Tainted Purity - Chapter 5
Title: Tainted Purity
Author: Tankyasue
Warning: Shounen-ai. Lime in later chapters.
Disclaimer: I don't own Tokyo Babylon, Clamp does.
Summary: Subaru discovers who Seishirou really is before the end of the bet.
Chapter 5 - Sayonara So Long
Absent-mindedly, Subaru reached out and touched his lips with gloved fingers. He could still remember how the Sakurazukamori's lips had felt against his own. The pressure had been so faint that he had barely been able to feel it at the time, and yet the experience had been so profound.
'My first kiss.' Subaru thought suddenly. His face became extremely hot. Immediately, pulled his hand away from his lips and forced himself to look at the blank sheet of paper in front of him. His art teacher had been gracious enough to give him an extra day to work on his assignment since he hadn't done anything over the weekend. He would get it done today!
Subaru grabbed his pencil and pressed it lightly against the paper. He had no idea what to draw. His teacher had been remarkably vague about the assignment; he’d told him that he could draw whatever he wanted to as long as it looked good. Normally, Subaru would have just drawn an animal, since those were the things that he usually drew anyway, but now he just didn’t want to. Whenever he thought about animals he remembered the puppy that the Sakurazukamori had killed lying amongst the trash staring at him with vacant, accusing eyes.
It was strange to think that that Sakurazukamori could kill something so innocent without remorse, and yet still be capable of expressing affection almost genuinely, even if there were no feelings behind his actions. Why had the Sakurazukamori kissed him yesterday? He'd spent an entire night awake wondering, and yet he still couldn't think of a reason. Nothing that the Sakurazukamori did seemed to make any sense to him. He still couldn’t understand why the Sakurazukamori had started the bet with him at all. It might have been possible that had he really wanted to learn how to love someone, but maybe there was another reason.
Either way, he thought that Kuzuki's method of 'winning' the bet was wrong. Killing Seishirou was not the answer.
Kuzuki blamed the Sakurazukamori for what would happen to his sister, but really it was entirely his fault. If he weren’t so weak, Hokuto wouldn’t need to die in order to protect him.
“Hello Subaru!” Hokuto cried out gleefully before throwing his bedroom door open and stepping inside. “Are you finished your project yet?”
“Not quite…” he replied weakly. Subaru glanced down at the blank sheet of paper in front of him, suddenly feeling guilty. He hadn’t even attempted to work on his assignment.
“Can I see what you’ve done so far?” Hokuto asked peering over his shoulder from behind him.
“NO!” Subaru cried out, covering the sketchpad with his arms. “Erm… I mean I’d rather you didn’t. I’ll let you look at it when it’s finished.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“You haven’t even started yet, have you?”
“No.”
“And you haven’t eaten since you’ve gotten home either.”
“I don’t feel like eating…”
“Don’t give me that bull, Subaru! How can you expect to be able to do anything if you don’t eat!”
Hokuto placed small plate on his desk, shaking her head slightly. “Eat these at least. They’re only store bought cookies, so they won’t be as good as mine, but they’ll give you some energy so you can do something besides stare at your paper. Honestly, you’d probably die of starvation if I weren’t around to take care of you.”
“Thank you, Hokuto-chan,” Subaru replied meekly without looking at what Hokuto had given him. He knew that he should eat something otherwise his sister would continue to worry about him, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep anything down, and that would only make Hokuto worry about him even more.
“Subaru, I’m not stupid. I know that you’re upset about something and I want to know what it is,” Hokuto said gently. She reminded him of a mother attending to a scared child.
Hokuto had always taken care of him because he was too incompetent take care of himself. She’d fed him because he didn’t eat on his own. She’d dressed him because he didn’t know what to wear. She would have to die for him because he couldn’t face the Sakurazukamori on his own.
But, if I learn to do things for myself from now on, Hokuto-chan won’t die.
“Hokuto-chan… I know that you want to take care of me, but this is something that I have to deal with on my own. You can’t keep protecting me all the time, or I’ll never learn to take care of myself.”
“But, Subaru-”
“Hokuto-chan, I love you. You’re more important to me than anyone else, even Seishirou-san. However, I don’t want you to get hurt because of me, so please try to understand. I will try to take care of myself from now on. I want you to take care of yourself too.”
