A/N: One of the hardest sections of Komatta Toki for me followed the car accident in Volume 13, when Kiyomine very clearly chooses his sister Ayako over Takara, and leaves their relationship visibly scarred. I wished that there had been more consequences for Kiyomine's outburst, and that Takara had been able to lean on his friends, specifically Reiichi and Yoshiya, to get comfort after this betrayal.

With some prompting from a friend, I've decided to take up a multi-chapter project for Komatta Toki set after Volume 13, sort of a "what if" where Takara's father does go back to Africa and he turns to Reiichi and Yoshiya for comfort after Kiyomine's harsh words. Not totally sure how long it will be, but nine or so chapters at least, possibly with additional interludes afterward.

Note: Mostly a friendship story focused on Takara, Reiichi, and Yoshiya, with some light Kiyomine x Takara and Yoshiya x Reiichi pre-slash hints.

Chapter Three

Takara woke to a pounding head, eyes that itched like they'd been sandblasted, and the disorientation of having no idea where he was. It took a few seconds of staring at the unfamiliar ceiling, crisscrossed with soft lines of sunlight leaking past the edges of the blinds, for the memories to trickle back in—the rattle and bump of the long cab ride to Okuno-sempai's house, his blotchy face buried in the shoulder of the older boy's coat, and then sinking down in the queen-sized bed in borrowed pajamas, the vague sensation of someone tucking a blanket around him just as his eyes slipped shut. Where wasn't so bad—but of course remembering where brought the why back, too, and suddenly his stomach was churning with feelings he didn't want, the dangerous kind of feelings that stung behind his eyes and made him feel like he was going to throw up. Takara rolled onto his side and curled his knees in until he could get his arms around them, stared hard at his reflection in the glass-paneled bookcase.

He wasn't going to cry. His head was still throbbing from all the crying he'd done yesterday—or maybe that was just from the lump on the back of his skull where he'd hit the wall, staring up into black eyes that were fierce like an animal's, like he'd never seen…Takara shook himself, pulled the comforter over his head like he could close the thoughts out. That wasn't the memory that had tortured him all night, anyway—it was the way that same face looked overcome by relief, his hands digging into his sister's black coat, eyes squeezed shut like he didn't need to see anything, because everything he cared about was already in his arms…

As long as you're all right, Ayako, I don't care about anyone else.

Takara sucked in a sharp breath and pushed himself up, shoving the blanket decisively to the foot of the bed as he swung his legs over the side. There was no point thinking about those things, because there was nothing to think about—he'd made an assumption about the relationship between himself and Ki—and that other person, and now it had been corrected, that was all. He'd indulged himself enough the night before, sobbing until his throat was raw, and he could forgive himself for that because it had been a trying day with…multiple distress factors, but he was sixteen already, and there was no way he was going to greet Okuno-sempai this morning with that same flushed face. He'd dealt with the situation, and now it was over.

Besides, he'd never been in Okuno's house before, and he wasn't going to waste this rare chance to poke around.

Scrubbing the crust of old tears—not new tears—from his cheeks with the back of one hand, Takara stood up, catching a glimpse of himself in the glass bookcase doors. He looked like a total mess, his hair pushed up one side of his head in a faux-hawk, the over-large striped shirt hanging off one shoulder in classic street urchin style. It was all too reminiscent of one picture in the photo album he'd taken with him to school, one of his grandmother's favorites—him at maybe six, bundled up in a messily buttoned long-sleeve shirt with a rainbow of paint splotches all over his pouting face. The story involved a day trip to a children's fun center, where he'd apparently turned the tempera paints on himself, making an Impressionist masterpiece of his summer camp T-shirt, and rather than guarantee a catastrophe in the car, his dad had…

No, that was off-limits too.

