a/n: This chapter is a little bit more Megumi-oriented.

Thank you to all who have favorited, alerted, and reviewed this story! Y'all are awesomeeeeee.

I apologize for utter stupidity of this chapter.

Last Chance

4. the roll of dice

-x-

The first thing that came to Kurosawa Megumi's mind whenever she looked at him was the first winter snow.

Yukimura - fragile yet strong, exquisitely beautiful like a flower in bloom, seemingly cold to the touch. Snow suited him perfectly.

At her first year of high school, she'd been so surprised by him that she'd never realized she'd like a boy who was so charismatic and talented and gorgeously perfect until it was too late to change anything about it.

Once, she accidentally dropped his gardening purchases in front of him. It was back when she was still working at the flower shop. She thought she would have died from the embarrassment.

But he waved off her apologies and to her disbelief, he actually helped her clean up the mess on the ground.

It only took his smile for her to get hooked. Oh, but was it one wonderful smile. She started attending his games, started reading more books about gardening, started talking to other girls about him, and they'd agreed he was wonderful too.

Certainly, he'd grown up to be quite the Prince Charming in their class. Smart, athletic, and a heartthrob, lots of girls had confessed their feelings for him only to be turned down politely. Pretty girls, normal girls, shy girls - all had been sent away with a gentle "no, I don't deserve your feelings".

And so, Megumi started to keep her feelings silent on the entire matter. Haruka knew of them and often liked to poke fun at them - but she wouldn't have understood. Haruka was funny and witty and easygoing; the kind of person who liked to have a good time. Haruka didn't like to worry about things like grades or boys or her plans for the future. Megumi, however, was different. She liked planning out things, making sure they would turn out the way she wanted them to, which was why they balanced each other equally.

In retrospect, liking Yukimura hadn't been part of her plan at all. The only thing she could do was attend his games, support him silently on the sidelines, and to wish for something that would make Yukimura notice her.

-x-

"That was fun," Megumi said, as they two of them went home.

"More like exhausting," Haruka said, but grinned. In the midst of one rather exciting match, someone had accidentally chucked a water bottle at Sanada's head. Tachibana An had to rush and get an ice pack before Sanada murdered someone, preferably an innocent freshmen on the tennis team.

"Ah, but you enjoyed it, didn't you?"

"Yeah, I did."

They walked up to Haruka's apartment.

"Well, thanks," Haruka said. "I guess I'll be seeing you later."

"Sure. Is your brother around? I haven't been seeing him lately."

"Ah - he's... He's kind of busy right now," Haruka said, a hand sheepishly scratching the back of her head. She couldn't look Megumi in the eye - lying wasn't one of her strong points.

"Of course, he must be really busy in college! Still, I'd hope he'd come home for the weekend."

Haruka nodded listlessly, than walked up the stairs where the door was unlocked. It'd always been that way - even at night - ever since her brother had ran away.

She walked into the house. Her mother was on the phone. She must have been talking to the police again, going over her brother's physical description and insisting that no, he probably wasn't staying overnight at his friend's house, and no, they hadn't had a family disagreement shortly before he'd left the apartment.

He'd cleaned up his room, stacked a few of his books into a tidy pile before the end of the cherry blossom season, and Haruka had teased him a little bit about it.

"Whatcha doing that for, Onii-san? Scared I'm going to go into your room after you're gone?"

He grinned good-naturedly. "Nah. Just doing this for luck."

"What kind of luck?"

He shrugged, still smiling, but it'd been a sort of absentminded kind of smile. Perhaps he'd still been thinking about calculus theorems or the meaning of some obscure Japanese haiku. "It's late, Haruka. Why don't you go to bed soon?"

"M'kay," she said obediently, and headed off to her room.

"See you in dreamland," he said, smiling at Haruka.

And that was the last memory she'd had of him. Nothing dramatic. Nothing special. But she'd analyzed that memory for ever and ever, wondering if she'd missed any signs.

-x-

"D'you ever think that things eventually work out?" Haruka asked Yukimura in the beginning of class. They were waiting for the bell to ring, and in that space of time she was slowly but surely building up something - a connection, perhaps - with Yukimura.

She asked the question for the hell of it, not expecting much. It was just one of those things where maybe, you wanted to see if someone would pay attention to the meaning behind the words. If they didn't, fine.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, say that life is one big equation and a person gets as many bad things as good things."

