a quick note: I wrote this as a break from the usual love/hate relationship that we RenPiri-shippers seem to associate them with so much. So i stepped back and thought, really thought how they would realistically react to and resolve the fact that Ren came from a noble family and she didn't, the fact that he was married to Jeanne, the fact that he had a son, the fact that Pirika had a boyfriend. And thus this story was born. Also, there are a few hints of an initial one-sided HoroRen. but keep in mind that this was, is, and always will be a RenPiri. You'll see what I mean.
PLEASE DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND LISTEN TO THE SONG "YOUR EX-LOVER IS DEAD" BY STARS ON REPEAT WHILE READING THIS: w w w . y o u t u b e . c o m / w a t c h ? v = 4 v 8 F J h Q - t e E (just remove the spaces. or just look it up). It will enhance the story like no other. I swear/promise/etc.
dedicated: of course, to my readers, and especially to my regular reviewers. but first and foremost, to sOrbetes, who is one of the sweetest, nicest, most dedicated RenPiri supporters ever. This is for you, dear!
one. (september)
It hurt. He was still standing outside his best friend's (though he would never admit to anyone he actually considered other people to be his friends) house. And it still hurt. How he would wave, shout out if he could just have a couple more minutes, and sling his arm over Ren's shoulders like nothing had changed between them. Well, to Horohoro nothing had changed of course. He couldn't even remember anything from that night. But Ren could. Which is why he would still march on, Tao pride and all, as he always did. Regardless of the pain.
They'd walk to school, the blue haired boy chattering on aimlessly about something or other and Ren would pretend to not give two shits about whatever he was saying, forcing himself to whack his friend upside the head at regular intervals to keep up appearances that they were still the same: best friends since Ren stole Horohoro's rattle from his crib. But Ren could give two shits. Hell, that's why he—
Adored is too girly a word.
They would arrive at the Funbari Hill High School's gates and they'd part ways, Horohoro grinning and yelling at Ren to meet by the tree for lunch, where they, along with the rest of Yoh's gang ate every day. He reminded him everyday. Ren would miss those little constancies he insisted on once Horohoro found out what had happened a month ago. It was inevitable he'd hear the truth, rumors spread like those fires Hao was always so keen on starting. FHHS wasn't a big school and rarely anything interesting happened. The talk of the hallways for the past three months was that Professor Ryu, totally engrossed with reading the script of his latest play, had accidentally walked into the girl's bathroom. And neither the girls nor the flamboyantly out Ryu had really cared either way.
Today, Horohoro would accompany his reminder with a punch to the arm. Ren could just tell he would from the bounce in his step. And then the Ainu boy would sprint to the other side of campus to make it to his first period Trigonometry class while Ren would shuffle, counting his steps as always, to his locker.
They'd eat lunch together, Horohoro in the center of the group with some crazy story he probably made up as he went along or a lame joke he had practiced on Ren on the way to school. It didn't really matter what he was saying. The way Horohoro would look back at Ren and smile as if seeking his approval or just to see his reaction made Ren feel wanted. Like he was needed there and not some antisocial, brooding loner that needed a group to hang out with.
Wanted.
It's been a month since he's felt that way.
Ren and Horohoro would go to the same physics class, the former trying not to look at the latter too much, too long. And then they'd part, leaving Ren to whittle away on the field during lacrosse practice without him. He was deteriorating more and more every day, a young man in an animated corpse.
But for now, he would try to find a way just to make the journey to school. Horohoro came out of the house, half-stumbling down the front steps. Ren turned away and began walking.
During lunch, Horohoro seized the wrist of a younger girl and yanked her in front of the group. He told them that this was Pirika, his younger sister who had moved down from Hokkaido to join him. She was a year younger than all of them. Ren hesitatingly admitted to himself that she wasn't ugly. She nervously raised her hand and said hi, her voice shaking and her eyes always flitting back to Ren every couple of seconds. Her eyes were red and the skin around them was rubbed raw as if she had been crying recently.
