The Pediatrician's Closet

Past

Random fact about me: I am actually the oldest of 11 kids. ^.^ I have ten little brothers and sisters. I guess that kind of puts me in Masaomi's shoes, eh? Though, granted, they aren't all from the same parents. I'm sort of the high school whoopsie baby, so I'm the only kid from my mom and dad. Then they both went off and got married to other people and had more kids.Still, I took my role as the eldest very seriously. My mom had bad chronic depression and crap luck with men, so I helped out a lot taking care of my siblings.

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Yusuke was still little more than a baby and his mother pregnant with Futo. With most of the kids in school, kindergarten or otherwise, you'd think there wouldn't be so much pressure on his parents. But his father could only move so high as a police officer and earn so much, meaning the lot of them were still trying to make do with the cheapest three-room apartment they could find, which was absolutely expansive, especially in Japanese city terms. Eleven kids in two rooms. Yusuke wasn't even in a bedroom with the rest of them when he slept. He had a little makeshift mattress on the floor of their parents' closet. And even then his father couldn't fill in the bills on his own. So his mother had gone to an evening trading school in order to get a job that paid enough to make it worth it for her to be out of the home, because daycare costs were almost as much as their freaking rent. Not only that, but Masaomi had gotten a part-time job as well. He had been the only one old enough to do so at the time. Legally, at least.

But he soon felt he had to quit, as when his mother went to school, it left all the boys with their father. Since Masaomi sort of made up as a second mother, he knew how to work with his brothers to get everyone fed, homework done, bathed (in their sole bathroom, nonetheless), and to bed. It definitely was more of an art than a skill—neither of which their father seemed to possess on this wide of a scale.

So he cut his hours to right after school to right before his mother left, graveyard shifts, and weekends. Even so, with keeping his grades up to top notch—he had to, since he couldn't afford prep school or clubs—Masaomi began to wonder if maybe he had too much to handle. Sure he'd grown up taking care of his many siblings and his mother, and there always seemed to be toddler in the house (they were the most upkeep, for sure, with their curiosity, mobility, and temperamental moods), but his adult life was in sight now.

But it wasn't so much his home life that got to him. Masaomi had grown up with that.

It was bullies he couldn't handle.

And Udo Tounoski had taken the cake.

Usually Masaomi didn't have to deal with bullies directly. Ukyo, while ultra clean cut and nerd of the family, had a mean right hook he wasn't afraid to toss around. Kaname, though still in middle school at the time, was going through a punk phase and was more than happy to bash in a few heads (even if he wasn't all that good at it).

But Hikaru...

Udo Tounoski had it out for Hikaru, and in a sly, underhand sort of way.

It wasn't completely secret that Hikaru liked to dress as a girl on his off hours, and Udo couldn't get enough of that. But he did it in such a way that Masaomi wouldn't have even known if he hadn't been looking through Hikaru's book bag for paperwork Kaname had said the middle school had asked them to fill out.

There he found the lewd pictures...and the letters...and the razors...

When he confronted Hikaru, the usually happy-go-lucky imp who floated above it all for the sole purpose of laughing at it burst into tears and told Masaomi all of it, and the threats Udo had issued if Hikaru would tell anyone. All the things in his book bag would be incriminating if he showed anyone, which was why Udo snuck them into his shoe locker. But it wasn't just the social and emotional threats. The boy was huge, for one thing, so it didn't stop him from doing whatever he wanted to Hikaru physically, and it wasn't like any of his older brothers could do anything about it. He would have bulldozed the wannabe Kaname with ease. Ukyo had managed to get a teacher to fund his own prep school and, since he wasn't old enough to work, he spent all his free time there. The rest of the boys were still too young to do anything...