A/N: Hello everyone! I'm back with yet another chapter of Imperfect, in Seth's POV. (I think you all get the idea about the POV rotation but I like saying it anyway XD ). Anyway, this chapter is, like, dripping in angst, but that's why we luuuuuurve Seth, isn't it? XD I kinda wanna slap him back and forth sometimes, though. With all my love, of course. But still.

The usual gargantuan thanks to my lovely beta reader MidnightChaoticPhoenix, who is wonderful for taking the time to go over my (increasingly lengthy) chapters despite her hectic schedule. I'd ask her to pick one of my characters out for herself, but, uh...they're all mine. XDDD Big thanks to all mah vunderful reviewers too! Carmen lurves you all.

I'll try and get some pictures up in my profile of the four main characters (Megumi, Seth, Sean, Yuki), so stay tuned! Or something.

-Chapter Nine-
Seth

I awoke on the next Sunday morning with a slight fever. This, however, was nothing unusual, and I spent the whole day in only mild discomfort, alternately sitting in my room to do my homework and going out to smoke on the balcony.

By the end of the afternoon, the pack that Sean had bought for me had run out. The last cigarette was already burning between my lips when I realized this, and I promptly cursed and dropped the thing and stamped it out on the thin metal railing.

I went back inside and tossed the empty box on the kitchen counter, then reconsidered and dropped it in the recycling bin instead. All the while, I felt Sean’s eyes watching me from the sitting room.

“Are you quitting yet?” he asked as I passed, but I said nothing as I went around the couch and sat on the opposite end of where he was. His papers crackled as he shifted to turn towards me and said, “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I replied curtly, perhaps a bit too curtly. “Nothing besides the fact that I’m addicted to nicotine.”

“At least you realize it,” said Sean with a sagely air, but the silly, triumphant grin across his lips ruined it. “Are you gay?”

“Not any more than you.”

“Very much so, then.”

“You’re not homosexual,” I said in a voice that came out flat and low. “You’re attracted to men, but you cannot become emotionally attached to them in the way you do with women.”

He had the gall to look offended. “So not true. I got very nicely attached to my previous male exes, thank you.”

“Don’t give me that. I know you were only into them for looks.”

“As if you know what I think.”

“As if you know what I think.”

“Fair enough. But Seth, I don’t wanna argue, okay?”

“I’m not arguing, I’m stating facts.”

“Aww...”

“Look, just drop it, and I will too.”

“Oh, but if I did that, we would never argue!”

“Well what do you want then?” I asked, exasperated and turning only my head towards him to show it.

He smiled sweetly and moved closer, setting his homework papers down on the coffee table.

“Only your complete and utter happiness, my love.”

“Ugh.”

“What? It’s a noble goal, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps, but since when has anything noble ever worked out properly?”

“You’re such a pessimist. You know good things happen to good people, right?”

“In theory,” I conceded.

He waved his hands dismissively. “I don’t want to know what bloody theory thinks, I want to know what you think, brother dear.”

His hair was unbound and flowed unkempt over his shoulders and forehead, but he seemed totally at ease as he pushed the stray locks behind his ears. We held each other’s gaze for a moment, and then I said, very evenly, “I believe it’s true.”

“Do you now?”

“Yes.”

“Absolutely?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Then that’s it!” he exclaimed, and bounded forward to grasp me by the shoulders. “That’s why you’re so upset!”

“I’m not up–...”

“It’s because you believe that good things happen to all good people, and since you are obviously such a good person, you’re mad...no, enraged...that nothing good has happened to you in such a long time!”

“Nothing of the sort!” I retorted, but something in my chest expanded painfully, like acrid smoke filling my lungs.

He nodded vigorously and I expected him to grin or laugh in juvenile triumph, but he only smiled and sat back, moving away from me.

For long moments, neither of us said anything, and Sean kept on smiling and staring at me and being his generally cryptic and annoying self, but suddenly his smile dropped into a frown, and he moved close again.

“You’re hot.”

I glared at him. “Sean, I told you to stop that.”

