Disclaimer: As of the other chapters.

Author's Message: Thank you all for the reviews/reactions to the previous chapter. I'm sorry I couldn't upload this sooner. I have this habit of looking over chapters with something like paranoia broiling in me, not to mention the assignment of which deadline is approaching. (Gargh!) Anyway, I do hope you enjoy this chapter! :)

Chapter 12: Decision

It took a whole of a week but Kai eventually found himself cornered at his locker by his friends.

He was only putting a book into his locker when, upon closing it, he perceived to his right Tala leaning a shoulder against the neighbouring locker, arms crossed over his chest, looking about ready to launch into a confrontation.

"Heard you're going on a vacation, Kai," he remarked casually, though if anyone knew Tala, the tone indicated that it was anything but casual. When Kai did not respond, Tala went on, "A really long one."

"Make that permanent," Bryan spoke up, leaning his back in turn on the locker across the one Tala was leaning against and effectively blocking Kai's escape route to the left. He, too, had his arms crossed.

With Ray and Spencer flanking him, Kai saw no way out of it.

"How did you hear about it?" he asked, not looking at Tala.

Tala shrugged and waved a hand about as he replied, "You know the business world. Your grandfather…my dad…word gets around."

"Hn." And Kai tried to squeeze past Bryan and Ray.

Bryan lashed out a hand and yanked Kai back by the shoulder so hard that his back banged into the locker behind him. Bryan then pressed an arm down on Kai's chest, pinning him to the locker, as Tala drew in close.

"So this is how it is, huh?" Tala demanded, not taking his eyes off Kai who still wasn't looking at him. "You with us and then you just walk out without telling us anything? What are we? Business connections?"

"I can't help but agree, Kai," Spencer spoke up in that mild way of his, not budging from his spot.

"Yeah, we're friends, aren't we? We're even teammates on the soccer team," said Ray. "If you really need to go away, then the least you could have done was to tell us and not just plan on buggering off at the end of the week."

"Let go of me," Kai told them through gritted teeth.

"We're friends, Kai," Ray reiterated after a while and after Kai was freed of Bryan's grip. "We're sorry we kind of overreacted, but we only wanted to know what is going on in your life. You never mentioned anything about going away or what your grandfather's expectations of you are… So much about your life is a mystery because you don't talk about things that matter."

Kai looked at Ray and folded his arms.

"There is nothing to tell."

"You did not make this decision on your own," Tala said.

Kai whipped his head around and snapped, "Just leave me alone, Ivanov!"

"That is a fine way to treat a friend I'm sure!" Tala hissed into Kai's face. "You just want to get through all this and go be the next great Hiwatari regardless of who the people in your life are...were. I was right; you have always been Voltaire's ass-licker."

Kai tucked his book under his arm, pushed his fists into the pockets of his blazer and started to walk away. However, Tala was not quite done with his lecture. He lashed out a hand and grabbed Kai by the nearest elbow. Kai was tugged back a bit but easily pulled himself forward and broke the contact. He grabbed his book and didn't know why he broke into a run, but run he did.

Tala was calling out behind him. "Hey, Kai! Come back here! I am not done with you!" But Kai kept running.

For the rest of the day, Kai skipped his classes, spending his time lying on his back on the rooftop of the school building instead. He was surprised to find a cat there, licking a front paw before rubbing it against its ear. It did this systematically, first with the right paw to the right ear, then later with the left paw to the left ear, and Kai watched.

In time it looked up and he called out, feeling pleasantly surprised when it actually trotted up to him and mewed. Thinking that it was hungry, Kai snuck down for a while to buy a carton of milk and managed to fashion a bowl out of the lunchbox he had lying around in his locker. The cat lapped up the milk hungrily and Kai watched.

There was something serene about watching animals feed. They completely ignore you, choosing instead to focus all their attention on their food. Watching the cat drink, Kai felt himself relax. He reached out a hand and tried to pet the cat. It jumped back and with an annoyed mew darted out of his sight.

Caught off guard, Kai was not able to say anything at first, but then seeing it poking its head out from its hiding place, Kai fell back to staring at the sky, saying, "Huh! What a grouch!"

In time the cat came back to feed and Kai didn't try to touch it. Not everyone was like Tyson, who could be disturbed from his food and still be cheerful.

Tyson.

Kai didn't know how both Tyson and himself were reacting to that day's episode. Surely, Tyson had not missed the fact that Kai had tried to kiss him. Kai had not missed the fact that Tyson had responded in kind. Despite it being what it was—the kiss that never happened—Kai held on to it like it was something precious, like it was his only glimmer of hope. But who could forget that all hope was gone, had been gone right from the start? Kai did not know what to make of anything, what to do. Kai did not even know what he wanted.

