Disclaimer: If X were mine, do you really think I'd be sitting here in the office my parents made out of my room while I was away at college getting baked on saltwater taffy? No…it would be Mr. Lemon-Heads instead, but alas life isn't what I want it to be…

Every once in a while, the writing gods give me a vision of a story whose scintillating perfection is enough to make me weep. Unfortunately, the gods and I have been quarreling lately…

So instead I give you pure Ooc crack madness.

-Kyou-chan

Kamui was having a bad day, and as he trudged back to Imonyama Mansion after a ruthless barrage of classes, he would have given anything to see it end. All had started out normally that morning when he made a brief stop at a coffee stand before his statistics class. He was just about to pay for his desired cappuchino when a hand from behind caught his wrist.

"No, let me get that!" offered a tall senior, and before Kamui could protest, the boy had already paid for his drink. As he stepped away from the stand, he muttered out an awkward word of thanks, and hoped to walk away without having to say anything more. Unfortunately, he did not get far without the boy following close behind.

"So what's your name?" he chirped eagerly.

He hesitated before replying. "…Kamui…"

"That's a cute name! I'm Taku, by the way."

Kamui shrugged like a parasite was growing on his shoulder. He was already late for his class, and was uneasy that one of the seniors had suddenly taken such an interest in him. And then it happened.

"You have pretty eyes, Kamui-chan. You're the first girl I've seen with that color and—wait! Where are you going?" he cried as Kamui stormed away.

The boy was hitting on him. Kamui sped through the courtyard while fighting back a shudder. This was the third time in a month that this sort of thing happened, and if he learned anything from the previous two encounters it was to walk away, especially with such a big senior interested in him.

However, the boy did not seem to take the hint. "Was it something I said? Don't go! You already have a boyfriend, don't you?"

Kamui halted. A hot plume of rage was boiling up in him, and he clasped the coffee cup with a death grip so that in any moment it would break. This should have been enough warning for anyone with half a brain to leave him be, but the boy only drew closer.

"I should've known…all the really cute girls are always taken."

His eyes narrowed with a simmering glare, and the cup crunched in his palm, sending the scalding hot drink splattering against them both.

"AAAGH! MY EYES! DEAR GOD, I CAN'T SEE!" The senior panicked as he hysterically ran in every direction causing havoc in his wake. Kamui, however, ignored the sudden pain and furiously threw the remains of the cup to the ground.

"I'm a guy, you idiot!"

"MY EYES!"

From there, the day did not improve for Kamui. Over his lunch break, he had to go to the school store to replace his coffee-stained jacket. He had just found a uniform in his size when a large hand clapped his shoulder from behind.

"Whoa there, Miss! I think you're in the wrong section!" exclaimed the store manager.

"No, I'm—"

"Now I know how you girls like to experiment with the academy dress code, but we only have enough of these in stock for the boys."

"But! But—" he desperately tried to break in as the man steered him toward the girl's uniforms.

"Now then, princess, why don't you choose a nice skirt and blouse?" Before Kamui could say anything, the uniform was stuffed into his arms. "Go ahead and start with these," he suggested with a wink before hurrying off.

Kamui stared at the bundle of clothes he held, then at the man who was now on the other side of the store. An irritated flush of color rose to his face, and he hurled the girl's uniform away.

Unfortunately, it landed over a girl who was just beginning to browse the skirts so that it shrouded her eyes. "Oh no! WHERE'D EVERYTHING GO? I CAN'T SEE! OUCH! AGGH! WHERE'S EVERYONE!" she shrieked at the top of her lungs while colliding with every shelf that was unlucky enough to be in her blinded path.

"I AM a boy!" screamed Kamui.

"MY EYES!"

Now as he walked back to the mansion, Kamui was on a hell path, glowering back at everyone who set eyes on him. After being mistaken for a girl twice in the span of four hours, he did not know whether to be furious or humiliated, and he hated the insecurity that now haunted him.

It would have been easy to dismiss the boy and manager as unobservant morons, but he could not shake away the feeling that he was too feminine for a boy his age—and his worry only deepened once he arrived back at Imonoyama mansion.

Every few weeks Yuzuriha insisted on throwing inane "togetherness parties" for all of the Seals, which usually ended with only him, Arashi and Sorata being forced into playing board games with her. He had forgotten that today was one of those nights until the second he twisted the doorknob, and he received a hyperactive, pocky-fueled glomp in the dangerous grip of Yuzuriha

"Kamui-san! You're finally here! Everyone's been waiting for you!" she squealed.

He was clearly in no mood to socialize with anyone, but she nevertheless fastened her hand over his wrist and tugged him into the living room.

"Kamui, there ya are!" exclaimed Sorata. "What took ya so long?"

