Summary: Love which started at the bus stop, met some road-blocks, never arrived at its destination... but rode in the sunset happily ever after. (whut?)
Disclaimer: Sad as it is to admit, I don't own anything, especially not Daa! Daa! Daa! Enjoy!
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Bus Stop
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Chapter 1: First and second impressions
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Going to school, they wait for the bus at the same stop, at the same hour. And because the tea ceremony club president and the soccer team captain are going out with each other, it isn't a coincidence that their clubs are dismissed at the same time— and, like in the morning, they wait for the bus at the same stop, at the same hour to take them home.
However, in the six months that they have been high school students, Miyu and Kanata have yet to exchange words with each other. Occasionally, they acknowledge each other with curt nods. On days when Miyu feels overflowing with delight, she will spare a smile in his direction which he returns with his own polite one.
They know each other by sight; he can pick her out from a crowd by her long, blonde hair and startling green eyes; she's aware of his reputation as the rising star of the soccer club through her friend Christine who harbors a massive crush on the guy. Miyu Kozuki and Kanata Saionji— their names are supplied, unsolicited, by their friends who are a lot more interested with things they cannot be bothered with. They are practically strangers.
But theses strangers both agree that the silence that envelope them is comfortable as it is. Call it telepathy, but they both think that as long as they don't know each other beyond the few labels the other students at school have given them, they will not feel the need to project a sort of persona for the other person, to please, to pretend. They can be themselves completely the whole time they wait and board the bus. When the ride eventually stops at its destination—before the school gates, in the morning; in streets that lead to their neighborhood, in the afternoon—the spell is regretfully broken, and they go back to acting like the diligent students, reliable friends, and good children that they are.
But the circumstances align and the day comes when they inevitably talk, and they are right—the magic is not there.
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After completing a particularly intense training regimen that ended an hour before sunset, Kanata finds himself alone in the bus stop. His eyes seek the clock across the street, perfunctorily calculating the minutes he has left to spend idly waiting for his ride home, when he sees the girl with the long, blonde hair and startling green eyes heading towards his direction.
She is talking, but not to him. She barely even notices the lone figure underneath the shade of the bus stop, her entire attention monopolized by the girl walking beside her equally absorbed in their little chat to recognize Kanata across the street. It dawns on him, that for the first time, she has brought company.
And for the first time, he gets to hear her talk.
He knows she is far from being a loner, that she has a wide social network at school or possibly even outside. She's a ray of sunshine, if the random unsolicited comments from their common friends, are to go by.
(Seiya, a close friend—or frienemy, more like— of his, adores Miyu and constantly disturbs Kanata with his lovesick sighs and whispered worship for the girl's beauty and kindness at random times of the day that Kanata sometimes feel unreasonably irritated at his friend's object of affection even if she has done him nothing wrong per se.)
So he shouldn't be surprised at her bringing someone to their bus stop. He even recognizes the girl—pink-haired, naturally obtrusive, possibly because of her foreign blood and upbringing—as one of the friends the blonde frequently hangs out with and one of his more raucous fans. Kanata unconsciously crinkles his nose at the thought; he still despises the word fan. Any reason why a person (fellow schoolmate) would revere another person (him) enough to form a fan club which nobody (him) wants escapes him at the moment.
He is spared from trying to further dissect the inner workings of a fan's mind when the five o'clock bus screeches into a halt in front of him, effectively cutting his view of his schoolmates. The bus doors open and he observes the various quirks of the passengers as they alight, finding some mildly, oddly amusing.
There is a boyish man that nearly trips, ironically when he's finally walking on the solid ground a few feet away from the bus. Then there's the grandpa carefully leading grandma down the stairs by her wrinkly hand. Kanata cannot help the smile that tugs at his lips, and feels his bone-weariness lighten considerably.
When all the passengers have dismounted, Kanata trudges up the bus's stairs, and when he doesn't find the blonde behind him, he pauses before the driver, one he has never seen before, to hold for a while for the "other person taking this bus home."
