Chapter 18

The summer vacation was unpleasant.

As much as Gakushuu did his own thing, summer had increasingly made him leave his house behind to do something or the other.

It was almost a relief that Gakushuu had the excuse of the cats to stay in Karma's sort of empty house instead.

The first full day he spent in Karma's house surprised both of them. Gakushuu had studied then played with the cats and when they were eating, he had been watching the cats and accidentally fallen asleep.

He had woken to the cats and spent the rest of the time sleepily stroking the cats. The warmth of the sun disappeared and he dozed, finding the complete emptiness of the house safe.

It was the closing of the door that convinced him to wake up. But he wasn't fast enough and when Karma came in, Gakushuu had just straighted out his clothes.

Karma snorted, his eyes warming with laughter as his eyes roved over Gakushuu. His eyes paused at his hair and Gakushuu fixed that as well, though it wasn't too messy.

"Well, looks like you'll need dinner too," Karma invited and then he went to the kitchen. He switched on the lights as he went and Gakushuu wondered, slightly surprised at the way Karma seemed so at ease.

There were two people in Gakushuu's house and they still had a housekeeper to clean and cook for them. Neither of them were people who spent time cooking meals.

Karma, though, naturally took out ingredients, checked their state and selected the ones he was about to use for dinner. He started cutting them up smoothly, skillfully, and Gakushuu wondered if his own knife skills would compare.

Gakushuu watched Karma confidently go through his kitchen, picking utensils and tossing things in the pan.

He paused for a moment and turned to look at Gakushuu, and Gakushuu wondered what kind of face he was making, to make Karma look at him so confused.

"What? Never seen a guy cook before?" He asked, a confident smirk on his lips.

Gakushuu frantically told himself that it was a biological reaction to be attracted to someone who cooked or fed them since ancient times and it wasn't just because-

Nope. Nope.

"I think you're better than me at it," Gakushuu complimented, his voice raspy. He cleared it and pretended it was because he just woke up. "Need any help?"

Karma blinked in surprise at Gakushuu and he wondered what the fuck he was still doing so late in another person's house.

"Hm. Set up the table, I guess?" Karma shrugged, going back to the meal.

Gakushuu went for the spoons and chopsticks he had already seen in the kitchen.

He was about to look for plates and bowls and Karma told him, "On the left" and Gakushuu followed Karma's instructions to set up the table, while he cooked.

"Medium spice, right?" Karma confirmed with him, already measuring out the spices and Gakushuu hummed in agreement.

Then Gakushuu went to search for the cats.

Gakushuu's skin prickled oddly at the way they were behaving with each other. Like the energy and caustic back and forths of their daily life were drained out, and…

Gakushuu had never just sat down with someone only to do their own things. Well, unless they were studying and then asking each other for solutions or checking methods.

But, the words were comfortable and to the point. It held no word games and only the information they wanted to convey.

Maybe someone might call it professional, in a way. But Gakushuu had never, in his life, had something like that.

There were word games everywhere. His vulnerabilities led to even more word games. Gakushuu was always doing his best to resist his father, in the midst of his own house, never truly comfortable to let go and do what he wanted.

So this felt uncomfortable, somehow. He wasn't used to it.

Being so familiar and at ease, looking at a new side of Karma, someone who wasn't even a classmate.

Willingly choosing to not.

Not fight, nor quarrel, not argue and play around each sentence the other threw out.

Suddenly, Gakushuu was extremely uncomfortable at the thought of how dinner might play out.

He wasn't sure he could take more of that kind of environment. He wasn't sure he could take more of this.

His ginger cat brushed against his hand and Gakushuu realized he was crouched in front of the two meowing cats. He stroked the cat in front of him.

Then he checked the healing cat and she rubbed her face against his arm and he felt a tad bit better again.

"Hey! Don't play with the cats right before dinner," Karma shot Gakushuu a look over his shoulder when he came back, and seemed relieved that Gakushuu wasn't carrying the cats back.

Gakushuu almost sighed in relief at the normal tone.

"I'm not planning to eat cat hair either, I just checked Yuki," Gakushuu rolled his eyes.

"So you admit, you were playing with them all day, huh?" Karma grinned, but the image was ruined by him coming over to pour the curry he made in the bowl. It was an oddly domestic scene when compared to the teasing words.

