A/N: All those reviews in 'Best Friends' got me hyped up for a sequel. So here it is! Ok, not really a sequel… more like Tsukasa's take on the whole thing. And I've been told the other fic was rather short ::KoFf PIGLET kOfF::, so I'm making this one longer!

Warning: This fic turned out kinda… longwinded? Calm yourself down and take it at a slow pace. If u're in a hurry, then read it another time. Speed reading may ruin the fic…

Oh wait… first I'll get over with the review responses from Best Friends… If this doesn't concern you, then move on to the fic. If it does concern you or if you're just plain nosey, then read!!

miss: Hehez… thank u!

piglet: Yea, they were so cute when they were young! And since it is YOU who decided to point out how short Best Friends was, I took both your suggestions and wrote another fic, and extra long too! Just for you!!

HYD4Ever: Ooh, thanks for all the comments! Yesh… who would have guessed Tsukasa would and could sew?? Poor teddy bear… And yes, you are another reviewer who motivated me to write this fic you're about to read. You should feel proud!

JayKimLi: Man, your review was as warming as you said my fic was… I love you to death too!

.::Stacey::.:Hehez, Thank you! Man, I soaked in everything you said in the review and I couldn't help agreeing with every word! Although you said you were actually agreeing with me… but I'll agree with you on agreeing with me anyway! Agreed? Muahahaz……ok, not funny. But yesh, Tsukasa and Rui's friendship is so special… ::wink back::, and damn right, they're cute!

cooking pot: Thanks for the review! Makes me feel wall warm and fuzzy inside… ::grins::

o.O-Rainy-Days-o.O: Meheh… I know you said space it out a bit more… but I kinda forgot when I started on this fic… O.O ::hides from rotten tomatoes:: Oh! But I did remember halfway and started to break down the paragraphs… then at the end my fingers disobeyed me and started shoving them together again… Hehe!! Oh! And I'll go read ur fic now… Lemonade Stand, was it?

Ok people, as you read all the shit in the first few paragraphs, you'd come across a lot of… symbolism? I don't know. Maybe it's just shit. But symbolic shit! Hehehe… Try to image it in your head and see what's the meaning that lies beneath… (if there's even any meaning at all… Wahoohoo!!) Hopefully none of you give up on the fic after the first paragraph… :


Faces of the Fake

It was just like a circus. Full of faces of different kinds. Of different colors, shapes and patterns. And the funny part was that they were all smiling. Perhaps it was because they were not even faces. Masks, more like. Masks with the different colors, shapes and patterns, but the same smile. Just like clowns. And boy did he hate clowns.

And with all that decorated facades plastered over the faces, it sure was hard to see their eyes. The weirdest things about these masks were the strange cracks they had. Some merely fine lines etched across them, like a thin black marker had gotten dragged clumsily across. Some were so big, where the hole took up more space on the face than the mask did, revealing almost the entire face. Some had so many cracks, he was sure the mask would shatter any time. The lines would make little diamond shaped fractures all over the mask. But not the smile. Never the smile. The smile was always there.

The masked faces always came. Smiling, grinning, saying and giving the nicest things. Things that would make anyone smile. Things that made little handsome, smart, cute, prim and proper boys smile. So he'd smile. Only because the masks wanted him to. It didn't feel like a want to smile. More like a need to. To smile back at the smiles.

He was sure smiles were suppose to come along with something else. A feeling, perhaps. A nice one. All his smiles had always felt so… sad. But why was it that it didn't even feel like a smile?

The mirror had answered that question one morning. The mirror hanging at his bedside table. He hadn't looked into that mirror for quite a long time. But when he did, He couldn't really see his face. No, he couldn't see his face at all. There was a mask, though. An ugly mask with an uglier smile on it. That same smile.

Damn, he hated clowns…

So that was what everyone else saw too. But they didn't seem to realize it was only a mask. They seem to think it was his real face. His real smile. Or maybe they knew it was fake, and didn't care. But otherwise, it was good they thought it was real. For inside, he felt he wasn't really smiling at all. And the mirror had revealed that he never actually had been smiling. But no one knew that. For no one could see it. No one cared about seeing it. And it must be hard for them to see his eyes too.

