An Idiot's Guide to Ectopic Birth

True to prediction, it was a rainy, dreary Sunday, certainly unfit for any tennis matches. Yanagi supposed the tournament coordinators had made a good call, though he wondered if the weather would clear up in time for tomorrow's scheduled rain date.

As it was, Yanagi was making his way down the fairly empty streets, listening to the rain as it pounded down on his umbrella. It didn't take him long before he came to a certain nondescript house in the Tokyo suburbs, and he knocked on the door, waiting for Inui to let him in. Sure enough, Inui didn't disappoint. Yanagi could hear his footsteps as he came down the stairs, and then the door was being thrown open.

"Sadaharu," he said, smiling, "I was hoping you could treat me to some lunch."

"Renji. Come in, come in."

Yanagi closed his umbrella as he crossed over the threshold, shaking it a few times before leaning it against the wall. Inui was explaining something as he led them to the kitchen, something about his mother being out at the grocery market or else she would have loved to see him. He was serving Yanagi some rice and grilled fish, and Yanagi hoped that it had been cooked by Inui's mother because Inui wasn't exactly much of a cook.

"So," Inui said, finally taking a seat across from him at the kitchen table, "what brings you here?"

"I can't just come visit an old friend?"

Inui chuckled slightly at that. "As much as I enjoy your visits, they're far and few between."

"Maybe I would come visit more," Renji said, a teasing gleam in his eyes, "if I weren't so hurt by the fact that you never come to visit me."

"Well. I suppose we'll both have to make more of an attempt to spend time together."

"I wholeheartedly agree."

The kitchen table was small, and Inui's hands were within a chopstick's distance from where Yanagi held his bowl of rice. Close enough to touch, but Yanagi was smart enough to know not to.

"At any rate," he said, finding it safer instead to discuss tennis, "I was wondering if Seigaku has decided on their line-up yet."

Inui's expression hadn't changed, but Yanagi could see the gears in his head start to turn. He wasn't trying to get privileged information, though, and Inui knew that. Both teams had certain interests regarding what matches they wanted to play, and it wouldn't harm either of them to make sure that happened.

"I would," Inui started, testing, "enjoy playing against you again."

"That would be fun. I'll be in doubles two with Akaya; I'll even tell him to try not to injure you too badly. And, you know, Sanada has a deep interest-"

"In playing Tezuka." Inui smiled. That much was common knowledge. "We'll be placing him in singles three, interestingly enough. We had assumed Yukimura would be placed in singles one."

"And you want your Echizen to play against him." Yanagi sighed, completely clueless as to why Echizen's teammates had latched onto him the way they did. The boy was arrogant and ill-mannered, as far as Yanagi could tell. "Well, you had assumed correctly."

Yanagi relaxed in his seat, now that their business had been taken care of. He was about to ask what exactly were Inui's plans for the rest of the day, when footsteps sounded from the hall, and a third person entered the kitchen.

"Inui-senpai, your father let me in. Sorry for being late."

"Don't worry about it, Kaidoh."

Well. Yanagi wasn't sure why he hadn't expected that, considering the fact that Inui and Kaidoh seemed to be close. Even so, Kaidoh's sudden presence was a surprise. Yanagi turned around to find that Kaidoh was staring directly at him.

"Hello, Kaidoh," Yanagi said. "Are you doing better?"

The boy was silent for so long that Yanagi wasn't sure if he was going to answer. Despite his temper and obligatory scowl, all information sources pointed to Kaidoh being a chronically shy boy. And a bit of a cross-dresser, if Shitenhouji's Konjiki was to be believed, but Yanagi hadn't cared to follow up that rumor.

"Yes," he finally replied. "Thank you for the other day."

"Oh?" Inui looked back and forth between the two of them. "Did you two run into each other recently?"

"I found your kohei in quite the state a few nights ago," Yanagi said. He turned to Kaidoh. "What happened, exactly?"

"An allergic reaction to something in Inui-senpai's vitamin drink."

Inui was already taking out his notebook. "I'm so sorry, Kaidoh. You'll have to tell me which one it was so that doesn't happen again."

