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Chapter 7 - The Relationships of the Gods, Part Three

A Variable Geo fanfiction. It follows the events in the life of Naoki Hayami, events which for the most part are neither fortunate nor pleasant. It is long, it is complicated, and it is at times somewhat disturbing--please pay attention to the warnings.

Chapter 7 - The Relationships of the Gods, Part Three

Chapter 7 - The Relationships of the Gods, Part Three
The Relationships of the Gods, Part Three[/b]
 
*~*~*~*~*~
 
   Even over the hustle and bustle of the Ii kitchen as everybody entered a vast free-for-all for Kaede’s pancakes—she was flipping them off her griddle with neither hurry nor any particular aim; more than one almost ended up on the floor—the sudden squall from upstairs was audible.
   Kaoru, who had just seized a hard-won pancake from between Maki and Haruna (which might have seemed cruel except Maki already had one and Haruna had somehow taken control of three,) let out a half-sigh, half-laugh. “That Sakura of mine. She knows[/i] we’re having pancakes without her.”
   “I’d be angry too,” Kaii said, getting shoved aside by Maki even as he spoke.
   “HONEY!!!”[/i] Kaoru screeched over Maki and Kaii’s heads. “GET ME PANCAKES!!!”[/i]
   Daisuke, her husband, gave her the thumbs-up. Kaoru thumbs-upped him back, shoved her entire pancake in her mouth at once, and headed purposefully for the door to go to her daughter.
   Niou got out of her way, feeling worried. It was not a usual feeling for Niou, so he was struggling with it. As a general rule, Niou didn’t worry.
   Niou wasn’t a very introspective kind of person. As evinced by the terrible sewing incident with Hikaru, Niou acted first and thought later—or, more preferably, never. Being surrounded by a host of domineering people, Niou was used to following the lead of the more intelligent, more talented, or more experienced rather than acting on his own—and did so with gusto. It therefore rarely fell upon him to worry. But he was worrying now.
   There was nothing for it. He would have to forgo Kaede-oba’s divine pancakes as well. For a nine-year-old, this was a crushing blow, but Niou took heart from the fact that Nijiiro had left the kitchen without any either and hadn’t died. Yet.
   Niou tramped his way through the other Iis until he reached Hikaru, who was serving, cutting, syruping, and eating her pancakes all with her spatula. Syrup was bedecking her hair and ornamenting her ears in large amber droplets. (Niou didn’t ask. He had learned a long time ago that it wasn’t safe to.)
   “Let’s go outside and help Haru,” Niou called to Hikaru.
   Hikaru’s eyes lit up at the word “help.”
   “Okay!” she said eagerly, and, now sawing away at her syrup-sopping pancakes with the spatula, she followed Niou to and out the back door.
 
