Chapter 3
"Ienzo-kun!" Yukina shouted.
"Sakuya-san!?" Ienzo shouted back. "What are you doing!?"
"Stop fighting and get out of there!" Yukina nearly screamed. When Ienzo looked back to her, there was concern in her eyes. She was worried, but Ienzo just didn't have any idea how much. Yukina almost cried at the thought of having Ienzo taken away. There was just something…something about him that made him so special to her in such a short time. Both of their hearts were beating rapidly through this moment, and neither of them could explain it.
"Sorry, but…Ienzo here needs to come with us!" Axel shouted before igniting one of his weapons and hurling it Ienzo.
"Ienzo-kun!!" Yukina shouted. Without thinking, she jumped off the balcony and into the line of fire.
"SAKUYA-SAN!!" Ienzo shouted upon seeing her jump.
Ienzo was able to catch her, but then she used her herself as a shield to protect him. For Ienzo, the scream that came after was painful for him to hear. When her body fell to the ground, he was both infuriated and saddened.
"Why…" Ienzo asked, almost inaudibly. "What the hell…What the hell do you want with me!?" He shouted.
"This wouldn't have happened if you came with us in the first place." Axel said while shaking his head.
"Don't you go making this my fault!" Ienzo shouted. "It was your weapon that hurt her!"
"So you want to start something!?" Axel shouted while taking out another weapon.
"Gladly!" Ienzo shouted. When he was about to run straight at him, something caught his leg. When he looked back down, Yukina's arm was holding his leg down.
"Ienzo…kun…" Yukina said weakly. "Please…don't fight…anymore…" Then her grip weakened, and she passed out.
"Sakuya-san…" Ienzo said. He started carrying her and then he looked back to his attackers. "If you try to hurt her again, I'll make sure you won't ever do it to anyone else ever again."
"Boy, aren't we going to get it when they find out we blew it." Roxas sighed.
"You're right…" Then Axel shrugged. "Hey, maybe we'll figure something out."
And with those words, Axel conjured up a portal and then both of them left. Ienzo, not minding hem at all, went back inside the hotel.
"Welcome back, Ienzo-san!" Lulu greeted. Then she frowned when she saw Yukina's state.
"Lu! Can't you do something to help the kid?" Wakka shouted.
"I'm not a healer, you big lug!" Lulu shouted back.
"We should call a doctor! She's been injured badly!" Ienzo pleaded.
"Let me see her." Lulu said.
Ienzo laid Yukina down on a nearby couch and Lulu looked closely at her. Then Lulu put her hand on Ienzo's shoulder.
"Despite her injury, she's actually going to make a fine recovery!" Lulu said while holding up two fingers in her hand.
"How can you tell?" Ienzo asked.
"I just can." Lulu said. "She'll just need some rest, so you can put Yukina-chan up in her room."
"I will."
Ienzo did as he was told, and carried Yukina up to her room. When he laid her down on her bed, he took a chair and sat down beside her. Then he took her hand into both of his. While he was there, he wondered why everything was happening like this. He knew there had to be more to how him and Yukina were connected. Did they meet sometime before? Looks like it. And they had to be close, seeing as she would unconditionally sacrifice herself just for his sake.
"Please…" He said to Yukina. "Sakuya-san…please be okay…"
He didn't know what led to this, but he kissed her hand. Immediately, he blushed, but then he was just happy no one saw that. In a way, he felt happy that he was with her. Right now, Yukina seemed like the most precious thing in the world to him. Unfortunately, he heard someone come into the room.
"Sorry…" Axel apologized. "We were sent on a mission to capture you. I didn't exactly mean to hurt her."
"A mission?" Ienzo asked while still watching over Yukina. "Who sent you?"
"Well, let's start from the beginning." Axel said while pulling up a chair. "Me an' Roxas here…"
"Hello."
"Both of us are nobodies, and we belong to Organization XIII." Axel started. "Organization XIII is a just a group of nobodies, with just one goal."
"And what goal is that?"
"Getting our hearts back." Roxas answered.
"Hearts?"
"The thing is, nobodies don't have hearts." Axel continued. "There are monsters called the heartless, and when our hearts are taken away by them, another heartless is actually made."
"And the soul and body left behind become nobodies?" Ienzo finished.
"Glad to see you still remember some stuff."
"What do you mean?" Ienzo asked while turning his seat around.
