Accidental Siblings

Chapter 17

Hello!

It's been a little while. I thank you all for waiting for me to update! Apologies, chapter is a little short but I wanted to cut it up a bit and continue where I left off in the next chapter.

To agirlwithgoodergrammar: Actually, the answer to how Bokushi actually came along will be revealed sooner than you think. Do stay tuned for the next few chapters!

Anyway on to the actual chapter, that was all I wanted to say. So without further ado...

Please enjoy!

Chapter 17

Morning came faster than Bokushi would have like it to. As he slowly woke up, he heaved a sigh and rolled over on his side, looking at the clock on his bedside. It was 9:13, later than he usually woke up, perhaps because of how many hours he had spent the night before freaking out (well, as much as someone like Bokushi could freak out, anyway) before his body couldn't take it anymore and shut down. Rolling out of bed and going to the bathroom, he stood in front of the sink and turned on the faucet, blocking the drain and watching the water collect in the basin. He took a moment to look at himself in the mirror. Lucky for him, he didn't look as stressed out as he actually was, which was good, because he was trying to mask how badly this current situation had messed him up. He switched off the faucet and scooped the cold water into his hands before splashing it on his face.

Even though he had a several hours after dinner last night to think about it, and then another eight hours to sleep it off, he was still in denial that Miyoko would be staying at his house this weekend. Yes, yes, he knows that someone staying over was not that big of a deal, and if it was, it shouldn't be. It was just that for as long as he's been around he had kept his life with friends and his life with his family two completely different things. Not even his teammates have been to his house, both former and current. Well, part of that was due to paranoia that they might do something disastrous and his father would lose his mind, but the other was simply because he just preferred not to. He would rather keep everything separate.

This particular arrangement, however, was a different story altogether. First of all, it was weird because it was his father, not him, who invited Miyoko. The next thing is that she was staying for more than a few hours, she was staying for a few days. The third is that when his father was giving his reasoning as to why he was doing this when he had called Akashi last night, Bokushi had the feeling that his father still has some ulterior motive, some reasoning that he hasn't told him yet. And that irked the redheaded boy to no end. Why was it? Why was he so frustrated about that? His hands paused mid-way between the sink and his face as he finally came up with the answer.

It was because he didn't know.

Bokushi used to be able to know everything. He could look at the information on any given individual, narrow down the results and predict the outcome; that's what he was known for. But his father... His father was a complete anomaly. It didn't matter how much information Bokushi had on that man, he was an ever-changing variable. How ironic that the person he knows least about is his own father.

Because of that, Bokushi gets frustrated when he tries to figure out what his father might be thinking and fails. His father is too complex for a person to understand. The only one who ever managed to crack the code was his mother.

Perhaps this was why he had such an uneasy feeling about Miyoko coming over today. He didn't know what his father was going to do, and so that caused an uneasy feeling of dread. Bokushi has never had this many instances where he hasn't known something before, and he wasn't sure if he was okay with that yet. At the moment, he didn't know, and he hated not knowing.

He splashed water on his face three more times for good measure. Just shake it off, he told himself. This visit is about Miyoko, not father. He nodded to himself in assurance before picking up a small towel and drying his face. Surely if he focused on just Miyoko, he would be fine.