*   *   *
 
   Haru was standing out in the backyard beneath the moon, throwing torn-off bits of pancake to the owl.
   The owl was sitting on the fence, catching the pancake in its large, vicious-looking beak, shuffling on first one foot and then the other, watching Haru with first one eye and then the other. It wasn’t a particularly large owl, but it was there and wild and somewhat dangerous-looking, and Niou was rather leery of it.
   Not so with Hikaru, of course.
   “Ooh, look at the owl!” she exclaimed, and would have marched right up to it (to...what? Pet it?) had Haru not turned right around and given her a look that clearly said, Take another step and die[/i].
   Hikaru stamped her foot, but at least she stopped walking towards the owl. “No fair, Haru-kun! I came out to help!”
   A large dollop of syrup dripped off her ear and fell messily to the ground.
   The owl eyed Hikaru with bemusement and rather too much curiosity. Niou decided to say what he had to say, and quickly.
   “Haru, Hikaru, don’t you think something weird’s going on?”
   “Hikaru’s weird,” Haru said.
   Hikaru stamped her foot again. “Meanie! I am not! I’m trying to help!” She shoved half a pancake in her mouth using her spatula.
   “No, not that,” Niou said hastily, because he knew from experience that Haru was sarcastic and Hikaru was excitable, and when Haru started insulting Hikaru then she started getting violent. “Everybody else.”
   “You have to be more specific than that,” Haru said, flipping pancake crumbs at the owl.
   “Well, like...” Niou racked his brain. “Nii-san. He’s not acting...normal.”
   Niou usually referred to Nijiiro as Nii-san—a pun off his name and the word for “big brother,” even if Nijiiro wasn’t his brother at all.
   “I hate to tell you this, Niou, but Nijiiro never[/i] acts normal.” Haru made more of his pancake into an offering which was quickly accepted and squirreled away by the owl.
   “Well,” Niou blustered, “he’s acting sad and worried and not energetic like he usually does.”
   “It’s the VG tournament,” Hikaru said sagely. “He wants to win.”
   “But Mom and Dad and Kaoru-oba and Daisuke-oji and Ayaka-oba—they’re all sad and worried too.”
   “Maybe they’re worried about the tournament too,” Haru said.
   “Well, I guess they could be,” Niou said, feeling that this conversation wasn’t going too well. “But...I just don’t think they are.”
   “Why not?” Haru demanded, hurling pancake at the owl. “It makes sense to me.”
   “Me too,” Hikaru chipped in, licking her spatula. “I concur with Haru-kun!”
   Niou made a mental note—next time he needed backup, he would not go to Hikaru.
   “But don’t you think that there’s something weirder[/i] and deeper[/i] going on?” Niou attempted.
   “Niou, no offense, but you[/i] don’t think[/i] much,” Haru said, which was the cruel if honest truth.
   “HEY!”
   “I don’t believe you came up with this yourself,” Haru continued, seemingly deaf to his twin brother’s outburst. “Who was it who said something was wrong with Nijiiro? If it was Hiroji, Zuma, or Kaii, you might as well save your breath—and if it was Maki or Yue, trust me, they were just pulling your leg.”
   “Nobody told me anything!” Niou said angrily, although he was blushing. “I just feel it, is all! I know[/i] something’s wrong!”
   “I don’t trust your danger sense, Niou, considering you let her[/i] sew your fingers to Shiho’s skirt,” Haru said, throwing the last of his pancake to the owl and brushing crumbs off his fingers.
   Hikaru went purple. The only way to truly insult Hikaru was to criticize one of her helping attempts—so naturally Haru did that all the time.
   “I RESENT THAT REMARK, YOU BIG FAT MEANIE!!” Hikaru roared, and with aim much better than Aunt Kaede’s she scooped up the syrupy remains of her pancake with her spatula and flung it like a catapult.
   SPLATTER!!
   Haru was struck dumb with shock as squelchy syrupy blueberry pancake exploded against the side of his head, spraying streamers of mixed syrup and blueberry juice through his short black hair.
   But he didn’t stay dumb for long.
   “I’m going to KILL you, Hikaru-chan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”[/b]
   Hikaru brandished her spatula like a sword. “Come and try it, Haru-no-baka!”
   “THAT DOES IT!!!!!!”[/i][/b]
   Niou sighed as Hikaru and Haru collided in World War III.
   “I’m going to ask Subaru-kun,” Niou said, although neither Hikaru nor Haru heard him over their frenzied, violent, name-calling, hair-pulling, nose-poking battle.
   Hoot[/i] said the owl.
   “He’s a boy in my class,” Niou said, whether to his un-listening relatives or the un-understanding bird even he was not sure. “He’s really[/i] smart. He’ll know.” Niou sighed. “He’ll know what I should do.”
   Hoot[/i]
   And the owl glided off the fence, up and away into the night.
 
*   *   *
That Same Night...[/b]
 
