Psync by Zile Elliven
Chapter Six
Haruka
The beautiful moron was about to bolt. It was as obvious as the panic attack the poor idiot had been suffering through.
Only he wasn’t actually an idiot, was he?
The first time Haruka saw Eli, he’d been surrounded by a flock of geese. He’d watched in amazement as the boy sat eating a sandwich, surrounded by a swarm of birds that were clearly about to attack. When he’d finally looked up, Haruka was struck by enormous turquoise eyes that had gone from studious to alarmed between one breath and the next.
Any smart person would have thrown their food and made a run for it, but instead, the kid stuffed his sandwich in his mouth and started packing up his things. He appeared to be in a hurry, but not on the level of about to be torn apart by wild birds. It was more like he was trying to dodge a clingy girlfriend.
Haruka had been torn. Should he help the idiot out? Survival of the fittest was a thing for a reason and right now it looked like the only thing the boy had been blessed with was a lovely face. And he wasn’t going to get to keep it much longer if someone didn’t do something.
“Eliiiiiiiiiii!” A voice sounded in the distance.
The boy’s shoulders stiffened, and he abandoned trying to put his things away neatly. Instead, he grabbed everything in a big pile and ran, right through a narrow opening in the flock of hungry geese, right past Haruka, and in the opposite direction of the guy shouting his name, now running down the hill startling the flock into taking flight.
The guy got to the bottom of the hill and looked around, trying to find his prey. Haruka pointed in the opposite direction Eli had run.
“Thanks!” The guy said and ran off in that direction.
Something silver glinted in the grass, and Haruka went to investigate. It was a pen that had an engraving on one side. It read: Happy 18th Birthday, Eli!
Haruka slipped it into his pocket.
The boy had never even noticed he’d been moments from getting his ass kicked by a flock of birds.
The next time Haruka saw him, it had been at the store. A commotion had caught his attention, and he watched as a dark-haired boy plowed through an aisle of people, causing several to dive out of his way. The entire time, the boy never looked up from the cart he was rummaging through as he walked.
As he got closer, Haruka was certain it was the goose boy from earlier.
Haruka couldn’t help himself. He purposefully planted himself in the boy’s path, wondering if he would actually run him down, or if he would come back to reality in time to stop.
Either way, Haruka would get a chance to see those striking eyes again.
When the cart crashed into him, Haruka barely felt it. The boy was too small to do any real damage. But he did get to see those eyes again.
It had been worth it to watch them go from dreamy, to shocked, to angry as Haruka teased him. The boy’s eyes actually shifted color as his mood changed. They went from light turquoise to sky blue, until settling on a stormy ocean blue.
As Haruka drove back to campus, it occurred to him that he should have given the boy his pen back. It didn’t, however, occur to him to wonder why he was carrying it around everywhere he went.
Over the next few days, Haruka had watched as the boy stumbled, tripped, and generally half-assed his way through campus. It really was a wonder the boy was still alive. And it was even more of a wonder that Haruka thought about him at all.
Haruka wasn’t here to make friends. He was here to find something. And to get a stellar education. As long as he could ignore certain unwanted interruptions, he would be perfectly happy with his current situation and the small number of people who already hounded his day-to-day life.
But, for some reason, he couldn’t ignore the enigmatic eyes of the campus moron.
Then his friend Bryan had not-so-casually told him about the kid whose entrance exam scores had blown Haruka’s out of the water.
It wasn’t that he cared. It wasn’t as if it really mattered. Except . . . those scores had meant something to Haruka. They been his ticket out of the ridiculous circus back in Osaka his aunt kept trying to drag him into. They were proof he was meant to be more than a lapdog.
So he hadn’t been able to stop himself from finding out who had outscored him. He turned up the name Eli Talosa. It could have been a coincidence. He wasn’t social enough to be able tell if Eli was a common name in America.
It wasn’t too difficult to get a face to put with the name. He wondered if he should have been more surprised to see those vivid, mercurial eyes he’d gotten to know over the past week.
That idiot—that beautiful, spacey, one-person wrecking team—was the one who beat his entrance scores? It didn’t bear thinking about.
So, why couldn’t he stop thinking about it?
Currently, he was face to face with the idiot in question, and the kid was clearly not stupid. He may have watched the boy tie his own shoe to his backpack strap, but Eli had managed to stumble into an advanced math class he’d been expecting to be a 101 course and then not only followed along, but was actually able to keep up with Haruka, who was always at the top of every class he was in.
The last thing Haruka wanted right now was for the boy to run. Not when he’d just made things interesting.
Especially when the fake smile Eli was wearing was causing something deep inside Haruka to stir unpleasantly.
“You should be in this class.”
Long, dark lashes blinked in confusion. “I think we’ve already established I shouldn’t.”
“You kept up better than most of the other students here. You’ll be wasted in a 101 class.”
Eli didn’t look like he was about to run anymore. Now he looked tired—and annoyed. Haruka could work with that. It was far better than the lost child expression he’d had moments before.
“I don’t need a challenging class right now—especially in geometry. I’m in the language department, no one cares what math classes I take.”
Which was a fair point, except . . . Haruka wanted to be in a class with him now. He wanted an excuse to watch Eli closely. Maybe then he could figure out what secrets those expressive eyes held. Then he could get on with his life and go back to being the center of his own attention again. Otherwise, his agenda might get sidelined, and that wasn’t an option.
“Maybe, but an advanced math course could be the difference between getting your dream job and getting stuck with whatever you can find.”
Eli bit his lip and tugged on his hoodie strings. “I don’t know . . .”
“Haru! There you are, man. I was waiting outside forever. Did you forget our study group?” Bryan, his self-proclaimed best friend, burst into the room on a wave of energy.
Without thinking, Haruka put himself between his friend and Eli. “Just give me a second, Bryan.” Haruka turned back to Eli to see him frowning at his phone. He reached out and plucked it out of the boy’s hands.
“Hey!”
Haruka ignored him and looked at the screen. Eli had been texting with someone named Berry who seemed very concerned about whether Eli had eaten enough today.
He could see there were only three other people Eli texted with and one of them was named Mom. Haruka’s mouth softened into a small smile. He opened up a new message window and sent his own number a quick text. Then he handed the phone back to Eli.
“If you decide to switch classes, let me know and I’ll help you get in. Professor Burke likes me.”
“I didn’t ask—” Eli sputtered, turning a brilliant shade of red. “Why are you so annoying?”
Haruka laughed. The red in the boy’s cheeks was much better than the pale, sallow color they been earlier.
“Who’s your pretty friend, Haru? Introduce us.” Bryan stepped forward and winked at Eli.
Before Haruka had a chance to decide whether to tell his friend to piss off or to simply drag him out of the room, Eli went through another startling transformation. His cheeks went pale, and he pulled his hood up over his hair. He seemed to shrink back into the oversized hoodie, and he looked like he was trying not to be sick.
Something burned inside Haruka’s chest. “He’s no one,” he said, sharply and grabbed Bryan’s arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
He dragged his friend out of the classroom, trying to give the poor, anxious boy some space from whatever it was about Bryan that had triggered him.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile like that before, Haru.” Bryan kept trying to look back into the classroom, but Haruka continued to tow him out of the building with a tight grip on his arm.
“Fuck off.”