Pairing: RyôHana (with a dash of 6918 & 8059)
Rating: T...
Author's note: my submission to the 2nd round of the KHR Romance Writing Contest! The challenge for this round was to write a romance fic circling around either RyoHana or Lambo and I-Pin. Thing is I was really busy last week, so I had to put this together really quickly! Hopefully it makes sense and hopefully you'll enjoy it though ^_^
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The Bathroom
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To Hana's credit, she didn't scream and she didn't start to cry. In fact her expression didn't change at all. She stared at the little plastic device in her hand and its heart-numbing truth and nodded to herself and that was it.
If she had been the kind of girl who went to her mother whenever something upset her, she might have had a more dramatic reaction – because she was in Italy and nowhere near her mother – but she wasn't so she didn't. Kurokawa Hana was nothing if not collected.
Their first New Year's Eve together they spent in Italy, along with Sawada, Kyoko and the other Vongola affiliates, in a huge Hollywood-movie mansion that belonged to the Cavallone family and looked exactly like Hana had always imagined mansions in Italy must look like.
She had been… associated with Ryôhei, Kyoko's big brother, for nearly two years at the time, and for the past six months had even graciously allowed him to refer to her as his girlfriend.
Hana and Ryôhei, sitting in a tree…
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It was Sawada Tsunayoshi, that little shrimp from her class who suddenly wasn't so shrimpy anymore at all, who had explained to her about the Vongola – of what they were and what Ryôhei was a part of. That guy never did anything half-way, so once he got a girlfriend they had no choice but to tell her.
Mafia… she thought it sounded pretty exciting.
Sawada seemed stunned when he realized she had understood every single word he had said to her and even more so when she said she believed him and had no further questions. Then again, Hana had had her suspicions about those guys ever since middle school. His look of blissful relief annoyed her until she overheard a discussion between Gokudera, her own Ryôhei and Yamamoto Takeshi a little while later and it dawned on her why it had pleased Sawada so much to talk to someone who didn't need to get everything handed to them wrapped in sports metaphors.
Oh well, that was Ryôhei for you. Men of action got confused around words.
She had started to get sick in the mornings last month as they were just beginning to prepare for their holiday in Italy, and though the chilling what if nagged at her from the deep of her subconscious a deep-set fear kept her from attempting to get any definite answers, answers she might not particularly want. But then her monthly it didn't come as scheduled either and she decided she couldn't put it off any longer – she would have to make sure, she needed to know.
But by the time she made her decision they were already in Italy and she was forced to sneak off in search of a pharmacy while Kyoko, Haru, Bianchi and she were out shopping. Italian brands were beautiful and sophisticated and Italian women so slender that they lacked no temptation or excuses to spend money – which made it feel even more like a hassle to spend her time here shopping for medical supplies.
She had bought the pregnancy test in all secrecy with her own money and her own shaky English on New Year's Day, and she was going to take it in all secrecy as well. So she slipped her purchase into her little handbag and waited patiently for the extravagant dinner to end so she could tip-toe her way back upstairs.
And sure enough, she got her opportunity as soon as the meal ended and everyone were still chattering with each other at the abundant dinner table, talking to each other on the veranda, dancing, trying to dance or lounging lazily in the padded, expensive looking chairs. There was Tsuna, blushing like an apple and trying to talk to Kyoko while Haru kept happily interrupting him, perfectly obliviously. Dino Cavallone was playing some sort of drinking game with Yamamoto, Reborn and Ryôhei and Bianchi was nowhere to be seen.
And those accounted for all the people who might notice it if she disappeared and was gone for a little while.
Ok, the moment of truth…
Absorbed in her own thoughts she barely noticed as she passed by Hibari Kyouya in the stairway. He had a hickey on his neck and ruffled hair and looked extremely pleased with himself and Hana thought, vaguely, that he'd probably just gotten laid or something and wondered who the lucky and/or traumatized girl was. Or boy, maybe.
When she was younger she had loved boys like him, mysterious and dangerous and terrifyingly beautiful, but now his perfect features unnerved her, made her a little jealous even, and she had long since decided that she much preferred her men to be straightforward, honest and packing that impressive six-pack she could never tire of stroking her fingers over.