Gakushuu's eyes flicked away then back, suddenly embarrassed at the sight instead of the words. Karma laughed, misunderstanding.

"I knew it, you're such a cat, Shuu," Karma teased.

"Shut it. Who's the one willingly taking care of two cats in his own home?" Gakushuu scowled back.

"Are you telling me you weren't prepared to offer up your own home if you could?" Karma raised an eyebrow mock-judgmentally and Gakushuu knew he had lost.

He'd be a dick if he refused and Karma wasn't ever going to let it go if he actually admitted it with his own mouth.

"You're still the one taking care of it," Gakushuu mumbled judgmentally as he glared Karma down to his seat. Then they started eating.

Gakushuu didn't even notice Karma keeping an eye on him, a small smirk on his lips, as he took the first bite.

Then, feeling like he had been mistakes, he took another.

Then another, because. That couldn't possibly be true.

After the fourth, Gakushuu physically struggled between getting frustrated enough to throw down the spoon and between taking one more bite.

Karma snickered, and Gakushuu made the instant judgement of throwing his spoon at Karma's head instead.

He wasn't prepared for this, damn it.

If Gakushuu was being polite, Karma's food was out of this world. It wouldn't be a surprise to eat it at a very good restaurant. Maybe not Michelin Star level, but just the fact that he was trying to compare it to that.

In cruder terms, Karma was a fucking brilliant cook and Gakushuu was glad he didn't have ovaries. Really, the only thing worse than this would be liking Karma for his cooking skills.

He stole Karma's unused spoon, while he ducked and laughed at Gakushuu's face.

Gakushuu made the decision to busy himself with the food and forget about said cook.

Life just wasn't fair sometimes, and you had to learn to roll with the punches.

Gakushuu also learnt how to wash dishes that day. It was like a distant memory, but Gakushuu's memory was almost eidetic so of course it was something he did a lot in his past life. He had enough experience with it to become familiar after the first fumble.

Gakushuu had learnt how to cook from chefs- basic knife work, ingredients, spices, techniques. Nothing too unique, but his basic skills were well polished.

But he had never actually made food more than a few times at home. And every time he did, Mimi would come after and clean up.

It was her job so Gakushuu had always left her to it.

Karma laughed at him when Gakushuu had told him to do it once, then he had raised a brow in surprise at seeing him serious.

Karma had easily cleaned up his own plate and then watched Gakushuu clean his. The demonstration was enough, but his hand movements were still slightly awkward, he slowly became familiar, fragmented sensations coming and his own habits fixing mistakes that he made by relying on his imperfect past life.

"So you did know," Karma noted, and Gakushuu internally sweated. Karma hummed, narrowing his eyes.

"I can do the rest. Maybe you should go check on Yuki yourself while I'm at it?" he offered, and Karma stared into his soul. Then after a moment, he shrugged, clearly deciding to let it go.

"If you can't, just leave it in the sink, I'll do it," Karma said carelessly, deciding to go where Gakushuu had just been.

Gakushuu looked at the utensils and sighed.

It was slightly messier than he had expected, he had accidentally put too much of the dishwasher and the utensil slipped from between his fingers. He managed to catch it somehow, but his clothes became wet from the soapy bubbly utensil.

He winced.

He finished the rest and decided to just go to the washroom and wash the soap off from his shirt, which was about when Karma caught him stripping off his shirt.

"So you really aren't used to it, huh?" He asked, a smirk on his face, enjoying the superiority he held over Gakushuu.

Gakushuu felt a slight déjà vu, remembering his father at the door while he was puking into the toilet, sick, and his father had stood by the door and mocked him the whole time. But then Karma left as Gakushuu washed his shirt and when he returned, he tossed Gakushuu a shirt.

"You don't have anything to wear, right?" Karma's lips stretched into a smile, like he was being a kind gracious host.

Gakushuu opened the shirt suspiciously and the searing bright orange almost blinded him. He blinked back spots and stared.

It was somehow the most childish and tacky shirt he had ever seen, while still being in their mutual size. It was an obnoxious orange that a mostly blind person could easily spot from a distance, with a pony in front in pink.

Not only was the colour coordination terrible, Gakushuu's own hair would clash terribly.

Then he looked at Karma's hair and admitted that it would probably clash less than with Karma's bold red, at least.

"Who in their wrong mind decided to give this to you?" He said, utterly disgusted with the piece of cloth that he refused to believe Karma would buy even as a joke. Wasn't black the norm instead of something this terrible?

