"Okay... Vocabulary for introducing one's self. 'Who are you?'"
"That's a very philosophical question. I'm not sure if I can answer it in my state, completely unprepared as I am."
Kikuchi raised an eyebrow. "Now is what we would call the most inopportune time to be learning how to use sarcasm."
Yoshikawa sighed a bit. Not that he didn't appreciate what Kikuchi was doing for him, but however expressive of good will it was, it was still essentially a tutoring session. Studying in all its incarnations was for from Yoshikawa's idea of a good time. "Ermm... Quis tu?"
Kikuchi nodded briefly. "'My name is...'?"
"Mihi nomen est..."
Kikuchi rolled his eyes a bit when his pseudo-student left his sentence hanging. "...Yoshikawa..." the bespectacled boy supplied for his friend.
"Yoshikawa. Noboru," Yoshikawa added.
"Okay. Good. 'Nice to meet you.'"
"Suave te cognoscere est!" Yoshikawa delivered the line with undeniable satisfaction lighting up his eyes.
Kikuchi hid a smile at the other boy's almost childish pride at having remembered that Latin phrase. "Ask me how old I am."
A bit of nose-crinkling to indicate concentration, then Yoshikawa hesitantly uttered, "Quot annos natus es?"
"Now, pretend I'm a girl."
Kanzaki's snickering could be heard as she entered the room. "Let me guess - I don't want to know." She batted her eyes at an increasingly frustrated Kikuchi.
"Quot annos nata es?" Yoshikawa smiled up at Kanzaki, knowing - of course - that Kikuchi wanted him to phrase the question as if it were directed to a girl... Contrary to what Kanzaki might have been thinking, which both boys probably had an idea of, thanks to the playful and not to mention somewhat sinister grin on her face.
"Working hard today?" Kanzaki strolled over to Yoshikawa and patted his head.
Now, the boy had been genuinely happy to see Kanzaki just a few seconds ago, but in the span of that small, innocuous gesture, Yoshikawa managed to remember the bit of irrational displeasure he'd felt the day before when Kikuchi told him about their break-up. The very second her fingers lightly touched his hair, he couldn't help but snap, "I'm not Tomoko, you know; I'm not your pet!"
Two pairs of eyes glanced at the shaggy-haired teen with considerable astonishment.
Yoshikawa himself hadn't expected those words tumbling out of his mouth. "I'm... sorry."
"No, don't- aww!" Kanzaki shook her head with seeming disappointment. With one sassy hand on a stuck-out hip, she gave Yoshikawa a reproachful look. "You ruined it! Just when you were about to get all manly."
Some effort was exerted to not dwell on the "about to" part. Yoshikawa averted his eyes in an awkward combination of apologetic embarrassment and inexplicable irritation. "Yeah, well."
"We're making progress, though. Yes, this certainly proves it. Want a treat?"
"Um... I'll pass."
"If you're done being an irrelevant distraction, Kanzaki..." Kikuchi began, recovering from the inital shock of having witnessed a Yoshikawa-outburst or tantrum or whatever it had been.
"Right, may I know why everyone is so cranky?" Kanzaki sat herself beside Yoshikawa, but did not induce any more unexpected hissy fits. "I hate it when guys are so irritable and easy - just begging to be pissed off, and yet girls are always being criticized for having PMS or what have you. What would your excuses be?"
"His excuse is Latin. I'm always cranky," Kikuchi pointed out.
"In that case, you're forgiven, Yoshikawa. And Kikuchi, honestly, you're too grumpy for someone who gets laid pretty often."
"That was the most USELESS effing class EVER." Murai zipped inside the room, slamming the door shut behind him. He settled angrily in front of the TV set and turned it on, ignoring the people around him - annoyed, curious, and entertained at turns.
"Welcome back, Murai," Yoshikawa greeted him.
"Hey, Yoshikawa. Ice queen. Urumi."
"How can you still be holding a grudge against me for not helping you?" Kikuchi muttered. His voice hardened as he told his roommates to "Get the hell out of here; go inside your rooms or something. Now. We're studying."