But as more masked faces and more ugly smiles passed him by, he could feel the hammer of superficiality chipping away slowly at his own. The circus act they played before him demanded that smile to be forced out. The fine line was growing longer and longer, and one day another look in the mirror told him his mask was going to break. He couldn't let that happen, could he? He couldn't let anyone else see the real face he had underneath. He tried gluing the pieces together, and sticking the fragments that have fallen off back. But as true and real as he was to them, they never stopped their performance. They wanted to keep the show going. They didn't care about seeing his real smile.

And so one cold evening in school, with a weather that chased everyone under shelter, the masks surrounded him, putting on their concert of care again, trying to make him smile the same smile they had on their own faces. But he could feel the smile cracking. The black marker line inching down over the plastic lips of his false face. He was sure his eyes were going to show too. So he ran out, holding the remaining pieces of his mask together, making sure it didn't shatter.

And then he saw that face. Finally, a real face. A face without that ugly mask. But why was it so sad? It belonged to a boy with hair the color of autumn leaves, sitting silently on those lonely swings he never saw anyone else sit on. He walked closer, wanting to observe the first real face he had seen, and wanting to see if it could smile.

"Oi, you didn't buy the swings, did you?" Yea, like that was gonna work.

The face didn't speak, but it looked up, its beautiful gray eyes deep and unfathomable. Yet they were pools of a dim, crushing sadness…

And it was the first time someone didn't respond to him with sugary words that made him sick. With that ugly smile plastered on its face. All the real face did was just looked back intensely with those misty eyes, beckoning him to go on.

So he did.

"I'm Doumyouji Tsukasa! What's you're name?"

Nothing.

He talked a little more, and then that smile finally came. A beautiful smile. One he had never forgotten. And like he had always suspected, it came along with something else. A giggle. A feeling. A nice one. And Tsukasa wanted more. Which meant he had to talk more.

Rui? Hanazawa Rui.

Much more easier to remember than his own bloody name. Ha. He could definitely remember 'Rui'…

And then Tsukasa smiled. But crap… he remembered that stupid ugly mask. But he had felt something, he was sure.

It was freezing, where they sat, and the cold was getting to him. So he got up, walking back to the school building, hoping the real face he just met would care enough about his own real smile to follow. And it soon did.

And everyday they would sit there on the swings. The lonely swings that were lonely no more. Tsukasa would talk, and Rui would listen. One released himself, the other soaked it all in. And as each day passed, the sadness in gray eyes were vanishing, and the real smile behind a masked face was growing.

But every night of those days, when Tsukasa went home, parted from the real face he had met and wandering amidst more masks, he felt the pain. Each night, the mask on his face burned, eating away at his flesh. And it only stopped hurting the next day when he met up with that real face again.

Then one night came when the pain was unbearable. The sharp flames licking at his face, slicing every inch of him into strips of anger and frustration. The continuous concerto of insincerity finally took it's toll, and Tsukasa walked out the house, no one caring that he left. No one caring if he was really smiling or really hurting.

The cool rain didn't help the burning much. But he kept walking, taking each painful step one at a time. He looked up, and there was the real face, staring up at the gray sky with grayer eyes, hair wet and plastered to his face, rain streaming down his face and neck.

"Rui." He called, running over.

Rui turned his face from the sky, looked at his friend, and smiled his real smile. The smile Tsukasa craved so desperately to see and to have.

"What kind of baka stands out in the rain to get wet?" Tsukasa asked incredulously.

"Aren't you too?"

Damn the red-head and his logic.

He grunted, and they sat down on a wet park bench, short legs dangling off the edge of the seat.

"Why'ja like the rain so much anyway?"

Rui didn't answer, but just stared up at the churning sky, letting the hard drops of rain sting his face.

Tsukasa shrugged and did the same, opening his mouth every now and then to catch a few drops.

"Ne… Rui." Tsukasa suddenly said, clasping his hands behind his head, "Have you ever got really tired of people?"

Rui's thin body stiffened.

"Like, have you gotten really really sick of them, all you want them to do it go away and leave you alone.?" Tsukasa continued, looking up at the sky.

Rui's hands were clutched tight, eyes glued to his feet.

The silence reigned for a while, and a soft voice suddenly broke it.

"Tsukasa… You don't have to be around me if you don't want to." Tsukasa looked back in surprise at Rui, "I don't want to force you…"

"Nani?" Tsukasa asked, trying to hold back any panic in his voice, "Rui, what are you talking about?"

Rui's eyes suddenly seemed a lot sadder than when they first met, "You were smiling a lot, and it looked real, so I felt happy and finally smiled too…"

Rui could see his smile? But… what about the mask?