Ryôhei's naked body was a work of art.
She snuck up to where the guest rooms were and wrung open the door to a random bathroom, the first one she could find, her hand reaching inside her purse even before the door had swung half-way open and then she froze in mid-movement and stared.
There on the black and white checkered bathroom tiles lay a stark naked young man. Hana knew him by name only from when Sawada Tsunayoshi had pointed him out across the room to her when she was being introduced to everyone in the Vongola and Cavallone famiglia, which already was nearly a full week ago.
Sawada was afraid of Rokudo Mukuro, or so she gathered, and he advised Hana not to talk to him, accept anything he might try to give her and, for God's sake, don't touch the trident. But then again Sawada was also afraid of Ryôhei, Hibari Kyouya, heights, animals, his own self-proclaimed right-hand man and sleeping with the lights off, so Hana tended not to heed or even pay much attention to his warnings.
The man named Mukuro didn't look very intimidating right now, though. He looked quickly up when she entered and crossed his naked legs in a valiant effort to appear decent in the presence of a young lady. Hana, who momentarily forgot all about her own troublesome thoughts, continued to stare at him and she blinked once, twice, as if her brain wasn't entirely sure if it believed what her eyes were telling it.
"Ah, good evening," said Rokudo Mukuro with a smile that looked somehow charming in spite of his current predicament and added, "… this is not what it looks like."
When Hana still didn't move or speak he coughed gently and said, "I wouldn't want to come across as too forward, but perhaps you wouldn't mind helping me with these?" There was a clanking sound as he shook his hands and Hana realized that though it looked at first glance like he had merely been stretching his arms up over his head, as if he were resting, his hands were in fact handcuffed to the toilet. The handcuffs gave off a faint, purple glow.
It was a terribly impractical place to get oneself trapped like that, too, she thought as she elegantly and wordlessly pulled a hairpin out of her dark locks, because he would be showered in toilet water and sewer if he somehow physically managed to break loose and even then he would still be naked and nowhere near any items of clothing. How on earth did this happen, she wondered.
It took her less than 5 minutes to pick the lock – Hana was a natural with hairpins – and then Rokudo Mukuro snuck out with a towel wrapped around his waist, muttering "no sense of humor", after bowing politely to her and kissing her hand in a gentlemanly fashion, which earned him a point on her People I Accept-list.
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That was almost 20 minutes ago.
She had waited for as long as she thought she could before turning on the enigmatic item lying on the sink. Then she had taken it and slid down to the floor with her eyes closed tightly shut and her legs folded underneath her. Ever so carefully she slowly opened one eye, peeked at it.
Uh-oh…
She opened her other eye just as slightly – could she have been mistaken? – squinted at it.
No. She had not been mistaken, no, she was definitely right the first time.
Kurokawa Hana was pregnant.
As she exited the bathroom she put the super-important, frightening, magical little stick into her simple, unadorned black purse and thought vaguely to herself that hmm, Ryô was a nice name, or maybe Akira. Or Kyoko, if it was a girl.
But she didn't even like children…
x.x.x
The Bedroom
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Gokudera Hayato was not naked, but he looked almost as embarrassed when she barged in with Ryôhei in tow behind her as Rokudo Mukuro had. He jumped instantly up from the wide four-poster bed he had been lounging on as if he had burned himself on it.
"OI, OCTOPUS-HEAD! D'you mind beating it?" Ryôhei put his arms around her shoulders and leant forward with a big smile on his face. Only Ryôhei could say something like that just like that and make it sound not offensive, thought Hana and was suddenly affectionate.
She had found him downstairs in the exact spot where he had been when she left. Yamamoto wasn't there anymore, but Reborn, Ryôhei and Dino were still banging their fists in the table, turning playing cards around and shouting at each other to drink, laughing and arguing loudly over whose turn it was. When he saw her Ryôhei's face lit up and he grinned broadly. "Hana! Hey, Hana, look, I'm EXTREMELY winning!" He hiccupped.
Perhaps she ought to have felt guilty about interrupting him while he was on a winning streak, but she didn't care. She also didn't care that her next phrase of choice was the worst possible thing to tell a boy.
"Ryôhei," she said, "we need to talk."
