Chapter 4 - The Enlightenment of the Gods, Part Three

The Enlightenment of the Gods, Part Three[/b]
 
*~*~*~*~*~
 
   It was very late when Nijiiro came back to his house. The windows were awash with light, and Nijiiro was certain that a very loud card battle was going on inside. But he didn’t feel like joining in, not tonight. Especially not if Jin was still there.
   A cat lying on the front porch, carefully off to the non-opening side of the door, looked up as Nijiiro stepped onto the porch and yawned disdainfully at him. Nijiiro looked down at the cat, recognizing it as Kin, one of his cousin Haru’s favorites. Kin was a fat silver tabby, filled with disdain for everything that wasn’t edible—except for Harunobu, whom he adored.
   Kin got ponderously to his feet and trotted off the porch and around towards the backyard. On a whim, Nijiiro followed him. He didn’t really want to answer the myriad questions of his relatives tonight, and the back door would go unnoticed easier than the front.
   However, he was not the only one in the backyard.
   A throng of cats, none of them the Iis’, were in the backyard. Alley cats, house cats, pampered cats, suspicious cats, cats with no owners and cats with ten owners, all weaving themselves about in a great feline pavane around the back porch. A loud purring issued from many feline throats at once, and nocat attacked another, even those that anywhere else would have attacked first and asked questions never. Haru was out, and the rules were different now.
   Harunobu was Niou’s twin, and shared the same short, soft black hair and large, amber eyes. However, there the resemblance ended. Haru was taller than Niou and more solidly built, although at the age of nine he was still too small to be called solid. He had none of Niou’s kitten-like softness, and his eyes were harder and more wary—but around cats, and indeed any other animal, fish, or insect, Haru’s kindness was second to none.
   It was almost a ritual that whenever he could Haru snuck food into the backyard to feed the animals of Japan. Cats had come—or so their tags said—from Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Asahikawa, even as far away as Iriomote Jima, perhaps passing the word of the strange cat-feeding boy by some unknown cat-relay and deciding to come see him for themselves. Haru loved cats, all cats, even the scruffy, angry cats that wouldn’t let anyone come within fifteen feet of them, and most cats loved Haru too—and even those who didn’t would still come to be fed by him.
   Haru was there on the back porch, surrounded by cats, letting them eat leftover meat from the ramen from his hands. He didn’t look up as Nijiiro came around into the back yard, but spoke to him as he stroked cats under the chin or down the back, wherever he thought they would like best.
   “You’re back.”
   “Yes, I am,” Nijiiro said.
   Haru didn’t ask any questions, merely continued to feed the congregation of cats. But then, when Nijiiro waded through the current of cats up to the back door, he said, “I wouldn’t.”
   Nijiiro paused, and looked quizzically back.
   “Ayaka-oba and Natsumi,” Haru said by way of explanation.
   “They’re not playing cards?”
   “They were, but Maki accidentally poked Ayaka-oba in the eye during Nertz.”
   “Ah.”
   “Jin’s left,” Haru added.
   Nijiiro’s stomach twisted. “Really.”
   “Right after you did.”
   “I had to think,” Nijiiro explained.
   “Oh.”
   Haru knew all about having to think. This was an explanation he would accept.
   “If you wanna go in without seeing anybody, try the roof,” he said, bringing more meat both cooked and raw out of his pockets.
   “The roof?”
   “Chihiro’s up there, but nobody else should be upstairs at all. Except maybe Kaoru-oba checking on Sakura.”
   “Okay. Thanks.”
   “Did you VG somebody?” Haru asked quietly.
   Nijiiro paused. Haru didn’t usually ask questions of anybody. “When? Just now?”
   “Yeah.”
   “No.”
   “Oh.”
   They were both quiet for a moment, surrounded by the meows and purrs of cats. Kin hopped up onto Haru’s lap, which as far as he was concerned was his by right, and curled up for a snooze.
   “Night,” Nijiiro said finally, clambering painfully onto the railing of the back porch.
   “G`night,” Haru answered as Nijiiro made his wincing way onto the roof.
 
   Chihiro was indeed on the roof. She spent all night on the roof, staring up into the sky, marking constellations and recording the stars on tremendous sheets of butcher paper that she stole from school. Nijiiro had a difficult time climbing up the roof—it was an easy roof, and he was used to it, but his body hurt so badly it was quite difficult—so Chihiro probably knew he was there even before he could see her.
   She didn’t say anything until he reached the apex of the roof, where she was, dotting her paper with stars and labeling them all in neat, Lilliputian kanji.
   “I saw you coming,” she said abruptly.
   That was unusual. From the roof, Chihiro could[/i] see the entire street, but rarely did, because her attention was usually completely absorbed in the sky above.
   “You were looking?” Nijiiro asked, feeling flattered.
   “Jin left to go after you,” Chihiro continued. “But he went the opposite direction you came back from.”
   “Really.”
   “He was only wearing his jacket and his pants. He was carrying everything else with him, and going really fast.”
   “He didn’t find me.”
   Chihiro drew lines between several stars and labeled the constellation Cassiopeia. “He was worried.”
   Nijiiro’s heart leaped, and then sank. “He was probably just trying to kill me.”
   “Possibly.” Chihiro wasn’t looking at her cousin, but up at the sky, searching for Bellatrix. “He didn’t yell any death-threats, though.”
   Nijiiro didn’t say anything. Chihiro’s veiled questions were not unexpected, but he didn’t feel capable of answering any of them. He started moving towards Chihiro’s window, from which the roof was easily accessible and decessible. Then Chihiro asked a question outright, fully as unusual for her as it was for Haru. “Are you okay?”
   Nijiiro paused, then answered truthfully, “No, I’m not.”
   Chihiro bent over to label Bellatrix’s new position, and her black hair fell over her face. “If you ever need somebody killed, all you have to do is say the word. I’m there.”
   Nijiiro stopped, and looked back up at her, surrounded by her extensive maps of the heavens, concerned for him and trying to mask it, and felt such a surge of love for her, for his entire family, that despite all their idiosyncrasies and all their problems and all their dependence upon him he wouldn’t have traded them for anyone else, even if it had meant he wouldn’t have to VG ever again.
   He smiled, feeling partially like laughing and partially like crying. “Thanks, Chihiro.”
   Chihiro didn’t answer him, but returned to the sky, eyes roving to search out where Procyon was tonight. Nijiiro climbed in through Chihiro’s window, her black drapes brushing his face like soft, fluttering hands.
 