"It means—"
"Axel!" Roxas shouted. "This is the fifth time I'm calling you! Do you want your frickin' ice cream or WHAT!?"
"I'm takin' the damn ice cream! Don't touch it!" Axel then ran out the door without another word.
"That was…awkward." Ienzo commented. "But I wonder what he meant."
When he heard something move, he turned around to find, Xunakiy yawning and rubbing her eyes. Ienzo couldn't help but hug her upon her waking up. She was surprised, of course, but she ended up clearing out the fact that she was blushing and took a deep breath.
"Ienzo-kun…" She started. "I know anyone would be worried if they were in your position, but…don't you think this would be a little much for a stranger?" Of course, Yukina noticed that something was strange about the both of them, but she decided to keep this a secret from Ienzo.
"I'm…sorry." He said while he went back to his seat. "Wait a—how the hell did you actually heal up so fast in only five minutes!?"
"I don't know." Yukina shrugged. "But I've always been a fast healer."
"Look." Ienzo said while pointing to a nearby window. "It stopped raining."
"You're right!" Yukina smiled. "Maybe this means things will be much brighter from now on!"
"DAMN STRAIGHT!" A voice came from behind. When the both of them looked back again, an exhausted Axel was at the doorway, and then he held up a popsicle stick in the hallway. "THERE! I ate the frickin' ice cream! You aren't getting seconds!"
Suddenly, Roxas tried to jump at Axel's head, but when he dodged, Roxas grabbed one of his legs. Trying not to pay any mind, he tried to walk towards Yukina and Ienzo with Roxas still hanging onto his leg. Yukina and Ienzo tried to choke down laughter as Axel tried to shake off Roxas.
"Ice cream…" Roxas muttered.
"So!" Axel said, while putting his head onto Ienzo's head. "We're going to be living here from now on seeing as we're going to get hell if we ever go back! Hope that's okay with the little bookworm here!"
"Just because I'm interested in books doesn't mean that I'm a bookworm!" Ienzo tried to take Axel's hand off, but in response, Axel pulled him into a headlock and kept scruffing his hair.
"Ice cream…" Roxas muttered yet again.
"That does too make you a bookworm!" Axel said while grinding his fist into Ienzo's head. Instead of just trying to break free, Ienzo simply bit down on Axel's hand.
"You don't have rabies, right?" Axel asked.
"Of course I don't!" Ienzo said while finally freeing himself from the clutches of the redhead.
"Ice cream…" Roxas muttered the third time.
"Will you shut up about the frickin' ice cream!" Axel shouted to the floor.
"But you ate my ice cream…"
"It was mine to begin with!"
"It looks like…things are going to get a lot more exciting." Yukina said to herself.
Over the span of the next two days, Axel and Roxas went through more fights over the strange ice cream that the two always ate. It made Yukina wonder if that's all they really ate. Other than the fighting, Yukina was able to take an entrance exam into a high school as a third year, because her adopted family was well known, and she was able to skip two grades of middle school. But it wasn't the test that was nerve wrecking. It was the fact that Axel was trying to "persuade" the principal into letting her into the school. She was just happy she got let in at all.
"I got accepted into Outo High!" She said while interrupting a lunch between Axel, Roxas, and Zexion. At exactly the same time, they all slurped up a clump of noodles.
"Outo High? That isn't too far from here, is it?" Ienzo asked before biting off a piece off of beef.
"It's actually just several blocks from here!" Yukina said while sitting down with the three other men.
"It was because of me that you got in there!" Axel said while proudly waving a fist in the air. "If there's anyone else you want me to rough up for you, you let me know!"
"Thanks, but…" She scratched her head. "Just so you know, my adopted family was actually pretty well known, so I had their influence on my side. You didn't really have to threaten the principal to let me into the school." Axel simply sat there like an idiot.
"Like always, you never think things through…" Roxas said after slurping up some more noodles with a fork, seeing as he didn't know how to handle chopsticks.
"Here it comes…" Ienzo cut in.
"…like making the mistake of always taking my ice cream."
"Why can't you shut up about the damn ice cream!?"
"So…Sakuya-san…" Ienzo started. "How did Axel threaten your principal?"
