Rated: T for language, mild nudity and mild violence

Pairing: Yuuri and Wolfram

Disclaimer: Kyo Kara Maoh! does not belong to me, but it is one of my absolute favorite animes (and recently a quite desperate obsession, hehe :P) and I just have to write a fanfic about it!

Summary: Shori accidentally gets sucked into the alternate world when searching for Yuuri after a huge fight, and suddenly he has to cope with the fact that his little brother is the Demon King, engaged to a boy and the surrogate father of a small, but very feisty girl. Will he ever be able to look at Yuuri in the same way again?

Author's note: This is my first Kyo Kara Maoh! fanfic, so please bear with me, tell me what you think of it and enjoy! :D

A ride to another world

Spring in Tokyo; the start of a new school year

Most days start out as boringly and excruciatingly usual as is absolutely possible, and most of those days also continue in the same repetitive patterns and prevail in being normal to such an extent that you start to hate normal. Normal is what makes you kick out in frustration, neglect to chew your food properly and utimately gives you a hell of an ulcer. Eventually you start to wish that something - anything - out of the ordinary could happen to break the unbearable pattern that you are stuck in against your will. Most people never get their wishes heard and go on in the same way as they have always done - and a few of course realize that the only way to break the mould is to break it yourself. But some people, although not many, admittedly, get their wishes heard - and heeded. Some people are lucky. Or, are they really?

Shibuya Yuuri sighed and slumped on the surface of his desk, his ear pressed against the cold wood and his arms stretched out over the front edge of the desk. "Why can't this day end already?!" he moaned complainingly and let out a prolonged whining noise of utter boredom. He had baseball practice that afternoon, and he was totally looking forward to some excercise in comparison to this dull, sitting-behind-a-desk-and-listening-to-a-teacher's-preachings-while-pretending-to-take-notes routine that was getting more and more familiar to him and his fellow classmates. What was going wrong with the school system lately? He suddenly found himself longing to get back to his kingdom and all his friends in his other world - his second home - and the crazy adventures that they always had together.

Yeah, he thought and sat up straight in his chair, suddenly determined to take matters into his own hands. A little adventure is exactly what I need right now! And it won't affect either my grades or baseball practice, because I'll just return to he same moment I left anyway. His mind now set, he rose from his desk.

"Shibuya!" the teacher immediately noted. "Where do you think you're going?"

"I need to use the bathroom, sensei," he said without caring much for the politeness and the respect that his teacher demanded of him, and which was expected of him to display. He began to move towards the door without even waiting for a reply.

"That is all very well, Shibuya-kun, but you could at least ask nicely and respectfully before leaving the room!" the teacher pointed out, trying to sound intimidating and awe-inspiring, but failing completely. Although it was only late March it had already gotten quite hot, and it was affecting students and teachers alike. Nobody really had the energy to put any real strength or passion into their statements or actions.

Yuuri just left the room and walked down the hall to the men's room. Once he was inside he checked that all the stalls were empty, and that he was alone. Then he went back to the door and peered out into the hallway once more. It was empty, so he saw no risk in being seen as he left this world and entered the other. Nervous, he slapped his hands together and rubbed them against each other for a while. "Let's see..." He turned on one of the fausets and plugged the washbasin shut. The water slowly began to fill up.

Now what?

When the washbasin was almost completely full he started to feel urgent, certain that he would not have the benefit of being alone much longer... Shrugging, he stuck his head into the washbasin, anticipating the swirling, tickling feeling of being flushed into a great abyss - but nothing happened. He stayed like that, with his head underwater, for a minute, but nothing still happened. His heart was starting to pound harder and more determinedly in his chest, and his throat began to ache funnily. He would have to lift his head out of the water soon, but he still wanted to give it a few more seconds to work.

Still nothing.

Then all of a sudden he heard a muffled, sort of distant shout and thought, It must be Wolfram realizing that I'm on my way and rushing to the point where I'll show up to greet me properly, but then someone grabbed him from behind and pulled him out of the water with force and urgency.