The deep breath hurt a little. Takara made himself take another one anyway. Probably he was just hungry, since all he'd had for dinner was four scoops of chocolate brownie ice cream. Hunger always felt like this, an incredibly empty space inside of him aching to be filled. He mussed his hands through his hair, glanced around for the pants and shirt he'd shed last night before bed, though he had a sinking feeling Okuno had taken them away to be washed. There was no way he was going in search of breakfast in his boxers. Takara made his way around the room, peering underneath the bed and at the alphabetically arranged bookshelf, even stealing a peek under the clothes at the bottom of each dresser drawer, ostensibly in the process of finding a pair of sweatpants he could borrow.

Five minutes later, striped shirt tucked into the sweats he'd rolled to his knees (and double-knotted four times), Takara flopped back onto the bed, sorely disappointed. Even after a thorough search of all the nooks and crannies, Okuno's room was just boring. He briefly thought he'd hit pay dirt when he found a middle school yearbook hidden under a bulky quilt on the top shelf of the closet, but that turned out to be a total bust: if Okuno had changed at all since middle school, it was only in height, and the notes in the back were all bland, Let's stay in touch or It was nice to be in class with you—the things you wrote to somebody you didn't really know. He'd had much better luck rummaging around the Kashiwagi house, where he'd stumbled across an entire cache of real handcuffs (Masaya's, maybe, left over from his time on the force?).

Speaking of Kashiwagis, the only remotely embarrassing thing he'd found wasn't even tucked away face-down in the sock drawer: it was a picture of Reiichi-sempai on the nightstand, but not just like a picture so much as a glamour shot in a silver frame, with Reiichi's looping signature scrawled along the bottom in glittering purple ink. Reiichi looked like he should be posing for a catalogue, lounging on his stomach on an antique divan with his arms folded under his chin and his feet crossed artfully in the air. Takara almost expected to see an icon advertising Clive Christian cologne in the corner. Instead the air over Reiichi's head hosted another purple inscription—To Yoshiya: So you'll never have to sleep alone. Takara shook his head, a little weirded out. It was the kind of gift that would maybe be funny as a gag, but someone had clearly taken the joke too far by the time it was framed in the place of honor on the nightstand. It was just the sort of thing a Kashiwagi would do, the sort of thing he could actually imagine Kiyomine—

Takara's breath hitched, the impact of that name knocking the wind out of him. He rolled onto his stomach, crushed a pillow over his head to block out those things he wasn't thinking about, definitely wasn't thinking about, definitely wasn't dwelling on curled up alone in Okuno's bed. Like whether Kiyomine had ever come back to the dorm the night before, and if he had, had he noticed Takara was gone? Had he missed him? Would he care if Takara didn't come back until school started, or if maybe he never came back at all—transferred schools, just disappeared like he'd considered doing the night before, walking blind into the storm. He could go anywhere now, he'd realized, trying not to choke on the thought—he and Kiyomine weren't anything, and his dad was gone, probably for years, and in six weeks there wouldn't be anything tying him to that neighborhood where he'd grown up, the big porch and the garden where he'd chased dragonflies through the long shadows of summer sunflowers…

Takara squeezed his eyes shut, pressed the pillow as hard as he could against his ears. He couldn't lose it again—couldn't let those thoughts crawl back inside his head. He didn't have a family, and he didn't have Kiyomine, and it didn't hurt to be alone because he'd been alone for a long time—

Was that…was there laughter coming from the other room?

Reluctantly, Takara pushed the pillow off and sat up, straining his ears for any sound from beyond the heavy oak door. Yes, there was definitely someone laughing—and not just someone, but someone Takara recognized only too well, the voice of the smirking cologne model in the nightstand photo. So Okuno had been right about Reiichi coming over. Takara had a knee-jerk urge to stay stubbornly right where he was, even if he was a little curious what could possibly have Reiichi in stitches one room over—but even harder to ignore was the sweet, warm scent filling up the bedroom, like sugar and butter and cream all melded into one mouth-watering whole…no doubt a trap set by a devious sempai who was all too familiar with his weakness for delicious food. Takara wrapped his arms over his empty stomach, torn. He didn't really want to leave the safety of the bedroom, didn't want to have to look at Reiichi and Okuno looking at him and know they were thinking about yesterday, even if they didn't say anything. On the other hand, it wasn't like he could stay holed up in here all day licking dried flakes from the ice cream bowl…

Takara's stomach gave a low grumble, enough to prod him out of bed. He stopped in front of the door to straighten his ragtag getup, hesitated again with his hand on the knob—then he shook his head, fortifying himself with a deep breath. If he really couldn't stand it, he could always grab his breakfast and run. With that comforting backup plan, he pulled the door open and sidled out into the hallway.

