Illiud Latine Dici Non Potest. (You can't say that in Latin.)

----

"I can sleep with you, if you allow it, but there's not a chance of it concluding in a serious relationship."

Cue the incredulous dot dot dot.

Kikuchi continued, unperturbed by his companion's silence. "You're a nice person, though."

"...Thanks." Ah, the dry, often monosyllabic reply that the other party always hopes to pass off as unaffected.

He moves on with his speech, making it mechanic enough so that only the truly desperate would try to believe him. "I mean it, it's likely that a lot of guys would fall in love with you." Careful now, not too sincere.

"I appreciate the compliments, really." A safe, caustic answer. An emphatic show of Attitude. Overall, though, it didn't deviate very much from the usual.

Kikuchi hated this part of dating. He disliked every second of having to debrief his selected partner for the night, having to discuss and arrange what would become of the affair. But then, he could be mean, or he could be downright callous and pretend to love them. Really, the process of clearing things up was clearly the lesser of two evils, and obviously the more tedious method.

He told them in no unclear terms that he preferred it unattached, free from the binding hold that the significant would otherwise have on your pituitary gland. Free from explanation and analysis. Just free.

And that's what he was, since he and Kanzaki broke up.

Free to stop trying to justify themselves to one another. Free to stop playing who loves who the most. Free to try and get Saeko into bed.

Of which Kikuchi didn't seem to be having much success. "So, are you leaving with me?" he asked the girl across the table.

Saeko looked past infuriated, but he could tell that she was trying to hold it in. He didn't know what she wanted out of it - never really cared to wonder what the other person could possibly want from an encounter with him, the physical reasons aside. For all he knew, she wanted to compare notes with her friends. Maybe girls actually bragged about this in their locker rooms, and their mysterious privacy was naught but a myth. This could be the stuff of slumber parties.

Girls were familiar territory to Kikuchi, but unfortunately, the one theme he was accustomed to was their ambiguity. He always had to tread cautiously and be attentive, difficult to read. He didn't know who to take face-value. It was why he went out with guys from time to time. It required less multitasking when it came to them. Usually he'd find an interested one from some university or the other, and the linear approach works fine on them, because it's much easier to detect boys who are in it with no thoughts of commitment. When they say it, they actually mean it.

He designed a different approach for girls - it wasn't exactly all the more gentle, but considerably more thorough. That way, he'd only get one of two responses that are apt to be completely honest. One of them would be a yes - said with varying levels of confidence, but with full knowledge of what she would get herself into. The other answer is often expressed more accurately, a resolute rejection, usually followed by telling him to stick it into one orifice or another.

Saeko, as he predicted, was inclined to the latter answer. "Leaving with you? Are you sure your place has enough space to accommodate me as well as your ego?" She stood up abruptly, fists clenched by her sides. "Only a moron would go out with you!"

He was tempted to reply, "That's not a nice thing to say about your friends." Instead, he just shrugged, hoping this would blow off by tomorrow. She was rude, but she's a classmate, after all.

Kikuchi got up and left, feeling the kind of tired that wasn't felt by the body. "See you."

----

"I'm home!" Noboru Yoshikawa called out, as per tradition, as he strolled into his house. After waiting in vain for the advent of a reply, he added softly to himself, "For whatever it's worth..."

If his sister were at home, these four walls should be on the receiving end of noise much more substantial than Yoshikawa's soft and - if you listen closely - dejected footsteps. But luck would have it that she was off somewhere else, with someone else, and very likely thinking about something else. It would be like her to do this, to be deliberately missing during the exact hour he needed to talk to her. However, Yoshikawa, being Yoshikawa, didn't begrudge her for it.

It did depress him, though, and Yoshikawa felt all his emotions thoroughly. He felt the familiar urge to spend time in front of some pixilated characters until an actual human being stepped into his line of vision. Video games were a way to fill up his senses with other emotions to feel, emotions from an entirely different world that he could experience but wouldn't upset him. But it wasn't nine o'clock, meaning he wouldn't yet be able to use his PlayStation as a medium of release. Takayuki's one stipulation since she's moved back to the house was that Yoshikawa be mindful of their electricity bill. He gave himself a strict schedule and he was determined to uphold it.

Looking back to when the sentence - er, schedule - was first implemented, he remembered eerily resembling a former drug addict experiencing severe withdrawal. The twitches and bloodshot eyes eventually left Yoshikawa, replaced by a look of an accepting sort of longing. He's been surviving in this manner for awhile now... He was impressed with how long it's been. He tried to recall the date when Takayuki moved in. It had been just a week before his mother died, so that would mean his sister flew back to Japan barely five months ago.