*   *   *
Earlier That Day...[/b]
 
   Endo Eiko stared with undisguised dismay at her brother, searching for a way to take his words as a joke, even though she knew they weren’t.
   “Do you accept?” Endo Shiro demanded.
   “Shiro, why...” Eiko began awkwardly, searching for a polite way to phrase her question. But Shiro cut her off, pulling out his VG card.
   “I just joined VG, Eiko. I’ve been training, working on it, and I can use my chi now. I want to fight you. Now. Come on.”
   Eiko dug her fingers into her long, luxurious golden hair and stared dispiritedly at her brother. Shiro was a decent height for a Japanese male, about five feet seven, but she, Eiko, was six feet, six two in the heels she was wearing now, and almost twice as wide as he was. It was one of nature’s little jokes, that Eiko was a carbon copy of their father—tall, solidly built, with a lion’s mane of thick golden ringlets—and Shiro looked very like their mother—average height, slender, with long, straight, silvery hair like a fall of moonbeams. Eiko could gain weight off a single grain of rice, whereas Shiro could eat a buffet and not gain a pound. It was Eiko’s dearest wish that she had her brother’s metabolism. But at least she had a figure. Shiro looked like a stick.
   “Shiro—” Eiko tried, but before she even opened her mouth she knew it was no good. Shiro had a mulish expression on his face exactly the same as the one that had been on their mother’s face when she divorced their father ten years ago.
   And she couldn’t turn him down. Even aside from the fact that her reputation as a VGer would be ruined and she’d probably be fired from her waitressing job at Kira-kira Umi—the sushi and karaoke joint she and her brother were standing in now—Shiro would never forgive her for turning his challenge down.
   The question was, would he forgive her when she won?
   “All right, Shiro,” Eiko sighed, pulling her own VG card out of the back pocket of her sky-blue, white-ruffled waitress dress. She shined it against the sleeve of her black blouse and clicked the corners. Kira-kira Umi was fully equipped to handle a VG match, and Eiko was its star champion.
   The console posts on the edges of the Kira-kira Umi VG ring beeped once as Eiko clicked her card. She and Shiro walked over to the ring and slid their cards into the posts at almost the same time.
   “Confirming VG status...Confirmed. Standby.”
   The cameras above the ring switched on and focused. The televisions in Kira-kira Umi, all set to Eiko’s channel, switched to the familiar VG Standby icon—an interwoven V and G—and the restaurant’s chatter of contented, sushi-eating customers died down, turning into an anticipatory whisper that ran about the place.
   “VG Senshi Endo Eiko,” Eiko said.
   “VG Senshi Endo Shiro,” Shiro replied, igniting mutters around the room. “Well then. Don’t hold back, sister.”
   Eiko sighed again. “All right, brother.”
   She pointed her fingers at him and unleashed a fireball of sparkling, translucent chi.
   Shiro barely got out of the way in time. The fireball hit the side of the arena and burst into sparkling flames that dissipated into the air. Around Kira-kira Umi, cheers went up. Most of the people who came here came here often, and Eiko was their darling. With her golden hair, black blouse, and voluptuous figure, she was attractive to men—with her sarcastic tongue, no-nonsense attitude, and fighting prowess, she was endearing to women. Sad to say, there was not a single Shiro-supporter in that restaurant, and both Eiko and Shiro knew it.
   Shiro vaulted around the arena, dodging every blast of chi his sister threw at him. Eiko watched him carefully, noting his evasion for every shot. He had gotten better since the last time she had seen him—he had been trying hard. But trying wasn’t good enough in VG.
   Eiko used her left hand to throw another fireball at her brother, then slashed her right hand off to the side, in the direction she knew Shiro was about to dodge. A gout of brilliant fire arrowed through the air and caught Shiro in the chest as he avoided the fireball—Eiko’s chi sent needles of pain into Shiro’s ribcage and broke the bonds of the molecules of his jacket. In other words, the jacket came to pieces.
   Shiro recoiled, having trouble breathing because of the stabbing pain in his ribs, and the front of his jacket fell away from his shirt, drifting to the arena floor as shreds of cloth that came apart mid-drift. Eiko’s heart ached, but she knew Shiro was going to have to lose sooner or later—she couldn’t let[/i] him beat her, or else she’d be ruined—so she wove her hands through the air, gathering two huge orbs of her chi, and tossed them into the air, one at his waist, one at his feet.
   The two spheres hit Shiro bang-on and exploded. Shiro crashed to the ground, his feet and ankles stabbed with pain, his shoes coming apart, and his stomach roiling like a fire hose. The ribbon tying his hair in its braid disintegrated—his silver hair came loose and fell over him like a funeral shroud.
   Pushing this terrible image out of her mind, Eiko looked up, and smiled at the people in the restaurant. Inside, she was writhing in guilt. There hadn’t been any way out of it, no way to avoid humiliating her brother—right? Of course. But what if there was a way? What if she just hadn’t thought hard enough, or smart enough? Could she have avoided this?
   The scoreboard above the VG ring hummed to itself, then came to a verdict. It beeped, and one of the squares lit up.
   LEVEL 1
   Eiko stared, open-mouthed in horror, at it. Oh God. Level 1. Why hadn’t she been thinking?! Why hadn’t she let Shiro land at least one[/i] hit on her?! He would NEVER forgive her for this. NEVER.
   She looked down at her brother, and saw that he was staring up at her through the curtain of his hair. He knew, even without looking, what level he had lost at. The cheers resounding through Kira-kira Umi told him that.
   Painfully he dragged himself to his feet. Eiko tried to go forward, to help him, to say something, anything, to him, but her feet were frozen to the floor. Alone, Shiro stood up, and looked around at his sister’s restaurant.
   One idea was resonant in everyone’s shouts and thoughts—Strip! Strip! Strip! Strip![/i]
   Shiro bit his lip, and swallowed. A crimson flush was rising in his face, down his neck, and—as became obvious when he fumbled open the buttons of his shirt—over his chest, too.
   Eiko couldn’t look. She had to turn away as her brother slowly, reluctantly, pulled off his clothes and stood naked in the arena. She hated her restaurant for cheering. She hated him for challenging her. She hated herself for doing this to him. She couldn’t look.
   “Eiko![/i]” Shiro yelled, his voice harsh as a crow’s with unshed tears.
   Eiko swallowed.
   “Eiko, look at me![/i]”
   She couldn’t look.
   “Look at me, dammit![/i]”
   Eiko whirled around to face him again, keeping her eyes locked on his face, a lump like an apple in her throat. Shiro was glaring at her, his hands at his sides, clenched into fists.
   “Eiko, I know you’ve had the better training,” Shiro growled. “I know Dad has more money than Mom, I know you’ve been learning stuff a lot longer than I have, but I swear to you, I’ll get better than this. Better than you[/i]. Someday I’ll beat you[/i] on Level 1. And this will all be the other way around.”
   Eiko couldn’t speak around the apple in her throat. Shiro closed his eyes, and one tear slid down his face as he readied himself for the last stage of a Level 1 loss, readied to humiliate himself in front of all of Japan—actually, all of the world.
   In a swirl of golden ringlets, Eiko turned on her heels and left the ring, left Kira-kira Umi, went out into the back and slumped in the alley where she could cry for the little brother she knew—and for the little brother she had just lost—without anybody to hear her.
 