Hokuto walked over to him and silently placed her arms around his shoulders and held onto him tightly. Subaru rested his head upon her shoulder, and wrapped his arms around her back. Neither of them realized that Subaru was nearly sitting in her lap.
“I won’t force anything out of you right now, but I hope that you will tell me what’s going on eventually. You’re special to me too, so please take care of yourself for me. Don’t allow yourself to get hurt or die because you think that your life is less significant than someone else’s. I love you. Grandmother loves you. If you ever died, both of us would be very sad. If you died, Subaru, I’d die too.”
Hokuto gripped onto him more tightly. Though Subaru couldn’t hear her sobbing out loud, he could see tears running down her cheeks. He wanted to turn away, but it was his fault that she was crying. He couldn’t let her worry about him anymore. He had to deal with the Sakurazukamori by himself.
Suddenly the phone rang.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” the fragile-looking woman whispered as she allowed Subaru into her home. In many ways she appeared very young, but her face looked as haggard as an old woman’s.
“No problem,” Subaru replied slipping out of the rather extravagant-looking jacket that his sister had made for him. Hokuto had really outdone herself with this outfit. It was literally covered in buckles and zippers, and had no pockets whatsoever. Not to mention it was extremely tight, and uncomfortable. Normally, it was easy for him to endure whatever outfit she forced him to wear, but right now it was difficult for him not to notice the way the woman was staring at him.
“You know…” the woman began hesitantly, “I wasn’t expecting the Sumeragi head to be so ostentatious.”
“Um y-yes well… You mentioned that you have been experiencing problems with an inugami on the phone. Can you tell me which room it's located in, and how it came to be in your home?”
"Well... You see my younger brother had been very interested in the occult while he was alive. It had seemed harmless at first... just a few books and some candles. My parents and I never suspected that anything was wrong until the family dog, Cuddles(?) went missing. We searched for him everywhere-I was afraid that someone had let him outside. Of course, the last place that we'd expected to find his body was in my brother's room. I-I’m not sure what he’d been trying to do with Cuddles… He’d cut off his head with a bamboo saw.
"Needless to say, my parents and I were very concerned. We were considering sending my brother to a therapist, but only a few days later he died as well... It looked as if something had torn him apart; there were pieces of him scattered all about the room. Afterwards, my parents and I been hearing noises coming from his room. It sounds like there’s something scratching at the door.
"It's that door over there," the woman whispered weakly, pointing to an ordinary door at the end of the hallway. "Can I trust you with this?"
"Of course. I know that I don't look like much, but I've been doing this for a long time. This should only take a few hours."
"T-Thank you."
"Please stay away from this area until I'm gone. There is a possibility that the spirit could become violet."
“Alright,” the woman replied quickly. She literally ran away from him and disappeared into another room.
Subaru sighed with relief as soon as the women left. He wasn't sure why, but there was something about the way that she had been looking at him that had unnerved him…
In any case, he wanted to get this job done as quickly as possible. He didn’t want to be away from Hokuto for even a second longer than he needed to be.
Subaru walked quickly towards the door that the woman had pointed to earlier. He placed several barriers around it before entering. Inside, the room looked very different than he'd expected it to. Everything about it indicated that the person who had lived there had been practicing magic for quite some time. Books on the occult were scattered throughout the room, along with a wide assortment of items used in spell casting. It was obvious that the boy had been attempting to practice magic for years, and yet his family only recently discovered that there was something wrong with him.
Cautiously, Subaru picked up one of the books and briefly scanned its contents. As expected, it was full of errors, and he suspected that most of the other spell books here were the same. He doubted that any of the spells that this person had tried to perform had worked properly, and he must have suffered from sakanagi for his efforts.
But his family had probably just assumed that their son got sick frequently.
Suddenly, Subaru heard a low growling. He turned to see the transparent form of the inugami standing in the corner of the room with its tail between its legs. It was surprisingly small... it must have been just a puppy when it had been killed. It probably wouldn't take much to convince it to move on.
Subaru walked closer to the spirit and crouched down in front of it. "I'm sorry for what your owner did to you. I can't undo what's happened, but I can send you on so that you'll have a chance to live a better life. I'm sorry... I wish I could do more for you."
He reached out to scratch the puppy's head, but the puppy recoiled and bit him hard enough to draw blood.
Subaru moved away from the puppy slightly. "I-I'm sorry. I scared you didn't I? I didn't mean to."
