A/N: I'm going to issue a warning to those who are only just starting to read this fic. It may appear sweet and happy in the beginning, but it is anything but sweet and happy. Trust me. It's a very slow romance so if you're looking to jump right into the action feel free to start at chapter 7. Enjoy!
Synesthesia (n.):
The production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by stimulation of another sense or part of the body.
Ticklish colors prodded at my brain like a kid would poke a poor, defenseless slug with a stick. Most of the time the feeling was less aggressive, gently tapping like rain pattering on the top of your head. There seemed to be a sensitive layer of memory foam wrapped around my brain that picked up on the emotions around me. Each color had a kind of texture, if that's what you want to call it. These colored, textured emotions were not always so rigid as, say, a pointy stick. At times, emotions were subtle, with the wispy haze of a cloud. Intense emotions felt abrasive like splotches of thick paint dappled onto the inside of my skull with the crisp edge of a palette knife.
Rain pelted the window on the first day of school. The palms of my hands smushed my face as I rested on them, making my lips pucker slightly to increase my eight year old pout. I wasn't excited. In fact, I dreaded the start of school.
In Konoha, my older brothers were prodigies, known for their strength and leadership. Starting the academy was only the first step of many to catch up with their legacy. As the thought dashed my mind, my heart sank. I didn't want to be a shinobi like them.
Two older ninja were on the other side of the window.
One of them was Anko, a kunoichi who was only a few years older, but she was already a chuunin. The boy she was speaking to was her age, I didn't remember his name though. All I knew was that she kept turning to look at me. Or so I thought, at first. I quickly realized she was fixing her hair in the reflection of the glass, trying to look nice for the boy.
Instead of staring back, my first instinct, I leaned back, tilting two chair legs off the ground. I stared up at the ceiling and closed my eyes. There were so many things I would rather do than sit in a classroom and learn about things that didn't matter. The only reason I enrolled in the academy was to make my parents happy. And to keep my stupid brothers from calling me a weak little girl.
A small groan mumbled through my lips. I am not a little girl!
To them I was the most depressing disappointment in the family.
At the age of sixteen my oldest brother, Mizoko, already held a spot as one of the Hokage's war time councilors. By fighting in the third great shinobi war he became well renowned for saving a group of older jounin, giving him the opportunity to become a commander at the unbelievably young age of thirteen.
Now, my other older brother was a bird of a different feather.
Last year, a flash of blue lightning and a letter were left for my parents. Hiruko was recruited by some secret service at the ripe old age of ten.
Being only two years older than me we were two peas in a pod, almost to a fault. We were friends who got to live with each other and wreak havoc on Mizoko and the rest of our neighborhood. Our mother started graying early because we were such a destructive pair. Ever since he was taken away, all we've heard were little tidbits on his progress through the Torture and Interrogation Corps.
What made their accomplishments impressive was not our family blood trait. They were born without it.
Tan skin, sandy-blonde hair, fair green eyes and no kekkei genkai- those were the traits that my older brothers inherited from our mother.
White hair, ivory skin and electric blue eyes indicated those of us who inherited our father's genes. Our phenotypic look is linked to this 'brain tickle'. It is our bloodline trait.
Each tickle's color indicates a different emotion; the texture is exactly how the person feels it. Or, how powerfully the individual experiences a certain emotion. It's hard to describe a feeling as a color using only words, so work with me here. Think of it as being similar to synesthesia of touch and sight. Press on your eyes and watch the little phosphenes appear, also known as the little lights that show up on your eyelids when you exert pressure. Imagine those phosphenes, only instead of pure white they are filled in with color behind your eyes and pressing on your psyche. Now imagine feeling this, minus the pressure, whenever you were around anyone. That's really the best way to describe it. Synesthesia.
Thoughts of my younger brothers popped into my mind. My two baby brothers were born like me, white as little ghosts. Kaz was only two when I started at the academy. He was the most gentle child ever born. There was this sweetness in his pretty blue eyes. Where mine are like blue lightning, hard and bright. His looked more like a blue sky obscured by a thin cloud.
