Hi guys! Please note that the story doesn't play in the US but in Germany in some city there and the story tries to develop the characters; I didn't want to let my protagonists end up in bed from the beginning on like in so many other stories posted here. Another note: The story is mainly 1st person, but for describing other persons it switches to 3rd person. Hope it is not too confusing. And a last note: If you're not supposed to read this ('cause you're below 18 or due to some laws) or you don't like the idea of men loving each other, then you should better leave. Please let me know what you think: tsuzahara@yahoo.com (Critics of any form welcome :) )
"..denn Seelen auf der Suche werden sich irgendwann finden.."
Alone Among Friends, Part I
I opened the door to my new apartment and was so relieved that I finally got away from home - not that I hated it at home but you have to know that my parents are some of the most caring parents one could imagine but they tend to be a bit overcaring at times for me being their only son. So here I was, standing in this small 15sq meters student's apartment in the 12th floor of the building. The view from here down to the city was somewhat breathtaking. I had the luck that it was a clear sunny day and that there wasn't virtually any smog which could blur and mess up the view. The building itself wasn't so spectacular at all. It had 20 stories and was constructed in the 70ies. A very simplistic and functional construction with actually no appeal of any style. In that time the main principle was to build, to be functional, and not to design or even think about concepts of how the thing they were about to build would look like. Or they had thoughts about the design and would choose the funkiest colors of that time: Combinations of brown, orange and green. (Let's have a barf-fest!) You can imagine yourself how good this looks now in the dawn of the new millennium. The apartment itself was not that bad: It had a small kitchen-niche, a very small bathroom with a shower and a closet next to it. The bed was arranged directly below the big window and I could already imagine that the curtains of that window will certainly disturb me when I would sleep. There was a desk where I was going to place my computer on, and below it, I could already see an ethernet plug for the Internet. It took me half the day to set up all my stuff in the room. Especially the computer gave me some royal pain in the ass since Windows would not detect that ethernet-card properly. I pinned up some posters on the wall, my favorite, the 'Trainspotting' one, where you could see Renton coming out of the toilet and struggling for breath -after success- fully retrieving his lost drugs-, occupied most of the space of the wall. After another half hour everything looked good and I took a seat on the bed, laying back to the wall. There I was, in my first own apartment, and thinking how it would be with university starting next monday.
"Hey!" somebody said and I nearly fell off the bed. I hadn't noticed that I had left my door open while I was setting up my stuff. "Uh hi." "My name's Daniel. My room's the one next to yours," he said with a smile. He was about 6'1" with a nice build, brown hair and blue eyes. And if smiles could kill then I would have been a goner. "Nice to meet you Daniel, I'm Kaneda," I said while I stood up to shake his hand. The handshake was pretty strong which I really like. It is really irritating when I shake hands with a guy and I don't even notice that he's actually shaking hands. Feels dead somehow. A handshake has to be firm. "Thought 'bout sayin' hi to you when I saw that your door was open and we're neighbors and stuff." "Nice thought, at least I got to know somebody now before uni starts. What are you studying?" "Computer science," he replied with a warm smile which made him look pretty much cute. I had to control myself not to stare at him since it was pretty hard not to do that though. "Hey! That's what I am studying, so I think we'll be hangin' together for some time, right?" I said to him, smiling back. "Yeah, I guess so. Do you have any clue about where the heck we're supposed to go on monday?" I wasn't clearly paying attention to what Daniel was saying since I was a looking more at him and his appearance. He was wearing those 'DCShoes' sneakers which all the skaters wear, a white longsleeve T-shirt with a shirt over it and cargo-pants. You could see his defined chest and the also defined abs trough his T-Shirt. He actually looked a bit like a skater. "Do you know?" he repeated his last question, looking a little confused since it must have looked to him as if I was looking -trough- him. "Uh sorry, got caught up with some thoughts about my stuff here. err.. well actually I do not have a clue either," I replied in haste. I hoped that he didn't notice that I was actually looking at him and adoring his appearance. "Shoot it! I think we can find that out later. Are you doing something in particular right now?" he asked, loosing that look of confusion. This was a question I didn't expect. I just got to know him, and he already asked me if I was doing something.. I started to feel uncomfortable but the same time my thoughts already digressed to something pretty much different... "Well I am just done with setting up my stuff here I think, why?" "I was doing the same and am done now. Thought about getting something to eat in the refectory," Daniel said with a big grin. Now I even got confused since I didn't understand