Kamui did not answer as he gawked forward. The other six Dragons of Heaven were all gathered in the same room. He shuddered when he recalled the last time that had happened…

"Subaru-san, you have to join us! This is a TOGETHERNESS party...what fun is it if you're not together playing with us!" Yuzuriha had coaxed, waving a Monopoly box over her head.

"I have a job…Obaa-chan's meeting me…I left the oven on at my apartment." Subaru was running dangerously low on excuses to leave early. "I have a hotel reservation tonight with—I mean, I have a job? No wait, the oven! I-I, um, oh God!"

"Subaru-san, it's only Monopoly. I play it all the time with my family," Aoki assured him.

Subaru walked over to the Monopoly board and selected a game piece in resignation. Little did he know that all hell would break loose.

"Hey, I wanna be the thimble!"

"No—I'm always the thimble at home!"

"Inuki and I want the thimble!"

"No, me!"

"Why can't I ever be the thimble?"

"But…I already picked it up…"

"YAARGH! GET 'EM!"

"Wait! Stop! No, my arm doesn't go that way! OW! It hurts!"

"Hey, you stepped on my foot!"

"No, you placed your foot under my heel!"

"GIVE-ME-THE-THIMBLE!"

"AAAGH! THAT'S IT!"

An entire face of the mansion was blown to ruins in seconds. The police said it had been the country's first emergency response over who could be the thimble in Monopoly.

And now they were all sharing the same room once again. He simply did not want to think what would happen if Yuzuriha was planning to have them play Twister.

But what was particularly disturbing was that everyone was wearing a sweater—a blue one for Sorata, red for Karen, brown for Aoki, black for Arashi, yellow for Yuzuriha, and green for Subaru. It was not even cold this time of year.

"Guess what, Kamui? I have a present for you!" She declared, and produced a package bound with ice-cream cone wrapping paper.

He blinked as the bundle was shoved against his chest. "Is it a sweater?" he dared to ask.

She giggled back. "No, of course not! It's a Friendship Sweater!"

"Friendship…sweater?"

"Yes! A sweater filled with friendship. A Friendship Sweater!"

"But—"

"FRIENDSHIP SWEATER!" she screamed.

Kamui recoiled, expecting her to enter a sugar coma at any given moment. In the meantime, he gazed suspiciously at the present.

"Go on, Kamui. Open it," urged Karen, who sat cross-legged next to Aoki on the sofa.

"But I'm not cold." Maybe he could forego this stupidity and sulk in his room for the rest of the night.

"None of us were," sighed Subaru. He looked rather miserable standing in the farthest corner.

Kamui stared at the onmyouji. To see Subaru participating in one of these gatherings after the Monopoly ordeal must have involved some form of blackmail.

As if reading his mind, Subaru's eyes lowered reproachfully. "They took my apartment keys…"

"And you're not getting them back until the party's over, Subaru-san!" Yuzuriha held the key ring high. "Now, open your present, Kamui."

He frowned back and delicately tore through the wrapping to the "friendship" sweater. But when it had been freed from its thin prison, Kamui felt his stomach twisting. In his arms was a hot pink sweater.

"It's…pink."

"Yeah, well…that was the only sweater the store had in your size, Kamui-san…in the girl's section," she explained with a wide grin.

Kamui sent a murderous scowl at the sweater. "I'm not wearing this…"

"Aw, come on, Kamui! I bought it just for you!" begged Yuzuriha.

His frown deepened. "I. AM NOT. WEARING. THIS."

"But Yuzu-chan worked really hard to put this all together," scolded Sorata. "And what are you doing, Kamui? You're refusing to wear the Friendship Sweater! In the big book of friendship…that makes you a blank page. Do you want that Kamui? Do you?" Behind him, Aoki and Karen were nodding solemnly.

"But it's a pink sweater!" he spat back.

The monk shook his head. "Yeah, I guess you have a point there." However, just as he was turning away, Sorata abruptly tackled him to the ground. "YUZU-CHAN! I got him, put on the sweater, quick!"

"No! LET ME GO! I DON'T WANT TO WEAR IT! GET OFF!" He kept screaming at the top of his lungs as he flailed under the larger teen. Nevertheless, his struggle ended in vain, and after a minute of kicking and whipping his fists in the air, he was trapped in the rosy sweater.

He shot poison in Sorata's direction, but was even more vexed when the room erupted with laughter. Karen and Aoki were hanging on to each other as they shook with chuckles, Yuzuriha and Sorata were nearly in tears on the floor, and even Arashi was snickering. Only Subaru looked away, probably more preoccupied with planning to steal back his keys.

"Kamui-san, you look so cute!" Yuzuriha squealed.

"You should make pink your color," remarked Karen.

