Disclaimer: I, (insert my uber-long pen name here), swear to all sentient, fanfic-reading beings out there (LOL:D) that I DO NOT own Clannad, nor it's characters and/or anything else that is associated with it and has Key and Kyo Ani's names branded on them. What I do own is the story contained in this fic and this fic alone. I am not making money out of this (for it's just my hobby).

Author's note: I just wondered how Sunohara Youhei would spend a 'seemingly' boring rainy night. Thanks for looking the fic up and please enjoy (and review. :D)

Also, lots of thanks to Chromate for beta reading this for me.

Now, onwards with the fic!

Chapter 1:

Cucurbita Soup for your battered soul

A rainy night. Bright lightning, followed by deafening thunder kept flickering outside Youhei's windows. Spatters of droplets pounded on the glass. The gale of wind whistled through all the nooks and crannies. And there he was, legs tucked under the warm cotton sheets of a kotatsu, his body enrobed in a thick sweater. Strange weather they were having in Hikarizaka that evening. It was very much unlike those rains in summer where everything remained hot. Now, when the storms poured down, the chilling coldness got into the bone. And it was just May.

There was nothing planned for tonight, of course. He did want to go to the arcade but, judging by the endless spatter, he would be soaking wet when he would somehow manage to get there. He could call home, and tell Mei and mom that he was alright and have a little chat. But the reason for why exactly he should do that didn't enter his thought.

He put it aside. From below his shelf, he jerked out his copy of the school newspaper they gave around the dorm and turned a few pages. He came across articles that had pictures of colorful booths and girls in maid outfits. The titles went, 'Seniors open new fun booths' or 'Freshmen carry out Kabuki play'. There was even 'Juniors open up maid café; extremely popular with the hombres'. "During the festival, students of class 2-A and Class 2-B challenged the Seniors by opening up a maid café for everyone to come to. What a way to raise their pride as Juniors! There was so much support from everybody, including the student council in the form of-" He turned the page since it got pretty boring to read the rest of it. He didn't know what the hell a 'hombre' was (a kind of German sausage?), but he knew one thing: all those articles were about the Founder's Festival.

So it must've been pretty ironic (or humorous, really) to put the one line blurb, 'Founder's Fest canceled due to irreconcilable events ', on the front page. Was the faculty still trying to hide it? He was there on the day of that incident and it was the most dangerous thing he got himself into. But, it was a pretty isolated case, nothing more. No one else knew about it but some unlucky shumucks like himself. They even made him shut his mouth about it in exchange for more months in his dorm room. The staff's desperation told him something he should've known from the start. He understood it somehow now.

There was no use making other students panic by telling them all that their school was attacked by delinquents.

Writing that day off as another piece of cool memory, he went on doing other stuff. Wriggling his toes became too boring of an act to kill time, so he decided to count all the spatters on the window. He even killed off the room lights for they let him see through the glass. Beyond that was a streetlamp that lit it in such a way that the droplets would be very visible. It was very stupid, of course.

But then again, he made his name being worse than that.

On his bed, in the dark, he started counting and he felt heavy. He started feeling drained. The cold weather was suitable, no, perfect for sleeping. It made him feel relaxed on his soft mattress. Also, he had nothing to do; nothing at all. He could just leave everything at the back of his mind so he could be ready for tomorrow. So then, his eyes started closing. Keeping them both open was so much of a struggle that when he opened one eye, the other closed. And slowly, gradually, he fell to sleep…

Knock! Knock! Knock!

What the hell? He rose and flickered on the lights. Who would come at this hour? He would forgive the person if it was Misae-san or some hot girl who came just for him. But other than that, then he would have the thirst to kill.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

A familiar voice came from behind it. "Open up, this thing's heavy."

The loud knocking was getting annoying. He started wishing that doors could be made soundproof. "Yeah, yeah, I'm comin', sheesh..."

Opening it, he was going to give whoever it was a piece of his mind. The first thing that he saw was a large bowl of something red (or orange) wrapped with kitchen plastic. It was so near that one step and it would get shoved in his face.

"Soup…?" He craned to its side. "Who would…?"

He paused, the weight of a slight dropping chin being too heavy to talk with. He put on that face people made whenever they met a travelling salesman at their door in the middle of the night. But, in his opinion, the person before him that moment was a hundred times worse than that. "Oh, crap."