A frown tugged the corners of my lips. Kaz's kekkei genkai still wasn't activated. We all hoped that it was because of his age, but father was beginning to think that he was born without it.
That was alright though. Kaz, like me, wasn't quite the ninja type. We were too soft and squishy to be fighters.
This was very unlike our spark of a youngest sibling, Mikah. He wasn't born until my second year in the academy, so he wasn't born quite yet. He was able to use the emotional connection from the moment he was born, using it as almost a means of communication with us as a baby. Today he claims that he was able to feel us around him even before he was even born, but I think he's just exaggerating. Batteries could be charged on the energy that kid had bounding from him at all moments of the day. The kid never sat still for more than a few minutes in his whole life.
By the way, yeah, four brothers. That makes five of us in total. Seven if you count our parents. All of us were born with an affinity toward the lightning element, which should make us a pretty rough bunch. But we weren't. Growing up we were just a bunch of goofy siblings who loved each other fiercely. Back then we were basically a really tiny army made up of two actual fighters, a little girl, an infant, and a fetus. Pretty pathetic, right?
My unborn brother was more adept to using our family's blood trait than his older sister. I mean seriously, a zygote could identify the feelings of individual people while in the womb.
"Like a kaleidoscope," he would say, "everyone has different colors."
I, on the other hand, still felt emotions like a loud buzzing of colors and textures in my brain. Only if I was really focusing could I separate and comprehend exactly who I was feeling. Hiruko says it's because I'm the only girl.
Ugh. Brothers.
In this classroom, right now, I could identify that our sensei was irritated. Even though he was holding a firm posture and zero expression from his many years of training, I could feel it seeping through. Thick light green pigment pressed into my head with tingling pressure indicating very slight anger. Leaning hard against the chalkboard with his eyes closed, the man gave out this dull green vibe of frustration. Some other colors cut through the melting pot, but they were difficult to differentiate because they only skated across the surface leaving a slight ripple of yellow and red.
The first time I experienced my blood limit was when the nine tailed fox attacked. Torrents of fear ripped though my head as tangible black hands seemed to clutch onto my brain with pointy talons, causing the immense pain that followed. Everything was dark and black no matter who I was handed off to. Not even Hiruko could calm my fear. It was terrifying. I had no idea what was happening to my village, friends, my brothers.
People's body parts littered the streets everywhere you looked. To save me from the images, my mother took me away to hide in our dilapidated house until the Fourth sealed the Kyuubi away. Hiruko and Mizoko ran off to fight, leaving me to handle our hysterical mother. We were all far too young to be involved with something like that.
Everything was so dark that night. It became my mission to never feel that way again, or to let the people I love most feel that kind of suffering. That was the only redeeming quality of becoming a ninja. It would give me the tools necessary to keep my brothers safe.
Learning about my blood limit was a double-edged sword. As a result of the soul changing misery I felt on that day, I became locked inside of myself. Others seemed to understand general social rules, but I couldn't seem to follow them correctly. Kids my own age would make fun of me because I would say and do the wrong things at the wrong times. Rather than understanding other people's boundaries, I would break through them leaving them uncomfortable and exposed. I only did this because I could feel everyone's emotions. It felt like my job to make people feel better. Most of the time it had the opposite effect.
My "perfect empathy" caused some pretty nasty teasing in school. Those who didn't understand my blood limit were busy making fun of my paper white skin. They would make fun of my waif-like appearance. It's not like I could help the way I was born. But in a way I could understand. Others had normal skin tones, while mine was almost pure white. It is only natural to reject something so different.
Hiruko and Mizoko looked normal. Peach skin tones made them look like they had blood running through their veins instead of snow like the rest of our family. They were bombastic and loud, demanding authority with their mere presence. People always forgot I was even in the room.
The fact that my brothers were so awesome was stressful. I didn't want to be awesome like them... Ever.
I just wanted to be Katsue.
My greatest dream would be to live on a ranch in the middle of nowhere with fifty kids and a dozen horses.
