"Well. Ya know..." He began, running a hand through his slick hair from front to back, making it spike up a bit in some places, "I wanted to see you too. Since, ya know, you hadn't come by in a while..." Yato nervously let out a heavy breath. "I just don't want you to forget me, okay? I'm just being cautious." He crossed his arms and looked at Hiyori through half-lidded eyes and dark lashes.
Hiyori sat up a little on her bed during the small silence that ensued between them. Of course his motives were purely self-concerned, what other kind of Yato did she know? She brought her hands into the sleeves of her sweater before opening her mouth to speak.
"Hey. I said I wanted to stay with you forever, right?" She said, surprised when she actually wasn't the least bit ticked-off-sounding. "I won't let myself forget you, even if it's the last thing I do. You don't have to worry, Yato." Hiyori smiled at him, not sure as to exactly what her emotions were at that point, though she knew what she had said was true.
Yato stared at her across the room, his eyes wide open and his cheeks a little pink. He remembered the time at Kofuku's house when Hiyori had said that... He had blushed the exact same way, not sure if she'd meant it like he thought she did. Yato shook his head from side to side, "Uh, yeah. Good." was all he could come up with in response. He began to walk closer to Hiyori, stopping at the side of her bed where he had been earlier. "Soo... What is it that you're even doing over here that's so deathly important?"
Hiyori huffed, folding her body forward in a slump. Her hair that was in a bun had loosened a bit, and fell forward onto the top of her head as she moved. "Math homework. Right now, at least. Then I have biology and psychology pre-exam assignments to do, as well." Her magenta eyes flicked back up to Yato. He stood looking almost uneasy with his hands in his jersey pockets. Hiyori tipped forward and pat the spot on her bed just beyond her books, inviting him to take a seat. Yato looked at her then to the bed, before deciding to sit down. He shuffled to where the bed met the white wall, his back leaning against the wall and his legs outstretched over the other side. He turned his head toward Hiyori while he scanned over the upside down pages of her open books.
"I see." He spoke, "Why are you so stressed about school, anyway?"
Hiyori kept her pencil to the paper while she wrote out equations. "Well I wouldn't be this stressed about it if I wasn't concerned with the "far shore" so much, hm? And if I was actually awake during class." She looked up for a moment and smiled at Yato, who returned her gesture with a blank expression.
They both sat in silence for a few minutes; Yato's breathing whistling through his nose and Hiyori's pencil scratching against the paper. She began to work as if Yato wasn't even present, the only thing reminding her that he was there being the occasional sweet scent that drifted in the air. It was almost like a sugary citrus smell, with maybe a bit of... cinnamon? Hiyori had never really tried to identify his particular scent before, but she wondered how he even smelt so good despite being so sweaty all the time. She shook her head back and forth like an etch-and-sketch, erasing those thoughts from her mind. She needed to focus on her work, or else she'd never get it all done in time.
To Hiyori, it felt like hours had passed by the time she finished the first set of her math work. Although of course, when she glanced to her alarm clock, it had been only 45 minutes.
"Ughhh!" She exclaimed, tossing her pencil down onto her books and throwing herself back into her pillow in frustration. Yato, who had been asleep for the past 25 minutes, jolted awake from the sudden break of silence. His sleepy but startled eyes quickly turned to Hiyori to see her sprawled out on the far side of her bed, presumably just in frustration. He breathed a light sigh of relief, his lips curving into a thin open-mouthed smile.
"Problem?" He questioned.
"If you'd like to count how many, they're on the sheet." She retorted, raising a lazy hand to point down toward her homework. Hiyori flung herself up into a sit when she heard Yato shift on the comforter and push himself off of the bed. "Hey, where are you going?"
"C'mon, we're going out. You need a break." He replied, his back to her as he faced the single window on the opposite wall.
Hiyori stared at Yato's back in silence for a few moments. "Going out? Yato, I told you a million times, I have all this work to do-" she was cut off by a scoff; Yato turned his head over his shoulder, lifting his chin to gesture toward Hiyori.
"Too bad your body doesn't know that."
"Wah..?" Hiyori perked up at his comment, turning at her torso to find her physical body happily fast asleep on her pillows. At the same moment, she caught a glimpse of her own ghostly-looking magenta cat tail in the corner of her eye. "D-dammit!" She huffed, letting her fists ball up so she could feel the ends of her nails in her palms. When she heard Yato chuckle at her and the clicks of the buckles on his boots, she looked up to him to find him already perched on her window sill, the window wide open again.
"You'd better hurry up, Hiyori." He said before quite literally jumping out the window. Hiyori watched him disappear into the dark, not even hearing a noise when he presumably hit the ground. She almost had the instinct to rush to the window to make sure he'd landed safely, but she knew better. He was always fine.
She glanced longingly down at her work, then back to the open window. It hurt her to say it, but Yato was right, she needed a break. The more she considered it, the more she realized her brain would likely explode with information before she even got close to finishing her work. Hiyori bounded off her bed toward the window, stopping and setting her hands on the cold sill when she saw Yato standing below the streetlight in front of her house. He had his hands back in his front pockets, his hip jutting out to one side as the light above him casted shadows over the rest of his body and onto the snowy sidewalk.
"Yato, wait..!" Hiyori called, waiting a beat as she watched a tiny cloud rise from his mouth when he breathed into the cold air. "I'll come."
She could just make out the smirk that appeared on his face at her words.
AN: Hey again everyone! I meant to post this yesterday, sorry for the wait! This will be my last chapter for a week or so, as I will be away over the March Break. I've gotten a few responses from some lovely readers, and I am very glad that you all are interested enough in my story to follow/favourite it as well! I hope to get another chapter or two written while I am away, and that will likely be it for this one! Thanks again for the continued support! Please review if you can spare the time, I really do appreciate any constructive criticism you can offer; or even just let me know what parts of the story you enjoyed! Bye for now~