"Is there something wrong with bringing Cucurbita soup?"

Those two blue eyes stared at him like how shady strangers in overcoats interrogated their targets with just one sharp look.

"No." He said, since answering made him sound smart. "But what the hell are you doing here in this kind of weather, Tomoyo?"

The familiar figure was none other than his immortal rival, Sakagami Tomoyo, carrying that large bowl. She was wet from the shoulder-up, the upper-half of her black turtleneck sweater smocked with water drops while her usually silvery hair was now filled with streaks of beige.

"None of your concern." She shoved herself through the door, cautious not to spill her luggage, and looked around, contemplating the untidy stacks of manga, the piles of clothes, and a large open cup of instant noodles that must've been unsealed and left untouched for at least three days. Then she gave a petulant sigh. "This place is still a dump…"

"Hey, what're you calling a dump?" He just cleaned it that afternoon for two minutes, which was the longest time he had ever spent on tidying his space. "This is my manly bachelor pad, you know."

"More like 'Weird pervert's lair that smells like-'"

"Don't even say it." He looked outside the door to see if anyone was accompanying her. "May I ask why you are here, ma'am?" He asked in a sarcastic, derogatorily stiff tone. It was one of his passes at her for she never addressed him as a senior. Never. He wanted just one 'Sunohara-senpai' from her, that's all. Why couldn't this confounded underclassman see and/or respect the hierarchy system that had built Japanese high school culture? He had to enact at least some revenge on her.

"You don't have to be overly-formal," she scoffed. "Give me a towel first; I'm soaking."

He was busy staring at her light brown hair and wondered how useful it was to have two different hair colors at one time, although more of his attention was on how tightly her soaked shirt clung to her well-developed body. "Uh… sure. Just wait."

He opened a drawer and threw a folded piece of thick fabric onto the Kotatsu. "There."

She noted the throwing with mild distaste, but didn't let the feeling get to her and shrugged it off. So she put both her load and her headband onto the table and dried her hair vigorously, being careful not to make it so messy as to require another brush up.

"Hey, Tomoyo, can you tell me what the hell you're doing here in the middle of the night?"

She was done drying her hair so she threw the towel back at him. "I came to see if Tomoya was here."

Oh yeah, Tomoyo has always been looking for Tomoya…

"Do I look like his keeper? Isn't it obvious he's not here?"

…That's what a couple usually does, right?

She blew out some air in disappointment. "Where is he, then?"

"Home," he replied simply. "Down with the cold like the most of us. Of all people, it's you who should know that."

"That's why I brought him soup."

"You know where his house is. Why not bring it there? And besides, going here in this type of weather's stupid. Especially if you're lugging around that large bowl of… whatever it is that you're holding."

"You're the one to talk. Besides…" she pointed at the window, "the taxi I took broke down."

Wondering if Okazaki's house was far enough as to require the use of a taxi (albeit with an expensive fare), he opened the window and only rain greeted him, flinging wet drops of chills into his face. Through the howling wind he could see a silhouette with a yellow coat dotting around a white car. He guessed that the driver must've been having a hard time fixing it.

"Of all places your taxi could break down, it had to be here."

She shrugged. "Minor coincidence, I guess."

Why not get another taxi? He asked himself. Why would Tomoyo drop by in the first place? There were a lot of other places she could take refuge in, not his just his hovel of a dorm room. Even if she came here, wouldn't it be more logical if she went looking for Misae-san, whom she held a lot of respect for, instead? Basing on how strange it was for her to come to his room in the middle of the night and how killers in movies usually tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible, he formulated what was probably the smartest hypothesis he had ever made.

"You came here to kill me, didn't 'ya?" He bellowed. "There's no other explanation as to why you'd come here at night!" In a mad, almost alcoholic daze due to extreme paranoia, he scrambled for the baseball bat he had under his bed.

Standing up, he got into a stance. "Well, I'm gonna take you out first!"

She sighed out of pity as he charged, while he was being desperate in proving (and thwarting) his possible assassination. With defiance deep in his throat he jumped over the table and was about to crack her skull. Success was in his grasp…

In a blinding flash of blue, a flurry of blows broke Youhei's face and some ribs, and it so happened to be that he forgot to close the window he had just opened. He rocketed through it and found himself crashing on the cold, hard cement sidewalk. His head hit first, and he found himself ending up nothing short of a run-down corpse, soaking in the rain.