Yeah, pretty lame, I know. This is why I never told anyone about my dreams. I just kept my head down and did whatever my brothers expected. Which is hard when you aren't naturally talented. For example: this family blood trait. I was never horribly inclined to use it because I preferred reading people's faces to see what they were feeling. Emotions are personal, not for random strangers to read at their will. It was more like social practice for me. Maybe if I didn't depend on my kekkei genkai so much then I wouldn't be so awkward.
Since our ability is a linked gene, my older brother, Hiruko, was always a mystery. Somehow, he was born with some weird ability that no one could seem to understand. People are afraid of what they cannot grasp.
Last year on baby Kaz's birthday I watched Hiruko's blood limit work for the first time.
...
"You little brat! Hand it over," Mizoko lunged across the table to snatch a kunai from the much smaller Hiruko with one of his enormous arms. Hiruko pulled away from the table, leaving Mizoko to grasp at the air with a frustrated scowl. "You're too young to play with that."
Hiruko dropped one eyebrow from across the table, a dare. "Yeah, Yeah. Whatever you say, big bro." he said sarcastically, just to irritate Mizoko.
I picked up the tablecloth and hid my nose like a puppy, barely peaking over the table in preparation for the food fight that was on the teetering edge of explosion.
"Hand. It. Over." Mizoko enunciated each and every syllable as if he was an invalid with his hand stretched, waiting for Hiruko to return the kunai.
With a smirking twitch of his lip, Hiruko's eyes bubbled into an effervescent blue. Icing flew everywhere, covering everyone at the table as Mizoko's huge body dropped into the birthday cake. Baby Kaz was clapping ecstatically, licking the icing off of his cheek the uncoordinated movements of a toddler.
From my low vantage point next to Mizoko's currently drowning form I could see Hiruko's eyes return to their normal, pale green, color.
Mizoko leaped up off of the table into a fighting stance out of utmost confusion and fear, throwing his head around, looking for the enemy. Icing dangled dangerously over his eyes, making it look like he had a white beard and eyebrows.
Hiruko and I exchanged a meaningful glance. He mouthed 'Don't tell mom', playful green eyes glinting mischievously with an unrelenting smirk.
"Mizoko!" Mother's shrill screech pierced the the room with one hand on a hip, the other threatened her tall son with a serving knife, "What do you think you're doing! Katsue and I worked on that cake all day!" She yelled in his face.
"Ma! I didn't do anything!" Mizoko tried explaining, "He did it!" He pointed at the smaller blonde boy at the other end of the table. "I swear."
She looked from the icing covered teen to her young, clean son. Her eyes narrowed up at him, "Very likely story, now clean this mess up before I give you something to complain about."
Hiruko and I sat there innocently, laughing hysterically as our mother tore into our sixteen year old, military trained, six-foot brother for ruining her beautiful cake.
Father just sat at the other end of our crowded table defending the remaining cake slices with intermittent giggles at her furious ramblings. His huge hands covered each piece pretty well. Kaz still refers to that as his all time favorite birthday.
...
"Hi sweetie! Is this seat taken?"
A voice like angel's bells shot through the fun little memory as I had a heart attack.
The chair clattered back onto all four limbs. Stifling an embarrassed laugh, I twisted a finger through my pale hair and stared down at the table. I felt the hot pit of humiliation boil in my belly when I looked up at her under half lidded eyes.
Long, straight, black hair and black eyes; painfully beautiful. Crazy eyelashes jutted in every direction wildly like starbursts. She wore a black, off-the-shoulder, long sleeved shirt with a red and white fan stitched to the front and deep red hakama pants. Typical Uchiha.
As my eyes the room nervously, I noticed that no one else showed up yet. There was no one to witness my spaz attack aside from this ridiculously pretty girl.
I searched her expression for any sign of ill intent. Hesitantly, I smiled up at her, not finding malice in her black diamond eyes.