"It's okay, Inui-senpai, it wasn't so bad." Kaidoh glanced at Yanagi again before turning back to Inui. "Can we go now?"

"Yes, of course. Renji, I'm sorry to end this visit, but-" Inui stopped in the middle of his sentence, his face brightening. "Actually, why don't you come with us? We're searching for an ingredient to put in one of my drinks."

"In this rain?" Yanagi asked, incredulous.

"Yes, well, that's the thing. It's a fungi that only comes out when it's raining. We've been waiting for weather like this ever since. . . well, ever since last week, when it rained, but our search wasn't very fruitful then."

"I wouldn't want to interrupt," Yanagi said.

"No, we'd love to have you along. It will be just like when we were kids. Kaidoh, you don't mind, do you?"

Kaidoh was frowning, but he only hesitated for a moment. "It's fine with me."

After Inui passed out plastic bags and laminated photographs of the fungi they headed out, each sheltered under the expanse of his own black umbrella. Inui led the way, Kaidoh and Yanagi clustered a little bit behind him.

"This is pretty nostalgic, isn't it, Renji?" Inui asked, his voice slightly muffled by the rain.

"Yes. To think that you're still making those horrible concoctions of yours."

Inui laughed, a deep, sinister sound. "They have their uses."

Kaidoh was looking at Yanagi again, this time in a rather curious way. "Did Yanagi-san used to go on walks like these with Inui-senpai?"

"Always," Yanagi replied, grinning at Kaidoh in a vaguely smug way. "We would spend hours outside, just the two of us, looking for all sorts of things to put in Sadaharu's juice. Then when we'd get tired we would go back to my place and Sadaharu would sleep over, clinging to me the whole time because he thought my house was haunted. Sadaharu used to be so cute back then."

"Renji," Inui said, his voice scolding, only he was laughing as well. "You're going to give Kaidoh the wrong idea about us."

"Yes." Yanagi was careful not to let his smile slip from his expression. "Well. . ."

"Inui-senpai and I have gone on a lot of these walks, too," Kaidoh stated, his eyes on Yanagi's, but Yanagi felt it was better not to outwardly react to the statement.

"Well, this is it," Inui said, coming to a stop in a small clearing in the forest. "We should split up and look for it. Maybe meet up here in an hour?"

The other two stated their assent, and then they were parting. As he crept into the forest, eyes carefully scanning the shade beneath trees and roots, Yanagi wondered what exactly it was that he was doing here. Did he actually think that doing this would bring him closer to Sadaharu? It was a foolish thing to think, given the space that had sprung up between them after he had moved away.

After awhile he came across a silhouette some yards in front of him. From the green cloth atop the figure's head, he figured it was Kaidoh, and frowned to see that the other boy was sitting on a rock without his umbrella to shelter him. Yanagi hurried over, holding his umbrella over the both of them. Kaidoh looked up at him, and he could see that the younger boy's arm had a long cut in it, and he was attempting to bandage it with just his other hand.

"I fell," he said, but Yanagi was already kneeling down next to him.

"Hold this," Yanagi said, pressing his umbrella into Kaidoh's hand. "Really, considering your kon-gen, you should be careful not to get too wet."

As Yanagi took Kaidoh's arm in his he saw that Kaidoh's umbrella was laying discarded on the floor, but only filed that detail away for the time being. Instead, he took Kaidoh's arm in his hands.

Yanagi's fingers ghosted around the cut, Kaido's skin shivering beneath them in that familiar way. The cut was long and bleeding quite an amount, but it was fairly shallow. Nothing that would affect the use of his arm, and nothing that wouldn't completely heal in more than a few days. Yanagi took the bandages and started wrapping them around Kaidoh's arm, oblivious to the lack of distance between them and Kaidoh's rising body heat.

"Why are you being so nice to me?"

Yanagi looked up, but the planes of Kaidoh's face were cast in shadows at the moment. He wondered if Kaidoh was talking about this or about before. Probably both.