After getting tired of looking indifferently at him, Tomoyo slid the windows shut and took a sigh of relief, feeling glad at the achievement she just got. Then the room's door creaked open, and through it a hand came in, then an arm, and finally a blond head whose whole face was blotched with mud and scars.

He laid there, still as an old cadaver. Then, his mouth wobbled in pain, "T-T-Three hundred… sixty-five..." He gave a tired guffaw. "Damn you…"

"That's what you get for threatening me," she said.

The blond was about to bark back at her when he noticed how dirty his shirt now looked like. "Crap," he muttered, "I need to change."

"And that affects me, how?"

"If you want to see me naked, then all you need to do is-"

A sharp, stinging pain pierced through his shin that made him fall flat on his floor. He could have been fine had his head not hit his doorframe.

"Eeeeeowwww…! My head!"

"Pervert," the student council president said as she withdrew her foot and made her way out his room without any other protest.

Some moments after she got out, Youhei stood up, shaking his head. Then he went to get a fresh change of clothes, and applied a substance that matched his skin on his face to cover his scars (Gotta' look handsome, right?). He heard a knock on his door, and he said she could come in.

"Thanks. Well then…" she tucked her legs under the kotatsu. "I won't be able to get to Tomoya's in this weather."

"Don't you have an umbrella?" He inquired.

"It wasn't raining when I finished the soup."

Thinking that it would be very annoying to have Tomoyo in his place, he looked under his bed again. His umbrella must be in there somewhere… After a few more moments of rummaging he grunted, then drew away from the bed's innards.

"What are you looking for in there?" She asked.

He muttered, "Crap, that bastard hasn't returned it yet…"

His comment caught her curiosity. "Who are you talking about?"

It was best for her not to find out. "No one you'd care about." If she did find out about the person he called a bastard, then he would either have to dig his own grave or exchange faces with a dog.

"I'll have to stay here for a while. Either when the taxi's fixed or when the rain stops." She curved a little half-smile. "It wouldn't be that much of a bother to you, right?"

He looked at her. Tomoyo staying at his place? He was kind of worried since he was thinking what would happen if Okazaki found out. It would be okay with him, right? Imagine, your BFF's girlfriend spending a rainy night at your place…

Alone with you.

Wow, this would be entertaining.

Okazaki would understand. For sure.

"Sure, why not?" he said, "As long as you don't do any funny business, alright?"

"It's you I'm worried about."

"Like hell I'd do something to you."

"Oh, I forgot. It's not me you're interested in, it's…what's her name again…?" she made an impish smile, the sort his beloved would usually make. "Fujibayashi, right?"

He sat on the side of the table across from her and said crisply, "Fujibayashi Kyou."

She nodded. "Yes, yes, Fujibayashi Kyou. How are things going with the…" She stopped sneering. "…Courting?"

In an instant, his face blushed. "H-hey, I'm not hittin' on her…"

"Stop lying, Tomoya told me everything. You don't have to be that secretive."

Damn you, Okazaki."…Alright. What I'll tell you now is that it's going super-well. We might even go on a date tomorrow." The truth was it wasn't. He was really embarrassed about it since well, it wasn't going on that well. And besides, who was Tomoyo to meddle in his business? She didn't have even a sliver of authority to ask him.

"Yeah, but reality and your face are telling me otherwise."

Unfortunately, she was right. Didn't she just mention that Tomoya told her everything, and along with the fact that he also told Tomoya almost everything? "So what if I failed? I suck at mushy stuff like wooing girls."

"Yesterday, Tomoya told me about the time you brought her flowers and danced."

"He was with me the whole time, you know. Told me all the steps."

"Uh-huh. And he was laughing behind a vending machine when he saw you actually did it."

"It's called the thriller and it's not weird!"

"In the eighties, it wasn't."

Note to self: Never, ever,ever listen to Okazaki. "Anyway, courting Kyou's hard. Very hard."

Those painful memories (and those endless yen bills he had to use) were still fresh in his mind.

"Tomoya just asked me 'If you could be my girl' and I said yes."