Dino and Reborn looked at each other with knowing looks at that, but Ryôhei was Ryôhei so his smile only widened. "OH! Sorry guys, see ya 'round later!"
She had expected Gokudera to get angry when he saw them, because he nearly always did, but instead he just blushed violently and lit a cigarette in practically no time at all with hands that shook a little – one moment his hands were empty, in the next he was blowing smoke rings towards the bathroom door.
Magical chain-smoker Gokudera.
"Hey, err," he glanced up at them before he looked back over his shoulder, "baseball-idiot, I'm leaving…"
Hana frowned, the room had seemed empty but for Gokudera, but suddenly Yamamoto Takeshi's head poked up from behind the bed like a whack-a-mole doll, grinning like an idiot. "Aw hi guys!" He blushed and gave a weak wave. "What's, err, what's up senpai?"
Hana's eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"OI, YAMAMOTO! What were you doing down there?"
Gokudera coughed into his fist and Yamamoto laughed instead of answering. "Hey, look what I found." He held up a military green camo-printed t-shirt. "It was here under the bed. Weird, huh? Like someone tried to hide it or something, ha ha!"
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Once they were alone she pushed Ryôhei firmly down onto the bed. She wasn't sure what he had expected would happen after she had dragged him away from his little game but noticed that he looked a little disappointed when she didn't proceed to promptly unzip her dress and straddle his lap.
Instead she fished the thing out of her purse and held it up for him to see.
Ryôhei looked at the test, then back at her again.
His expression did not change at all.
After nearly a full minute had passed Hana felt certain that clearly her boyfriend had absolutely no clue what he was looking at. She sighed in exasperation and felt obliged to resort to the Q & A method. "Do you know what this is?"
Ryôhei shook his head slowly. "Is it a thermometer?"
"Do you see this line here?" she waved it back and forth in front of his face, seized suddenly by an overwhelming impatience. "If that line is colored pink, it means 'safe'," she said. "Pink is the happy color."
Ryôhei followed the white plastic stick with his eyes, his brow wrinkled in concentration – one of his weaker points.
"Now then," she went on, "what would you say is the problem with this line right here?"
"Err… it's not pink?"
"That's right, it's not. It's blue. Blue is the color that means we have to talk and you have to listen."
Then a faint light of understanding, or suspicion perhaps, dawned in Ryôhei's eyes… "Wait, Hana," he said slowly, "what is that thing you got there, exactly? Is that a –"
It was the worst possible moment for them to be interrupted, but at that precise moment they were; the door behind them opened and they both snapped their heads around.
Is there no peace or privacy anywhere here, even inside a mansion this big, thought Hana to herself.
It was Rokudo Mukuro.
He was partly dressed now in a pair of jeans that clearly did not belong to him and with his intimidating trident clasped firmly in one hand. He looked angry but when he spotted them he stopped and bowed elegantly. "Ah, my apologies," he said smoothly. "I do hope I did not interrupt anything…? Say, if you should come across any items of clothing scattered around somewhere…" he looked self-consciously down his own front, "well, I would be much obliged."
"Yamamoto found your shirt," offered Hana in a flat tone of voice. Mukuro touched his forehead with two fingers and winked.
As he was about to exit he turned his head and smiled suddenly knowingly at Hana. "Hmm, congratulations…"
Apparently Mukuro was Magical, too.
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Ryôhei was staring fixatedly on his hands – hands that were rough even when they tried to be gentle, hands that were made for action and normally wrapped in bandages.
"But, but those tests don't have to be right, do they?" even his voice, made for roaring, sounded quieter now, almost soft. She felt tender for him at that moment, but at the same time she was immensely relieved that he had managed to put two and two together on his own. "Maybe we got one that's broken?"
"Don't be such an idiot! Do you think I bought this because it looked pretty?" once again she practically shoved the thing up in front of his face. "This test is merely a tangible proof of what my body already knows, do you understand? I could have taken 10 of these, Ryôhei, 10!" She put her fist hard on her hip.
"Right, and they would all be… we-gotta-talk-I-hafta-listen colored?" he gesticulated vaguely with one hand while he spoke.
"Yes, Ryôhei, yes they would be." She swallowed and looked away. Now what? She had told him. How would he react to this, she wondered.
