Author's note: May I just say that I DESPISE the uploading process. It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. No matter WHAT format I upload in, it ditches any formatting I've got, and I have to run through the entire thing by hand in the QuickEdit screen to re-italicize things. Which is why, if you see things like ithis/i, that was supposed to be in italics and I missed it. I apologize. If it were easier to EDIT things once they were posted, maybe I'd go back and FIX it, but frankly, I just don't have the energy. grrrrrr.

Chapter 21

For a long moment Issei stood at the edge of the fountain area, watching Jinpachi's still form. The other boy wasn't moving, in fact Issei wasn't entirely certain he was actually awake. There was a despondent slump to his shoulders, as if he were disappointed by something.

Issei wanted nothing so much as to step up and smooth away the lines that undoubtedly creased his friend's brow, to assure him that everything was fine and they could be happy together. Except that wasn't really what Jinpachi wanted, he knew. The redhead wanted to apologize, so he could stop feeling guilty about the way he'd treated Issei, perhaps, but that didn't mean he wanted anything more.

He took a hesitant step forward and Jinpachi looked up. Issei was startled by the oddly fragile look on his old friend's face. He'd never seen the redhead look so... vulnerable.

"You came," Jinpachi murmured, standing. Thankfully for Issei's nerves, he made no move to get closer, just stood there looking back at him. "I was starting to think you wouldn't."

"I was studying. I just got your message," Issei admitted. "I almost didn't bother."

He could see that Jinpachi wanted to know why he had shown up, but apparently the redhead wasn't going to ask. That was fine with Issei.

"I didn't expect you to show up like this," Jinpachi said after a moment of awkward silence between them. Issei flushed, at first thinking his friend meant his rumpled appearance, before he realized what the redhead actually meant.

"Dressed like a girl, you mean?" Issei asked, just to clarify. He spared a moment to be grateful that there weren't many people nearby at the moment. "This is the way I always dress." Mindful of keeping his secret, he edged a little closer and lowered his voice a bit. "I haven't dressed as a boy since the day I found out I got the scholarship."

"So then, it really didn't have anything to do with me?" Jinpachi asked, and Issei shook his head. "Then why? Has Enju really got that strong a hold on you?"

"It has nothing to do with Enju, specifically," Issei replied. "It has to do with the fact that I have a female soul. I never should have been asked to be reincarnated male." The knowledge that he'd done so only in an attempt to be closer to Gyokuran's current incarnation hung between them, choking the air.

"You're really... happier this way?" Jinpachi asked, and Issei's eyes softened.

"For the first time in a long time, I don't flinch whenever I look at myself in a mirror, Jinpachi," he answered. "I don't feel like I'm being strangled by my own skin. Happy? I don't know about that. I just know that this is the only way I could stay sane."

"Fair enough," Jinpachi replied. The silence stretched out between them, awkward in a way that had never happened when they were friends.

"Were you really serious about changing schools?" Issei asked abruptly. Jinpachi blinked, then shrugged.

"Yeah. It's not fair to you for me to stay. I dunno what's going on between us these days - hell, I haven't understood our relationship since the day you... you k-kissed me that first time." The redhead flushed a dull red shade that Issei knew was probably echoed in his own cheeks. "But it's relatively easy for me to switch - I already checked with my dad. He's a little bewildered, but he said okay, as long as I bring my grades up at least five percent in the new school."

Issei gave a reluctant smile at the look of distaste on Jinpachi's face. The redhead must have done reasonably well in high school to get into a university at all, and his grades couldn't be that bad now if he was confident of being accepted to a different school, but studying had never been high on Jinpachi's list of favourite activities.

"You don't seem as convinced that I'm manipulating you," he pointed out, and Jinpachi's flush increased.

"Take it as a compliment, I guess. You, uh... you make a really pretty girl." Issei ducked his head at that, both astonished and pleased at the unusual praise. Jinpachi continued, "I was just so sure that I couldn't really still be... I mean, I knew you were a guy, but... well, my mental picture of you as Isako was pretty strong, and... argh."

Issei couldn't help it - he laughed. Jinpachi was unexpectedly adorable when he was this flustered. "Well, now you know how I felt back in high school, when nothing I did would shake the way Enju's love for Gyokuran was leaking into my feelings about you," he replied, somewhat unsympathetically.

"Yeah, I know," Jinpachi said. There was a hint of sympathy in his voice that had never been present before, and it startled Issei again. Well, maybe this whole mess had one positive aspect, if Jinpachi was starting to be a little more tolerant.