Rui broke into a whisper, "But if walking away will make you truly happy, then I'll gladly do it." Somehow Rui didn't really look too glad.

Tsukasa was shocked. Rui was willing to give up his new found smile, just so Tsukasa could have his own real one? Not that it was true. But did Rui actually care? No one else cared. No one else ever cared about his true smile. But Rui…

Rui?

Tsukasa snapped out of his thinking and stared at the empty seat next to him. He looked up, panic coursing through his veins, fear ripping away in his heart, and through the misty downpour he saw the small body of the real face trudging away.

He flung himself off the seat and ran toward the red-head.

"RUI!" He screamed, wondering why he suddenly felt so scared.

The other boy just stopped, but didn't turn.

Tsukasa kept running as fast as his little legs could carry him, having almost fallen a few times on the slippery muddy ground.

"Rui…" He stopped behind the other, "Why… W-where are you going?" Tsukasa suddenly realized how much his voice was shaking.

Rui hadn't turned around.

"Why are you leaving me?" Tsukasa said to the back turned on him, hiding as much of fear and pain in his voice as he could.

The gray-eyed one was silent.

"Why?", Tsukasa's shoulders were slumped and the rain was sending torrents of sharp drops of itself down on the two boys, striking callously at every inch of their exposed skin.

"So you can smile."

Tsukasa's eyes widened, "Please. Please don't go." His desperation and pain was evident now, his obsidian eyes locked on the body a few meters in front of him, "I was talking about everyone else. Not you. I… I was always surrounded by a lot of people. But I was always alone." He could feel the tears slip down his mask, falling between the cracks, mixing with the rain, "You're…the only real friend. The only real face… If you go…" He broke into a whisper that even he himself could barely catch in the screaming wind, "…I'll never smile again…"

Rui was still.

Tsukasa walked forward, his feet sinking slightly into the soft mud beneath him at each step, until he was just an arm's reach away from the other boy. His face was cast down, staring at the ground, not wanting the other boy to see his tears. His jet black hair was saturated with the rain, now straight and falling over his face, sticking to his skin.

"Please don't go…"

He felt a hand rest on his face, "Ne, Tsukasa…" He looked up and met the dark gray eyes of the real face. The real face with a real smile. "The rain is nice, isn't it?"

Tsukasa stared at the abrupt change in his friend's features, and he wondered if Rui could see his eyes. If Rui could see through that fractured mask of his and see his sad, dull eyes. But to also see that now, he was trying very hard to smile a smile tht could be seen. Tsukasa wanted Rui to smile his real smile more. So that he could smile too. Yes, the rain was nice… nice enough to cover up any tears that could be coming down his face. Come to think of it, he couldn't really tell if Rui had been crying too…

Rui's small hand ran across Tsukasa's face, pulling away long strands of wet hair and remaining fragments of a broken mask.

And Tsukasa finally smiled. A real smile. A smile he could actually feel. And with a real face too.

"Yea, the rain's great."

-

"Only a baka like you would stand in this kind of rain." Tsukasa walked towards Rui, who was sitting balanced atop the monkey bars of an empty playground, with a long leg dangling down.

"Only a bigger baka would join me." Rui's gray eyes never left the dark night sky. Every inch of his tall form was soaked, and his clothes could hold no more rain and so water was beginning to stream down and onto the wet sandy floor.

Tsukasa sniffed indignantly and grabbed onto one of the monkey bars, pulling himself up easily and swinging his lengthy body up and over. He rested his body across a number of monkey bars, with his head next to his friend and closed his eyes, facing upward so the rain could splash mercilessly onto his body. For now, he was away from all those fake faces, and with a real one. A real friend.

They sat there in companionable silence, isolated from the rest of the world and glad to only have each other. Feeling the sharp cold daggers of water sting his unmasked face, Tsukasa smiled with an ease he once thought he could never achieve.

"Feels like the sky's crying with you, huh?"

A/N: DONE!! Whoa… symbolism overload. And sorry if it turned out rather wordy and full of shit. But hey, you never know what goes on in Tsukasa's little warped out brain… herherz… And hope none of you freaked out in the first few paragraphs… I was writing and imagining all these random clown faces floating around… Almost fainted.

Meh… me just having reread it, try not to take this as a romance novel or anything! It's a friendship one… Wahahaz… I just realized how mushy it turned out.

Adios!

-sylver