Graduation
“I don’t see how it’s hard to understand,” Ritsuka said, feeling aggravated, which was how he usually felt around Soubi. He kept thinking that he was going to get used to it, but every day he came out from school and the other man was standing there, cool and calm and serene and Soubi, and then he realized he would never get used to it.
“Graduation ceremonies are very important,” Soubi told him.
Ritsuka didn’t bother to scowl, since that never seemed to have any affect on Soubi anyway. “Graduating high school, maybe. But elementary school? It doesn’t mean anything.”
Soubi smiled at him. “Maybe you’re not looking for the meaning hard enough.”
This time Ritsuka did scowl, albeit involuntarily. Soubi always said stuff like that. It sounded like it was profound, but he was really just talking. Soubi said a lot of things that didn’t really have meaning, when you looked at them real close. A lot like an elementary school graduation that way.
So you always missed the things he said that did have meaning, that had so much meaning that Ritsuka wasn’t sure he ever really understood them.
“I’m still not going,” he said, his chin starting to get a stubborn tilt. “I don’t feel like it. Neither of my parents will go, and I don’t need you showing up again like you did to the parents’ day.”
“You don’t want me there?” Soubi asked, all innocent as he lit a cigarette.
“No, I don’t want you there,” Ritsuka said, keeping his voice very firm.
Soubi’s smile didn’t waver. “Yuiko-chan will be upset. She’s expecting me.”
Ritsuka looked away and muttered something about how Yuiko expected a lot of things that she was probably never going to get.
“Don’t be mean, Ritsuka,” Soubi said reprovingly. “Anyway, ‘I don’t feel like it’ isn’t a good reason for skipping something important.”
“It’ll be boring, that’s all.”
“I like boredom,” Soubi said. “It’s peaceful, compared to the alternative.”
Ritsuka snuck a sideways glance at him. He had a feeling that that was one of Soubi’s double-meaning statements. Therefore it was safer to give no real response at all. “Hmph,” he said.
Soubi smiled, because he knew he had won.