Ego Drift

Yuu had reappeared in his life. Kazuhiro sure hadn’t been expecting that. He’d been—alone for so long.

Some definition of alone. Was it okay to say that he was alone?

He’d been lonely.

“Let’s play,” Yuu said, cracking her knuckles. “It’s been ages since I got to use a pool table.”

Last time he’d seen her, they’d been eleven years old. She was a little girl who was protective of her stuff, easily provoked, always resisted when the orphanage directors would try to get her to mother the younger kids. Hated crying babies, hated mess.

She’d been happy whenever just the two of them had snuck out to play at the park, and happiest when they went to explore the city. No responsibilities, maybe. Nothing keeping them locked in, enclosed.

“Should I play?” Fuuji said. “You’re kinda spacing out, bro.”

“…I want to play.”

“I’ll play winner, then,” Fuuji decided.

I want my senpai to think I’m cool. “Yuu-chan talks a big game, but I used to be better than her at this stuff,” Kazuhiro claimed. It was true enough. He took a wooden triangle off the wall where he’d gotten his cue and started arranging the balls.

Yuu picked out a long dark-wood cue and twirled it on the tip of her finger, catching it with her other hand before it fell. “Well, it’s been a while.”

“Yeah, it has. Stripes or solids?”

“Stripes. That time gap wasn’t my fault.” Yuu rolled the cue ball over to Kazuhiro’s side of the table, then lifted off the triangle. “You can break.”

“No, he can’t. He falls on his ass when he tries to do a windmill.”

Kazuhiro whacked Fuuji with his cue. “Not funny.”

“I don’t get it,” Yuu said.

“He’s talking about breakdancing and pretending he doesn’t know that breaking means starting the game in pool.”

“And it was funny as fuck,” Fuuji said, stuffing some more chips in his mouth.

“Back off,” Kazuhiro said, lightly whacking him again before leaning over the table and squinting at the balls. He hit the cue ball into the group of others, which rolled apart with a cacophony of clacking noises. None ended up in a goal.

Yuu’s gaze fixed on a striped one near one of the pockets. “I’m going to go for that.” She paused, probably realizing there was a crowd of billiard balls in between her and her goal. “Still going for it.” She leaned forward, the shadowy lighting of the bar obscuring her face. A lightbulb shone on the back of her neck, illuminating loose strands of hair. She still wore it long. It was paler brown now, though, bleached by the sun.

She struck the ball lightly. It successfully made it through the others, losing a bit of momentum as it glanced off two. Finally, it hit the ball she’d been aiming for—and moved it approximately half an inch.

“Damn, rest in peace,” Fuuji said.

Yuu stepped back from the table. Kazuhiro started to circle it, trying to sus out his next move, but was distracted by:

“I asked before, but seriously, how’ve you been, Kazu? I mean, we got interrupted cause—” She glanced at Fuuji. “How tangled up is he with you guys?”

Kazuhiro winced. You’re just gonna ask him that?

“Pretty tangled,” Fuuji said, “but he’s not an OG like me.” He ruffled Kazuhiro’s hair with a hand covered in chip grease. A crumble of Calbees fell onto Kazuhiro’s ear and then slid off. “He’s my cute kouhai.”

“Ew, get off of me.”

Fuuji had recruited Kazuhiro back last year. He’d been cool in how casual he was about everything, friendly and not posturing and stuff, and offered a group to belong to, so Kazuhiro’d jumped at the chance. Besides that, just because he’d gotten adopted didn’t mean he’d easily slot into a tidy little place. He was more used to being like Fuuji, the poor, on-the-edge, badly disciplined and bad in school, seen as a delinquent kid.

“You two in a gang?” Yuu asked.

And he didn’t know if any of that was a feeling he could express to Yuu. Instead, he played it down. “Just a public school team. There’s not many of us and we haven’t got arrested.”

“Yet,” Fuuji said cheerfully.

“We’re called the Higanbana-gumi.” Kazuhiro circled the table and found a solid ball in a convenient position. He carefully positioned the cue ball, and did a few test jabs with the cue before striking.

“When did you join?” Yuu asked.

“Last year.” Kazuhiro’s shot went wide, cue ball rolling into a corner of the table.

“I’m gonna get some more chips,” Fuuji said. “Okuda, spot me some change.”

Kazuhiro handed him 200 yen. “Go buy me some shampoo while you’re at it.”

“It’s not that bad. Your hair’s greasy anyway.”

“Go die, bro.”

Yuu took the cue ball and went to take her place at the table, leaning across it again. A string from her hoodie fell over the cue, and she tucked it inside her collar. “I got another question for you.”

Her voice carried a regional accent Kazuhiro had all but lost. “Shoot.”

She sent the cue ball hard into a striped ball far from a pocket, which bounced off the wall and hit another striped ball that was closer to its pocket. That second ball rolled into the pocket with a thud. “Why didn’tcha show up after you got adopted? You can travel.”

“…Kochi’s far.” Kazuhiro tried another shot. He hit a solid ball, which bounced off a wall and then struck the edge of the pocket; almost, but not quite, making it in.

“So? Weren’t we best friends?” Yuu grabbed the cue ball and set it up behind the line on the table. She jabbed at it a few times. Was she setting up her shot, or just…missing? Finally, she hit the cue. It rolled in a random direction and lightly struck the side of a solid ball.

“I’m sorry—”

“Chat,” Fuuji said, ducking his head back in, “we’ve got a weirdo.”

“Let go of me!”

Miyazato Ryoya was getting dragged by the collar, slapping at Fuuji’s hands ineffectually. Kazuhiro’d thought this earlier, too, but what was up with this guy? Normally, he could solo anyone. But in this case, his eyes were wide with fright—and his face was flushed a little, too, as he tried to avoid looking at Fuuji.