Gakushuu would prefer Karma going through a black emo phase instead of the colourful magical girl one.

Karma burst into startled laughter, before he poorly attempted to cover it by coughing into his first. Gakushuu shot him a look at the terrible attempt and was surprised to see Karma attempting to look at him solemnly but his lips kept stretching into a smile as he saw Gakushuu's horrified reaction.

"My parents gave this to me on my birthday. Automatic sizing with their own…design," Karma explained, then he grinned cheerfully. "And of course, it is something I can only give to my dear friend, who accidentally ruined his shirt in my very house!"

Gakushuu looked at his wet shirt and wished he hadn't drenched it so thoroughly in his irritation. He would have been willing to wear a half wet shirt if that was what it took.

He resigned himself to wearing the terrible distasteful shirt and silently hoped that Karma's parents burnt in hell for their terrible lifestyle choices. Specifically for their memory of their son's age.

"All right, get out," Gakushuu shooed Karma and there was a moment where he thought the other boy would bite his hand, but instead Karma darted in to grab his wet shirt, and gave him a mocking wave as he closed the door.

Gakushuu looked at the mirror, then at the shirt, and back again. Then he pulled the shirt over his head and slipped it on.

Surprisingly the material was soft and the smell was…familiar. He had a flash of memory, a moment of looking out the window into the ocean of students and a flash of red that caught his eye.

He inhaled. A meeting of gold and violet, across a veritable crowd of students.

Gakushuu dropped the shirt and met his own violet eyes. His cheeks were flushed, deeper than the slight dusting he was used to, when he got angry or frustrated or embarrassed.

His heart was beating in his throat, and there was a sensation under his skin. Something akin to embarrassment but also, a light almost unpleasant feeling that he related to nervousness.

He tilted his head up, and waited for his blush to pass.

It really was a frustrating sensation sometimes, Gakushuu thought.

Gakushuu opened the door and Karma was playing on his phone, his damp shirt missing instead of in a bag, like he was expecting.

Karma looked up, cheek resting on his fingers.

"You took a while. Appreciating yourself in the mirror?" Gakushuu very carefully didn't think about what he had actually been doing.

"I think I can pull even this monstrosity off," he smirked back, tilting his head arrogantly, showing him his model profile. A colour coordination that almost worked, if not for the pink pony.

Karma snorted, and Gakushuu sighed.

"Yeah, I can't pull this off either," he admitted frankly. "It's literally the ugliest thing I have ever seen. I have no idea what they thought your age was, but at least the material's pretty good."

Gakushuu rubbed the bottom hem of the shirt, feeling the high quality fabric. It made it that much worse that the design itself was so tacky.

He had taken a look at the tag and he still felt slightly surprised by the fact that Karma had implied it was custom made. Karma nodded along, agreeably but Gakushuu could see his dislike of the colours as well.

"...Don't they only do custom orders for regular customers?" He asked, curiously. Karma shrugged forced-casually.

"My parents probably are. People from the Japanese branch come by to take my measurements then again to drop off the finished product. It's like clockwork, on my birthday on the dot," Karma laughed, a bitter sound that didn't didn't fit in at all.

His expression said that he found the whole thing meaningless and distasteful, but there was a sense of loneliness around him.

"I've never celebrated my birthday," Gakushuu offered back, and Karma looked up at him, startled. "It's an odd enough time that people aren't really free and I just never minded," he shrugged.

"Well, that'd do it. It's the same for me," Karma grinned. Gakushuu raised an amused brow.

"Well, I'm certainly not you, Jesus Christ," he mocked.

"Well, at least you know I'm coming back to life at least once," Gakushuu's smile wavered for a moment before he redirected.

"I mean, if you want to check out your resurrection so badly, how about now?" He threatened, an eye on the path to the kitchen where a range of knives were kept.

"So eager to have blood in your hands? Are you planning to confess any other crimes while you're at it?" Karma suggested, his eyebrows lifting, entertained.

"I admitted nothing," he claimed. "Also, I'm not some kind of movie villain who monologues before killing his victims."

"Aha! So you admit to attempted murder," Karma exclaimed, his finger holding the record button on his phone. Gakushuu laughed, leaning forward.

"I don't have a habit of refusing people who are asking for death," his voice dropped into a mock-serious tone, and Karma smirked as he recorded Gakushuu's words.