“No, no, I don’t mean ‘hot’ as in ‘fantastically and mind-blowingly attractive’, which you of course are...I meant ‘hot’ as in temperature-wise. As in your skin is hotter than normal.”

He moved very close and forced himself into my lap to straddle me comfortably. I did not even bother resisting. Dull knives were pressing into the backs of my eyeballs. Sean touched his forehead on mine and held it there for a few seconds, during which the palpable emotion of him went from bad to worse.

“I have a fever,” I said to him after a while.

“So I’ve noticed. Since when?”

“Just now,” I answered, because I did not want him fussing over me for not resting since this morning.

“Why? Why today? Did you stay out too long? The sun, maybe? Maybe you’re allergic to books? Maybe you should stay away from books forever and live your life as an ecstatically happy farmer man!”

“I’d rather become a hermit,” I replied icily as I pushed him off me and onto the couch. “It’s nothing, anyway. Just a fever.”

“A fever,” Sean whined pathetically.

“Yes. A fever.”

“You have a fever.”

“So what? It happens all the time...”

“Exactly. That’s why I keep asking you what’s wrong, but you won’t tell me.”

I stood from the couch and straightened the front of my shirt, looking in his general direction but not at his eyes.

“You know I have a frail body, Sean. It’s always been like this, so I don’t see why you’re making such a fuss.”

“People die of fevers!”

“I won’t die!” I said to him in my most severe tone. “You’re being stupid now. I was even weaker when I was a kid, and I never got any worse than this.”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t have so many worries back then, did you?”

“Probably not.”

“You didn’t have Megumi back then either,” he remarked, quite unnecessarily, and giving a cheeky grin.

“Megumi-san,” I corrected sharply. “And I don’t have him. He’s not mine.”

“He could be.”

“No.”

“Seeeeeth...”

“I said no! Just...just go frolic with your Yuki-san and leave me out of all...all that.”

“Ah, frolic,” he sighed. He leaned back in the couch like it was luxurious thing and heaved a dreamy sigh. “Well, it wasn’t exactly a frolic...but we did have dinner, right?”

“Right.”

“It was wonderful! Yuki-saaaan...”

“I know it was, you told me all about it in excruciating detail once you came home.”

“But it was wonderful excruciating detail!”

“Whatever,” I grumbled, feeling like a bad man and a spoilsport but not being able to help it. “Could you make supper, please? I’m going to finish studying.”

“Of course, brother dear!”

I nodded my thanks to him, and for the rest of the afternoon retreated to my room and leaving it only when Sean pounded on my door to announce the completion of dinner.

As uninvolved as I wanted to remain with the Japanese people, even I, one of the two famous foreign students of Toumo University, could not make myself blind to the things that our presence was causing within the school. Famous was perhaps not a strong enough word to describe the effect we were having on the student population. More like a sensation or a phenomenon. Sean would say we were superstars. In a similar fashion, Jude would say we were Gackt and Hyde, whoever they are.

Scarcely a month had gone by when I received my first romantic confession, from a small, shorthaired girl in my math class, and since then there has been a steady downpour of the same kind of thing. I, of course, rejected all any and all offers for companionship, simply because they were not needed, and certainly not wanted. Even back home, I had no female friends aside from my cousins, simply because they were not needed.

Sean has many friends, both male and female, and both here and back in Britain. He has had many girlfriends too, because apparently “a bloke can’t live without his bird”, as he has taken the liberty to inform me on several instances. He has had many boyfriends as well, not quite as many as one would think, given his attitude, but a fair few. Certainly enough to make more distant relatives uncomfortable, if they knew.

I cannot say that it does not make me uncomfortable as well. After all, the proper union is always between a man and a woman, it always has been. Sean has never managed – and never will manage – to change my mind about that, no matter how many times he had called me to a certain room of our house just so I would walk in to the sight of two boys locking lips.

Just because I do not need women, it does not mean I need men. But he will never understand, because he will never try to understand. And sometimes I even wonder why I still bother trying to teach him.