"You're overworking him, Kikuchi-kun," Kanzaki informed her ex-boyfriend. "After all, isn't he - as the old song goes - still mending the pieces of his broken heart?"
Murai's mood perked up a bit upon being reminded that misery existed outside his life. "You and Anko, right?"
"To tell the truth, it was a strange one to digest, from the very beginning," Kanzaki said bluntly.
"I couldn't imagine either of you chasing after each other," Murai agreed. "I mean, not that Anko isn't aggressive, but I can't picture her going after someone like you. I mean that in the kindest possible way." (Murai and Kanzaki had a number of good characteristics between the two of them... The ability to be tactful has yet to be included in that list.) "You know... Complete opposites and all."
"The only way I see Yoshikawa propositioning her is through a stuttered pick-up line inspired by anime." In a falsetto parody of Yoshikawa's voice, Kikuchi gushed, "'Uehara-san, will you be the Asuka Langley to my Shinji Ikari?'"
"...The sad thing is you were able to come up with that," Kanzaki commented knowledgeably.
"I'm Shinji...?" Yoshikawa pouted, looking additionally unsettled by how Kikuchi perceived his voice.
The strangest thing happened - an unconventional kind of fear seeped into Kanzaki's separately blue and brown eyes. The way her entire body froze indicated some sort of inner turmoil, until she finally snapped out of it and began to frantically dig into her pockets. She grabbed Yoshikawa by the wrist and led him to the cabinets that stored the cereals and the sugar and miscellaneous food items that required no refrigeration.
"Give him back this instant! That one has to learn from me!" Kikuchi commanded the blonde walking off with his personal project.
"I'm going to introduce him to the rules. Since he's practically here more often than I am..." Kanzaki said. She opened one of the cabinets and started... scribbling on the inside using a permanent marker. She pocketed the marker and brought out a ballpen, then proceeded to write again. She smiled as she dotted a few I's and crossed some T's, nudging Yoshikawa towards the cabinet, to reveal an abused piece of paper taped to the inside.
It read:
Household Laws
Rule #1 - Labels!
Rule #2 - Silence after 12:00 AM, and absolutely no barging into anyone else's room asking for homework or research information when it's his responsibility to find out for himself.
(Beside it, in ballpoint scrawl was:) I said I was sorry! -Murai
Rule #3 - Should a guest be invited, one must inform the other inmates about it beforehand.
If I walk out naked one more time when Murai's mom comes over, she's liable to suspect something. -Kikuchi
So am I. -Murai
"Inmates"? Make us sound like prisoners, why don't you -Urumi
Why the hell do you need to walk out of your room naked anyway? I mean, it wouldn't be so bad if it were Kanzaki...
That's not happening soon, Murai, but I hope you liked the present I left in your bedroom -Urumi
The next time inhouse revenge is called for, make sure that the actual execution of said retaliation will not procure the involvement of medical treatment. -Kikuchi
Shouldn't that last comment be rule #4? -Murai
I for one thought that it went without saying. -Kikuchi
Duly noted -Urumi
(The following rule had been blacked out, and all Yoshikawa could make out under the thick lines was "quietly." He concluded that it had something to do with Kikuchi and Kanzaki's relationship, judging from all the scribbled comments that followed it.)
Rule #5 - (Marked simply, "READ." Followed by a tabular schedule of domestic duties.)
Rule #6 - If you come up short on cash at the end of the month, be prepared to do grocery duty for the entire year.
Rule #7 - If you're going to play flouncy-ass J-Pop, don't do it in full fucking volume!
It wasn't my fault, Tomoko was practising lip-synching -Urumi
Isn't there a studio she can do that in? -Murai
I'm just curious... If she's practising lip-synching, why does she have the volume on so loud? -Kikuchi
Busted! -Murai
DAMN IT YOU GUYS! If you're trying to drown out sounds or something, play some good music. -Murai
new Rule #4 - We are not feeding one-night stands.
Why do you insist on bringing them here? That's what love hotels are for, you bastard... -Murai
Rule #8 - No otaku-speak so long as we are under this roof or it's hell to pay.
