Life had been simple only a day ago! He'd actually been looking forward to going home for the summer and doing things with his family, but now, instead, he had four long weeks of just aniki for company. That in itself would probably have been bearable, if only aniki hadn't taken his flirting to a whole new level last night, making Yuuta question... well, everything about his entire world. He didn't know how he was ever meant to stop questioning, either, especially not when he had other problems to work on too, like why aniki didn't love their father. If only aniki hadn't come to visit yesterday...!
A little voice – a member of the rebel faction that was gaining ground on taking him over – whispered to him that if aniki hadn't come, though, life would feel a lot more empty than it currently did. And didn't he enjoy feeling confused?
The voice was quite clearly evil, but Yuuta found that he couldn't really argue with it, so he chose to get out of bed and ignore it instead. If he kept busy, there was no chance of further ambushes. He hoped.
His morning passed pleasantly enough. He did his maths and physics homework, which sped time up because he quite enjoyed those subjects, once he actually sat down and started, and there were no distractions from his phone. Yuuta didn't even think about aniki again, in fact, until it reached lunch time and he was reminded of the discussion they'd had just before dinner the night before, which then made him wonder just when aniki would call him today. He was relieved to find that he didn't feel as anxious about receiving a call as he had last night – it even felt unimportant enough that he could leave his phone behind in his room when he went out to the tennis courts with Atsushi-senpai to hit a few balls around for an hour or so. Having a brief flashback to the dreams he'd had made him miss a deciding shot, and that was a bit embarrassing because it had really been a miss, but all in all, Yuuta was proud of himself for being able to have a normal day where normal things had happened.
When he returned to his room after dinner, though, the first thing he did was check his phone. In case Yumiko or his mother had tried to call, of course. And he did still kind of want to talk to aniki, even though he didn't feel as excited about it tonight.
No missed calls, but there was one message.
It was from Yumiko.
"Shuusuke says to tell you that he's busy tonight and can't call. Expect something from him later this week. And Yuuta, don't be too sad about this summer, okay? I'll still be here, and Shuusuke's very excited to have you back, even if he has funny ways of showing it."
Yuuta would've thought that having a nice, normal message on his phone from a nice, normal person would've been a refreshing change, but the wayward voices in his head (any kind of voice in his head was bound to be bad news – wayward just took it to the next level) whispered seductively that maybe he was a little disappointed – more than a little disappointed – that aniki wouldn't be calling tonight either. When asked for reasons, they suggested that he might quite like to hear his voice. This was the wrong answer, so Yuuta ceased negotiations. (Not that he'd ever have surrendered to peace talks anyway.)
Even though he was quite, quite sure that he wasn't pining after his brother's voice, Yuuta couldn't deny that right now he was feeling as if his birthday party had been cancelled. This was horribly intense for something as trivial as not receiving a phone call as expected, which worried him, but more important seemed to be the cake and balloons he'd been looking forward to. (Or maybe not balloons – no one should trust aniki with balloons ever again after last year...) What was wrong with him! Why was a simple conversation with aniki – okay, maybe scratch 'simple' – something to plan his day around, even subconsciously, when before, it had felt like a necessary evil to keep him happy until the next time he called. He even felt a little bad about having thought of aniki's calls as necessary evils!
This all begged the question, though: why, if he had been flirting mercilessly with him, was aniki putting off phoning him? Surely he'd be ringing as often as he could get away with (or more, since aniki could get away with anything)? He hadn't even sent him any messages today! Was this all a plot to make Yuuta paranoid? Or some sort of ruse to force him to make the next move? It had to be: aniki was always playing with his mind and enjoying it; he was probably getting bored with just sending indecent texts.
If this was true, then it meant Yuuta probably had the power to stop all of this now, if he didn't respond to aniki's bait. Never let it be said that Fuji Yuuta was easy to reel in!
Except, that was depressing, because Yuuta knew it wasn't true, and that he should get real or be reeled. He was going to have to stand firm on this and not let his inner self get in the way as it so frequently did. If he could quash the feelings of wanting to hear and talk to his brother (since when had 'hear' been on that list? Those voices were rewriting his brain...!), then maybe things could go back to normal, since aniki would get the hint that Yuuta just wasn't interested. Interested in what, Yuuta really dreaded to think, but who needed to put labels on things like flirting and wanting to kiss your own brother?
