Disclaimer: I own very little.

A/N: A sequel to Kimihiro. Kindly ignore anything that's happened after chapter 130.

Shizuka

Watanuki's former good mood had disappeared nigh completely. Doumeki often had that effect on him. Just why did that archer have to always manage to poke at whatever was going to make him most angry? Did he have some kind of List of Things That Annoy Watanuki – one he apparently used frequently? Or was it just a natural skill to be as much of an ass as possible no matter what the circumstances?

And of course the idiot had to be following him. Talking to him, too. Doumeki was always silent whenever he should have spoken, so why couldn't he simply be quiet now when every word of his enraged Watanuki even further?

"Kimihiro-kun."

"How many times do I have to tell you that my name is not –" Watanuki froze in the middle of his sentence. After all, Kimihiro was indeed his name. However much he may have disliked the fact that Doumeki was calling him that, he couldn't really hide behind his usual 'That's not my name' protest as with the 'Oi'.

Doumeki did not smile. However, there was something like a twitch on his lips that could be read as amusement by somebody who knew him well. Watanuki knew him well enough – perhaps better than anybody else outside his family, although telling Watanuki that would have only resulted in a hysterical fit and yells of 'No way do I know anything about that bastard!' – which, naturally, meant he got quite enraged.

After a long moment of yelling, arm-flailing, and other things usually associated with Watanuki's hissy fits, Doumeki was still just as expressionless. As the other boy finally fell quiet for a moment, however, the archer spoke again.

"It's getting colder." Watanuki gave him a questioning – yet still angry – gaze. "You should get gloves, yourself."

Watanuki gritted his teeth. "What are you, my mother?" he yelled. "Tell you what, I will not! Just to show you, I won't make myself gloves even if it kills me!"

Doumeki did not call Watanuki childish. His expression said it loud enough – loud enough to cause another fit.

"Ah, Himawari-chaaan!" Watanuki exclaimed. "You'll eat lunch with us today, right?" He wasn't sure exactly when 'me' had become 'us'. He decided he didn't want to know for sure, either. It was only because Himawari-chan always insisted on inviting Doumeki along, though. There was no other reason for Doumeki to be automatically included, no reason at all. After all, he hated the idiot. Watanuki only hang around him because he kept the spirits away.

"Of course!" Himawari-chan chirped. "It's always nice to eat with you and Doumeki-kun!"

Himawari-chan was the one that was nice, Watanuki's mind replied as he fluttered among the pinkest of clouds for a moment. How could a simple human child so clearly resemble an angel?

Of course, as always, he was rudely dragged back to Earth by a boy who appeared out of nowhere to his side. "Kimihiro-kun," Doumeki said, calm as ever. "What's for lunch?"

Oh, no! The idiot had called him Kimihiro-kun in front of Himawari-chan! What was she going to think now? What was she going to say? Watanuki was about to wail with despair. If there was anybody he wanted to call him by his first name, it was Himawari-chan, not that idiot Doumeki!

Himawari-chan smiled at them both. "Ah! Does this mean you have finally decided to make your relationship public?"

It wasn't Watanuki's fault that he threw a fit, really. After all, nobody could seriously expect him to stay calm after something like that, right? Nobody could bear such a humiliating question! Especially from somebody like Himawari-chan. How had she even come to such a ridiculous conclusion, anyway? Not that the fault was hers, of course, she must have been misled somehow, most probably by that idiotic pervert Doumeki…

The two others, however, seemed quite unaffected by his frantic cries and wails. In fact, it was as though they weren't paying attention to him at all. Perhaps they had developed an immunity of some kind after so much exposure to Watanuki Hysterics.

"…There is no relationship," Doumeki said calmly as ever. Apparently nothing could faze him.

"Oh! Excuse me," Himawari-chan said, looking sincerely apologetic. "I just assumed – well, since you are always so close and –" Then, her smile was back, just as bright as ever. "So you're not officially together yet, eh?"

"We are not together at all! We are not going to be together!" Watanuki yelled. "It's all wrong, wrong, wrong! I have nothing to do with that idiot!" As his yelling apparently had no effect on either of the two – Himawari-chan was still smiling, Doumeki still expressionless – he finally calmed down a bit, glaring at Doumeki. "…I made sushi," he grumbled.

