Disclaimer: I do not own Junjou Romantica or any of its characters

Another World, Another Time

Chapter One

"You should just go."

"Eh?" Miyagi's eyes drifted over to where his junior was seated.

Hiroki frowned in irritation as he pushed himself back from his desk and stood up. "You heard me."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Kamijou."

"Right."

Seeing the unconvinced look in Hiroki's face Miyagi snorted back. "Right!"

With a shake of his dark head, Hiroki reached down and picked up his briefcase. "Keep telling yourself that, Professor." Grabbing a pile of ungraded compositions he stuffed these into his satchel. "I'm going home. Watching you continually checking the clock is annoying."

With a glare and another shake of his head, Hiroki swept his sport coat up off the back of his chair and strode towards the door.

Miyagi called out after, his voice far more jovial than he felt. "Tell that doctor of yours he should prescribe something to you for your moods."

Hiroki had the door open and was halfway out when Miyagi spoke. He turned and looked back. Miyagi was surprised to see that rather than his junior's normal, easy anger, the younger professor was regarding him with an expression that was…

Sad?

"Nowaki is a surgeon not a psychiatrist." Hiroki's face was solemn. "And for the last time… I really think you should go." These words were said softly, free from his usual huff. After a moment, getting no response Hiroki nodded. He stepped out, quietly closing their office door behind him.

Miyagi sat there silently for several minutes after he'd left.

Pipsqueak. What does he know!

"Damn, I need a cigarette."

Miyagi patted his breast pocket and, finding it empty, pulled out the top drawer of his desk. He was still fuming, blindly feeling about for the pack he kept there, when his fingertips grazed dog-eared pages. His hand flew back as if it had been bitten. Pulling it up before his face, he stared at his perfectly fine fingers for a long moment.

You're being stupid, Old Man.

Miyagi frowned, knowing that he'd spoken the words to himself even though the voice he'd heard in his head was not his own.

His hand returned to the drawer's handle and he opened it further. Peering in, he located his spare pack and drew it out. A moment later a wisp of smoke curled up and dangled from the tip of his newly lit fag.

The little ritual of lighting up alone should have soothed him, but it didn't. Blue eyes darted over to the clock on the wall above the office door.

Grrrr.

Looking away, Miyagi felt his gaze drawn to the still-open drawer with the same sense of magnetism. He made himself pull and resettle his cigarette, exhaling deeply in between, before he allowed his hand to dip down inside. It emerged holding a book; the spine heavily cracked, the pages rumpled from multiple readings. Miyagi traced the lettering on the creased cardboard cover, unconscious of the tenderness in this caress.

A moment later, he reached over to shut the drawer. His eyes drifted back down into its contents once more before they disappeared from view. Not that he needed to see them: he knew every magazine and yellowing newspaper clipping held there by heart, along with the various sheets printed from off of the web.

Drawer closed, Miyagi shifted his gaze to the book on his desk; his eyes then traveled back over to the clock once more.

Damn you, Kamijou.

Pushing back, he reached into the pocket of his slacks to withdraw his phone, the ancient flip his braver students teased him about. He flicked over to messaging and started to tap in a text, cursing the slowness. Another quick glance at the clock and he snapped his phone shut, message unsent. Then, in one fluid motion, the cell was returned to his pocket, his cigarette stubbed, and he was standing, tattered tome in hand.

"Fuck," Miyagi grumbled to his book and scroll-littered office. With a deep sigh he turned, grabbed his coat and case too, and headed out into the University's evening-quiet hallways.

Arriving at the lecture hall, Miyagi found it relatively packed. While on one level this pleased him, on another he found it annoyingly intrusive. Locating an empty seat near the back, he slipped in. A few of his pupils noted his entrance and greeted him politely. Miyagi was cordial but not his normal buoyant self and his students, recognizing this, refrained from their usual hovering.

The murmur of the crowd stilled when a few moments later, Minoku Ryou, one of the literature department's new assistant professors, took the podium. Miyagi listened raptly to the man's introduction, though there was little information about their honored guest lecturer that he didn't already know.