*   *   *
At Roughly This Same Time...[/b]
 
   Clack[/i], went the bamboo against the rock, pouring water out into the pond.
   “Your cousin is here,” the old man murmured around his tea, not taking his eyes off the sparkling little pond in his yard, feeling rather than hearing his trusted agent leaving the room.
 
 
   Masuda Kasumi was waiting outside the front door, bouncing on her heels in barely suppressed glee. The Master had called for her. Her![/i] She was just a fledgling ninja, and he wanted her![/i] She wondered what dangerous task she would be assigned to complete, what tremendous duties she would be put in charge of, what terrible enemies she would—
   The door opened.
   Kasumi screamed and threw herself on the girl in the doorway. “Chiho-san!![/i]”[/i]
   Masuda Chiho fell backwards under Kasumi’s weight, and the cousins fell onto the floor in a hopeless jumble. Both girls were wearing typical ninja garb, tight and black, but that didn’t make it any easier to disentangle themselves.
   “You need to learn control,” Chiho said, prying her arm loose from Kasumi’s leg. “What if I wasn’t Chiho, just an imposter?”
   “Then you wouldn’t be in the Master’s house. Awww, Chiho-san, I’m just trying to say hi!”
   “Then say[/i] it, don’t tackle me.”
   “Tackling’s half the fun!” Kasumi got up and helped her cousin to her feet. “So what’s going on?! What am I doing?! Where am I going?! Huh, huh, huh?!”
   “Why don’t you go talk to the Master and find out?” Chiho replied, closing the door.
   “`K!” Kasumi was off, tearing down the corridor. Chiho sighed and rubbed her temples. This might be more trouble than it was worth.
 
 
   “Kasumi,” the Master said to her when she came into the room very quietly, behaving with an uncharacteristic amount of control. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
   “Yessir,” Kasumi said, sitting on her feet and bowing to the floor.
   “I want you to investigate the VG tournament,” the Master said.
   “VG, sir?”
   “Yes. Eleven years ago, the tournament was a cover-up for a secret plot to revive Jahana Miranda, a plot which surely would have succeeded had it not been for the help your cousin Chiho gave us. I cannot help but worry that perhaps this tournament is as rotten on the inside as that one years ago—and it is better to be safe than sorry. I have decided to send you and Chiho to Ariyake Coliseum to enter the tournament.”
   Kasumi jolted as though she had received an electric shock. The Master probably noticed, but didn’t say anything about it as he continued.
   “Keep a low profile. I will be sending you under the guise of a fake restaurant called Sakuraba’s that has been hacked into the VG computers. Stay in the tournament to keep suspicion away from you, and search the entire area for any hint of any kind of plot that might be going on in the shadows. Be careful and quiet and do everything that Chiho tells you. You will be serving as her messenger back here.”
   “Yessir,” Kasumi said, her voice shaking slightly.
   “Do not be afraid,” the Master said softly.
   “Oh, I’m not, sir,” Kasumi said eagerly. “Thank you so much for—”
   “Just remember that for later,” the Master said. “Do not be afraid[/i]. Chiho will protect you. Now go, and bring me back good news that I am just going senile, and there’s nothing wrong with VG this year at all.”
   “Oh, I will—er, I mean, you’re not going senile, sir. I’ll—yes—I—well, goodbye sir.” And Kasumi left, blushing pink at her idiocy.
   Clack[/i], went the bamboo against the rock, pouring water out into the pond.
 
*   *   *
The Next Day...[/b]
 