He was bad with words, to the point that everyone around him became used to taking physical cues---a nod here, a grunt there---to decipher what he was trying to communicate. He was happy to just let them.

Strangely, the only other person besides Albert, who could read Kai's cues almost perfectly, was Tyson, even though the boy was not physically with Kai for a good part of their lives. When they met again, Tyson seemed only to pick up where he left off and they settled into a friendly familiarity so easily.

Kai knew, at least he knew this for sure, that he was not going to be satisfied with mere friendship, but to bring it any further was impossible. He tried to push it all away, but Tyson's magnetism was not to be taken lightly. Kai had found himself spiraling down, down, down and was spiraling down still into that well of emotion, heartfelt, but to which he could attach no name. Yet, the only tangible end he could foresee for himself was a life married to some rich "pretty girl" he didn't care for and sitting at the head of the Hiwatari business empire, slowly aging into the next iron-fisted, perpetually frowning elder Hiwatari. This was the future that he had been told was for him since he was a child and it seemed like it was all going in that very direction.

Kai did not want to go to school the next day. He didn't feel like it. However, he had a choice between staying at home with his grandfather, and going to school and facing everyone else. He chose the latter. At least, he could give people in school his famous glare and trust them to leave him alone. He couldn't do that to or with his grandfather.

He opted to set out early and walk to school instead of being driven. His grandfather thought it a preposterous idea for how could the future heir to the biggest business empire around walk like a commoner! Kai slipped out without his grandfather knowing.

Kai had fully planned on taking the longer route in order to avoid passing by Tyson's house, for fear that maybe Tyson was on his way to school already or was outside his gate doing stretching exercises. (Kai didn't know Tyson's morning routines, so he was only guessing.) However, the moment Kai spotted the familiar roof from a distance, his legs carried him to it and he did not try to stop himself. It was as if this constituted his morning routine: passing by that house and looking at it, never mind if he didn't see anyone, just look at it and be content knowing that Tyson still lived within it.

As he neared the house, his steps slowed to an amble and Kai looked up at the house. No one seemed to be up. Perhaps he was expecting to hear the sound of running feet upon the wooden floor and a familiar voice frantically crying out how late he would be. The house was still and Kai felt strangely disappointed.

He didn't realise that he had stopped right outside the gate until it was pushed open, creaking quietly on its hinges, startling him out of his thoughts.

"Kai?"

Kai cursed himself inwardly at the sound of that voice. Tyson stood just outside the gate, staring at him. His hair was still a little wet, probably from a morning shower, and because of that, he did not have it tied up. Tyson had his usual bag slung over his body and in one hand he had a textbook.

For a moment none of them so much as breathed. Since the incident of that day, they had not spoken to each other in school. While Kai sometimes stole furtive glances at Tyson's back from where he sat in class, Tyson always sat rigidly, keeping his eyes on the board. After the last class, Tyson was always the first one to leave and Kai one of the last. When they passed each other in the corridors, Tyson looked straight ahead while Kai would focus on a spot on the floor, his bangs falling into his eyes to shield them. If Kai's friends had noticed the tension in the relationship between Tyson and himself during the week before they knew of his leaving, they were definitely not being nosy about it.

Finally, Tyson turned to close the gate, breaking the silence.

"I thought you are usually driven to school," Tyson said, walking over to Kai.

"I didn't want to sit in the car," Kai told the younger boy. He couldn't admit anything else. What else could he say indeed? I wanted to admire your house, didn't seem like the smartest thing to say then.

"Like I said once before: If you miss me, just say so, Kai!" Tyson said jokingly and landed a punch on Kai's arm. "Shall we walk?"

Kai gave a brief nod and they started to walk. The silences between them were never uncomfortable before, but then the silence carried with it the burdens of questions unasked and confessions fallen dead on lips that could not move to speak the truth when it mattered. Kai fancied that Tyson was walking further away from him than usual. Other times, their arms would sometimes brush against each other as they walked and conversed. Right then, there were perhaps five hand's length of space stretching between them. Kai felt the absurd urge to reach out and close his hand around Tyson's own which was swinging freely just a little beyond his reach. To quell that urge, he balled his hand into a fist and shoved it down his blazer pocket.

"Say, Kai," Tyson spoke up suddenly. "Did you study for the Math test today?"

Kai looked at Tyson, suddenly surprised. He had not known of any Math tests. Why, of course he hadn't. He was on the roof the whole of yesterday skipping classes. Trust Tala and gang to not tell him about important things when they're pissed.

"I figured as much," Tyson said, turning to him and grinning. "You were not even in class yesterday!"

"Skipped them all," Kai added.

"Uh huh," conceded Tyson. "You were on the roof. I saw the tuft of your hair while I was eating lunch with Max and Kenny at the field. You could recognise that tuft anywhere!"