He turned away and resumed eating his lunch in silence.
two. (october)
Horohoro had breathlessly told him, face flushed and his voice stuttering. He was in love. Or so he proclaimed at least. Totally, irrevocably in love. That menacing four letter word Ren had never spoke out loud in his lifetime and had never heard his best friend say before. So he had blinked in confusion before he registered what he had been whispering animatedly for the last fifteen minutes. On the brighter side, Horohoro was saying he was in love for the first time to Ren. On the shittier side, Ren wasn't the object of the Ainu boy's affections.
Fuck this.
Ren had merely scowled and attempted bursting Horohoro's bubble. He asked who the girl was.
Always, always a girl.
Horohoro grinned and began blushing (so cliché!). It was the new girl in their English class who had just transferred from Izumo. Pink hair, sad eyes, petite frame, delicate voice.
Ren absolutely hated her already.
Horohoro went on about how their lockers were next to each other, how he'd get Yoh to hook them up. Maybe he'd ask her to the next dance.
Ren had never seen them talk before.
The blue haired boy admitted hesitantly that they had never talked. For all they knew, she didn't even know he existed. Then the worst thing possible happened: Horohoro asked Ren for his help in getting the girl.
If Ren was a better friend, he'd voice his and Joco's concerns over her. How he was setting himself up for heart ache. How he probably only liked her because she was so similar to his former love. Damuko. The quiet, fragile beauty both new girl and old girl had that Ren would never have. The quiet, fragile beauty Horohoro adored so much.
Adored.
But Ren wasn't in the mood to be a better friend. He wanted others to feel pain. He wanted Horohoro to feel how much hurt Ren was feeling. So he kept silent and watched and waited for things to fall apart.
Ren had never seen her talk before.
It would never work out between them.
The last period of the day, Ren discovered, he shared with Pirika as she transferred into his class. He stared at her as she asked, her head tilted upwards slightly out of confidence, if they could be lab partners. As they sat next to each other at their two person table, learning about valence electrons or unstable isotopes or something Ren wasn't paying attention to, he thought about what he would have said if their chemistry teacher hadn't answered for him. It didn't take a genius to figure out that many boys at FHHS found her quite pretty, further supported when, after class, many male eyes were trained on her as she and Ren walked down the hallway.
He noticed that she had been crying again. But he didn't ask why.
three. (november)
Ren had woken up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night from the dream he had been trying to avoid for the past few months. He had been rather successful up until then. He flung the shower door open and stood there for nearly an hour, letting the cold water beat down upon him as his disgust with himself built. His nails scratched at the ceramic shower walls, remembering how his nails had scratched along the other boy's skin. He shook his head as he punched the tiles and gritted his teeth. He hated what he did, he hated his weakness, he hated himself.
The Tao heir dried himself off and didn't go back to sleep. Instead he let himself remember that night, the clumsy initial fumbling, the smell of alcohol heavy in the air, the animalistic demands, the awkward, mumbled excuses the morning after.
Ren arrived at school the next day, eyes heavy from sleep deprivation. Horohoro ran down the hallway, winking and saying that it was time for phase one of their plan to get the girl. Ren waited for the Ainu boy to disappear around the corner before slamming his forehead against the cold metal of his locker and staying in that exact position for five minutes.
He was late to class.
She insisted on sitting next to him every lunch, her leg always reflexively kicking him in the shin whenever she laughed. He didn't know what she always found so funny considering he barely opened his mouth to talk nowadays. Horohoro, at the center of course, watched the two, pride and uncertainty mingled on his face.
Ren noticed that Pirika had begun pulling him away, both physically and emotionally, from the axis of the group, the center. Away from her brother. Irritated and resentful at first, he began to wonder if he was letting her do it to him. As if he wanted to be more distant from Horohoro to dull whatever hole that that night had left in him.