Sure enough, just as Kanata's comfortably settled in the last vacant seat at the back of the bus, Miyu appears at the foot of the bus, huffing and clutching at the stitch in her chest. Still breathless, she thanks the bus driver for waiting for her and her friend who looks more bedraggled, and dangerously close to passing out. (Kanata resists the urge to roll his eyes—for the short sprint to reduce them to wheezing like angry bulls, have they never heard of exercise?)
Like most idle of the passengers on the bus, Kanata's eyes are drawn in front, towards the blonde tugging at her friend further inside the bus, green eyes scanning for places to rest. And Kanata, ever the gentleman, shoots up from his seat despite the protest of his tired muscles, and shoulders his bag to accommodate the pair, especially the more girly (pink hair and all) one.
His movements catch the girl's attention, just as he has intended, but when she points at him unexpectedly, eyes growing wide and jaws dropping open, Kanata is confused. Unable to do anything, he watches the girl eventually catch herself, lower her hand to her side, and snap her mouth shut, though she opens them again as if to speak but no words come out. If this were any other day and he were not slowly becoming the center of attention inside the bus, Kanata would have found the whole scene comical. But as it is, it merely confuses him and he doesn't like being confused, not even on his good days.
He becomes increasingly annoyed.
"What?!" He finally snaps. He doesn't even bother to mask the scowl in his expression.
"Hey!" The sound startles Kanata although not enough for it to show on his face. His pink-haired offender hasn't spoken, and in fact still in a state of shock at Kanata's sudden show of emotion (yeah, news flash, he can feel too) for her to have uttered the single word dripping so much contempt. Suddenly, the blonde, Miyu Kouzuki, advances towards him, eyes flashing with equal scorn. "What's your problem?"
Timidly—finally, Kanata's brain supplies—the pink-haired school girl lowers her head, and grabs at her friend who whips her head to look at her. Kanata doesn't miss the softening in her gaze, quick like a landslide, nothing at all like the one directed at him split-seconds ago. "Nothing," the pink-haired girl (whose name he still doesn't know) answers Kanata quietly, "sorry to bother you, Saionji-san."
If the bus hasn't stopped abruptly, and he hasn't hurried past the pair to get off the bus, Kanata would have seen the pink-haired girl's face reddening from embarrassment, her sitting down the seat Kanata has previously vacated, and the blonde Miyu, also red in the face for completely different reasons, hover above and trying to console her friend.
Try being the key word.
As it turns out, Miyu needs more calming down than her friend Christine does. It doesn't really surprise Christine that Miyu seems to be more affected by what has transpired than she, the main offender, is. The blonde has always been unquestioningly compassionate towards her friends, possibly one who'd even voluntarily take the bullet for them if the circumstance arises. Sometimes, she thinks it's a blessing—she must have been a saint in her past life, perhaps even Joan of Arc, to have deserved Miyu in her life. She couldn't have wished for a better friend. Other times though, Miyu's brand of justice is kind of bothersome (an adorable kind of bothersome, but still).
The blonde is naturally quick-tempered, couple that with her completely biased protectiveness for her friends—the result: blown-up disasters.
Christine chuckles under her breath as she watches Miyu give the window a stink-eye. The thing earlier with Kanata may have been a disaster wherein she embarrassed herself enough to the next century, but at least Miyu's endearing concern and fuming is giving her enough of a distraction to push the scenario out of her mind at the moment. Her mission right now, which requires her undivided attention, is to convince Miyu that she, Christine, is indeed in the wrong, and Kanata Saionji has merely acted like any sane human does in the face of unwanted attention, and she will never hold it against him.
Later on, when they are safely out of the bus, and Christine has just finished reciting her fourth argument on why Miyu should calm down and forgive Kanata's warranted reaction, Miyu tells her that she shouldn't think of herself as unwanted attention because "Look at you! You're so pretty, Christine-chan! Any guy would be lucky to have you give them a time of your day!"
It takes every ounce of Christine's strength not to glomp Miyu right then and there, in the middle of the pedestrian lane. So she waits until they have safely crossed the street before smothering Miyu in a rib-crushing bear hug.
Privately, she thinks Miyu's the better catch. Any guy or girl would lucky she gives them a time of her day.
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AN: I have rewritten the entire first chapter, in an attempt to make the storytelling more coherent and cohesive. But I fail all over anyway.
Hold me. :(