Night fell slowly, accompanied only by the scratch of my pen on paper and the faint confused sounds of the television, coming from somewhere far beyond my peaceful study space.

Evenings have always been my preferred time of day, which is rather unfortunate for me since they make up such a small percentage of the day. My mother and I are the same in that we are both night people and function generally better late in the day, although over the years I have taught my body to forgo this rule and perform just as effectively in the daytime, which is of course an essential time for studying. According to some people, my mother and I are quite similar in more ways than one, but that is the public opinion to which I pay no heed.

Nights, however, are more difficult to bear, even more so than the day. Nighttime is quiet and empty, easy to crowd with loud, wandering, unnecessary thoughts. Being in an actual crowd is almost easier, because even though I wish ten times a day that I could be alone, I know that that is what is most terrifying.

Sean must find it strange that I always ask to be alone because he knows that I am afraid of being on my own. He may be completely clueless when it comes to my romantic feelings, or lack thereof, but for everything else, his insights are surprisingly accurate. But that is only because he cares so much about me, and for me.

This would explain why he never notices things about other people. He just does not care enough. People like him for his easy-going attitude and his good looks, but he will never like anyone other than for the company they provide, unless of course they go the extra mile to be noticed by him. He will never make the first move, since he knows just as well as everyone that people always flock to him no matter what he does. Some people are jealous, but once again he does not care.

After much introspection during my high school years, I had determined that in my case, it was in fact the opposite: that I cared too much, and therefore, in order to maximize my daytime efficiency, what I had to do was minimize my emotion output, or at the very least, make it less of a priority. And that is precisely what I’ve been doing since then, and because of this decision, I’ve become a model student in an almost worldwide fashion.

Because of this, I am happy.

If I had taken the time to notice that feeling that night, instead of through retrospection, I am certain I would have been happy then too. After all, what in the world could make me feel more accomplished than ensuring my continuing academic success? Certainly not friends, females or romance.

At night, however, things changed. At night, my self-fabricated cold inner voice seems to melt away with the warmth of the falling dusk, and does not seem to harden even through the cold of the pitch-black evening. I will be the first to recognize that I am at my most vulnerable once the daylight is gone.

That night, a chill seemed to pass over me as I wrote and wrote, and for a moment I laid down my pen to rub my upper arms distractedly with my hands. I got up to pull on a sweater, then sat back down and continued to work.

I heard sounds of movement from somewhere else in the flat – Sean moving about with as little care as possible – and steadily ignored them. This part was easy. I had long since learned to block out everything I needed to block out.

I stared down at my notes and the math problem sheet before me, tapped the end of my pen absently against my left wrist, and dropped the pen, causing me to look down to retrieve it.

My gaze lingered too long on what was visible of my hand and wrist past the knitted sweater, and with a frown at my own agitation, I pulled the sleeve up with my right hand.

When I was seventeen, I had somehow come to the conclusion that the one, most effective way of silencing unnecessary emotions was to cease functioning altogether, and with this thought in mind I had done my research and determined the most efficient manner of taking my own life.

I had put my plan into execution one night, when I was quite sure that everyone in the house was asleep. I had detached one of the razor blades from the shaver Dad had bought for me when I was fifteen, the one identical to the one purchased for Sean on the same day, and very carefully slid the sharp corner up my left wrist in a perfect vertical line.

I remember watching very coolly as the blood had begun to bead thickly along the cut then collect into a single red line against the paleness of my arm, and I had decided to carry out the plan and open my other wrist, but for some reason my eyes blurred and my hand trembled and I had not been able to help crying out in pain as the blade lacerated the edges of the wound. A moment later, Sean had burst into the same bathroom, all panicked with his long hair flying everywhere. Apparently, he had heard me from his room, adjoined to the bathroom we both shared, while, apparently, not sleeping as I had thought.

So he had discovered me there, sitting on the bathroom floor with a bloodied razor in my hand and my life force dripping out of my opposite wrist, and he had, of course, awakened the entire household with his madman screaming. And of course, the entire household had come running, just in time to witness me hastily blotting out the blood as though it were a sight unfit for their eyes.