"And now everyone will know who to go to if I suddenly end up dead," Karma saved the audio with a pleased expression.

"Why? Are you asking for death?" Gakushuu asked. Karma froze for a microsecond and Gakushuu felt a chill.

"I'm friends with Asano Junior," Karma said flippantly, "of course, I'm courting death."

"Karma," Gakushuu said, voice tight. Karma sighed heavily.

"I'm not," he rolled his eyes, looking into Gakushuu's eyes. "You can tell, can't you?"

Gakushuu looked into Karma's eyes and. Well, he was right.

Gakushuu and Gakuhou had both gone through every kind of behavior pattern for people who ended up actually suiciding, and also for people who were on the path to.

Gakushuu had been depressed for a while, but Gakuhou had never let him get to such a state. Gakuhou would have rather given up his entire education policy if it had made Gakushuu actually suicidal.

Sometimes Gakushuu almost wished he was, just so he could show him the flaws in the system, but Gakushuu could never muster up enough dislike or even harder, dissociate from life, with his father hovering over him.

"Yeah," he said after a few minutes of staring at Karma. Karma's expression softened.

"I can too," he said, his eyes looking meaningfully into Gakushuu's own.

Gakushuu gave him a wry smile that made him look his age.

"Of course you can," he shook his head, breaking eye contact.

"So what did you do with my shirt?" He asked, changing the topic with no subtlety. He saw a smile peak out.

"I threw it in the wash," there was a full blown teasing smile on Karma's face, "I mean, you are coming back."

Gakushuu wished he could refute it but he really couldn't.

"Shuu is such a cat person," Karma sighed dramatically, "does your dear class A know about how you cuddle them to sleep, Ace?"

He flashed his phone mischievously.

"Should I send them some pictures?"

Gakushuu lunged and Karma laughed.

Gakushuu stopped chasing after Karma when he realized yet again how late it had gotten.

He frowned for a moment, before deciding to quit it. Then he waved and left casually.

It wouldn't be the first or last time he came to Karma's house, though, it had gotten quite late already.

He had already become familiar with both Karma's house and the neighbourhood, able to navigate through it with his eyes closed.

Summer vacation, like winter, was a time a lot of his classmates tended to be busy. So was he, but he had shifted a lot of his free time around so he could spend more time with the cats.

Normally, today would have been his 'run away from home' day.

Which was why, he was surprised to be called out when he was going up to his own room. He debated changing but his father's voice was slightly impatient.

"Yes, father." He answered politely, standing by the doorway.

"Come in," Gakuhou said, his eyes looking at the orange monstrosity with distaste.

"You're late," he noted.

Gakushuu kept a blank expression, and nodded.

"My apologies, father. I wasn't aware of the passage of time," then Gakushuu internally winced. He shouldn't have given an excuse at all. It was a mistake Gakuhou was going to capitalize on.

Gakuhou's eyes narrowed at the remark.

"...I see. You weren't aware of the time," his voice became colder by a few degrees.

Gakushuu had cold sweat going down his back as he frantically tried to find a way out.

He couldn't give more explanations. It would bother him more. The best way to deal with it would be to take whatever his punishment was willingly instead of adding to it.

"My apologies," he repeated, looking at his father's cold eyes.

"Yes, I see that you are," Gakuhou commented. Gakushuu felt a stirring of discomfort at the remark.

Was this the wrong answer too? No, he would have been punished for something, as long as Gakushuu was opening his mouth to speak.

"You haven't managed to repeat your perfect score from the finals of your first year till now. I think it would be better to stay in for the rest of the summer to study, don't you?" Gakuhou suggested.

Gakushuu was actually open to defy his father for this. There wasn't a solid reasoning for the punishment, nor was the punishment appropriate when Gakushuu had a few more things left lined up.

But he shut his mouth and nodded.

Gakuhou was seriously ticked off about something since about halfway through the summer vacation, and Gakushuu used his EQ to determine this wasn't a situation he wanted to add fuel to.

Gakushuu went back to his room.

He hesitated, something about the situation just felt off.

'Keep a low profile if you can' he texted to the class group.

Then he switched to messaging Karma and texted him the same thing.

He didn't read any responses, choosing to drop his phone and relax back into his bed and the comfortable shirt he was wearing.

He fell asleep surprisingly quickly.