Welcome to the second chapter of In Your Eyes.
Since I didn't get that much detailed with the first, Byakuran's 25 in here, along with Shouichi, Spanner, Yamamoto, and Hibari. More details will be exposed in the further chapters, I promise.
Here you go. The second chapter~
Rewritten: 4/13/12
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The bouquet was still there when Byakuran came back to fetch a cup of coffee from the vending machine. He thought for a while with what to do with the said bouquet and two questions came in his mind.
First, who the hell bothered to send him those orchids?
He wasn't a girl for Pete's sake and his officemate, Skull, was snickering at him. He could hear the other man laugh from the opposite side of the wall covering his part of the office. He should've gotten a knife to just get the guy to shut the fuck up.
And second, who's Leo?
Byakuran himself knew that he'd met a lot of people in the span of his 15 years of living with Luce, along with watching over Yuni as a baby. He had friends in high school and even college too, but who was this Leo guy bothering to send him flowers?
"Byakuran, get to work."
A light haired man stood by the doorframe of the office space of the entire room. He was dressed in a black polo shirt with a purple tie with a small nameplate on his breast pocket that read Alaude. There were less people around there, and Byakuran could see a typical lawnhead peeking from his quarters from beside Skull's desk.
"What's the extreme fuss all about?" he asked, scratching his head as he drank his coffee.
"Nothing, Ryohei. " Byakuran motioned as the lawnhead slumped back into his seat and gobbled on his breakfast. The albino caught sight of Alaude walking up to his desk. He took away the bouquet and replaced it with his laptop and mug of coffee. Yet he didn't notice that the placard was left on top of the sprawled documents where Leo's name was written on it. Alaude, having noticed the said placard firsthand, picked it up.
"Herbivore, I've seen them earlier before you even stepped inside." He said, throwing the placard swiftly back at the white haired man, who caught it in between a pair of fingers.
"Did you see anyone come here earlier, Alaude?"He mused.
"No. The bouquet was already there when I got here. The door was already open." Alaude replied, dropping a new stack of documents on the albino's desk. "Sort these out. Tell Elena if you're done," then he left without a spare glance.
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Later that afternoon, about two o'clock, Byakuran went out of the building, after a good 10 minutes of waiting in the elevator to go down from the 14th floor to the lobby. If he chose to drive his car, it would be a waste of his 5 minutes and a liter of fuel. He was going to curse himself for looking at those goddamn oil prices.
He strolled along the sidewalk, watching as cars were drifting on the highways. It was a normal sight for an office worker like him, despite that he earned at least 900 Euros a day and he owned a Ferrari which he shipped from Italy. He himself was Italian too, along with the adoptive family he was living with now, even though they lived in Japan for a start.
He was knocked out of his blissful daze when a familiar man bumped into him and dropped his books onto the other's lap.
"Byakuran?"
The albino blinked as he knelt down and picked up the dropped books on the path. He perked up, seeing a familiar, too familiar blond man with curly hair that stared back into his lavender eyes and with the irrevocable lollipop sticking out of his mouth.
"Spanner?"
"Oh good god." Said Spanner as Byakuran threw himself on the other man, capturing him in a tight hug. It was as though those 6 years of separating himself with his odd circle of friends had ended, or not. Spanner had given him a push just as the albino released him.
"I never imagined that you would be in France already, Spanner!"
The blond male sighed, arranging his things in his bag. "My grandfather took me here for a robotics competition with Shouichi."
"Shouichi? Shouichi Irie? Shou-chan's also here?" Byakuran asked in glee.
"Well—"Spanner was cut off by a voice behind him.
"S—Spanner! Why'd you—"
The voice stopped as a redhead with headphones around his neck came into view. He panted heavily upon halting behind Spanner, also carrying a handful of groceries on his arms. The smaller one looked up at Byakuran, who had somehow an idiotic grin on his face.
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"It's been years, Byakuran. You still haven't changed for the while." Spanner mused with a lighthearted chuckle as he sipped his cappuccino and bit off a piece of strawberry shortcake from his plate. Shouichi was staring out the window with drowsy eyes.
"Have I?" Byakuran smiled, sipping on his mocha coffee as he stared at Shouichi.
Shouichi yawned into the glass, seeing his breath through it. "We missed you, Byakuran-san."
"Eh?"
"Well, you've been gone for a long time and the others were looking for you right after graduation. Hibari, Yamamoto and Mukuro went their own ways though. Spanner and I stuck up throughout these years of college competing in competitions and earning money by jobs, but we never expected that you moved in Paris. It's a huge city!" Shouichi said in a worried tone.
