I couldn't not write. Wrote this when I had the feels during the hols, edited and touched it up sort of over the course of a few days, and ended up removing the smut completely because of my...

If anyone is reading this. Fuck it, I hate school. I can't take people. I want to cry really badly.

Annoyance

Pairing: Azuma x Kahoko

I feel this is much like Hades x Persephone, Erik x Christine. This pairing is deep and intriguing. Any fan of music should read this manga, or even watch the anime. Romance lovers be warned, it has no satisfying ending. You may hate Azuma in the anime. But you will understand. Or maybe I'm twisted LOL

xXx

Annoyance.

Annoyance is but a word to describe her. It is annoying and irritating, the smile that never gives in. The light that won't stop flickering and just give up. Because, nobody will understand. Because she will never understand.

I could close my eyes and breathe in the scent of her forever.

Does she even know the effect she has on me? Damn, I need to stop biting on my lips so hard.

xXx

Azuma looked up into the sky, dressed impeccably in a dinner outfit again, hosting yet more parties for his family business. Bloody ikebana. Damn the business to hell and back. He twirled a long lock of hair in his fingers, drinking in the sights and sounds of the resplendent party. Should he try that trick again with the new girl his grandmother favored? Or should he just marry her? Truth be told, he had no intention of ever marrying one of them, all but a means of good connections for his damnable family. True, each girl was an exceptional beauty, with hair unlike the coarse ropes of Kahoko Hino...He blinked, clearing his mind. Why was he even thinking of her? She wasn't even anything of his caliber. Just an annoyance. He twirled his cellphone in his palm once, twice, before flipping it open. His long fingers dialed the number with ease, having done so many a time that night. Why did he even bother? Just get it over and done with, he screamed to himself in his head. Let her know what a pitiable monster and complete bastard you are. She can't hold back, she can't help it and won't. You wouldn't need to bother. She's all but your toy.

But, what was the likelihood someone like her would be in France? Yunoki Azuma leant on the balcony, remembering the times at school. Another balcony, another time...trying to control himself as all but her uniform top and his shirt separated them...the very last time they had met as friends. Could he even consider her a friend? More like someone, the only one that knew his darker side and love of torturing her. He let out a smile, even Hihara had no idea of how he had beaten her down, and yet, every time she had not faltered. Biting his lip, almost that it bled, he pressed the little green call button.

"Yunoki-san?" Kahoko bolted as she gripped the phone, sitting upright in bed. "What do you want?"

"Just wondering how you were, Hino-san," he said smoothly, his voice unwavering. Azuma smiled to himself, as the flustered Kahoko babbled out a string of sentences about her life, ending with an "I'm okay". He listened slowly to each, replying with a simple "You're annoying," before continuing.

"Would you like to see France?" He tried, guessing she'd be elated. After all, in the correspondence with the other concur participants, she had but been the only one not to travel overseas. A dead, pregnant silence ensued, and Azuma wondered if she had dropped the connection, only to hear the scrabbling in the background to prove that she hadn't.

"Good, you're awake now." He noted coldly, smirking as he turned to face the ballroom, thronging with people. Gay voices drifted from inside, making him frown with disdain at them. Surely enough, he was to play the genteel host, the becoming gentleman to their family business, albeit a musician on the side, performing with the Viennese orchestra from time to time, but he much preferred the days of the concurs and school. As he waited for the scrabbling sounds to finish, he looked down at his flute case, which he often carried with him or placed near him. Running his fingers over the smooth metal of the instrument, case unzipped, he slowly tapped out the fingering to Ave Maria.

Kahoko Hino's favorite song.

"Ano, Yunoki-senpai?"

Speak of the devil.

"Yes, Kahoko?"

"I-I'd like to take up the offer. "

"Very well. Please prepare a song of your choice, and you will perform at the gala dinner in Nice on Wednesday. Of course, we will pay you for it...but as to the amount, I decide."

Kahoko nodded dumbly, staring at the phone.

"Hai...Yunoki-senpai."

A job offer. That's all she was now as a professional violinist, like the rest of the concur participants. A professional. And nothing but a person to listen to. Inside, she felt something stir at the thought that was the idea of her being but that. And then she frowned. Why would she be anything more to Yunoki? He could always choose from his gaggle of adoring fan girls, or the Yunoki Guard as they were called. And he had called her plain, and without brains or beauty.

"Goodnight, Kahoko."

So lost in her thought, she never noticed the other details, until her phone blinked with an email.

"Please be ready in a day's time at Narita Airport.

Azuma."

xXx

Kahoko rushed to pack, throwing in a few warm clothing and as well as a long sleeved sweater Len had given her. Something to make Yunoki jealous, she thought. Why even bother anyway? They weren't even together. Still, she tossed the blue knitted sweater in, hastily shutting the luggage.

It wouldn't shut. Kahoko unzipped the bag, trying to shut it again, before she noticed a small object stuck in the sweater that made it stick out, and hard to close the bag.