Tyson reached out and swiped at it. Kai managed to prevent Tyson from destroying his morning's effort by ducking just in time.

Tyson laughed and Kai watched him laugh, feeling himself drawn yet again by that laughter, feeling it envelope him like an old, comfortable blanket.

Suddenly, Tyson stopped and turned away. "Sorry I didn't call you up to tell you or anything. I thought you might be…busy."

"With what?" Kai asked, almost too sharply.

He saw Tyson turn to him again, grinning.

"Spending quality time with your grandfather?"

"No. I wasn't," confessed Kai, turning away. "Never had."

Tyson fell silent for a while and they continued walking without saying anything to each other for some distance.

Then he spoke again, his voice uncharacteristically quiet, "So you're going away."

Kai saw no other way out of it but to tell the truth: "Transferring out."

"I see."

They didn't say another word and kept on walking. The school gate was already in sight, the clock tower looming up just above it, the long and short hands showing that they were still early. Some students could be seen arriving on their bicycles or stepping out of cars. Still few were going through the gate, most of the early birds choosing to stand outside in small clusters, greeting each other and laughing their morning lethargy away. The world seemed so normal even as his, Kai felt, was crumbling around him. He couldn't help the slowly rising scorn and he was sure that his face was carefully working itself into the cold mask that was, and had been for a long time, his trademark.

"Man Kai, you could use a smile or two once in a while," he heard Tyson say from beside him. Kai turned to see the bluenette peering intently up into his face as they walked in perfect synchrony. "Your face is how my milk looks after it had been left on the counter overnight."

Kai snorted. He couldn't help himself. He thought it was quite funny, somehow. Tyson laughed.

"Anyway," Tyson began, shoving his hands into his blazer pockets and suddenly picking up his pace so that all Kai could see of him was his slim back. What he said next came out so soft that Kai almost couldn't hear it: "Just make sure we'll still be pals, 'kay?"

Kai's movements stopped and he stood there staring at Tyson's back. Something was ripping at him from the inside, shredding him. It made his throat hurt and his nose felt funny.

"You are so screwed for the test, Kai!"

Tyson had looked over his shoulder at Kai, grinning almost maliciously. Then assuming a superior air he added, "Maybe I can teach you in whatever little time we have before Math!"

Kai must have been staring with his mouth gaping slightly open because he distinctly felt himself closing it with a snap.

"Just tell me the topics, Granger." And he started to walk, feeling deeply annoyed and strangely angry.

Tyson guffawed and did so. "I am so beating you in this test, Hiwatari!" Tyson declared when he was done.

"Oh yeah?" challenged Kai, glaring at Tyson.

"Yeah, and you will eat my dust!" and with that, Tyson took off running towards the school gate where he saw Max and Kenny waiting just inside it.

Max was with Ray, standing close but perhaps both were too shy to do anything more than…well, standing too close. Ray watched Kai walk through the gate, a long moment after Tyson had crossed it at breakneck speed. Kai lifted his head at the young man and issued a nod. Ray smiled, flashing his fanged teeth, and nodded back.

The lot of them started walking towards the main school building. Three people separated Kai from Tyson but perhaps, thought Kai, it was for the best.

Kai met Tala, Bryan and Spencer at the lockers, and nodded a greeting. He was secretly glad when Tala and Bryan nodded back. Spencer was as docile as ever when it came to such matters and was more bent on ranting about how someone was at it with his pea plants, and how all the peas were gone. However, Kai constantly felt that they were all watching him whenever his back was turned. He was already looking forward to the end of the school day.

The next few days everyone noticed that Kai was preoccupied and that he came to school with Tyson everyday, except that one day when it rained and Kai had to take the car. Kai's preoccupation was usually hard to detect because he somehow appeared the same with or without it. Lately though, his friends noticed that he wasn't even listening to the things they were saying and that his eyes followed Tyson whenever the younger boy was within sight. His friends said nothing. They had all come to a silent concession that they would leave Kai's personal life to the latter, however frustrating it was to watch and accept.

Kai saw the poster for the charity performance of the play on his way to the bathroom in the middle of Math class. There was nobody in the corridor, so he stopped and looked at the poster. Tyson and Brooklyn took center stage in the poster just as they did in the play. It was a shot of their side profiles, blown up and rendered translucent so that it could show the stage and the balcony scene in the background through them. Tyson, dressed as Juliet had his eyes closed, tilting his head up toward Brooklyn, as Romeo with his ridiculous hat, as the older boy planted a kiss on his forehead. The two of them looked so blissful, so happy and so in love.

A loud thud and a throbbing hand later, Kai realised that without thinking, he had lashed out a fist and slammed it against the poster, right over Brooklyn's face.