The inugami only snarled at him in response, bearing abnormally large fangs. He was sure that the puppy’s teeth had been normal-sized only a while ago.
Subaru stood and backed away from the inugami, suddenly remembering what the woman had told him before. This inugami had killed its master and torn him apart afterwards. He couldn't underestimate it otherwise it would kill him as well.
He could still remember what his sister had said to him only hours before:
You’re special to me too, so please take care of yourself for me. Don’t allow yourself to get hurt or die because you think that your life is less significant than someone else’s. I love you. Grandmother loves you. If you ever died, both of us would be very sad. If you died, Subaru, I’d die too.”
The idea of dying suddenly terrified him.
The inugami moved towards him, emboldened by his fear. It had become much larger than before, and its claws were nearly as large as its teeth. However, it were the eyes that scared him the most. The eyes had been golden brown before, just like Seishirou’s, but now they had become piercing amber.
Subaru closed his eyes and began chanting softly. His grandmother had taught him to maintain control in any situation, and yet he had been doing so badly as of late. He couldn't afford to waste time hesitating like he had during his last job.
Distantly, he could already hear the sound of the inugami whimpering, but he forced himself to ignore it.
Only when Subaru had felt the inugami's presence leave the room entirely did he open his eyes. He thought that he would have felt guilty for causing the spirit so much pain, but he didn’t feel anything at all. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't regret his actions. He had known that the spirit was malicious from the beginning. He'd just chosen to ignore it because he didn't want to believe that such a small, innocent-looking puppy could have killed a human being.
It had been the same with the Sakurazukamori. Even after he learned that the man was dangerous, he'd never fully acknowledged it because he hadn't wanted to think that someone who seemed so kind could be a bad person. But, now he knew that he couldn't afford such a luxury. He would have to be more careful around the Sakurazukamori from now on. He would watch him, and try to find a way to defeat him without killing him, but if killing the Sakurazukamori were the only way that he could save Hokuto’s life, he wouldn't hesitate to do so.
]…Only to you do I want to give this gift. Not the decoration of this love.
Even if only the meeting was to just pass by one another and nothing happened
Only you don't understand, though I remember certainly being next to you.
If I hold you, this only appears as if I'm letting you g-
Seishirou shut off the radio abruptly. He pulled yet another cigarette out of his coat pocket and lit it with an effortlessness that could only be acquired with years of experience. Though it was not unusual for him to go through a pack a day, it was not normal for him to go through an entire pack in a single morning.
It hadn’t been unusual to find Subaru’s apartment unlocked and empty, even early in the day, but he hadn’t expected to find Hokuto lying upon Subaru’s bed with tears streaming down her face. Though her eyes had been open, it had taken her several minutes to realize that he’d been standing in front of her.
Of course, once she had noticed she wiped the tears from her eyes, straightened her clothing, and greeted him properly as if nothing had happened.
The conversation that followed had been brief and unsatisfying. Hokuto had informed him that her brother was working. Seishirou had left shortly after.
Seishirou pulled into the parking lot just outside of a relatively large home. The spiritual energy radiating from within was rapidly diminishing. Subaru didn’t seem to have suffered any major injuries. In fact, he appeared to be doing extremely well.
Seishirou pulled another cigarette from his coat pocket as he waited for Subaru to arrive.
Subaru sauntered out of the house without looking back at the woman standing in the doorway behind him. His head was lowered so he couldn’t see his eyes properly from underneath the brim of the hat that Hokuto had most likely forced him to wear, but Seishirou could see that the boy was smiling. It wasn’t the same happy smile that he was used to seeing, but an apathetic smile that appeared misplaced amongst the rest of the youth’s features.
He’d been so deep in thought that he hadn’t even noticed he was there until he honked his horn.
“Subaru-kun,” he began in the same friendly tone that he’d always used in the boy’s presence. The effort seemed pointless considering that it didn’t have the desired affect on him anymore, but it had become almost habitual.
Subaru’s head shot upwards. “S-Seishirou-san!”
“We haven’t seen each other since our little outing in the park last week, so I thought that we could go somewhere today. You aren’t busy are you?”
“W-well no, but-”
“Excellent! I’ve wanted to take you to Sunshine City for a while now. Come on inside, Subaru-kun!”
Subaru’s head dropped to the ground again. Seishirou thought that the boy was trying to think up another excuse to avoid him, but instead he walked towards the van and took the seat beside him.