We had driven to the hospital in the van that we always reserved for pleasant family outings. Mum had sat in the backseat with me the whole time, holding me gently with one arm as the fingers of her other hand pressed down on the thick bloodied gauze against my wrist. Even Judy had spent the entire trip in silence. Dad had kept telling Ryan to stop clutching his arm while he was driving.

Once we had reached the hospital, Dad had carried me inside, and once hit by the glaring hospital lights, I had passed out in his arms. When I had awoken, I had been lying in a soft, cool hospital bed. Everyone had been clustered around the bed; their forms a haze and unsubstantial through my myopic vision, and my left wrist had been affected by an alternately stabbing and lacerating pain.

Thinking of that past event always made me tired. I stared at the thick, white scar on my wrist for only a moment longer before shoving my notes back into their respective folders and standing. My head spun as though I had just lost blood.

I went to Sean’s bed and stayed sitting on the edge of it until he came in, some minutes later. He looked at me in surprise as he pulled his fingers through his unbound hair, smoothening out any knots. He was shirtless and carrying himself in that way he always does when he’s seen himself in the mirror.

“I feel sick,” I said to him, although in truth my fever had been nearly forgotten until that moment.

His expression soured then softened, and he came to sit beside me on the bed. He felt my forehead, tutted, fussed as usual. Only in this circumstance did the habit reassure me somewhat.

“I’ll get you a cold compress,” he said quietly, and went to rummage in the medicine cabinet for some time before returning with the whole box. He laid me down on his bed and put one compress on my forehead. The coolness felt good, though the fever still burned behind my eyes.

Sean removed my glasses and set them on the bedside table, and then he pulled the sheets over me and went to put a shirt on.

“I’m sorry it can’t be Mum doing this for you,” he said in a sincerely apologetic voice as he came close again.

I shook my head slowly against the pillow and told him it was fine.

I guessed that he was either smiling or frowning when he stood looking at me for some time. He turned off the light and climbed into bed beside me.

“You’ll get sick too,” I chided.

I felt him shrug beside me and settle down.

“S’fine. It’s a fever from you, anyway.”

“It doesn’t know that.”

“But you do. Tell it to be nice to me.”

“I’d like to tell it to be nice to me instead.”

“Aw, and use up all your brownie points on yourself? Selfish bastard.”

I smiled a bit. The compress was getting warm.

“I know I am.”

“I didn’t mean it.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“Even if I did, it shouldn’t change anything. I still love you like crazy, you know.”

“So much that it’s practically inappropriate. Go to sleep.”

“Yes, brother dear. Good night.”

“Good night,” I said in a low voice. “Thanks for getting us electric shavers.”

“You’re welcome.”

We fell silent, but I lay awake for a long time after he began snoring.

The next morning, I knew I had awoken later than usual when I recognized the sounds of someone bustling about in the kitchen. I grabbed for my glasses, shoved them on and tried to sit up, but the painful throbbing in my temples forced me back down. I groaned with a mix of discomfort and frustration, and from the kitchen, Sean yelled, “Don’t even think of getting up!”

He came in a few minutes later with a plate of slightly charred toast. A little dab of wasabi sat on the edge of the plate. I grimaced at it, then up at him. He had a half piece of toast caught between his lips. Apparently he was in the process of eating it.

“You eat wasabi with your toast?” I asked in a thoroughly disgusted voice.

He nodded enthusiastically, wiggling his eyebrows in his own silly excited way, and handed me the plate, then sauntered out to wreak more havoc in the flat.

Gingerly, trying not to jostle my overheated body, I pushed myself out of bed with the plate of toast balanced precariously in my trembling hand. I placed it down on the bedside table and went to refresh myself in the bathroom, but even the cool water did little to calm my heated skin.

As I emerged from there, Sean came up and thrust the plate of toast and wasabi back into my hands. At least now he was not running around with food in his mouth.

“You should eat to gather strength,” he said matter-of-factly. “And go back to bed.”

“No,” I said to him, squinting in displeasure. “It’s Monday.”

“Yes.”