That had been a particularly tumultuous time, and nobody was in any position to console anyone else.

Anko had gotten into a fight with her entire family that year, and anyone she talked to would receive an earful of her strategy to escape her house. Yoshikawa remembered that it would always begin with her giving condolences, and end up with a lengthy discussion of why she wished she could bury her mother. There was also the fuss over Kikuchi and Kanzaki's break-up still not dying down, which made it all the more impossible for Yoshikawa to approach either of them. The other students who, while tolerant of the self-pity permeating throughout the classroom, weren't eager to butt into anyone's private pains. Especially not during those particularly volatile times. Between slipping grades and the instability of the class since Onizuka left them, there wasn't enough room for reaching out to anyone. All Yoshikawa had to live by during those days were e-mails from his former teacher and Yuuki. The latter, however, was much more infrequent with communication, having been relocated and asked to take resolute heed of their anonymity.

He'd printed out practically every one of Onizuka's letters - the longer ones, at least. He reread them by the day - by the hour, if needed. Fulfilling a request, he showed them to Fuyutsuki one time. When she returned them, she was blushing and apologizing all the while, saying she couldn't help it... It was placed on Yoshikawa's desk, covered with markings to correct Onizuka's miserable kanji.

That memory was enough to get Yoshikawa to pull out his "Onizuka pile", which he kept in an easily accessible drawer. He knew his sister would have to arrive before he finished going through all the letters. It wasn't long before he was laughing at the words as they formed into shapes in his imagination, despite the fact that he could probably already recite a few of them by heart.

Time passed by under the influence of Onizuka's action-packed letters, and soon Takayuki was greeting her brother as her image produced a swiftly-moving blur across the house.

"Welcome home." Yoshikawa tidied the Onizuka pile and stashed them away for future use. Considerably brighter, he helped his sister with the packages she was carrying. "You brought home a load. You bought all this?"

"Well, you know... For the wedding." Takayuki smiled at her brother, weakly.

"Oh." Yoshikawa joined her in emptying the bags and placing the contents on the counter.

Takayuki hastily gave him an explanation, never mind that it wasn't asked for. "Well, not the wedding per se, but the party before the wedding... It's going to be on Saturday. Ha-kun will be arriving here by then. Poor guy, won't be getting any rest. That's an eight-hour flight."

"Um... Takayuki. You're going to introduce me to him soon... Don't you remember his full name yet?"

"You know, that's really the least of our problems, little guy. I mean, I haven't seen him in four months-"

"Five."

"Five? Has it been that long?" Takayuki shrugged. "Fine, five then. Wow. That's almost as long as the time we actually spent together."

"I thought you guys met on April? Wouldn't that make it four months?"

The taller, disgruntled sibling decided to shake her head and put the topic to sleep. "Noboru, I know you don't have a life, but are you usually so painstaking about my relationships?"

"I should hope not," Yoshikawa replied with a chuckle. "But you are, you know... marrying this one."

"As if you're the one who's been taking care of me since we were little." And so she felt the need to remind him again. "As I recall, you were helpless without me. I swear, I don't know how you survived mom when I left the house. Don't get me wrong, I think you ended up a bit more pathetic than you should have, considering you're related to me... But in the end you're not such a disaster, after all. I hope you learned a bit from when I was standing up for you."

"You still are, standing up for me," Yoshikawa said, almost as if he were accusing her. "Really, it's embarrassing when you go bullying the teachers at my school. Mother would never do such things..."

"Mother had no spine when dealing with anyone except you." Takayuki gave him her best superior, disapproving look. "You let anyone and everyone walk all over you. I should've never left you in the first place. I did for a few months, and now look at you, keeping tabs on my relationship with Ha-kun. Thinking you're the man."

Yoshikawa pondered. "What? Do all girls talk like this? Or do you just happen to share a brain with Anko?" A moment's silence to perish the thought. "Anyway, I have to warn you. There's something you need to know and you're going to like it maybe even less than I do."

"You shaving your head for military school next year?"

"Uh. No." With knitted eyebrows to complete the baffled look. "I'm not, uh, going to military school."

"Really? I thought you might as well, because you seem awfully bent on flunking all your subjects."

Yoshikawa smiled sheepishly. "...Ehe. So, you heard?"

