All You Need Is Love (MewGulf AU)

🌻Chapter 6

PRESENT
🌻

"Sorry about what happened yesterday."

Kashima had come up to Gulf cautiously as he was preparing to go home after work. He was persistently wiping the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief and his eyes roamed everywhere, as if he felt awkward.

"I heard you got me into a taxi and took me all the way home. The wife reamed me out once I woke up, and that helped me figure it out."

Gulf pulled out a smile and answered, "It was nothing."

He'd felt eyes on him all day, but he'd been busy and hadn't had the time to wonder about it. This was the first time Gulf had been at his desk all day.

"I only remember the first thirty minutes in the bar. The rest is a blur. Did I do anything bad?"

Gulf had suspected this would happen. It was too much trouble to rehash everything that had happened yesterday.

"Nothing that can't be written off to having to much to drink. Don't let it bother you." Kashima would probably talk to his favorite girl the next time he went to the bar, but it would be better for him to hear about it from her.

Fleeing from Kashima, who was apologizing profusely, Gulf started walking for home. He had begun to feel as if what had happened yesterday had all been a dream. But Kashima's apology had forced him to realize that it wasn't.

Mew Suppasit. In the eight years since they'd last seen each other, he'd become much more mature and looked much better. Even back in the old days when Mew had worn the school's severe uniform, Gulf had felt some kind of manly charm exuding from him. But last night it had been much more intense.

Part of it might have been because his chest had been showing beneath his jacket, but Gulf understood why the girls in the bar thronged around him---he could practically smell the masculine pheromones that Mew exuded.

They were in his languorous manner and speaking syle. Mew's voice had gotten deeper since the last time he'd heard it, but the touch of naivete still remained.

'Gulf.'

The memory of his voice sent a shudder down Gulf's spine.

He could never forget him, the transfer student who'd come in May of their senior year at high school---an old time. He'd been obscured by a quality that Gulf didn't understand.

Gulf had known nothing but the most ordinary of lives, and Mew had shown him something different. Gulf had loved him, and he had loved Gulf. But in the end, the world Mew inhabited as the heir to a yakuza family was too different.

Gulf had betrayed him and disappeared from his life. They never spoken since then, until running into each other yesterday.

When Gulf went on to college, he could have been accepted at plenty of good schools, but he'd gone to a second tier school in his hometown. He didn't want to go to Tokyo, where Mew was.

He'd chosen to work for the regional bank for the same reason. There were no words to describe his feelings at the outrageous fact that he was in Tokyo now.

Tokyo was huge, and so was its population. He'd brushed aside his concern with the idea that after eight years, even if they ran into each other in the street by some odd chance, they would never recognize each other. But it looked like that had just been a wishful thinking. Gulf knew that he, at least, would recognize Mew wherever he saw him.

And now Mew had done it too.

The only reason Gulf run was he couldn't face the reality of it, nothing more. But his desires to see Mew again coexisted with his desire not to. He didn't know how the emotions he'd been suppressing all this time would manifest if he did see him. Gulf had lived his life these last eight years by forgetting about Mew and sealing away the memories.

But now Gulf had seen him. What would he do if they saw each other again? He'd been thinking about it non-stop, but he still didn't have an answer.

TBC