The Scars Remind Us

*~*~*~*The characters in this chapter or any others do not belong to me, as much as I wish they did.... they belong to Koyasu Takehito and Project Weiss.... *~*~*~*~

The only characters that DO belong to me are Keiko and the various other extras.

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For some reason, he couldn\'t sleep. Tossing and turning, his body felt as heavy as a cement block. His eyes longed for sleep, feeling so swollen he could use them as pillows, but his brain was a tease, a terrible tease. No matter how many tricks he tried or how many sheep he counted, he couldn’t get a wink of sleep.

The room was so dark, so utterly dark. He couldn\'t see a damn thing. The only light in the room was the red digital numbers on his alarm clock that solemnly reflected back the time, and they didn\'t light up anything. It was as if only inches away from those little red numbers was a black hole that absorbed all the light they might have given off. Three forty six A.M.

He rolled over to his other side. His room was cold. Really cold. He wondered if maybe he\'d forgotten to shut his window or something. He looked over to where the window should have been, but it was still too dark. Not even starlight was coming in. A sigh escaped parched lips. He knew he should replace his drapes. They were so heavy, and it took a lot of wind to move them even a centimeter. They were so boring to look at. They never danced about in the breeze or let through that little sparkle of daylight which would warm the room but not quite light it up.

Now that he thought about it, the drapes kind of reminded him of himself. They looked really nice, and if you didn\'t already know, you wouldn\'t think they were as heavy as they were. If you got close enough, you\'d realize there was a rough texture to them as well. But either way, they do their job and don\'t ask questions. They simply exist. They are simply functional. But why did that bother him? Wasn\'t being functional, being useful good enough?

Maybe it used to be.

In the two months since Weiss had become an independent group a lot more had changed than who bossed them around... well nobody bossed them around anymore, people just associated with them now. They did what they wanted, what they believed was for the good of everyone.

Maybe it was this new sense of independence that had changed him. Now that he could make up his own mind maybe being a drape wasn\'t good enough anymore? But if not a drape, what did he want to be? He felt the emptiness in his heart expand painfully as it pushed through the fragile tissues, destroying them to increase it\'s own size, taking him over from the inside. Obviously his heart knew something he didn\'t.

My heart, huh...

Just then it hit him like a ton of bricks. That nagging suspicion in the back of his skull wasn’t just a suspicion after all. It was really that simple...he was alone. Completely and utterly alone. It wasn\'t that he was a drape that was the problem, it was that a SET of drapes was needed to cover a window. He felt a tear in his heart as the hole grew a little bit bigger.

He lifted his hand to his face and just imagined he could see its outline. How long had it been since he\'d shared his life with anyone? A picture of Yuriko appeared in his mind. That really was a long time ago. He couldn\'t really remember her anymore, she was just there in his head, the last person he had even attempted to open his heart up to. But being with her was a mistake. It always had been, as little as he liked to admit it. She never could have understood him, she never could have truly accepted him for who he was. There was no one left like that. No one but Omi, Yohji and Ran.

But that was different. The rest of them still had things to cling to, or at least to help them forget. Omi still had school, where he could meet new people whenever he wanted. Yohji was constantly meeting new women at whatever bars or clubs he constantly convened to, and Ran had his sister Aya and Sakura back at the flower shop.

Well, he still did have that kid\'s soccer team he coached in the spring, but how was he going to meet someone that way? What was he going to do, date a soccer mom? He loved kids, but the idea of dating someone who already had one was kind of disconcerting. Besides, most of them were way too old for him. There wasn\'t one of them that hadn\'t pushed or passed thirty by now.

A strange thought passed through his head. What about—no way! He couldn\'t even believe his mind was pushing such nonsense! Nonsense. But if it were nonsense, why did it wiggle its way from his subconscious like that? He rolled over again.

Nonsense nonsense nonsense nonsense nonsense.

******

The alarm clocks went off almost simultaneously. A smile momentarily creased Omi\'s lips, as it always did when he heard all the alarms go off like a choir of mechanical birds. One by one the song of the mechanical birds was smashed to silence, one of them literally. That would be Ken\'s. Ken always seemed to think it was a better idea to throw the thing across the room rather than just hit the button on the top. He was going to break that thing someday.

He giggled a little bit at the thought. Ken always got too carried away with things. He was brash and overly emotional, but that was just part of his charm.

He could imagine what each of them was doing now. There was Yohji, rolling out of bed, groping around for his pack of cigarettes so he could have his morning smoke. Then there was Ran, who always woke up so quickly and alertly, walking out the door and busting Yohji for smoking in the house. Then of course would be Ken who, after throwing his alarm clock, would stumble blindly through the hallway on his morning bathroom run. It was all a routine. Every Monday and Friday was the same.