This was a new and uncharted territory to them both, but surely it must be harder for him… mustn't it?
"But, but this is… This is EXTREMELY great news!"
No, apparently it wasn't.
He beamed at her and, grinning widely, he jumped to his feet and lifted her up in his arms as easy as if she weighed nothing at all.
"Ryôhei! Wait, what are you –" It was hardly the reaction she had anticipated!
He spun them around, clutching her frame like a dancer. "This is AWESOME!"
Ryôhei, of course, liked children. Of course he did. He was good with them, even.
Before he could put her down on her feet again, the door once again swung open. This time it was Hibari. He didn't greet them or say anything at all, but from his hands dangled a pair of expensive looking shoes which he chucked inside so that they landed softly on the floor and skid half-way in underneath the bed. Then he offered them a curt nod and a lop-sided little smile. "Excuse me…"
x.x.x
The Porch
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When Dino Cavallone mentioned fireworks all his men, Hana noticed, grew very pale and started to cast each other nervous glances.
But Yamamoto, the sweet-looking Basil, Ryôhei's coach Colonello and the blond guy with the awful table manners named Ken all lit up and they scrambled after don Cavallone like excited puppies, and Gokudera stuck his hands in his pockets, shook his head in exasperation and trailed after them, muttering something about making sure they didn't accidentally blow themselves up.
"Freakin' idiots…"
In spite of the intimate conversation they had just had, their first ever baby-talk, Hana had fully expected Ryôhei to run off too and was surprised when all he did was squeeze her shoulder. He wasn't even looking at the others and it was as if he hadn't even noticed that there were other people there at all.
Suddenly she loved him intensely.
He didn't let go of her shoulder even as the fireworks began to soar up with loud whistling noises and explode in candy-colored stars and dazzling fountains of light. They stood outside on the half-moon shaped veranda that connected with the dining hall where they had been eating, and it was large enough to fit all of them and still leave enough room so that everyone might keep a safe distance away from where the fireworks were being sent up.
"What about Mike?" he whispered to her, his face painted red and orange by the glittering light above them. "Can we call him Mike? Or Tyson?"
"Why do you think it'll be a boy?" she asked in reply, too content to argue with his ridiculous choice of name. They didn't live in America!
"Of course!" said Ryôhei matter-of-factly. "Didn't you see the line? It was blue! Blue is the color for boys!"
Incredulously she squinted up at him, but then she merely snorted and shrugged. That was Ryôhei for you – and there was his logical sense in a nutshell!
"You're a monkey," she whispered affectionately and rested her head on his shoulder.
Sawada stood with Haru on one side and Kyoko on the other, and seemed more fixated on casting fleeting glances at Kyoko than watching the fireworks display, though both of the girls were laughing excitedly and clapping their hands, completely absorbed. Kyoko loved fireworks.
At the very back of their crowd, by the wall, stood Gokudera and Yamamoto, who had detached themselves from the firework crew and by carefully planned coincidence ended up side by side. They weren't very preoccupied with the display either, it seemed.
Down in the gardens below them laid Hibari Kyouya on his back on top of a stone bench under a tree, a demonstrative distance away from the rest of them. Above him, perched precautiously on one of the lower hanging branches sat Rokudo Mukuro, dangling his legs and sprinkling dry snow down in Hibari's hair through his fingers like sugar.
He must have gotten his t-shirt back from Yamamoto, but his feet were bare.
"I always knew it would be you, you know!" said Ryôhei suddenly, and now it was his voice that was warm and affectionate. "I'm gonna marry you, just wait, I'm gonna the buy an EXTREMELY large diamond ring and propose!"
Hana's lips quirked, then she burst out laughing. "You idiot, you aren't supposed to tell me!"
"A real man NEVER goes back on his word!"
She didn't argue. A small part of her momentarily love-struck, dumb-struck brain heaved a mental sigh, however.
But I don't even like children…
x.x.x
Boys are stupid
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When Hana is 5 she enters elementary school and she and Sasagawa Kyoko becomes best friends for always. It's also the first time she meets Kyoko's big brother.
Both these incidents are connected to a fight but, as she discovers soon enough, fights tend to occur around Ryôhei a lot.
