Suginei: This is sort of a side story for What is the Last Thing I Want to Surrender :P As The Beast and Its Mistress is the spin-off. ...Yes, there will be an Endou x Natsumi in the near future. Like... next year. Which is one month later, haha. ...Haruna... I'm tempted to pair her up with Sakuma, to tell the truth, or even Fubuki, but... that goes against expectations, haha. Oh, and also Ichinose x Aki along with Edgar x Ri-
XXX: Hell with that! Fudou x Fuyuka goes against expectations!
Suginei: Which is why there will be an Edgar x Fuyuka scene, idiot.
XXX: Ohh... wait, that doesn't-
Suginei: Ahh, the confusion, the confusion! 3:)
Here, kitty, kitty cat, here kitty, kitty...
At first, she didn't understand the true meanings behind these words... the mice attached a bell to the cat... so that they would hear it when it came near. Touko had always wondered... why didn't the cat hear the bell itself? Were cats really that stupid?
"Touko, To-u-ko!" Her best friend, Urabe Rika, snapped her fingers in front of her. "What's up with you?"
"Huh? Oh, nothing... just something... on my mind, these days." Touko said quickly, waving her hands in front of her frantically.
Rika smirked, raising an eyebrow and leaning towards her from across the table, "Something on your mind? More like... someone." The Osaka princess wiggled her eyebrows meaningfully at the prime minister's jewel.
Touko rolled her eyes. Nothing to be mad about... it's just Rika being Rika... she had to put up with this for eleven years after all... Besides, it wasn't like she was thinking of anything important... just something she thought of when she was little. She remembered she used to ask around, but no one ever gave her a straight answer. They only said something like, "Oh, Touko-chan, you know that's only a story after all~ it doesn't have to be realistic!" Yeah, maybe they were right, but still...
"Touko~~ you're doing that thing again!" Rika was snapping her fingers in front of Touko once more.
"What thing?" Touko asked, raising an eyebrow questioningly.
"Goggling at the sea."
Oh, that's right... they were at Touko's summer home, which was of course, by the beach. Summer break was nice, really, it takes her mind off college and stuff. Yes... unlike the others that were going crazy in the soccer sports world, she was stuck being a business woman. And she kept begging Natsumi to join her, but... her excuse was that she had to stay at home and make delicious food for Endou. ("Right, Endou-kun~?" "Oh... yeah.") Touko sighed, placing her straw in her mouth but not really sipping the content. She could have sworn Endou was looking at her with pleading eyes... oh, well. That was revenge for not accepting her offer to be the coach for her team.
Come to think of it... it's been a long time since she even played soccer. Guess girls just grow out of it...? No, she was sure her feelings hadn't changed for soccer... And him? A deep red began to spread upon her face.
"Touko?"
God, Rika had sharp eyes... "Nothing, I think the waiter accidentally dropped some chili sauce into my beverage, that's all~" Touko said, waving it off and trying to cool off her own sudden embarrassment.
She looked at her friend from across the table... A sudden thought came over her. Endou was happily married with Natsumi, Aki is possibly engaged with Ichinose, considering the fact that she got a ring in the mailbox the other day... and Rika... even Rika had a husband. If only she wasn't so busy with her studies, she wanted to at least have a boyfriend as well... "No, I didn't."
Touko spat out her straw, "Huh?!" It wasn't the fact that the waiter had heard what she said that surprised her... it was the fact that this waiter was wearing black-framed glasses... and had pink hair in the style that hadn't changed since the last time she saw him in years... "Tsunami?!"
"Surprised?" He laughed, adjusting his glasses.
"A waiter? Really?" Touko retorted, arching an eyebrow at him as if he was the most laughable thing ever.
"I do have good balance, you know." Tsunami remarked. "Oh, and also because you need a membership to surf here, so I applied for a job here instead." He looked pretty determined to surf here... perhaps it was because it was his dream to master all the waves... including the ones here.
Still, this was way too much of a coincidence. "So how have you been doing?" Touko asked, nudging him in the shoulder while at the same time, feeling awkward for making up an excuse like that right in front of him.
"Pretty good, rode some pretty nice waves yesterday."
"Oh, cool! Maybe Touko and I can go watch you some day." Rika added, glancing at Touko evilly. Oh, tell me she's not... Touko thought, sighing.
"Sure, why not!" Tsunami pretended not to be bothered by Touko's sighing. It seemed as if she was extremely reluctant to spend more time with him even though they haven't met since high school graduation. Right... high school graduation... I wonder if she still remembers? He looked at Touko, who was avoiding eye contact.