why he was grinning. "Haven't you heard it man? The refectories in the unis here are supposed to have the worst meals ever served to mankind - I wanna check that out and see if I survive! And if I die then there wouldn't be anyone to tell that story!" he said with a laugh. His laughing made him look even cuter. In my imagination I saw myself going over and hugging him which made me smile as well and so I laughed along with him. "Okay, let's go I'd say," I said and closed the door behind me. It was a 10 minutes walk from the dorms to the campus where the refectory was. If you can actually call that place a campus. There wasn't a bit of grass anywhere to be seen. Everything looked pretty dull, the buildings surrounding the campus were left all in their anti-septic gray concrete-color. Great 70ies architectures! I simply loved the 70ies! It was absolutely not the way I ever imagined an university to be. Not at all. We reached the refectory and it was already beginning to close down so we grabbed the first meal they offered, chose a table in the big hall and sat down. "Are you Korean?" Daniel asked me. "Nopes, I am half Japanese, half German," I replied. "So you can speak Japanese too, right?" he asked and one could see the curiosity in his eyes. "Err, actually not. I was raised here and never learnt it though since my parents speak German with each other and so Japanese never got trough to me. But I can still understand it, my mom speaks to me in Japanese sometimes - I reply in German," I said and grinned. We continued to chat for some time and survived the food there (apparently it was not as bad as the rumors were). Throughout the whole meal I was actually looking more at him and trying to see every facial expression of him and I really liked his looks. He had this habit to use his hands a lot while talking. This habit caused him to be pretty slow with eating.. After sometime of chit chat Daniel and I walked back to the dorms. "Hey I still have to get some stuff from the supermarket down there I forgot. Better get going before it closes down," Daniel said while I was looking for the right key to my apartment. "Yeah, okay you do that and I will finish up some stuff and might even find out about the whereabouts of our first course on monday," I replied. "Okay see ya Kaneda," he said and rushed away already. It was pretty nice how this first day at the university-complex went: Got my own room, which was better than expected got to know somebody who was pretty cool and on top of that even cute. Hoped that this good and smooth way of things would continue on monday when university would begin. I opened the door and went into my room and looked around. It was still all pretty new to me. For the first time I was all on my own and taking care of everything myself and with this thought a feeling of freedom arose in me. I smiled and dragged the chair from the desk where my computer was on and looked in my jacket for my Luckies. Back in school all my friends smoked Marlboros for some reason I didn't know. Sandro started it, others copied him. But why did they even have to copy the brand? I mean, the others never even tried another smoke. But who cares about that anyhow :)? I was sitting there on the chair and enjoying my smoke, thinking about all the possibilities I would have now - here in my apartment and all on my own. I never truly recognized from the beginning of my puberty on that I was gay. Sure, I happened to wonder why there wasn't any chick which would really please me and that there were some guys at school who would look pretty cool to me. I was about 15 when I realized that I liked guys over girls. The girls back at school happened to like me a lot and I liked them as well but apparently not the way they 'liked' me. One of the girls once said in a more private atmosphere that she liked my almond-shaped eyes and my face over and over and I felt a bit helpless since I didn't know if and how I should return the compliment. And now I had just turned 19, had grown about 6 feet high and there wasn't much of an activity in my sexual life. I had met so far some guys from the Internet but most of them were completely different than they described themselves. A true love I had never encountered yet and hoped that in the university things would change a bit. Nobody knew about me being gay and I actually didn't want anybody to know that I was gay but I was searching for the one to share everything with.
Time flew by and my day-dreaming was suddenly interrupted when somebody knocked the door. "It's open, come in." It was Daniel. Looking cute as ever. I smiled at him. "What's up?" "Have you found out about that course yet?" he asked. Shoot, I had completely forgotten about that thing - I looked at the clock and already 20 minutes had passed while I was sitting there and thinking. "Err well I think I was daydreaming. Forgot it. But no problem. I think those guys from the CS Department have attached a plan of the campus with their welcoming-letter," I said to him while I started to search for that particular piece of paper in my bag. "I know, I also got one from them but have lost it," Daniel said grinning a bit and scratching his head. He looked so cute, I wished he was gay but the same time I doubted that he was gay. But then I thought, even if he was gay - how would I know and how would I approach him? "There it is! Well it's in lecture room H 3 - weird. We have to find out where that is," I said to him holding that letter in my hands.
