Safe Harbour: Part 1 (PG-13, OshiGaku)
© 2006 Gold
Title: Safe Harbour
Part 1
Author: Gold
Rating: PG-13, for language and same-gender pairings
Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis is created by Konomi Takeshi. This work is a piece of fanfiction and no part of it is attributed to Konomi-san or any other entity holding any legal right associated with and arising out of Prince of Tennis . It was written purely out of fanservice and it is not to be used for profit or any false association with Konomi-san or aforesaid entities.
Pairings and Guests: Oshitari/Gakuto. Hiyoshi and Shishido guest-star. Atobe squeezes in a mention or two.
Warnings: Language.
=========================
There is a small ryokan tucked away in a discreet corner of Yokohama that Mukahi Gakuto sometimes visits. This is where he goes when he disappears and nobody, not even Atobe Keigo, can find him. Nobody in Tokyo knows where Mukahi Gakuto goes when he disappears; indeed, it is perfectly accurate to conclude that nobody in Tokyo is even aware of Mukahi Gakuto’s disappearances.
Gakuto chooses his time and place to remove himself from the reality that is his life; it is not quite as random as it seems on the surface. To the casual observer, there is no discernible pattern to his disappearances, nor to his manner of choosing date, time and length of his disappearance. Nevertheless there is a common thread that runs through, and it can only be unwound by asking Gakuto himself, always provided he gives the answer-or else by reading his mind. This is unlikely to happen at all; Gakuto’s closest friends and family know him best, but even they are completely unaware of his disappearances.
Gakuto lives away from his immediate family; they at any rate have some excuse for not being aware of his disappearances. He calls home most days in the week and occasionally returns home during the weekends to have dinner with his parents and his younger brother, who is in his second year in university.
Gakuto’s closest friends, on the other hand, see him at least once a week, judging by the number of times a year that they have to get together for their birthdays (nine of them, including Taki Haginosuke’s), other people’s birthdays (there are fifty-two weeks in a year but they are invited to at least thirty other birthday bashes during the year), and those fancy dining parties and monthly tennis teas hosted by Atobe Keigo. Gakuto’s closest friends do not keep tabs on his private life, although they do their best to wheedle and threaten information out of him the way real friends of your heart should. Gakuto’s life, as they know it, is full of joie de vivre; bright-eyed, vivid and possessed of a hectic presence akin to randomly exploding fireworks, they cannot imagine him living otherwise. But if there is anyone amongst them who ought to be remotely aware, at the very least, of Gakuto’s disappearances, that person should be Oshitari Yuushi.
Oshitari Yuushi is Gakuto’s closest friend; an old, old friend dating back from the days when they were schoolmates, sometime classmates and frequent first-choice doubles partners on the school tennis team throughout junior high and senior high. They were very good friends back in their salad days in the Hyoutei schools although they were never best friends; now that they’re all grown-up, though, Oshitari has become Gakuto’s closest friend, and they even share a decent-sized apartment in classy, upscale Azabu together with two other old friends of theirs from Those Salad Days.
Strangely enough, Oshitari Yuushi, who from all appearances is one of those fortunate individuals blessed with brains and street smarts, continues to labour under the strict belief that his very good friend and flat-mate, Mukahi Gakuto, is living a life both fun and fulfilling. Oshitari has some reason for this strict belief of his; he is of the species homo sapiens, sub-species male, and there is an argument to be made here that it is therefore inherent in him to overlook the obvious and note the banal. Gakuto is eating well, sleeping well (apart from the occasional panda resemblance when he has to film in the wee hours of the morning), has a job many would give their procreative ability for (TV presenter for the hit talkshow Redheads that involves peeks into the personal lives and histories of famous Japanese personalities) and has mood swings that range from being chirpy and demanding (“Yuushi, do this, bring me that, on your way back from work tomorrow, buy me this”) to being a little spitfire (“I’m not talking to you ever again”). Oshitari knows that as long as Gakuto curses colourfully at him once a day, God’s in His Heaven and all’s right with the world.
Oshitari knows Gakuto so well, you see, just as well as Gakuto knows him. If they sat down to compare notes on each other, they would find that they know the answers to exactly the same questions, down to every dotted ‘i’ and every crossed ‘t’.