He continued to watch the redhead closely as she got herself a new straw and sipped at the light blue content in her cup that looked highly suspicious. What did she even order?
"So... hey." Tsunami cleared his throat slightly, "We've just been talking about me, so what's up with you guys?"
"Rika got married." Touko reported in a flat tone.
"Married? Seriously?!"
"Yup~ now we're all lovey-dovey~" Rika added, squishing her own cheeks and twist her body around on the counter chair with different colored hearts bursting out of her eyes.
Touko smiled warily at the scene with amusement. She had to admit, Rika had grown up to be quite a lovely flower, despite how she looked back during the Aliea Academy attack. Her natural dark skin color had actually become one of her "selling points". Thanks to Kazemaru, who is currently engaged to Reika, she managed to make her long slippery hair stand out even more. Now it flowed all the way down to her waist, and instead of parting at the middle, it parted towards the left, slightly covering her right eye, which to this, she used a swallowtail butterfly barrette to take care of the loose portion.
The prime minister's daughter sighed again. Look at herself... besides the fact that her hat was no longer in place, and perhaps her taste in clothes had become much more "lady-like", absolutely nothing had changed.
"What about you, Touko?" Tsunami's deep voiced jolt Touko out of her deep thoughts.
"Huh? Well..." Touko thought she saw a glint near Tsunami's neck. ...A chain... he was always wearing that around his neck, ever since the first time they met. Why? Was it something that special to him? Ah, but now wasn't that time to think of that. "Nothing... really..."
"Touko beat the crap out of Natsumi during the state exam-"
"Shush!"
"That's awesome!" Tsunami laughed out loud, patting Touko on the back, winking at her, "You shouldn't hide that." He moved away from their table slightly, glancing at his watch, "See you two tomorrow!"
"Sure thing!" Rika answered while Touko touched her cheek lightly with the tips of her fingers. ...Maybe she just imagined it... but for a brief moment, when Tsunami had bent down to pat her on the back... she thought she felt him give her a small peck.
Why? ...Didn't you say back then... that it would be best to break up? ...And you said it so cheerfully, too... why?
"Uh... Touko?" This was the over a hundredth time Rika had to say this. "For God's sake, girl, snap out of it!"
"Let's head back to the mansion."
"Huh? O-okay..."
After slipping into something less formal than her usual business suit, Touko headed down to the beach, barefooted, feeling the sand give in to each step she took. She loved the cool feeling... the beach seemed like a much friendlier place at night compared to the hustling and bustling in the day. Palm leaves made quiet swishing sounds, and Touko continued to walk towards the water, just close enough to touch the waves with her toes.
"Well, this is a surprise."
Turning, she already knew who the owner of the voice was, "Tsunami..." In fact, it was as if she had expected or wished for him to show up.
Tsunami tilted his head to the side, his hand on his hips, "I've always thought you looked nice in yellow."
Touko blushed, pouting slightly, "Don't be stupid." She heard him laugh... the laugh that she had longed to hear for so long... "I... actually..." Come on, Touko, you've been hanging out with Fuyuka for too long! "Missed you... a lot."
The laughter stopped abruptly. Touko clutched her hands in front of her, head lowered, not daring to look up at the boy's face. She felt something warm on her face, her heart danced around wildly in her chest, her head seemed as if it was about to burst. She shut her eyes tightly... "What's up with you?" Tsunami arched an eyebrow, "You're acting s-"
"You're the one who's strange!" Touko blurted out, her whole body quivering, feeling like a fool... what was she expecting? "Kissing me like that, whispering to me words like that, making promises like that... then throwing them all away... what do you take me for?"
Tsunami blinked slowly before taking off his glasses and lowering his body so that he was eye level with Touko, then raising up again to press his lips against her forehead gently for a few seconds. Touko sighed, mostly out of blissfulness before snuggling herself into Tsunami's chest, "Answer me..." She mumbled, voice muffled.
"I told you the day we graduated, right?" Tsunami was careful as he held Touko's waist with one hand, threading through Touko's hair with the other, "I want to... travel."
"...Huh?"
"And someday, I'll come back for you, remember?"
Tears began to stream down Touko's face... yes, she now she remembered... all the stress from school had probably twisted her way of thinking, mistaking them to be words of rejection... "Travelling... don't come back to me."
"What?"
A playful smirk emerged on Touko's face, something that she hadn't shown for quite some time, "Take me with you!"
Suginei: I am tempted to say- "This was why Tsunami and Touko were in England", but no. The chronological order won't be right then.