Blurb: Yesh! You found the much-asked for sequel to Cut Off! Eight months minus three days after the events of Cut Off… Omi’s birthday is coming up soon, and Yohji has NO idea what to get as a gift. He knows what Omi WANTS. . . but you can’t wrap up that sort of thing in oddly-coloured paper for Omi to open in front of Ken and Aya-kun…
Yes, I actually started this over the summer, and since I have time to type NOW. . .
I turned back to face Omi. Winking, I paused long enough to blow him a kiss before leaving. The look on his face was priceless. ~Cut Off, Chapter 9
Yohji had lunch with his newfound otouto one day, three days before Omi’s eighteenth birthday. Normally, such lunches with Hikaru were spent catching up on childhoods that should have been spent together. This time, however, Yohji’s thoughts were occupied with a more urgent matter.
“. . . and then when mom walked into the principal’s office and saw me black and blue and covered in mud, she - ” Hikaru stopped, noticing the vacant expression in Yohji’s eyes.
“Niichan.” He whined. “You’re not paying attention.”
Yohji blinked, and the vacant look left his face.
“Sorry.” He grimaced. “I’m kind of stuck on this little problem.”
Hikaru seemed interested. “Oh? Do tell.” Yohji sighed and after an expectant look on Hikaru’s face, decided to confide.
“What do you get a kid for his 18th birthday?” Hikaru’d been 18 more recently than me, after all, Yohji thought. Maybe he could come up with something. After a moment’s pause, he answered.
“Depends. What does this 18-year-old want?” He said. Yohji sweatdropped.
“Well, if I knew that, then I wouldn’t have to ask you, now would I?”
“Come on. You’ve got to have some idea.”
“Well, I do. But it’s more of. . .” Yohji considered his words carefully. He had yet to tell his brother about his sexuality. “It’s more of a service I can do him, rather than a thing I can put in a box and wrap in oddly-coloured paper.” Omi’d been dropping hints at Yohji for at LEAST the past month.
A pause. Hikaru’s mouth twisted in thought.
“You could always ask him.” He suggested.
“Nah. Too obvious.” Yohji dismissed it. The brainstorming continued.
Five minutes later it was interrupted by a call on Yohji’s cell phone.
“Kudou.” He answered. Yohji’s end of the conversation went something like this, from what Hikaru could hear.
“Aya-kun? . . . . What?! . . . You’re kidding? . . . ME?! Why me? . . . Oh, alright. I’ll go.”
Yohji hung up, and grabbed the blue shirt he’d discarded on the seat beside him and stood up.
“Hey, where are you going?” Hikaru protested as Yohji gave him enough money to cover his half of the bill.
“Sorry. I’ve got to go and rescue the 18-year-old from the evil high school principal.”
And the day had started out so nicely, too. The morning was eventful only in the fact that Yohji was already awake when Omi’d gotten up. He only did so when he worked the morning shift. Omi’d gotten some extra flirting in and had been rewarded with a feeble, sleepy smile.
During lunch, Omi wrote about his good morning in his notebook. It was a diary he’d been keeping since that great day when Yohji ended his relationships with Ken and Aya. Then, just as Omi was about to put the diary away, it was snatched away by another classmate of his.
“Nice diary, Omi.” The boy said, and proceeded to read the entry he’d just written aloud for the whole class to hear. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment. And Omi didn’t even do anything wrong!
“Dude, Yohji’s one of those guys you work with, right?” Another boy asked. “You’re not supposed to think THAT way about guys.”
Now, Omi was generally good-natured, but somewhere amongst the falsettos, feigned lisps and limp-in-the-wrist jokes that ensued, Omi lost it.
Naturally, since Omi was the one who inflicted the most damage in the fight, he was the one who was dragged down to the principal’s office. They were awaiting his angry “supervisor” from Koneko who was listed as the person the school was to contact in case of an emergency. Didn’t it just FIGURE that the one who eventually showed up was Yohji?
Even though Yohji was not the disobedient student this time, he still felt nervous walking into the principal’s office. It brought up too many bad memories. This principal’s stern face and the fact that Omi was the disobedient student spoke volumes.
“Are you aware that Omi has been having . . . carnal thoughts about you, Mr. Kudou? The principal spoke as if merely pronouncing the words made them contagious.
“Yes.” Yohji answered. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Omi was sitting on a hard bench in the corner, looking sheepish, but otherwise fine. According to Aya, he’d been involved in a fight.
“It was because Omi was writing such thoughts in his diary that his classmates saw fit to ridicule him, and take it away. Do you know how Omi tried to get it back?” The principal asked Yohji accusingly, as if snatching a boy’s diary was perfectly fine… trying to get it back was wrong.
“No.” was the obvious answer. The principal turned to Omi with a frown that he must have recognized, because he answered.
“I punched him, Yohji.” And Yohji thought Omi wouldn’t be one to see the inside of the principal’s office too often… Way to go! Yohji forced himself to put on a concerned look. He sat down beside Omi, and put his arm on the kid’s shoulder.
“Omi-kun… are you okay?” He asked. “Yes Yohji-kun. I’m alright.” Omi nodded.
Yohji let out a sigh of relief, and gave Omi a little huggle. “Good.” He said. Omi’s cheeks flushed somewhat.
After a good quarter of an hour haggling over disciplinary measures, Omi ended up with a pink slip.
~ End chapter 1