   Endo Eiko was sitting in her apartment, absentmindedly channel-surfing as she picked at the remains of her dinner. Being the champion VG Senshi of Kira-kira Umi, she often got to take home some extra sushi—however, sushi, even free sushi, could get boring after a while. Which was why she was supplementing it with a mental dessert of some VG matches.
   She was currently watching the latest match on Ii Nijiiro’s channel—that fight between him and Suzuki Jin. They were such a cute couple. Both of them obviously held back against the other physically, although you’d never have known it from the way they fought verbally. Eiko had seen this match before—she was fond of Nijiiro, who usually spiced his VG battles up with some pretty clever one-liners, although his best lines definitely came out in his battles against Jin—but she stuck around for the part where Nijiiro stole Jin’s scarf, and the screaming that resulted, before she changed the channel.
   She skipped over Ikeda Kyuso’s channel—she couldn’t stand him—and would have done the same for Miyure Chikao’s, except she switched in at the end of one of his losing matches, against, amusingly enough, Suzuki Jin. Suzuki-san was actually a pretty good VG senshi, Eiko reflected—if he wasn’t so in love with Ii Nijiiro, or at least didn’t hold back on him, he might have stood a black horse’s chance of winning the VG nationals. However, with Ii-san in the running, Suzuki-san didn’t have a prayer.
   Miyure-san was well-stacked, Eiko noted as he peeled—literally peeled, they clung so tightly—off his briefs, even if he was kind of annoying. She didn’t think it was really necessary, for example, for him to wear briefs that tight, nor for him to show off quite so much when it was only a Level 2 loss. Although Eiko had been admittedly prejudiced against Chikao ever since that disastrous match he had had against Ryusaki Hajime a month ago. Ryusaki-san was another one of Eiko’s favorites, and she hadn’t yet forgiven Miyure-san for his utter humiliation and exposure of the gorgeous VG senshi.
   Eiko had thought about Miyure Chikao for thirty seconds now, which was pretty much her limit. She changed the channel.
   That singer, Kamisaka Makoto, she forgot what band he was from. Beautiful eyes, although she wasn’t too fond of his singing and his quips weren’t as fun as Nijiiro’s bantering. He was fighting somebody she didn’t recognize—a Chinese-looking boy with very dark skin. They seemed roughly evenly matched, but not marvelously interesting. She nailed the channel-up button again.
   Ishida Ryu. Now here was a looker. Good VG senshi, too, although he could be a little arrogant sometimes. Although with a body like that, he could afford to be a little arrogant. He was also good enough at VG that it was interesting to watch his battling, not just his body, which, as far as Eiko was concerned, was the mark of a true VG senshi. However, she’d seen this match before. Flip the channel again.
   It landed on her own channel. She skipped hurriedly.
   Some VG senshi loved to watch their own matches. Eiko hated it. She wasn’t all that fond of fighting as a whole—it paid the bills and had its moments, but Eiko wasn’t sadistic enough to actually enjoy causing pain to other people. Going through a match once was more than enough—watching it again on T.V. held no attraction for her.
   Besides, her hair looked horrible on camera.
   The next channel was some nobody Eiko had seen on occasion, but never learned the name of. The next was a rerun. The next as well. The next was some green-haired kid. Boring[/i].
   That was the problem with Variable Geo, Eiko realized abruptly as she continued to safari through the jungle of channels. Although it was awesome in many ways, it cheapened the idea of the body. The more people saw of the occasional seamsplitter, so to speak, in VG—whether it was Yano Tsuyosa, who could split the seams of his clothes with those muscles, or Ryusaki Hajime, who could split the seams of his pants with his endowments—the less they thought of normal people in normal life. Sooner or later, if VG continued the way it did now, muscles like Yano-san’s and balls like Ryusaki-san’s would be considered commonplace—meaning that there would be people beyond[/i] them, who made them look normal.
   The idea was kind of creepy.
   But Eiko had no sooner gotten the idea into her head and begun to play around with it than she landed on a completely random channel—and stopped, every thought in her head exploded away by what the television was showing her.
   Shiro—Endo Shiro—Shiro-kun—her brother Shiro[/i]—was kicking Imaizumi Fumio’s @$$[/i].
   Eiko knew Imaizumi Fumio vaguely, although she had never actually fought him hand to hand. She knew him to be a tallish, gangling red-head with a soft voice, but a killer chi-powered kick that he had dubbed (somewhat unoriginally) the Red Death. Something of a challenge for her, when she had dueled his image in Kaori’s Virtual Kaoliseum. And Shiro was wiping the floor with him.
   Eiko watched, her mouth just about hitting the floor, as her VG-illiterate younger brother not only read each and every one of Imaizumi-san’s moves, but countered them flawlessly without a single excess movement. It was a dance—from Shiro’s side, at least. On Fumio’s, it was a massacre.
   It was over before Eiko could even begin to process what she was seeing. Fumio made a brave attempt to slam Shiro with a Red Death kick, a kick so blazingly fast and strong that most VG senshi couldn’t even see it, let alone withstand it. And Shiro slid effortlessly back, down, out of the way, and forward beneath Fumio’s guard—sprang up like a bullet—came down knees-first on Fumio’s throat and smashed him heavily down to the ground with so much force that Eiko’s breath caught in her throat in sympathy.
   Shiro stayed kneeling on Fumio’s throat for a moment after they hit the floor of the VG ring, but it was beyond overkill. Fumio had stood no chance from the moment Shiro had launched himself into the air. He lay limp and unconscious upon the ground.
   Suddenly the T.V. screen dissolved into an interlocked V and G.
   Eiko stared at the VG symbol without seeing it at all. Her mind was making a sound like stuck gears. Shiro, fighting? Shiro, winning?[/i] Shiro, fighting and winning so violently that his opponent was not only defeated but rendered unconscious in the ring?
   Who was this and what had he done with her brother?
 