"No!" he exclaimed as a reflex and flailed his arms in the direction of the full washbasin.

"What in the world are you doing, young man!?" an all too familiar voice said close to his ear, and to his great disappointment it was not Wolfram. He swallowed hard as he understood that he was in trouble.

It was the teacher. What an irony.

"Are you completely out of your mind, Shibuya-san!?" the teacher prompted, shock written all over his face. He shook him violently. "Why were you trying to drown yourself in the washbasin?!"

Yuuri blinked sheepishly at him. "Huh, what...?" he muttered.

"Why were you trying to drown yourself?" the teacher repeated, now starting to sound really angry and accusatory.

"But I wasn't trying to drown myself!" he objected offendedly, and grasping for some sort of excuse that would explain his weird behavior added, "I was just trying to cool down a bit!"

"Cool down a bit? Yes, I bet that is what all of you suicidal little troublemakers claim! Principal's office - now!"

"But--!"

"Now!"

Yuuri had no choice but to follow his teacher's order and shuffle down to the principal's office two floors below. Outside the door, he slumped down in a tattered chair and moped. After a few minutes the teacher came hurrying through the corridor until he had went past him and knocked on the door before opening it and bowing, "Shitsurei shimasu." (Excuse me for interrupting.)

Furthermore Yuuri waited outside the principal's office while the teacher explained the situation to the principal. Yuuri groaned irritatedly. Why did this have to happen to him!? And on this day nonetheless...

Why had it not worked? Why hadn't he gone to the Demon Kingdom as he was supposed to do when exposed to water? Had he done something wrong? Had he somehow disrupted the flow between this world and the other when he had tried to travel there of his own accord, and of his own choice? Maybe it only worked when he was forced to against his will? Maybe the Great One was a devilish old badger who loved to mess with other people's lives and had a good laugh every time Yuuri was sucked into the alternate world out of the blue? Or did his inability to enter his second home originate from something more sinister than that? Maybe something had gone wrong over there... Maybe the portal or whatever it was that brought him from here to there had been sealed due to an invasion of his precious country? What if his people were in danger?!

"I have to do something!" he cried out with determination, shooting up from the chair with his right arm thrust high into the air in a king's gesture of loyalty and pure wish to protect his people from evil.

In that very moment, the door to the principal's office opened and a very baffled principal and an indignated teacher took a step into the corridor. Yuuri stopped dead right in the middle of his omage to the loyal people of the Demon Kingdom (who may or may not be in grave danger) and suddenly felt very stiff, embarrassed and silly. They had seen him thrust up his arm like that! Now they were bound to think he was crazy or something... And together with the fact that they thought he had just attempted suicide they would probably lock him up in a storage room without windows (or washbasins) and call the mental hospital to tell them to come pick him up.

"Shibuya-san, please be kind and step into my office," the principal offered stiffly, and stepped aside to allow Yuuri to pass.

Stunned, Yuuri walked past his teacher and took a seat in the chair that the princpal indicated for him. Confused by this whole situation, he turned to his teacher and asked, "Shouldn't you get back to class? They might be destroying the classroom, you know. You should be more careful with your things here."

The teacher snorted indignatedly and stubbornly looked the other way, his arms crossed over his chest. Somehow it reminded Yuuri of Wolfram...

For a second he felt a sting in his chest. A feeling that was difficult to define briefly fluttered through him. What was that?

"Shibuya-san," the principle said and effectively gained Yuuri's attention. "Please tell me what is bothering you. What made you decide to do what you did today?"

Yuuri blinked. The principle was looking at him expecting some sort of answer, but Yuuri could not understand what the question was. Only ten minutes ago he had quietly begged for something to happen, but this was not quite what he had pictured. "Eh..." he began, "I am not sure what you're talking about, kouchou..."