“Monday means school. I have morning classes.”

“Not anymore, you don’t. You’re still uber feverish, therefore...”

He twisted his hands dramatically, drawing attention to his fit upper body. He has an affinity for strutting around half-naked.

“...you will stay home,” he finished pointedly, and dropped his hands like it was business done.

I glared at him. “I’m going to school.”

“I have spoken.”

“Sean...”

“I have spoken!”

“You’re not Dad!” I snapped at him. “You don’t get to order me about like I owe you obedience. I’m going to school as usual and that’s that.”

I took a ferocious bite from the first slice on the plate and attempted to look as determined as humanely possible, but that is always difficult when one has an inhumane amount of charred bread in one’s mouth. After a few moments of furious masticating, I swallowed with much trouble. Sean was giggling a little. I told him to stuff it and went to my room to change.

My head was still spinning as I made my way stomping to the kitchen, where I made myself a real breakfast, nothing that included overcooked bread and strange Japanese condiments. Sean was sitting at the kitchen table, still topless, with his laptop in front of him. He seemed to be leaving me alone, so with grim satisfaction I finished preparing myself for the day.

Everything went well up until the moment I had to go through the door. My shoes were on, my books in my bag and my bag on my shoulder. Nothing was out of order in here or on my person. So why...

I hated Sean for catching me as I stumbled back. The fever felt like a raging inferno within my body. I would not have been surprised if my skin and muscle had started boiling and melting clean off my bones.

“I’d like to say ‘I told you so’,” said Sean as he dragged me to the couch.

“Just shut up and go,” I growled. I dropped my book bag on the floor and sank back against the cushions, removing my glasses and pressing the heels of my palms hard against my eye sockets.

“But you need someone to take care...”

“I said go.”

“But...”

“I’ll be fine,” I said in a somewhat gentler voice. “Please, just...just go. I promise I’ll rest.”

He felt doubtful and like he was about to argue further, but he only ruffled my hair a little and laughed softly.

“All right, then. I’ll go. Want me to pick some cigarettes up for you later?”

I thought about it for a moment then said, “Yes, please.”

He clasped my hand firmly for a second before leaving. I exhaled with relief once the door shut behind him and collapsed on the couch, stretching my whole length upon it. Then I curled my legs tightly, using my arms as a pillow. Truth be told, I felt utterly miserable, and not just with fever.

There was a tightness in my chest that I did not recognize, even though it was hot like the fever. It was stronger, however, and the main contributing reason to my deciding not to go out after all.

I reached down and clumsily unbuttoned the front of my shirt, then continued to lie there as though dead.

Even though it was true that my body had been rather weak since childhood, the real reason for me getting sick all the time, even now, was something else. So far, I had been able to hide this from the rest of the family, but Sean, of course, with his unfathomable insight, had long since seen right through my excuses. He knew as well as I did that my sickness was more due to psychological than actual physical weakness.

I had first realized this some years ago, around the time when I decided to take my own life. Suddenly, everything had seemed even more useless than usual. Who needs a body that responds to every negative thought that dwells in the mind? Certainly not I.

The obvious thing, then, was and still is to simply get rid of the cause of the problem. And since getting rid of one’s mind is a substantially difficult task, getting rid of the body became the first choice.

But once again, the mind proved to be an impediment to even this plan. For it was my own mind, I knew, that had caused my instinctual fear of death to surface, which had in turn caused my hands to tremble and give me enough pain to cry out.

Since then, I have never again considered suicide, which I now come to see as a despicable, cowardly thing, but thoughts of what could have happened that night still return from time to time. What would have happened if I had not faltered, if I had gone through with it?

That is a stupid question. Of course, I would be dead.

A very, very strange thing happened near the middle of the day. I was still lying about, drinking cold water that made my gums ache, when Sean rattled the doorknob with his usual vehemence, but seemed to reconsider after a moment and let himself in with his key. I was sitting on the couch in my bedclothes, sparely covered in the blanket I had pulled from my bed.

I said hi to Sean as he came and plopped down on the couch beside me, but then I felt my body stiffen as another person entered the apartment after Sean and closed the door behind him.