The evening's speaker had graduated with a law degree from the prestigious "T" University, despite the fact he'd been disowned from his family half way through when he'd declared his sexual orientation. After graduating, he joined a law-firm, one that specialized in advocacy for LGTBQ cases, both in Tokyo and throughout Japan.

Despite working for almost nothing, the young man quickly made a name for himself. His skills in interpreting and challenging an unjust legal system brought him to the media's attention on a number of high profile cases. And even those few he didn't win could still be counted as victories, in that they had led to a much greater public awareness of issues facing often oppressed minorities.

Miyagi shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his stomach grew tight, knowing what came next.

Celebrity had its drawbacks, however, and an unsettled individual with opposing sentiments found a moment to attack the young lawyer in the midst of a crowd leaving one of Tokyo's major courtrooms. The man made three severe punctures in the few seconds he had, before security wrestled him to the ground and relieved him of the knife.

The wounds had been almost fatal.

It had taken their honored speaker over two years to recover. But even in his convalescence, he continued to work. Unable to carry on in his law practice, he turned his energies to writing. Having read a tremendous deal in his youth, so much that he'd even wavered in his decision initially at University as whether to undertake Literature or the Law as his focus, he decided to turn his knowledge into yet another vehicle for change.

What emerged from this was a series of books that now had gone into numerous printings and had been translated and published worldwide in fifteen different languages.

While one might classify them at their base as detective stories, they were really so much more. To start with, the language and imagery was such it elevated the work far above pulp, and propelled these pieces in to the arena of literature. Beyond this however, the work was groundbreaking for mainstream Japanese literature due to its characters, the protagonist an older man, a private detective, kicked off the police force after becoming sexually involved with a young male thief he saved from an assault.

These two men, detective and criminal, castaways both of them, braved on, making their way through the world together. The love between them was severely raw at times, their dynamics tumultuous. But their relationship was also honest and moving in a way that transcended orientation for many a reader.

The young thief eventually righted his circumstances, and with the encouragement of his detective, left his illicit past for a career in law. Working as a team, the duo took on the most desperate of cases, seeking to rectify the abuses of others pushed to the periphery of Japanese society.

The culmination of these stories was a breathtaking amalgamation. Written like poetry, they were a proclamation of the beauty of male emotion and love, and they were also a call for recognition, acceptance, and social change.

At this end of Professor Minoku's introduction, the lecture hall remained silent. Miyagi's blue eyes scanned the crowd and he could see that there were few in the audience who had not been deeply moved.

The battered book in his lap suddenly seemed unbearably heavy.

What a different time it is that I find myself in. I never really imagined I'd see a day when such topics could be spoken of in this open way.

Miyagi's gaze drifted back to the orator.

Minoku was the first openly "out" hire in the Department of Languages and Literature: Kamijou, even though he'd been an associate professor at "M" for over fourteen years now, continued to live his life privately and had still never brought Kusama to even a single faculty function.

Even more amazing,however, Minoku's appointment had been approved by Dean Takatsuki himself.

All thoughts of Minoku or Kamijou fled from Miyagi, when suddenly the guest speaker rose from where he'd been seated and made his way to podium.

As the room broke into thunderous applause, a tsunami of emotions engulfed Miyagi. Watching Shinobu step up to the microphone, he was transfixed by the sight of the young man "thanking" Minoku for his too generous introduction. A familiar hint of pink colored the handsome if slightly more angular face.

How long has it truly been? Miyagi found himself wondering.

Following Shinobu's rise as he had, through all his various clippings, it hadn't really seemed as though they had been too far apart. Not until now anyways. Seeing Shinobu here in the flesh, golden-haired and gray-eyed, however, the years suddenly came crashing down.

Ten years… it has been ten, empty, long-aching years.

That a decade had passed since they'd last been in the same room seemed impossible.

Miyagi cleared his throat quietly and hoped that if anyone in the dim auditorium noticed how the corners of his eyes glistened, they'd attribute this to Minoku's introduction.

Thank you for reading.