   Nijiiro woke up slowly the next day to sunlight pouring in through the window between his bed and Hiroji’s. It had to be later in the day—there was nobody else in the room, and everyone else’s bed was made, to varying degrees. Shiho’s looked new, whereas Haruna’s looked like a bear had slept in it.
   Overnight, his bruises had turned into one huge, blackened clump of pain spread unyieldingly over his upper body. It hurt just to breathe.
   Although he couldn’t do anything about the dark stains raised all over his skin, Nijiiro did have a notion of how to stop it from hurting so much—a little trick he had learned to use on himself when he was little and would fall and skin his knees. He called his chi to him—even this nonphysical effort hurt his ribs—and sent it blazing through the bruises.
   Anybody watching Nijiiro at that time would have seen brilliant rainbow light flash in his eyes and over the bruises, changing them from black and blue to red, green, gold, and violet. Then it was gone, and Nijiiro felt normal again—at least, as normal as he ever did. He knew himself well enough to tell that it was only temporary, though. Any quick or strenuous movement would wear through the chi he was coating his damaged nerves with and stab through with pain; but as long as he was careful, he could act pretty much normal, and nobody would have to know he got beaten up last night.
   Until he got into a VG match...
   “Healing Rain,” Nijiiro muttered. “Why have I never named that one? I’ll call it Healing Rain. I’m hungry.”
   He hadn’t bothered to change into pajamas last night, and he was still wearing his uniform from Bubblegum Ice Cream. It was a crumpled mess, so he took it off and put on his favorite shirt—a long-sleeved white shirt Natsumi had obligingly drawn a group portrait of Aqua on for him—and old, worn jeans that had once belonged to his oldest brother, Ashootei, who was away at college. They were large on him, even with his belt, though not nearly as big as Fuma’s. Fuma’s jeans were almost as long as Nijiiro’s entire body.
   Padding on socks and the flopping ends of the jeans, Nijiiro went out into the hall and almost ran right into Yue, Himeko’s Gothic, poetic daughter.
   “Hark at Sleeping Beauty,” said Maki, who was right behind her. “It’s almost eleven.”
   “Where were you last night?” Yue demanded.
   “I had to go think,” Nijiiro said vaguely. “Where’s Hayami-kun?”
   Maki just snorted. Yue was a little more voluble. “He played Nertz with us last night and got flattened, and stupid Hiroji tried to get him to play Strip-Nertz, so he got weirded out and went to sleep in Chihiro’s bed.”
   “Ah.” Nijiiro tossed apple-green hair out of his eyes. “Is he up?”
   “Yeah, and Hiroji’s not making an idiot of himself anymore,” Yue said.
   “For a change,” Maki added.
   “Do you like anybody[/i], Maki?” Yue asked.
   “Not if they’re male.”
   “Is there any food?” Nijiiro asked.
   “Not breakfast,” Yue shrugged. “But you can probably get some leftover ramen or the oden from two nights ago for lunch, if you like.”
   “Natsumi left the anpan[/i], too, but that’s not lunch,” Maki said.
   “Nah,” Nijiiro agreed. “Thanks.”
   “Be careful,” Yue warned. “Ayaka-oba and Shiho were working themselves into a volcanic state last night. They were ready to rain magmatic destruction on somebody because you didn’t leave a note or anything.”
   “Magmatic’s not a word.”
   “Shut up. I’m a poet, I’m allowed to make new words. The point is, they’ll probably mob you as soon as they see you, so I’d keep my eyes peeled.”
   “Thanks for the warning.” Nijiiro went for the kitchen.
   He found Kaoru, Shiho, Hiroji, Haru, Niou, and Naoki in the living room. Kaoru, Hiroji, and Niou were playing Crazy Eights while Shiho read a book checked out from her school’s library. Haru and Naoki were absorbed in stroking Kin and a lovely fluffy black female cat with clear green eyes. As soon as Nijiiro opened the door, Niou dropped his cards and ran up to hug him, while Shiho dropped her book and erupted—true to Yue’s words—like a volcano.
   “WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU?! WHERE DID YOU GO?! YOU SCARED THE LIVING HELL OUT OF US, DIDN’T TELL US WHERE YOU WERE GOING OR EVEN THAT YOU WERE LEAVING, AND JIN NEVER FOUND YOU SO WE WERE WORRIED THAT YOU GOT KIDNAPPED OR MURDERED OR SOMETHING, AND THEN THIS MORNING HARU—” she jerked her head toward Haru, who was ignoring Shiho completely “—TOLD US THAT YOU CAME HOME LAST NIGHT WITHOUT US KNOWING AND WENT IN THROUGH THE ROOF, SO YOU WERE AVOIDING[/b] US, AND I WANT TO KNOW WHY THIS INSTANT, MY DEAR BROTHER, OR ELSE I’LL SKIN YOU ALIVE FOR MOM TO DRAW AND QUARTER YOU WHEN SHE GETS BACK FROM GROCERY-SHOPPING!!!!!”
   Nijiiro was trying not to wince or gasp at Niou’s hug, which was causing the chi-barrier around his bruises to shake and let out little cracks of pain.
   “Shiho thought you got murdered,” Niou said from somewhere around Nijiiro’s waist, “but I knew you weren’t murdered.”
   “No, I wasn’t murdered,” Nijiiro agreed. “I just...needed to think about some things.”
   “THOSE HAD BETTER BE SOME DAMN GOOD THINGS, MY DEAR BROTHER.”
   Shiho only called Nijiiro her ‘dear brother’ when she was on the verge of strangling him.
   “I think—” Nijiiro hesitated, and met Naoki’s eyes across the room. He looked curious, and kind of embarrassed to be witnessing a family squabble.
   At first, Nijiiro had been fully intending to tell Shiho that he had realized last night that he was in love with Jin, and to try and talk some of his weird, traitorous, contorted feelings out with her. (The whole ball-massaging thing didn’t need to be mentioned.) However, that had been with the assumption that that information would not be going outside his family. Somehow, with Naoki in the room, he found himself extremely reluctant to say anything about Jin at all, let alone about his crush on him.
   “Shiho, er—” Nijiiro hedged.
   “START TALKING.[/b]”
   “I went in to check on Jin.” Nijiiro began with the truth. “And he was awake. And really, really mad. Chihiro did some pretty bad things to him.”
   “He didn’t look good,” Niou agreed.
   “So he challenged me to VG then,” Nijiiro improvised. “He’s got a one-track mind. And when I wouldn’t fight him, he got even madder and tried to attack me anyway. He kind of freaked me out, so I ran to get outside, so he wouldn’t destroy the house if he tried to attack me. But when I started running, I...just couldn’t stop. I stopped in an alleyway and had to think about stuff for a while. Then I came back.”
   “What did I tell you, Shiho?” Kaoru asked, sneaking a surreptitious look at Niou’s cards. “I told you that when he told Chihiro that Jin was trying to kill him he was being serious.”
   “Why didn’t you just come in and SAY that instead of sneaking in through the roof and freaking us within an inch of our lives?!” Shiho demanded.
   “I was tired, and I figured you were all playing cards,” Nijiiro said candidly. “I didn’t think I could take the energy. I thought about some serious stuff last night, Shiho.”
   “How serious?”
   “Same level as you and Fuma serious.”
   That[/i] got her.
   “Well...okay,” Shiho said, deflating like an opened balloon. “Okay, I guess I can understand that. Just tell Mom when she gets back, okay? She was having kittens over you last night.”
   As she spoke, Shiho collapsed back onto the floor where she had been sitting.
   “Jin is such an idiot,” Haru said, still stroking Kin.
   “I’ll say,” Hiroji agreed. “I remember when Yuna and I beat him up in third grade. He must have been, what, in sixth? And he got his butt kicked by a third- and fourth-grader.”
   “Hey, Kaoru-oba!” Niou cried, running back to his cards. “Don’t peek at my cards! That’s cheating!”
   “It’s not cheating unless I get caught!”
   “I just caught[/i] you, Kaoru-oba!”
   “Curses! Foiled again!”
   Nijiiro laughed and went towards the kitchen.
   The kitchen was mercifully empty. Immediately Nijiiro let his smile fall away and felt his bruises cautiously. Niou was a sweetheart, he was trying to make him feel better—it wasn’t his fault that his hug made things worse.
   Nijiiro had just finished reinforcing his chi with another of his newly-dubbed Healing Rains when the kitchen door opened. Hastily, Nijiiro tried to look as though he had just been looking around for the ramen.
   It was Naoki.
   “Thanks for letting me stay with your family,” Naoki said.
   “I heard Hiroji freaked you out last night.” Nijiiro pulled out the ramen and a bowl, filled the bowl to the brim with the leftover noodles, and yanked out chopsticks. “I’m sorry.”
   “S`okay,” Naoki mumbled, his face reddening. “Um...look, because you’ve been really nice to me, and your family too...I kinda feel like I owe telling you this.”
   Nijiiro paused, this far from his first bite. He was starving, but something in Naoki’s voice sounded weird.
   “It’s about the restaurant where I work,” Naoki said almost inaudibly. “Cream’s basically...I guess you could call it a brothel. A male brothel. I didn’t work there as a waiter or a cook or anything. I was...one of the...boys.”
   Nijiiro’s appetite squirmed and vanished.
   “I had a fight with my parents a...actually, over a year ago, and I ran away, and the guy in charge found me and hired me—he said I was going to be a waiter, but when we got to the place, he—”
   Naoki stopped, then said with very forced lightness, “Two weeks ago I ran away from Cream too, and joined VG to give myself an excuse to get away from them, and then I made it here.”
   “Oh...God,” Nijiiro said inanely.
   “I think if I win, they can’t come after me,” Naoki muttered.
   “Not if you pick real estate in a different country and move there ASAP,” Nijiiro said. “Hayami-kun, I’m...”
   “I’m not, like, trying to ask you to give up or anything,” Naoki said hastily. “I know it’s important for you to be in VG too—”
   “Yes. Oh, yes.” Nijiiro felt tears coming to his eyes like last night and angrily blinked them away. You wouldn’t think it considering how often it was happening lately, but Nijiiro didn’t cry often, and tried not to be around people when he did. “So that’s why Hiroji’s been freaking you out so badly.”
   “I kind of thought you deserved to know,” Naoki said. “I’m sorry, I really don’t worry here, I trust your family already—I mean, listen, last night, I slept, and I didn’t worry that somebody might try to...you know...rape me or anything. And I...I’ve worried about that, I’ve dreamed[/i] about it, every night, ever since—I was in Cream, and I didn’t here.” He paused, then said again, as though he had to, “I didn’t.”
   Nijiiro couldn’t think of anything to say to finding out that the guy he had invited to stay with his family was a prostitute, so he shoveled ramen into his mouth to stop himself from saying anything stupid.
   “If...since your situation is kind of—urgent,” Nijiiro said finally when his mouth was empty again, “then I think we should go to Ariyake Coliseum today. After I’m done eating.”
   “Ariyake Coliseum?”
   “It’s the HQ for the nationals. I was going to go there today to sign up myself, since this’ my day off, but this kind of, um, gives a new urgency to it.”
   “Thanks,” Naoki mumbled, blushing redder. “I’m kind of putting you and your family through a lot, and I’m sorry.”
   “Well...” Nijiiro began, and then shoved another bite of ramen into his mouth for the same reason as before.
   “Thanks,” Naoki repeated, leaving the kitchen with the expression of a hunted fox on his face.
   Nijiiro lifted another bite to his mouth, then threw it down, his appetite gone. Naoki needed to win. If he didn’t, he was going to be dragged back to Cream. How much worse could it be, to be stuck in a place where you were sold until you even dreamed[/i] about it at night? But Nijiiro needed to win too. If he didn’t—
   Nijiiro wanted to scream.
 