Perhaps.
four. (december)
He wanted to know why Horohoro looked like he could explode from an overload on happiness when Ren had monotonously announced, mid-bite into his sandwich, that he had asked Pirika out. He would've expected his best friend to flip a bitch that his baby sister had a boyfriend. An older boyfriend. That had known her for barely a month.
He finally asked her why she kept crying. But, admittedly, she was crying not even a once a week recently.
She responded that her boyfriend back in Hokkaido had unceremoniously and embarrassingly dumped her literally the day before she moved down to Tokyo. Away from all of her friends. A place where she knew only one person. Ren responded that any boy who dumped her was a complete fool.
He said that only because he felt that it was his new duty as her boyfriend to say it.
In truth, Ren was just as bad. He asked her out because one, she looked like a pathetic, wretched mess every time she cried and he knew that she was interested in him to some extent. So why not ask her out and get her to stop crying?
Two, he knew that Horohoro wanted them to get together to get her mind off of her ex.
Three, he would be able to spend even more time with Horohoro.
Four, maybe, just maybe, he could learn to be content with her. To settle for her when he knew that it was impossible to get the Ainu boy to be by his side. Mind you, he didn't have to be happy. Merely content was fine by him. She would become a substitute for something he couldn't have.
Horohoro was still doggedly perusing English class girl. He happily reported that she had looked at him momentarily. When half-heartedly asked for more details by Ren, Horohoro had scratched the back of his head while elaborating that it was because he had asked to borrow a pencil from her.
Ren already knew that this whole thing would shudder and die before it even took off. Surprisingly, he didn't feel any satisfaction from watching the impending disaster.
five. (january)
She notices that he is even more distant from her. If that is even possible. She knows that both of them aren't right for each other at this point in time. But she clings onto it even harder because of it.
six. (february)
Ren and Pirika reach an unspoken agreement and let their relationship fizzle out slowly and quietly. Ren was met with a vigorous shaking of the head when he asked if there were any hard feelings between them. They go back to being friends. Or whatever the hell they were before. Horohoro threatens to kick his ass before Pirika rolls her eyes and tells him that it's fine. That it was mutual and wasn't going anywhere.
Ren found himself semi-enjoying the Ainu girl's company. Which was quite a big deal because the only other person whose company he enjoys was Horohoro's. She shrugged things off that would otherwise bother most other girls, a quality that Ren had learned to appreciate after their break up. The only thing that was off putting was that he noticed her reddened nose and eyes again soon after the death of their relationship. He actually felt guilty for once and treated her less coldly than he did with the rest of Yoh' group.
Gradually, Horohoro forgave Ren for whatever offense he had perceived Ren committing and everything went back to normal.
Normal as things could get after that night, of course.
She still forced him to carry her things for her of course. Just because he wasn't her boyfriend didn't mean he stopped being her pack mule. If he were his old self, he would've glared at her and walked away. But he wasn't.
Naturally.
Ren didn't mind of course. She wasn't gratingly annoying like every other member of the female species that attended FHHS and he still frequented the Usui household as much as he did when they were going out. The painful part was that he was forced to endure listening to Horohoro endlessly come up with ineffective plan after ineffective plan for Operation: English Class Girl.
He would only be saved when Pirika noisily entered the room with a question about homework or some glasses of water for the two boys. He wondered why her voice sounded deliberately louder as if she was forcing Horohoro to stop talking and pay attention to her. Or why she needed help when, after reading the question she needed assistance on, he knew she was perfectly capable of answering it on her own. Or when her steps outside the room sounded rushed before she burst in, the water in the cups sloshing dangerously, herself out of breath as she offered them to the two boys.
She notices for the first time the way Ren would keep his eyes on Horohoro a second longer than he did with anyone else who talked to him. The way he would look after her brother had finished talking about some girl at school. The way Ren would clench his fists as he rigidly sat still next to Horohoro in an attempt at self-control. And she finds it all quite interesting.
seven. (march)
He was carrying her backpack across the quad to the field where she had cheerleading practice as she had requested. He sat down by himself and watched the memorized and mechanical like movements of the skinny girls on the other side of the fence before he took out her phone from the front pocket of the bag as she had asked.