*   *   *
Still That Same Night...[/b]
 
   Tsuyosa ran his hand down his own naked body, exulting in the feeling of hard, smooth skin, even if it was his own. Moonlight fell over his upper body, washing his hair with streams of glittering darkness, casting shadows from the tips of his nipples.
   Tsuyosa usually preferred masturbating alone in his room, all lights off, with only the moonlight for company. It was something approaching a ritual for the sex-minded VG senshi, though it was rarely performed, since Tsuyosa rarely spent his nights alone in his home.
   But this time—this one, odd, exceptional time—Tsuyosa was accepting company from one object, the sound turned down low but the light forming dazzling pictures that caught his imagination on fire.
   It had taken Tsuyosa almost an hour of searching to find Naoki’s VG channel. Had it been any other senshi in the world, Tsuyosa would have given up by the ten-minute point and found some other way to spend his time. However, Naoki was unique. Naoki was special.
   Dammit, Naoki was practically infecting his body, from the mind down. The mere sound of the syllable “na”, just spoken casually in the street, seized every particle of his attention. A simple red shirt standing in a store window wrenched his mind back to a shining wave of coppery red hair. The words “VG” couldn’t enter his head, through his eyes, ears, or thoughts, without his fingers sparking with the feel of Naoki’s skin. And with every forcible reminder of that one single boy, a most fantastic surge slammed through Tsuyosa’s veins. Particularly those in the vicinity of his waist.
   Tsuyosa had searched the Internet, the onscreen TV guide, and a list of over twenty thousand names in unbearably tiny print he had had to beg off from a secretary at the Jahana Building for Naoki’s name, persevering through the wretched task only because of the thoughts of what he would find if he found it. And finally he had. And it was all he had thought of—and more.
   Hayami Naoki’s one-and-only recorded VG match, against VG senshi Takamura Hyobe.
   Disqualified[/i] VG senshi Takamura Hyobe. Because after Takamura-san had landed the finishing blow to his Level 2 victory against Naoki, and Naoki had taken off his clothes and stood naked in the ring, Takamura-san had abandoned VG protocol, thrown Naoki to the floor, and had his way with him right there, out on the street. The perverted, shameless audacity of the action—towards VG, towards Naoki, towards civilization and society as a whole—and the shocking public-ness of doing it where anybody could have seen it made Tsuyosa shiver with longing. It made him want to do something just as shockingly public, and preferably to the exact same person.
   Takamura-san never made it to another VG match. The footage was cut off as soon as the rape of Naoki began, and Reimi had, with admirable speed, arrived at the scene and disqualified Takamura-san at once. The Internet rumor went that she actually had to stop the rape by attacking Takamura-san herself, but Tsuyosa doubted that. Regardless, Reimi had saved Naoki then—and poof, exit Takamura Hyobe.
   But the footage of Naoki’s reluctant and ungodly sexy striptease remained on the air, and Tsuyosa was luxuriating in it. For one who had actually had[/i] Naoki, the pixilated image was hardly satisfactory, but Tsuyosa was a practical man. He could appreciate the TV as well as his memory.
   And together, well...
   Tsuyosa lifted his hips into the air and worked himself into a sweat, passion rolling through him in breathwrenching waves. The Naoki on the screen, the Naoki in his mind, the Naoki on his fingers...
   Everything he had and felt burst from him in a torrent, coursing through his body with an impossible heat.
   He had to have Naoki again. No matter what it took.
 
*   *   *
At the Ii’s house again...[/b]
 