"Yeah sure." I said. Why'd she call me 'sweetie'? "... Sweetie." I added quickly, not wanting to be rude or something. "I'm Katsue, it's nice to meet you." Heat rushed to my ears as I tried to be friendly. Not weird.
There was a grating noise when she pulled out the chair directly next to mine.
"Score!" She plopped down. "Thanks, Kat! I'm Arashi Uchiha."
Her hand shot out and took a handful of my white hair and rubbed it between two fingers, eyebrows lifted high in disbelief. "Wow, you're hair is nuts! Can I touch it?"
It was already in her hand without my expressed permission so I found it funny that she would even bother asking retroactively. Not to mention she just gave me a nickname. My smile ebbed to widen, this girl was not joking around. Being near her was like being around an open fire pit with pieces of burning matter ricocheting and popping in every direction.
Since she touched my hair without asking first, I decided to make her feel just as awkward. Leaning ever closer to her I pointed my finger at the middle of her face with the most serious face in my repertoire. Nervous blinks fluttered over her eyes, she rocked back into her chair with my hair still in hand, refusing to let it go. It was a battle of wills. A giant grin smoothed over my face. "Yeah you can touch it." I poked at the flickering lashes of her right eye, staring into inkblot eyes intently. "But only if you show me how to make my eyes look as cool as yours."
She stared at me like I was crazy.
My heart sunk. Crap. Too awkward. Welp, there goes that...
"Pfft!" A laugh pressed between her lips as she held in a giggle. Silence passed between us as we just stared at each other with my finger still in her face. Her's still laced in a long chunk of my white hair.
Crackling laughter popped out of us both until we were gasping for breath. Arashi hung her arm over my shoulder for support. With a smile on my face, I just looked at this new person as she laughed with all of her heart.
There were empty seats all over the classroom. Why she decided to sit next to me on that first day I would never know. Why she endured the ridicule others threw at her because of our friendship, I'd never know. All I'll ever know is that it was the best decision she ever made.
That's how I became best friends with an Uchiha.
...
One of the most awkward moments of my young life was the first time I brought Arashi over to my house.
It was another rainy day. For the most part, Konoha had pristine weather, this week was a little out of the ordinary. So, like most eight year olds we just played with toys and imagination. Mostly pretending to be ninjas. My Uchiha best friend showed me how to do my hair.
Unlike most women in Konoha my mom didn't have time to be girly, so I never learned how to pick out clothes or put my hair back into a ponytail. My clothes were made up of hand-me-downs from my brothers growing up and my hair just fell in a mess to my bellybutton. The first time I ever experienced love was when Arashi put my hair back into a bun.
There was no hair on my back, I could wiggle around and it wouldn't get in my eyes! This was a major life improvement that stayed around for a long time.
Knock, knock, knock.
My beige haired mother stood in the door frame with a worried line between her eyes, stopping my goofy dance around the room in its tracks.
"Katsue, can I speak to you?" Mother motioned me into the main room, leaving Arashi to her own devices on my bed with her hair all flopped to one side.
Glancing back at my new found friend I noticed that she was playing with my favorite horse toy, braiding its hair like she kept trying to do mine, but it looked painful so I didn't let her.
"Yes mommy?" I asked in a typical eight year old 'mom, do you have to do this right now?' kind of way.
She had that look on her face, when her skin was completely flat leaving only a few lines under her eyes, which meant she was going to lecture me about something. Pressing her hands to her hips she leaned a shoulder against the white wall behind her.
"You do know that your friend is an Uchiha, right?" My mother held a cautious tone as she spoke about my new friend.
I cocked my head up toward her, what's she talking about?
"Yeah Ma, she's my friend."
The line between her eyes got deeper. "You know the Uchiha's reputation Katsue." She ran a hand through her short sandy blonde hair as her thoughts danced through her mint green eyes. "Just…" She said, "Please be careful, okay? I don't like you spending so much time over there."
It was a warning. I could tell from the little lines in her face that she was truly nervous.