After pulling out the hot pink plastic device, an envelope fell out onto the ground. Upon closer examination, it was a letter wrapped around a picture from a disposable camera. His chest constricted painfully and he found it rather odd that it suddenly became hard to breathe as he read it. It was a letter Horohoro had written to her last year describing the enclosed picture.
He had skimmed over the general description of his friends, how Yoh and Anna (the carefree looking boy and the angry looking blond on the left side of the picture, Pirika) had gotten engaged in an arranged marriage.
How Manta (short boy with the big eyes) had gotten a scholarship already to some school in the States.
How Joco (front and center! Big hair, you can't miss him!) had transferred to their school that year and already had become notorious for his terrible puns.
How Lyserg and Jeanne (the only non-Asians in the picture…) were foreign exchange students from Europe.
How Ren became his best friend (the really fierce and serious looking kid…I seriously really love this guy a lot, you don't even understand how much!)
Love.
Ren wrapped the letter around the picture with the cheap glossy finish.
A lot.
He creased the fold sharply in between his finger nails before placing it back in her bag.
Seriously really.
Her phone vibrated as it received a text message. He opened it.
Don't even understand.
It was from Horohoro asking her where she was and what dinner was going to be tonight. It ended with a less than sign and the number three.
How much.
He deleted it, the virtual emoticon heart and the pixilated picture id of his best friend disappearing off the screen as her phone happily announced that the message had been moved to the trash.
He sat there in a daze, the heavy backpack on his lap cutting off circulation to his legs. He knew he had to convince himself that Horohoro didn't love him in the way he wanted him to. In the way Ren l—ed him.
He couldn't bring himself to fill in the three other letters in his head.
As soon as Pirika sees his face after she exits the locker rooms, she knows he had seen the letter. She can barely keep her heart from breaking as she sees the pain he didn't even know he was feeling that he was trying to conceal.
eight. (april)
Ren skipped as many days of school that he could and still be able to graduate. Pirika visited him at his house often after classes were let out, telling him news of their friends.
Anna and Yoh were getting married in a few months.
The last chemistry test was shit.
She had gotten a job at the ice cream parlor.
The lacrosse team was losing almost every game without him.
Horohoro missed him.
He missed…
Pirika bit down on her tongue after the last statement when she realized what she had said. The hurt flickered across his face before he went back to drinking the soup she had brought for him.
He told her that she didn't understand how it was to love a person who was fawning over someone else. When that someone else was totally oblivious to your loved one's affections. How it was to love that person without them even thinking of loving you back.
She smiled bitterly as she chewed through the rubbery chicken alfredo she had bought for herself and told him that she knew exactly how it felt. She threw it away, gathered up her things and left without saying anything else.
Ren closed his eyes, slightly surprised that she still wasn't over her ex back in Hokkaido, and willed himself to a dreamless sleep.
nine. (may)
The school's administration had notified his parents and thus Ren was forced to go to every class before graduation.
He had been away for so long that he had forgotten his locker combination. He went to class late and without his books. He didn't bring enough money to buy lunch. He got a note saying that he never turned in his measurements for his graduation gown and would thus have to pay a special fee. His teachers looked at him haughtily as the truant who had skipped their classes for no apparent reason. His friends walked on eggshells around him, not quite sure why he was gone for so long without telling any of them.
And then he saw Horohoro and the girl holding hands and smiling at each other.
He could've thrown up. Rather, he would've if not for a hand that roughly spun him around to face the hand's owner. Pirika looked up at him, eyes blazing, hands on her hips. He wasn't sure what she was going to yell at him. Perhaps it was because he was still being a total wimp over the whole thing. Perhaps it was to tell him to man up. Perhaps she finally was going to unleash her pent up anger and frustration over their weak excuse of a relationship.
