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This wasn’t the first time that Kojiro Nanjo had left Kaoru alone with promises of return, nor would it be the last. This Kaoru was certain.
“Carla, time.” His words were curt, but the black board loosely gripped in his hand lit up and responded without hesitation.
“Fifteen minutes and forty nine seconds, master.” He was keeping track of exactly how long it would take for Kojiro to return with his motorcycle. At least this time he knew it wouldn’t be four long and agonizing years. This time.
~~~~
“You are-” Kaoru couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. He looked away from Kojiro, the caramel eyes overwhelming him. He swallowed hard, cleared his throat and steadied his voice.
"You are leaving to study in Italy?" The pink haired teen had managed to level his voice, pulling most of the sadness and disappointment out of his tone.
“Yeah! I got accepted into a critically acclaimed cooking school! When I get back, I wanna open up my own restaurant!” Kojiro leaned against the railing, looking out into the sea. This was one of their favorite places to learn new tricks. It was just so convenient, and had been a safe place for them for so long.
“A chef?” Kaoru swallowed hard, his back to the ocean, hands gripping the rail.
The sound of the sea overcame them both, the soft crashing against the rocks. It was peaceful. Kaoru had always known this. Yet, it did nothing to quell the racing beating of his heart. It ached, and it felt as if he would never be whole again.
“Adam left for the states yesterday.” Golden eyes so similar to that of a cat glanced back, an edge of hurt behind the mask he was forming.
“Oh.” Kojiro pushed back from the railing just enough that he could look at Kaoru’s face. His features were unreadable, but the green haired man knew better than that. “How’d you find out?”
There was more silence, as they waited together for Kaoru to be able to say it. It hurt, almost as much as it had hurt hearing that Kojiro was leaving him, too. It was something he was going to have to figure out, being alone. He had never a day in his life been without Kojiro. Now, he was without a boyfriend and he was soon to be without his best friend.
“I texted him yesterday, and got an automated response back saying the phone had been disconnected.” The words were hard to wrap around, feeling that it was a bad love story that he wanted nothing to do with. “I went to his house this morning-”
Kaoru swallowed hard, shaking the memory from his head as the words became harder to speak. It was not like a small wound. No, it was a large gash across his heart and he was openly bleeding out into his chest.
“Tadashi intercepted me before his aunts did.” Kaoru continued.
“The master has gone away to America.” He had said, and in that moment, they both had been feeling the same pain.
“He didn’t even have the decency to break up with me or give me his number. I don’t know for how long he will be gone, but according to his loyal lapdog, it is going to be for a while.” A shuddering sigh left Kaoru’s pierced lip. He swallowed hard, only now daring to glance at Kojiro.
“I’m sorry.” The smile that had been on his lips when he had announced his plans faded, and the only thing that remained on the supple lips was a downward curve. “I don’t have to accept.”
It made it even worse that Kojiro was willing to sacrifice his livelihood for him. There was nothing that made him deserve that. Instead, Kaoru shook his head, leaning back over the railing. “Don’t you dare. I want you to become the best damn Italian chef the world’s ever seen.”
~~~~
“Okay! But catch this!” There was so much noise on the other end of the skype call, and Kojiro was smiling like the baboon he was. The pure happiness that was filling the sharp features made Kaoru forget about the ache in his chest. Since he had wished the imbecile away a month and a half ago, it had been an almost semi constant reminder of his loneliness.
“Yes, Kojiro?” His voice was calm and level, as he stared at his computer screen. His own dorm, was minimally decorated and felt nothing like the room still at his parents.
“Okay,” Kojiro turned in the frame, and spoke something in, as far as Kaoru was concerned, very bad Italian. “Sorry. So. In the kitchen today, Chef Brambilla asked me my name, right?”
He was laughing already, and obviously there was a girl laughing heavily in the background. Kaoru swallowed hard, trying not to let the noise get to him.