"Listen, Issei... uh, I guess I should call you Isako?" Jinpachi interrupted himself, getting sidetracked. Issei smiled slightly.

"I still think of myself as Issei to a certain extent, and Sakura calls me that in private, but for the most part it's better that you usually stick to Isako," he murmured. "That way you won't make a mistake when other people are around." He winced at the very thought. "I... I don't think I want to know what will happen if the truth got around."

"Yeah, it probably wouldn't be pretty," Jinpachi agreed, frowning. "I mean, I reacted badly, and I know you. But," he tilted his head, curious. "How do you keep it from, you know, your boyfriends and stuff? You're not... you didn't..." his eyes got very wide.

It took a moment for Issei to realize what he was getting at, and then his face flamed. "No, I haven't gone that far," he all but squeaked, shaking his head. Moving closer to the fountain, though not closer to Jinpachi, he perched on the edge, feeling the spray misting against his back. "I doubt I ever will. Dressing and acting as a girl is one thing; only society's arbitrary rules dictate what is 'proper' for males and females. But to actually disfigure the body Sarjareem gave me... well, that seems too much like sacrilege."

"I guess I can understand that," Jinpachi agreed, sitting as well. They faced each other over a short arc of water, out of reach and yet close enough to make them both uncomfortable, for different reasons. "So, how do you keep it from your boyfriends?"

Issei gave a soft laugh, which had little of mirth in it and a great deal of old pain and sadness. "You still don't get it, do you? Do you think I would have let myself get anywhere near you if I'd had any choice? If I had ever gotten over you?"

Looking somewhat stunned, Jinpachi stared at him. "You mean... you still... there's never been anybody but me?"

With a soft sigh, Issei shook his head. "I tried briefly, with Sakura. I thought I could use my empathy to feed off her feelings for me, and pretend, and it would be good enough. But it wasn't fair to either of us, in the end. And no, there's never been anyone else." He shrugged. "Even if I was interested, it's not worth the danger of them finding out my secret."

Eyeing the flush on his first love's face, he added gently, "Does it upset you? To know that I still feel that way?"

"A little," Jinpachi admitted bluntly, rubbing the back of his head with one hand. "And it's a little flattering, I guess. Sure as hell I've never had a girl that devoted to me." After a brief hesitation, he added, "It's a shame, though. You deserve better than that. And you'd make someone a really great - well, girlfriend, I guess, if you could find someone who could get past the fact that you're not a girl. There's gotta be someone out there like that."

Looking at him, Issei thought it might be wise not to comment that there was still the problem of the fact that he didn't want anyone but Jinpachi. That was his own fault, and he'd already resigned himself to the fact that he was going to spend at least one more lifetime alone.

Deciding it was time to change the subject, he asked, "What where you going to say, before you got sidetracked by my name?"

"Oh yeah!" Jinpachi shook his head, as if to clear it. "I wanted to ask you... especially now, with what you just said... why did you get so angry at me, back in high school?" He gave Issei a genuinely bewildered look. "First you vanished on me, then you slapped me when I found you again - I know I'd been kinda distant to you since that day on the roof, but what the hell did I do to piss you off so much?

Issei couldn't help but stare. "You still don't know? After all this time, you still haven't figured it out?" Jinpachi shook his head, and Issei raked a hand through his hair, giving him a disbelieving look. "All right. If you really want to know what you did that upset me so much, I'll tell you. You hung up on me."

"Huh?" Jinpachi looked blank. "What are you talking about? When? And why would that make you so angry?"

"Jinpachi..." Issei didn't know whether to cry or hit him. He settled on a frustrated laugh. He loved the boy, but dearest Sarjareem he could be dense at times! "I know you have a brain, I've seen you use it given enough provocation," he murmured, earning him a dirty look from the other boy. "Think, for just a moment, will you? What started this whole thing?"

"You vanished on me," Jinpachi replied promptly. "You just didn't show up for school one day. I thought you were just sick, but then you still didn't show up, and then they stopped calling your name for attendance." He made a frustrated noise. "I tried asking your sister, but she was avoiding me. I tried calling your parents, but they just hung up on me! I even went and asked Alice and Shion and Haru if they'd heard from you, but they didn't know what was going on, either."

"Wait, wait," Issei broke in, holding his hands up in an effort to stem the sudden flow of increasingly angry words. "Back up. What happened right before that?"