The smell was even more enticing out here, as was the burst of laughter coming from the kitchen, Reiichi's voice echoing under the vaulted ceilings. Takara tiptoed toward the living room and the enormous kitchen he'd only glanced at the night before, listening to the banter that had been muffled by the heavy bedroom door.

"Sorry, sorry," Reiichi was saying, though he didn't sound all that sorry to Takara. "Here—let me try again."

"No, Reiichi." Okuno's voice had an edge to it, the one Takara recognized as the older boy's patience wearing thin. "That's enough. The last one landed in the glaze."

Reiichi clicked his tongue. "Don't be revisionist, Yoshiya. It landed on the counter—it bounced into the glaze."

More puzzled than ever, Takara paused at the end of the hallway and peeked around the corner, blinking against the sunlight pouring through the balcony doors. If there was a Heaven for people with a wicked sweet tooth, it probably looked just like Okuno's kitchen right now: the marble breakfast bar was spread with bottle after bottle of syrups, drizzles, and preserves—maple, chocolate, hazelnut, strawberry, and an iconic canister of whipped cream positioned next to a bowl of cut strawberries. At the center of it all was a large dish of whatever he'd been smelling from the bedroom—coffee cake? breakfast casserole?—and it looked just as good as he'd hoped, lightly browned dough overrun with juicy blueberries. Okuno stood at the stove stirring a saucepan of shimmering purple glaze, and Reiichi was seated across from him, his bare feet hooked into the bottom rung of his high-backed chair as he leaned over the breakfast bar, offering a forkful of whatever it was to the cook. Okuno opened his mouth to oblige him, but he pulled back when he spotted Takara in the doorway, their eyes locking for one serious moment before the older boy smiled and tipped his head. Reiichi twisted in his chair, fork held aloft like a scepter.

"Well, look what the cat dragged in—or out, I suppose," Reiichi declared as he beckoned Takara forward with a grin, looking a little catlike himself. "Fujishima, c'mere. Yoshiya made his signature blueberry French toast, and I've been experimenting with different toppings. What do you think about the meringue?"

Almost before he realized it, Takara found himself seated on the chair next to Reiichi's, his feet swinging awkwardly from the high seat while he chewed on a heady bite of blueberries and whipped egg whites. Across the bar, Okuno dished up two squares of French toast and drizzled them with the warm blueberry glaze. Suddenly Takara was so hungry he thought he could devour the entire two-thirds-full casserole pan. Okuno must have caught his gluttonous look as he slid the plate over.

"Start with this," Okuno suggested, giving the bowl of strawberries a not-so-subtle nudge as well. "You don't want to end up with a bloody nose. Let me get you something to drink."

"Try this. Turkish coffee," Reiichi broke in, handing Takara an extra-large saucer. The liquid inside was as black as ink, broken by a soft foam rim—and it tasted about like ink too, Takara decided after one small sip, working his tongue against his teeth and nearly spilling the mug in his haste to get rid of it.

"Ugh. That's awful, Reiichi-sempai. It's like drinking mud!" Takara seized the older boy's glass of water, rinsing the bitter grains out of his mouth and only swallowing them because it seemed rude to run to the sink. "Um, could I just have regular…?"

Before he could even finish the question, Okuno set another cup in front of him, this one brimming with just the right amber-colored coffee, the perfect mix of milk and honey that was the reason he'd run to Reiichi and Okuno's room so many evenings at the dorm when he couldn't sleep, or when he was in a really bad mood because of—Takara swallowed the thought down with a gulp of coffee, winced a little as the hot liquid slid down his throat. He blinked up at Okuno through watery eyes. "Thanks."