Oshitari knows where to buy the only kind of shampoo that fastidious Gakuto uses (cranberry-scented or apple-scented, in an Azabu specialty store, and expensive as heck) and Gakuto’s favourite seasons (summer, for the beach and the funny way Yuushi’s hair gets all messy because of the heat; winter, for the cold, cold snow and the way Yuushi’s eyes laugh at Gakuto’s strawberry pink nose-Yuushi says it’s the prettiest nose he knows). Oshitari knows just where to find Gakuto’s favourite vanilla-chocolate-strawberry-swirl sundae (Jin’s Home, a small café in a quiet part of west Tokyo, run by the mother of one of Japan’s most famous stuntmen and resident Bad Boy, Akutsu Jin).
Gakuto knows where to buy the only kind of pen Oshitari ever writes with (Mont Blanc Meisterstück Solitaire Gold & Black Classique and insanely expensive; Atobe Keigo gave Yuushi one as birthday present donkey years ago and Yuushi keeps raving about it, so Gakuto has been saving up to give him an entire set from the anniversary collection) and Oshitari’s favourite seasons (spring, for the sakura petals and the scent of young love in the air; autumn, for the falling leaves in red and gold and brown and the utter romance of the season). Gakuto knows how to cook Oshitari’s favourite foods just the way Oshitari likes it (Yuushi, for all his cosmopolitan, global-village image, is surprisingly hell-bent on the adage North, South, East, West, Home’s Best-the way to his heart is through his stomach and paved with Kansai-influenced cuisine).
Oshitari knows that when he sees Gakuto sprawled on the sofa at seven in the morning, face hidden by his favourite cushion (the biggest, plumpest one on the sofa, the one Yuushi and Gakuto brought home from their Hyotei graduation trip to Ankara) and his favourite quilt cover over him (dark blue, patterned with stars), it means Gakuto has come home less than thirty minutes ago and is dead to the world.
Gakuto knows that when he sees Oshitari spritz on something other than his usual Givenchy aftershave at a quarter past seven in the morning, it means that Oshitari is meeting someone special that day (Gakuto knows this, because he buys all of Yuushi’s colognes, and he can tell from the cologne just what kind of woman Yuushi is meeting).
Oshitari knows Gakuto so well, you see, just as well as Gakuto knows him.
“Sempai-”
It is seven in the morning in a very decent-sized apartment in upscale Azabu district in Tokyo, Japan.
Breakfast table.
Buttered toast, eggs fried sunny-side up with rivulets of dark soy sauce dribbled all over them, freshly squeezed orange juice, ice-cold milk, grilled mackerel with steamed rice, miso soup, pickles, tamago kake gohan, udon topped with finely chopped scallions and slices of fishcake and roast pork, and chilled soba waiting in the wings with saucers of light soy sauce.
Hiyoshi Wakashi, a postgraduate student in the Faculty of Business Administration at Waseda University, valued employee of a fledgling online computer game company and part-time teaching assistant to some undergraduate classes at Waseda University, is a surprisingly decent cook. He is also not prone to experimentation, which is one of the most powerful arguments for permanently assigning him the duty of cooking breakfast, one of the most important meals of the day. It was through a series of trial and error with one another’s cooking that Hiyoshi’s flatmates discovered his culinary skills; consequently, he has been delegated the all-important task of serving up what amounts to a veritable breakfast buffet for them every morning for the last three years and eleven months. (In the first month, experiments proved that the remaining flatmates were disinterested cooks at best and indescribably bad chemistry students at worst. Gakuto, who was a rather decent cook, was given up as a lost case because he frequently produced dishes based on natto, which was not an ingredient that was terribly popular with the others). Breakfast, after all, is the most important meal of the day.
Hiyoshi has gone to school with his flatmates for years. He, Mukahi Gakuto, Oshitari Yuushi and Shishido Ryou have been teammates on the Hyotei tennis teams for as long as any of them can remember. Hiyoshi doesn’t have problems with two of his flatmates- it’s his third sempai, Mukahi Gakuto, who’s a handful even on the best of days and an unmentionable string of expletives on the worst of days.
At the moment, Gakuto is fumbling with his shoes at the door, swathed in a particularly flashy outfit involving a confusing mixture of cranberry-red suede, black fur and many other difficult materials. It would be a fashion disaster of cataclysmic proportions on anyone else but just seems like so much haute couture on Gakuto.