Doumeki didn't say anything, just nodded. He couldn't have been any more annoying even if he had tried.

…Perhaps he did try. There was no telling with him. Thinking so definitely made Watanuki feel less guilty about his well-detailed plots to murder the idiot, anyway.

"That idiot Doumeki is driving me crazy!" Watanuki grumbled, taking his anger out on a semi-innocent stain on the wall of Yuuko's kitchen. Mokona's attempts at cooking tended to be messy. "Whenever I try to talk with Himawari-chan, he gets in the way! And now he's somehow even got sweet Himawari-chan mistakenly thinking that –" he shuddered, "—that we might be interested in each other! Romantically, can you imagine!"

"I can imagine it very well," Yuuko replied with a smirk. "You and Doumeki-kun would be such a cute couple!"

"Cute, cute!" Mokona exclaimed. After causing all this mess, the thing didn't even have the decency to stay out of the way when he was trying to clean up! "Doumeki and Watanuki, sitting in a tree –"

"Shut up!" Watanuki wailed. "I want nothing of the kind to do with the idiot! He's obviously just using this as a ploy to make Himawari-chan think I'm not interested in her so that he can make a move on her instead!"

"Why exactly do you think Doumeki-kun is interested in Himawari-chan, anyway?" Yuuko asked with her most reasonable voice. It never failed to surprise Watanuki that she actually had one, given the way she acted most of the time. "Has he told you so?"

"Of course not! But he always pops up out of nowhere whenever I try to talk with Himawari-chan," Watanuki protested. "And whenever I want to spend time alone with Himawari-chan, he gets between us! It's obvious he's trying to keep me away from Himawari-chan, so he must like her!"

"How do you know that is to keep you away from Himawari-chan," Yuuko smirked, "and not to keep Himawari-chan away from you?"

"Because –" Suddenly, Watanuki fell silent. He saw nothing wrong with Yuuko's reasoning – wrong though the comment was on every other account. Actually, if he didn't take into account the fact that Himawari-chan was the sweetest thing on Earth, and even an idiot like Doumeki should have realized it and thus Doumeki obviously liked her, it made even sense.

To his great horror it made even slightly more sense than the notion of Doumeki liking Himawari-chan – after all, it was Watanuki, not Himawari-chan, whom he had saved numerous times. He hadn't given his blood or eye to help Himawari-chan. And, in fact, aside from being vaguely polite and getting between Watanuki and Himawari-chan all the time, he had not shown any obvious signs of interest in Himawari-chan, either…

Now that he thought about it, Doumeki didn't even call Himawari-chan, Himawari-chan, but instead spoke of her as Kunogi. As far as Watanuki knew, there was now only one person outside Doumeki's family the archer called by their first name…

…And that was Watanuki.

But that was just a coincidence, wasn't it? Doumeki was calling him Kimihiro-kun just to annoy him! It didn't mean anything else, definitely not anything like what Yuuko was not-quite-implying! Even the mere thought was enough to make Watanuki shudder with horror!

After looking at his latest fit for a while with vague interest, Yuuko chuckled. "Of course, if you want to find out whether he really likes you, you could always just ask him." Ignoring Watanuki's sputtering, she continued, "Or, I could ask him for you. I'm sure he would gladly tell the truth if you were nowhere near eavesdropping!"

"Like I'd trust you to tell me the truth!" Watanuki spat. "It can't be true anyway! He likes Himawari-chan and that's it. It's nothing like those – things you suggest! No way is it that, it can't be –"

"The lady doth protest too much," Yuuko said calmly before finally leaving the kitchen with Mokona.

Watanuki's enraged yells of, "I'm not a lady, damn it!" followed them out of the room.

Most of the time, Watanuki wasn't exactly unhappy when Yuuko was proven wrong. Rare though the occasions were – in fact, he couldn't recall a singe one off the top of his head, but there had to be something, right? Right? Not even Yuuko could be right all the time! – they were usually reasons of celebration to him. Now, however, he couldn't help but feel the slightest bit, well, annoyed.

He had come to school, determined to prove Yuuko wrong. There was no way Doumeki liked him, after all. Therefore he was going to observe the idiot very closely and make sure the archer wasn't watching him from the corner of his eye or something equally ridiculous.

