Seven Weeks: A Seven Days Fanfiction

WEEK FOUR: Monday (Touji)

I managed to avoid Shino on my way out of the house in the morning, though it took a bit of strategizing. She'd spent the night in Natsuki's room. I figured they were trying to sneak in as much time together as possible before my parents got home this weekend. I didn't care, except that I didn't want to start the day fending off her catty remarks.

I waited until I heard her go into the bathroom down the hall before I grabbed my bag and darted downstairs. Umeki offered breakfast, which I declined with a hug, and got out the door before Shino could come looking for me.

Once I was safely a block or so down the road, I pulled out my phone to text Yuzuru. And that was when I realized my screen was full of messages—texts, emails, and alerts from the Houka message board app. There were so many of them that I gave up on scrolling and unlocked my phone to see what was going on. I pulled up the texts first, looking to see if any of them were from Yuzuru, but his thread didn't have new messages. I clicked on the first unread one, which was from Nakamura.

Please, please tell your brother it wasn't me. I'm sorry!

That was weird. The next one was from Miyano, a girl I'd dated for a week several months ago. Seryou-sama, you could have just told me.

There was one from Tajiri that said Call me.

One from Kobayashi that said Big fat liars ;)

One from a guy in my class that I almost never spoke to: You're sick, dude. Followed by a photo.

I stopped walking. My heart sped up so abruptIy that I got dizzy. "Oh my god."

I opened up the school message board app. The top thread had been posted by an anonymous account. It had over two hundred replies and was titled, Gay? I tapped on it, and the same photo was plastered across the screen.

"Oh my god."

I dialed Yuzuru's number, my palms sweating. He didn't pick up, and it went to voicemail. I hung up and dialed again. "Come on, come on, please answer." He had to be on the train by now, but maybe his phone was in his bag, or he was sneaking in a nap. His ability to fall asleep while standing up was nothing short of confounding.

I had to redial four times before the line clicked. "Seryou?" He sounded groggy. "What's up?"

"Have you seen the school message board this morning?"

"Why?"

"Yuzuru-san... someone got ahold of that picture we took. The one where I'm kissing you. It's all over the board, and god knows where else."

"Eh? Hang on."

I waited, jittering with nerves, until he came back on the line. "I see it. Koike-chan and Utsumi are giving me crap about it already." He laughed, which only heightened my panic.

"Yuzuru-san, this is serious. There's hundreds of comments."

"Hey," he said gently, as if he could hear me hyperventilating, "it's gonna be okay. Calm down."

"We can't lie our way out of this one. I'm kissing you."

"Only on the cheek," he replied. "It's not a big deal."

But the way I was looking at him in that photo... a person would have to be blind not to get what it meant. "I don't think people will see it like that."

"Sure they will. We just call it a prank."

"A prank?" I repeated doubtfully.

"Why not? We were goofing off for a selfie, since everyone was teasing us last week about that website. It's actually kind of true, isn't it?"