"It was something like…" Yukina looked up for a second, then she looked back down. "Oh yeah! It was something like…'You better let little Yuki here into your school or I'm going to beat the hell out of you!'" Yukina said it without the whole 'tough' attitude and she practically chopped up the sentence which made it sound even worse, so for the three of them, listening to a cute voice while trying to sound intimidating left them all in silence. "You guys are just sitting there. Did I say something wrong?"
"Oh! It's umm…just that…you—"
"That isn't at all how I sounded!" Axel shouted while cutting off Ienzo.
"I tried to the best I can…" Yukina sighed.
"Don't get all depressed now!" Axel shouted even louder.
"You're right! I'll stay positive!" Yukina sat there, and then she looked down again. "But Lulu said she'll pay for my tuition, but then she said that I'll be having to pay double the rent…"
"Don't worry. I'll get a job and do my best to support the two of us…" Ienzo said while putting his chopsticks down and clapping his hands. "Thank you for the meal."
"But you can't do that!"
"Why not?"
"I have to worry about my own problems! I'll get my own job!"
"I'll be doing this because I want to. End of story." Ienzo said while getting up and going out the door.
"I think I ticked him off."
"Don't sweat it!" Axel intervened before she could fall into depression. "He wasn't angry! At least I'm sure he isn't…anyway! Just trust me on that!"
"Axel?" Roxas asked.
"What?"
"You really suck at making people feel better."
"Shut up!"
On her first day of actual high school, she didn't feel like socializing with the other girls. Apparently, the other girls avoided her as well. Was it because she was only fifteen but she was a third year? Was it because of her unusual hair color? She figured it was either one or the other. She was happy it ended so quickly because she wanted to speak to Ienzo after that little discussion at lunch the other day. She figured she would talk to him as soon as she saw him, but upon exiting the building, she found a large group of girls gathered around a tree on the campus.
"He is so cute!" Yukina heard a girl shout.
"He's better than what you find on TV nowadays." She heard while passing another pair of girls.
"A picture for 2,000 yen isn't much at all when you think about it!"
"Of course! It's better than the movies!"
"Do you think he'll come back tomorrow?"
"Why wouldn't he?"
"Umm…excuse me…" Yukina started.
"Yeah. What?" The girls sneered at her.
"I was only wondering what you two were talking about…"
"Looks like you aren't up to date." The first girl said.
"The cutest guy we've ever seen is actually in the campus and we were able to get a picture for only 2,000 yen!"
"I see. Thank you."
"Whatever, loser." The girls giggled as they walked off.
"Loser…" Yukina repeated. She decided to see how much money this person was making. Whoever it was certainly must've been smart to use their looks for this particular job. All the girls at this school were only here through high-class families, so they were all shallow in some way. When she went to see who it was…she was very surprised. "I-I-Ienzo-kun!?"
"Sakuya-san. Nice to see you today." Ienzo waved. Yukina looked to what was on the tree's trunk and she saw a sign that read "Take a picture with me for 2000 yen."
"Sakuya-san!? So you know her!?" All the girls crowded around him. And then they started crowding around Yukina.
"Oh no…" She whispered to herself.
"So you know him!?"
"What's his favorite color!?"
"How long have you known each other!?"
"Can you set up a date for me!?"
"Too many questions…GET AWAY FROM ME!!" Yukina shouted.
After shouting, she ran off in a random direction. Ienzo, upon seeing this, got out a marker, flipped over the sign, and then he scribbled down 'CLOSED'. Then he silently walked off to see where Yukina went. Leaving girls to squeal at how mysterious he was.
After navigating through the city, Yukina chose to sit down at the swing set where she and Ienzo first met. She was just sitting there, watching smaller kids play soccer. Then Ienzo finally caught up and joined her.
"Why'd you run off like that?" Ienzo asked.
"I'm sorry." Yukina apologized. "I…I just don't like crowds."
"That was sort of…I don't know…evident."
"I guess it was…wasn't it?"
"Look. I'll just accompany you to school tomorrow, and Ill try to see if I can fix the situation." Ienzo put his hand on Yukina's shoulder. "If I can't…I'll…try seeing if I can take you somewhere."
"Like a date?"
"Yes—NO! It's not a date! Just because a guy and a girl go to a place doesn't mean it's a date!" Ienzo tried to correct himself, but when he deemed it a lost cause, he slapped himself.
"Are you sure?" Yukina smiled. "You're blushing."
"I-I am not blushing!"
"Yes you are."
"Let's just…get home!"
"Sure."
