The sun had barely begun to rise above the horizon when Tohru's shrill alarm clock disturbed her slumber. Rolling over in bed, Tohru reached out her hand and pressed the 'off' switch on the beastly device. Loud silence followed. Tohru stretched and pushed back the cocoon of warmth that surrounded her, listening to the quiet house and slowly waking up. She sat up, and arose from her bed, but not before her right foot snagged in her comforter causing her to tumble head first into the floor. A quiet "Oomph" and loud thump accompanied her graceless landing. Shaking her now fully awake head, Tohru giggled quietly, rose quickly, greeted her mother, and began her daily routine.
Not ten minutes later, a cheerful Tohru carefully made her way downstairs, hoping to avoid waking the other members of the Sohma household. She flitted into the kitchen, intending to begin the preparations for breakfast, when a loud snort startled her into tripping once again, making this her second fall in half an hour. She looked up from her fallen position to see Kyo standing over her, arms crossed and a derisive, yet resigned look on his face that made her feel more flustered than should be allowed this early in the morning.
"Keh, you're so clumsy and loud. I heard you fall earlier from all the way down here" he scoffed, but abased himself enough to reach down his hand to help her stand up.
"Good morning, Kyo-kun," she replied, hoping that by smiling brightly enough, he could ignore her blush. "Thank you for the help."
"I couldn't just leave you there, you were in the way of the refrigerator," he said as he walked around her to open said appliance.
"I was just about to start breakfast," she continued, ignoring his slight, "why are you up so early?"
As Kyo grabbed his favorite drink from the fridge, he took a gulp straight from the carton before explaining, "Training, of course. I know I'll beat that damn rat this year!" While making his impassioned proclamation, Kyo's hand had convulsively crushed the nearly-empty milk carton. Now he did his best to nonchalantly throw it into the trash can, nearly succeeding in hiding the milk that dripped from his still-fisted hand.
During Kyo's speech and subsequent clean-up, Tohru finished making a cup of tea for Kyo, and headed out to the dining room table to place it at his seat. As she set it down, though, she noticed a magazine lying on the corner by Shigure's spot. Picking the magazine up from it's face down position, Tohru got one short look at the cover before giving a loud "Eeek!" of surprise and dropping it quickly back to the table, blushing to the roots of her hair. Kyo, who had heard the noise and assumed that Tohru had hurt herself somehow, ran quickly to her side, asking hurriedly, "What's wrong?"
The red-faced Tohru said nothing, just pointed towards the culprit. Kyo looked at the magazine in disbelief, then back to her quickly, before leaning over and picking it up. "What's so bad about a… Aaghh!" he shouted, dropping the magazine as quickly as if it had burned him.
With the magazine now face up, the whole world could see what the two had found so disturbing. On the cover were two naked girls, holding each other in a quite compromising position. "HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS AND THEIR BEST FRIENDS GONE WILD!" blazed across the bottom of the magazine in bright fuchsia coloring. There was an awkward silence as both Kyo and Tohru tried to avoid looking the other in the eye.
"I'm sorry, is this Kyo-kun's?" Tohru asked, plucking a corner of the magazine. "I'll go put it in his room."
"Hell no that thing ain't mine!" Kyo shouted. "It's that damn dog's… disgusting old pervert," he muttered under his breath. "And don't touch the filthy thing," he said, grabbing the magazine from her hand and marching towards the trash can in the kitchen, "he shouldn't leave disgusting things like this lying around for anyone to see." He promptly emphasized this statement by hurling the dirty magazine into the trash.
"Oh, so Kyo-kun doesn't read things like this? Shigure-san says all men do. He says that's why he has them. I asked him why he had so many, and he said it was so he could compare and contrast between publications. Shigure-san has all his chronologically ordered on his bottom bookshelf."
"No, not all men look at this garbage," he complained, gesturing to the trash can, "Shigure's just a sick old bastard who's desperate."
"But still," Tohru replied, walking past him to the trash can, "he won't be happy that we threw away one of his most favorite editions." So saying, she reached into the garbage and plucked out the magazine, holding it out with her arm fully-extended. While looking into the trash, she missed Kyo's face twisting into a look of utter repugnance at the thought of Tohru knowing so much about Shigure's filthy habits. "I'll just go take this back to his room."