   “Hey.”
   Kaoru looked up from Sakura’s bottle and smiled the soft, sweet, non-psycho smile she rarely showed to anyone other than her husband. “Hey. Coming to bring your poor starving wife pancakes?”
   Daisuke bent down and popped a length of pancake rolled around a syrupy mass of blueberries into Kaoru’s mouth. “Yep.”
   “Mmm.” Kaoru spoke around her mouthful of blueberry. “You’re the best, honey.”
   “I know.” Daisuke sat down beside her and looked down at Sakura. Normally her little face, adrift in pleased sleepiness, could always bring a smile to his face, but tonight he watched his daughter without really seeing her.
   Kaoru saw his look, and reached over to touch his arm. “Hey. What’s the matter?”
   Daisuke sighed. “What’s always the matter, sweetheart? Kaede’s last operation drained us to the dregs.”
   Kaoru got defensive, as she always did when her twin was mentioned. “It’s not her fault.”
   Daisuke placed his hand over hers. “I know. I know. But Kaoru...” Daisuke’s attempt at a smile sank into a worried frown, “we’re so low on money right now, we couldn’t spare a yen to throw in a fountain. All of us together can barely support each other.”
   Daisuke slammed his fist down on his knee, trembling with long-suppressed emotion. “We have to take the salary from our eldest daughter’s job, which she should be using to be able to move out on her own, and the prizes our next-eldest daughter wins for writing poetry, which she should be able to save for the college she wants to go to, just to cover the rent. The other day, Niou and Haruna brought us change they picked up off the street—and we had to use[/i] that for grocery shopping that same day! The money our nieces and nephews pick up off the street, we have to use to buy them food[/i]!”
   Kaoru sighed as well. Her Daisuke was so proud—he hated being unable to support their family alone, and having to rely on the kids when they were still young enough not to worry about things like rent and food was almost more than he could bear. “In another year, I’ll be able to leave Sakura with Yue and get a job again—”
   “Nobody’s hiring, sweet. Believe me, I’ve been looking, trying to find a better job—or any job, any[/i] job that I could work another shift at. The only company hiring anybody at all is Jahana.”
   Kaoru’s chin went up. “Then that’s where I’ll go.”
   Daisuke shrugged wearily. “Sweetheart, you know you hate math, and you can’t operate computers to save your life. They’re looking for damned computer technicians there at Jahana. If they wouldn’t hire me, they won’t hire you.”
   “So I’ll learn. I have a year. Besides, Ashootei’ll be able to, once he gets out of college...”
   “Ashootei deserves much better than a job at Jahana. Their salary is worth dirt and their recommendations are more damaging to job-searching than no experience at all. He has big dreams, Kaoru, and he deserves the chance to reach them.”
   There wasn’t much Kaoru could say to that, mostly because she agreed. “Nijiiro—”
   Daisuke’s second sigh was more like an explosion. “Kaoru, Nijiiro is not going to win that tournament.”
   “You don’t know that.” Sakura stirred at the vehemence in Kaoru’s voice, and she paused for a moment to compose herself. “He has as good a chance as any of the rest.”
   “Darling, you know I love Nijiiro dearly, but he is not going to win. He relies on flash and surprise over strength. That works well enough against random battles in the street, but everyone in that tournament will have studied his style. He’s too popular for them not to have. If he were virtually unknown, he could get away with what he does—but he’s—”
   “Nijiiro’s chi,” Kaoru said fiercely, “is strong enough to win him over people three times bigger or buffer. And it’s fueled by his love for us. By his desire to win for us[/i]. The least we can do is trust that he knows what he’s doing. He’s not dumb, Daisuke! He’ll have thought up new tricks for something this important! He knows that Kaede’s life might hang on his winning this tournament!”
   “Yes, he does.” Daisuke stared brooding beyond Kaoru’s burning eyes, barely hearing Sakura grizzle with annoyance at their simmering argument. “The pressure must be eating him alive.”
 
*   *   *
Elsewhere...[/b]
 
   Shiro poured his remaining pills out into his hand and counted them with a sinking feeling in his stomach. Four. There were only four left.
   Somewhere in the back of his mind he had known he was burning through them much faster than he ought to have considering the tournament was so close, but the feeling of power he had felt as he smashed contestant after contestant within an inch of their lives was irresistible. He had brought every opponent he faced to their knees—sometimes even lower. With the help of these pills, he was turning into a VG wild card. A magazine reporter had even written an article about him for VG Monthly. Shiro did not have a subscription to VG Monthly, but he had bought the issue with that article in it, cut out the article, and hidden it underneath his mattress. He wasn’t sure what his mom would do if she knew about it, and he didn’t want to find out. He doubted she even knew he was starting to become famous.
   But his fame only came from the pills, which he was almost out of now.
   Shiro sighed, and tipped the pills back into their container. He needed more. After the tournament, he could stop taking them—as VG Champion, he could easily retire from VG and forget about the pills. But he had to win the tournament. He had to beat Eiko.
   And having Yano Tsuyosa at his feet was not unattractive, either.
   Shiro replaced the little bottle of pills underneath his mattress, beside the article, and picked up his wallet from his bedside table. His mother was a dog, but at least she let him keep his earnings from his job at Bubblegum. Thank God, or else he’d have no money with which to buy another bottle.
   He dumped out the yen, intending to count it, and with it fell a little piece of paper.
   Confused, Shiro retrieved the paper from where it fell on the floor, and found it to be a small folded scrap upon which the following list was written:
 