“Takahata-san,” I said slowly, still registering his presence in our apartment when he should be at school.

“Hi, Buraku-san,” he said cheerfully, slipping his worn running shoes off at the door. “Sean-san told me you were sick, so I took extra good notes in math today and came to bring them to you.”

“Oh...”

I looked towards Sean, who only shrugged in a slightly guilty fashion and smiled. I tried not to roll my eyes at him.

“Well, anyway,” Megumi continued on a little nervously. “I only have one copy at the moment, so if I could have a few minutes to copy them down in my own notebook, then I can give these pages, okay?”

“You can go work on the kitchen table,” Sean said cheerfully to him, and we both watched as he smiled shyly and made his way there. A second later, though, he came back and said, “Um...you don’t think I could use your bathroom too?”

Sean laughed and ushered him towards it.

Once Megumi had disappeared into the room and closed the door, I turned sharply towards Sean and hissed, “What the bloody hell is he doing here?”

He raised an eyebrow at me like he did not understand.

“Well, he said so. He’s come to give you today’s lesson notes for your beloved math class.”

“I mean why is he here. He could have very well copied his notes down at school and given them to you to give to me!”

“Oh. Well...”

“This is your doing!” I said in my fiercest whisper. “You’re trying to set me up! You devious little prick.”

“Now, now, brother dear...”

“Don’t ‘brother dear’ me, Sean. I told you specifically to not meddle in my personal affairs.”

He finally seemed to lose patience as he snapped, “You have no personal affairs! I’m trying to create some for you!”

“I don’t need any!”

“Who doesn’t!”

“I don’t!”

“I’m sorry, is this a bad time?”

We both turned towards Megumi, who was standing at an embarrassingly close distance and had no doubt picked up the end of our conversation. In any case, he seemed to have gotten the general idea of our near-row, and looked appropriately uncomfortable.

“As a matter of fact, it is,” I said to him, not bothering to keep the bite out of my voice. “I am very sick with a high fever and would no doubt transmit the sickness to anyone who dares to set foot in this apartment. It would be best if you left to avoid contamination.”

Sean said “Seth!” in a pleading voice, but I ignored him and went on in a curt voice: “I’ll copy down your notes and return them to you tomorrow. You don’t have to worry, I’ll be in class tomorrow for sure.”

There was a heavy pause, during which I was painfully aware of Megumi’s stricken expression.

“Oh. All right,” he answered finally, in a quiet voice. His eyes were downcast, his artificially streaked hair obscuring his face. “The notes are on the table. I’ll see you both tomorrow then. Get well soon.”

He moved quickly past Sean and I and went to retrieve his backpack from the kitchen, then hastily returned to pull on his shoes. He did not meet our eyes as he waved a vague goodbye.

Once he had let himself out and shut the door, Sean stood from the couch and shouted, “Why the hell did you do that?”

I got up, leaving the blanket in a pile on the couch, and tottered to the kitchen to get the notes. His handwriting was surprisingly neat, and although the notes were probably not as complete and concise as I would have liked, it would have to do.

But Sean was not through. He followed me and grabbed my arm roughly, yanking me around so that we were face to face. The notes spilled onto the floor in a skittering of paper on linoleum.

“There was no need for you to speak to him so harshly,” he went on, his words coming out sharp and hard like he was clenching his teeth. “If I were you, I’d run out and apologize to him right now.”

“What, and endanger my health any further?” I replied, my voice taking on a strange taunting quality. “No thank you. I’d rather not do anything so stupid as what you’d do.”

“Why are you like this? He’s only trying to help. He wants to be friends!”

“Well, you can tell him I don’t need his friendship.”

“He’s been so kind to you and all you can do is shun him like that? What kind of person are you?”

By then, he had grabbed the collar of my pajama shirt with both hands, his green eyes blazing angrier than I had seen him in a long time. Growling, I shoved him away from me and stumbled back hard against the kitchen table.