"No need my beautiful flower," Shigure's voice boomed as he suddenly appeared in the room. Kyo moved quickly to the other side of the kitchen, as far away from Shigure as possible, almost as if he was attempting to avoid catching a contagious disease. "I'll take that," he said, grabbing the magazine from her hand and cradling it to his chest. "Does Tohru-kun have pictures of herself and her friends?" Shigure asked, moving into the dining room and helping himself to the almost cold tea Tohru had left on the table.
"Yes, I have lots of pictures! Some of them are us at sleepovers, and some of them are us in costumes, and some of them are just everyday life," she explained.
"Well Tohru-kun should send her pictures into magazines with high school girls and their friends. I'm sure they would love seeing how close you and your friends are," Shigure commented slyly.
Tohru blushed bright and stammered, "I… I don't know Shigure-san. I know I'm never going to be pretty enough to be one of those girls in the magazines."
"What are you talking about my lovely flower? You are very beautiful, right Kyo-kun?" Shigure asked as both he and Tohru turned to look expectantly at the cat.
"You're even more disgusting than I thought," Kyo exploded. "How can you say such things to her with a straight face? Don't listen to him, Tohru, he just talks nonsense!" Kyo did not notice Tohru's crestfallen expression, which she quickly hid by looking at the floor and nodding at what Kyo was saying.
"Aww, now you've hurt my wife," Shigure said, reaching over to seemingly innocently pat Tohru's shoulder, "let Papa Shigure comfort you."
"Get away from her you damn dog!" Kyo shouted, tugging Tohru out of Shigure's reach. "Go back to your room and finish another one of your disgusting stories or something," Kyo ordered harshly, making sure that Tohru was secured behind himself, safely out of a certain pervert's reach.
"Oh very well, I'll leave you two lovebirds alone," Shigure stated while drifting out of the room with his magazine clutched tightly in hand. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do," he sang from down the hall, before the sound of his office door sliding opened then closed was heard. An awkward silence followed, as Kyo turned to face the still quiet, down-turned Tohru.
"Just ignore him, he's a disgusting pervert anyway," Kyo said, trying to reassure her that she was safe from molestation.
"Yes," she replied quietly with a sniff, "I knew I would never be pretty enough to be in a magazine. Especially one of the ones Shigure likes so much."
"That's what you're worried about?" Kyo asked. At Tohru's miniscule nod and short sniffle, Kyo scoffed, "that's not what you should be upset about."
"But Kyo-kun said it himself. He said I shouldn't listen to Shigure-san's nonsense, and that he was completely wrong about my pictures. And you never lie Kyo-kun, so I know I can trust your judgment."
"That's not what I was talking about. I meant you shouldn't listen to Shigure about sending your pictures into his dirty magazines. You're too good to be in something gross like "High School Girls and Their Best Friends Gone Wild." That's not something you should lower yourself to," Kyo explained curtly, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Oh," Tohru stated eloquently, finally turning her red-rimmed gaze up to Kyo's face. "Does that mean," she started, than paused, "does that mean Kyo-kun thinks I'm pretty?" She finally finished with a blush.
Kyo blushed too, but silently looked at her for a minute. She felt his eyes burn into her skin with an intensity she had never noticed before. The silence after asking her question was quickly becoming uncomfortable, but as she opened her mouth to break it, Kyo beat her too it.
"I think you're beautiful," he said quietly, capturing her eyes in the intensity of his gaze. The moment was broken however when Kyo looked away blushing bright red and gruffly stated, "Don't let it go to your head or nothin'."
"Thank you Kyo-kun," Tohru said. Kyo turned to look at her and was nearly blinded by the brightest smile he had ever seen her make. Unable to look away from her brilliant, glowing face, he leaned towards her, drawn to the intensity of her joy. Just as he was mere inches from her face, a buzzing noise sounded in the kitchen, making them both jump.
"Oh no, I forgot about breakfast!" Tohru shouted, racing into the kitchen, and leaving Kyo to contemplate what had just happened.
For the rest of the day, nothing could bring Tohru down. Not the burnt breakfast, not the new hole in the wall from Kyo and Yuki's latest brawl, not even the major school project she had to finish before the next day. All she could think about was that fact that Kyo thought she was beautiful, and she felt like the luckiest girl in the world.