"Right you are, Shou-chan. But it wasn't my choice to move here. Luce and her family wanted to move to here from Japan and of course, I went too," Byakuran sighed, "yet I couldn't help but reminisce our good old days of high school."
The thin air dispersed into silence, but was soon broken when Byakuran rummaged through his office jacket and showed them the placard he received earlier morning. "Do you know who this guy?" He pointed to the lower part of the placard, Leo.
"Hmm…seems familiar." Spanner declared as he sipped on his mug of coffee. Byakuran raised an eyebrow.
"Wait, isn't that Mukuro's pseudonym?" Shouichi interjected.
"What?"
"Leo. Leonardo Lippi. The famous chef from France. Doesn't it ring a bell?" Spanner said, in a tone that made Byakuran recall back unwanted memories.
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"I love you, Muku-chan." Byakuran confessed, clenching his fists until they turned white on his knuckles. He stood behind the indigo haired man who planned to become a culinary artist someday, and yet they were on the rooftop, at least a meter away from each other, drowned in silence.
Mukuro was standing right there, among the stunned faces of Spanner, Shouichi, Yamamoto and Hibari. Hibari didn't care though, but he just stared in shock. They had headed up to the rooftop to eat but they caught the two standing in a distance from one another. Shouichi and Yamamoto were gaping, while Spanner was only blinking from his position. No one of them expected that Byakuran would confess now, especially all of them knew that they treated each other like brothers of the same family.
The pineapple haired was currently in shock of Byakuran's statement right now. He only took Byakuran's showcases of affection towards him as a form of friendship but the albino himself sounded that he wanted more than that.
Affections were quite noticeable in their circle of friends. Yamamoto would normally sling his arm around the raven haired prefect's neck and the latter wouldn't bother or even care to bite him to death. Spanner, on the other hand, was clearly showing how much he liked Shouichi by helping out in homework, projects, etc. with the redhead and Byakuran. Byakuran himself gave Mukuro a warm hug and hot chocolate every morning or his homemade lunch for school. Yet the latter wouldn't show anything back. He was an epitome of grief and hate, but not to his younger sister Chrome.
Despite all of this, Byakuran wondered how would Mukuro would be able to like him back, or even love him so. He made the other man blush sometimes, not matter the faintest of blushes showed up on his face, Byakuran would still see it. Byakuran was a cheerful, carefree guy after all, having his love of white and marshmallows, and also his popularity in school. But Mukuro was quite the contrast to him.
Mukuro absolutely hated anything white, but he couldn't live without it.
It was something of a nightmare he had during his childhood, something that really bothered him until the present. However, Byakuran changed it all from the moment they met. Even though Mukuro had a bad impression on his fellow Italian, Byakuran tried his best to be friends with the guy, and eventually did.
No reply was heard. The albino's world seemed to break down.
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Within the apartment near the Eiffel Tower, a piano tune can be heard from the window of the apartment room of a certain pineapple haired man. Calloused fingers can be heard playing by themselves on the keys of the seemingly old piano that had dust seeping from the edges of the stand. The room had walls plastered with navy blue, nearly matching the occupant's hair color. The moment the tune stopped, the man turned to look at himself in the mirror, right beside the bedside table, and sighed inwardly.
He stood up from his seat, grabbed the DSLR camera on his study desk and shut the door right after he walked out. His mind was wandering to La Defense, whether to pull up his disguise or take more pictures in his album. The small ID dangling around his neck was labeled Mukuro Rokudo, a name which he tried to hide for so many years. He went to the park and took more landscape pictures of the random people passing by, remembering the single thing he planned on his mind.
He had to meet that guy again, that's for sure.
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"You still remember—"
"Oh just shut up now, Shou-chan. Please."
The said man laughed inwardly to himself until he was shot by a dangerous glare by the albino.
"I don't want to remember."
"Are you sure?" Spanner said, pulling them along the sidewalk.
"He's around Paris, I've heard. And it won't be long until you see him again." He added.
Byakuran stopped momentarily behind the two, his hands curling into a fist.
"It won't be."
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And so, that's the end of the second chapter of In Your Eyes. Actually, Mukuro here is actually a photojournalist, and a chef in secret. Byakuran had to put up with six years of nearly forgetting the fact that he had unrequited love for the pineapple head.
Anyways, R&R~
-AbandonWolf3 signing out.