He gave her a miserable smile, as though he was mocking himself. Of course Okazaki did. Since when had his best friend not got anything he wanted, even if he didn't mean to? He's the lucky guy, and he's just the poor idiot spending endless nights dreaming of dating another girl. All that certainly made him feel much better tonight, with Okazaki's girl lecturing him on how to court girls. This night just couldn't get any better.

After a few moments of awkward silence, he asked matter-of-factly, "So, what are you gonna do with that soup?"

She was kind of surprised at this question. "Bring it to Tomoya's, of course."

"Cucurbita sucks when it's cold."

Now she knew his plot. "Then I'll reheat it once I get there."

Sorry, Plan A failed. Execute Plan B, now!

He clasped his hands together and made a desperate 'beggars-only' face. "Please let me eat some!"

She made a chortle at Youhei making a fool out of himself. "Beg and maybe I will."

He stood up, and got on his knees. "Please let me eat some! Pretty, pretty please!"

She smiled at this pathetic example of manliness. "No wonder Tomoya has fun doing this…"

"Gimme some soup now."

"Give me a bowl."

"Why? Can't I just spoon it from the…"

That disgusted blue stare told him everything he needed to know.

He looked away, ashamed, and then gulped. "…Okay, I'll get a bowl."

"Get two bowls."

There were two bowls to pick from: a china glass one (which he lifted from the neighbors to take some revenge. He hoped that they never find out) or a sleek ceramic one his mother sent him a week ago. "Why?"

"I'm hungry, too."

Fearing that something might happen to the expensive stuff, he instead picked out two plastic bowls with spoons and gave a set to Tomoyo.

She took hers quite gratefully. "Thanks."

She took away the plastic wrap and the smell of Pumpkins filled the room. He sniffed around, whilst looking around his room. "You sure the smell won't stick?"

"Don't worry; it'll be gone in two days."

"Two days?" That was because a room scented with the smell of autumn food wasn't exactly popular back then.

She took his bowl. "Just stay quiet and I'll give you your fill."

A few minutes later he finished eating. Unexpectedly, Tomoyo offered him seconds, saying that there was too many soup for one sick man. They ate in silence, the background dinner music being the spattering of rain. Kind of boring, he thought.

"Hey, Tomoyo."

"What?"

"How was your day?"

"Do you want me to kick you?"

"I was just asking how your day was!"

"Who are you and what have you done to Sunohara?"

"It's me, damn it!"

"You said you wanted me to kick you until you squeal and your bones break? Sure, then."

"You sadist!"

As he thought he was going to die, she chuckled. "I was kidding, don't worry. I'll only waste my energy if I kick you. Anyway, you were asking?"

Now he wished he had a tape recorder. "How was your day, ma'am?"

"Fine, thank you."

"What the hell?" He pointed his spoon at her. "After all my trouble and getting threatened to be kicked, you're just gonna say 'Fine, thank you'?"

"What do you want me to say, 'Not fine, thank you'?"

"Don't be a smartass; I'm already asking you decently here!"

"Fine, fine, I'll tell you." she spooned up some soup, slightly annoyed. "It was boring at most. Did nothing but some paperwork in the council office. Then I lectured a few students about how bad it is to be late for class. Then I spent the rest of the day in study hall."

His eyes widened. "Woah, that long?"

"Our teacher is pretty lazy."

He clapped. "Wow, even the student council president has her sentiments."

"That's the only one, though."

Secretly, glee started coursing in his brain. Good, she didn't noti-

"By the way, Sunohara…"

He slurped in his bowl. "What?"

She climbed onto the kotatsu, bent over like a four-legged feline across it as she drew her face close. The cat had just cornered her little mouse. He was shivering in his knees like crazy as he smelled the cucurbita in her breath.

"Why didn't you go to school today?" she asked.

Hiii…! She found out! "I was uh, sick…?"

She drew back to her side across the table and sighed. "…You're hopeless."

"Not really…" He crinkled his brow, his defense mechanism kicking in due to instinct and habit. "I'm trying to make something out of myself too, you know."

"What, a female bra inspector?"

Huh? "No."

"Voyeur photographer."

"What the heck?"

She raised a finger, trying to set up the atmosphere for her narration. "Ah, I got it. You'll rent yourself a dark basement and you will start your life as a used female underwear collector."

