Disclaimer: I don't own SD boys, Inoue does. The events that follow are not included in the original plot but enjoy anyway.

Chapter 2: The Hours

So I was skunked by a cute middle-age's request and here I was fostering a teenager who had a mental clock of a toddler. Nice going, Hisashi.

Rukawa sequaciously tailed me to the living room where I intended to usher him. The house was practically empty and comparatively clean, so I guess that would've been enough for Kaede Rukawa. If you think that I exulted at the thought of entertaining him, you're mistaken. He was just a team mate after all, and neither of us was so glad we had each other for company. So it was up to him to entertain himself at that point; nursery amusement wasn't part of deal, right?

For the first moments, we stood unguarded. I was still having a hang out from my incomplete sleep and you could tell the kind of wangling steps I was taking in my pyjamas, and he...well he was always in a mindless stupor like a mechanic automaton that turned into a basketball monster at the sight of a net. Naturally he was acting miffed. He was always like that...like he was so cool he could overcast the whole universe with a deleterious typhoon.

'Take a seat for chrissake.' I emitted in an irritated tone. The hell was he doing standing stiff like a flag pole? It was just somebody else's house, no one was going to arrest him if he took a seat without permission.

'...' He plopped himself down on the sofa bed in no less rigidity; you'd think he'd only act the moment he received a stupid command. His eyes retained the old hollow transparency he had been wearing all morning. It was very far from those that I'd seen in action.

'You've bitten anything, Rukawa? Breakfast?' I asked in a territorial sort of query. I didn't want to lend courtesy; this wasn't exactly my idea of spending a weekend alone in my place. Hell I was never fond of the boy for crying out loud.

'Yes.' He muttered drolly without even looking at me, much less looking thankful for the offer. What the hell.

'Well I haven't.' I said as-a-matter-of-factly. 'So I'm grabbing something from the fridge. You stay here and don't go out, okay?' I finished without waiting for an answer.

I skittered down to the kitchen and flung the fridge open to be greeted by a carton of fresh milk. Same as always; I was chewing cereals for the morning. They say it's healthy but what's the use of fucking healthy when you're bound to nurse an overgrown retard under your roof? I squinched up my face to show my irritation to show it to no one in particular. I was pissed by my own folly; had I refused Mrs. Rukawa I would've been snoozing like a cow on my bed and not opining myself crazy with all this Rukawa thing. I unheedingly stashed the corn cereals on the rice bowl and let fall the milk on them. Chewing proved to be a challenge when I started worrying myself sick about the disadvantages of looking after Rukawa; number one; he's a bore, number 2; he's a bore, and number 3; he's a bore. It would be worse than useless to confine ourselves within my place doing nothing; that'd kill me. Ever heard of anyone who died of boredom? I wouldn't want to be the first one nor to be THE one. That would make me seem too stupid for my standards. Then my jaw began to get craggy as I lost control of my mastication; without knowing it I was chewing so vigorously that almost every chunk I took in was dripping back from my mouth. 'Damn thing!' I ejaculated hoarsely but only icy echoes gave a reply. The house had never seemed so effete before; it was as if Rukawa's presence only augmented the dispirited aura within the vicinity.

After munching on the pointless breakfast I returned to check him out; he hadn't moved a fragment, that was nice. The only alteration might've been the number of respiration he had performed and oh, the 30 minute addition in his lifetime. Magnificent. I slumped myself across him for whatever reason and directed my gaze bull's eye on his.

'Look, I haven't the slightest hunches of what you do at 7:00 in the morning. If you would be so kind to tell me, then I'd be much obliged to prepare it for you.' I proposed somewhat sarcastically. Somehow, I was hoping he'd go for a basketball routine in the nearby playground but he didn't.

'...' No response. I felt like I was instructing a wall to run after an escaped criminal. He was as immotile as the damned American continent; the only thing he did to acknowledge my inquisition was to tilt his fraying head in a rakish angle. So that must mean nothing. I was frazzled beyond endurance and was about to bawl over but...

'Okay...you want to go biking? Y'know, inhale some fresh air. The sun's beautiful this time of the day. There's nothing on the tube at this hour; all they show you is these silly police beats in the news and I trust you don't care about current events or how many corpses were found in Japan's dark alleys.' I suggested in a casual inflection, feeling that a more affable mode of speaking was necessary. Even I was surprised I had taken care of my temper. Anything just to get rid of him; even if I sounded like a phony parent who couldn't convince a child.

'...' Still nothing. He just simplified his remark with a sore shrug. What an impudent mutt. I knew he had a very low squabbling ratio, talking at average 40 words per day; but to give a stupid breath for an answer was way off reasonable. It made me want to reave him out of the damned door. Oh well, time to get this beat-around-the-bush cackle a few notches down, I was going to order him flat out to skive himself away from me.

'Rukawa, I need a little hand here. If you would rather have it that we stare at each other all day that's fine with me (on second thoughts, that sounds fucking horrible to me), but don't expect your sojourn here to be fruitful because I ain't got anything to have you entertained, okay?' I said, trying hard to hoodwink my resentful mood.

The glum on Rukawa's face was replaced by a sudden frown as his glance drove a fraction nearer to mine as if to ask my intentions. Still he didn't answer.

'So what I'm implying is that you find yourself something to play with outside or away from me so that you wouldn't just hole up in here with me and bore yourself to death. Got that? The last time I baby sat was decades ago, upon my little sister; but now she's in junior high and I quite lost track of how to do it...so go ahead and enjoy yourself.' I continued in righteous indignation. How long was I going to persuade him to leave me alone, anyway? There I was gaggling like a goose to an intellectually incapacitated slob and I wasn't getting even a syllable of retort. Imagine how frustrating a bastard he could get.

