DISCLAIMER: Skip Beat! belongs to Yoshiki Nakamura.
~ Sidelines ~
"Hey, let me borrow your phone."
It was more of a demand than a question, but Yashiro supposed he should consider himself honored that the girl considered him close enough to being a friend that she didn't need to fake politeness toward him anymore. Kanae Kotonami was the type who spoke her mind without reserve among family and friends, social etiquette be damned.
Yashiro was snapped out of his thoughts by a series of short, sharp clicks - the sound of Kanae tapping her foot impatiently while she waited for him to comply with her request.
"Huh? Oh, sure..." he responded belatedly, fishing his phone out of his pocket and handing it over.
She took it without a single word of thanks, completely ignoring him as she tapped a rapid series of keys. She stared at the screen for a moment and then handed the phone back to him.
She's done already? His curiosity getting the better of him, he asked, "What did you do?"
The words were barely out of his mouth when an electronic tone sounded from roughly the direction of Kanae's purse. She quickly fished out her cell phone and started fiddling with it, still apparently ignoring him.
Why did she borrow my phone if she has her own with her? he wondered, nonplussed.
"I sent myself a text message," she answered, not looking up from what she was doing.
"What? Why...?"
"You can read if it you want. I don't care."
He hadn't bothered with a glove earlier, as his skin-to-phone contact had lasted less than ten seconds per handoff, but he pulled one on now before extracting his phone from his pocket once more and checking the most recent sent message.
He stared at the screen for a moment, then glanced up to see that Kanae had finished whatever she'd been doing and was now looking at him expectantly.
"It just says 'a'," he said in confusion.
"Yeah," she replied unhelpfully. Her expression seemed to imply that she was waiting for him to realize something, but when he just kept staring at his phone with his eyebrows scrunched up in confusion, she gave up and walked away.
Later that same day, Ren - having misplaced his own phone - asked to borrow his manager's phone. Yashiro, not realizing that he'd left the message screen pulled up earlier, handed it over without thinking to check it first.
"Yashiro-san..." Ren said, when he saw what was on the screen. "It seems you may have accidentally sent a text message to an unfamiliar number."
"I don't think so," Yashiro replied, frowning.
Ren flashed the screen at him, showing him the text message sent to a number that wasn't saved in his contacts. The message itself just said 'a'.
"Oh, that," Yashiro said, chuckling. "Kotonami-san sent that to herself from my phone."
"Ah... I see," Ren said, wondering if his manager realized... but Yashiro was constantly reading things that weren't there into Ren's non-relationship with Kyoko, so surely he couldn't be so dense about what was going on here with Kanae?
Before he went on the internet to look up a reference he hadn't understood, Ren saved Kanae's number to Yashiro's contact list. If that had indeed been the girl's purpose in sending that message to herself, he was sure they would both be grateful for this action later.
~oOo~
A/N: For anyone who is confused - the 'a' does not mean anything. The text message to herself was so she could get his phone number.