Namimori Public Elementary School is owned and run by the Namimori Ward and it is not a particularly high standard learning facility. Once a child is committed into the elementary though, it is easier to glide all the way up through junior high and high school and into Namimori College without the extra burden of entrance exams, which is why so many parents go out of their way to get their children in. Getting them into the system must be the ticket, or so they seem to think at least. It was the same for the Kurokawas, Hana's parents, and though Hana would later come to despise the escalator-system as a matter of principle she was too young to give much thought to it as a 5-year old.
Hana didn't much enjoy her first days of school and proved thus to be a severe challenge to the doting teachers and a stark contrast to her new classmates, especially because it was their presence that made her uncomfortable. Kurokawa Hana did not like children. It didn't matter that she was still one herself, a fleeting fact which completely eluded her young mind at the time as such things often will. Children are selfish beings.
She thought the others were noisy and dirty and infinitely stupid.
Her teachers fussed endlessly over her listlessness to participate in games that involved others, and Hana's parents were the first to be contacted for a private parent-teacher meeting. This happened within the first 2 weeks of the 1st semester of the year, a record beaten only by Hibari Kyouya who had been enlisted in Namimori elementary the year before and had caused the school board and his teachers a profound amount of trouble.
Incidentally her class included both Sawada Tsunayoshi, who was very shy and spent most of his time trying not to get noticed, Yamamoto Takeshi, who became best friends with everyone all at once and received his first clumsy love letter within the first week, and Sasagawa Kyoko, whose childlike face was already perfect and doll-like.
All the girls in their class wanted to be friends with her.
They seemed intimidated by Hana though, and as a natural result they became terribly curious of her.
But the one who first dared approach her was Kyoko, who came up to her during lunch recess one day as she was sitting perched on a bench underneath a tree with a book that was written without any kanji in it at all.
"Why aren't you playing with us?"
Hana looked up and studied the girl without answering. She had very big eyes, like a doll. "Playing is for children," she replied finally and made to return to her book.
Apparently accepting this as a perfectly reasonable answer Kyoko climbed up onto the bench and scooted closer to her trying to peek at the book over her shoulder. "What is that?"
"A book." Was this child stupid or something?
"Can you read everything?"
Hana nodded.
"Everything? Really?"
Hana nodded again.
The other children from their class were playing some sort of ball game that looked all too stupid for her to even consider joining, and so it was just the two of them there on the bench. The sun was shining and the light that fell on them, filtered through the foliage of the tree above them created little patches of gold in Kyoko's hair.
In a way Hana was happy about what happened next, although it took her some time to realize it…
"Hey, girlie! You're the baby sister of that prick, Ryôhei, aren't ya?"
At the sound of the boy's voice both Hana and Kyoko looked quickly up from Hana's kanji-less book to stare at him and the three friends he had brought along with him.
Kyoko looked a little scared. Hana scowled.
As a result of her combined age and gender Hana had decided that even worse than children in general were boys, because boys were noisier, dirtier and much stupider than any girl. And these four certainly looked to be all three at once and Hana hated them immensely for no other reasons than these.
One of them took her book away from her and threw it carelessly over his shoulder and another began to pull at Kyoko's hair. Hana had expected her to cry or scream, but little Kyoko just pounded at the boy with her tiny fists and looked angry. "Don't say mean things about my big brother!"
"Oh look, she wants to fight! Come on, girlie, just do it! We're gonna kick your stupid brother's ass when he comes to save you!"
The boys were much bigger than her, but in Hana's eyes they were nothing but a bunch of filthy, annoying children who were hardly worth her time. She was furious. They had taken her book and now they were being cruel to the sweetest girl in 1st grade – the only child who had talked to her!
And there was a special place in hell, she knew, for girls who didn't help each other out.
So what she did was kick the boy with his fist in Kyoko's hair as hard as she could manage and then punch him in the stomach. He toppled over groaning with surprise and pain. He was the biggest and dumbest-looking of them and his friends looked glanced uneasily at each other now and one of them even took a couple of steps backwards.
"Don't think we won't beat you up just 'cause you're a girl, ya know?!"
"Oh yeah?" Hana balled her fists and brought them up to her face like a boxer. "Don't think I won't beat you up just 'cause I'm a girl either!"