"Like hell that'll happen!"

"Then, you'll want to be a pornography actor."

He tried imagining it… The horror! (And the good stuff that comes along with it!) "What kind of freak do you take me for?"

"A perverted one." She took his bowl. "More soup?"

As though he instantly forgot what happened just now, he happily reached her a bowl for seconds. "Yes, please."

She poured him more Cucurbita and got another bowlful for herself too.

"Now that's settled…" She took some in a spoon. "I want to ask you something."

"You asking me?" He blew out some air. "Ain't that something new…"

"I would like to know what's happening to you and Kyou."

The flabbergasting came first before the hair-raising of his skin. Why bring that up now? "You're a stubborn one yourself, aren't 'ya? I told you already, it's super-hard. No, wait, it's supra-hard. Like, it's so difficult that it needs a new word."

Whenever he would talk with Kyou, he would sound fine but deep inside, his giblets were quaking. Whenever he would talk with the theater club girls (Nagisa-chan, for example), he would end up saying stupid things to keep up his 'talking fuel'(his absurd term for 'conversational topics') and make himself look cool (which did not). Whenever he would talk with other girls he did not know, he would sound and act twice as stupid and somehow scared the girls away. But when faced with girls like his younger sister, Mei, or older women like Misae, he would talk with great comfort and ease since he felt that none of them would judge his true personality. That was one of the few times he realized that he sounded like how Okazaki would normally talk.

And the only other girl that was almost his age he could talk to in that way turned out to be none other than Sakagami Tomoyo.

"You're exaggerating," she scoffed. "It can't be that hard. Is she pushing you too much or something?"

He realized that he sort of trailed off earlier. How he talked to girls could be dealt with another time. Now, he had to focus. If he could only tell her that supra-hard was an understatement. "On a normal day it goes like 'Youhei, get this' and 'Youhei, get that'. Then it turns into 'Youhei, go buy me drinks' or 'Youhei, go buy me lunch'…" he ranted.

"There's nothing hard about that," she said in a lecturing tone. "Maybe you are just complaining too much."

"Let me finish. Finally, it always ends in 'Youhei, take care of Botan for me'. That's what makes my day…" He let it trail off for anticipation. "… A living hell."

"Who's Botan?" She cocked her head to one side. "Someone I know?"

"More like something you know. You saw him before. He's that boar or whatever-it-is running around school during Founder's."

"Oh, that. I remember now." She smiled. "He was that little round thing with the cute nose, right?"

He raised a few fingers. "But I have to warn you. Botan can be summarized in three words," he took a deep breath and let out the words that had been in his mind for long, "Worst. Pet. Ever."

"Maybe it just doesn't like you that much."

That wretched boar-thing. He hated it. He hated it very much. He hated it with all his might. Whenever he saw that brown snout, he would have a bitter taste in his mouth. That thing caused so much pain, so much shame, so much humiliation that he would be more than happy as to see it served up in a hot bowl of Miso. It hated him first, so he had to hate it back. Basic human instinct, he would tell himself.

But then again, what was human instinct? Did it tell him that he should hate this boar just because it hated him? Or was it an effect of transference, that he hated it because of his stuck relationship with Kyou, so he put his stress and anger on that thing? He did not know anything about that philosophical nonsense. He just hated it, just like how other people pettily hated other things. He... just felt like he should.

Now he could get everything off his chest. "No way. It whines a lot. It cries a lot. It's hungry all the time. And the worst part is, it farts a lot. Kyou takes care of that little runt everyday and she doesn't have problems!" He sighed in dismay mixed with regret and let out a deep whine. "Whhhhhhhhyyyyy meee…?"

She raised a finger to make a point. "I told you already, it doesn't like you. It's obvious."

He grimaced, swore under his breath, and decided to drown all his sorrow in more soup.

"C'mon, tell me more," she said. "I don't usually listen in on other people's lives but yours sounds interesting." She made that smile people made in zoos when they try to encourage the animals to come close. "C'mon."

He glared at her. "It pissed on my lap."

Well, that's the first segment of my fic. I hope you like it. I'll try to update in three days time or something like that so, to those who still want to read it, please wait and i'll get the chapter up in no time. Also, your comments are very important to me so please review so I can make my writing (and my English) better. Thank you very much!