=5=
Kaoru didn't know a thing about computers. He supposed he could master them, like he had just about everything he chose to apply his remarkable mind to, but he never bothered. Basic computer course had been offered during the first year of secondary school; their friendship had still been young and tentative, and Omi had had hard time wrapping his brain around the fact that Kaoru WAS a genius and, therefore, for him trying out all that disgusting junk food Omi was so fond of felt like much bigger sacrifice for the sake of friendship than doing every piece of homework that required extensive writing twice (and then making Omi re-read and re-write it till he could actually understand, if not re-create, every single kanji). It certainly didn't help matters that English gave Kaoru no more challenge that any other subject, while Omi, while being a native speaker, still needed his help, as he couldn't always understand the Japanese phrases they were required to translate. So, just this one time, Kaoru chose to play dumb and let Omi shine. He didn't like computers, anyway. Their insistent buzzing and flickering made his head hurt and they required insanely complex actions to perform the easiest tasks. As far as Kaoru was concerned, aspiring freshmen had no business pestering him about every single digit they insisted on putting on some 'dead useful' self-updating charts, if they would inevitably screw up, leaving him to revise miles and miles of unnecessary subtotals, when he could have just told them the correct result in the first place. And there was certainly no need to turn the insane machine on, go online and log into the e-mail account (entering three separate passwords chosen by Omi in honour of his favourite heavy-metal bands, computer games, comic books or some equally ridiculous things Kaoru had trouble understanding – and, therefore, remembering), only to see his in-box remain stubbornly empty, barring the obligatory holyday spam.
Never before had he felt so miserable about being born on St. Valentine's day. Even when his classmates had been too engrossed in their romantic adventures, when his sister (and, on one memorable occasion, his parents) had had to beg off because of a date, Omi had always been there with a neatly wrapped gift to go with an insane plan that would leave Kaoru grinning madly for two days straight.
Only this year Omi was 7000 miles away, where long-distance phone-calls were apparently inconvenient due to different time zones, not to mention expensive; or maybe Omi just didn't want to talk, surrounded as he was by people who spoke his preferred language and shared, not just grudgingly tolerated, his avocation.
Hanging up on what felt like the thousandth "switched off or outside the coverage area" today, Kaoru silently watched the first five seconds of February 15th ticking away, before going to locate his glasses, thinking he should probably make an ophthalmologist appointment: for some reason his contacts were making his eyes water.