Be good, Yoshikawa (heart) -Urumi
"How does it feel to be integrated into cupboard culture?" Murai asked with a short chuckle, accompanied by the ever elegant snort. He and Kikuchi could guess what Kanzaki had just written, based on her previous unseemly experience involving Gundam afficionados and Onizuka's knack of coming up with stressful room assignments for his students.
Yoshikawa felt, perhaps, more intimidated than he should have. "What qualfies as 'otaku-speak'?"
"Oh, for..." Kikuchi could actually be described as huffy at this point. "Tell you what, if you speak in Latin, I guarantee you that we won't consider it otaku-speak. Okay? Okay. So, if you were a girl-"
"I don't want to know," Murai decided, turning swiftly back to the television.
"I was going to ask him to tell me how a girl would say 'I'm 17-years-old' in Latin but everyone is busy thinking I'm depraved or being jackasses who don't care whether or not they're interrupting people who are trying to study!" Kikuchi inhaled sharply through an upturned nose (following the direction of his upturned chin). He clutched Yoshikawa's arm and stormed off to his room.
"You're bringing him to your room?" Kanzaki gasped extravagantly.
Yoshikawa winced as Kikuchi's grip tightened. The shorter boy was tempted more and more each day to gain some weight just to rob people of the ability to drag him around as easily as they would a rag doll.
"If he tries anything, we're one yell away, Noboru!" Kanzaki called after them helpfully, her voice dulling after Kikuchi closed the door behind them.
"They drive me crazy. It frequently makes me wonder why I'm not a loner." Kikuchi glanced at Yoshikawa, and for no definite reason, the two of them laughed a little when their eyes met. "Sorry about the complaint, it was unnecessary."
"That's a weird thing to apologize for," Yoshikawa said teasingly. "In any case, I know you like them both."
"It must seem like someone complaining to a beggar about having his steak not cooked the way he wants it to be. Like someone complaining to an orphan about how his parents aren't perfect," Kikuchi said in his usual deadpan voice. "That's what me complaining to you about Murai and Kanzaki must be like. I know you. You think you're a loner, and you're probably subconsciously mad at me for not being grateful enough for having friends like ithem."
Yoshikawa looked away, his heartbeat feeling like a flimsy movement in his chest, fluttering at the tenuously accurate statement. "...I'm not mad at you."
"You know you're not alone, right?" Kikuchi looked at him, trying to read the thoughts behind his friend's wistful eyes. For some reason, it was important for him to get this straight with Yoshikawa, to remind him now and then... "In school, even when Onizuka's not there, do you know that you're not alone?"
"Yeah." Yoshikawa made his lips smile. "I just get pulled back into this mindset, you know? I don't mean to, like, reduce everything everyone's done for me... like how you're helping me with my studies and all... I guess I've just felt so alone for such a long time, and when Onizuka-sensei kind of just brought me out of my shell like he did... it really meant a lot to me."
"Yeah... I understand." Kikuchi gathered some handouts in his hand, ready to continue helping Yoshikawa with his academics.
Yoshikawa, however, didn't share the same willingness. He snickered a bit. "We always end up being so serious when we're together. Um... Are we going again?"
Kikuchi smirked a little. "Ideally."
"Okay." Resigned, Yoshikawa slumped into Kikuchi's computer chair. He jumped up suddenly, not willing to let the bit of courage he was feeling go to waste. "It's just... Before that, um... Well, you told me about you and Kanzaki."
"...Yes, I did."
"I sort of want to tell you about... well, what Anko said..."
Kikuchi was caught off-guard by the feeling of conceit rising within him as a result of Yoshikawa expressing his intent to open up. There was a certain kind of pride in having someone invest trust in you. Especially someone like him... Kikuchi pried himself away from further mental gloating and focused on the matter at hand. "Alright. Go ahead."
"Right." Some obvious stalling tactics were deployed, but all in all, Yoshikawa managed to let out a sufficiently detailed rant about what went wrong with him and his ex-sort-of-girlfriend.