The Uchiha's were basically royalty in Konoha. Royalty with a dark fire surrounding them. Although they controlled the police, many civilians stayed away from them. People avoided them and they kept to themselves and that was simply the way things were. But I was only eight, so I didn't really care what other people said about Arashi. I thought she was cool.
Mimicking my mother's face I put my hands on my hips.
"Mom, she's cool. She's fun and I like her. She's my best friend. Look what she did to my hair!" My eight-year-old brain argued, spinning slightly to show off my new hairdo.
With a weary, defeated smile she waved me off so I could go back to playing.
When I reached my room, the dark haired Uchiha was flipped upside down with her legs reaching up the wall, book in hand, ready to help me study. The position didn't look particularly comfortable, I wondered how she was able to read upside down like that.
Gently, her ankles tapped the wall in pattering rhythm.
"What did your mom say, sweetie?" Black eyes turned to me expectantly. She looked funny upside down.
I felt my face get a little screwed up, "She just wanted to ask me something. Don't worry about it." I said, sliding the door behind me. I spoke only loud enough for her to hear me. "I do have a question, though," I leaned over her laying form. "Why does everyone stay away from you guys? The Uchiha, I mean?"
Arashi flipped onto her stomach in a fluid motion and looked up at me with a toothy smile. "Everyone's just jealous 'cause we're awesome."
And that's the story of how I acquired my opinion of the Uchiha clan.
They were, in fact, awesome. No one could contest that. Since the day that Arashi and I met she was better at, well, everything.
Stronger, faster, smarter, and just overall better; both as a person and a shinobi. The best part of her awesomeness was that we never held it against each other. How could I hold her natural abilities against her? I was who I was, and she was who she was. It would be stupid to try and compete with someone like her when I'd obviously lose every time. I'd only be setting myself up for disaster.
The only time I even attempted competing with her was when it came to a boy in class.
Most boys thought I was weird because I looked like a ghost with my white skin and hair, but this boy seemed to actually look beyond my bizarre appearance. Very, very briefly.
"Get out of here Casper, go haunt somewhere else." A dark haired boy called from his circle of friends, jerking his squared chin in my direction. They were playing ninja. Arashi normally stuck up for me at times like this, but today she was absent from school. All I'd asked was if I could play too.
The others in the group laughed at me, but one boy with rust colored hair and bright purple eyes furrowed his brow at the leader of the group. "Dude, leave her alone. It's not her fault she looks like that."
It was a backhanded compliment, but it felt nice for someone to stand up for me since I was too meek to do it myself.
He defended me again. "Let her play, if she's cool with Arashi, she's cool with us. Right Senji?"
The mean group leader cocked an eyebrow at the rusty haired boy then tilted his head with a half-frown, motioning me over.
I ran over with jerky strides, were they actually going to let me play with them? Senji looked me up and down with a disgusted expression before muttering to his red haired friend.
"Hiroto, you can't be serious." He said, motioning over at me with his eyebrow. "Not only is she a girl, but she is about as soft as marshmallows."
A heavy thunk alarmed in my chest, this was just embarrassing. If they had simply said 'no' then I'd be on my way home, but that one boy's hesitance gave me hope of acceptance. Blood rushed to my cheeks as I thought of the right thing to say. What were people supposed to say when someone accuses them of being made of a sweet, chewy treat?
"Sorry…" I said, looking to the ground, feeling rejected. I started to turn away to walk home, but then there was a whirring noise right behind me, right over my ear. As if by instinct, my hand shot out and caught the cardboard shuriken. Glancing down at it then up again, I saw a cocky smile appear on the boy named Hiroto's face.
He looked at Senji with the same smile and said, "See? She's not terrible. Just this once, if she's bad then we'll kick her out and never let her play again. If she's good, then we have nothing to worry about."
Senji shrugged then shot me this look of complete disdain. My face burned. I felt the cardboard in my hand and imagined what Arashi would do in this situation. I smiled wide and looked around at the, now scattered, group of boys.
"Hey! Are you gonna throw or what!"
