Disclaimer: Tokyo Majin and all of the characters I include in this story do not belong to me, only the arrangement of the words do.

Masses of pink ribbed clouds slunk lazily across the orange, yellow and red streaked horizon somewhere over the looming sky scrapers of Tama Chiiki, the west end of Tokyo. Kyouichi Horaiji watched boredly while the setting sun cut dust streaked, pale blades of sunlight through his bedroom window.

His sharp brown eyes were unusually soft as he allowed himself to be lost in the simple beauty of the setting sun over his city, knowing that soon it would be dark enough and the stars that were blotted out by Tokyo's industrial filth would be replaced by an artificial but no less beautiful sea of lights.

His angular face leaned heavily on his upturned palm; the familiar weight of his bokken resting against his shoulder reminded him of the events of the day.

Exhaling heavily and swinging one of his long legs against the wall from his perch on the window sill, he closed his eyes and emersed himself in memories.

He remembered short, coarse black hair, wind blown; He remembered leaping and stricking for hours and hours until his muscles were palpitating with tension and exhaustion both, skin tingling with bruises that wouldn't show until the next day. He remembered eyes too wise to belong to someone his own age but too guileless sometimes to even be considered more than a child's. He remembered the heat of another body, striking all of his weak spots without remorse or mercy.

He remembered an absent minded smile.

But most acutely he remembered the assault on his senses as he gulped down air, panting heavily from the exertion of their sparring session. His friend's clothing and body in such close proximity— It was difficult not to catch wiffs of the strange combination of clean sweat, uprooted earth, the sweetly scented breeze, combat and the creamy richness of the strawberry milk the boy always drank.

He was remembering his best friend, Tatsuma Hiyuu.

"Tcht." He muttered without any real contempt.

His eyebrows fell naturally into a heavy furrow as he landed heavily with mischevious purpose on the flats of his feet to disrupt his neighbours downstairs. Shuffling his socks against the scuffed hardwood, he crossed his one room apartment and sat down heavily on his un made bed, causing an out turned pair of pants to slither onto the floor, forgotten until he decided to tidy up a little.

He laid his wooden practice sword across his knees and steepled his fingers in front of his face, trying to think about why he was sitting here alone in his messy, cramped apartment instead of out with his friends, having a good time and eating.

He had never experienced such a thrilling sensation at just the memory of any one person, least likely a boy—his friend.

It was the fact that Hiyuu, although Tatsuma was not aware of it and thus could hardly be blamed but Tatsuma was of a single, simple mind in such matters, had disrupted Kyouichi's entire daily routine.

He hadn't been hungry, too lost in his own thoughts to think about food, so he had declined the offer to go with the rest of his motley band of friends to his favourite Ramen stand. But even if he had some sort of an appetite he would've still said no, for reasons no one need know but himself.

Thinking of that brought back the quiet confusion that may or may not have been hiding some underlying emotion on Hiyuu's blank face.

He grabbed his bokken viciously and stood up, pivoting to face the small shrine erected on a knotched wooden table by his bed. He stood there a minute, grasping the pommel until his knuckles were white with the effort. After a moment, his fingers relaxed and he let out a long, low breath, laying the weapon with reverent care onto its richly stained stand.

He stared at the simplistic carvings etched into the wood without really seeing them, his thoughts not really going in any particular direction, caught instead in a pointless loop of confusion.

Kyouichi wasn't known for his ability to philosophize, to think before acted. So eventually he gave up, for it was too tedious, too troublesome to sort out these feelings without more to go by. This wasn't like one of the fights he so frequently got into, there wasn't a plain target, there wasn't a lead to follow up on.

Reaching a hand behind his head he grabbed at the hem of his red T shirt and pulled it over his head, tossing it behind him to fall where it may. He walked into his bathroom, groping for the light switch then flipped it, waiting for the flickering bulb to stabilize as he blinking owlishly into the light after the near darkness of the rest of his apartment.

He leaned forward with his hands braced on either side of the sink and stared at himself in the mirror.

He studied the slanting arch of his high cheek bones, the thin line of his lips and the sharp curve of his brows, his arresting gaze staring back at him from his dirty, fly blown reflection.

Leaning back he prodded at his deltoid, running his fingers over his bicep, tricep down to his long fingered hand. He scrubbed a thumb over the riveted line of his abdomen, feeling the whip cord muscle beneath give under his boyishly rough skin.

