Disclaimer: Takaya Natsuki is the rightful owner. I'm merely borrowing her creations for my own diabolical ideals. No, really.

A/N: Bear with me, everyone. I am still undergoing introductions of many more characters to come. XD However, the characters I'll be adding/have added will all play some sort of role, and I'm (hopefully) gonna make sure that they won't simply fade into the background after a while. And one goal I set for myself is to not create a OC for once. XD It's a bad habit of mine, and I want to at least exclude OCs from this story. And please don't hate me for what I did to Rin in this story. She's not a major character, so you can ignore her. X3

Text in this format is a event from the past.

Please read and review. Thanks a bunch if you do: ) Also, sorry for the super, super, super late update. My muse is sorta out of it because I am not getting a lot of reviews, and I am pretty much very busy now.

Life's Many Indulgences
Chapter 4: Who'd Of Thought?

"Hmmm, I wonder what all the hype could be about?" Yuki thought out loud to himself.

Little did he know that someone was sneaking up behind him. "Geez, Mr. President--"

"It's Yuki."

"--you should perfectly understand what all the hype is about." She paid his interruption no mind. Kimi waggled a finger at her now somewhat irritated student council president. "As the president, and me being your first vice president, it should be more obvious to you than it is to me as to what all the hype is about, understand?"

"Huh? You're confusing me," Yuki told her. He didn't really understand why the president of any club or whatnot should know more than their vice presidents. Information usually circulate in many different ways from person to person.

"I'll explain the hype for you, then." Kimi cleared her voice and tucked her hands behind her back before beginning. "As of today we have two new transfer students coming to our school." She looked at Yuki expectantly.

"And?" Yuki asked. He wasn't sure what she wanted him to do at this point.

"Jump for joy! Celebrate!"

"Wh-why?" Yuki was looking at Kimi like she had gone insane. Transfer students wasn't a uncommon thing, and he didn't see a reason for any sort of alarm in the first place.

"We should welcome them, you know? We are the student council, aren't we?" Yuki nodded while sweat dropping at the same time. He could see where his number one vice president was leading this conversation. "Let's throw them a party! Just us student council members and them! What do you say?"

"No."

"No?" Kimi looked hurt. "But, why?"

"You already have Kakeru, so you needn't go boy-scouting. That's not something you should be doing when you're going out with someone." Kimi's hurt expression became a deep-set frown. "I honestly don't understand how he can put up with you."

Instead of taking offense by Yuki's words, Kimi was rather enlightened. "It's because he loooovvveesssss me a lot. And I loooovvvveeee him a lot, too. Even if I go boy-scouting he knows that I won't do anything funny."

"A relationship like that, in my standards, would fall apart really, really fast," Yuki analyzed.

"Man, you really are the Virgo of the horoscope, eh?"

"What do you mean?"

"You should at least know what your own sign means, Mr. President."

"I've told you to call me Yuki, Kimi." He made sure to say her name a tad bit more loudly than his own.

"Yuki," Kimi finally said, "your horoscope sign means that you're very analytical, and tend to take things piece by piece, instead of looking at it as a whole. You're completely set on communication, though, so I can see why you need a lot of explanations before you understand something." Yuki's right eyebrow twitched then, but Kimi didn't seem to notice. "Since you're the Virgo and it's a Mutable Sign, you can easily adapt to any situation, and have no problems working through it."

". . . Did you read that out of some sort of horoscope book?"

"Yeah. It was a few years ago. Funny how I remember the Virgo, but none of the others whatsoever," Kimi replied.

"Is that so . . . You don't even remember your own?" Kimi shook her head. Yuki had a inkling feeling that she was purposely saying these things to annoy him.

"So, we're going to hold a party for the newcomers?"

"Decide it amongst yourselves. You have my permission, I suppose."

At the top of her lungs, Kimi shouted, "everyone, we're going to throw a part for the newcomers! Yuki says it's okay!" All the student council members stopped what they were doing to look at Kimi. Yuki sighed - she didn't "discuss" anything amongst the other members at all. Supposedly, he was to be excluded from their decisions, but not this time. "I'll make sure Yuki makes an announcement on the speakers for all to know tomorrow!"

"Kimi!" Yuki literally cried.

"What?" she asked.

"You are the one who wants to throw this party, so you can be the one to announce it."

The reason Yuki said this was because he didn't want all the fanatics to come barging at the student council room simply because he spoke through the intercom. It was a lame reason, really, but just like Kyo, Yuki gets tired of his fans, too.

