Chapter 8

"Yes, I got it. Thank you, Morimoto-sensei." Kisa sighed and hung up his cell phone. Then he fell back on his couch, holding the recently-acquired storyboards up in the air and vaguely staring at them. Yukina was over in his kitchen, fixing them something to eat since they left the restaurant without even touching their orders.

Yukina finally came in with two plates of spaghetti with meat sauce and two cups of tea. He set them down on the coffee table, and there was a short silence as they both started eating.

"Kisa-san, I've been wanting to ask you something," Yukina said, putting down his fork. Kisa was distracted by the storyboards and just nodded. "Did you know Onii-chan before this?"

Kisa's head snapped up, his own fork dropping down onto his plate with a clang. "Who told you that?" he said, laughing in a way that he hoped didn't make him sound like a maniac. Yukina just sat there staring at him, and Kisa ducked his head. "Well… you said you didn't care about my past, all the guys I've slept with."

"…you and…" Yukina didn't look like he could finish the thought, and Kisa nodded.

"It's kind of stupid, really," Kisa said, not able to look Yukina in the eye. "We were in the same year in university, and I met him at a party the night before graduation. He said we'd had a class together but I didn't remember. Of course we still…" Kisa waved his hand vaguely, as if that gesture expressed the rest of it. "I was used to guys I slept with in college trying to contact me again, but I never heard from him after that. I thought it was because we graduated, but you said he suddenly moved out to Kansai after he finished college." Kisa shrugged his shoulders. "That was eight or nine years ago. He was just another guy."

Finally he looked up, only to see that Yukina was still staring at him, his face carefully blank. Kisa hunched his shoulders and ducked his head, ready to be yelled at, for Yukina to be furious. When none of that happened, he looked back up in time for Yukina to come around the coffee table and lay against his side.

"Oh Kisa-san," Yukina said, closing his eyes. "Onii-chan never did tell me why he felt the need to get out of Tokyo, and I guess I know now."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Kisa asked, looking put-off.

"I think he liked you, back then. It seems kind of weird, saying that about my older brother, but I can't say I don't see why." Yukina smiled and pulled Kisa's head around into a kiss.

Kisa finally put down the storyboards he had in his other hand and wrapped his arms around Yukina's neck. Just as Yukina pushed him onto his back on the couch, there came two rings. Both of their cell phones had started going off at the exact same time.

"…awesome timing," Kisa muttered as Yukina pulled back and reached for his own phone. Kisa glanced at the display of his only to see it was Morimoto-sensei again. He was tempted to just ignore it, but this had to be the first time since she was first accepted as an artist for Emerald that she had taken so much initiative. What a time for her to become a hard worker.

"Good evening, Morimoto-sensei," he said, glancing over and seeing Yukina had gone into the other room to talk. Kisa couldn't tell who had called him just from the small snippets of his side of the conversation he could pick up.

"I'm sorry to call again. I hope I didn't interrupt anything," Morimoto-sensei said, sounding genuinely sorry.

Kisa sighed and shook his head. "No, of course not. I was just eating dinner. Was there something you forgot about when we talked earlier?"

"Um, yes actually," Morimoto-sensei said. "I forgot one of the storyboard pages when I faxed them over earlier. I was hoping you'd still be home, but I know you must have your own life."

"What would make you think that?" Kisa asked, only having a hint of irony in his voice. The further it got into a cycle, the less of a life he had, if he had to be honest with himself. "Feel free to fax it over to me and I'll add it in."

"Thank you, Kisa-san!" Morimoto-sensei said. "I can't believe I forgot this page. It's rather important! But one of my assistants found it laying there in my tub. I honestly have no idea why it was there. I can't recall doing any of my storyboard the last time I bathed."

"Yes, well, it happens to the best of us." Kisa glanced over at his fax machine as it started beeping and pulling a piece of paper through. "And there it is. Thank you for all your hard work, Morimoto-sensei."

"You, too! I couldn't do it without you, Kisa-san." They said their good-byes and hung up.

Yukina was still in the other room, and Kisa glanced in at him as he picked up his cup of tea and went over to the fax machine. He picked up the page and looked at it. According to the page number in the corner, it went just about in the middle. It was a reveal page, where the main character's love interest finds out she was actually the superhero who'd been saving him for months now. He hadn't even gotten to that point in the storyboard, so he hadn't noticed it was missing.

As he was putting it in its proper place with the rest, Yukina finally emerged, snapping shut his cell phone. "I'm sorry, Kisa-san. That was just my parents. They'd still like to go out with us."

"I don't really see that happening. I doubt I'll have time the rest of the month." Kisa had gone back to his distracted mode, taking out a red pen and starting his storyboard corrections.

"I know, Kisa-san. I told them maybe at the end of the month, after the new issue of Emerald has gone to print. They said they understand." Yukina smiled and picked his fork back up. "Kobayashi-san and Onii-chan plan to go back to Kansai after Kobayashi-san's seen Emerald out for sale. I suppose she sees it as a big step in her career."

"It is. And with Takano-san as her editor, I'm sure her manga will be very successful," Kisa said, his eyes following his hand as he drew an arrow between two panels. When he finally looked up at his boyfriend, Yukina had that same blank look on his face as he stared at him. "What?"

Yukina smiled and shook his head. "Nothing."