Warnings: Spoilers for all of the manga.
Notes: Oh, my Lord! First, Mizuki didn't want to tell me anything, and then suddenly this became the longest chapter of the series so far! Geez. This one veers the most away from what can be gleaned about character backgrounds from the manga itself, I think. I just always thought it was strange that Katsuro and Mizuki just decided to take some kid home with them. Ah, eternalsailorsolarwind, so very attentive you are. Not only am I glad to see that we think alike on these issues, but that you are able to read through my subtle attempts at making my points about these characters. Goh as a catcher: You'll just have to wait for more information on that. (Eheh.) It might be a while before I get that other story down to posting condition (It'll be after I finish these shorts in any event). I also found that in writing this chapter I really want to go back and write the whole story behind it (another fic on my already full plate, sigh). I have indeed heard about the Yellow Drama CD. Apparently it covers the first 3 or so Acts (so, just the episodic stuff at the beginning). If I understood Japanese at all I'd go out looking for it myself. Maybe someone will write up a transcript for us English speaking unfortunates some day.
Disclaimer: Yellow is owned by Makoto Tateno; I'm just borrowing it so I can make myself feel better about the plotholes...

Secrets

Everyone has secrets. Some are better at hiding them than others, that's all. I have secrets, too, and not just the ones that certain people have a working knowledge of. Mine go deeper. Mine go straight to the heart in a way that if they were ever known to anyone, and that person chose to use them against me, they could completely undo me. That's why they stay buried. I don't trust anyone that much.

I love Taki. That's no secret. I've loved him since the first time I laid eyes on him, over fifteen years ago. That's closer to it, but not everything. I think Katsuro always knew that much, and many more have come to learn of it since.

I'm amazed I've kept this from Katsuro for so many years. Perhaps because he just never bothered or wanted to dig any deeper than the surface lie. Perhaps because he's my partner and he cares about my privacy. Maybe in the grand scheme of things this secret really doesn't amount to much. Who knows? It certainly isn't a truth that would have any real effect on anyone but me, and perhaps Taki as well.

If I told Taki, what would he think? Would his opinion of me change? For better or for worse? My "change" didn't seem to have much effect on his feelings for me, so maybe he wouldn't blink an eye about it. I know I'll never have him, but that knowledge doesn't change the hurt I feel about it.

He was so small and vulnerable that day. So fragile and yet so beautiful. I stood there waiting for our client to come up with the cash he owed us. A little six year old boy looked up at me and said, with the complete innocence of a child, "You look lonely, mister," and with the grubby hands of a child, reached into his pocket and said, "Here, have some gum, it always cheers me up," and smiled up at me.

How could you not fall in love with that?

"Everyone has a past that covers the years since birth." That's true. From what I know about Katsuro, from the small pieces of information we have been able to glean from each other over the years, he came from a broken home. His father was apparently a mean drunk and I'm not sure, but I don't think his mother was around much, if at all. He joined the SDF just as soon as he was able. They found him to be an excellent marksman, and as the cliché's of these things go, when he left the service, he found himself with a unique employment opportunity, which he readily accepted. Anything to get out of going back to that life.

It wasn't so much different for me. Only, my problems with my father weren't that he hated me or beat me. Far from it. I'm not going to talk about that, but by the time I was the age that Taki left me I was living on the streets myself. In those days I would do anything for money; to remain on my own.

Lost innocence. I don't even remember anymore what it felt like to have any. I lost it so young. Endless nights crying for relief; for an end to my torment. I stopped feeling. I stopped caring about this wretched world and all the worthless people in it.

I killed for the first time at the age of 15. This isn't the secret. My own past, as troubling as it is to think or speak about, is not what I am afraid to reveal to the one I love. Who I killed was my father. I killed him and then I disappeared. It wasn't hard. It wasn't like anyone was really going to look for a wretch like me, over a wretch like him, anyway.

I met Kasturo in the most unlikely of places: a gay bar. I had tried to pick him up for the night. I needed a place to stay and some people I had stiffed on some drugs were looking for me. He wasn't interested. That's not what he was doing there. I learned later he was staking out a job, but at the time I guess I ruined his cover as I followed him outside when I spotted one of the men looking for me.