Author: Tankyasue
Warning: Shounen-ai. Lime in later chapters.
Disclaimer: I don't own Tokyo Babylon, Clamp does.
Summary: Subaru discovers who Seishirou really is before the end of the bet.
Chapter 5 - Sayonara So Long
Absent-mindedly, Subaru reached out and touched his lips with gloved fingers. He could still remember how the Sakurazukamori's lips had felt against his own. The pressure had been so faint that he had barely been able to feel it at the time, and yet the experience had been so profound.
'My first kiss.' Subaru thought suddenly. His face became extremely hot. Immediately, pulled his hand away from his lips and forced himself to look at the blank sheet of paper in front of him. His art teacher had been gracious enough to give him an extra day to work on his assignment since he hadn't done anything over the weekend. He would get it done today!
Subaru grabbed his pencil and pressed it lightly against the paper. He had no idea what to draw. His teacher had been remarkably vague about the assignment; he’d told him that he could draw whatever he wanted to as long as it looked good. Normally, Subaru would have just drawn an animal, since those were the things that he usually drew anyway, but now he just didn’t want to. Whenever he thought about animals he remembered the puppy that the Sakurazukamori had killed lying amongst the trash staring at him with vacant, accusing eyes.
It was strange to think that that Sakurazukamori could kill something so innocent without remorse, and yet still be capable of expressing affection almost genuinely, even if there were no feelings behind his actions. Why had the Sakurazukamori kissed him yesterday? He'd spent an entire night awake wondering, and yet he still couldn't think of a reason. Nothing that the Sakurazukamori did seemed to make any sense to him. He still couldn’t understand why the Sakurazukamori had started the bet with him at all. It might have been possible that had he really wanted to learn how to love someone, but maybe there was another reason.
Either way, he thought that Kuzuki's method of 'winning' the bet was wrong. Killing Seishirou was not the answer.
Kuzuki blamed the Sakurazukamori for what would happen to his sister, but really it was entirely his fault. If he weren’t so weak, Hokuto wouldn’t need to die in order to protect him.
“Hello Subaru!” Hokuto cried out gleefully before throwing his bedroom door open and stepping inside. “Are you finished your project yet?”
“Not quite…” he replied weakly. Subaru glanced down at the blank sheet of paper in front of him, suddenly feeling guilty. He hadn’t even attempted to work on his assignment.
“Can I see what you’ve done so far?” Hokuto asked peering over his shoulder from behind him.
“NO!” Subaru cried out, covering the sketchpad with his arms. “Erm… I mean I’d rather you didn’t. I’ll let you look at it when it’s finished.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“You haven’t even started yet, have you?”
“No.”
“And you haven’t eaten since you’ve gotten home either.”
“I don’t feel like eating…”
“Don’t give me that bull, Subaru! How can you expect to be able to do anything if you don’t eat!”
Hokuto placed small plate on his desk, shaking her head slightly. “Eat these at least. They’re only store bought cookies, so they won’t be as good as mine, but they’ll give you some energy so you can do something besides stare at your paper. Honestly, you’d probably die of starvation if I weren’t around to take care of you.”
“Thank you, Hokuto-chan,” Subaru replied meekly without looking at what Hokuto had given him. He knew that he should eat something otherwise his sister would continue to worry about him, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep anything down, and that would only make Hokuto worry about him even more.
“Subaru, I’m not stupid. I know that you’re upset about something and I want to know what it is,” Hokuto said gently. She reminded him of a mother attending to a scared child.
Hokuto had always taken care of him because he was too incompetent take care of himself. She’d fed him because he didn’t eat on his own. She’d dressed him because he didn’t know what to wear. She would have to die for him because he couldn’t face the Sakurazukamori on his own.
But, if I learn to do things for myself from now on, Hokuto-chan won’t die.
“Hokuto-chan… I know that you want to take care of me, but this is something that I have to deal with on my own. You can’t keep protecting me all the time, or I’ll never learn to take care of myself.”
“But, Subaru-”
“Hokuto-chan, I love you. You’re more important to me than anyone else, even Seishirou-san. However, I don’t want you to get hurt because of me, so please try to understand. I will try to take care of myself from now on. I want you to take care of yourself too.”
Hokuto walked over to him and silently placed her arms around his shoulders and held onto him tightly. Subaru rested his head upon her shoulder, and wrapped his arms around her back. Neither of them realized that Subaru was nearly sitting in her lap.