“So, I said my name, right? Kojiro Nanjo!” There was a chuckle which drowned out the girl. “And he was like, ‘Yes. Joe.’ And I was like, ‘No. Kojiro Nanjo.’ I don’t think he can get down the japanese. So, everyone is calling me Joe, now. It's the funniest thing ever.” There was another laugh as Kojiro shook his green locks. He had grown it out slightly since he had seen him last. It wasn’t a terrible look on him, not at all.
“How clever.” Kaoru smirked, letting a sigh pull his shoulders down. “So, what now? Would you like me to call you Joe, too?” It was a snarky response, but not one that Kojiro wouldn’t be able to handle.
There was clearly another voice in thick Italian that Kaoru did not understand. He made a mental note to learn Italian. Kojiro responded quickly before his attention was back on his phone with Kaoru.
“Sorry, we are about to go out to a party.” There was a pause as if that was a reasonable response for being mostly ignored on a call that Kojiro had been one to make in the first place. Kaoru did not respond.
“No.” Kojiro responded finally, his attention still split between his phone and this mystery girl. “You don’t have to call me Joe, unless you want to.”
Kaoru had just started to open his mouth when Kojiro interrupted him. “I’ll give you a call this weekend. Sorry. Gotta go.”
The line went dead and Kaoru could only let out a slow sigh. So the gorilla was out destroying the town and he was left all alone with nothing but the rain as company.
~~~~
The theory had been simple, and with the recent research, Kaoru was certain he would be able to accomplish it. After all, it was basic programming. Yet, no matter how hard he tried, each attempt had fizzled out. Quite literally in his fifth attempt he had almost set the entire dorm alight when he crossed the wrong wires.
“For heaven’s sake.” He growled over the motherboard, his soft pink eyebrows knitting together in frustration. He had set up everything like he was supposed to, yet the thing wouldn’t click on!
Kaoru’s second year dorm room was a single. After the pink haired teen had complained to his mother about the atrocity of sharing a dorm room with one especially malodorous teen the year prior, the eldest Sakurayashiki had donated handsomely to the school so that her son could room in peace. However, given the privacy, the walls were mostly bare, spare the two posters that sat over his desk. The first had been a gift from Nanjo Kojiro, the boy who still held a vast majority of his heart.
The poster was colorful, with many different styles and designs of skateboards with a roughly stylized ‘S’ in the corner, courtesy of the only two men who had truly broken his tender heart. Despite that fact, it was one of few prized possessions that he held dear.
The second poster was a more recent acquisition; a quick cheat chart for computer programming, one of Kaoru’s many areas of expertise. Between Calligraphy and Computer Sciences, there was little else that took up the boy's time.
A soft chime came from Kaoru’s elbow, indicating that a particularly brutish green haired gorilla wanted to talk to him.
“Does he not realize the time?” The corner of the computer screen indicated that it was two in the morning.
It would have been easy to ignore the call.
With a sigh, and only half looking at the screen, Kaoru clicked the green phone icon.
“Are you unaware that if I had been asleep, you would have successfully woken me up?” Yellow eyes were still on the motherboard, and did not look up to greet Kojiro.
“Yeah, but I know you don’t sleep. It’s not that late. Not for you.”
It wasn’t the words that got Kaoru’s attention. Instead it was the funny way that Kojiro slurred his consonants and sounded like he had tissues shoved up his nose. Even still, he was surprised when he looked and saw exactly what was causing the abnormal speech patterns.
“What happened to your face!”
“Oh, this?” Kojiro laughed, but it only resulted in him pulling his face taught in pain.
“Yeah. That.” The words came out as a growl, anger and worry skewing Kaoru’s features .
“That’s actually why I called.” There was an awkward moment of silence where Kaoru finally was able to take in all the brutality that was a normally very beautiful face.
The most notable problem was that there was gauze taped over Kojiro’s right eye. The meat around was tender looking and bruised, as if he had taken his face straight into a brick wall. Minor cuts littered his face, including a slightly larger one which had a bandage right over the bridge of his nose. The normally full and perfectly appealing lips were puffy and split. There was also a mean purple right under his left check, indicating a deep and horribly painful bruise forming.