1.                      [/i]Go to where you met me[/i]
2.                      [/i]Go down Sakura to Apple[/i]
3.                      [/i]Right on Apple down to Persimmon[/i]
4.                      [/i]Left on Persimmon down to Hawthorn[/i]
5.                      [/i]Right on Hawthorn down to the wash[/i]
6.                      [/i]Cross wash to Crow[/i]
7.                      [/i]Right on Crow to Morning[/i]
8.                      [/i]Go down to end of Morning[/i]
9.                      [/i]Ask for the dealer at 2316 Morning[/i]
 
   Shiro stared at the paper. Directions. Directions to find the man who had sold him the pills.
   Something inside of Shiro clenched uncomfortably at this, but Shiro pushed it away. He had had no idea that he had had this. The man—the dealer—must have given it to him when he had taken his payment for the pills, correctly anticipating his need to find him again.
   He had directions, and he had money. What more did he need?
 
*   *   *
 
   Disinfectant, probably, Shiro realized when he stood in front of 2316 Morning Street.
   2316 was a shady rundown dump[/i]. The walls leaned, the roof sagged, and the door didn’t look capable of standing up to Shiro’s fist as he knocked on it. It looked like the kind of place even rats would blacklist. “You’re thinking of crashing there[/i]? No, trust me, you don’t wanna. That place sucks worse than spaghetti. Now, that bar over on Crow...”
   The door flew open.
   “Yeah, whaddaya want?” snarled a large, slightly fleshy man with a grimly florid (or was it floridly grim?) face.
   Shiro wrenched his thoughts away from the discussions of rats. “I’m...looking for this guy, who...he’s the dealer of—”
   Distaste showed clearly in the man’s face, but he stepped aside and waved Shiro in. “Another one? He’s in his room. Downstairs,” the man snapped when Shiro hesitated, “don’t you remember?”
   “I’ve never been here before,” Shiro said, baffled.
   “A new one, eh?” The man sniffed disapprovingly. “Well, he’s down there, anyways. With another one of you. Keep it down.”
   The man waited with undisguised impatience for Shiro to inch in through the doorway onto a wooden floor that felt like it could collapse into the basement at any moment, then slammed the door closed behind him.
 
