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Jin
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"I thought we were friends."
Deep down, Seifer knows he is being petty. Dare he say unreasonable, even. But it's pretty deep down and the words have already been accompanied with a flippant wave of the hand.
He begins to turn away.
"We are."
Because they are standing in the middle of the tunnel leading to the train platform, her voice echoes, startling him enough to pause. He breathes in once, twice, three times until he feels his hackles lowering. With nonchalance he does not exactly embody yet, Seifer idly swivels on one heel so that he is once again facing her, his hands in his pockets.
She watches him, something that could never quite be classified as anxiety flitting across her eyes. Yes, eyes. Plural. She must have tucked that wayward mop of prematurely grey hair behind her ears when he wasn't looking. And had it not been for that sharp glint in those very eyes, Seifer would have thought her words had been spoken in innocence.
"Don't start that, Fuu."
He tries hard to keep up his air of casual indifference but inevitably feels the fight in him rising along with his temper (he never could curb it) and the words come out as more of an order than anything else. Inside his pockets, his hands have formed fists.
The only outward change in her is that she shifts her stance, ever so slightly, so that one hand is now propped on a tilted hip. Glancing at the said hand on her hip he thought to note that those hips of hers were not nearly as narrow and skinny as they had been when they were twelve. Not necessarily a bad thing. It's the changes that he can't see that bother him. He looks for them anyway.
It's the second time in so many seconds that he's swept his eyes over her body, but it's the first time he notices that, in a few years, Fuu could turn out to be beautiful.
It would never be like Olette, whose dimples and soft features already had men unthinkingly referring to her as "Sweetheart", so obviously pretty. No, pretty was never a word Seifer ever associated with Fuu. Even now as he dwelled deeper into his budding theory about her future looks, "Pretty" was still not in the vocabulary.
He does not dwell long. With a certainty he'd rather care not to place, he already knows how Fuu will look.
He already knows that in a year or so the rest of her body will catch up with her long limbs, never quite as tall as himself but closer than most girls. He knows that she will still carry herself with that annoyingly quiet haughtiness, though she may cover herself up a bit more until she grows into herself on a mental level (having boys as best friends could do that to a girl).
Exotic. She would be exotic in her beauty. That was what had initially attracted him to her the first time around. It was why he stuck around now for the second.
And maybe, also, for the moments like these.
"We are." She repeats firmer this time, "We always will be."
"Fujin."
"So." A section of silver hair flops across her forehead as she poises her next question on pursed, knowing lips, "Seifer, are you still gonna keep going?"
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Jin: End.
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