"You're the president. It'd be better if you did it."

"I'll pass," Yuki replied.

"No, I insist. Like I said before, it'd be better if you did it." Kimi wasn't going to give up that easily.

XOXOXOXOXOX

"Woooowwww, this school is so big!" A young blonde-haired teen marveled at how large the hallways were compared to his old high school. He wasn't there long, but he got to know the people and the surroundings pretty quickly. "It's even better that you're here with me, too, Haru."

"Oh?" Haru would like a valid reason. "And why's that?"

Kishida Momiji and Shimazaki Hatsuharu (better known as Haru) were really close friends, believe it or not. It was purely by chance that they transferred to the same high school on the same day, because neither one of them knew as to why the other came here. In all actuality, they hadn't seen each other well over a year now, and Momiji was obviously ecstatic that he'd run into an old friend again.

"Well, we only kept in touch through e-mails since we lived far apart because you moved, remember?"

"That's true."

"And luck would have it that we'd end up at the same high school on the same day. I don't mind making new friends, because it's really easy to do. However," Momiji widely smiled, "since you're here with me, it seems like we can make more new friends together."

Despite their distinct personalities, Momiji and Hatsuharu met one another under a very strange circumstance, and it was because of them meeting one another that they became steadfast friends.

XOXOXOXOXOX

Both Momiji and Hatsuharu was no younger than nine when they first met one another. Momiji caught a glimpse of a lonely-looking boy sitting on a bench by himself. He wasn't looking at anything in particular, and it seemed like he was waiting for someone, but nonetheless Momiji still approached him. The first thing the other boy noticed about Momiji was that he appeared to be oddly cheery for such a morbid atmosphere. For a few moments all the either of them did was stare at one another until Momiji offered out a hand to the other boy.

"Hi, I'm Kishida Momiji," he said.

"Shimazaki Hatsuharu." He couldn't understand why the blonde was smiling. He wanted to ask him about his expression, but he decided not to.

"I bet you wanna know why I'm smiling," Momiji said. Hatsuharu neither nodded nor said anything, but he wanted to know. The blonde was reading him like an open book; Hatsuharu actually found it kind of creepy. "I'm smiling because my dad says we're getting a new puppy."

"You are smiling over that?" Hatsuharu asked. "And in a place like this?"

"Hm? Gee, we're at the cemetery, aren't we?" Hatsuharu rolled his eyes at him. "What brings you here, Hatsuharu?"

"Just call me Haru." Hatsuharu looked up at the sky and sighed. "After all, it reminds you of the spring, doesn't it?"

"You look awfully lonely. Do you want to be my friend?" Hatsuharu merely looked at Momiji. "I know you probably lost a loved one, and so have I, but I'm not going to let it get to me. If she were alive right now, my grandma that is, I know she'd scold me for sure if she knew that I was crying because she's passed away."

"You're strange," was all Hatsuharu said.

"You're not the only one that thinks so. I get that comment a lot." Momiji laughed.

XOXOXOXOXOX

"Hey, Momiji, do you somehow think that I appear different?"

"In what way?" Momiji asked.

"Ah, never mind."

"I can probably guess the reason why you're here, Haru." Intrigued by the blonde, the other teen bade him to continue. "Girl trouble is what I'm sensing from you."

"Yeah, I have a girlfriend back at my other school. I never mentioned about her to you through e-mails at all; it's shocking how you can figure me out so easily." Momiji laughed - Hatsuharu hadn't heard his laughing voice in a really long time. It felt nice to hear it again. "Her name's Amiya Isuzu, but I call her Rin for personal reasons. She and I hit it off pretty easily when I asked her to be my girlfriend. At first, everything seemed to be going really well until her grades started to plummet, and her parents then found out that she was seeing me. They thought I was the only reason there could be for her academic failure, even though Rin claims that isn't the case."

"Hmmm, bummer, huh?"

"I suppose." Hatsuharu frowned for this last part. "The real reason her grades plummeted was because she was cheating on me behind my back, and I guess she was distracted by the guilt she was feeling."

"Ouch."

"It doesn't bother me too much anymore. I dumped her after she told me. She said she was quite relieved that it wasn't as hard on me as she thought it would be. Hmph, that bitch . . ."