"It's all right," Okuno assured him. "Only Reiichi likes Turkish coffee."

Reiichi huffed against the lip of his cup. "Well, excuse me and five hundred years of kahvecibaşıs for disagreeing with you."

The luscious French toast demanded his full attention. Takara let the conversation slip away from him as he sawed off an enormous bite and closed his eyes, taking in the taste of blueberries and gooey cream cheese and the warmth of the kitchen and the pleasant background hum of Reiichi and Okuno's debate about coffee preparation in the Ottoman state. He couldn't remember ever having breakfast with just Okuno and Reiichi before, but it felt nice, normal, comfortable in a way that he almost couldn't identify. Maybe it reminded him of his own kitchen many years ago, when the house was still full and it would have been his grandmother at the stove, shooting him a wink every now and then over her shoulder. He cut his thoughts off right there, opened his eyes on a good memory to find Reiichi laughing, one arm extended awkwardly across the bar to Okuno, who was diligently blotting a blueberry stain out of the too-long sleeve—Reiichi had obviously borrowed some of Okuno's clothes, too, though he looked a lot better in them than Takara did, probably because he was one of those annoying people who looked good in everything. Between them all they kind of had a Goldilocks and the Three Bears vibe going on, and Takara wasn't sure if it was that thought or the resigned look on Okuno's face that made him smile, really smile, for the first time since rolling out of bed, but either way he took Reiichi's dare to slather the next bite of French toast with caramel pecan sauce. It was way too much, and honestly he almost gagged on it, but sometimes too much was just right.

It was so fun to just cut loose, racking his brain for more and more unusual combinations to challenge Reiichi to choke down, that Takara completely forgot what he was trying not to think about. So he was totally off his guard when, halfway through the second square of French toast, Reiichi hooked an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close enough to bump their heads together.

"Hey," Reiichi murmured, nuzzling his cheek against Takara's temple. "I'm really sorry for leaving you last night. Forgive me, okay?"

Takara's fingers tightened around the handle of his fork, the dull metal digging into his palm as his wide eyes fixed on Okuno across the breakfast bar, watching both of them with a wary expression. Suddenly it felt like a bite of French toast the size of a baseball was caught in his throat. He wanted to tell Reiichi that he was fine—everything was fine, and yesterday was no big deal, he barely remembered it anymore, but somehow he just couldn't get the words out. He couldn't even get himself to breathe.

Reiichi pulled back far enough to meet his eyes. "Listen, about Kiyomine…" Takara felt the name go through him like an electric shock, the nerves in his ears tingling and his brain horribly fuzzy. He could do this—he could sit here and listen with a straight face to someone talking about Kiyomine, because he was over it, all of it, and really there was nothing to get over, because he and Kiyomine were nothing, had always been nothing. And that was why he didn't have to turn away, could look up at Reiichi without so much as blinking as he said, "When school starts again, you don't have to…"

Takara was totally in control of himself—but somehow his face must not have been getting the message, because Reiichi stopped talking abruptly and just stared at him for a long moment with wide eyes, eyes that were the exact same color as—

Then Takara's brain short-circuited as Reiichi seized the whipped cream canister and sprayed a foamy white line across the bridge of his nose, leaving him gasping as the breath suddenly burst up from his lungs.

"Wha—Reiichi-sempai, what are you—" Takara couldn't even get the question out before Reiichi squirted a fluffy pile of whipped cream into his flapping mouth, too, and then he was spluttering instead of speaking, trying not to breathe it in. Okuno looked as shocked as Takara felt—though not nearly as shocked as he was a second later when Reiichi slipped around the breakfast bar to smear a gob of whipped cream across his stoic cheek, too. Reiichi grinned at his handiwork.