My smile broadened. I threw the little thing with deadly accuracy so it hit Senji right in the back of his big, stupid, head. The boy jumped out of his skin as he did a 360 with a bewildered look on his face.
A smug smirk tugged at my lips at his confusion. I narrowed my eyes at him. "Nice dodge."
Senji didn't seem too pleased with that one. Before he could retaliate, I ran so he couldn't tag me. In fact, I wasn't tagged for the rest of the game.
At the end of the game, Hiroto came up to me and placed a purple flower into the palm of my hand. To this day, I still have that little flower pressed between the pages of a childhood book. That day I decided that I liked him. Sadly he was much more interested in my best friend, which was probably why he was being nice to me in the first place. All of the boys liked her; she was the prettiest girl in class on top of being a genius.
Arashi and Hiroto didn't start going out until we were a little older, but his choosing her over me was the only taste of competition I ever needed. When it came to the two of us, I just let her win. It was never a contest to begin with. By nature I was never really competitive. I didn't have dreams of becoming some great shinobi. This was just the only life I knew since my father was a big time adviser and commander.
More than anything I just wanted to follow in my mother's footsteps. I just wanted an easy life with no blood and fighting. Nothing glamorous, just a happy life like my family had when my brothers and I were growing up.
My family weary of the amount of time I spent behind the walls of the Uchiha compound. Arashi's parents had virtually taken me in as a second daughter. From the time school was out until dinnertime I would just stay there and train with her (a.k.a.: become a living target.) or play (a.k.a.: find her little cousin and launch an attack.).
Ryu was the most entertaining of her cousins. We would hunt him down with a full-scale tactical attack. Wooden and cardboard shuriken were pretty effective against a six year old, especial one who wasn't paying attention. He was Arashi's baby cousin by two years. To him, I was the most interesting person in the world. He asked me every possible question about my life. About my brothers and how I feel other people's emotions and my white hair and how old I was. As he grew up, that affection changed, but never went away.
Time passed through like water down a stream. Meeting Arashi helped me in so many ways. Perhaps it was bizarre, but I'd adopted some of Arashi's personality traits just by spending so much time with her. People didn't find me nearly as awkward as before, I actually made some more friends of my own. I still never knew the right things to say, but now I could at least go into public without being made fun of or making a total fool of myself. It didn't hurt that my best friend was the girl everyone wanted to meet.
Walking down the Uchiha compound's main drag, we passed a few boys who followed Arashi with gawking looks, practically drooling. Even adult men would stare at her when she walked by. To say it was creepy would be the understatement of the century.
We were thirteen. Maybe we weren't entirely mature, but hormones were beginning to take the place of cooties and we all felt it. Arashi had a new boyfriend every week. I hadn't even been kissed yet.
Keeping up with her love life was like trying to catch the wind: impossible. She fell in love then out again more easily than I could pick my outfits in the morning.
Winks were exchanged, then names and sometimes even places to meet up. But that was only for the boys she thought were cute. Unlike most, she thought that long-term relationships were for unrealistic people. That they only worked when you were older and had life figured out. Neither of us had ever been in love before, just a few crushes here and there to keep things interesting.
At one point I'd really liked Hiroto, but he didn't like me back so nothing came of it. He and Arashi were dating these days. It made my blood heat up when she told me about it. She knew that I liked him, but I cared much more about my friend than some guy, so I just let it go.
"Did you see that guy staring at you?" She nudged me with her, now, much taller shoulder and laughed, throwing her elegant head back. "Go talk to him! Boys don't bite." She winked. "Much."
Rolling my eyes at her, I glanced over my shoulder to check out the guy she was talking about. Dark grey hair and a Konoha hitai-ate tied around his forehead. He was very obviously looking at Arashi's butt over the top of his book.
"Ugh, you're so weird." I made a face over my shoulder, glancing back at the dark haired boy with a slight scowl, but now he was writing something in the corner of his book. "C'mon, he was obviously checking you out. You are the gorgeous one." I teased, popping my tongue out at her.