 
   The dealer was there in his room all right. Just like the man upstairs had said. The man upstairs had, however, forgotten to mention a few important details, such as exactly what the dealer was doing with the “other one of you.”
   Shiro made it to a vantage point before he fully realized what was going on, but as soon as he saw the tiny basement room—half-filled by the occupied bed—he was rather radically enlightened. The force of this enlightenment jettisoned him backwards a few steps, but with no coordination—his foot landed wrong, and he tripped and fell, landing on the steps with his back against the wall and his eyes facing the bed.
   The short, muscular, golden-brown young man thrusting into the dealer with a moan half-triumph and half-submission ripped himself backwards at Shiro’s crashing fall, which only served to give Shiro way too much of an eyeful of Komiya Hayato fully naked and fully aroused. It made the silver-haired boy rise in response. He had seen naked men before, of course, and been the naked one more times than once—unavoidable in VG—but this was the first time Shiro had ever seen men engaging in sex. He felt almost sick.
   Hayato of course realized his mistake almost as soon as he made it, and grabbed for the sheets beneath him, dragging fabric up to cover himself. The dealer, however, made no such effort—he sprawled lazily over the bed like a cat, leaving himself completely open for scrutiny.
   “I remember you,” the dealer said, shifting himself slightly. “You’re the last one I sold to. What’s wrong? Pills are working, right?”
   Shiro suddenly realized what the dealer was doing. He was using his nudity as a purposeful distraction, to keep Shiro off-balance and stay in control of the situation. Knowing he was being manipulated gave Shiro the necessary willpower, and he ripped his eyes down as surely as Komiya Hayato had ripped away from the dealer. There might be an inordinate amount of gorgeous flesh exposed in front of him, but he didn’t have to look at it.
   “Yes,” Shiro said. “They’re fine. But I’m running low.”
   “Ah,” the dealer said. “I see.”
   Feet hit the floor. Shiro couldn’t help looking up, just in time to see Hayato hastily yank up a pair of faded black jeans. He was blushing furiously from his white-tipped black spikes of hair down to his sculpted shoulders, obviously vastly embarrassed at being caught in flagrante delecto[/i]—certainly moreso than the dealer was.
   “I don’t think you two have met,” the dealer said, rising up to a sitting position. “Komiya Hayato, Endo Shiro. Endo Shiro, Komiya Hayato. Shiro-kun’s another user, did you know, Hayato-kun?”
   Hayato and Shiro both jerked at the dealer’s casual tacking-on of the –kuns to their names.
   “Don’t let this put you off, Hayato-kun,” the dealer said idly. “Just because we’ve been temporarily interrupted doesn’t mean we can’t finish what we started.”
   Hayato’s ears burned. Snatching up his shirt, not bothering to put it on, he bolted past Shiro up the stairs and out of sight.
   The dealer sighed, and let himself fall back onto the bed. “So sensitive when he’s not drugged up, that kid. He needs looser inhibitions. Or looser balls. Either way. You said you were running low.”
   It wasn’t a question, but Shiro nodded just the same, resolutely keeping his eyes down. “Yes.”
   “Come over here.”
   Again, it wasn’t a question. But Shiro didn’t move.
   “Come over here.”
   Still Shiro didn’t move. Or couldn’t move. Moving would mean looking, and looking would almost certainly mean a loss on Shiro’s part.
   “The pills are in this drawer here, right next to my bed. Come over here and take them.”
   Now the opposite became true. Shiro could not not move. This was what he had come for, wasn’t it? Was he a human with a brain, or a wild animal ruled by instinct? An old question, one asked by many people, but rarely under these kind of circumstances.
   Shiro stood up, made his way down the stairs with his eyes fixed firmly to his shoes, then looked up.
   The drawer was in a small night table beside the bed. Shiro walked over to it, forcing himself to keep his eyes off smooth, slick, lamplit skin with admirable success, and pulled the door open.
   A dozen small bottles filled with pills rattled up against the drawer, cross about being shifted.
   Shiro breathed an inward sigh of relief, and was just reaching out his hand to take one when the dealer slid his hand up beneath Shiro’s shirt, fingers rubbing tauntingly across his stomach.
   “What do you think?” the dealer murmured, letting his fingers play over Shiro’s navel. “Wanna stay? Finish what Hayato started? Take your first man, have the experience for later? I have to say...lying here right now, I’d really welcome some...company[/i].”
   Shiro reflexively grabbed the dealer’s hand and shoved him away. The dealer let his hand be pushed away—but then he took revenge. He stood up, moving the entirety of his honey-luscious body into Shiro’s sight.
   “Tell me you don’t want to and make me believe it,” the dealer whispered, fixing Shiro with eyes that gleamed like a wolf’s.
   Shiro opened his mouth to say something—then, with sudden, unplanned violence, he shoved the dealer back away from him onto his bed.
   “You don’t want me,” Shiro whispered back, something—pain?—audible in his voice.
   Shiro grabbed a bottle of pills from the drawer, yanked his wallet out of his pocket, and threw it onto the dealer’s chest. Without pausing to see if what he had given was enough, Shiro turned on his heels and ran to and up the stairs.
   The dealer lifted Shiro’s wallet up off his chest, and his smile faded away, leaving behind only the wolfish gleam in his eyes.
   “Now that’s where you’re wrong,” the dealer said, although there was nobody in the room to hear him anymore. “I want you indeed, Endo Shiro-kun. I want you bad.”
 
*   *   *
2:37 A.M.[/b]
 