Kamui forced back a hot blush with a withering look toward everyone in the living room, but any hope of preserving what little dignity he had left was blackened when Sorata regained the composure to speak.

"Ain't he pretty?" He let out a cat call. "Watch out ladies! Looks like you got some competition! Ne, Kamui-chan?"

His eyes narrowed to dark slits.

All the really cute girls are always taken…

Now then, princess, why don't you choose a nice skirt and blouse?

MY EYES!

His blood pressure was about to burst. The senior, the store manager, and now the other Dragons of Heaven—they were all building his anger and frustration so that it was only a matter of time until it went frothing over the edges of his self-control. He could already feel the back of his eyes burning.

And then whatever mastery Kamui held over his temper dissolved with a camera flash. Aoki was now taking pictures. With a feral growl, he jerked the camera from the unsuspecting editor's hands and chucked it at the opposite wall. The room then went gravely silent when one of his psychic blasts followed the offending device and demolished the wall.

"I AM NOT A GIRL! I'M A BOY!" He ripped off the pink sweater and stomped on it. "A BOY!" He howled with an unintelligible scream and stormed upstairs to his bedroom, leaving the six remaining Seals in a stunned silence.

"That camera…had pictures of my tomato garden on it…" whimpered Aoki.

"Didn't Imonoyama-san just rebuild that wall?" whispered Arashi.

Karen stared at them both with disbelief. "We just watched Kamui-san have a complete mental breakdown over his gender identity…shouldn't someone check on him?"

"I think we oughta just let him scream this one out on his own," Sorata replied uneasily.

Yuzuriha clasped the monk's shoulder and beamed at them all. "Besides! It's time to sing the Friendship Sweater song I wrote!"

Again, the room went quiet before the unlikeliest person among them volunteered to speak. "I'll go see if he's well…" Subaru offered, and he sped up the stairs to avoid whatever sing-along could possibly have involved a sweater.

In the sanctuary of his room, Kamui held his head pressed under the pillow while bleating out anguished moans. Wasn't it obvious to them all that he was anything but a girl with the clothes he wore? Didn't they see that he was flat-chested, that when he spoke, his voice was huskier than that of a sixteen-year old girl? It should have been clear to anyone!

But the disturbing truth was that it was not obvious to strangers and questionable even to the people he lived with. No matter how much he wanted to keep denying it, there was something about him—his face, his build, the way he moved—that overshadowed everything else that made him masculine.

And if that were the case, there was little that Kamui could do to change the predicament. He cringed at the realization and pulled the pillow tighter over his head so that he barely noticed the soft knocking at his door.

"Go away!" he growled. "Leave me alone!"

"Kamui?" called a muffled voice through the doorway. "It's Subaru…can I come in?"

He wearily looked up from his bed at the locked door, and forced himself up from the mattress.

Subaru shifted where he stood. "I just wanted to be sure that you were—" He paused when the lock clicked and the door swung open to reveal a very sullen Kamui, "—all right."

Kamui moved aside, and motioned for the onmyouji to enter. Once he had done so, he quickly shut the door and padded back to his bed. But as he attentively stared the Sumeragi, a silence dangled between them.

"I suppose…you wouldn't want to talk about it?"

If it had been anyone other than Subaru asking the question, Kamui would have already propelled them through the door, but his tranquil green eyes always held a spell over him as he spoke. They were patient and disarming, so that he could not help placing his trust in Subaru above anyone else.

He took a deep breath. "Today…I was buying coffee, and this boy…" he started at his own tremulous voice. "…and then at the clothes store, the manager said I was in the wrong section. And when I got here…" Kamui shook his head bitterly, loathing his day even more as he recounted it.

Subaru gazed at him with his slender eyebrows creased together with sympathy. Kamui glared back; the last thing he wanted was to have Subaru of all people pitying him.

"Don't look at me like that," he snapped.

His face blanked. "I…was just going to say that—"

"What, Subaru? That it isn't as bad as I think? That it isn't my fault people confuse me for a girl? What can you possibly say to help me?"

He exhaled sharply and stepped toward the bedside where he seated himself next to Kamui. "Let me show you something," said Subaru reluctantly as he reached into his back pocket for his wallet. From it, he pulled out a wrinkled photo and handed it to the other boy.

Kamui wordlessly examined it. Beneath the wears and folds of age was a young Subaru with big, green eyes that glowed through long tufts of ebony hair. A wide-rimmed hat was settled over his wild bangs and the clothes he wore were skin tight. However, the most striking feature that left Kamui awestruck was that this boy had an enormous grin over his face while wrapping his arms around an identical girl in a frilly dress that he assumed to be his sister.

The thought that Subaru was even capable of smiling like that sent a strange chill through Kamui. "That was you?" he exclaimed, pointing to the youth in the photo.