"Before you disappeared?" Jinpachi blinked, broken out of what was probably a years-old rut in his thinking. "Well... you called me the night before, and you said you'd talk to me in school the next day, which is why I thought it was weird when you didn't show up. Is that what you mean, 'I hung up on you'?"

"I didn't say I'd talk to you the next day, Jinpachi," Issei corrected him quietly. "I didn't say a single word except your name. You made that assumption, and then you hung up on me."

He could see his friend struggling to recall the conversation, to remember if it had gone the way Issei said, but it had been too long ago. Finally the redhead gave up with a small frustrated noise. "Well, if you needed to talk to me right then, why didn't you say something before I hung up?"

"Because I wasn't able to say much of anything," Issei told him, his voice still quiet. "It's a minor miracle I got your name out coherently. I had a broken jaw, Jinpachi. I was calling you for help." He saw his friend's eyes go wide with horror. The words poured out of him now, much as Jinpachi's tirade had a moment before, and he didn't even try to stem the flow. This was a hurt he'd been sitting on for too long - maybe if he got it out in the open, he'd finally be able to deal with it.

"In all this time, it never once occurred to you to wonder why I would call you out of the blue, late at night, when we'd barely spoken in months?" he asked, voice still quiet but now full of old pain. "You never once wondered if that phone call might have had anything to do with the reason I vanished the next day?"

"Issei, I..." Jinpachi tried to stop him, but Issei continued right over top of him.

"My father had just beaten the shit out of me and physically thrown me out of my house, Jinpachi," he said, each world deliberate and painful. "The only reason I even had my phone was because my sister snuck it out to me, along with some other things. I had a broken jaw, broken ribs, and I was crying too hard to breathe. I was scared, and lost, and hurt, and just when I needed you most you hung up on me."

Aware that he was starting to sound a little hysterical, he clamped his jaw shut and just focused on his breathing. He was startled to feel tears prickle at the corners of his eyes, and he fought them back, horrified. The last thing he needed to do now was break down crying in front of Jinpachi. Here I am, acting like a girl again, he thought wryly, and the memory of the last time Jinpachi had accused him of that almost broke him.

"Issei? Issei, I'm sorry, please don't cry." He wasn't even aware Jinpachi had moved closer until he felt the hesitant hand come to rest on his shoulder. Try not to sniffle, he glanced up to see the redhead hovering over him as if he was uncertain of his welcome. Which, Issei admitted to himself, he had reason to be.

"Damn it," he muttered, swiping irritably at one watering eye with the back of his hand. "I promised myself I wasn't going to get emotional."

Jinpachi's lips twitched, and he relaxed a little since Issei hadn't used the hand to hit him instead. "I'd say you're acting like a girl, but I don't want to get slapped again. And it seems a little redundant at this point, anyway." His voice was light, obviously teasing rather than accusing, and Issei surprised both of them by laughing softly.

"I'm sorry I slapped you," Issei admitted. "If it had been any other day, I'd probably have been more reasonable, but you caught me at a very bad moment. I was already mostly hysterical."

"I thought it was just more of whatever it was that was making you avoid me in the first place," Jinpachi admitted. "Issei... at the risk of getting you upset again, you can't blame me for not knowing there was something wrong. You didn't say anything, and you're the mind-reader, not me. How could I have known?"

"Sakura did," Issei replied quietly. "With no more information than you had, except that I called her Shusuran by accident. She could tell just by the tone of my voice that something was wrong, and she dropped what she was doing and told me to meet her at her house. Of course," he smiled slightly, "she thought it was just another heartbreak over you, as usual. When she realized I was actually injured, she hustled me off to the hospital, and then talked her parents into letting me live with them."

They were both silent for a moment as Jinpachi absorbed that, his head bowed. Finally the redhead sighed. "I'm sorry," he repeated. "I guess we'd grown so apart by then, I just wasn't able to tell with so little information. I wasn't ever really a very good friend to you, after you... after that day, was I?"

"We were already growing apart by the time I kissed you," Issei corrected him. "It really started the day we first dreamed about Enju and Gyokuran sleeping together." Shaking his head, he forced himself to admit, "It wasn't fair of me to force that on you, either. I suppose... I could see our friendship slipping away already, and there was a part of me that was so desperate to believe you could feel that way too..."

The hand on his shoulder squeezed gently. "So we were both at fault," Jinpachi said. "I guess... that's what growing up is really all about, isn't it? Being able to admit that it's not all everyone else's fault."