   The street was deserted, populated only by the soft flashings of the traffic lights and the lounging glow of streetlights. A faint mist caught the lights and glittered in the air, flowing through Tokyo like the tide of a diamond sea.
   Katsura Setsuna stood at the street corner, not even noticing the dew that formed on his forest-green hair as though he were a statue in a garden. He was staring out into the center of the intersection. The intersection where he had seen Naoki VG-ing.
   He had done it. Stuck to it. Even after Setsuna had abandoned him.
   It felt like decades ago that Setsuna had first met Naoki, in Kinseisoku, the ghetto of Tokyo. Setsuna had been seventeen, a high school dropout kicked out of his house, reduced to life in a ramshackle apartment run by a perverted landlord who spent his days watching old VG matches on his TV, and Naoki...Naoki had only been fourteen. A beautiful, innocent, inspiring fourteen, stuck in that same apartment building with his spineless mother and alcoholic father, trying to make something of himself.
   Setsuna had never meant to get close to him, or even to admit his feelings—fourteen was too young, way, way too young—but he had slipped up. Stared at Naoki across the deserted floor of the apartment building’s rickety elevator one snowy morning in February for just a moment too long. Naoki had finally asked why Setsuna was staring at him, and Setsuna, unable to think of an excuse, had blurted out the truth—because Naoki was gorgeous. Naoki had blushed, and ran out of the elevator as quickly as he could, and Setsuna had resigned himself to knowing he had made another mistake.
   It was a mistake. But not in the way he had thought then. Because the next time they had chanced to be in the elevator together, Naoki had confessed that he thought Setsuna was gorgeous too. And before the elevator had stopped, Setsuna had kissed him, like something out of some stupid clichéd shonen-ai anime.
   For months, that kiss was the only contact they had. But more and more, they made time to run into each other. More and more, they talked, and found in the other a kindred spirit. More and more, they became close. But so quietly, so slowly, that even they barely felt it. Nobody aside from them knew. Nobody aside from them could have known. They never spoke of it, even to each other.
   Until Christmas of that year.
   In February, the Naoki that Setsuna stared at was a rosebud of juvenile beauty. As the months passed, however, that changed. By the time December hit, Naoki had blossomed, and he was no longer just beautiful—he was sexy. REALLY sexy. And somehow, Naoki and Setsuna ended up alone together, and somehow, Setsuna moved to touch him, and somehow, Naoki did not resist. And somehow, when the sun rose the next morning, it found them asleep in each other’s arms, all the interfering things like clothing thrown to the other side of the room. Red hair tangled with green. Like Christmas decorations.
   When the new year came, and Naoki came to Setsuna with bottle glass embedded in his arms, Setsuna realized that if he cared about Naoki, he couldn’t let him stay here in this godforsaken apartment anymore. Which was why he came up with the plan, the first and only thing in his life he had ever been proud of. It was simple—run away. Run away from Naoki’s father and the ruin of an apartment and the life that would dead-end in pain and poverty unless they broke out of it, and start anew, in a new city, with a new job—VG. Reimi had just opened the tournament to men, and even if Setsuna lost in the regionals or nationals, if he distinguished himself in any way he would receive compensation. Not much, true—but more than either of them lived on right now.
   The night had come. Setsuna had taken Naoki and left. And they had misjudged terribly. Because Naoki began to panic when they reached the end of the street, and Setsuna moved to comfort him in the surest way he could think of—and Naoki’s father had lurched around the corner just in time to see the boy from the next apartment story up slip his hands into his[/i] son’s pants.
   Naoki’s father had had a knife, which he carried on him at all times in case mugger dissuasion was ever necessary, and he had done his best to kill Setsuna with it. Naoki and Setsuna had fled into an alleyway, realizing only too late that it dead-ended in a fence. Setsuna had climbed the fence. Naoki had tried, and fallen. Setsuna, straddling the top as best he could, tried to help Naoki up—and then his father had charged down the alleyway like a juggernaut. And Setsuna ran.
   He hated himself for doing it. Even now, he didn’t understand how he possibly could have done it—how he could have left Naoki on the other side of that fence with his father and a knife. He had loved Naoki. He loved Naoki still. Seeing him today had proved it to him. His heart still ached from that brief sighting, in violent, throbbing waves that pressed on his throat and threatened to squeeze water from his eyes. All he could say in his defense—although he would never say it; he deserved no defense—was that for some incomprehensible reason, even with the proof right in front of his eyes, he could not believe that Naoki’s father would hurt his own son. For some inexplicable reason, Setsuna had felt that if he had disappeared, Naoki’s father would lose his anger and leave Naoki alone. It was stupid, and he knew it. The scars on Naoki’s arms proved how wrong he had been.
   Setsuna’s life was a chain of long mistakes—drugs, dropping out of high school, and breaking into a convenience store where he was nearly killed by the owner were only some of the items on the list. But of everything, Naoki—from looking at him, to kissing him, to sleeping with him, all the way up to abandoning him to his father’s rage—was the worst. It was the mistake that haunted him in the day, that kept him awake at night, that he would do anything to be able to erase, or change, or just in some small way to repent for.
   He had hoped for that ever since he had done it, committed that unforgivable mistake. Now, he hoped for something else instead.
   He hoped—he wished, he prayed—that he didn’t make another mistake.
   Because to add another of his mistakes to Naoki’s life was more than he could bear.
 
*   *   *
End Part Two
*   *   *
 
Variable Geo Image Ending
Naoki and Setsuna
Shuji
Nijiiro
Jin
Setsuna and Naoki

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