Instead she paused before yelling at him that she had to do all the lab work for chemistry by herself the past month and a half.
He was tired. She was tired. He smirked for the first time this school year. She smiled broadly before grabbing his hand and leading him to the rest of the group.
After class Pirika insisted on going over to his house to chat over coffee as she had put it. Instead they ate cold leftover pizza in his living room while watching TV.
He suddenly clicked off the television set and sat in silence. Pirika waited patiently for him to start speaking.
He didn't even preface it.
He recounted rather unfeelingly that night many months ago over the summer. He tried his best to appear aloof and apathetic, perhaps trying to act like it was a bother to tell her what had happened.
He told her how the air conditioning in the Tao household had broken down and his parents were out on business, leaving him alone to steam to death by himself. Horohoro had staggered up to the front door, knocking wildly and shouting out his name. Ren had let him inside and as he entered the house, Horohoro shoved a large bottle of vodka at him before stumbling over a chair. It had been the eighth anniversary of Damuko's death on that balmy August evening and Horohoro, still ridden with eight-year old guilt, was looking for a way to get totally plastered so he wouldn't have to think about it.
The two had sat down on the sofa, passing the glass bottle back and forth as they took turns. They invented drinking games by the hour, each one crazier and more dangerous than the last. Horohoro would go from laughing his ass off to sobbing his eyes out in a turnaround time of about thirty seconds. Horohoro was completely fucked up by the time the bottle was finished. Someone could've gotten drunk just by smelling the poor boy's breath. He thought that Ren was drunk too.
But the Tao boy could hold his alcohol thanks to years of Jun's lessons and techniques, thanks to how she had stolen countless bottles of fine hard liquor from their parents for her and Ren to practice with. Ren, already having to suppress these scary, foreign feelings for his best friend he had had for all of junior year, didn't stand a chance when Horohoro leaned over and sloppily kissed him. He was pretty sure the Ainu boy was too out of it to tell the difference between him and the deceased Damuko. But he didn't care. He pretended to be just as inebriated as the drunken, beautiful boy across from him.
He pulled off Horohoro's bandanna and watched his best friend's hair fall the same way he had admired it when they would change in the locker rooms after PE. But back then he hadn't known he was admiring it. He hadn't known why watching this simple act of Horohoro removing the cloth band from his head had made Ren's chest go tight, would make his heart beat a tiny bit faster. He had written it off as a post workout rush.
Ren hesitated before relaying the more graphic part of the story, considering that he was telling Horohoro's sister. But Pirika remained poker faced and nodded as if to tell him to continue.
When they had finished, they collapsed on each other, sweating and smelling of cheap vodka. Horohoro immediately passed out and was sleeping peacefully. Ren looked at him, the cold reality that he had just screwed his best friend beginning to disperse the warm post coital high. Not just his best friend. His male best friend. Ren closed his eyes as he came to terms that he just had the type of sex everyone ridiculed. The kind that everyone snickered about and flung around as an insult to each other. How scandalized their families, their teachers, their classmates would be. How disgusted.
Ren had been disgusted with himself. He was sick to his stomach. He had given into his urges in a moment of sheer weakness. He had no self-control. He had taken advantage of his clearly drunk friend.
Exhausted, he half assed an attempt at pulling on Horohoro's clothes and moved him to the floor.
Although he hated himself at the moment, he realized that he was in—
Ren stopped talking. Pirika raised an eyebrow as minutes dragged by and he still was quiet. She pressed him, asking what he realized he was in.
He turned to her, not wanting to answer the question. She gave a curt nod and he continued in his story.
The next morning Horohoro woke up, his head clouded by one bitch of a hangover. How convenient, how perfect that he didn't remember anything at all from the previous night. Ren kept his eyes on the ground the entire time, unable to bear looking at him directly. Horohoro asked why he felt sore, why his clothes were so messed up, why it was hard to walk, why everything smelled like alcohol and sweat.