The principal leaned forward on his desk and fixed his gaze on Yuuri's. "Shibuya-san, you tried to kill yourself. That is a very serious action, and I am aware that there must be some sort of reason behind what you did, but you need to understand that what you did was wrong. Suicide does not solve anything, and if you are in trouble of any kind we are more than happy to help you, of course." Again, that glint of expectation in his spectacled eyes. He wanted something specific out of Yuuri, some magical words that would erase this whole incident and make things go back to the way they were, but he had no idea what those words might be.

"Kouchou, I'm sorry, but I'm sure there must be some sort of mistake," he said, feeling a bead of sweat slowly starting to trickle down his forehead. "I haven't tried to kill myself."

The principal's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Your teacher found you with your head immerged in water, and you didn't seem to have any intention of pulling it back out of there."

"I was just trying to cool off," Yuuri tried to convince him, "you know, because of the warmth. I used the bathroom, and then I felt like I needed some cooling off. That's all."

A tiny, pitying smile traced the thin lips that formed the principal's mouth. "That sounds awfully like a troubled kid's self-delusions," he said gently. "You're just trying to get out of here as soon as possible so you can try it again, but we're not gonna let you do that. I called your Mom, and she will be here to pick you up shortly."

Yuuri pulled back his chair and stood up violently. "You can't do that! You're wrong, you're both wrong! I didn't try to kill myself! What, do you think I'm stupid or something?!"

"Shibuya-san, please calm down..."

"No! I will not calm down! This is wrong, you can't just call my Mom and say stuff like that! I have not tried to kill myself!"

"I am sure she will give you whatever support you need--"

"I did not try to kill myself!"

"I am very glad to hear that, Yuu-chan," his mother's voice suddenly said from behind him, instantly compelling him to turn towards the sound of her worried voice, at once making him wish that he hadn't because he just could not bear the pained, tear-filled look on her beautiful face, "but I think we need to have a talk, you and me. Would you please come home with me, Yuu-chan?"

He felt powerless in her presence in that moment, and so he quietly nodded and followed her out of the office. He walked behind her in silence until they reached the car, and only when he had got in the backseat, his mother sitting down next to him with his left hand tightly squeezed between her both, did he realize that his brother was there too. "Shori..." he said faintly, feeling both guilty and appalled when it dawned on him that his older brother had heard the news, too.

Shori refused to look at him, but simply stared stubbornly out the windshield and drove out of the school parking lot. None of them said a single word on the way home, and Yuuri was starting to feel anxious when neither mother nor bother said anything to him or looked at him as they walked into the house.

"Um, guys..."

Suddenly Shori slammed his hands down on the kitchen table. Yuuri jumped. His brother was shaking, his hands in tightly clenched fists on the table, his head bowed, which made it difficult for Yuuri to see the expression on his face.

"Eh, Shori...?" he said cautiously.

Shori looked at him with burning eyes. "You selfish bastard!" he shouted and came at Yuuri, grabbed him by the collar. "Have you any idea what your mother and I felt when your school called and told us about your suicide attempt?! What the hell were trying to accomplish, anyway?! Was it to gain attention? You sick little bastard...!"

Yuuri tried to wrench loose. "What?! No! What the fuck do you think of me, Shori?! I would never do anything as stupid and unhoughtful as that - you should know that!"

"Liar!" Shori barked. "Lately you've been like that all the time, keeping more and more to yourself and going out to see friends when someone in the family wanted to do something together with you, and you care less and less about your family, who put the food on your table, give you clothes to wear and work hard to keep a roof over your head! But what do you ever do to thank them for that, huh? Huh? And then you go and do something like this... Trying to drown yourself in a sink!?"

"It was a washbasin actually, but that's beside the point," Yuuri pointed out, "I didn't try to commit suicide - I am perfectly fine with being alive, thank you, and I have way too many things to live for to go and kill myself just like that. If I died in a war, well... that would be a whole different story."

Shori frowned in confusion. "A war? Why would you die in a war? It's not like you're gonna be exposed to one..."

"Might be," Yuuri objected, "there are uprises sometimes, and the regents of the other countries can be quite power-crazy sometimes, so..." He was starting to think about his constant struggles with keeping the peace in the Demon Kingdom and its surroundings and temporarily forgot about the current situation.

