Chapter 2
Kanzaki dug into her backpack and scavenged furiously. "Oh, let them be bothered." She pulled out her arm in exasperation and started banging on the door of her shared apartment. "Open up! It's Urumi. Oh, and we have a visitor! Let's be decent in there, shall we?"
Murai opened the door with a great scowl on his face. "Welcome home."
"You know, with all the job opportunities that you're less than qualified for, it wouldn't hurt to improve skills in attending to doors. Just in case someone wants you as their big-shot butler. You never know." Kanzaki strolled inside, a hand wrapped securely around Yoshikawa's limp wrist.
Not one greeting passed between the two boys, each feeling a level of weariness that made it hard to be overtly amiable at the present time.
Kanzaki pushed Yoshikawa onto the couch, with equal parts gentleness and impishness. He stumbled on top of the mattress, looking practically boneless with his unresisting movement. "There, you look perfect just like that. I know I raised your hopes and everything, but it looks like a little generosity isn't an option for Murai tonight. Either he got his ass kicked in the arcade again, or his mommy figured out that those divorce papers weren't authentic."
"That plan would've worked, but for your information, Kikuchi didn't even want to fabricate those documents unless I paid him." Murai glared at the closed door that concealed a thoroughly stingy individual. "Which makes sense, because he never wants to do anything for anyone. I bet he'd only tutor me if I gave him compensation for it, or find some other way to cheapen our friendship!"
"Then kindly be such a rich friend and let me sleep!" retorted the detested door.
"I take it we're not going to have much luck with Kikuchi, either," Kanzaki concluded. She patted Yoshikawa's head once, then headed for her room. "You'll have to make do with this. Sleep tight, Yoshikawa!"
And so Kanzaki left him, at the mercy of a seething but mostly mathematically inept Murai. Yoshikawa quietly resigned to his fate, folding himself amidst the pillows and inglenooks of the furniture he'd been made to lay on. He was quite content with being ignored (even by Murai) in favor of a textbook, as he closed his eyes in the pretense of sleep.
But underneath his eyelids rampantly flashed the images and sounds of his chaotic day. Upon snarled and tangled thread hung snapshots of what had been some of the most trying and tiring hours he'd ever lived, fraying at each touch, spinning with every throb of his pulse. He lost himself trying to push these memories into oblivion, too caught up in negating remembrance.
"You're sleeping here?" Yoshikawa was questioned, when Murai finally achieved the presence of mind to ask.
I'm trying to, but my mind seems to have plans more important than getting unconscious and letting me end this day once and for all. Instead of saying those exact words - or any words at all - Yoshikawa spared himself from having to answer, and pretended that he had fallen asleep. If he couldn't convince his body that it was what he needed, maybe he could at least fool Murai.
Fortunately, Murai happened to be more gullible than Yoshikawa's physique, and returned to grumbling into his homework without any further attempts at deriving an answer from their unanticipated visitor. And so the thoughts flew freely and uninterrupted once more in Yoshikawa's brain, attacking him relentlessly with "this is what you did" and "this is what you should have done".
Everything replayed in a colorful rendition with each detail apparently deserving at least one run-through, though select scenes were revisited more frequently than others.
Mostly, he thought back to Anko... Desperate and defeated Anko.
They had been huddled over a science book, both pairs of eyes sweeping across the black stretch of grueling text. Yoshikawa sighed in near silence, frustration getting hold of him. Feeling a wave of sympathy, Anko's glanced up at him with truest concern. "Is there something you don't get?"
"I've sort of been lost since the beginning of the chapter."
Anko made a neutral sound, to be freely interpreted. "Hmm. It's not that difficult, actually. Nevertheless, I don't think it's good to overwork yourself, especially since you're not used to it. On the other hand, the downward spiral that is your grades is getting wildly out of control. Are you distracted? Is it one of your terribly geeky little video games...?"
"No, it's not," he insisted. It hadn't been the first time she asked. "I'm not throwing my life away for the Playstation, honest."
Anko sat up, staring down at the textbook, at a loss. "You learned more from Onizuka even if the guy taught you next to nothing." She saw the look on his face - a mild but unmistakably hurt expression. "Academically, I mean. I know he taught you all these other majestic, life-altering things and made you all the better person... Yeah, yeah. I liked the guy too. I guess something must be distracting you right now. All I know is it can't very well be me."