Ren mumbled out some excuse that most likely didn't make any sense before handing Horohoro all of his belongings and effectively shoving him out of his house.
The worst part was that Horohoro believed Ren when he said he didn't remember what happened.
So they went back to how they were before, Horohoro seriously thinking nothing had changed, Ren pretending nothing had changed. To Horohoro, it was just a drunken night that he and Ren had both had, both probably just drinking peacefully and quietly before passing out. It was just one evening missing from their eighteen years of best friendship. One evening that probably didn't even matter.
But it did to Ren.
They sat in silence. He had been able to keep his voice emotionless during the entire story.
She finally laughed, mostly because he had told such a passionate and emotional story in an absolute monotone voice. He turned to her, an eyebrow raised. She wiped at her eyes that had been tearing up, partly because the story was so emotionally exhausting partly because she had been laughing so hard. She apologized and smiled, telling him to look at the pair of them. How messed up both he and she were. She told him that they should have these cathartic moments more often, perhaps every month or so. They could make it into a club and everything. She would call it the Heavy Hearts Brigade, here to listen to your problems with a smile!
He was surprised she knew the word cathartic
She cleared her throat and sat there, smiling with the same foolish smile her brother had.
He apologized. She was confused and asked what for. He didn't really know what to say other than everything: breaking up with her before even giving her a chance, leading her on, treating her like she was a less than adequate replacement for her brother—
She waved her hand dismissively as if to say that was old news.
He asked if she was still upset over her ex in Hokkaido. She looked at him funny, her brows furrowed, not quite sure what he was talking about. He crossed his legs onto the couch as he brought up their little encounter last month. How she knew how he felt.
She turned a lovely shade of pink as her eyebrows raised in comprehension. Pirika sat on top of her hands, telling him that though she was talking about an ex, it wasn't that one.
Now it was Ren's turn to be confused. Exactly how many boyfriends has this girl had?
She held up two of her fingers and waved them in his face before standing up and leaving. But this time she left with a smile.
ten. (june)
They graduated finally. Ren immediately took out his keys and intended on driving home as quick as he could to avoid any invitations to graduation parties.
Can't they get over high school and move on with their lives?
Pirika had insisted on going with him, knowing that she would be the only one he'd say yes to.
He was happy that he was going to a university in America. Away from everyone to make a fresh start. Maybe when he had had enough time to recover from whatever funk he had sunk into for all of senior year, then he could come back to Japan to see everyone.
Pirika leaned forward, bouncing up and down in the passenger's seat, to turn on the radio, a huge smile evident on her face. He had forgotten. There was the matter of Pirika.
Of course.
Plain and simple: he wanted to be with her. He wasn't going to let four letters scare him anymore. He had grown and learned, in the span of a few months to lo—
He stopped. His parents were waiting in front of the house for him. His mother and father never ventured outside the Tao residence except by chauffeured car.
Pirika quietly told him that she'd wait while he talked to his parents.
eleven. (july)
She simply stood there. He had expected her to yell, to swear at him, to cry, to break down, at least frown. Some sort of reaction. Instead, she remained still, her face expressionless as if someone had jabbed her with a syringe and sucked her soul out of her.
He set his mouth into a straight line, not wanting to show her even more weakness. He asked how she felt.
She nodded and said she was fine with it. That they could still be friends. But she said not to call her until she called him.
He found the last part odd, considering she had just said she was fine.
She stuttered out an excuse and walked away from the park bench they had been sitting on. He looked up at the sky before closing his eyes.
In hindsight, he probably should've found a better way to break the news to her. He was just as stunned when his father happily announced he had some wonderful news for him. Ren immediately felt uneasy since the last time his family had some "wonderful news," it had ended with Ren starting what he was sure to be illegal physical training.
The same day he had graduated, the same day he was supposed to be packing for college life in America, they told him he wouldn't be pursuing a higher education.
Instead, he was going to get married.
