Past friendships
Hunni sat down in the coach (A/N: THIS IS RELEVANT TO THE PLOT SO BARE WITH ME AND IT IS A POSH EXPENSIVE COACH) with a group of his regular customers. Who all looked slightly worried.
"Hunni, you and Mori haven't had a fight have you?" asked Karin,
"No, why?"
"Its just that we all expected you to sit with him."
Hunni looked around, as if checking no one was listening in on them "Can you keep a secret?" he whispered, leaning forwards.
The three girls nodded.
"You know Hikaru and Kaoru's older sister?"
"Yeah..."
"Well, Mori and her were best friends when they were kids and they haven't seen each other in ages so I wanted them to sit next to each other so they could get to be best friends again." he said, playing on the 'sweet-little-boy-who-wants-his-friend-to-be-happy' act.
The girls squeeled with delight "How cute!"
*
Mori finished helping to load the suitcases onto the coaches (there was five of them, each one seats thirty) and boarded the coach. The seats next to Hunni had already been taken. He looked round for an empty seat. There was one next to Suki, who was day-dreaming and staring out the window.
"Is this seat taken?" he asked
She snapped back to reality "Huh? What? Oh, no, you can sit here."
It had been a while since he'd spoken to Suki, eight years to be precise. He could remember the first day they met as if it was only yesterday.
Flashback:
An eight year old Mori was walking through the park in the heavily falling rain, holding an umbrella above his head, when he saw something odd. There was a small girl curled up beneath the climbing frame, she was soaked through and shivering. He walked over to her, knelt down and held his umbrella over both of them.
"You'll catch a cold if you stay out here." he said to her
She lifted her head to look at him. There was a flash of lightning and a rumble of thunder. She yelped and pressed her face into her arms again, absolutely terrified.
"If you're scared of the thunder and lightning, why are you out here? and without a coat on."
"D-daddy says I sh-shouldn't b-be scared of s-silly things I-I should be scared of p-proper th-things and I c-can't go b-back inside until I'm not s-scared" she stuttered, lips blue with the cold.
Mori pulled off his coat and put it round her shoulders "My name's Mori, whats yours?"
"Tanisuki,"
"Tanisuki, when you're scared you should just think of something happy or not scary."
"Like w-what?"
Mori thought about it "My mom says there's always calm at the eye of the storm. So you should just imagine the storm is in your head and the find the middle of it."
"W-where's that then"
"Here," he kissed her forehead quickly, she froze."You should get home," he said, then left.
End Flashback
He didn't even know if she'd gone home after that or if Hikaru and Kaoru knew that their father used to lock Suki outside during thunderstorms.
The coaches turned onto the Motorway. Mori glanced over at Suki to see what she was doing. It looked like she was writing a piece of music, he could almost hear her humming the tune of it as she wrote each note. Every now and again she'd stop and softly sing the last few bars to herself.
"Where have you been?" he asked
"Huh? Been? What are you on about?"
"For the last eight years, where have you been?"
"Keeping my distance from Dad, my eighteenth is in a few weeks and he's convinced himself that I'm going to get pregnant and elope at the first chance I get." she said putting her pencil and music away.
"You could of called," he blurted out
"I couldn't, the old man still gets my phone bill and a list of the numbers I dialed. You know what he'd do if he found yours on that list."
He agreed, this was a valid reason for not calling him.