"Oh. Umm…" Ienzo pointed to her book-bag. "You need help carrying that?"
"I'm fine."
"No. I can carry it for you." Ienzo tried to grab the bag, but instead was hit on the head by Yukina.
"Okay, here you go!"
"Why'd you hit me on the head then!?"
"…I don't know. Maybe letting you carry my bag was a last minute decision."
"WHAT!?"
"Welcome home." Lulu greeted.
The two just silently went upstairs to their rooms, leaving a saddened Lulu.
"Thank you Lulu, it's nice to be home." Lulu sighed. "Is that too much to ask?"
"It is." Wakka said while passing by.
Out of nowhere a pillar of water drenched the orange-haired man.
"Why you gotta do that!?" Wakka shouted.
"You are annoying for a husband…"
"So!" Axel said while patting Yukina's head. "How was your first day of high school?"
"It was great!" Yukina said with happiness.
"Glad to hear it!" Axel then spotted the sign that Ienzo was holding. "What's with the cardboard?"
"I made money." Ienzo flatly replied. When Axel looked at what was written on the other side of the board, he had his jaw drop. Then he closed it after five seconds.
"So I take it that business went well?" Axel asked while scratching his head.
"Very." Upon being asked how many people actually went for it, he answered…
"EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON THE CAMPUS MINUS YUKINA!?" Axel shouted.
"I'm very happy with my earnings." He said while holding up a box filled with yen. "On my count, I think I made…roughly…"
"Roughly…what?"
"A good…one million yen…or more…" Ienzo said while showing the sums on a calculator in Axel's face.
"Th-th-that much…" Axel pointed at the calculator.
"That's almost close in amount of munny to what we spent on sea-salt ice cream last year…" Roxas said while popping up behind Axel.
"Not really, Roxas." Axel said while putting his hand on Roxas' shoulder. "I think we just went on I.O.U to avoid paying for it…"
The four of them stood quietly.
"So…you're in debt?" Yukina asked. As intelligent as she was, Yukina wasn't all that bright when it came to obvious matters.
"Of course we're not in debt!" Axel jokingly pushed Yukina. "We were just…um…talking about…something that happened last year! Yeah…"
"So you paid it off?"
"Of course we—"
"Did not." Roxas finished.
"Shut the hell up you idiot!"
Within a snow-white castle…lives its very own king…a king…with his own royal problems…
"I take it that the little tramp is living peacefully…with him…"
"Well, I wouldn't say it so soon…seeing as you sent Number IV on his mission, as well as VII and XIII…though we haven't heard a word from those two in days…"
"Why do you think that is?"
"What?"
"Do you know why there hasn't been a sign of both Axel and Roxas?"
"Not a clue…"
"It's because she's poisoned their minds with her own devious little intentions and now they've left to join her side!"
"I believe it's nothing you should get worked up over—"
"Of course I should get angry about it! She should have been dead by now! And then, just when I thought everything would be reverting back to something orthodox, both of them find each other again! It's…it's disgusting! And then…everyone else will stray from their path and desert us!"
"Maybe its because of you that they're starting to leave—"
"It's because of that little witch! Everything has been going just fine until she had to come! She's filthy, weak and—"
"She wouldn't have become one of you if she was weak. Becoming a nobody requires a strong heart and all…and you shouldn't be thinking badly of her."
"Why shouldn't I!?"
"Because…someday…you'll actually get to know each other…and then…she would ask you to become her friend. She truly is…one of the best people…you could ever meet. Maybe…you'll change if you meet her…"
"That would never happen! I'll stay in this castle for the rest of my life! I'll create the perfect world! I'll never leave!"
"Never say never. And don't you still owe me from our last bet?"
"No I don't!"
"Sometimes…I wonder if I should still consider myself as one of you—"
"What do you mean 'one of you'!?"
"Must I really spell it out for you? Oh well…it doesn't matter because…whatever you're planning…you will lose…you will fail…"
"You…you bastard…don't you dare walk away from me!!"
"Oh yeah? Well I'm walking right now…"
"TAKE THIS!!"
"What!?"
((I feel…dead. School has just started two days ago…but at least it gave me an idea to play on. Anyways, it should be obvious which two characters made their own little dialogue in the last part. Oh yeah! And for the record…that one million yen that Ienzo made off with is—on my estimate—equivalent to a good ten thousand dollars! A lot of dough huh?))