Yoshikawa had smiled at that, wanting to steer the conversation towards a more light-hearted direction. "How can you be so sure? Maybe I shouldn't spend so much time with you, because you occupy too much of the available space in my brain."
"Hmm. Hardly."
The boy had been persistent. He would refuse the emergence of a serious talk as it drew nigh, go to all sorts of lengths to eschew it. "Modesty isn't a good look for you. It's one trend that doesn't suit you too well," he teased her.
She acted as if she heard nothing, just closed the science book sprawled between them and gathered it into her arms. "It's not your fault if you don't like me as much..."
Yoshikawa knew he couldn't rely on his avoidance for too long... He allowed the discussion to continue, if only because she needed the repeat performance. "I do like you. I really do, and I love you." He said it so simply, so straightforward that she there was no space for her to be shocked or be doubtful. He said it almost as if he were speaking to his mother... Which, believe it or not, actually wasn't helping his case. "I care about you more than anyone in the world."
"How about Onizuka?"
Yoshikawa faltered. "Onizuka?"
Anko looked firmly into his eyes. "Come on, Noboru. If you were to go back in time and were given the choice to meet only one of us, who would it be?"
"You can't... just decide something like that! Nobody can choose between two people, and besides, you two are different! You two mean different things to me, you - Anko, you're my friend."
It was obvious, by the way she looked at him with wounded eyes, that he had somehow insulted her. "I'm your friend? What's Onizuka, then?"
"My teacher," he replied, lamely.
She allowed some time for her heart to return to its normal pace, for her breath to come in and out of her body like it usually did. "I can choose you, over any of the people I know. I can choose you over my family, even over my friends. Not because I hate them or they don't mean enough to me. But I'd choose you."
"I... That's too much for you to say," Yoshikawa stammered.
She leaned into him, took his hands and wound his arms around her waist. "If you won't listen to me, feel me." She placed her wrists on his shoulders, fingers lightly splayed on his neck, and her lips found his in a soft collision.
Yoshikawa awkwardly held Anko to himself, limbs resolute. He moved his lips against hers, all the while trying to quell an uprising of terror somewhere inside him. It felt like his mouth was scraping against canvas, as if he were testing a surface instead of kissing a person. His unstable heartbeat rapped unpleasantly against the hollows of his chest, as his fingers curled around her shirt, suppressing the demanding instinct to push her away. He waited out every agonizing second, for her to break the kiss.
"That was..." she began breathily, sounding wistful, dreamy; as if she were reading lines from a book. "You felt that, right? That was..." She never really put into words what she thought it was, but she kept nodding, as if she were trying to prod the lines from someone else, as if she were bobbing for answers.
"It, um... takes a while to get used to." Yoshikawa didn't like how he sounded. "I mean, I've never kissed anyone before. It's too new."
"Oh, God." There was a shock of helplessness that made Anko's eyes shine with an odd, heart-breaking brightness. Feeling self-conscious, she bent a little to bury her face in his shoulder. "There has to be a way to fix this. We can analyze it and find a solution, there's a solution for everything." She held onto the boy standing stiffly in front of her, the one who wasn't supposed to be feeling as vulnerable as she was. "Because you love me, and I love you, despite everything, right? It has to count for something. It would be stupid if this didn't work out. There's nothing wrong with you. I mean, us, there's nothing wrong with-"
Yoshikawa gaped at her, because she'd never looked more serious in her life. "There isn't anything 'wrong' with me-"
"I just said that-"
"And just because we're not, what, fooling around? As if it was something we have to do just because movies like to depict teenage life like that, as if media calls the shots-"
"I didn't mean- I wasn't trying to insult-" Anko gritted her teeth. Slapped him. "God, let's just do it."
The ferocity in her eyes wouldn't allow him to ask for clarification. "We don't need that..." he whispered weakly. He rubbed his cheek, not because she had hit him hard, but to give his trembling hands something to do.
"We do. I'm..." Anko's expression softened - her eyes were pleading. "It won't hurt me. I love you."
Yoshikawa shook his head. Even if he could find the logical connection between those statements, it would have been meaningless. With his back to her, his farewell had been, "It's not going to solve anything."
Now, laying on the couch and reminiscing, Yoshikawa had to wonder just how true that would have proved. What if he had been wrong, and that one act would have fixed him and her, if it would have provided the solution to the problem Anko had structured.
What would it solve, anyway? Had there been something that needed repair to begin with? And if it did exist, was it something the two of them could overcome?