And then she brought her fist up like a rocket and plunged it into the bridge of the nose of the boy who had bothered Kyoko. He staggered backwards, clutching his bleeding nose. He looked furious now! "Why you little –"
The fight that might have started and might have become ugly came to an abrupt end when a thin boy with skin like snow slid down from a branch in the tree that loomed over them and landed on the sun speckled ground like a cat.
"I was sleeping," he said and sounded like he was accusing them of something very bad. "You woke me up. Do you know what happens when weak little grass-eaters like you disturb my sleep?" That was the first time she ever saw Hibari Kyouya.
If the four boys had not been much impressed with Hana, the pale cat-boy had a different effect on them entirely and they all instantly blanched at the sight of him. And as Hana and Kyoko stood clutching each others' hands they watched on in fascination as they turned suddenly on their heels and ran off with cat-boy hot on their tail like some vengeful demon.
"Thank you," said Kyoko softly and she smiled weakly up at Hana. "That was –"
"An EXTREMELY sweet punch!"
And that was when she first met Sasagawa Ryôhei…
"You hit like a real BOXER!"
He came running towards them and Hana would later learn that Ryôhei always ran whenever he could, and often as not when he shouldn't – he had pale, unruly hair and band-aids on his arms and face, and he was very, very loud.
Kyoko's little face lit up at once. "Big brother!"
And then Hana punched Ryôhei as well. Hard. "You stupid idiot!" she yelled at him. "Those boys came here because of you! What kind of brother are you that can't even protect your own little sister, huh?!"
"Umh, Hana-chan, it's ok, really –"
She wasn't sure what she expected him to do now that she had hit him and she certainly didn't care. It was his fault now if those boys had marked her too as a target. But when he looked up at her his face was practically beaming.
"WOW! That punch was EXTREMELY AWESOME! I didn't know girls could do that!"
Then he punched his own palm with his fist and his face lit up. "I got it!"
He jumped up onto the bench where they had been sitting and started reaching for one of the low branches of the tree where the white-skinned boy apparently had been napping before the big boys showed up. "I'm gonna watch over you guys from up here! It should be an EXTREMELY great hiding place! Don't worry Kyoko, boxer-girl, those guys won't bother you EVER again!"
"Big brother, you don't have to do that…"
Hana scowled incredulously up at him and crossed her arms angrily. "Are you going to guard us from that tree? You look like a monkey!"
"Ryôhei, mom said you shouldn't climb trees!"
But the boy didn't react to his little sister's admonishments or to her insults at all, not even when she yelled it again. "Monkey-boy," she called, "monkey! Aren't you even going to apologize for this?!"
"Umh, he is… just being himself, Hana-chan. Look, there's your book!" Kyoko picked it up from the grass and dusted it off gently with her small hands. Then her eyes lit up, "won't you read it to me?"
And so they spent the remainder of the lunch recess that day on the bench under the tree where monkey boy rested, presumably watching over the two of them, as she read out loud from her book that had no kanji in it. And that was the day Kyoko became Hana's first and forever best friend in the whole, wide world.
And the day she met Ryôhei.
On their way in for class Hana caught another glimpse of cat-boy being addressed by one of the school yard inspectors.
"So, you see, Kyo-kun, those weren't adults beating people up for fun. Even adults can't do that and certainly not you! Those were policemen upholding the law and punishing people who don't abide the rules. There is a very big difference. Do you understand?"
Little Kyouya looks thoughtful for a moment before he smiles like a wolf. "Yes."
Less than a week later, Namimori Elementary School's very first Disciplinary Club, Namimori Children's Watch, springs from the 2nd year Sunflower class. Delinquents beware. None of the teachers approve of this but because the official rule book says nothing about students not being allowed to form clubs and a whole lot about teachers trying to suppress creativity in young children, they let it pass and Hibari Kyouya's reign of terror enters its first year with full legality.
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Author's note: I just realized this is the first fic I've written with focus on a girl/boy relationship. Anyway, I'd really appreciate some feedback. Hope you liked it! Like I said, it was put together pretty quickly, and the elementary school scene I'd already written before and I figured this was the best opportunity I'd have to include it, since the story was about Ryohei and Hana ^_^
Reviews will be cherished and given a warm and loving home!