"I'm afraid I'm not much of a philosopher as you might assume, Kasamatsu-san," he said politely, but she could tell he was thinking about it.

She was starting to get a better picture of him. He was good at hiding his true thoughts behind a guarded expression, but if one looked closely, it was not difficult to guess what he was feeling.

And after a few seconds of consideration, he said, "I know that good people can be unlucky, and that even good things can happen to bad people."

It'd only taken two weeks for years of lean muscle to wither away in the hospital. The medics called it atrophy. Yukimura thought it was wrong.

"I see," Haruka said, even though Yukimura knew she didn't. "You're a realist, aren't you?"

"Yes," he said, and there was something in his blue eyes that seemed so sure of himself. "I suppose I am."

-x-

I've just been visiting a businessman and, according to him, the only way to succeed is to practice the 'triangled technique': try to escape your obligations, annihilate your kindly feelings, and geld yourself of the sense of shame. Try-an-geld. You get it? Jolly clever, don't you think?

Megumi was at the library, eyes squinting, as she always did when something was difficult. Specifically, it was her Japanese Literature class that was giving her so much trouble. Her teacher was notorious for assigning college-level texts, which included the first volume of Soseki Natsume's "I Am a Cat."

She sighed to herself, and tried, as always, to understand the point of the satire. She never liked dissecting words and literary elements; trying to read below the surface - it just wasn't in her personality to read books on a deeper level. It'd been one of her worst subjects in school.

And anyways, the library was getting a bit crowded. She probably wouldn't understand it very well in here any better than at home, so she might as well leave.

"Excuse me, is this seat taken?"

Megumi looked up to find Yanagi Renji with his eyes closed. Although they were classmates, she hadn't really spoken to him all that much. Still, it wouldn't do to be impolite.

"No, go ahead - I was just leaving." She smiled and proceeded to put her things away in her book bag.

He saw the title of her book. "Were you working on your analysis?" he inquired. Each week they'd have to turn in a paragraph summary of new insights and developments in the book.

She paused in the middle of tucking her pencil-case into one of the leather pockets. "Yeah, I was. Have you finished it?"

He nodded. "It's one of my favorite books."

"Really?" Megumi found it hard to imagine anyone simply enjoying an old book about a cat's narrative perspective. It was full of academia humor; which was probably why some of the jokes felt forced to her.

"There's a lot to find about Soseki-san if you read his work in short sections," Yanagi said. "I mean, that's how I read him in ninth grade."

She blinked, slowly taking out her book. "You read this in ninth grade? What else did you read?"

"'Kokoro', 'A Personal Matter', 'The Setting Sun' - " Yanagi began to quote titles of famous Japanese novels, and he saw the girl's eyebrows stretch higher and higher.

"I thought you were more of a math and science guy," she confessed. "I had no idea you were so well-read."

"Expertise in one area doesn't necessarily negate the proficiency of another," was his reply, but there was a little upwards curve to his mouth, as if he was suppressing a smile.

"I suppose you're right," Megumi said sensibly. Her arms were done putting her things in her bag, and she slipped it over her small, yet sturdy, shoulders.

"Well, see you later," she said, and he caught a quick flash of her friendly smile before she turned away.

-x-

It had occurred to Yanagi that Kurosawa had easily been the prettiest girl he shared a decent conversation with in two years or so.

Perhaps he wasn't used to collecting data on girls. He was acutely aware that his database on females were limited. What he had observed about the female species came mostly from his own conclusions from living with his older sister, and he'd long since concluded that his data was insufficient for him to interact comfortably with the opposite sex.

About half of the girls in Rikkaidai were focused on what they wanted to do in the future; if they so much as looked at him, it would probably to glare at him as they aimed for the highest possible class rank. The other half had money and popularity - a result of Rikkaidai being one of the elite schools in the Kanagawa prefecture - and he would have been smited on spot if he was brave enough to approach them. He wasn't. Yanagi was fine with being pegged as that "weird guy who always closes his eyes", but to be humiliated openly in front of people wasn't an option he was willing to consider.

Frankly, if he hadn't been part of the Three Demons, Yanagi often thought he'd have no friends at all. It wasn't that he wasn't willing to be a friendly person - it was more that the opportunities he wanted to happen never really had a chance to come to fruition.