And that was only what Kaoru could see.
“And?” The words were tense as he leaned in closer, as if that would prompt the man to explain quicker.
“I had a nasty tumble while racing.” Kojiro shrugged his ever widening shoulders, which also forced a wince. “But I won, so that's cool.”
Kaoru was dead faced as he tried to figure out what Kojiro had wanted to glean from this chat.
“I mean, It really isn’t that bad.” There was a frown, and another wince. “I only needed four stitches.”
“Kojiro Nanjo, I swear to whatever god holds power over this world that if you die before you come back home I will kill you myself!” There was no malice in his tone, an honest concern lacing the words.
“I promised you once I’d come back. I don’t go back on my words.”
There was another lull in the conversation, and Kaoru found himself pushing back tears. “Good.” He finally pushed out, surprised that there was no waver in his voice.
“And I do expect you to take care of yourself while you heal. No idiocy so that your only redeeming quality returns to its previous state.”
“Are you talking about my face or my abs?” There was a smirk that seemed to pull the pain and mutilation away for just one moment.
Kaoru smirked, rolling his eyes as he glanced back at his project. “Both.”
With one final eye roll, Kaoru clicked the little red ‘X’, and the call cut out leaving them both in silence.
If this project went to schedule, Kaoru wouldn’t have to feel so lonely in between each time Kojriro remembered he existed.
~~~~
This spot was sacred to Kaoru. It was a place he could always find a sense of serenity. It held many memories, good and bad. He gripped the railing, feeling the tears stream down his face. The sun was setting over the waves that thrashed against the rocks just feet below.
There were hundreds of marks littering the ground, and he knew he would never be able to let this place go. When he was last here, Kojiro and Ainosuke were here, too. Through the good and the bad, they were both his friends. The only friends he had known.
Even now, it was the only place he felt any semblance of connecting with someone. It had been years since he had seen either Ainosuke or Kojiro. The former had run away to America. They hadn’t been able to contact him, and, after a while, both of them had stopped trying. The blue haired monster had broken Kaoru’s heart and it had long scarred over. He was better off this way, and he knew it.
Kojiro had taken off to Italy to learn from some of the greatest chefs in the world. He had mused with the idea of staying after his graduation. The idea had made a new wound in Kaoru’s heart, one that still stung even after Kojiro had determined he missed his homeland.
Still, Kaoru was used to being alone, and he hated every second of it. Even with Carla, he missed human contact, missed the conversations he'd had. The texts that came scattered from Kojiro were nice, but they surely were not enough to deal with the loneliness in his soul. One day, perhaps, this ache would go away. Maybe one day he would not be an afterthought. Perhaps someday he would be remembered instead of simply forgotten.
~~~
“Good morning, Master. The time is currently 5:30 A.M. You are due to your first class in one and one half hours. The weather is forecast to be sunshine with a small chance of rain. I would recommend an umbrella today.”
The walls of Kaoru’s apartment were a bleak off white, but the glow from the small black box was a pleasant soft purple, almost pink. A glowing ‘C’ was in the middle of the box, the first name for the device that Kaoru had named Carla.
“One missed notification. Text Message from Kojiro Nanjo. Would you like me to read you your message, Master?”
With a sigh, Kaoru pushed himself from the covers. While it would be nice to lounge around for another hour or so, there was so much left for him to do.
“Please.” He spoke, rolling over and moving to shimmy down the ladder of his bed.
'Heading to bed! Have a big test in the morning!'
“Respond back: Good luck, you gorilla.”
In his dorm, there were two desks, one where he practiced his calligraphy and did his ‘normal’ schoolwork, the other where he worked on his engineering.
“Sent.” The feminine, metallic voice responded, and there was a moment of silence. Kaoru moved to the desk under his bed. Last night he had been working on his stylized calligraphy. A scroll lay open, two kanji characterized on the faint background of a snow tipped mountain. He had given up, frustration peaking no matter what he did. There was something very wrong with the piece. In the morning light, he still hated it.