The details of all of this are unimportant, but basically Katsuro saved me from a beating or worse that night. I still don't know why he did that for me. The one time I asked he said he did it on a whim, because he was bored.

He also gave me a lecture about drugs and was about to send me on my way when I asked him to take me with him. He said what he did for a living wasn't something for "kids" to get messed up in. I guess he thought I was still a teenager. I know I always looked pretty young for my age. Eventually he relented, after I "helped" him on his job he realized I didn't really have a problem with death or killing. He said I was the perfect partner because I didn't care at all and I could do all the "dirty" work like what had brought him to a gay bar in the first place. He taught me how to shoot and a lot of other technical things, I cleaned up my act, and we went on working together for some time like that. Years later this brought us to Taki's father.

He paid us to kill the murderer of his wife. A drunk driver who got off with a slap on the wrist. We took the job with only half the payment up front. It wasn't a huge payoff, and the job had been as simple as they come, but when it came to paying the second half we found out that this guy owed more than just money to us; he had a considerable gambling debt as well.

I felt almost sorry for him, but as he nervously tried to buy himself time he did something. He looked at Taki, who he for some unfathomable reason had brought with him; probably to invoke sympathy and buy himself a few more days. He said, "Go wait for me in the car, Taki." He did this and then he bent down and hugged the boy. He hugged him and when he pulled away he looked at Taki's face and smiled. He looked at his son with a face that didn't say, "I love you like a father." He looked at Taki with a face that said, "You look like your mother." Taki was more than a little affected by this look because he shrugged away and turned to leave. The bright smile I had seen on him just moments before, gone. I immediately wanted to kill this man, and when I knew Taki was out of eyesight, I did.

That day, Taki became my world. The light in my dark and worthless existence. I looked down at that abandoned boy; abandoned not literally, but by a man who no longer saw him when he looked at him. I saved him from that life.

How was I to know that I would commit the same sin upon the boy as well one day? I tried to do it right. I spoiled him and I coddled him, I was more than a little protective of what I allowed him to witness of our real work, and I waited; waited for a day when he would be old enough to choose for himself. I tried to show him the purest kind of love I could think existed. I gave Taki the control in the situation. Giving up that control was the greatest act of devotion I could think of. I gave him the choice; the power. When he took my offer and shattered it, I shattered with it.

I tried to think, desperately, of what I could do to fix this, but in the end my efforts were for nothing; he would never come back. He couldn't love me the way I needed him to. Even though we were not family, he couldn't bring himself to love me any other way. I showed an innocent boy a killer that night and I scared him away for good. I can't help but wonder if I had had the courage to have done it the night before, would things have been different? Would he have stayed with me? Or, would he have just run later anyway when he found out the truth?

I never told him what happened to his father. I guess he had heard the gunshot, even though I used a silencer. That or he had an intuition; he was always so very bright. Either way he made his way back and saw the bleeding corpse of a man who was once the only family had had left in the world and another man who he had just offered gum to a few moments earlier standing over him with a gun. It must have been shock because he stood there completely blank for several minutes. I put him on a bench and moved the body and cleaned up the mess. Then I called Katsuro. By the time Taki was home with us that night it was as if he didn't remember anything. Not his father or what he had seen. It is interesting how children are able to block out these kinds of memories. In a way I envied him for that. I needed him for that.

My desperate need for him was what ultimately drove him away. I'm sure of that now. I drove him away and now it is too late. My lies and deceit cost me the love of my life. He's moved on and found someone much more worthy of his love. If only I had been worthy.

I don't know if I will ever love again and I don't believe I will ever accept Taki's love for another man. If I thought it would bring Taki back to me, I would kill that man in a second, but I know it wouldn't. He doesn't want me to do anything that would make him sad. I can't say no to that face. Oh, Taki.

All I have left now is my partner. Katsuro, despite a total lack of interest in me romantically, has stayed loyal to me for all of these years. He could have abandoned me too, that day, but he didn't. I'm not foolish enough now to fall in love with him for it, but he is the closest thing to family I have left, and I don't ever plan to let that slip away. I wonder if he knows that? One of my less well-kept secrets.

Mizuki
8/7/06
1825 words