*   *   *
 
   He didn’t scream.
   He even managed to go to Ariyake Coliseum with Naoki without saying, “Why don’t you drop out of VG and just run for it?” like he felt like saying. Running away had already proved itself to be a major mistake for Naoki. If he ran somewhere else, he’d probably get cut up and sold on some organ market.
   Which would solve Nijiiro’s problem—
   Nijiiro refused to think about that. He was a VG warrior, and with that title came a code of honor and ethics, although most people who weren’t in it would probably question how a sport with the goal of forcing your opponent to strip naked could have anything approaching morality. He shouldn’t think about reasons why Naoki should drop out of the tournament. He should[/i] be thinking about how he would defeat him when they came face-to-face in the VG ring.
   Ariyake Coliseum was a huge, spiraling building, shaped exactly like a giant rose, the effect heightened by its rose-red color. Originally, before Nijiiro had even known what VG was, the Coliseum had been painted the white of sea foam by the then-leader of Jahana and therefore of VG: Jahana Miranda. However, Miranda’s daughter Reimi had ordered the Coliseum painted red when she took over Jahana. Nijiiro had to admit, it gave the place a hard, almost dangerously beautiful appearance that seemed to convey the whole spirit of VG. Red for blood, for bruises, for chi and life and heart. Red for spirit and emotion and feeling. Red for sunburn if you took real estate on the equator. Red for Naoki’s hair. Red for Jin’s face after he lost to Nijiiro at VG, and for his balls after—
   Nijiiro reined fiercely at his imagination, which was taking things way[/i] too far, and led Naoki into Ariyake Coliseum.
   Inside was a labyrinth of sun-filled corridors and spacious rooms. The glass front doors opened into a colossal lobby crammed to bursting with people. Ariyake was the main HQ of VG for the world, and the reasons of the people visiting it probably ranged from signing up for VG to stalking a favorite champion. Men and women of all ages and appearances ebbed and flowed throughout the room, shoving Nijiiro and Naoki this way and that in their single-minded pursuit of their goals.
   “Follow me!” Nijiiro called, seizing Naoki’s hand. It did not escape his notice that Naoki flinched when Nijiiro touched him, but was it because of his experience at Cream, or because he didn’t trust—?
   “Excuse me!” Nijiiro hollered at the closest information desk, banishing those thoughts swiftly from his mind. “Where do we register for the nationals?”
   “Up the stairs to the right, hang a left on the third floor, then right again!” the woman at the desk hollered back at him. “Fourth door down!” The woman grinned. “Good luck, Ii-san!”
   “Do you know her?” Naoki yelled as Nijiiro towed him off towards the stairs.
   “No!” Nijiiro shouted back.
   “Then—?”
   “A lot of women like me,” Nijiiro shout-explained. “They think I’m cute, or funny, or they like my style, or my hair. Sometimes all of the above. Cross my heart. Some girls have actually asked me if I’d consider switching orientations for them.”
   They made it to the stairs. Nijiiro took them three at a time, dragging Naoki up after him. This was only possible because there was nobody else on the stairs, everybody who was somewhat sane having partaken of the elevators in the lobby instead. Naoki was too busy trying not to get pulled over flat on his face to spare breath for talking until they’d gotten to the third level, where Nijiiro stopped to throw sky-blue and hunter-green hair out of his face.
   “Would you?” Naoki asked finally.
   Nijiiro stopped with a single tangerine lock in his hand. “Would I what?”
   “Change orientations,” Naoki said. “If you could.”
   Nijiiro opened his mouth, then closed it again. He wound his tangerine hair around his fingers, so tightly he almost cut off his circulation. “I...don’t...know.”
   “You don’t know?” Naoki repeated incredulously.
   “I want to,” Nijiiro said softly. “Sometimes. Sometimes...I feel like I’d like a sex-change operation, you know? Like I want to...to be a girl. All the way, not just in my feelings. But also...I also...sometimes, I like myself just as I am.”
   Naoki’s face took on a hard, frozen look without moving a centimeter. “Do you really?”
   “Yeah,” Nijiiro said, nervous now for no reason he could name. “I...I guess I...I just...”
   He was trying to think of how he could express what he felt for Jin. How he could explain to Naoki that homosexuality wasn’t all rape and lust, that feelings of love could exist, without actually mentioning Jin at all. And then a spear of humiliating hypocrisy stabbed through Nijiiro’s heart. Who was he to talk about love? He had almost jumped a perfect stranger last night, all thoughts of Jin or love eclipsed in an instant by muscular legs and forest-green hair.
   Before Nijiiro could figure out anything to say—or even if he should say anything at all—the door slammed open.
   A tall, beautiful, voluptuous woman, dressed in a pinstripe business suit and four-inch black heels, was behind it. Her lilac-blue hair fell in waves down her back and in two tremendous curls down her sides—her lips were darkest carmine rose petals in a face sharp, hard, and coldly lovely from the high cheekbones to the sapphire eyes with their long black lashes. One long, slender, graceful, dangerous hand rested on the doorknob still, the long nails painted as red as her lips, as red as the roses for which she was famous.
   She was Jahana Reimi. Head of VG and the Jahana Company. The richest, strongest woman in the entire world.
 