“Master.” Carla chimed, this time coming from a different metal box, the one at his calligraphy station. “May we commence cleaning?”
“Yes.” Kaoru moved over to the coffee pot, frowning at the half full carafe from the night before.
As he moved across the room to his restroom, a whirring noise kicked to life and a small robotic vacuum came to life. The round object was mostly naked, the gears and electric bits still raw in places. On its back, as the little brushes spun about sucking in debris from about the small room, the same C was blinking purple indicating Carla was hard at work.
The black sludge splashed into the toilet and Kaoru filled it back up, expecting to need at least half a pot before he could stomach his early morning lesson, ‘Digital System Design’. After four weeks in the class, Kaoru already knew most everything the teacher had to tell them. Carla was a testament to that.
“Input error 15.” Carla informed Kaoru with a frustrated beeping from the floor. After measuring off the two scoops of ground beans into the coffee maker and pressing the green button, Kaoru turned to the complaining machine on the ground.
“I swear, I will figure this out if it kills me.” He lifted the machine and took it over to his work desk. Taking up the majority of the space was, what appeared at first glance, a deconstructed skateboard. The biggest difference was the fact that the parts that were seperated seemed to be held together by the gruesome innards of a computer. Coated and raw wires, tubing and a motherboard or two lay in organized chaos.
The lengths to which he would go to give himself companionship.
~~~~
“April fifteenth is graduation day.” Cherry fiddled with a paper crane that had been perched on his desk, a good luck charm from one of the girls in his class. He was sure she had been hitting on him, and yet he felt nothing for her.
“Oh, yeah. That shouldn’t be an issue.” Joe sounded like he was rummaging through something in Kaoru’s ear, just before the sounds of scribbling could be heard. “That's right before we start to prepare for our own finals. I miss home. Can probably jet over for the weekend to celebrate with you!”
Kaoru’s eyes widened as he adjusted the earpiece that looped over his ear, a glowing C on the flat side of the plastic.
“What do you mean?” The words came out before Kaoru could sensor himself. “When is your graduation?”
Kojiro laughed on the other side of the phone, letting out a long breath before speaking. “June twenty-third.”
“Why so late?” Kaoru knitted his brows together typing the event into his keyboard quickly for Carla. Immediately she began looking for tickets and hotels near Kojiro’s school. Undoubtedly he would not fail his final term.
“Actually, I am graduating early. Did a four year course in three. Western style schools are weird, they only do two semesters, but I didn’t want to waste summer. So I did summer classes. Made my learning a bit odd, but hey.” Kaoru could feel the shrug that Kojiro did in the break in his sentence. “So I'm graduating before a lot of my friends. They're upset that I'm planning on moving back home after graduation, but I got my eyes on an abandoned building near the old factory downtown.
“Oh! That reminds me, could you do me a HUGE favor?”
Kaoru let out a long sigh. “Sure.”
“If I give you the address, could you check it out? Apparently there's a living space above the shop. The guy I talked to on the phone said it would be super easy to convert into a restaurant! Honestly, it sounds too good to be true.”
“Yeah. I can swing by there next week. Text me over the details.” Even still, Kaoru would do anything for the stupid gorilla. His heart thumped hard as he thought about having Kojiro back home again.
“You're the best!” The smile on the thick lips translated solidly over the phone. “The ‘rents said they’d put down the down payment on my loan! If I can get the approval through by the time of your graduation, I can get the construction underway and maybe a couple months after graduation I can have a full blown restaurant! How cool would that be!”
“And then you couldn’t leave me behind again.” Kaoru mumbled under his breath. The further into this conversation they went, the harder his heart beat in his chest and the harder the tears were to push back.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.” Kaoru cleared his throat, glancing at the clock next to his side table. “I need to get going. I’ll talk to you soon and see you in April.”
“Talk soon.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
The phone clicked off, the dial tone dying. Cherry waited for a moment before he plucked the ear piece from its place. He let out a sigh as he wiped a solitary stray tear from his eye.