“I won’t force anything out of you right now, but I hope that you will tell me what’s going on eventually. You’re special to me too, so please take care of yourself for me. Don’t allow yourself to get hurt or die because you think that your life is less significant than someone else’s. I love you. Grandmother loves you. If you ever died, both of us would be very sad. If you died, Subaru, I’d die too.”
Hokuto gripped onto him more tightly. Though Subaru couldn’t hear her sobbing out loud, he could see tears running down her cheeks. He wanted to turn away, but it was his fault that she was crying. He couldn’t let her worry about him anymore. He had to deal with the Sakurazukamori by himself.
Suddenly the phone rang.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” the fragile-looking woman whispered as she allowed Subaru into her home. In many ways she appeared very young, but her face looked as haggard as an old woman’s.
“No problem,” Subaru replied slipping out of the rather extravagant-looking jacket that his sister had made for him. Hokuto had really outdone herself with this outfit. It was literally covered in buckles and zippers, and had no pockets whatsoever. Not to mention it was extremely tight, and uncomfortable. Normally, it was easy for him to endure whatever outfit she forced him to wear, but right now it was difficult for him not to notice the way the woman was staring at him.
“You know…” the woman began hesitantly, “I wasn’t expecting the Sumeragi head to be so ostentatious.”
“Um y-yes well… You mentioned that you have been experiencing problems with an inugami on the phone. Can you tell me which room it's located in, and how it came to be in your home?”
"Well... You see my younger brother had been very interested in the occult while he was alive. It had seemed harmless at first... just a few books and some candles. My parents and I never suspected that anything was wrong until the family dog, Cuddles(?) went missing. We searched for him everywhere-I was afraid that someone had let him outside. Of course, the last place that we'd expected to find his body was in my brother's room. I-I’m not sure what he’d been trying to do with Cuddles… He’d cut off his head with a bamboo saw.
"Needless to say, my parents and I were very concerned. We were considering sending my brother to a therapist, but only a few days later he died as well... It looked as if something had torn him apart; there were pieces of him scattered all about the room. Afterwards, my parents and I been hearing noises coming from his room. It sounds like there’s something scratching at the door.
"It's that door over there," the woman whispered weakly, pointing to an ordinary door at the end of the hallway. "Can I trust you with this?"
"Of course. I know that I don't look like much, but I've been doing this for a long time. This should only take a few hours."
"T-Thank you."
"Please stay away from this area until I'm gone. There is a possibility that the spirit could become violet."
“Alright,” the woman replied quickly. She literally ran away from him and disappeared into another room.
Subaru sighed with relief as soon as the women left. He wasn't sure why, but there was something about the way that she had been looking at him that had unnerved him…
In any case, he wanted to get this job done as quickly as possible. He didn’t want to be away from Hokuto for even a second longer than he needed to be.
Subaru walked quickly towards the door that the woman had pointed to earlier. He placed several barriers around it before entering. Inside, the room looked very different than he'd expected it to. Everything about it indicated that the person who had lived there had been practicing magic for quite some time. Books on the occult were scattered throughout the room, along with a wide assortment of items used in spell casting. It was obvious that the boy had been attempting to practice magic for years, and yet his family only recently discovered that there was something wrong with him.
Cautiously, Subaru picked up one of the books and briefly scanned its contents. As expected, it was full of errors, and he suspected that most of the other spell books here were the same. He doubted that any of the spells that this person had tried to perform had worked properly, and he must have suffered from sakanagi for his efforts.
But his family had probably just assumed that their son got sick frequently.
Suddenly, Subaru heard a low growling. He turned to see the transparent form of the inugami standing in the corner of the room with its tail between its legs. It was surprisingly small... it must have been just a puppy when it had been killed. It probably wouldn't take much to convince it to move on.
Subaru walked closer to the spirit and crouched down in front of it. "I'm sorry for what your owner did to you. I can't undo what's happened, but I can send you on so that you'll have a chance to live a better life. I'm sorry... I wish I could do more for you."
He reached out to scratch the puppy's head, but the puppy recoiled and bit him hard enough to draw blood.
Subaru moved away from the puppy slightly. "I-I'm sorry. I scared you didn't I? I didn't mean to."