"I suppose," Yanagi said, "it's because it's the decent thing to do. I don't mind helping you. . . even if we are in love with the same person."

Yanagi had expected at least some small shift of emotion to come over Kaidoh's face, so Kaidoh surprised him by not reacting to the statement. Kaidoh only looked at him, and there was silence except for the rain pouring around them.

"Well," Yanagi continued, his voice lower and harsher, "I suppose it could also be because I sympathize. After all, sexuality isn't a malleable concept for monkeys, like it is for us. A straight monkey is a straight monkey, isn't he?"

And that had always been the rub. Long walks, sleepovers, Sadaharu's given name flowing freely from his lips. But it had never been, and it would never be, anything more than just platonic.

Kaidoh gently tugged his arm away from Yanagi at the same time that he leaned forward.

"The truth is,"Kaidoh said, his eyes dark with some unnamed emotion, "I've gotten over Inui-senpai a long time ago. Why haven't you?"

The kiss was so brief and so light that, later on, Yanagi wondered if it had happened at all. But, at the moment, he was sure he felt Kaidoh's lips brush softly against the corner of his mouth, before the other boy grabbed his umbrella and ran away.

Yanagi listened to the quick footsteps, half eaten up by wet dirt. His head was a blank, and he wasn't sure if he should be confused or surprised. He could hear Inui calling both of them now, and he stood up, bringing two fingers to the part of his mouth that Kaidoh may or may not have kissed.

The next ten minutes passed in a haze. Rejoining the other two, Inui eagerly showing off the fungi he had found, Kaidoh nodding and smiling in half-false sincerity. As though nothing had happened, and then they were parting, Yanagi walking one way and the Seigaku players walking another.

Yanagi didn't know where to go, so he went to Sanada's house. He found the other boy in a back room, in a XXX as he practiced kendo strokes. The paper screens of the far wall were open, the rain falling beyond it, rain drops breaking like brittle pins on the leaves and rocks of the Sanadas' immaculate Japanese garden.

They didn't say anything to each other. Yanagi took a seat against the wall, next to where Kirihara was sleeping on the tatami floor. And for some time, watching Sanada practice against the rain, Yanagi felt at peace.

Yanagi didn't know he had fallen asleep until he was being woken up. Soft snickering, and Yanagi blinked his eyes open to see Kirihara's face, a black marker in his hand and its felt tip dangerously close to Yanagi's face.

"Akaya," he said, voice heavy with sleep, "what did you draw on my face?"

"Nothing, Yanagi-sempai."

More snickers, but Yanagi didn't mind. He reached out, burying fingers in Kirihara's hair and ruffling it as Kirihara grinned at him. The soft jingling of porcelain sounded from from the doorway, and Yanagi looked up, surprised to see that it was Yukimura and not Sanada who was bringing in the tea cups.

"I can make tea too," Yukimura said, almost pouting at Yanagi's expression. "Akaya, Sanada needs your help with something."

"With what?" Kirihara asked, but he was already getting up.

"I'm not sure, but he's in the kitchen right now."

Kirihara ran off, and Yanagi went to sit at the small table where Yukimura was pouring them both cups of tea. The rain had stopped.

"Are you okay?" Yukimura asked, his eyes searching as he raised his cup to his lips.

"I'm fine."

"Hmm. You've been acting a little strangely lately."

"Are you worried about my tennis game?" Yanagi asked, teasing.

"Every now and then," Yukimura said, a small smirk on his lips, "I do recognize that the world doesn't revolve around me. I'm allowed to care about you outside of your use to the tennis club."

"Of course." But the emotions and thoughts swirling like a typhoon through Yanagi's head didn't exactly manifest in words. So he didn't say anything, despite the questioning looks that Yukimura was giving him. They sat in comfortable silence, drinking tea and listening to the cicadas as they started to come out.

Walking home later on, Yanagi's confusion gave way to a profound sense of self-depreciation. He felt altogether pathetic. I've gotten over Inui-sempai a long time ago, came Kaidoh's voice. Why haven't you? And why hadn't he? He was still living three years in the past, idealizing a childhood crush that had never, would never, turn into something substantial. Every one around him had some one, but he only had fragments of memories, filtered through some rose-colored lens.

