ocha no hime presents…
Serenade;

(AU) Souma Yuki: perfectionist, graceful, elegant, passionate. Souma Kagura: crazy, soulful, happy-go-lucky, clumsy. Can two complete opposites and strangers attract? Yuki & Kagura

author's notes: Hi, and welcome to Serenade! This is my first Fruits Basket fanfiction, and I hope you'll be nice with me! I suck at speaking scenes, so yeah… I'll try not to make Yuki overly sarcastic, but he's the "Prince" after all… I'm not sure if the Yuki and Kagura pairing is, well, normal, but I think it's… nice, so please give me a chance! Thank you! BTW, this is OOC for a reason. The other main characters like Touru and Kyou and Shigure won't appear as often, though, but they will all have their normal personalities.

disclaimer:

Roses are red, violets are blue
This disclaimer's to you
From me
For you to not sue

Serenade:

Chapter One – You're My Cousin?

Souma Kagura sighed for the tenth time that day. Where was her so-called cousin that she never met before? Kagura had heard that he was a famous dancer—she hated dancing, really—and his name was Souma Yuki. He was to stay with her in Tokyo while attending Tokyo University with her.

In family pictures taken a long time ago, he was really the oddest. Yuki had a handsome face to other girls (Kagura had shown his picture to her friends—they swooned over him) but to Kagura, he was as plain as day. Silver hair (she wondered if he had dyed it) and unique lavender eyes (does he have color contacts?) accompanied his slender build, but that was pretty much it. Not too muscular, not very tall (but he was only 13 at the time), but there was a familiar glint in his eyes.

The brown haired girl sighed again while looking in a bathroom mirror. She had plain features—fair skin with a few freckles spattered across her heart shaped face. They were hardly noticeable, so Kagura didn't worry. Brown hair. Dark eyes. Simple. Plain. Average. She was a little bit jealous of that Yuki person (he didn't have freckles), but accepted her appearance anyways. She didn't want grey hair and purple eyes; they bothered Kagura a little.

Kagura waited a little longer while studying her reflection again. She puckered her lips, then frowned. Then she smiled. She smiled more after that. And then she began to play with her placid looks. Pulling her hair into a side ponytail, she couldn't help look at how silly and out of place she looked. She was twenty, not ten! Kagura left her hair down and decided to go upstairs and change into a summer dress, but her house's doorbell rang ten furious times.

"Sheesh!" Kagura yelled at the door angrily. "Sheesh, alright, God! I'm coming, damn it!"

"You'd better," the muffled voice at the door replied just as angrily back. Kagura's door was made of both wood and glass, so she could see his (was it a he? She couldn't tell—the person had a middle-toned voice) figure slightly. He was tall and carrying multiple suitcases. "So hurry up and open this freakin' door!"

Kagura frowned again. Who was this guy, thinking that he could boss her around like that? She was a black belt, for Heaven's sake! She should go kick that door down and slap the guy on the face, but she bit her tongue and stormed over to the front door and reluctantly opened it.

What she found was a not so much of a pleasant surprise.

Her cousin was staring down at her.

"Oh," Kagura said dumbly, "it's you. You're Souma Yuki, that famous playboy-dancer kid, right? My name is Souma Kagura, your distant cousin, I guess. I don't think I've ever met you. Sorry, but I mistook you for a persistent and inpatient TV guy. Oh, I didn't notice you had bags," she continued with a more lively tone. "Sorry! You can put them—"

"Where's my room?" snapped the silver-haired boy, making Kagura cringe. She wasn't used to people like this; snobs, jerks, and the such. "Oh, and you can put my suitcases upstairs if you'd like. I heard you're a black belt, but you look pretty scrawny to me. I'm hungry so go fetch me something to eat, maid."

Kagura was deeply taken back. Who the hell was this kid, barging in and the like? Didn't he have any rich boy manners? Besides, she wasn't scrawny or a maid. Kagura sighed again for the twelfth time and replied calmly, "Your room is upstairs, first door on the left. Put it up yourself; I was jogging for two hours. And besides that, I'm not a maid, thank you very much."

Souma Yuki smirked. "Such a person like you…" he drawled back. "You wouldn't make it for even a day in the dancing business and the spectacular arts. We dancers have to practice for hours each day—and you! Look at you! You call yourself a dedicated person? Shigure told me that you were dedicated, but alas! You're unworthy of my maid. Ah, I think you should get out of my house now."