"Part of it," Issei agreed. A guilty part of him was revelling in the feel of that large, strong hand on him, no matter how much he ordered himself to just ignore it. To get his mind off it, he asked, "So now what? It doesn't seem fair to make you leave the school."

"I don't really want to leave," Jinpachi told him. "I just don't want to make things harder for you. And..." He trailed off and shook his head, as if thinking better of what he'd wanted to say.

Issei caught some of it, though. Jinpachi wasn't touching his skin, but their connection was strong enough that at this distance, he didn't need to be for Issei to read him. "And I make you uncomfortable, like this," he finished for him, gesturing down at his appearance. "Don't I?"

"Well, yeah," Jinpachi admitted awkwardly, withdrawing his hand. Issei felt the loss of warmth like a sharp sting, but did his best to ignore it. "Even sitting here, talking to you about the old days... it's hard to see you as a guy. You sound like a damn girl."

Issei's lips quirked in a half smile. "I worked hard at that," he murmured. "I already moved and talked like one, but learning to sound like one was the hardest part."

"Yeah, so... it's hard to see you as anything but a girl," Jinpachi informed him, almost gruffly. "And damn it, if you were a girl, I'd ask you out in a heartbeat. In fact, I already did that, didn't I?" He raked a hand through his hair, mussing it. "You were my best friend for a reason, Issei. I liked being around you. I hated that things got awkward between us and I lost your friendship. And it just about killed me when I thought you'd deliberately vanished on me and didn't want to talk to me any more."

Biting his lip, Issei tried not to cry again. His heart was squeezing painfully. So close to the words he'd wanted to hear for so long... but not quite right. What he wanted to hear didn't have a condition on it. If you were a girl...

"I am what I am," he said simply.

"I know," Jinpachi replied, just as simply. "D'you ever wonder how many incarnations we've gone through, screwing this up?" he asked suddenly. "I mean, we only remember the last life, but do you ever think about how many others there might have been?"

"I try not to," Issei said dryly. "It's kind of depressing. I'd like to think that we learn our lessons fairly quickly. Maybe we'll get it right next time around."

"Or maybe we'll just make the same damn mistakes again," Jinpachi said in disgust. "We're really hopeless, aren't we? Chasing after what we can't have, wanting things we shouldn't... isn't there any way to break the cycle?"

Issei couldn't look at him. If he met Jinpachi's eyes, he knew he'd say something stupid, like 'You could always start now...'. Maybe, if he hadn't been so stupid and asked Sarjareem to make him male, they could have gotten it right this time around. But he had, and so there was nothing to do but wait for the next round.

"Issei..." Something about the hesitant way Jinpachi said his name made Issei look up, wide-eyed. The redhead was giving him the oddest look. "Maybe... maybe it's not too late to fix things in this incarnation?" he asked more than said.

"Wh-what do you mean?" Issei stuttered, certain he'd misunderstood. Surely Jinpachi couldn't be implying what he thought.

He swallowed hard as the redhead lifted his hand again, and touched his cheek this time rather than his shoulder. "I haven't been able to stop thinking about you since that night in the club," Jinpachi said, his voice gruff. "I keep telling myself I'll get over it when it finally sinks in that you're not a girl, but damn it, you're driving me nuts."

Issei was shaking, struggling to keep his heart calm. It wasn't working very well. "You will get over it when it sinks in," he said, his voice almost as rough as Jinpachi's, but for different reasons. "And I don't think I can take another rejection from you. It's worse each time." It took a deliberate effort of will, but he managed to move back so they weren't touching any more.

It was only with the sudden loss of skin contact that he realized how much of the roiling emotions he'd been battling weren't actually his. He drew a deep breath, staring at Jinpachi in wide-eyed surprise. "You really do want me that badly, don't you?" he exclaimed softly. "Or rather, you want her. Isako. The girl I look like."

"The girl you look like, who has your personality and who knows me better than anybody else on the face of the planet," Jinpachi returned, his voice almost bitter. "Who's seen me at my absolute worst, and who still loves me, even years later. Even two lifetimes later. I'll never find something that real with someone else, ever. Damn it, it's not fair!"

"No relationship is perfect," Issei offered with a bitter smile of his own. "The flaw in ours is just a little more overwhelming than most."

"I don't want to spend a whole damn lifetime alone, just waiting for the next time around," Jinpachi said in frustration, echoing the feelings Issei had been harbouring in his heart for years. "And maybe I will find someone else some day, but it won't ever be the same. It won't ever be as good. They won't know me, not the way you do."