“Master. I have found a first class seat to Genoa International Airport.”
“Pull up the details on my computer.”
~~~~
Just as they had promised, Kojiro returned to Japan for Kaoru’s graduation. Kaoru flew to Italy and traveled over ten hours to the small town that Joe’s school was in and back. Five months later, Joe returned to Okinawa for good, his restaurant in full swing of renovation. During the last few months of construction, Kaoru helped hire on the staff, of which only the sous chef position was filled, a good friend that the green haired man had convinced to come with him back home to Japan.
Sia la luce was to be a traditional Italian restaurant. After all, what else would make sense after the long stay learning from Italian masters?
There was an overwhelming sense of comfort in the building that Kaoru couldn’t put to words. It felt more like home than any place that he had felt during his years in college. Like this was where he was meant to be. He would never tell Kojiro this.
Six months after the successful opening of Sia la luce, something concerning came through the grapevine. In the form of letters sent to both Kaoru and Kojiro’s newly formed businesses.
“I'm sure he sent this appalling thing to you, too?” There was no need to knock, although there was a distinct ‘closed’ sign on the wooden door. Kaoru knew Kojiro would be up making sure everything was ready for the opening in the morning. The letter moved from his hand onto the bar that looked straight into the open kitchen.
Kaoru had opened the letter, glanced at the garish black heart with a golden stylization of a rose, and knew that there was only one possible meaning. The back had a date and a time. Two weeks from today and midnight. There was also an enamel pin with a stylized ‘S’. He was bringing it back.
“Yeah. Already tossed mine in the fire.” Kojiro growled from the kitchen, turning on his heel with a bottle of wine in hand.
“You don’t own a fireplace.” Kaoru quirked one brow as he settled into the bar stool.
“Gas oven has a fire my boy.” Joe snagged two long stemmed glasses from the counter, and poured the chilled wine as he walked and placed them in front of the pink haired man.
“You’re going to go, aren’t you?” Long, delicate hands reached for the glass, bringing it quickly to his lips.
“I will never pass up an opportunity to prove to that blue haired monster exactly what I think of him.” Joe smiled, but it wasn’t the smile that Kaoru liked. It was a horribly mischievous and dangerous smile. As if it was the smile of a man who was planning to do unthinkable things.
“I need to keep you from going to prison, I suppose.” The wine was smooth and helped to calm his surprisingly frayed nerves.
“If I do lose myself, no one would ever find the body.” Finally, Kojiro brought his own glass to his lips as he leaned an elbow into the high counter looking down at Kaoru.
“For my sake, don’t get caught.”
~~~~
It had been years since then, and now that Adam, or whatever the sociopath wished to be called these days, was starting to repent for his sins their life was finally grasping some sort of normality.
Kaoru gripped Carla in his hand as he sat on a rock and waited. He let out a sigh, as he looked about the treacherous path about him. Yes, there were many bad times that they had had here, and more recently much good had come from this place. It was as if there was a spirit to S that was unspeakable. Somehow, the place was still able to exist in the darkest hours of the night, even if the authorities wished it not to. For that, Cherry was thankful.
“Carla, Time.”
“Twenty two minutes and thirteen seconds, Master.”
Just as Cherry was about to speak to his frustrations, the familiar hum of his bike roared and Joe came into view around the corner.
Standing, Cherry dusted off his kimono from the dust he had been forced to stand while the gorilla fetched their ride. “Finally. Do you know how long you made us wait?”
“Oh, you’ll live, princess.” Joe smirked, tossing Cherry his helmet.
The bike itself was mostly black, with the same familiar pink LEDs and accents that denoted the machine had the same Carla AI as everything that Cherry owned.
They were getting looks from everyone, a soft murmur coming from both the Cherry and Joe fan girls as Cherry straddled the bike behind Joe. “Not another word, you gorilla.”
“As you command, your Highness.”
There wasn’t another word as Joe revved the bike and tore away from the gravel and dirt. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, Kaoru would never be forgotten again.