Kikuchi's intrigue morphed into comprehensive delibiration by the time Yoshikawa was at "...and she thinks I don't love her", around the time the smaller boy was concluding his long-winded, mostly incoherent speech. "She thinks you don't love her?" Kikuchi asked almost distantly. Yoshikawa knew that he wasn't really confirming what he'd just said, but prodding for the few more trivialities that Yoshikawa had left out.
"Well... I mean, yeah. I mean, she knows I do love her." Yoshikawa hesitated again, but propelled onward. "She's insecure, though, because of the things we haven't done and how I'm mostly uncomfortable with all that. And regarding the 'Onizuka-sensei thing' again, she thinks... She thinks I'm too..."
"Gay?"
Yoshikawa made a face at the suddenness word. Even Anko hadn't said it, although it was heavily implied. Now that it was actually articulated, it seemed even more of an impending title to him. "It's such a crazy idea! I have no idea why she practically convinced herself of it. I mean, not to insult you or-or anyone else, but it... I really can't imagine... I mean, I do like Onizuka-sensei." (Kikuchi was barely able to suppress a "Really? I couldn't tell." Sarcastic, of course.) "But even when I tried to think about... doing things... It just really creeped me out. I don't mean to say that I think you're disgusting or anything, I just can't see myself with another guy. Even him. Or especially him. Doing..."
"Things," they said together, with one feeling extremely self-conscious and the other feeling more than a little wry.
Kikuchi nodded, a familiar air of wisdom hanging about him. "But you like him?"
"I'm almost certain you know the answer to that."
"Hm, good guess," Kikuchi said, dryly, but he continued without missing a beat. "And he's important to you."
"Yeah."
"And you'll concede that among every single person you've met, he's the one who fascinates you the most."
"Well... I don't know." Yoshikawa felt his face grow warm. "I guess..." he admitted.
"It's natural, Yoshikawa," Kikuchi declared. "It's very understandable for people to think homosexuality is disgusting. That's why I don't hate homophobes, generally speaking. Components of a society are programmed with particular beliefs and morals. In religion or biology, the union of man and woman is promoted because of the differentiation in genitalia, and the productivity thereof. Sure, when you look at it that way, it makes sense. But from a historical perspective, homosexual behavior isn't such a deviation. It certainly wasn't sparse in Greece. The concept of homosexuality being wrong is easily just another social construct, not a justified truism. To think love or pleasure is ruled upon whether or not you can get someone pregnant, that's a bit illogical. In my opinion, there isn't anything morally degenerate about sex itself, unless there's no fully aware mutual consent."
Halfway through the gay lecture, the slightly nauseated look on Yoshikawa's face became more evident. (Kikuchi thought it was around the time he said "pleasure.") It made Kikuchi feel a bit guilty for trying to force the idea upon his classmate, so he tried to take back as much of his assertiveness as he could. "But, just because I do something doesn't make it right. I try to do the right things, usually based on a decent stringing of logic, but it doesn't mean my decisions are flawless." Kikuchi was rather stunned at how easily he could say these things to another person. But he wasn't too shocked that the other person happened to be Yoshikawa.
"Even if you know entirely too much for a teenager?" Yoshikawa questioned him, shaking off the discomfort he felt due to Kikuchi - of all people - giving him a "birds and the bees" (birds and the birds?) talk.
"Actually, I think knowing a lot of things makes it harder to believe in them."
"But you believe everything you just told me."
"Yes. Pretty much."
Kikuchi dumped the handouts on Yoshikawa's lap, a reminder of the still unreviewed lessons that needed tending to. "Alright, alright," Yoshikawa surrendered with a small sigh. "You know, it's so hard to think of you as this... sexually active guy. What more bisexually active, so to speak. You're... Kikuchi."
"Right. Well, with you, I think I'd like to keep it that way."
Yoshikawa was caught off-guard when he felt some relief wash over him thanks to that statement. But even more surprisingly, he felt a bit of something akin to distress as well. He assured himself that it was simply because Kikuchi made it sound like he was being rejected in a way, although that wasn't too consoling either.