Shori blinked. "Uprises? Regents of other countries?" Then he became even more angry. "Are you mocking me?! You selfish, insufferable, demonic little asshole! You think you're being funny!?"

"What? No!"

"You think it's funny to 'try and kill yourself' and make your family scared half to death, huh?!"

"No! And I wasn't trying to kill myself! I was just trying to go to Wolfram and the others!"

"Worufuramu? Who the heck is that? You're just trying to confuse me to get out of trouble!"

Shori's grip on his collar tightened, and he was actually getting a slight difficulty breathing. He turned to his mother in desperation, tears burning in the corners of his eyes. "Mom! You must know that I'm telling the truth, right? You know where Dad came from - you know about Conrad! Mom, please!"

His mother looked stricken. If he had not imagined it his mother had just started at his mentioning of Conrad, and he finally felt a tiny hope of being believed. He pleaded with her with his eyes and hoped that that was enough. Then she smiled bravely and nodded. "Yes. Yes I understand," she said.

"What!?" Shori swirled around to look at their mother, and Yuuri was ruthlessly flung along. "You can't be serious, Okaa-san! He's spouting a whole truckload of bullshit, and you believe him?!"

"If he has met Conrad, then I believe him," she confirmed, back to her normal self.

For a moment Shori did not know what to say, obviously.

"Nii-chan, could you please let go of my shirt?" Yuuri begged.

Shori once more bore his eyes into Yuuri's, and they were cold and black with fury. "I am no brother of yours," he said cruelly, letting him go as if disgusted by him. "I don't even know who you are. Now get out of here before I do anything I might regret."

It was as if Shori had stuck a knife through Yuuri's heart. A paralyzing nausea surged through him and made him temporarily faint. Then his eyes began to sting, too, because of all the tears that had assembled there. He could not believe that Shori, his own brother, had actually said that to him. The pain of it was worse than anything else he had ever felt. Nodding slowly, with his lips pressed into a thin line, he said, "Okay. If that's how you want it. I'll get out of your sight." And with those words he turned on his heel and hurried out of the house. He ignored his mother's cries. He just needed to get away from there, as far away from Shori as possible.

Up and down streets he ran until he could not run any more. Out of breath, he bent over and supported himself on his thighs while drawing quick breaths of air. "Ano baka!" (That jerk!) He was too hot from running all that way: He took off his school uniform jacket and hung it on a railing separating the sidewalk from the grass lawn of the park at which he had arrived.

A tear fell from his eye and landed on the ground.

Plip.

Surprised, he looked down to find that he was standing in a small puddle of water. Apparently there had been some rain in this part of town some time ago. He did not have time to think any more about that, because in that very instant something seemed to stretch up out of the puddle and grab him by the ankles and drag him down into the water. "Oh nooooo!" He had not been prepared and was not experiencing a slightly nauseating rollercoaster effect as he swirled down through abyss after abyss of dark water until he was spat out in the castle bath. Soaked, he dragged himself out of the hot, steaming water and onto the hard stone floor. Luckily no one had taken a bath as he arrived, and he had a moment of solitude before he would have to face his friends. Shori's betrayal still stung in him, and he longed to spill his guts to someone and get some consolation.

A few minutes later he walked through the stone hallways of the castle until he reached his room. He found it odd that he did not bump into anyone on his way up there, but was too tired to think much of it. He longed to throw himself down on the bed and take a nap. This afternoon's events had stolen away a lot of his energy. Good thing that the castle was dark inside...

He dragged his heavy feet up to the bed and dropped onto it, but it didn't quite feel as the soft, comfortable bed that he was used to in Covenant Castle. And it certainly did not talk to him.

Yet now it was screaming, "Oooooowww!"

Something wriggled out from underneath him and an instant later he could feel cold iron pressed to his throat. "Who's there?!" the mattress demanded.