“He did say he’d come.” How come, though?

“I don’t get why,” Yuu said. “He’s getting on my nerves.”

Fuuji snapped his fingers in realization, letting go of Miyazato at the same time. “I got it. It’s probably like…ah, what’s the word…when men open doors for women and shit.”

“Manners?” Kazuhiro said.

“Hardly,” Yuu countered. “Patronizing shit.”

“Chivalry,” Miyazato said.

“Well, look at this fancy school bitch,” Fuuji said.

“I’m not—leave me alone,” Miyazato sulked.

“I’m just fooling, nothing personal. Chivalry is the word, anyway. Like, he probably got spooked that this girl was going out with a bunch of delinquents.”

“Huh!” Yuu said, annoyed disbelief. “What does he know? We’re fri—” She cut herself off.

She can’t even say we’re friends anymore. The phrase, I want to be friends, was on the tip of Kazuhiro’s tongue. Maybe she just thought he would reject it. But he couldn’t say it either, he didn’t want to be rejected either.

“I wanted to spend time with you,” Miyazato said.

“Didn’t I say I didn’t want to spend time with you?”

“You said that it might be good to have another guy along anyway.”

“Guess I did…Look, you’re just not my type,” she said firmly. “I don’t like playboys, and I don’t like pushy guys.”

“Yuu, lemme explain something to you,” Fuuji said. “Basically, these guys are from Sakura Academy, up the river from us, and they love antagonizing us every chance they get and throwing their expensive ass weight around.”

“We’re the problem?” Miyazato said indignantly. “It’s you guys! You got roped together by a violent psycho and came up here trying to pick a fight with them—I mean, us! And sure, a bunch of us are rich, I’m rich, but it’s not an Ouran High School type deal up there! We’ve got a bunch of scholarships and stuff, and all of us had to test in too! And it’s you all who give your school a bad rep and make people want to avoid it!”

“Miyazato’s got the chicken and the egg wrong. Anyway, so I’m gonna beat him up.”

Yuu stared at him. “Please don’t.”

“What for?” Miyazato yelped.

“Because I didn’t want you to come and you came, you’re on our territory, and you’re pissing me off. Kazuhiro, help me.”

“I don’t give a fuck about your feud, y’know. I’m going!” Yuu snapped.

“Wait—” Kazuhiro started, then stopped himself.

He wasn’t scared of Fuuji. When it came down to it, he wasn’t that scared of Konno, either. The thing between him and Konno was strange, electric and inescapable… between him and Fuuji…

He was more loyal to his senpai, who’d always talked to him and taken him under his wing, than he was to Yuu, who he hadn’t seen in years. That was just how it was.

Miyazato twisted out of Fuuji’s grip. Fuuji gestured briefly; a simple and small wave of his hand to Kazuhiro, saying grab him.

Kazuhiro hesitated. In that moment, Miyazato swung and hit Fuuji square in the jaw.

Fuuji wiped his mouth and glared at him. “Bastard…”

Miyazato gasped for air.

Yuu made for the door, picking up her phone as she went, and slammed it behind her.

Kazuhiro didn’t think, just chased after her.

She was walking fast down the hall, eyes firmly fixed ahead of her.

“Where are you going?” Kazuhiro called.

“Somewhere else. Before you all get busted for fighting in the fucking community center.”

The community center’s doing what now? LOL, said Kazuhiro’s internal Fuuji.

Shut up, Kazuhiro thought in response.

“Look, I’m sorry.”

“You fell in with the wrong crowd, Kazu. Didn’t you use to be a good boy?”

“Not particularly,” Kazuhiro admitted.

“Whatever. You were so easy to be around back then, though.”

They made it into the main room of the community center. Yuu flopped into one of the armchairs there, a blocky thing upholstered in generic fabric. “Guess we can talk. I wanna know what happened to you.”

“How’d you get so far out here? Don’t they have to keep an eye on you? You’re still seventeen, right?”

“Yeah. Eighteen in a couple months. But I would’ve run away if they didn’t let me go where I wanted. It was shit without you. I can’t deal with all that constant social stuff, surrounded by kids I don’t like. I heard the family that adopted you was in Tokyo.”

“Was that…” Why you came? “…That whole time, were you just…”

“Thinking about you?” Yuu shrugged. “Not really. But I guess I wanted to see the place you went.”

“They’re okay,” Kazuhiro said. “They’re British.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Could barely talk to them for ages. I was pretty lonely, too. I’m…sorry I didn’t go back to you. Sorry for being dismissive.”

Yuu rested her head in her arms, leaning on the armchair’s bulky armrest. “It’s okay. I’m fine on my own, anyway. But some like…six years? For real?”

“You could’ve come to Tokyo.” Kazuhiro sat down in the chair opposite her. “Well—no, guess not. You were a kid. So was I—I mean, we were both separated by things we couldn’t control.”

Yuu gestured around her. “I did come to Tokyo.”

“Six years later, sure.”

“Okay—” Yuu said. “I get it. So what’s the deal with you and that gang?”

“I don’t know. My friends just ended up being them.”

“I’m not against whatever you guys have going on. I’m just against drama…”

“How—how about this,” Kazuhiro started. Maybe he didn’t have to pick. “Whenever you’re around, we won’t do anything you don’t like. Fights, anything.”

“Anything I don’t like.” Yuu looked at the ground. “That’s a pretty tall order. You want me around that much?”

“Yes!” Kazuhiro said, and realized he meant it, realized that maybe every day since he was eleven years old he’d missed her.

“…Takayama’s beating up Miyazato right now, though.”

“I’ll tell them later. Tell—both of them,” Kazuhiro promised, a little anxious thinking of how much Miyazato might take offense at Kazuhiro talking to him, feeling willing to try anyway. “To have a truce, when you’re around.”