It wasn't that easy to find that place monday morning since the campus was pretty huge and there were many buildings which were full of lecture rooms, all with odd numberings and names. We finally found it and actually they had been expecting us to be a bit late and have problems with finding so they started about 15 minutes later than they were supposed to. When we arrived, the lecture hall was actually half-crowded with students and still some were coming. To my pleasure I noticed that 90% of the students were male and there were only very less women. Unfortunately at the same time most of the guys didn't look any good and especially the ones sitting in the first two rows looked like typical 'computer-wizs' (Very pale, with dark rings under their eyes and thick glasses).
Daniel who was sitting next to me tugged me and said "Heck man, there are no chicks at all here! I am going to go nuts!" "Yeah, pretty poor selection of women here. The ones who sit here don't look too cute though," I said, and sighing within me since that was another sign that Daniel was not gay. Meanwhile people seated themselves behind and in front of us. After 10 minutes the guy standing below who was apparently a student in a higher semester wearing a 'Don't panic!' button addressed us. "Hi guys and gals! I bet that this is all new to you and since most of you will neither know anybody here nor the campus , we've decided to make a little game for which we'll have to make groups of 5-6 people." "Is he serious??" asked Daniel with a quite puzzled face. "We're supposed to study right? And we're playing games?" "Daniel you forgot that this is an introductory week. Real uni starts next week. They want to show us around and inform us," I said to him and smiled. "Man, if it was that way, I could have stayed back home - who needs that?" Daniel said angrily. "See it that way: We'll get to know some people and the campus. Ain't bad a deal?" "That's true, man. I like to make new friends and always am 'on the search' for new people. I bet you must've noticed that," he said, having a real huge smile on his face. His smile was virtually killing me. "I didn'tice that; it's a cool attribute," I said. "Okay I'll call some names now and would like the persons to come down please," the tutor below said. He named a few people and created the first group, then he proceeded to call out the names for the second one. "Kaneda Rechtsmann," the tutor said smiling the whole time and pronouncing my name wrongly. (After all any pronunciation is wrong. No syllables are stressed in Japanese names) I went down where other people were standing and I actually hoped that Daniel would be in my group too so I was waiting for the tutor to continue naming people. "Daniel Herzog,". I expected Daniel to stand up but some other Daniel came down. He was about 5'8" and had brown hair and brown eyes. He was a bit 'weightier' than the others. "Oh shit, I overread that other Daniel.. but does not matter since both Daniels are in the same group.. Daniel Hermstedt!" the tutor said to himself, and 'my' Daniel came down. I smiled at him and he smiled back down to me. "Okay guys," another tutor said, "here's your game-plan with a riddle - to solve it you will have to look up several places in the university and write down stuff described on the paper. It ain't hard at all. You'll just have to find it. And if you are quick enough to make it back before 2 p.m. we'll treat you guys for something. But before we - actually YOU - start, make yourself familiar. Why doesn't everybody introduce him/herself to each other? How about you?" and he pointed at me. "My name's Kaneda. Nice to meet you," I said a bit shyly. "I'm Daniel. Hope to kick those other groups' ass!" he said grinning. "Hi, my name's also Daniel," the other Daniel said. "I am Georg," the last guy in our group said and smiled. He was about 6'3" tall with black hair, which were all spikey and reminded me of Matt Dillon's hairstyle in "In & Out" - a film I actually didn't like too much for Kevin Kline overacted a little too much in my opinion. Georg was a real sight, his arms were looking strong and he had a pretty seductive smile. His eyes were also blue, making me the only guy in this group having brown eyes. I got happy that I already had two great looking guys around me. "I am Stella," she said and smiled. 'Stella got her groove back' was the first thing I had in my mind. She was not looking too good as far as I could assess, but she wasn't ugly either. She had a common face but there was still something which made her distinct and extraordinary; actually her name suggested that she would be a foreigner. "mmhtnjha," was what I understood from what the last girl was saying. Apparently she was very very shy and spoke so softly and low that I didn't understand a word. She was exactly what one would call a "Mauerbluemchen" in German. A description for a little girl, which is not to be noticed by anyone. "What was her name?" I whispered to Daniel. "I think her name's Tanja. A pretty shy girl. I like shy girls," Daniel said and grinned to me, having one of those real seductive smiles on his face. Damn I