Doumeki, to Watanuki's great relief, wasn't. Then again, he wasn't even looking at him the ordinary way. Nor was he talking to him, or bugging him about lunch, or in any way paying attention to him at all. Even talking directly to him brought no response. To put it shortly, Doumeki was completely ignoring him.

This, naturally, proved wrong Yuuko's assumption that the idiot might like him. However, it also pissed Watanuki off. What right did the idiot have going around like he didn't exist?

Of course, it still didn't stop Doumeki from eating his lunch. He simply acted like Watanuki hadn't been there at all when he ate it. That annoying, frustrating, idiotic guy!

Even Himawari-chan noticed it, as it turned out. "Doumeki-kun?" she asked, adorably concerned about that jerk. "Is something wrong?"

"Huh?" Doumeki turned to look at her. Well, that was all proof Watanuki needed to be convinced that Yuuko was wrong. The idiot would respond to Himawari-chan but not to him! It was just unfair!

"You've been so quiet all the time," Himawari said – like the idiot wasn't quiet all the time! –, "and, well, you haven't looked at Watanuki-kun even once! And you don't even respond when he talks to you. Did you two fight or something?"

Why didn't she ask Watanuki himself?! He could have told her that no, they hadn't fought about anything, the jerk was just being a jerk and could continue being a jerk for all he cared, the jerky jerk. Idiot, besides. But no, she had to ask Doumeki! Why, oh, why was the world so cruel and unfair?

"No." Well, at least the idiot wasn't lying! Not that it made Watanuki feel any better.

"Just leave him alone, Himawari-chan," Watanuki said. After all, Doumeki was hardly worth Himawari-chan's concern, sweet though she was to care about such an idiot. "He's probably just sulking because I made him fingered gloves instead of mittens."

"I don't think it's that," Himawari-chan said, frowning. "Maybe… oh! That's got to be it!" She smiled brilliantly. "He must be upset because you're still calling him by his family name!"

As was only to be expected, Doumeki didn't react to this assumption in any way, not giving any indication as to whether Himawari-chan was correct. Watanuki, on the other hand, reacted more than enough for both of them. "Whaaaat?" he wailed. "Why'd he be upset about that? I never asked him to call me by my first name! I never even gave him permission to!"

"Well, it's worth trying, isn't it?" Himawari-chan said. "Just think of how horrible it would be if he never paid any attention to you again!"

Watanuki thought, and was about to weep with joy. Then, however, he happened to think of all the monsters and Doumeki's bow. And then about the idiot's blood in him. And then the eye, and…

Soon enough he realized that, without Doumeki, he probably would have been dead for quite a while already. And, if the archer was going to ignore him now, this state of affairs was going to be corrected fairly soon.

It was, he decided, entirely unfair.

With the threat of death looming over him and Himawari-chan's eager gaze on him, Watanuki felt he had no choice. With a great effort – though considerably less so than he'd needed to utter half of a 'thank you' after the wisteria incident – he managed to stutter, "Shi-shi-shizu – Shizuka-kun."

And, as though by magic, Doumeki's gaze immediately snapped to him. "Hm?" the archer asked as though he hadn't just spent the entire day completely ignoring Watanuki. "What is it?"

Now, that was too much. That was entirely too much. Without a moment's thought, Watanuki launched into an enraged tirade full of less-than-favourable names for the archer accompanied by several not-so-helpful suggestions as to where Doumeki could put his holier-than-thou self for the next century or so. During the whole thing, Doumeki hardly even blinked, simply watching him indifferently. Himawari-chan, on the other hand, seemed more amused than anything – not that Watanuki paid much attention to her, so enraged he was.

In the end, however, it was Himawari-chan's giggles that ended his yelling. "See, Doumeki-kun?" she asked cheerfully. "It's not nice to ignore your boyfriend!"

Watanuki didn't throw a fit. He was too shocked to do that. He simply stared at the other two, silently wondering just how Himawari-chan, in all her cuteness and obvious intelligence, could have got it so grievously wrong.

Then he wondered why the jerk Doumeki, instead of correcting her mistaken assumption, simply said, "Ah." And after this he wondered just why he had stopped yelling in the first place.

A careful observer, however, might have noticed that the usual 'Doumeki, you idiot' in his hissy fit had been replaced by an equally enraged 'Doumeki Shizuka'.