Takayuki took his hand in hers, with more gentleness than she's ever possessed in her entire lifetime. "I'm not going to scold you because you're not doing so well in school... I mean, I've never been the best student, myself, let alone a good one. And, besides, it's just the beginning of the school year, right? You can make up for it. And you have to." Her voice edged on desperate.

"I know, I know..." The boy bit his lip, feeling a sense of contrition. "I tried, and I kept asking people for help. But... I'm just no good at this."

"Alright, first of all, you have to stop selling yourself short if you have any plans of succeeding." Takayuki's hands were no longer softly atop her brother's, now they were latched quite firmly on his shoulders, with the grip that she assumed exuded the confidence of an army general. "You just need the proper motivation. Just keep in mind: the two of us lying in the gutter, homeless, starved, and being eaten alive by house flies. Think of that. Then think: if only you could've gotten good grades on your last year of high school, then maybe - just maybe - you could have gotten that scholarship to that awesome university and you would've landed yourself in some hotshot job and-"

"Or I could drop out of high school and get a less flashy job, one that could sustain us anyway."

Takayuki looked appalled at the idea of the bare necessities. "Unheard of. No. In fact, you are to study right after we eat. Which we will do right after I make dinner. Which I will do while you wait with your little video game. So go have fun. Now."

Yoshikawa glanced at the clock. "It's not nine yet."

"Look at you, able to tell the time. If that's not the most important requirement of a top-notcher, I don't know what is." Takayuki gave him a kiss on the cheek, much to every little brother's dismay. "Run along and play. Get the recreation out of your system now, because you are going to do some serious grinding later. That would be the books, you dirty-minded boy, the books."

----

"Welcome back," Murai warbled slowly. He turned and saw that it was Kikuchi. "Oh, it's you. What are you doing here?"

"Well, as far as I recall, I live here." It should have come with a scowl. Kikuchi could do snarky like a professional. Instead, he was friendly, if a bit condescending. That was how he usually was as far as Murai was concerned.

The bleach blond returned to doing his homework. "Ha, ha and ha. So how did Saeko dump your ass?"

"Something along the lines of not willing to play my game, or being disgusted with me... I don't think we were on the same wavelength." Kikuchi rolled his eyes with little disappointment. "Don't they understand by now? Or do they honestly think they'll 'change' me? It's all very simple, really... I never asked for salvation, did I? Tell me, is there something written on my face, something like 'HELP ME' in big, bold letters? I'm thinking it's a vibe I put off..."

"Hardly," Murai reassured him, a wry expression on his face. "They're just not with the program. Er... hey, in the Mathematics homework... Are you sure it's page one oh three, 'cause I don't remember discussing how to do this thing here..."

Kikuchi ignored Mister Subtlety trying to get his notably smarter friend to cooperate and help finish his assignment. "I should come with a contract. And a fine print. Then they'll sign it and have to accept that I'm not up for relinquishing my wicked, dastardly ways. Hah."

Murai decided to rush the conversation along, still hoping against hope that Kikuchi would buckle this time and give him a hand. "I saw it coming, you know. Aizawa confided in Fujiyoshi that Saeko was out to get revenge in Chikako's name. Now, really, about this problem. When did they teach this to us...?"

"Please tell me you aren't serious. Do you guys have some Love Mafia going on?"

"'Love Mafia'," Murai repeated quizzically. "Sounds like one of Tomoko's dramas..."

"Oh, and I'm chauvinistic. Saeko mentioned that, too; what was that about?" Kikuchi didn't sound the least bit insulted, not to Murai. He even seemed to be enjoying talking about how he was slighted. "I don't objectify anyone, I'm perfectly aware that they're human. Who wants to have sex with objects, anyway? And if she must insist that I objectify girls, she should believe that I objectify guys, besides. It works both ways, so she has no right to defend herself like that. She can't unleash her feminist dignity on me."

"Just because you swing both ways doesn't mean you still don't treat girls like shit." Oops, not the proper way to suck up when one wants a little homework help. Murai's tactics quickly underwent a drastic face-lift. "I get your point, though. You treat everyone the same. You wouldn't even give any friend of yours any tips in Math, despite the fact that he does not remember taking up a single thing in this goddamn book..." Ahem, ahem.

"I don't treat everyone the same. I'm shitty to shitty people. I treat girls perfectly well, and some guys, too." Satisfied, Kikuchi finally headed to his room. The prospect of going to bed and getting some rest had apparently put Kikuchi in a good mood. Before closing his door, he decided to give Murai one very helpful tip. "I believe the teacher would more likely credit you if you answered the Mathematics book, not the Physics one."