He could solve physics equations and analyze the mole ratio of two reactants, but when it came to socialization, he was mostly at a loss.

Of course, there had been teachers and next-door neighbors that resembled his sister; friendly enough, but not enough commitment to deepen their relationship to anything more than acquaintances. He used to have a chemistry lab partner who was also a girl, but she'd been more interested in getting a good grade than anything else.

-x-

(The day after he met her in the library they had been assigned a group project over narrative perspective over their book.

Kurosawa had asked him politely to be his partner.

His data told him there would have been no advantage in it whatsoever. She obviously didn't understand the material as well as he did, and he would have been uncomfortable working with her as she was more of an acquaintance rather than friends.

Then again, he wasn't quite sure of the idiot who told him to say, "Yes, that would be nice.")

-x-

Yukimura is sweetly demonic in the way he executes and carries out his orders to the tennis team.

"You know, sometimes I think it's a miracle that we're still doing this," Yukimura said as he, Sanada, and Yanagi were walking to tennis courts.

"Miracles don't exist," Sanada said bluntly.

Yukimura was amused. "I only meant to say that I didn't expect to have the same team from middle school all the way to high school."

"Or perhaps we'd be more afraid of what you'd say to us if we resigned from the team," Yanagi observed.

"Are you two suggesting that I run this club on fear alone?" the bluenette asked him playfully.

Neither of his companions bothered to deign Yukimura with a response.

"Anyways, I still think it's sort of a miracle how we've all stuck together," Yukimura said again once he was sure that neither of them were going to answer him. He loosened his tie just slightly. "I mean, I feel like I'm fifteen again. Except a lot better."

Yanagi and Sanada stiffened at the mention of his illness. They remembered that year all too clearly.

"Of course you are," Sanada said immediately.

Yanagi could see that Yukimura liked to mention his illness to provoke a reaction out of them. The reason remained unknown to him.

At the same time, it reminded Yanagi that his icy blue eyes had never ceased to watch carefully over their team.

And he knew that Yukimura would rather quit than let their team down again.

-x-

All of the team members play tennis for different reasons.

For Marui, he does it because he wants to show off.

For Kirihara, it's a passion that will never die.

For Yagyuu, it's an alternative path in high school.

For Niou, it's his partner that lures him in.

For Jackal, it's his only way to be accepted in a culturally-homogeneous society.

For Sanada, it's another way to channel discipline and honor.

For Yukimura, it is a lifeline.

-x-

By some weird twist of fate or destiny, she'd gotten cleaning duty after school with Yukimura.

Haruka decided this wasn't actually a bad thing.

"You know, Yukimura-san, you're actually different from what I thought you'd be."

He was in the middle of sweeping the floor with a broom and pan. "Is that so?" he asked, not looking up to meet her eyes. "What did you expect me to be?"

"Mmm... I guess I thought you'd be more of of a demanding person. You know, kind of pushy."

He laughed. It was a tinkling, pleasant sound.

"You're not completely wrong on that assumption, Kasamatsu-san. I push my teammates around and demand perfection from them."

"I meant like in public."

"Even more so. If they're not worth my time, I don't acknowledge them."

Haruka rolled her eyes. "That's not demanding, that's just plain arrogance."

He smiled. Yukimura rather liked her honesty.

-x-

"You two seem to be getting along well," Megumi said.

Haruka paused. "Not really. I mean, we're classmates, but we're not friends or anything."

"Oh," Megumi said. "Well... that's good, I guess."

If Megumi was telling the truth, she would have said that she felt put-out that Yukimura actually said "Ohayou, Kasamatsu-san" while they were walking to school that morning. It told her two things.

One, he acknowledged her existence.

Two, they were on talking terms.

Yukimura didn't like to waste his time or energy on things that he didn't enjoy. It was the way he was, and if Haruka could hold his attention for this long into the year...

Who was to say that he wasn't interested in her, girlfriend or no girlfriend?

-x-

a/n: I think this is like, one of the worst chapters I've written. Please forgive me for the utter suckiness.

Am currently sick, so I don't care at all to edit this. When I write I get tired of reading what I've written. :P

For those people who care, Kurosawa Megumi looks like Mogami Kyoko from Skip Beat! before she bleached and cut her hair. She's supposed to be cute, not beautiful (or bishoujo-whatever it is)

Haruka (to me, anyways) looks like Sohma Kana from Fruits Basket.