The sky hung laden with pregnant clouds. The light dusting of rain a portend of the heavier storms rolling in. Gakuto took deep satisfaction in the moodiness of the weather, it's grim and cold outlook a perfect accompaniment to his mood.

He couldn't be in the house. Not right now.

His mother all happy smiles, packing away the remains of their life together. His newly minted step-father absorbing the place he used to occupy. Everything that had once come in pairs was now unbalanced. Things that used to be, 'just the two of them', were now 'just the three of them'.

Kobayashi's awkward overtures of conversation fell into the dead silence. Their twin looks of surprise as his mother exclaimed over how well they got along. They were strangers, forced to share space for an undefined period of time.

He could've lived with it. The stretch of their house to accommodate a third person, the quiet overlay of his presence as he was replaced by all things new. The causal forgetfulness of his mother. But he couldn't move away.

He wanted to rail against the unfairness of it. To curse her for not caring about the methodical disassembling of his life.

She hadn't even asked him about getting married to Kobayashi. After dancing into the lounge with the ring upon her finger and dancing back out again, Kobayashi had asked him. 'Are you okay with this?'

'No,' he answered, but it was too late.

The first few heavy drops fell from the sky and pattered across the courts at Hyoutei.

He'd walked to the school without even thinking about it. His feet leading him to the courts where he had always been the happiest. Where'd he'd met Yuushi. Where he had finally found a place where he belonged. Gakuto wasn't going to let go of that, not unless Yuushi let go first.

The sky cleared on the day his father came to pick him up.

Through the car window he watched her tears fall, the echo of her parting words choking his heart. Why? She'd begged him. Why leave?

As he had no answer for her, she had none for him.

Why stay…