Something in Gakuto’s body language tells Hiyoshi that it’s one of those days.One of those days when his sempai dresses in a way that garners the immediate attention of every living being within a five hundred mile radius. One of those days when his sempai steps from bedroom to front door, wrapped in a thundercloud trimmed with lightning bolts, and sails out without a word. Those days Hiyoshi knows that his sempai won’t be back until the next evening or even later, and that breakfast is the last thing on his sempai’s mind. Hiyoshi used to think that those days meant something wasn’t quite right with Mukahi Gakuto-Hiyoshi doesn’t know what, but he’s been disturbed enough to ask his Oshitari-sempai before if those days mean anything. Instead of being anxious, Oshitari-sempai just gets this moony, indulgent look on his face, mixed with something like resignation, and tells Hiyoshi that it’s just Gakuto.
Just Gakuto.
There’s no pattern to it at all.
Some days Gakuto is just in a mood, Oshitari-sempai says fondly and dismissively. You have to humour him a little.
And Hiyoshi frowns and nods and says nothing, because Oshitari knows Gakuto so well, you see.
So Hiyoshi lets it go.
This is one of those days, Hiyoshi reminds himself. Humour Gakuto-sempai. Other days Gakuto-sempai eats and creates food fights that Hiyoshi has to clean up-so maybe it’s a good thing.
Sometimes.
“I won’t be home for dinner, Gakuto.”
Oshitari Yuushi has just arrived on the scene, resplendent in pristine linen suit and dark blue silk tie threaded with pale gold, and Hiyoshi sneezes. He has a sensitive nose, and Oshitari-sempai tends to wear too-powerful whiffs of eau de cologne on the days when he is planning a fancy evening. Oshitari looks remarkably tall, dark and dangerously handsome amidst the beautifully starched folds of ivory linen, and there’s something about the tie that throws a burnish on his tanned skin and an added gloss to that dark, blue-black hair.
It is amazing how thunderingly furious Gakuto can look despite the presence of the dorky black velvet fedora and cranberry-red aviator shades perched atop his head:
“Bloody hell, I’m out of the country until next Friday, you bloody bastard, so ask your dumb girlfriend to cook, I’m not your servant!!!”
The pure amount of venom in Gakuto’s voice surprises even Hiyoshi; every word has been laced with acid and then some.
In the blank silence that follows, Gakuto marches out in high dudgeon, and the front doors slam and bolt behind him.
A whole minute goes by; sixty seconds have never been longer.
Then Shishido Ryou puts down his half-eaten buttered toast. “He’s right. You’re a right bloody bastard, Oshitari, if you don’t even know that he’s out of the country. Hell, even I know.” Shishido pushes back his chair and gets up to leave.
Gakuto’s temper is old news to Oshitari, but sass from Shishido Ryou is persona non grata in Oshitari’s world. There is something astonishingly hard in Oshitari’s face now, and Hiyoshi doesn’t remember Shishido’s quietly classic features being so sharp and bitter as they are now. Sometimes, Hiyoshi thinks, watching as Oshitari and Shishido face off, he would have preferred it if they could have remained schoolboys forever, left behind in that time so long ago, when they actually had good reason to fight each other, and they did so on rolling green courts under bright blue skies and brilliant sunshine, with a kind of fierce, happy pride that seemed to burn in them in everything they did. But they are schoolboys no longer, and whatever they have left sometimes feels suspiciously like a rot that gnaws away at those old bonds that should have been forged unbreakable in the heat of hellfires.
Outside, an airplane sails across the sky, leaving a trail of faint white behind it, and Hiyoshi turns his face towards the window of blue sky and the brilliant sunlight, and wishes that he could stand on those green courts again.
Downstairs, a black saloon speeds by, and there is a loud bang.
Something cranberry-red and black and ivory arcs through the air, landing slap against a wall, and then slides down so that only cranberry-red can be seen against that wall.
This, maybe, is the beginning of the end of the story for a brilliant, talented little boy who dyed his hair cranberry-red and played tennis in a flashy, inimitable acrobatic style to stand out in a crowd of other brilliant, talented schoolchildren in one of Japan’s premier schools.