A/N: Perhaps my shortest drabble published publically…it's Horimiya, for a change, and laden with a strange sort of fluff…1st person (as is my habit lately) from Miyamura's perspective. No set place within the plot, so no spoilers to warn of. Rating only for the tiniest bit of language…lastly, I do not own Miyamura! End of story.

Reviews are love! (Especially among such a small fandom…)

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I'm not sure exactly what happened, to be honest.

We were walking and talking quite normally—or at least, as normally as we could, being us, you know—when Hori-san suddenly flushed, shifted her eyes away like an angry serpent, and…hit me. I think. Or did she shove me? Maybe it was a slap? Did I say something weird?

It all happened so fast, between the violent contact and my swift embrace with the concrete, and then there was the wall and…my awareness became a complete blur. I saw Hori-san's horrified expression before she ran away and I was left to brush off my slacks and wonder what the hell had just happened…

I was found the next morning with a lump on my head, a cherry-red mark peeking out from a bandage on my cheek, and my back aching like someone ran over it with a semi-truck. It must've shown pretty badly on my face, despite how I reassured Hori-san that I was fine. I should be used to this sort of thing by now. I smoothed over the ruffled feathers of our congregated friends and sailed through the day's classes on painkillers every few hours. Ibuprofen is a wonderful thing.

She was found with a heartbreakingly guilty expression on her face, seeming to dissolve into her winter jacket when I asked her what was wrong. Her amber eyes hid from me like a pair of shy koi and she shook her head with stubborn fervor. She slipped forward and pressed a piece of tightly folded paper into my hand before disappearing without a word.

'I'm sorry, Miyamura-kun', read the neat script as I unfolded it, 'I didn't mean to hurt you like that. Come over for dinner tonight, I'll make it up to you, I promise. Hope you're in the mood for stew.' A messily scribbled heart adorned the end of the message in a red-inked scrawl.

I chuckled to myself. Hori-san was such a strange bird—so ferocious on the outside, but such a gentle, kindhearted soul on the inside. Kind of like…

I don't know, actually. She's like…herself, I suppose. There could be no comparisons when it came to my Kyoko…

Note to self: don't call her that, even in your head. Ishikawa is a horrible tease when my cheeks get warm.

I was prompt that night, of course, and brought a fruit pie with me as a peace offering, despite her insistence that I was the one deserving of an apology. Hormones be damned, I still needed to know what I had done to set her off, but that would be another issue for another day. The kitchen smelled much too good and Souta was shooting me looks much too adorable to linger in such frustration for long.

I thanked her for dinner after tucking Souta in for the night, commenting that she didn't need to 'make it up to me' with food in the first place. Her face reddened again, but not with embarrassment…she was mad. Again.

She fumed, quietly though, so as not to wake her brother in the other room. I just stared blankly, wondering aloud what on earth she had meant in her note, if that were the case…

My hair was pulled, fiercely and painfully, as though by an angry child. My face saw the floor for a split second, followed by a flash of her narrowed eyes, before my vision just…exploded.

Fireworks. Fireworks? In my head? Maybe…

Or maybe, my eyes were seeing something out of a psychedelic movie while the fireworks were actually elsewhere, exploding somewhere deep in my chest, wreaking havoc on my entire being.

She was kissing me.

Warm. Gentle. Impossibly tender and…soft. Tinged with the barest hint of salty tears as she chided me for being too selfless and murmured apologies between our barely parted lips.

Hori-san could be incredibly difficult to manage. Being with her could even be quite painful at times, in more ways than one.

But perhaps it was that 'punishment' that made her other side—the tearful, delicate, ever-loving side—all the more precious and wonderful when it decided to show itself.

"Kyoko," I murmured carefully, watching her eyes dance as I encouraged her with my own. She beamed, her entire face radiant and as bright as the sun—brighter, really, since it was on the other end of the world by now. But I digress. She was smiling, genuinely so, and that's all that mattered.

That alone was more than worth the wait—and Band-Aids—I decided as I watched her.

I grinned and leaned in eagerly for more.