"Never mind all that," he announced, waving the canister dismissively. "I have a brilliant plan. First, we hit the row at Daikanyama for some clothes shopping. Then we'll have lunch in Chinatown—your treat, Yoshiya," he added over his shoulder, earning a raised eyebrow from the taller boy very deliberately toweling off his cheek. Takara knew he should be wiping his face, too, but he was still too surprised to move, lost the opportunity when Reiichi reached over the counter and grabbed his hands, one of them still frozen around his fork. "And then we'll come back here and you'll spend the rest of the break with us, doing nothing but enjoying ourselves. We'll have a regular bacchanal!" he declared. Okuno gave him a sharp look.

"With less drinking, I hope."

Reiichi shrugged. "We'll see." Then he snatched the dishrag from the counter and smeared it mostly unhelpfully over Takara's face, smooshing his nose in the process. "First, though, you'd better change, Fujishima—right now you look like an illegitimate child dropped on the doorstep in the middle of the night."

"Thank you for that image," Okuno told him through a sigh. "Fujishima, your clothes are in the bathroom right across from the bedroom—and you may want to use the facial soap in there, too."

A little numb, feeling like someone had picked him up and shaken him, Takara slid down from his chair and made his way to the bathroom, barely aware of the hallway or the soft carpet under his feet. His face felt sticky and sort of raw, his skin flushed from the blood pounding in his head, reminding him painfully of the lump hidden under his hair. He turned the water in the bathroom sink on extra cold and ducked his face under the faucet, wishing the freezing water would calm the roiling in his stomach. Maybe eating all those weird toppings hadn't been such a good idea. Takara opened his eyes and stared at the spray rushing over his nose. He liked the idea of spending the rest of break here at Okuno's house, not having to deal with any of it yet—but even that silver lining was overshadowed by a storm cloud, one that thundered in his head as he toweled off his face. Winter break would be over in three days, and then what? Would he go back to the dorms? Would he go home? No—he shook his head hard, blinked the sting out of his eyes. No, he'd never go home again.

It wasn't until he'd stripped off the enormous shirt and reached for his own clothes that he realized what the black object on top of them was—his phone, the green alert light blinking in the corner. Robotically, he picked it up. Nineteen missed calls—one from his dad, eighteen from Kiyomine. No messages. Takara leaned over the sink to rest his forehead against the cool glass of the mirror, staring into the dark brown centers of his own eyes.

No messages. Somehow, after everything that had happened, Kiyomine was still leaving it all at his feet, forcing him to make the next move. The missed calls meant he wasn't going away, but that was all they meant; they offered no hint of what Kiyomine was thinking, what he thought Takara was thinking. And his dad—his dad who already felt insubstantial, just a name on a glowing screen. Takara wondered if he'd call back, wondered if he'd bother to tell his dad what he'd figured out last night, shoving his hands down into his pockets on the way into the hospital—that somewhere in the confusion he'd dropped his change of guardian form, that indescribably empty piece of paper lost in the night, like everything else he used to have. It didn't matter. Takara sighed, watched his breath fog the cold glass. He wished his problems were the kind that would go away if he just ignored them long enough, but he hadn't gotten that lucky.

Well, that wasn't quite true. There was one problem that would go away if he just shut his eyes, kept his head down for six weeks, until the sign in the yard had been traded for a moving truck idling in the driveway, the pictures on the shelves in the living room replaced by another family's pictures, another family's voices and memories and new footsteps. If he could hold out for six weeks, he'd never have to set foot again in that kitchen where he'd stood rooted to the spot almost one day ago exactly, listened to his father tell him that it didn't make sense to hold onto the house when he was going to be gone for close to two years, not when Takara was living in the dorms now, when he seemed so much happier at school with his friends. He was welcome to keep whatever he wanted, of course—he could work it out with his new guardian, here was the name of a moving service…

Takara had wanted to slap his hands over his ears, to run to Kiyomine and put it all out of his head, but that was before Kiyomine…and now he was glad that he hadn't told anyone, could just pretend it wasn't happening until it wasn't anymore. In six weeks, the house and everything in it would just go away. Like his father. Like Kiyomine.

Takara blinked hard and squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his hands over his pounding heart. "Kiyomine," he whispered against the glass. "Kiyomine. Kiyomine." But it was no good. That name still hurt every time.