Omi always loved having kitchen duty for some reason, waking up before everyone else, warming up over a hot stove and just having some time to think. Some people, like Yohji and Ken, always concentrated on things too much, but Omi had always been able to just separate his mind and his hands. Most of the time he didn’t have to think about his actions at all. Cleaning, cooking, taking notes, even killing... none of it he really had to think about anymore.

Ran pulled a mug out of the cupboard and poured himself a cup of black coffee. He sat down quietly at the table.

“Hey, Ran-kun. Nice morning, huh?”

“Don’t even bother.” Cold as ice. But that was normal.

“You’re going to go check on Aya at the flower shop today, right?” Ran paused, then gave a short, stiff nod. Omi smiled and turned down the heat on the stovetop.

“All right! Omi’s got kitchen duty today!” Yohji bounded in, his vibrant blonde hair escaping in wavy locks from his ponytail. He sat down in the chair beside Ran’s, his robe still saturated with the smell of cigarette smoke. “Let’s do this!”

Omi looked over at Yohji with a look that was not quite irritation. “We’ve got to wait for Ken.”

“Right. And so if Ken decides not to come to breakfast?” Yohji yawned deeply, his long, thin arms stretching up toward the ceiling. “He’s probably on the computer or something like that.”

Omi glanced over the table. “All right. I guess I can take him something.”

“How cute.”

Omi’s glance shot toward the grinning Yohji. “What!?”

Yohji let out a deep-throated chuckle. “You never take me anything when I don’t show up for a meal on time.”

The younger boy’s cheeks flared up, turning a deep beet red. “I don’t know what you’re trying to say, but—“

“I’m saying that I think you’ve got a little crush on Kenken.”

By now, Omi’s whole face had reddened. “No way! Ken is a BOY! I don’t go for that kind of stuff!” Yohji laughed to himself and plunged his fork into the pile of scrambled eggs on his plate. Ran, who hadn’t said a word since Yohji had been there, looked just as cold and distant as ever. Omi wondered for a moment if he had even heard any of the conversation. He took a fork from the drawer and piled some food on an empty plate. Ken was probably just distracted. Ken never missed breakfast.

“54-55-56...”

Omi opened the sliding glass door and slowly walked onto the patio, a burst of cold winter air hitting him squarely in the chest. He felt all the hairs on his arms and legs prick up. How could Ken be out on a morning like this, on a snow covered patio in nothing but his pajama pants?

“You’re gonna catch cold.”

Ken spun around in surprise, his concentration broken. The soccer ball rolled through the railing and down into the snow, disappearing without a trace. “Oh, hey Omi.”

“You’re gonna catch cold, Ken-kun. You should come inside.”

Ken smiled a little. “I’m not gonna get sick.”

Omi looked around, trying not to blush. “When I saw you were out here, I left your breakfast inside so it wouldn’t get cold.” Ken sighed lethargically, but nodded anyway.

“Yeah...” Ken looked over the balcony, grazing the snow for his soccer ball.

******

Ken hesitated, looking across the room to the boy sitting at the computer. It had taken all the courage he had to come this far, so he couldn’t just turn back and act like nothing had happened. If anyone would understand, it would be Yohji.

He approached the computer chair where Yohji sat surfing through porn web sites, cautiously. He knew he shouldn’t have come, shouldn’t have bothered even thinking about coming... but he had. He took a deep breath, counted to three and tapped on Yohji’s shoulder. “Uh...Yotan?”

Yohji spun around and smiled. “Hey Kenken, what’s got you so red faced?” Ken recoiled for a second. He hadn’t even realized he was blushing.

“How do I say this... um... uh... how do you know... uh... if you have a... uh... crush on somebody?”

“Oh-ho, Ken! You’ve got a crush on someone? Who? C’mon! Who’s the lucky lady?”

Ken blushed harder and looked away. “I-I don’t know what I’m feeling. I’m just so... uh... I don’t know...”

“Does your heart beat harder around her? Do you feel nervous? Warm? Maybe even confused?”

Ken looked down at his feet. “Confused, yeah.”

Yohji smiled. “Do you find yourself taking more than just a few glances? Do you follow her with your eyes? Do you notice every time she walks into the room? Do you maybe even stare?”

“Yeah, sometimes.”

Yohji laughed. “It sounds like a crush to me, but, you know, you’ve really got to figure it out for yourself.” He brushed away a few locks of his hair that had fallen into his eyes. “No one can tell you that you like someone. You just gotta know, deep inside.”

A sigh escaped from Ken’s lips. ‘That’s just the thing... I DON’T know...’ he thought to himself.

“So who is it? You can tell me, right?”

Ken looked down at the floor again. Ken’s thought process was interrupted by the moaning sounds coming from the computer speakers. “Yohji-eh...” Yohji laughed at himself and closed out the window.

“Hah! I guess it didn’t like staying on pause for that long!”