Momiji sweat dropped. Apparently, from the way Hatsuharu was referring to her, he was sure that it did bother him more than he was showing. Having heard his friend's reason for transferring, he thought it only fair that he told Hatsuharu his reason.

"Haru, the reason I transferred here was because my dad found a new job at a new location, so me going to my other school was no longer convenient. I didn't really mind the long train rides, but after a while it started to affect my health. I was getting up way too early, and the air in the subway tunnels are never too good for you when you're down there too much like I was. My mom got really worried so she absolutely insisted that I come to a school closer to my dad's new workplace. As a result, here I am right beside you."

"By the way, Momiji, who's your homeroom teacher?" Hatsuharu asked.

"Mrs. Kunagi."

"Same here. Looks like we're gonna be classmates." Hatsuharu smiled for the first time that day. "With you around, I think I'll enjoy school more so than I did before."

"Awwwwww!" Momiji was squealing like a schoolgirl, but really though, he could pass off as one if he had longer hair and dressed in female attire. "You're such a good friend, Haru!"

"As of you."

XOXOXOXOXOX

"Why are you holding that lacquered soup bowl, Tooru?" a dark-haired girl asked.

"Ah, well, Saki, this is Yuki's, and I want to return it to him."

"Calling the school prince, Yuki instead of Usuda? Are you two an item?" another girl asked. She had long blondish-colored hair that came down to her armpits.

"Not at all!" Tooru replied.

"Arisa, don't tease Tooru."

"Ahahaha, my bad." Arisa stuck her tongue out playfully. "But Tooru is making it hard for me to think otherwise."

Uotani Arisa and Hanajima Saki were Tooru's two and only friends here at the high school. They were friends ever since middle school and they all made sure to attend the same high school together, as well. This was a little oath the three of them said to one another at their last year of junior high; Arisa, being the one to come up with the oath of course. Lasting friendships usually never sever for life. Arisa was only making sure their bonds didn't tear away.

"The prince usually passes this way, doesn't he?" Saki asked.

"I find it strange that you don't notice him when you pass by him everyday through this long stretch of a hallway," Arisa pointed out. "Has your so-called electrical waves blocked him off?"

"You could say that," Saki replied. "He's already teeming up enough fish from the sea without me being added into his net." Arisa shook her head in confusion. "Getting caught by such a fishermen as him will eventually make you suffocate to death from the lack of water."

"Huh?" Arisa was even more confused now.

"Oh, I see him coming!" Tooru exclaimed.

Yuki was being closely monitored by an entourage of his fanatics, and he knew it, too. He gave the girls sidelong glances that literally meant they needed to keep their distance this time around; Yuki wasn't sure if they understood him though, because they were still following behind him like a pack of loyal dogs.

It couldn't or it wouldn't be helped because Yuki's fanatics were just as unrelenting as Kyo's were. He was going to talk to Kyo's little sister with the whole lot of females behind him, so it seemed. He sighed.

"Good after noon, Mizunashi." Yuki didn't want to risk the chance of calling her by her first name right now.

"You can--"

"Ah, I know." Yuki sweat dropped when Tooru gave him a perplexed look; she wasn't understanding the situation she was going to put herself in if she were to say: you can call me Tooru, remember? "I remember you telling me that, but for now it is fine the way it is."

"Oh," Tooru smiled, "I see." She then opened her schoolbag and pulled out what appeared to be a lacquered soup bowl. "I thought I'd return this to you. Thank you for being so considerate."

"It wasn't a problem." Yuki took the offered bowl back into his own possession. His fan girls were eyeing it greedily, but he wasn't going to give it to any of them. "May he recover safely."

"I'm sure he will. Everyone who's made him something were so polite to me when they asked me to give their goods to Kyo. He hates leeks, but he ate everything that contained the green tyrant of a vegetable."

Yuki sweat dropped again. Tooru was obviously not seeing the brightest side of the picture of what her brother has to go through every single day that he attends school. Eating leeks even though he didn't like them could not amount to the annoying burden he feels towards his fan girls.

And despite Tooru being like this, it did make leeway to say that she was in the exact same grade as Yuki and Kyo, although she had a different homeroom teacher, of course. Skipping a grade usually meant the person moving on up is in a higher plane of intellect compared to his or her classmates.

Tooru was one special girl. Just like her brother people always found something good about her and they liked her for it. She may be more aware of her capabilities than Kyo, but something they both shared in common made them bond in the most unlikely ways.

Stubbornness must run in the Mizunashi family.

Chapter 4: END