Augh! Where had that come from, again! He didn't want to kiss aniki! Not at all!
He was obviously doomed to be a pawn in aniki's plan until some conclusion to whatever this was had been reached. Yuuta was a bit scared about what sort of conclusion could be reached, but even that scared feeling was kind of pleasant. It figured that, with aniki at the helm, Yuuta's life was turning into one big oxymoron.
He wished he couldn't hear Mizuki-senpai's voice in his head, telling him "Love is full of contradictions, Yuuta-kun...", because one, there were too many voices in his head today, and two, it was most definitely not love. Everyone was trying to sabotage his life today, even when they weren't physically present!
There was obviously only one thing to do.
And that was to call aniki.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
"Oh, Yuuta, I wasn't expecting to hear from you – did you get nee-san's message?" Aniki sounded... flustered?
"I did, but I wanted to speak to you." Damn, that had come out wrong.
"Really?" Was that hope in aniki's voice? "What about? Is everything okay?"
"Yeah, everything's fine, I just wanted to... I don't know, chat for a while. If you're not busy." This was a lie, since nothing was fine at all, at least on the "I want to kiss you and maybe undress you" front, but oh shit what was that and where had it come from? Yuuta made a funny squeaky sound in surprise, too loud to be passed off as mere background noise.
"I thought your voice had already broken, Yuuuta?" Aniki sounded amused.
"It, er, has. I just, er, yeah. Stuff. So, are you able to talk right now?" Smooth.
"Actually, now's not so great. Can I call you tomorrow?"
"Er... yeah. Any time's good."
"Okay. Sweet dreams, Yuuta."
What on earth had happened there? Something had been off, although Yuuta couldn't pinpoint what, apart from the absence of anything bizarre and wrong. That in itself was weird, but there was something more to it. Had aniki really been busy? Maybe he had been; if it had been a plot to get him to call him, then he would have stayed to chat once Yuuta did call, wouldn't he?
This was really getting complicated.
Aniki didn't love their father; aniki had said what Yuuta suspected to be indecent things to him; Yuuta had had dreams about aniki which he knew to be indecent; and now aniki seemed to have pulled this all out from under him, leaving him with a crush – no no no, not a crush! – on his own brother and no way of doing anything about it when aniki was acting so strangely.
Could he ask Mizuki-senpai for help? "Mizuki-san, what do you do when you have inappropriate feelings for someone close to you?" But that would be a dreadful, dreadful conversation, for Mizuki would almost certainly think that Yuuta was talking about him, and the only thing worse than having a crush on aniki would be having a crush on aniki while Mizuki was being extra-nice to him to 'let him down' gently. At least, Yuuta assumed that that's what would happen. The world would become unbearably painful if it turned out that Mizuki had some sort of guy crush on him. Not that there was anything wrong with Mizuki-senpai, of course, it was just that... well. Yuuta didn't know what he wanted, as evidenced by the fact that he seemed to be wanting to cuddle with his own brother in bed. He didn't even feel remotely surprised that aniki wasn't a girl; that, he could accept, although it felt a little strange just because for all of his life he'd been expecting to fall in love with a girl and do all that stuff you did when you were adults and now maybe he wouldn't. Or maybe it was just that experimenting thing he'd heard about. But either way, what he couldn't manage to accept was that aniki was, well, aniki, his own brother! There was no good way to look at that fact. Even Mizuki-senpai, who collected data, probably wouldn't want to learn of those statistics!
Was tomorrow going to get even more complicated? Yuuta didn't see how it could, which was simultaneously relieving and depressing. Would aniki actually phone him tomorrow? It was all in his brother's hands now that he'd said he was busy. Busy with what? What if aniki already had a girlfriend or a boyfriend! It seemed unlikely, but he'd been cagey today...
Yuuta was saved from further introspection and worry by the arrival of a new message on his phone, however.
It was from aniki.
"I had some good dreams last night. Did you enjoy yours?"
The game was back on, if it had ever actually stopped, and if it had ever actually been a game. Was it a game? Yuuta's fingers said 'maybe not anymore' as he punched out a response.
"I didn't know you owned a whip."
Actually, maybe it was still a game.