really loved that smile. Now I was pretty sure that Daniel wasn't gay at all. Tough luck. The six of us went on the 'trip' trough the campus to find the different locations for this idiotic riddle. Actually the whole plan of the tutors was to get us together and get to know the campus aswell. And they did a pretty good job. "Where are you from?" Georg asked me while we were heading for a building which was supposed to be 'inspected' by us. "I am half Japanese, half German," I replied. "I assumed that you were a 'bit' Japanese. Hajimemashite, Georg desu. Doozo yoroshiku!" Georg said smiling broadly. I was a bit shocked since I didn't expect him to speak Japanese. "Pleased to meet you too. Where did you learn that Georg?", I asked curiously. "Well I just picked it up from a film, don't know any more Japanese," he said and started laughing like a madman. His laughing made him look real cute. "The pronunciation was really good! I'm impressed!" "It was just a line I picked up. Nothing more. But still thank you Kaneda." "Yeah man, that was impressive," Daniel butted in. The girls chatted on their own and actually I didn't mind it all since I naturally liked the company with the guys more than the one of the girls. The tall Daniel which I had met earlier didn't mind at all that he wasn't speaking to that shy girl. Apparently she wasn't much of his type. The only one who isolated himself for a reason unknown to us was that other Daniel. He didn't speak to us too much even when we tried to pick up a conversation with him. I thought that he was one of those lonely guys and assumed that he wanted to be alone. Probably he would open up a little more later the semester. We didn't make it to be the first back in the lecture hall since Daniel, Georg and I got up talking with each other about stuff, life in general, what each other was expecting from the studies and life at the campus. We were in fact pretty slow and I was more than happy to got to know those two cute new guys who were my friends by now. I wished even more that one of them was gay. But that was just a wish and I never seriously expected one of them to be gay. After another half an hour of sitting in the lecture hall we were finally done for the day. The girls had already separated themselves from us and nobody had a clue where that other Daniel was. He had just vanished without letting us know. "Do you see those guys below there?" Georg said and pointed down to two guys sitting 6 rows in front of us. "Yeah I do, what's with them?" "I bet they are gay," he said with a light smile. "Why do you think that?" I asked curiously. I had nearly dropped that habit of mine to behave pretty macho-like which I did back in school. It helped me to survive there. People thought of me as the 'lone wolf' and none of them ever got the idea that I could've been gay. I was happy for that at some extent, but the same time, it also caused that even if a guy was gay he would never think of me being gay and thus I had never met or rather found another gay guy back in school. I didn't want the same thing to happen here, so I thought carefully about what I was saying to people when talking about gays. And I was not very proud about the way I tried to hide myself. "Cause they're sitting far too close to each other," Georg said. "Hmm? No come on, they're not, are they? I cannot assess it," I replied but actually I knew that they were sitting very close to each other, nearly sitting in each other's lap. It was pretty cute of them, though I didn't know if they were aware of it. "Can we talk about something else, guys?" Daniel said, a bit turned off. "Yeah sure Daniel, it was pretty boring here, so I thought about starting a conversation about something," Georg replied grinning heavily. I wondered why he would chose exactly this topic for a conversation and kept that in my mind. "I'd suggest that we get out of here. Let's get something to eat?" I said. The rest of the day went by on the fly. None of us even noticed time passing so fast and when it got late we decided to return back to our dorms. Georg didn't live in the same dorms as we did. He lived in the next block over the street, so it wasn't too far from ours at all. "Okay guys, it was really nice to get to know you and am looking forward that we guys stick together in some classes," Georg said with a smile. "Hey, you're saying that as if we're going to split up right now and never see each other again," I interrupted him and laughed a bit. "Noo.. I didn't mean it that way," Georg said a bit shakily "Don't 'hope' it - we'll meet tomorrow morning and we'll sign up all in the same classes, okay?" I said and looked directly to Georg. For a second I thought that Georg was staring at me rather than looking at me, but dropped that thought. He had a puppy's eyes and he looked so damn cute. His face was really loveable. I loved the combination of his black spikey hair with his adorable blue eyes. He reminded me a little of James Marshall from 'Twin Peaks' - two cute guys and both were friends. Wow, I thought, the semester started pretty good. But back to the courses: The system was pretty much different and