He hadn't been mindful of Murai retiring to his room, and he wasn't aware of how long it had been until sleep had slowly but surely subdued him. After an incomprehensible duration of time, in the same drowsy sensation he found that the upsetting morning light had trickled and seeped into his vision, still narrow with residue slumber. Sounds became louder and more distinct, despite his struggles to keep them dull and separate from his thoughts.
It was a losing battle, and in no time, he found himself irredeemably awake. He groaned into the cushion beneath him, and finally, a skinny frame emerged behind the pillows. He saw three of his classmates faintly going about their own morning rituals. "Good morning," he greeted them with the painful effort of sounding cheerful.
Having been answered with a couple of grunts and growls, he induced that none of them were part of the mythical group best known as "morning people". He had only received a more or less proper reply from Kikuchi: a confused "Hey", which he muttered because he had been taken a good deal off guard by Yoshikawa's presence.
Yoshikawa observed them uneasily. Kanzaki was going over a newspaper, Kikuchi was lazily lounging in front of his laptop, and Murai was packing his mouth with breakfast. Yoshikawa woke up with an intense hunger, but couldn't bring himself to ask any of them for breakfast. He decided to put it off for now, and wait until they were ready to interact with other human beings. To bide time, he decided he would call his sister. "Can I use the phone?" he asked politely.
Ten minutes later, Murai must have noticed that the poor guy had been standing in front of the telephone, meekly waiting for permission. He glanced at Yoshikawa and gruffly made a hand gesture that signified consent.
Relieved, Yoshikawa dialed his number and was treated to his sister's notably buoyant voice. "Hello?"
"Hi. It's Noboru."
"Wonderful." Wait, did that... just come without sarcasm? Yoshikawa could practically hear the grin on her face. "Good morning, little brother."
He felt his skin crawl, unprepared for this flagrant manifestation of affection. "You know, you locked me out yesterday."
"I did, I'm sorry. The thing about last night... Well, Ha-kun arrived last night!" Takayuki squealed. Dear Lord, she squealed. "Took me by surprise, he did. Took me other ways, too, in different posi-"
"No, no divulging!" Yoshikawa cringed. "You have friends for that sort of thing! And really, don't I deserve at least a little apology? You did prevent me from getting inside my own house. The least you could do was open the door for me, I was rapping at it for nothing short of an hour."
"I'm truly sorry, but I really didn't hear anything. It's a bit difficult when-"
"Okay, got it," he snapped. He had never been so snarky with his older sister, but she had never been so awfully giggly with him, either. "The fact remains that I would've had to sleep in the streets. Luck has it my classmate found me and offered to let me stay with them."
"That's great, then! I'm so happy for you!" Takayuki gushed. Yoshikawa had a feeling she was just happy, period. "Sleeping at your friend's house, that sounds fun."
Yoshikawa surveyed the room, taking in the sight of three grouchy teenagers immersed in his or her own world. "Yeah. Fun."
"You must be very close to this friend of yours, huh, Noboru? I bet you had a great time. You know, you and your friend. Without me and Ha-kun to disturb you with any of our private affairs."
"...Actually, that would be nice..."
"Your friend must really like you to want you to stay there, huh?" Hint, hint.
"I doubt that they would like me here any longer that necessary," he admitted softly, even though nobody within hearing range was paying him any attention.
"They? You mean there are a lot of you? That sounds so cool, Noboru. It would be like a dorm, if you lived there with your friends." Hint, hint, hint, and for emphasis, HINT.
It had been a while since he'd questioned whether or not they were his friends. It wasn't too long ago when he'd said that Onizuka was his only friend. The one-item list expanded, albeit minimally, to include a few more names... but he never discerned whether it extended to Kanzaki, Murai, and even Kikuchi. "I guess. I never really liked the idea of dorms, though."
Already sick of her futile attempt at subtlety, Takayuki resorted to telling her younger brother exactly what he should do. "Alright, don't be such a kid, you don't want to live here with me," she informed him. "Just ask your friends if it's okay to live there. Tell them you'll pay your share, I'll help you out with it."
"I don't want to live-!" he stopped himself in mid-protest, before anyone could pick up on what he and her sister were talking about. "No, I won't ask."
"Oh, come on! Even for just a while? Just so Ha-kun and I can adjust to being with each other. Give us, I don't know, just a few months. I want this relationship to work, dammit. Don't you want me to be happy?"
