Chapter 2

"You ready?" Kurosaki asked, his outstretched hand waiting for mine. To my surprise, I took it with a grin and responded with a cheery, "of course!"

The beach is about a two hour drive, so we're leaving at the crack of dawn to get there early (though I have no idea why, because it's not as if we'll be swimming at nine o'clock). I hadn't really known what to expect on the ride there, mostly because my mind was occupied with lots of chaotic thoughts: I know this is a date, but is it like an actual date, or like a friend-type date? And if it's an actual date, what do I have to do? I'd never agonized over anything this trivial before, so when I found Kurosaki looking at me every few minutes, my face turned a horrible blush red, heating up everything from the base of my neck to the tip of my hair. After a few minutes, I managed to calm down, and I suspected Kurosaki realized that, because he suddenly started chatting to me:

"What would you like to do when we get there?"

"Well," I paused for a second, then told him, "I did some research on the beach when I went with my friends last time, and the guidebook said something about a cave on a small island off the seaside, so I was thinking maybe we could check it out. Unless you're too scared…?"

"Stuuupid. I'm a man; I'm not scared of that stuff. I don't get scared by that stuff at all. I'm just worried about you getting scared. Puny people like you get scared so easily—I would never be scared by something like that." I pressed my lips together to supress a laugh; there have been a few occasions where I've been watching a horror movie, or we've been in a haunted house, and he's purposely scared me to keep himself from being scared.

"Is there anything else it mentioned?" He asked, sparing only a glance at me from the road this time.

"I think there were also some touristy sites mentioned there too, but they are all mostly for couples…"

"Oh." Was all he said. What the heck does that mean?

We finally arrived at the beach at around nine, and a few thoughts I hadn't considered popped into my head. Are we sharing a room? If we are, there would surely be another futon, right? There probably wouldn't be a couch… or at least there wasn't one last time I visited. But we're not sharing a bed, but maybe there will be a division in the room, or even better, a separate room?

As hoped, there were two rooms, so I was relieved of one of many worries I seemed to be having.

"Teru," Kurosaki said, emerging from his room in only a pair of navy blue plaid swim trunks. "Wait, you're not dressed yet? Go, go! Go get your swimsuit on! We're going swimming now. What are you standing there for, idiot? Hurry!" He waved me off with his hand, so I went into my room and took the swimsuit Kurosaki had gotten me out of my suitcase. I ran my hand over it, thinking back on when we were trying to decide on what to get. In our search, Kurosaki and I went through numerous swimsuits until we chose this black and white polka-dotted one. I put it on, wrapped my towel around myself, and trotted back into the "living room" of sorts. Kurosaki was still there, with an old grey towel across his neck, and looking decidedly impatient. I laughed at him, grinned and yelled at himto hurry up this time, earning a "yeah, yeah" from him.

For being nine thirty in the morning, the beautiful blue water was fairly warm, so I turned around to look at Kurosaki and cheered, "It's so nice! When do you wanna go in?"

He shook his head sadly and said, "You're such a kid! We just got here. Let's relax a little bit, and when it warms up, we'll go in, okay?" I pouted for a second, but then conceded.

"Good," Kurosaki said. He walked over to the car, parked a few meters away and popped the trunk. "Hey, servant! Get the stuff out of the car." He picked up his folding beach chair and left the rest of the stuff to me (which admittedly wasn't much). I stuck my tongue out at him, causing his eyes to crinkle from laughter and picked up my beach chair and my bag of limited beach things.

I unfolded my chair and carefully laid down my patched up towel on the sand, careful and meticulous not to get any unnecessary sand on it. Kurosaki shook his head at my towel, but said nothing as he unfolded his own chair. He was a second from flopping onto the chair when I grabbed his hand and dragged him a few feet away to a good spot with lots of sand.

"Hey! I was just about to sit down and relax, Teru! You might not know how tiring it is to drive, but I sure as hell do." He got up to leave, but I wordlessly grabbed his hand and practically threw him onto the sand, then started to bury him.

"Heh," Kurosaki snorted, allowing himself to be buried. "You are a kid, after all. Only little children do stuff like this, but I guess that would explain your small chest."

"Hahaha stop," I laughed. Honestly, I hate it when he treats me like this—as a kid instead of a sixteen year old girl—but I never have the heart to tell him how much it gets to me, because then I know he'd think of me as an even younger child and I'd be putting him in a horrible position.

"No way, you are my servant. I think I've got some floaters in here… maybe you need earplugs too? Or do you need to me show you how to swim?" He teased.

I dug a whole around him to bury him, and took some of the sand in my hand and shoved it onto his head, and said sweetly, "You know, I heard that this beach has a bald curse. If someone wishes for you to go bald while rubbing this beach's sand on your head, the person will go bald."

"Whatta kid you are, believing in everything you read and stupid curses about baldness. You even read about sutras and protective spells to rid you of anything you think is slightly suspicious. I mean, I know you're top of the class, but I'm starting to think that there must be a mistake in the system or something…" He kept on talking, slowly ripping my heart to pieces. I know, I know I should have told him to stop… I know if I had told him, he would've apologized and not done it again, but I just couldn't ruin it. Everything had been going so well lately and I don't want something like my insecurity and feelings for him to destroy this good time.

"Such a kid… kid… you're a child, Teru… immature sometimes…" Little fragments of sentences kept sticking out in what he was saying, as if the sadist in him is doing this on purpose.

"Stop…" I mumbled quietly.

"Sorry, what was that? You should learn how to speak up louder. Didn't you learn that in kindergarten?"

"STOP!" I yelled at him, "I hate how you always treat me like a kid! I'm not a Kurosaki! How could you still think that? You may not know how I feel, but you should at least try to realize my position!" His eyes widened, and as I ran away with tears in my eyes, I heard him call to me, "Teru! I'm—".

I splashed into the water, not caring that I still had my cover-up over my swimsuit and swam.

I can't believe I yelled at him… and why did I leave? Riko said to trouble him once in a while, but this isn't troubling him a bit. This is accusing him and snapping at him for doing something that he didn't even know was wrong! How was he supposed to know? I agonized over my thoughts, not knowing exactly where I was swimming to, but bouncing back and forth between blaming him and blaming myself.

No! He should know how I feel! He knows that I'm in love with him, and I know he cares about me, but how would he think the girl that loves him feels when he treats her like a kid? I saw overhead the tiny island with the cave (basically the island consisted of the cave), so I felt myself drawn to it, unaware of my surroundings.

I shivered, and rubbed my arms while treading water. Soon after, my teeth started to chatter, and then it got more violent. I looked up at the sky, finally realizing the horrific colour; dark grey, surely containing lots of lightning that would love to roast me alive. The cave was only a few yards away; I could still make it, but as I began to swim again, I felt my legs starting to go numb and lungs start to burn. No! NO! This is not going to happen right now! I have to go apologize to Kurosaki...I need to…

I need Kurosaki.

My vision started to darken when I felt something scrape my belly and scratch my hands. My eyes started to close, and my body gave out before my will.

Kurosaki…


Thank you all so much for reading! I'm soooo sorry it took me so long to put out this new chapter, and if you'd like an excuse, I will tell you that I had a lot of homework, but if you're the type to not accept excuses, then I'm so terribly sorry. However, I did make this chapter extra long (at least compared to those I've put out so far, which would be very little) and I promise to update a lot quicker from now on!

Hope you enjoy it,

Courtney