“If he’s so kind and perfect, than why don’t you go and make friends with him?” I yelled. “He’s just your type too, isn’t he? He’ll sit and listen to your insane jabbering all day without a single complaint!”

“I know he’s my type, I kissed him!”

“And you...what?”

“I said I kissed him,” said Sean.

Our voices had gone quiet all of a sudden in the wake of his strange revelation, and for a moment I could not find the words to tell him just how tremendously stupid he was.

“You are tremendously stupid,” I said to him, in a strangely neutral voice.

He nodded and said, “Yes.”

“Tremendously stupid.”

“Yes.”

Without another word, I stepped past him and went to my room, pulling on proper clothes before rushing out and shoving my feet into my shoes. Sean came into the room and stared at me quizzically, perhaps even with a bit of wonder, but I ignored him and strode to the kitchen to pick Megumi’s notes up from the floor and left the apartment without so much as another glance in his direction.

My fever was still raging in my body, making my blood vessels pound in my head, but I steeled myself against the discomfort and made for the elevator, which, in an unfortunate turn of events, seemed to refuse to come up to this floor. I cursed and moved away from it, choosing instead to dash down the staircase with the notepapers clenched tightly in my hand.

When I reached the ground floor lobby, I had to shield my eyes from the brightness coming in through the clean glass doors. My head ducked, the notes flapping and crackling in front of my squinted eyes, I pushed out of the building and looked painfully around. There he was, with light streaming through the reddened locks of his hair: Megumi Takahata, moving swiftly away on those cursed roller skates of his.

I started running after him despite the wheeze in my chest, and shouted, “Wait, Takahata-san!”

He turned sharply and seemed on the verge of falling over as he caught sight of me. He stopped and held himself up against the wall of another building as I approached. My lungs burned from the effort of running while ill, and I was forced to stand bent over and panting in front of him for a few moments before shoving his notes up in his face.

“Take them,” I said haltingly, feeling the sweat streaming uncomfortably down my neck. “I can’t take them.”

He looked at me with an odd look on his face, and said, “You said you’d give them back tomorrow. It’s fine. I don’t mind at all.”

“Liar!” I puffed out, but the horrible state of my lungs deformed the word into a gasp of air. “Liar! Liar!”

He seemed to understand after I had repeated it a few times. His eyebrows furrowed and his lips thinned as his mouth tightened, but I stopped paying attention because I suddenly realized that I would not be able to catch my breath. My body felt even weaker from lack of oxygen, and before I could stop myself I had collapsed onto the sidewalk, only just managing to hold myself up on the side of the brick building beside me. Megumi made a little sound, halfway between a shriek and gasp of concern.

“Buraku-san! Buraku-san, daijoubu? Buraku-san!”

The summer heat was almost too much to bear for my fever-wracked body. Feebly, I pushed the crumpled pages into his hands as he knelt down beside me on the hot sidewalk.

“Buraku-san...”

“...take them...”

“No, Buraku-san...”

“I’ll be fine soon. Just...just go...”

Just go. The same words I had uttered this morning, selfishly uttered. Selfish words veiled under pretence of kindness and independence. Why can no one see that I cannot; just cannot be independent?

“No.”

“Wha–...”

“No, Buraku-san. Veils can always be lifted, you know?”

“What...did I say tha–...?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t pay attention to me,” I mumbled, my legs still crumpled under me as I half lay on the sidewalk. “Don’t pay any attention to me, I’m delirious. Bloody delirious. I’m crazy. I’m insane. Don’t pay any attention to me.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” said Megumi quietly. He was sitting on the concrete, right beside me. He had my hand, the one still clutching the note papers with desperate tightness, gently caught between his own, like he was comforting me. He felt so very close. I tried to cringe away from him, but found that I could not move.

“Ssh,” he said. “Don’t force yourself. You’re sick. It’s dangerous to run when you have such a high fever.”

“It’s because I smoke,” I said roughly, and suddenly a cough rose in my chest, as though to prove a point.

“I know you do. Sean-san told me you started really young. Because of stress or something.”

“Yes.”