As if life wanted to torment him, Kai later walked past the black box studio on his way to the field for soccer practice. He didn't know what compelled him to stop and stare at the entrance to the studio. A hand-written sign on the door said, "Rehearsal in Progress". His legs didn't follow his mind's behest to leave and make way to the field. Instead, they took him through the door, down a short corridor and finally through another door on the other side of which Kai found himself standing in a corner of a space that literally looked like the interior of a black box.

There were no seats but in the center of the studio, the drama members were gathered, some reading lines while sprawled on the floor and others acting their parts in clusters. Kai scanned the studio for the one face he must have been brought by impulse to see. He spotted that face easily enough. Tyson was being held by the waist by Brooklyn who had one of Tyson's hand outstretched and Tyson's back bent backwards as if they had paused in the middle of a dance number. Tyson was bent so low that the end of his ponytail touched the floor and he looked a little bewildered. Brooklyn, however, was looking like he was out to seduce, his face close to Tyson's own and whispering something that Kai couldn't hear from that distance. Whatever it was that he had said, it made Tyson blush furiously, and Kai, furious.

With a laugh, Brooklyn pulled Tyson back up and did a little tango number before twirling him and ending the dance. Tyson, appearing not to have noticed Kai, straightened the white sweater he was wearing over his school shirt. Kai quickly darted out of the inner studio door, but he was not quick enough for Brooklyn not to spot him.

The next thing Kai knew was that he heard his name being called as he was hurrying, as only Kai could hurry, down the corridor. He turned, half-expecting Tyson even though he recognised the voice which called him. He stopped and only looked over his shoulder at Brooklyn who came to a halt just behind him.

"Nice of you to pop by the studio, Kai. Here to watch our rehearsal?" Brooklyn asked.

Kai could hear the maddeningly serene smile in the young man's voice. He turned full around but said nothing.

Brooklyn started circling Kai slowly as he spoke, his arms outstretched as if to receive a hug.

"Shakespeare wrote in one of his plays: 'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women, merely Players' [1]. If you want something, Kai, really want something, or should I say, someone, you will have to play. You will have to put everything into your game, as if you are battling against a powerful opponent, against someone you cannot lose to."

"What are you yapping about, Brooklyn?" Kai asked coldly.

Brooklyn stopped circling, drew back, the smile once more on his face.

"That was a hint, Kai," he said after a moment of study. "A HUGE hint."

Kai turned and left. For a while he thought Brooklyn, too, would leave, but he heard the young man say, "Am I really someone you want to lose to?"

Kai's hand was on the outer door, about to push it open so that he could step outside into the main corridor of the school, but it paused there for a while before it pushed and the door swung open.

When he reached home after soccer practice, Kai was summoned to the study which had become Voltaire's private throne room for the period of time he was staying at the second mansion. As Kai walked to the study, he tried not to see the packing and cleaning that was going on around him. Already some rooms had their furniture covered in white cloth, the sitting room for example, where he had spent time with Tyson reading the script.

He knocked on the study door and waited until he was bid to enter. Inside he found Voltaire looking every bit the patriarch as he sat behind the table, holding a silver envelope and reading the slim slips of card which only before had been in it.

"It seemed our flight will have to be postponed to the following Monday, Kai," the elder Hiwatari remarked. When Kai did not reply, he waved the cards vaguely. "We have been sent VIP invitations to a play performed by your college."

That caught Kai's attention.

"Which show is it?" he asked.

Voltaire raised an eyebrow at his grandson and replied, "The last performance day, the coming Sunday. Highly inconvenient but, seeing it is the Jurgen family, an important appearance to make."

Voltaire was surprised when Kai excused himself hurriedly and only watched when his grandson darted out of the room.

Kai was suddenly seized by an idea and he needed to set it all in motion…on that last performance day.

In his room, he made sure to lock the door before digging his cell phone out from his bag. He dialed and held the phone to his ear. It was picked up after a significant number of rings and from the sound of it, he figured that Tala and Bryan were in the midst of something.

"What do you want, Hiwatari?" Tala demanded in a fierce series of gasps. There was a persistent creaking in the background and Tala let out a highly restrained cry of Bryan's name. There was a lot of hard breathing going on too.

Kai grimaced. He seriously didn't need to hear all that, what more see images of his friends getting it on.

"Switch off your phone when you are doing that next time," advised Kai. "I need help. Explain to you later. Call me."

It was a whole three hours later that Kai's phone started ringing. He snatched it up and put it to his ear, only to find that he had not pressed the 'Accept' button for the call so it blasted out the metal ringtone directly into his eardrums. Cursing, he accepted the call and put it to his ear.

"I need help," he explained the moment he heard Tala's voice.

Next Chapter: Wherefore art thou, Romeo?

Footnote:

[1] As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7