Murai looked at the cover of the book he'd been holding, turned scarlet with embarrassment as well as fury, and swore he could hear Kikuchi laughing inside his bedroom.

----

"I am beyond worrying for you, just so you know."

Kanzaki didn't mind that she was talking to herself, addressing an ex-boyfriend, and climbing the creepy stairs just so she could reach the chilly rooftop. She was just pissed that she felt the need to check up on Kikuchi... if indeed it was him.

She'd stayed very late in school to help a teacher with the lesson plan. He was an aging man, but relatively new to Tokyo Kisshou Academy. He approached her after classes, in this somehow endearingly gentle way, and asked her for this favor. She shocked herself by accepting. It was (or should have been) ordinary work, but the teacher had been so particular about everything. He'd grated her last nerve, really, but she stayed until their job was accomplished. He thanked her profusely, in that quiet and soft manner that charmed her in the first place, offering to give some form of compensation for her help. Normally, Kanzaki would've exploited this to the last iota it was worth, but she'd heard movement on the rooftop. She excused herself, figuring that it could have only been one person.

She had license not to be too concerned about him now, but Kikuchi throwing tantrums was too weird. She could handle him being unpredictable and throwing himself in the midst of something he wasn't used to... But if she let him draw into himself, it would be certain to spell disaster. It probably wouldn't be like hers, but intuition told her that if Kikuchi totally broke down, it would be no stroll in the park.

Kanzaki could already see that it wasn't Kikuchi dangling precariously near the edge of the rooftop. The form was smaller, and more twiggy, dare she say. She called for that boy's attention, anyway.

"I've heard rumors about your intelligence - most of them not so good, I'm afraid - but surely your depth perception can't be this incompetent?" Kanzaki teased. She secretly delighted in Yoshikawa's little jump of surprise.

"K-Kanzaki-san!"

Still with a cheerful, almost upsettingly joyful voice, she approached him. "What are you doing up so high, Superman? Don't you think you're a bit too close to the edge?"

"I... Well, I'm not going to-"

"I know you're not going to. Onizuka would have your head if you were." Kanzaki winked at him.

Yoshikawa blushed furiously. Kanzaki chalked it up to social ineptness... as nice a kid as Yoshikawa was, he barely had any close friends in school, and there was just one girl he seemed comfortable with, and that was the result of her being obsessed with him. "So what are you doing here, aside from not committing suicide?"

The blush slowly disappeared, as his face flashed feelings of sadness, confusion, and bashfulness all at once. "I came from Anko's house. We were supposed to study together... and I kind of abandoned her."

"Oh?" Kanzaki looked intrigued. She was a genius, sure, but inside the heart of that genius was a teenage girl. "Was the Math too hard or were you getting 'distracted', shall we say?"

Her classmate was calm, not at all flustered by this insinuation, causing a slight disappointment in Kanzaki. She lived for the squirming she could induce in other people."We didn't do anything. I couldn't... I mean, um." Yoshikawa exhaled loudly. "I tried to go home, but my sister fell asleep. I couldn't bust in, even if Onizuka once taught-" Yoshikawa stopped abruptly, then the blush came.

Kanzaki noticed and wondered why it was a bit belated. She expected it to come after the Anko innuendo. "Locked out? Poor boy! Come on, then, I have this urge to bring home stray children today..."

Confusion. "Um. What?"

"I know. I've been so charitable lately I feel like I've betrayed my true self for the sake of the warm and fuzzy. I hope to get a good night's sleep and get back to normal." Kanzaki grabbed Yoshikawa's collar and proceeded to drag the boy away, not hearing a single one of his stuttered protests. "Don't drag your feet, you're slowing us down. The sooner I get to bed the sooner I can clear my head of this wretched generosity. As for you. Kikuchi and Murai can fight over you."

"You... Kikuchi... Murai?!" It wasn't so much a three-part question as it was a prolonged word.

Still dragging Yoshikawa, Kanzaki answered his "question" without missing a beat. "Yes, I still live with Kikuchi. So does Murai, as he's still boycotting his mom's new husband. Anyway, I'm sure one of them can take you in their rooms. Will you move your feet, they function better that way."

He opted to finally walk properly instead of skidding along with Kanzaki dragging him, in a valient effort to maintain whatever small amount of dignity he might possess. Just in case he still had some left.