"I'm home," he called, stumbling into the foyer of his home.

"Welcome home," his mother called back, in her soft, dulcet tone of voice. "You have a friend waiting upstairs in your room. Ask him if he wants to stay for dinner."

Yanagi brightened at that, wondering who his surprise guest for the evening was. He made his way upstairs, opening the door to his room to find Kaidoh sitting on his bed.

Kaidoh had his back slowly hunched over, legs stretched out in front of him, his attention focused somewhere in the floor. But with Yanagi's entrance he straightened and looked up, eyes blinking in mild surprise.

"Yanagi-san," he said, "why do you have a mustache and beard drawn on your face?"

Ah, yes. Yanagi had forgotten about that.

"I fell asleep," Yanagi explained, coming to sit at his desk, "and Akaya decided to have some fun. But, Kaidoh, why are you here?"

"I came to apologize. I was too abrupt, this afternoon."

"Oh, that." Yanagi leaned against his chair, bringing his arms to cross in front of his chest. "There's no need to apologize."

"No, I. . ." Kaidoh hadn't been looking at him since he first entered, eyes flitting to and fro, but now he did again. "Do you. . . can you wash those things off your face? It's hard to talk to you seriously right now."

"Oh. Yes, of course."

Yanagi got up and walked to the bathroom, seeing for the first time the handlebar mustache and goatee that Kirihara must have drawn earlier. Kaidoh's presence in his room had him a little stunned, but the water helped. He felt more refreshed, more himself, when he re-entered his room. This time when he sat down, he sat down on the bed next to Kaidoh.

"Are you in love with Inui-senpai?" Surprisingly strait forward and direct. If Yanagi hadn't been thinking about it all day, he wouldn't have known how to answer the question.

"I'm not sure," he answered, because that was the most honest thing he could say. Love, infatuation, fixation. . . they could be hard to sort out. But the fact was, it had been three years, and they were both completely different people now. "Probably not."

"Yanagi-san. I'm not sure if it's because of the season we're in, but ever since that night you took care of me, I've liked you." Kaidoh's cheeks were a furious red, his eyes glaring at some point near his sneakers. Yanagi wondered if he was going to say any more, but it seemed as though he was content to wait for Yanagi's reply.

Yanagi sighed. "It. . . it's not as though I don't like you. It's just that I haven't really thought about it."

Kaidoh was certainly cute enough. And he had stuck up for Yukimura that one time, against Murigaoka, something that had endeared him to Rikkai's tennis club after they had all found out about it. But Yanagi didn't really know Kaidoh, and he had never been like other madararui, able to fall in love or like by scent alone. But. . . he was willing to take a chance.

"Renji!" Yanagi's mother called from downstairs. "It's time for dinner! Is your friend staying?"

"I should go," Kaidoh said, voice almost a whisper as they stared at each other.

"Do you. . . do you want to go out on a date this Friday? There's a poetry reading at a book store that I wanted to go to."

"Yeah," Kaidoh answered, the flush on his cheeks lessening. "I'd like that."

"I'll walk you to the station."

"You don't have to."

"Well, at the very least," Yanagi said, "I'll walk you to the door."

The two walked downstairs in semi-awkward silence, then Yanagi opened the door for Kaidoh to leave. The younger boy did so almost tentatively, feet slow to step over the threshold. Kaidoh's lips were almost a pout. It made Yanagi want to kiss him, and he decided to act on impulse for once. He reached out to grab Kaidoh's wrist, pulling them together and pressing their lips together in a way that was almost chaste.

They pulled back after a second, and Yanagi let Kaidoh's wrist go.

"Good night, Kaidoh," he said. "Good luck tomorrow."

The small smile on Kaidoh's face threatened to send Yanagi's heart into somersaults.

"You too," Kaidoh replied, and, as he turned away. . . "please don't be too angry when we beat you."

And then, before Yanagi could answer, he was running away.