In that moment, Issei almost regretted his decision to remain physically male. The operations they had now could turn a male into such a close approximation to a natural female, even a doctor wouldn't be able to tell the difference with only an ordinary examination. But he couldn't shake the feeling that it would be going too far.

"We don't have a choice," he replied instead. "This is what we have to deal with. I'm male, and as long as I won't change that and you can't accept it, then we can't be together."

"Can't we at least try it before we give up on it?" Jinpachi asked, a little desperately. "We'll never know if we don't try, right? I am attracted to you, as you are now. I'm not saying it doesn't freak me out a little, but not as much as it used to."

"As long as you could pretend I was a girl, it would work. But the moment you're reminded what I really am, you'd be scared off," Issei said, speaking from experience. It wasn't that different from what he'd tried to do with Sakura. Except Jinpachi does have feelings for you, the traitorous part of his mind whispered. Is it really that inconceivable that you might be able to take what he already feels and gradually accustom him to the rest of who you are?

Jinpachi's fists were clenched on his thighs, his expression determined. "I'm not willing to give up that easily," he declared. "Maybe that's true, but maybe I've grown up and gotten a little less intolerant than I was when I was in high school. If I do have to spend the rest of this life alone, I don't want to also have to wonder if things could have been different."

"And so you'll break my heart again, instead," Issei replied. "I truly don't know if I can handle it again and still survive, Jinpachi. It hurts more every time."

"One kiss," Jinpachi demanded. "One kiss, and you read me and tell me if there's any chance or not. I'll believe you if you say what I'm feeling is only surface deep. But I don't think it is."

One kiss, and I'll only be reading what I want to see, Issei knew. But his heart betrayed him, and he heard himself answer, "All right."

Warm, firm lips sealed over his before he'd even finished the second word, as if Jinpachi were afraid he'd change his mind. Issei was immediately drowning in sensation, both the physical pleasure of his friend's rather expert kiss, and the psychic onslaught of emotions through his empathy. That Jinpachi wanted him, he had no doubt; how could he doubt it, when he could feel the lust and desire in his friend first hand?

No, the question was whether the desire would continue when the illusion of Issei's femininity was forcibly shattered.

It was so hard to concentrate through the pleasure, but Issei did his best. He probed deep, deeper than perhaps he'd ever been in anyone else's mind. He didn't find an end to Jinpachi's desire for him, but he also couldn't tell how much was aimed only at his female appearance, and how much might even be projection from Issei himself.

There was only one way to find out. Trying very hard not to think about what he was doing, Issei reached up and wrapped slender fingers around one of the strong hands that had come to rest on his shoulders, holding him in place. Jinpachi willingly let him move one hand down over Issei's body. He hesitated briefly when their tangled fingers encountered the soft mass of Issei's bra; it looked realistic, but didn't quite feel real.

Still, there was no sign of a flinch from the boy kissing him. So Issei went one step further, pulling Jinpachi's hand down to his lap, until the other boy couldn't help but be aware of the very obvious evidence that Issei was anything but a girl.

For one burning instant, Issei thought he might be swept away by the sudden incandescence of Jinpachi's emotions. There was pride there; the smug male pride of a man who has driven his partner that far into desire. There was lust, too, the heat of desire prickling his skin, so strong it was almost physical. And, just for a moment, Jinpachi's fingers voluntarily closed over the aching bulge under his clothes.

Then the redhead jerked back, panting, pulling his hand away like he was the one who was burned. There was a deep sense of loss and despair in his beautiful eyes, as well as intense frustration. "Damn it!" Jinpachi exclaimed, running a shaking hand through his hair. "Ah, hell. I honestly thought it was working. But I just... it was just too much."

Too much, yes... too much for the sense of horror that had been drilled into Jinpachi from birth by their prurient society. Too much for his long-held conviction that he was entirely straight. Too much, in the end, for his mind.

But not too much for his body, as Issei now knew very well. He'd felt that moment of primitive, instinctive lust, before higher reasoning and decades of conditioning had kicked in. Many men weren't nearly as straight as they'd like to believe, he knew from his classes. Most buried it so deeply they were never even aware of it. But maybe, with determination and the help of an equally determined empath, all that deeply held social conditioning could be circumvented.

"Jinpachi," he said, his voice breathy with the desire that was still coursing through his system. His friend looked at him, probably wondering why Issei didn't seem more upset. Smiling sweetly at the flustered redhead, Issei told him, "I'm willing to try if you are."