 
   “Excuse me,” Reimi said, and she brushed past Nijiiro to head up the stairs. One lock of lilac hair fluttered out and brushed against one lock of Nijiiro’s hair—then she was nothing but the sound of high-heeled boots clacking against metal as she took the stairs up two at a time.
   Nijiiro stayed in shock for a full fifteen seconds, then grabbed his hair, searching frantically for the lock of hair touched by Reimi. But whatever it was, it fell back into the waterfalling rainbow and was lost.
   “What are you doing?” Naoki asked.
   “Do you realize who that WAS?!” Nijiiro squeaked.
   “Jahana Reimi?”
   “EXACTLY!! And she TOUCHED me! My hair! But which color[/i] was it?!”
   “Why does it matter?” Naoki demanded.
   “Whatever it is, it’s obviously my lucky color! I need[/i] that!” Nijiiro was sorting through his hair in skeins, throwing spare colors across his opposite shoulder like a scarf. “Errgh! Where is it!”
   “If you don’t know[/i] what color it is, how are you going to find it again?”
   Nijiiro paused. The logic was inescapable. He growled and sorted through the rest of his hair in a last-ditch, desperate bid for hope, but couldn’t figure out which color it was Reimi had touched. “Darn it! How many people could that happen to?!”
   “I’d bet not many,” Naoki said delicately.
   “Exactly! And I wasted that opportunity! I didn’t even say anything to her. Ihhhh...” He blew his bangs out of his face. “But wasn’t she beautiful? She looked like the model for that Aqua song, ‘Roses Are Red.’” Nijiiro smiled to himself and started to sing, very softly, “ ‘Roses are red, and violets are blue/ Honey is sweet, but not as sweet as you...’ ”
   Naoki looked uncomfortable.
   “All right, all right,” Nijiiro sighed. “Let’s go. We’ve still got to sign up.”
   The door had closed behind Reimi when she had let it go. Nijiiro reached for the knob, but it burst open again. Nijiiro jumped back and had his mouth open to berate whoever was on the other side—but who it was was so unexpected that Nijiiro froze mid-word.
   The blood drained from Naoki’s face.
   Jahana Reimi had been a surprise, but even she could not compare to the shock that was Yano Tsuyosa.
 
   “Excuse me,” Tsuyosa said. There were a few things he had to take care of before he could call it a day and leave Ariyake. He usually used the stairs because so few other people did, but this time, for once, there were two boys on them. At least, one[/i] of them was definitely a boy. A hot one, too, but there wasn’t any time for that right now. Too bad.
   Tsuyosa started to move towards the stairs, but then he stopped. His eyes ran over the boy once, twice.
   Hot damn[/i]. It was Hayami Naoki, the Cream boy with the body that sometimes tormented Tsuyosa in his dreams. Here[/i]. In Ariyake Coliseum.
   Never before or since had Tsuyosa had the same feelings that he had had with Naoki. After that night at Cream, the VG champion had wanted to make a second visit so badly that it had taken him a week to get over the urge and return to his old self. Thoughts, remembrances...Naoki had been so hard and hot he left burns on Tsuyosa’s mind, burns that might never disappear.
   Forget everything else. There was indeed time for this boy after all.
   “My God,” Tsuyosa said. “Well...ohayo[/i].”
   Naoki didn’t say anything. Tsuyosa watched his face, watched his skin drain to white. Hatred for Tsuyosa burned in his amethyst eyes, but underneath the hatred, hidden just below the surface, pulsed fear. Tsuyosa could see it. And beneath the fear...
   Tsuyosa let his eyes sink very obviously down to his jeans. Naoki blushed ferociously, and his jeans shifted. Tsuyosa’s smile grew. Oh, yes. Naoki’s body didn’t agree with his brain. It wanted Tsuyosa too.
   “Y–Y–Y–Yano-sama!” the other boy stuttered. “Y–Y–You...er...h–h–hi!”
   Tsuyosa looked at him, and despite his first impression felt slight interest. Nothing like Naoki, obviously—nothing that exciting—but he had beautiful hair, even weirdly dyed as it was, and a lithe, slender, wiry body. And he was obviously infatuated with Tsuyosa. That was always good for something.
   Tsuyosa looked back over at Nijiiro. “So you brought a friend?”
   Nijiiro went red and looked down, hiding behind walls of color. “Uh...I’m...I’m Ii N—Nijiiro. N—N—Nice to meet you.”
   “Hey.” Tsuyosa bowed until his head was on the same level as Nijiiro’s, then reached up with one hand and brushed Nijiiro’s hair behind his ear. “I like your hair. It’s different. Very unique, very interesting.”
   Nijiiro turned the color of the Ariyake Coliseum and looked down even more ferociously than he had before. “I...I’m...that’s...you really think that?”
   Tsuyosa couldn’t help smiling at the kid’s innocent pleasure in the compliment. “I don’t say things I don’t mean.” He looked over at Naoki—the sight of him made his fingers itch, but Tsuyosa held himself back. “So, what are you[/i] doing here?”
   Naoki didn’t answer. He either wouldn’t or couldn’t, and Tsuyosa had a feeling he knew which one it was. But no matter. There was an easier way to find out.
   “Ii-san,” Tsuyosa murmured, and Nijiiro looked quickly up, his eyes brilliant gold in his ruby face. “What brings you here? With Hayami-san, no less?”
   “You’ve met?” Nijiiro asked curiously.
   “Yes,” Tsuyosa said. “Yes, we have.” He cast a slow look at Naoki, who was clearly undergoing a serious physical struggle. “I’m surprised to see him here.”
   “We’re registering,” Nijiiro said. “For...for the nationals.”
   “For the—”
   For once in his life, Tsuyosa almost lost his composure. It couldn’t be true. There was NO way that he had heard right. “For the—nationals?”
   “Yeah,” Nijiiro muttered.
   No way. No goddammed way. Hayami Naoki was ENTERING the VG nationals. He was willingly participating in something that could end up with him naked on global TV.
   Forget that. He was willingly participating in something that could end up with him naked in front of Tsuyosa. Again. Could. But Tsuyosa wasn’t in the nationals. He hadn’t been planning on—
   “That changes my plans,” Tsuyosa said.
   Nijiiro looked up. “What?”
   “There’s no way I’m letting this pass by,” Tsuyosa said, taking a step towards Naoki. Naoki took two back, missed a step, slipped, and almost fell. “I’ll have to go enroll in the nationals as well now.”
   Naoki and Nijiiro’s eyes both snapped up to Tsuyosa’s instantly. Nijiiro’s were astonished—Naoki’s were flooded with horror.
   “Are you serious?!” Nijiiro choked.
   “If you’re entering,” Tsuyosa said, pointedly to Naoki, “that’s a chance I won’t miss.”
   Naoki tried to move back further, but his foot caught on the edge of the rail—he had backed himself up against it. Much faster than Naoki could move, Tsuyosa took three running steps down to him and seized one of the belt-loops on his jeans, holding him not two inches away. His fingers pressed down against the hardness beneath.
   “You should be happy,” Tsuyosa said softly, resisting the animal urge to rip off the jeans entirely. “You came here looking for me.”
   Nobody had to tell Tsuyosa this for him to know it was true. Naoki’s eyes were as easy to read as a children’s book.
   With a sudden, desperate violence, Naoki shoved at Tsuyosa with all his strength, ripping himself away. Without a backwards glance, he pelted headlong down the stairs with no regards for their position or his own safety—twice he almost slipped and fell, but something kept him upright, upright and still going until he had disappeared beneath the square spiral of iron steps.
   Something clacked above Tsuyosa. He turned around just in time for Nijiiro’s backhand to connect solidly with his left cheek.
   Tsuyosa’s head snapped to the side, bright rainbow chi-flames biting at his hair. Reflexively, he touched his hand to his cheek, and flinched as the chi nipped into the bone of his fingers before dissipating.
   Nijiiro was standing two steps above Tsuyosa, hand still glowing, eyes now a brilliant and furious orange.
   “What the hell were you doing?!” Nijiiro shouted, his voice at once furious and wildly disappointed.
   Not waiting for a response or a reaction, Nijiiro flung his hair angrily back from his face and ran down the stairs after Naoki. The echoes of his voice resounded in the stairwell, bouncing on and off of Tsuyosa’s ears.
   Doing...doing...doing...[/i]
   Reflectively now, Tsuyosa touched his cheek again, and felt a last spark of fire needle his finger. He rubbed the skin, marveling. For such an effeminate prism of a boy, Nijiiro packed quite a punch.
   Tsuyosa rubbed his fingers together, and wondered how that prism of a boy would feel beneath his fingers some night.
 