Yoshikawa rubbed his temple, something that usually followed a round of his sister's dramatics. "I do. But it won't make a difference with me there, anyway. I'm low-key, remember?"
"Noboru!" Hers was the only violent whine Yoshikawa ever had the privilege of listening to. It would take Anko years of experience to achieve the potency Takayuki's incensed complaining. "Be a good brother! Think of me and my future with my husband! Remember what happened to mom and dad? Could you, in good conscience, subject me to a similar kind of life?"
"Think of it this way, you can always blame it on me," he replied hotly. "Look, I'm sorry, but I'm really too embarrassed to just invite myself over... permanently." He tried to make himself as cryptic as possible, just in case any of this reached the coherent part of Kanzaki, Kikuchi, or Murai.
"I'll do it! Give one of them the phone, I'll ask for you-"
"Forget it!" was the immediate reply. "No, I mean... I'm sorry. Look, we'll talk about it at home, okay? 'Bye."
He hung up the phone in a frenzy, cutting off any possible response. He'd deal with this later, and make it clear that he wasn't about to be kicked out of his own house.
It was a good turn of events to witness an actual conversation happening, be it predominantly occurring in less than five syllables. Kikuchi and Murai mumbled at each other, and for some inscrutable reason, there was understanding between them. Murai turned down the volume of the television and Kikuchi, satisfied, turned back to the computer monitor.
Yoshikawa looked down at his clothes and sighed. He was going to have to go to school unwashed, unchanged, and with unbrushed teeth.
And, he realized in abject horror, without his assignment in Latin.
In an act of both bravery and desperation, he sat across Kanzaki and asked, in a voice that wanted to be both heard and ignored, "Um... Kanzaki-san? Do you happen to know anything about Latin?"
In an instant her eyes were open and her aura accommodating. "Latin? You're taking Latin?"
Without shedding any lethargy, both Murai and Kikuchi looked up. Though void of energy, Murai managed to ask, "May I ask what inspired the pure brilliance that led you to choosing Latin as your foreign language? You do realize it's not a very popular elective."
Yoshikawa hesitated, as he attempted to conjure a plausible answer. "Well, Latin is a romantic language."
"Romantic? It's a dead language, what's so romantic about that?" Kikuchi asked him levelly.
"Um... well, death is eternal. And so is love...?"
Kikuchi shrugged. "...Yoshikawa, you're a weird guy. I'm not insulting you. I'm just saying you're weird."
"Oh." That's fair, Yoshikawa thought.
"I haven't done Latin. I've had my share of Western linguistics, truth be told," Kanzaki said, her attention pried completely away from the newspaper in her hands. "I'm getting into Eastern dialects, even if they're not being widely taught. Anyway. You should have signed up for English or something."
"I was never very good at English," Yoshikawa admitted. "I don't know, I just chose Latin. There was this one game I really liked, and it had a Latin title. Magna Carta. And I must sound like a total loser."
Murai, coming out of his stupor, gawked at him. "I wasn't going to comment, but... dude, you're going to suffer for an entire semester because you had a hard-on for the chick with the braids?"
"Are you talking about Adora? Or Rien? Wait, hey, I don't get... I don't get - you know - because of 2D people. Give me some credit!"
"You're taking up Italian, right?" Kanzaki asked Kikuchi.
"Yeah. I believe it's the closest language to Latin, among all its other descendants." Kikuchi turned to Yoshikawa. "What do you need help in?"
"Actually..." He couldn't help but inject a bit of shame in his intonation. That's just wonderful. The more pathetic, the better. "I just need the importance of learning Latin. It's the first week, so we're not given that much work yet."
Kikuchi nodded, then his attention was given back to his computer. "We can search for it. There are bound to be English sites about things like that. I'll just translate them for you."
"Thanks. That's... convenient." Yoshikawa seemed almost disappointed that the proposed plan seemed so simple, so infuriatingly easy to achieve. "Uh, but, shouldn't I think of the answers myself?"
"When it comes to the real lessons, you can work hard for it. Blood, sweat, and tears - knock yourself out. For now, we'll just take the easy way out. This is obligatory meaningless drivel, anyway. Besides, we have to leave for school in about fifteen minutes." As an afterthought, he added, "Later on, if you need help... I'll see what I can do, alright?"
Nearly fainting with gratitude, Yoshikawa thanked Kikuchi, with one less thing to worry about.