'I'll just stay here, sempai.' Came the ultimate, ever so awaited reply. 5 senseless words were all he could supply after multifarious sets of babel and babbling had been released by my exhausted throat. He just wanted to stick his ass on the goddamn sofa bed round the clock because he had become so enticed and allured by it. I wanted to rummage it to see what sort of enchantment that made the bastard so attached to it but that would've made me look stupid even in front of someone like him.

'That's it? Stay here? But that's so fucking preposterous! Sounds like an old clunk's idea of fun; sit and relax all day. You're getting too old for your age, kiddo. Go get yourself a toy, anything. Or you could go to the movies; there's a new motion picture from Pixar, "The Incredibles". It's fascinating. I've seen it so I ain't going with you, or you can attend Shohoku's remedial classes; I bet to hell your grades didn't shoot through the roof this time...just go!' I hollered hysterically, as pugnacious as a tyrannical Viking. I was shooting the bull; I had watched the silly film no more than he and there wasn't any remedial class back in the campus. I studied him with bemused eyes; he was still drowning himself in chaotic gloom. I was dawdling in-cohesively but what did it matter? If I looked like an idiot for raving like this, I was sure Rukawa wouldn't mind it. In fact I was rather skeptical that he had any sense of classification when it came to identifying who was an idiot or a genius.

'My mom asked me to stay with you, sempai.' he mumbled as he quickly washed off any lifeless expression on his face. So after some venomous minutes of trying to extract anything from his cynical glare, I got reason. His mom asked him to coll himself to the baby sitter, and he was obsequious under the given premise. His mom...the workaholic dowager who dumped him in front of my door step as if he were some shuttle bound, fragile package. Great; the freshman jock cum haughty floor sweeper was a good son after all. Obedience wasn't exactly a virtue one gets from school (Hell, Rukawa didn't get anything from Shohoku except for a lousy all-girl fan club); wherever he got this, it sure wasn't from the hours of snoring inside his insane classroom.

'Well yeah that's one point; technically you are under my probation. But do you seriously regard me as your guardian? You don't, more than I treat you as my responsibility. I don't give a crap if you've just been diagnosed as a mentally imbalanced juvenile, I'm not your doctor. But if you're going to spoor me around like I'm your mom and you're my cub, I ain't gonna let that either. Clear? You can go outside for all I care.' I chortled in a mollified note only to see Rukawa endorsing the same blank stare. Prudence was a quality I never possessed but sarcasm was my forte and at this point, I had clambered up to the pinnacle of my irritation and the view wasn't so good from up there.

I let an intermittent pause seep through. I needed a ponderous second to rearrange the structure of my thoughts. Rukawa, the big jerk of intolerable contumely, was consistently acting like an imbecile as he had been for 15 years. The minutes coursed through a soft stream of cogitation and a silence...a silence that I'd been dreading to avoid like a plague incessantly wrapped itself around us. I tried to flog it down...This was what I was frightened to end up in; to be enmeshed in an eye to eye, wordless moment with Rukawa. Holy cow! Then as crazy as the situation was getting, an idea poured itself to me,

'Right. You don't want anything. Fine by me. I'll do it my way then.' I announced peremptorily and stretched up.

Rukawa remained soundless and inadvertent in much the same manner even as I ripped my way through the door. It was like watching your listener lose interest in your tale, so equally insulting. The humongous asshole.

'The cash your mom shoved to me abetted me to nib a case of alcoholic drink from the nearest local boutique. You said you wanted to stay with me, then get drunk with me. Yeah, I do that on a hebdomadal basis so don't go reporting me to the police and don't fink me to your mom.' I sneered, pulling a sweatshirt from the cupboard. I knew he wasn't going to blurt it to his mom, I didn't think he was the kind naturally. But I was, however, aware that he was composing himself better than I expected; he didn't redound one single reaction, for the whole time he had been as cool as an arctic ice floe.

I threw the door open and followed the trail to the store. Rukawa just made an incoherent gesture I wasn't able to catch; perhaps even taking the time to be ashamed.

A scrim of burdensome weight was filtered away from me as I snatched myself away from the bastard. From that perspective, I could see how dreary my house looked with that unit number 27. I wouldn't even want to repeat to myself that some mean entity was lounging there.

I scampered my way to the store's path, cursing an awful times. Nosy people came throwing incurious glance at me like they just saw an incongruous animal on the loose. Then it dawned on me; I was dressed so pathetically in this almost pellucid pyjamas and my hair was all a mess. 'Damn Rukawa!' I shrieked coarsely only to invite more attentive glances.

'Mitsui-san, you look awful.' said Mr. Inoh, the store owner. I reached it, finally.

'You have no idea. Nah, I don't wanna talk about it.' I grunted wolfishly.

'Bad day? This early?' The man smiled.

'Yeah. Unimaginably.' I snapped.

'Easy. You need Lucky Strike?'

'Still got loads of stock at home. A case of Miller Lite, please.' I said.

'Throwing a party this early, huh? I never knew you drink, Hisashi.' he chuckled amicably.

'You're right I don't, but I'm going to make a recant; I'm drinking myself to death this wacky weekend.' I replied bitterly.

I don't want to delve history as to why I abstained from taking a dose of alcoholic beverages. My gangster cronies sure were into drinking barrels but hey, set me apart from them, and though I still chilled out with them I wasn't capricious enough to try it. I smoked though, and if I had to place any blame in my future notoriety for being an obscure smoker, I'd put it on the nights out with my gang pals. But drink I didn't. And don't ask me why I did something so crazy; I went as far as pushing myself to the limits just to show Rukawa I was the man and that he shouldn't be pestering the crap out of me. Mad, isn't it?

Or perhaps I wanted to impress him? Oh to hell with that...I just lied to him, that's all.

TBC