The inugami only snarled at him in response, bearing abnormally large fangs. He was sure that the puppy’s teeth had been normal-sized only a while ago.
Subaru stood and backed away from the inugami, suddenly remembering what the woman had told him before. This inugami had killed its master and torn him apart afterwards. He couldn't underestimate it otherwise it would kill him as well.
He could still remember what his sister had said to him only hours before:
You’re special to me too, so please take care of yourself for me. Don’t allow yourself to get hurt or die because you think that your life is less significant than someone else’s. I love you. Grandmother loves you. If you ever died, both of us would be very sad. If you died, Subaru, I’d die too.”
The idea of dying suddenly terrified him.
The inugami moved towards him, emboldened by his fear. It had become much larger than before, and its claws were nearly as large as its teeth. However, it were the eyes that scared him the most. The eyes had been golden brown before, just like Seishirou’s, but now they had become piercing amber.
Subaru closed his eyes and began chanting softly. His grandmother had taught him to maintain control in any situation, and yet he had been doing so badly as of late. He couldn't afford to waste time hesitating like he had during his last job.
Distantly, he could already hear the sound of the inugami whimpering, but he forced himself to ignore it.
Only when Subaru had felt the inugami's presence leave the room entirely did he open his eyes. He thought that he would have felt guilty for causing the spirit so much pain, but he didn’t feel anything at all. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't regret his actions. He had known that the spirit was malicious from the beginning. He'd just chosen to ignore it because he didn't want to believe that such a small, innocent-looking puppy could have killed a human being.
It had been the same with the Sakurazukamori. Even after he learned that the man was dangerous, he'd never fully acknowledged it because he hadn't wanted to think that someone who seemed so kind could be a bad person. But, now he knew that he couldn't afford such a luxury. He would have to be more careful around the Sakurazukamori from now on. He would watch him, and try to find a way to defeat him without killing him, but if killing the Sakurazukamori were the only way that he could save Hokuto’s life, he wouldn't hesitate to do so.
]…Only to you do I want to give this gift. Not the decoration of this love.
Even if only the meeting was to just pass by one another and nothing happened
Only you don't understand, though I remember certainly being next to you.
If I hold you, this only appears as if I'm letting you g-
Seishirou shut off the radio abruptly. He pulled yet another cigarette out of his coat pocket and lit it with an effortlessness that could only be acquired with years of experience. Though it was not unusual for him to go through a pack a day, it was not normal for him to go through an entire pack in a single morning.
It hadn’t been unusual to find Subaru’s apartment unlocked and empty, even early in the day, but he hadn’t expected to find Hokuto lying upon Subaru’s bed with tears streaming down her face. Though her eyes had been open, it had taken her several minutes to realize that he’d been standing in front of her.
Of course, once she had noticed she wiped the tears from her eyes, straightened her clothing, and greeted him properly as if nothing had happened.
The conversation that followed had been brief and unsatisfying. Hokuto had informed him that her brother was working. Seishirou had left shortly after.
Seishirou pulled into the parking lot just outside of a relatively large home. The spiritual energy radiating from within was rapidly diminishing. Subaru didn’t seem to have suffered any major injuries. In fact, he appeared to be doing extremely well.
Seishirou pulled another cigarette from his coat pocket as he waited for Subaru to arrive.
Subaru sauntered out of the house without looking back at the woman standing in the doorway behind him. His head was lowered so he couldn’t see his eyes properly from underneath the brim of the hat that Hokuto had most likely forced him to wear, but Seishirou could see that the boy was smiling. It wasn’t the same happy smile that he was used to seeing, but an apathetic smile that appeared misplaced amongst the rest of the youth’s features.
He’d been so deep in thought that he hadn’t even noticed he was there until he honked his horn.
“Subaru-kun,” he began in the same friendly tone that he’d always used in the boy’s presence. The effort seemed pointless considering that it didn’t have the desired affect on him anymore, but it had become almost habitual.
Subaru’s head shot upwards. “S-Seishirou-san!”
“We haven’t seen each other since our little outing in the park last week, so I thought that we could go somewhere today. You aren’t busy are you?”
“W-well no, but-”
“Excellent! I’ve wanted to take you to Sunshine City for a while now. Come on inside, Subaru-kun!”
Subaru’s head dropped to the ground again. Seishirou thought that the boy was trying to think up another excuse to avoid him, but instead he walked towards the van and took the seat beside him.