actually confusing here at university. For each lecture they offered, they had several so called 'Tutions'. If you had a class in Practical Programming there would be at least 5 'Tutions' for that class at different times in the week. "Hey that's great. Really am glad to know you Kaneda and Daniel. Gotta go now. See ya!" and Georg went down to his block. Daniel and I went up to the 12th floor by stairs since the elevator was somehow out of order. None of us had much a problem of getting up there. "Do you do any sports?" Daniel asked. "I workout. I am just doing that to keep myself fit and maintain a good condition." "Woohah! I do the same! What about signing up to the gym here? We can workout together then and it will be less boring? What about it Kaneda?" Daniel said with big, wide eyes. "Sure!" Daniel smiled on that and patted me on my back. I really loved him patting my back, it felt so nice. We just rushed up the last two floors and were standing in front of our doors and were a little exhausted from running up here. I was looking for the keys in my pockets when I had the feeling that Daniel was doing something behind me. I just had a feeling that there was some kind of a movement but I was not sure what it was. Not being able to determine what had caused that feeling I started to turn around not too fast but not too slow either. "Can't find my keys," I said grinning and actually trying to figure out if he was doing something or not. It looked like he wasn't doing anything but just standing there and exhaling a bit. The keys to the apartment were in my jacket and not as I thought in my pants. I opened the door. "Would you like to come in? I've put some cokes in the refrigerator and there ain't nothing more refreshing than a chilled coke!" I said hoping that he would accept the offer and come into my apartment. He was damn handsome and even if he wasn't gay - the company of such a cute and nice guy is always cool. "Yeah man, that would be cool. I forgot to buy myself beverages earlier," Daniel said smiling. "Hey I hadn't seen earlier that you also have a TV and a Playstation! What? Even a stereo?! You're some sort of rich bastard or what?" he said jokingly. "Yeah exactly," I grinned, "People call me R.B. - Rich Bastard or J.R.," and we both laughed heavily. We were sitting on the bed together - not as close as the two guys back in the lecture hall - but pretty close to each other and staring at the TV with the controllers in our hands playing RidgeRacer. I was paying more attention to him than to the game actually. I was looking at him trough the corners of my eyes and what I was seeing was so pleasing. His build was wonderful. His T-Shirt was bulged out by his defined chest and his strong, muscular arms were really smooth. His whole appearance made my mind digress in a direction that I started biting my lips not to divert too much into a phantasy while I was watching him secretly..
Georg closed the door to his apartment, threw himself onto the bed and hugged his pillow. He lay there for a while thinking about the cute guy he had met today. Georg had never felt so strongly for anybody yet in his entire life but this time he adored everything about that guy. He sighed, smiled and stood up, went to the little refrigerator and took out a can of ginger ale. While sipping on his can he thought a lot about Kaneda. He liked his smile, his voice, his eyes, his everything. He thought about how hard it was for him earlier to get that Japanese line out to impress the guy. And he hoped he had impressed him a little. But then what use did it have to impress a guy who was not gay at all? Georg's face turned sad at this thought. He had no clue if Kaneda was gay at all. And how was he supposed to find out? 'Hi Kaneda, I'm gay. Are you gay too? Cause I wanna tell you that I like you!' he thought and started to laugh at that thought but turned sad again. There was simply no way to find out if Kaneda felt the same way for men as he did. He was new at this university and there wasn't anybody he knew. Even if he knew somebody who knew about Kaneda he still didn't know how to ask that person since Georg was still in the closet. Would there ever be a way for him to find out he thought? Georg thought that he was the only one with this problem.
After sometime Daniel got pretty tired and left my room. I got quite in a mood thinking about Daniel and Georg I know that I shouldn't been thinking about my friends this way, but well, I did. I lay there for some time thinking about Daniel and Georg and wondering if any of them was gay until I finally stood to ease my desire. I went over to my jacket and searched for my Luckies and lit one. Sitting there on the bed, watching the lights of the city at night and the cars passing below I wondered if there would ever be a guy who would be fully in love with me, who would probably be sitting somewhere and thinking about a guy he hadn't met yet and whom he would love endlessly.
To be continued.. -----
So guys, hoped you enjoyed this part, part 2 already in the works but for now, let me know what you think. Critics and ideas of any form are welcome: tsuzahara@yahoo.com