Yuki's cousin's eyes burned with such a passion. "Your house?" she screeched loudly. "You think it's your house? What the hell? You can't just barge in and claim this house for yourself! It's mine! Mine, I tell you! I paid for it! I pay for everything! And some playboy-dancer kid is not going to kick me out of my freakin' house, even though he's handsome and famous and happens to be my goddamned hellish cousin!"

Yuki smirked again. "Oh," he twanged pleasantly, "you think I'm 'handsome and famous'?" That happens to be incest, you know. It's," he continued, leaning near Kagura's ear, making her shiver, "illegal." He pronounced the word in perfect English, making Kagura burning with jealousy. If only she could speak like her cousin. Yuki remained grinning, studying her expression, looking for a fault. He, however, found none, and Kagura smiled with triumph.

"You're looking for a fault of mine," she spoke out loud, reading his mind. "You're searching, scanning for something that you can blame me on, but you find none, and that's why you're frowning." She gravely pointed to her left temple and continued, "It's all up here." She tapped it twice and smirked in a very Yuki-like fashion. "I guess I can read you like a simple four-year-old book. Honestly, you're so much like Hiro and Kyou-kun put together!"

"Kyou!" was Yuki's screech. "I'm not like Kyou! Lady, who do you think you are, comparing me and Kyou and that little Hiro-brat? Honestly," he mimicked perfectly, "you're like Akito! She's a woman and hides herself. What is she, your role model or something? Maybe you're a guy with plastic surgery from the United States. Maybe you're transsexual."

"Akito!" yelled Kagura with fury. "Transsexual! Plastic Surgery! Boy, you're going down and down and down and down and down until you end up in Antarctica! Actually, before that, I'll take your cell phone and coat and let you freeze to death! God have mercy on you!"

Yuki grinned like the Cheshire Cat. "Akito-woman wants to have a fight with me? Then Akito-woman will get a fight. It's like the Americans say: 'If you want to dance, then dance, but if you want to fight, then fight with me because I'm your opponent.'"

Kagura grimaced. She did not understand a word he said. Ifu you wanta dancu thenu dancu wit mi? No thank you. She gave trying to learn English a long time ago. And this cousin of hers was a big jerk-head! How could anyone like him? She bit on her tongue and snapped out, "Shigure was right about you. He said that you are a pompous, haughty jerk-head! Why am I letting you into my house? You have money—go rent one or something, but you aren't staying here."

The boy smirked again and reached into his pocket to give Kagura a scrap sheet of paper and said, "I don't think Shigure actually said those things about me. Look at this sheet of paper: it says that Hatori and Akito demand that you'll let me stay here. If you don't, then," he closed his eyes dramatically and pointed to where his heart was supposed to be (yes, that thing that Kagura wanted to rip out right now) and continued, "you'll just have to bid 'adieu' to this lovely whitewashed house then."

Kagura studied the note, which said;

I, Souma Akito, hereby declare that Souma Kagura shall let her dear cousin, Souma Yuki, stay with her during his studies in the University of Tokyo. And I declare that Souma Kagura shall do his bidding, whether it be cleaning the house, changing the TV channels, or whatever. We don't really care.

"Adieu?" Kagura asked when she looked up at Yuki (she didn't really care about that freaky note anyways). She never learned any language besides Japanese and a tiny bit of Chinese. "What the hell does adieu mean? Some kind of milking cow or something (1)?"

Yuki mock slapped his forehead. "No, Akito-woman, it means 'goodbye' in François."

"F-François?"

"Oh boy, we have a long way to go, darling child—I mean, Akito-woman."

"STOP CALLING ME THAT!"

author's notes: I'm sorry for the fast-paced-ness. Anyways, I hate Yuki in this story. He wasn't supposed to be this of a 'pompous, haughty jerk-head,' but I decided last-minute. And when Yuki says 'adieu,' and Kagura asks if it's a milking cow, I'll explain! 'Adieu' sounds like 'ma niu,' which in Chinese is "Mother Cow.' Okay, get it now? Not really, neh? PLEASE DO NOT KILL ME, YUKI FANS! I'm part of the Purinsu YUKI Fan-Kurabu! Well, not really…