Yuuri, who was so tired that he could not quite grasp the situation and tell inanimate objects apart from live ones, still felt cold, desperate fear when he realized that someone was holding a dagger to his throat in the dark. Should the castle really be this dark this time of day? But he recognized the voice, and so this whole situation didn't add up to him. "Wo-Wo-Wolfram?" he stuttered uncertainly, sweat dripping down his face.

The dagger was immediately retracted. "Yuuri?"

So it was Wolfram. For the first time ever Yuuri was actually relieved at the fact that Wolfram was in his bed. "Oh, Wolfram... I am so glad to see you," he exhaled, not really bearing in mind that he actually couldn't see him.

Wolfram embraced him in the dark. "Yuuri! What are you doing here? No one was expecting you back this soon..."

Yuuri actually smiled sarcastically. "What, you're not happy to have me back?"

"Of course I am! That's not what I meant! I am very happy to have you back here, Yuuri, you belong here with me!" Wolfram hastily spurted.

Yuuri chuckled. "Relax, I'm just kidding." He looked around the dark room. "Why is it so dark? It's not even evening yet..."

"What are you talking about?" Wolfram wondered in lack of understanding. "It's in the middle of the night, I was sleeping..."

"What? But when I left Japan it was three in the afternoon... I thought I was supposed to arrive at the same time of day here as it was in my world when I left it..."

"You really surprised me, showing up like this," Wolfram cut in, "you hardly just left. You slipped into the fountain earlier this evening, and now you're back... I hardly had time to miss you."

"I'm sorry, did you say 'earlier this evening'?"

"Yes. It hasn't even been a day since you left."

They were both silent for a while.

"Something's up," Yuuri said with conviction. "Something's fishy."

"Yes, this certainly is odd," Wolfram agreed.

Yuuri rubbed his temples. "Ooohh, I am so tired!" he complained in a prolonged moan.

Wolfram drew him into his arms again. "Then come lie down with me and have some sleep," he cooed. "We can't do anything about this before morning, anyway."

Yuuri mumbled his agreement. After all this time he had grown accustomed to having Wolfram sleeping next to him in his bed, so he did not react at all to the blond's statement. That was one of the definite upsides to an oldfashioned country: Nobody made any passes or advancements before it was appropriate.

So Yuuri lay down under the quilt and closed his sandy eyes. He even let Wolfram snuggle a little closer.

When Yuuri did not return home that night their mother was incredulous and forced Shori out to search for him, something Shori didn't feel like at all after his little brother's display of total lack of respect and discipline earlier in the day. But he did not have much of a say when it came to their mother: She could be scary when she was determined about something. So he went out into the night to search for his ungrateful brother.

How he was supposed to find him was another story entirely, though. This was a big city, and he only had so much time.

Minutes became hours, and there was of course no sign of Yuuri anywhere. He was ready to give up when he noticed something fluttering in the corner of his eye. As he turned towards it he saw that it was a jacket or jumper of some sort. Feeling a hint of ominousness, he slowly went over there to have a closer look, at the same time dreading to find that his fear was justified. Hanging on the railing separating the sidewalk from the park lawns was Yuuri's school uniform jacket - he was sure of it. It fluttered lazily in the breeze.

Shori stiffened. Yuuri would not just abandon his jacket like that. Something must have happened to him. He reached out his hand and grabbed the jacket - and at the same time a weird spinning sensation filled him and he fell into the puddle of water that he was standing in, falling, falling...

...until he was suddenly sitting in a tiny fish pond at the edges of a strange city. There was something so utterly anachronistic, so utterly alien about that city that he cried out in panic and scrambled to his feet, slipped on the muddy bottom of the fish pond and ran away from there in blind fear, certain that he had somehow fainted from the realization that his brother must have been abducted and was now stuck in a fantasy created by a very, very confused mind. And then he realized that it was day time. It had been night just a moment ago. And if this really was but a feverish dream... how could he possibly be imagining such a strange and mideival-looking city in such perfect detail?

"What the fuck is this place?!"