*   *   *
 
   Nijiiro burst out of the door at the bottom of the staircase and looked frantically from right to left. His hair flickered over his face, and he blew it impatiently out of the way. Naoki was nowhere in sight.
   Although worry, anxiety, and more than a hint of foreboding was tingling in Nijiiro’s stomach, he forced himself to calm down and breathe slowly. In—out. In...out. In...out. In...and...out...
   But what the hell had Tsuyosa been doing?! Disappointment curdled Nijiiro’s stomach and upset his breathing. Tsuyosa was Nijiiro’s idol. He had been for almost two years now. But that idol—Tsuyosa—could he really be so much of a—?!
   Think about that later. Breathe...breathe in...and...out...
   Nijiiro had found out early on in life—while playing hide-and-seek with Ietsuna and Kaii—that he could throw his chi out into the air around him, and use it to stain the trails of chi that all living things leave behind them different colors to his vision. As the hide-and-seek group grew with the Iis, Nijiiro had slowly learned how to focus just on one particular chi, and stain just that one trail to allow him to follow where one single person had gone.
   He did this now, opening his mind to his power and to the air around him. Chi spilled out from him like an expanding sun—it burnt the unneeded chi-trails into translucence and blazed forth over the path of Naoki’s chi, turning it...
   Nijiiro opened his eyes, and was nearly blinded by the brilliant reddish-gold radiance of Naoki’s chi. It was like a molten river in the air, chi so powerful and focused that Nijiiro couldn’t even look at it directly.
   Nijiiro followed it at a run.
 