He stood there, dumbstruck at the news. For once in his life, he was caught completely off guard. For once, he didn't know what to say.
His parents had arranged a marriage for him, right behind his back. Apparently, the entire process had started nearly two years ago. He'd wed her to keep the bloodline strong, to keep the nobility running through future Tao generations. She was of an influential family. Yes, sure, she was from a completely different country, but what does it matter. The only thing that should matter to him was to preserve their honor. It wouldn't be that bad. Many of Ren's relatives and family friends had had arranged marriages. Just look at Anna and Yoh, they're in an arranged marriage.
But they had gotten to know each other. They love each other.
He could barely spit out the obvious question they had neglected to answer: Who was his bride-to-be?
His mother smiled as his father answered. As a matter of fact, Ren already knows her. Ren didn't want to get his hopes up, even just a bit. What were the chances of Pirika being the girl? She didn't even fit the descrip—
He was to marry Jeanne D'Fer of France.
As in Jeanne who had been a foreign exchange student at FHHS. As in Jeanne who had been in his circle of friends. As in Jeanne who he had eaten lunch with every day for the last two years.
She had known ever since she stepped off of that plane and onto Japanese soil. She had known when she had seen him. She had known as she watched him walk across the stage to receive his diploma.
She was instructed to not tell him of the engagement. She had joined the foreign exchange program once their families had found out it would be at Ren's school. How perfect. She could observe her future husband, get to know him, become friends with him. Funny how they didn't consider how he would never want to look at any of them ever again once he found out the truth.
It would never work out between us.
twelve. (august)
He couldn't believe he was giving up college for this. Jeanne's adopted father was supposed to take him under his wing and show him the ropes in the business. Marco was an influential businessman; he was the founding CEO of X-LAWS, the biggest weapons and military vehicle manufacturing company in the world.
Apparently, Ren was supposed to take over for Marco one day. But for now, Ren was stuck being labeled as Marco's golden boy by the other resentful board members who had wanted Marco's position for themselves. So he was dictated by the board members to run errands for them.
Back in high school, Ren was actually popular for those first three years. He had had girls crawling all over him. And since he was one of those cocky, smart ass popular kids, he smirked at them and brushed every single female advance. He got decent grades, everyone thought he was cool, he was on the varsity lacrosse team ever since his freshman year, captain of the varsity lacrosse team ever since his sophomore year. Hell, he was nominated to homecoming court, losing the kingship to Yoh by a few votes. He was chosen by his fellow students to be "Most Likely to Become a Professional Athlete." So many people had told him that he would be successful in college.
Instead, he was doing coffee runs at six in the morning and making endless photocopies for the resentful higher ups.
He never asked for this. All he ever wanted after high school was to be left alone so he could peacefully go to college, graduate with a degree, and maybe start his own business or go into the family business. He wanted to be able to relax a little before starting his career. He had hoped that he would be married after he had graduated to a young woman that was as strong and bold as he was.
Instead, he was engaged to a wisp of a girl who he really hadn't talked to at all and had found to be rather quiet and weak.
Instead, he was relegated to being an office bitch for a year before he would share ownership of one of the world's largest and most powerful companies.
I never asked for any of this.
A/N: and thus ends the first year of Ren and Pirika's relationship/friendship/wtfship. as you noticed there isn't any actual dialogue in this. i thought it would be interesting to do a complete story without any dialogue whatsoever since i feel that many of my stories rely on it. let's see how i do once we take that dialogue away, shall we? never fear, this is a RenPiri fiction. And I'm a sucker for happy endings.
First off, I already knew that Ren was a conflicted character and I wanted to write him in a personal way. Second, though I do not endorse HoroRen, I always thought that the character dynamic and relationship would be interesting to explore. And finally, I knew that both Ren and Pirika would be capable of feeling this much. So yes, I hope you enjoyed this. There will be several chapters to come. (I'm thinking of five, total. So five years?) I would love to hear from you guys! So leave a review? Thank you very much and happy days to you all.