Subaru squirmed with discomfort. "Ah, well, no—not exactly. You see, that was taken on Halloween when Onee-chan made us switch places…" he trailed away wistfully.

Kamui gaped. "Wait…THIS is you?" He fingered the blushing girl who looked mortified in the elaborate outfit. "That's you in the tacky dress?"

"I-It was the early nineties!" he cried as he snatched back the picture. "But that's not the point. I'm telling you that know what it's like." He held up the old photo. "When I was your age, they mistook me for a girl."

Kamui shifted his eyes between Subaru and his younger image. "But now you're older…"

"Yes."

Kamui's eyes began to glisten with a revelation. "Then…that must mean that when I get older, I'm going to…that I'm…I'm…" He released a horrible wail from his throat. "I'm DOOMED!"

Subaru nodded. "Exactly. You have nothing to worry—wait…what?"

"Doomed! Doomed to a lifetime of girlish misery!" he bawled with his face in his hands. "Doomed…!"

"No! It means you're going to grow out of it just like I did!" Subaru desperately assured him.

Another hysterical moan left him. "Oh God! Just like you? It's worse than I thought!"

He blinked back. "E-excuse me? Kamui, people don't mistake me for a woman anymore…"

He gave the onmyouji an incredulous stare. "Subaru, you can be a little…"

"A little what?" he demanded.

Kamui cringed as he forced the word out. "Effeminate."

"Effeminate?" whispered Subaru. He looked as though he had just been smacked in the face. "How am I effeminate?"

Kamui raised an eyebrow. "Subaru, look at your legs."

"What's wrong with my legs?" he queried indignantly with a graceful gesture at his lap.

"They're crossed!" shouted Kamui. "Girls do that! And the way you just moved your hand—your wrist was limp, Subaru! Limp! Don't you know what that means?"

The Sumeragi hastily uncrossed his legs and sat with his fists balled up. "It doesn't mean anything!" His voice was flustered and his face tinted with red.

How anyone could be so lost in denial was beyond Kamui. In exasperation, he stood up and took him by the shoulders. "Subaru. Look at yourself in the mirror! You're not even handsome; you're BEAUTIFUL. You're practically a queen!"

Subaru shook himself free. "That's absurd! I don't look or behave like a woman. And no one treats me like one!"

"Yeah, except for the Sakurazukamori."

Kamui instantly regretted letting those words escape from him. Subaru flinched, and his protests went dead. Without looking in his direction, he quietly rose from the bed.

"Subaru, wait! I didn't mean…" he began. But anything he could have said was now meaningless as Subaru walked out the door.

When he was out of sight, Kamui cursed himself. Subaru was only trying to help him feel better. He should have never have said those things, no matter how true they might have been. And even if it was his place, he definitely had no right to mention the Sakurazukamori. The way that Subaru blanched at the name made it obvious that he had dealt a grave blow to the onmyouji.

He reburied himself under his pillow. In one day he had been called a girl three times, temporarily blinded someone twice, and wounded the only person who seemed to care about him. Kamui moaned.

Down the hall from Kamui's bedroom, Subaru could hear the others starting the third chorus of a Friendship Sweater song, but his attention rested on his reflection on the bathroom mirror.

His eyes were too big. His lips were too pink. His shoulders were not broad enough, and his atom's apple was almost nonexistent. It was like discovering himself for the first time as Subaru realized that it was all true.

Seishirou enjoyed telling him how beautiful he was at every chance he had. He opened doors for him, held him like a delicate doll, kissed his hand, and even when they were in bed together…How much of this had Kamui known was true?

He softly banged his head over the sink counter. Was there ever a moment that he was treated like a man? Even as he looked at his sixteen year old self in Hokuto's dress he could not tell himself from a girl. Had he deluded himself that something had changed from that time nine years ago?

He was taller, and his hair no longer fell past his ears in that androgynous style he and Hokuto once shared. Yet looking in the mirror, he saw too much of his old self, that boy he killed nine years ago when his sister died because of him.

His fists clenched over the edges of the sink and he gazed fixedly at himself looking for anything else that could distinguish him from the ashamed, cross-dressed boy in the photograph. There was only the dress and the make-up which painted his face.

The dress…and the make-up. Subaru locked his eyes over the red lipstick one of the girls had left open on the counter.

You're not even handsome; you're BEAUTIFUL. You're practically a queen!

A ridiculous, humiliating, and degrading thought entered his mind and he should have ignored it right there. Yet instead of turning away from the counter, Subaru realized that he could not take his eyes off the lipstick.

It gleamed under the lustrous bathroom lights.

(tbc)

Will Kamui's day improve? Will Subaru ever be more secure in his masculinity? Why can't I be the thimble? The answers in the second installment…