“My dad smoked too. He tried stopping, for Mom, mostly, but in the end he never could. Oh, I’m sorry! That wasn’t very encouraging...”

“It’s fine.”

“Buraku-sa–...”

“I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“I said I was sorry,” I repeated, my voice feeling a little stronger now. “I shouldn’t have...thrown you out like that. You were only trying to help. I apologize for being so rude towards you.”

I stopped and closed my eyes. Suddenly I was very tired, as though I had not been lounging around the whole day.

My eyes blinked open with surprise when he laughed, quite unexpectedly, and I felt his hands tighten around mine.

“It’s okay,” said Megumi with a smile in his voice, that same slightly melancholy smile he always kept on his face. “I didn’t think it would be a good idea to just come over like that, but Sean-san insisted.”

He laughed again, gently, and added, “To tell you the truth, he had this really sneaky look on his face when he asked me. Like devious. Almost like he was trying to set us up or something.”

His third laugh was a little embarrassed, but for some reason, I felt a smile pull at my own lips.

“Yeah, he’s like that,” I said. “I’m also sorry for what he did to you today.”

Megumi’s smile faded a little, but the next moment he was shaking his head and saying, “Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry about it?” I repeated. “What he did was a violation of you, wasn’t it?”

“Huh?”

“Well, he forced it on you, didn’t he?”

“Oh...well...”

“I’m sure he did.”

A sudden thought hit, easily the most obvious thought in the world, and I began to babble, “Unless you...well...”

He shook his head very hard, like a child. “Oh, no! I didn’t ask for it, if that’s what you’re thinking! It came out of nowhere, I swear! But...”

“But...?”

“Well, you are his brother, you should know,” he said slowly, the smile returning shyly to his lips. “Sometime later this morning, he...Sean-san asked me out.”

“Did he now?” I asked wearily, thoroughly unsurprised.

“Yes. And I said I would, at least once, to see...”

“I get it.”

“Please don’t be mad at him, I’m sure he was going to tell you...”

“It’s all right. I already knew.”

“That he’s...”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Okay, then.”

Slowly, I pulled myself up onto a more upright sitting position, dropping the notes as I did so. Megumi let go of my hand, drawing his hands back quickly, and watched me anxiously as I stood up. Then he clambered to his feet, the wheels of his skates clacking against the pavement.

“Will you be okay?” he asked me, looking very concerned, like I mattered to him, and still slowly, I nodded. His face broke into a smile of relief.

“That’s good.”

He bent, with that same display of skill I had questioned just a little while ago, and picked up the now ruined notes, dusting them off a bit before handing them back to me.

“They’re still legible. Take them,” he said before I could protest. “You need them more, since you weren’t even in class. You can just give them back to me tomorrow, okay?”

We looked straight at each other for one moment, then he looked away and I took the papers from his hand.

“Thank you,” I said, genuinely grateful, and forced myself to smile at him, to smile for him, to ensure him that this one act was a welcome thing.

He smiled back, took a step backwards and waved, and then he turned around and swiftly skated away. I stood standing at the same spot for long moments after the rolling sound of his skates had faded away.

When I got back up to the flat, I found Sean waiting fretfully in the hallway by the elevator. More precisely, the first thing I met upon reaching the floor of our place was his startled face. The next thing I knew, he had fluttered anxiously into the elevator and clung to me as though I were on the verge of death, which admittedly, I felt like I was.

“Seth! Seth, you maniac, what the bloody hell did you go do that for?”

“Run me a cold bath,” I replied. “And dump all the ice we have into it. Then make some more.”

“Brother dear, I can’t exactly lay ice, you know.”

“Obtain it by whatever means possible.”

I went into the flat and lay down on the couch, the same couch that I had spent all day on as I alternately thought of ending my life and spending it in the deepest of torpors.

For some reason, Sean followed my questionable orders and pulled the coldest bath possible, in his opinion, complete with ice cubes from the freezer. It must have been because he knew I would never get into it, that he in fact knew that I would fall asleep right there on the couch, holding Megumi Takahata’s math notes against my chest like they could protect me from the days to come.