A single snowflake pendant.

Damn him, damn his purple locks and his leaving, damn him and his present! Not as if she had asked for any birthday presents from the concur boys anyway! But they had all come together, even with Fuyumi, to throw her a party. And he had given her this.

This.

Stupid.

Snowflake.

xXx

A promise never kept, a silent dark muse that they told each other as the eyes carefully regarded each other. She lifted her bow in a graceful arc, playing the opening notes to Ave Maria. The melody was soft, sweeping Azuma in an unfriendly arc as he remembered the last performance in the concurs, the last performance she gave. He blinked. It seemed almost as if she had taken her sound, her very sound she possessed and multiplied it five times over, telling him once more of the hidden genius she had. What or how had one seemed to absorb the flavor, the very essence of the music that she could have seen even before she was a professional? Such a talent, if it could be even called one, coming from Kahoko Hino, was magical in a sense, irritating him that he could never exert such sway over her as he had over the rest of the girls. As the audience clapped uproariously, she bowed, her pearly whites showing as her slim form swept in a graceful arc, up, then down. She made her way down to Azuma's side, as planned. Azuma slowly counted the number of ways she distracted him. First, her hair. Second was the nape of her neck, gently exposed by the bloody bun she tied it up in, and then the eyes which flicked around, ignoring him but taking in every damn other thing. Why did she even need to see such beauty in everything else? He almost wanted to grab her and tell her of the way everything else disgusted him.

Especially his "Guard", they thought themselves so worthy of him. Truth be told, some were women he had coldly rejected in the past by his own virtue, or lack of it, women chosen by his goddamned grandmother and her iron fist of ruling. Ever since having learnt to balance life of music and as well as the business, he had somewhat seemed to placate the stormy being that she was, and their conversation had almost returned to normal, normal being clipped, terse sentences by which they regarded each other and acknowledged the existence of each other. How he longed for the night to be over…

xXx

Azuma grinned slowly to himself as he escorted the redhead up to the hotel rooms where she had placed her bags. He remembered the shocked and pleasantly surprised face she had regarded him with as they journeyed up after she had landed, because she had a penthouse suite…not to say it was all to herself, but who bothered really, with the technicalities of things? In any case, the media would already have pinned them as a secret celebrity couple, perhaps more than just the old friends the were meant to be. Surely his grandmother would blow a gasket at such a prospect of tarnishing the Yunoki family name, based on the simplistic background of the woman beside, but who could say the least? She was now an accomplished, world renowned violinist, said to even rival the powder blue baby boy of the Tsukumoris.

He couldn't care less anyway as he swiped the key card gracefully, leading her into the room before he followed.

Shock and surprise turned to disgust and disregard for him as he sank down onto the bed, pulling off his dinner jacket and tie.

"Yunoki-senpai…don't joke around."

He smirked coldly at her.

"Who said I was joking?"

xXx

Finally. Is this not power, is this not lust? Is this not man, and its irrevocably broken trust? Kahoko is weak to fighting back, and perhaps, Azuma hopes, is giving into her desire.

She mentions nothing.

It puzzles neither.

Unspoken words will reach across the chasm of years and lost memory as he slowly reaches out to cup her face. She no longer struggles, her eyes wide open in slight fear and apprehension as his hands slide down the distracting column of flesh. Her heartbeat is a steady thrum in the palms of his hands, the jugular vein as the rest beating out a steady lub-dub that matches the pounding of his heart.

When both are so broken that the fight is out of them, the healing will eventually begin to sew the scars of time. Studies and the business had torn them apart and also brought them together, he muses, remembering the tears for her once beloved, the crystals that she had shed and he had fashioned into new dreams with him.

Kahoko lets the matters proceed even though she knows what he wants. It's nothing, they've already done it, once, twice, thrice. The coupling of them both means naught to her at all, in fact it reinforces how much the separation has taken its toll on them.

"Yunoki-senpai…I-"

He shushes her rudely, his tongue dancing across her neck. An A, followed by the soft trails of a Z, a U…Kahoko quickly took the cue.

"A-azuma…senpai."

A dangerous glare of his eyes, and she quickly follows him into the dark depths of pleasure.

xXx

The morning dawns. Formalities, of course, are but the things needed to break them again.

On the plane, whispered voices of "stay" make her heart rend, but she shakes her head.

Azuma blinks. He closes his eyes and remembers. Remembering the past as it was. Remembering what he must. Remembering how his heart must not ache. And when he watches her go, he cannot convince himself.

Kahoko is nothing. She is nothing but a peasant. Yet in luminous eyes that regard her coldly she is the riches of the earth. He is distant, distant as the nebula, distant as the galaxies. She is nothing, he is nothing, everything is but nothing as the calmly regard each other in the hallways as they pass.

This is what he must think. This is what she must be.

But she is nothing but his dearest annoyance.

thank you for reading LOL