She flapped her hand gracefully as a debutant. "Oh, please. You know I'd never pick an ugly chick for a best friend." Her arm wrapped around my shoulder. "So, you can't be that bad." A cocky grin appeared on her face. "'That' being the operative word."
Shaking my head I rolled my eyes again. "Shallow as ever." I said with a smirk.
Then my masochistic streak took over.
"So… how are things going with Hiroto?" I asked, trying to look nonchalant about it. As if the thought of my best friend dating the guy I liked didn't make my stomach burn. Considering how much I liked him, I was hesitant to ask. Normally talking about him just hurt. But sometimes you have to put up with a lot of misery to make your friends happy, even when you suffer inside.
Her cheeks burned a little as she walked ahead slightly and she scratched the back of her head with her eyes averted to the trees lining our path.
"He broke up with me."
That stopped me dead in my tracks and stared after her, mouth agape. "Really?!"
She was standing still with a look of humiliation directed at the ground. Rather than being sad, she was embarrassed that someone broke up with her rather than vice versa for once. Heart racing, I glanced from her eyes to the ground then back again. I needed to know more. Did she still like him? Was he gay? Would she be mad if I went out with him? Ahh! This was such good news!
She looked up at me with her eyes closed into an embarrassed smile as she explained, "Yeah, turns out he likes someone else-"
A crushing hug choked her explanation away.
"-that's terrible! What a jerk!" I shrieked, much louder than I expected to. Some guy gave me a dirty look for being so annoying, but I shrugged it off like I'd been teaching myself to do.
Arashi pried me off and held my upper arms tightly away from her. Those black eyes seared into my soul, searching for something.
"Sweetie." Her pupils danced, searching my expression for something. "Why do you always do this?"
Pulling from the embrace, I looked up at her, brows tucked together. With expressions as readable as her's, it was easy to tell what she was feeling without using my emotional awareness. Slightly upturned eyebrows and the tiny lines under the corners of her lips told me she was in one of her serious moods. Time for a lecture; guess I should just get it over with.
So I initiated my own tongue lashing like the masochist I am.
"Why do I always do... what, exactly?" I crossed my arms over my chest with a cocked head.
Furrowing her eyebrows even more she slanted her lips in frustration.
"You care too much about what other people want and forget about yourself, sweetie." Black fire seared into my blues. "It's not healthy, someday you're going to get yourself really hurt."
Standing akimbo with my head cocked up at her. "It's not really like that." I picked up a section of white hair and held it to take my eyes away from her intimidating stare. "I just like seeing people happy-"
Arashi's lightning fast hand gripped my wrist to hold me captive. "-at your own expense Kat! I pay attention! You like Hiroto, and that's fine, you don't need to lie for me."
From her taller heigt, she placed her hands on my shoulders forcing me to drop my hair and look at her. "Please do me a favor. Try thinking about what you want for once. I want to try and make you happy. If there's nothing you want, then tell me something that you hate so I can get rid of it. I want to help you be happy, too. Other people don't matter as much as you do."
Concern was written all over her face. The situation was too intense, it was making me nervous. All of this just because I wanted to console my friend over a breakup? Girls are officially crazy.
With artificial nonchalance, I explained myself, "When other people are happy, it makes me happy too. It's not that I'm overlooking what I want, it's just that other people matter more." An animated grin split my face. "Especially my Arashi!"
I sprang up into her arms, hugging her tightly until a smile cracked the hard facade she was trying to maintain. A toothy smile took over her face, making her somehow even prettier. My explanation seemed to calm her down a little.
She laughed, pushing me away. "Okay, but if you ever need anything or need to talk about something you better talk to me first or I'll knock you out!"
The mild threat made me giggle like a gibbering bird, I covered my mouth to buffer the annoying noise. If I took my problems to someone other than her, she might actually hurt me. For some reason, the thought struck me as hilarious.
My stupid laugh made Arashi crack up, pointing at my face as she doubled over with the other hand on her knee to support her toppling form. We walked the rest of the way to my house, chattering and joking about the difficulties of our easy lives.