He scratched his nail over the dip of his navel, the hard bone of his sternum to the soft give of his pectoral.

A wave of gooseflesh prickled over his bared skin from a draft blown in from the open window, a bar of cold against his flank. He started and then made a discontented noise, kicking off the rest of his clothes and trying to ignore the direction his thoughts had been taking seconds ago and doing a very poor job of it.

'Tatsuma Hiyuu huh? What a weird guy.'

He squeezed his eyes shut and slammed the bathroom door with finality. He needed a shower.

Closing the door to his humble home, Tatsuma Hiyuu gently set his bag down on the raised area of the genkan and toed off his sneakers, stepping up into the dusty, silent gloom with an uneasy feeling that he had forgotten something.

He had just beat the storm after saying a hasty good bye to his three friends as they parted ways at the entrance of the Ramen stand, the rain and wind were now raging mutely against his windows and sliding glass door.

Flicking on the lights, he squinted, shielding his eyes from the penetrating glow by retreating further into his hood and tugging the rim of it over his face for a minute before his eyes adjusted. Methodically he went about his every day routine whilst trying to remember what the niggling sensation at the back of his mind was trying to tell him.

He removed his gakuran and set it on a hook by the door, pushing his hood off and walking into the kitchen to look and see what he had in his fridge for dinner, even though his stomach was warm and full with food already.

He scanned the barren interior of his fridge.

Comically grimacing at his findings he moved a nearly empty carton of milk out of the way and all of a sudden he remembered what it was he had forgotten. This morning he had mentally reminded himself to get groceries after school, but he had been so caught up with the surprise 'training session' Kyouichi had called up that he had completely forgotten.

He reached in and pulled out a half finished container of tofu and set it on the counter, walking to the other side of his small kitchen he bent down and fished out a pot from the bottom cupboard.

Standing wearily he walked over to his sink and set the pot into the bottom, turning the taps to fill it up half way.

He was lost deep in thought.

He knew the recipe well, so he was pretty sure that he could get away with thinking about his current 'perdicament' without really needing to worry about messing up his dinner.

Setting the now half full pot onto a small element on his stove, he reached up to the shelf of herbs and spices to pluck out a small package of kelp, almost empty, another thing to add to his list, to boil in the water.

Turning the stove's flame onto a medium heat he dumped the remainder of what was in the package into the water and thought about what it was that was bothering him.

Well, he knew that. Kyouichi Horaiji.

Kyouichi had been one of the first people who had befriended him when he had shown up at Magami High school at the beginning of senior year, an estranged transfer student.

'Well', he thought quietly with a silly smile just curling to corners of his lips, 'you couldn't quite call it befriend. '

He remembered the day quite vividly, standing beside the blonde English teacher as she introduced him to the rest of the class, he remembered singling in on Kyouichi before he even knew the type of reputation he had nor the trouble it would get him into in the future.

His lazy posture, bored expression and radiating attitude and confidence were hard to miss.

He remembered the sensation, the raw physical power of the air current whipping past his nose by mere inches as Kyouichi's bokken carved a jagged line through the black board where his head had been seconds ago.

Methodically he reached for the cutting board leaning against the counter and began chopping his block of tofu into eight cubed slices.

Scrapping them into the not quite boiling stock, he lowered the heat just a little and then was allowed to submerge back into his thoughts.

He hadn't remembered feeling the stinging pain of his feet hitting the ground flat, he had been too caught up in the exhilaration of trying to keep the wooden sword from getting a critical hit in his defences.

He remembered having to exert his body in a way he hadn't in a long time, having to duck, to dodge, to bend himself into awkward positions to escape the deadly arch of the wooden blade.

Then just as abruptly as it had started, it ended.

He remembered the feeling of the blunt edge of the bokken pressed against his racing jugular; he remembered the radiating heat and rhythmic puffs of hot breath against his fist that was an inch from the other boy's face.

He remembered a cocky, self confident and pleased smile.

He plucked the finished tofu from its pot into a serving bowl he did not even remembered fetching from the glass cabinet to the left of his stove. He shrugged and snagged a pair of chop sticks from the drawer and some dried sea weed to top his meal.

He sat down at his small dining room table and looked at his food, not really seeing it. His thoughts were jumbled, confused.

He wasn't used to thinking so much about something he didn't understand.

Shaking his head, he dug into his meal and locked those awkward feelings away for further contemplation... some other time.

Kyouichi Horaiji... what a strange guy.

To be continued...