*   *   *
 
   “Naoki!” Nijiiro panted, wrenching open a broom closet door.
   Naoki was there. He was crouching in a little ball in the center of the closet, amid buckets and mops and outdated cleaning machines that nobody had managed to throw away yet. It was dark and dusty and slightly sour-smelling inside, lit above only by one pale, dying light bulb that probably hadn’t been replaced in years.
   “Close the door,” Naoki whispered.
   Nijiiro opened his mouth to protest, hesitated, and ended up stepping inside and closing the door. The entire closet faded into weak, washed-out light, leaving sunspots on Nijiiro’s vision.
   “Naoki-kun...” Nijiiro hesitated again, then plunged ahead. “Naoki-kun, why was he doing that to you?”
   Naoki didn’t say anything.
   “Naoki-kun, please...”
   Naoki still didn’t say anything, and those little hints of foreboding in Nijiiro’s stomach exploded into one great mass of foreboding. Combined with the disappointment Nijiiro felt over the fall of his idol from his pedestal, it was almost enough to make the rainbow-haired boy sick.
   “Naoki-kun, was he...” Nijiiro swallowed, not entirely sure he wanted to know the answer to this. “Did he...come to...where you used to work?”
   A spot of blood dripped onto the floor with a wet slap[/i]ping noise. It took Nijiiro a moment to realize that Naoki had bitten his lip through.
   “I can’t get away from it,” Naoki whispered dully. “I can’t get away from him. I wanted to fight him...wanted to beat him...thought, I guess I thought, if I could beat him, defeat him, then I could...”
   He drew in his breath explosively. “But I’m not! I can’t be! They both took me, but he won’t let go—and if I defeat him in VG—I’ll just be playing back to him—whether I win or lose—it makes no difference. Either way...he’ll be—”
   Suddenly Naoki lunged up, grabbed Nijiiro by the shoulders, and slammed him back against the door. Nijiiro yelped, partially with surprise and fear, and partially with the reawakening of all his bruises.
   “Have you ever seen him naked?” Naoki asked, in a low, rough voice, his fingers cutting into Nijiiro’s shoulders, his eyes burning into the black of Nijiiro’s. “You ever seen his muscles? He’s like one of those old Greek sculptures. He’s perfect. He’s hard and perfect and hot and gorgeous all over. I know. He made sure I knew. He took every line of my body and made sure I would remember his—and left me just—a shell, filled with—with him—”
   Even more suddenly, Naoki seized Nijiiro’s hand and shoved it down the front of his pants. There was nothing sexual about it, though—the coruscating anger blazing from Naoki’s eyes seared anything vaguely resembling enjoyment out of Nijiiro’s mind. This was nothing like the Naoki Nijiiro had been getting to know up until now—fury breathed off him like heat from a furnace.
   “Feel this!” Naoki hissed, forcing Nijiiro’s hand around himself. “Feel[/i] this! I’m so hard just from seeing him—talking to him—he touched me and I couldn’t breathe. I got so hard it hurt. Because of one night. One night when he had me and took me and never gave me back. He has me. I belong[/i] to him.”
   “Naoki—” Nijiiro tried to say, but Naoki was crushing him against the door, his eyes filling with tears that fragmented the blazing violet anger into falling glass shards.
   “Feel this!![/i]”[/i] Naoki demanded, his voice shaking. “It’s all anybody’s ever wanted from me! Sometimes I tried—sometimes I fought—they’d throw me down, rip off my jeans, take me anyways because of this[/i]. And...one time...one time...the one time it ever mattered...I gave it because I didn’t know any better, and I didn’t lose all that bull everybody tells you that you lose from sex. I lost my soul[/i] because of him[/i]!!”
   Naoki blinked angrily, sending glass cascading down his face. Nijiiro tried to say something again—he wasn’t sure what, he wasn’t even sure if Naoki was still talking about Tsuyosa anymore—but Naoki pulled Nijiiro up to him and kissed him hard, on the mouth, his tongue streaming into Nijiiro’s mouth like acid, the first real, deep kiss Nijiiro had ever received—a kiss loaded with more experience than Nijiiro would probably ever have in his lifetime. A kiss so hot it felt like the fires of Hell.
   The kiss broke off like a knife, and Nijiiro almost choked, Naoki’s saliva a brand on his lips.
   “You want me too,” Naoki growled. “I know you do. Just like everyone else who’s ever done anything for me. You want me now? Take me right now. I owe you for your house, and this is all you want anyways. This is all anybody ever wants. Go ahead. Do it.”
   For one, long, horrible, treacherous instant, Nijiiro was unbearably tempted. The voice that had gotten him to strip Jin was back, in its insidious little way, murmuring support and encouragement.
   Take him.
   Go for it.
   He said you could.
   He’s right, he owes you.
   Go for it.
   Take him.
   Then the instant was over, with an almost physical suddenness that made Nijiiro reflexively swallow. That would[/i] be giving in. Even worse than what he had done with Jin. Demanding sex in exchange for shelter was like...like...
   “Mars,” Nijiiro said quietly.
   “What?” Naoki asked, thrown for a loop.
   Nijiiro carefully and very, very calmly slipped his hand out of Naoki’s jeans, half afraid that Naoki might attack him again. Inside his head, the little voice cursed the loss of the chance to possess such perfect balls, even for just a few minutes, but Nijiiro, completely fed up with that little voice, turned his mental stereo up full volume and blasted out Aqua’s Back From Mars. The little voice was drowned out, and all at once Nijiiro’s brain clicked back into action.
   “Back From Mars,” Nijiiro said, still very quietly. “It’s a song. It’s a great song music-wise, but I always hate the ending, because you find out that the girl isn’t really going to be a movie star like she thinks. She’s been tricked by the guys she’s traveling with, and they’re going to make her a porno star.”
   Naoki was still, seemingly unable to react at such a radical change in subject.
   “I first heard that song when I was five,” Nijiiro said, keeping his voice soft and even. “I had to ask Ashootei what a porno star was. I still remember, that when he told me, I got so mad I punched him. I didn’t want it to be true. I didn’t want a girl like her to be caught up in something like that.”
   Cautiously, Nijiiro put his arms around Naoki’s shoulders and laid his head against Naoki’s shoulder, chest to chest, feeling his heart beat frantically beneath shirt and skin. “I swore that I’d never trick anybody[/i] like that girl got tricked. I told you when I invited you over to my house that you wouldn’t have to give us anything. There is no way[/i] I’d make you sleep with me now, after telling you that. You don’t owe any[/i] of us anything[/i]. And you could never[/i] owe anybody you[/i].”
   Nijiiro was one of those very few, very talented boys who can sing in a falsetto-soprano without sounding like a complete idiot. Very softly, he began to sing the chorus of Back From Mars, his voice as high and sweet as Lene Grawford Nystrøm’s own.
     “I am coming back from Mars,
     Where they drive in fancy cars,
     And the King, he is okay,
     He is coming home today,
     I am coming back from Mars,
     Where there are no cheap cigars—”
   Suddenly, Naoki broke down. He didn’t burst into tears—abruptly all the tension and wariness and barely-held-back hatred in his body seemed to fall like weights into his shoes, and he fell down against Nijiiro, holding him tightly as a lifeline. Nijiiro missed a line of the song in Naoki’s sudden movement, but kept going.
     “Meet the stars...”
   Nijiiro let the note draw out, thrilling to the thrum it sent through him and Naoki.
     “They’re from Mars...”
   Nijiiro let this note die away, and rearranged his head onto Naoki’s shoulder, holding him as a friend, as he had been held just last night. Naoki didn’t say anything, but held onto Nijiiro with a kind of desperation, as though if he let go, he would get swept away back into the world he had come from and was trying so hard to escape.
   Nijiiro sifted one hand—NOT the one that had been in Naoki’s pants—up through the silky planes of Naoki’s hair and began to scratch his head lightly. Naoki jumped at first, but slowly began to relax into it. It felt good.
   Still scratching Naoki’s beautiful red-and-gold hair, Nijiiro said softly, “Let’s go home. Worry about the nationals later. Worry about him[/i] later.” He didn’t have to specify who he[/i] was—they both knew. “For now...”
   Naoki sighed against Nijiiro’s hair. “Let’s go. Let’s...go home.”
 
*   *   *
 
   “I’m sorry,” Naoki said.
   “For what?”
   “We were supposed to register today, and we didn’t, because of...because of me.”
   Nijiiro looked at Naoki. “You mean you’re still registering for the nationals?”
   “Yeah.”
   “But I thought...” Nijiiro broke off, no longer entirely sure what he thought.
   “I still kind of have this crazy feeling that if I beat him in VG, then some miracle will happen and everything’s going to turn around,” Naoki muttered. “It sounds—really dumb. But...even if nothing happens, at least...at least I tried, right?”
   Nijiiro was quiet for a minute, but finally the question he had to ask burst out. “And...if you lose?”
   Naoki didn’t answer, which was answer enough.
   “Sorry,” Nijiiro said, shamefaced.
   “Nijiiro,” Naoki said suddenly, “if I win, you can have the money.”
   Nijiiro stopped dead. “What[/i]?”
   “If I can have the real estate, and I can beat Tsuyosa, then I swear, I’ll give you the money,” Naoki said, very quickly. “I don’t need it. And you—it’s not just that you need it, you—I want[/i] you to have it. After what you and your family have done for me. You—deserve it. And I’ll give it to you. If I win. Promise.”
   Nijiiro stared at Naoki for a minute, so dazzled that he couldn’t even think, and then dropped into a bow so low his hair almost touched the ground.
   “Thank you…thank you so much,” Nijiiro whispered. “I...you...you don’t know what that means to me.”
   “Probably as much as getting out of Japan would mean to me,” Naoki confessed.
   “You can have that if I win,” Nijiiro promised. “If I win—somehow—then, I promise you, that you can have the real estate. Anywhere you want.”
   “You don’t have to—” Naoki started to say, but Nijiiro cut him off.
   “You don’t have to either. But you are. So I am too. Just...just your saying[/i] that to me means to me...probably what our taking you in means to you.” Nijiiro thought this over for a moment, then smiled embarrassedly. “Considering how different our situations are, we seem to be on some pretty similar parallels.”
   “So—no matter which one of us wins, neither of us gets left behind.” Naoki smiled too, as much with relief as anything else. “That’s...good.”
   “Good?” Nijiiro flipped carnation and lemon locks out of his face with his usual flair. “Are you kidding? I’d call that bloody fanfrickintastic!!”
 
*   *   *
End Episode One
*   *   *
 
Variable Geo Image Ending
Nijiiro and Naoki
Eiko
Tsuyosa
Jin
Naoki and Nijiiro
 

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