The Pediatrician's Closet

Pedophile

Every time Masaomi saw his stepsister, he wondered if he should have himself admitted.

It didn't matter that he couldn't help but see a woman. She was half his age. Stretch propriety and he could be her father. He was already fulfilling that role for the half-dozen so brothers who still needed one.

As a pediatrician, he had patients the same age. He wondered why they still felt and look like children to him, while Ema didn't. If he hadn't known himself better, he would have feared himself a pedophile.

Which was why when he looked at her and felt the stirring of warmth in his chest, he thought about turning himself in. Forget the fact she was his stepsister, she was a kid. He was in his early thirties.

I am so wrong.

So, purposely kept his attention out of his brother's matters as they collectively swooned and scrabbled over each other for her affections. He trusted his elder younger brothers to apply the force if necessary to protect her, as well as in the honor of the younger siblings he had helped raise. In a way, it was a good thing there were so many of them. If Ema had only one or two, maybe even three, at least one would have been able to get in something offensive behind the other's backs. But thirteen? Not even Wataru went unwatched. Hikaru alone made up for a whole team of private investigators and shameless paparazzi.

Masaomi didn't examine his feelings more than was necessary to keep them in check. He welcomed overtime. He kept living. He blurred her out in his mind, demoting her to the squabble of siblings, and ignored anything else that said otherwise.

And then, soon after she had entered college, he saw Fuuto, half-naked, leaving her room with a noticeable bulge in his pants.

For how close Masaomi was, Fuuto didn't notice him. Probably because he was busy avoiding the gaze of another brother that had appeared at the other end of the hall, dressed in drag and far too sharp for his own good. Hikaru didn't miss Masaomi, though, and sauntered his way over to the elder brother the moment Fuuto had vanished behind the elevator doors.

"These walls are wonderfully thin," simpered the fourth son. "If she hadn't told him 'no,' I was going to send in the cavalry."

Any doubt as to what his second youngest brother had been up to fled, and a broiling, flesh-searing heat burned up from the pit of his gut.

Hikaru's smile faltered. "I—I haven't seen that look in a while."

The long-haired man actually flinched as Masaomi moved his hot gaze to him.

"You let it get that far?"

Hikaru threw his hands up, a rare flicker of fear crossing his face.

"I don't stalk the poor girl. I just got here."

Masaomi clenched his fists, suddenly remembering all the times Hikari had stood to the side after instigating conflicts between their brothers, watching and smiling.

The younger man seemed to sense the danger and he stepped back, careful not to smile. "I'll go after him."

Hikaru spun on his heel and fled.

Masaomi looked to her door, taking a step towards it to check, to make sure...

Then he came to his senses and remembered who he was: a man, twice her age, and coming in after she had more or less been taken advantage of by Fuuto. For not the first time, Masaomi cursed that gentleness of hers that made her both defenseless and appealing.

He needed a talk with his second in command.