Early update to celebrate the start of my school holidays (2 weeks of writing and ignoring my responsibilities more like). Enoy the update!

4 – fingers gripped tight and led into fear

"H-How-?"

"How did I get in?"

Yasuka, typically not one to be caught off guard, was both surprised and thoroughly stunned.

"Yeah…" she mumbled.

"Your mum." Rika, the surprise visitor, explained rather vaguely.

It shouldn't have been so shocking, really. Rika and Yasuka had been friends for years, since they were children learning to walk, and Yasuka knew that it wasn't Rika lying on her own bed, reading magazines, that made her stutter – it was the content of the magazines.

"Any reason why you've grown suddenly interested in fashion, Rika?"

Yasuka could hardly fathom it. Always, she had been the one to dress up, to look pretty and keep intensely in tune with her feminine side. Rika, despite the occasional floral hair decoration, was a tomboy through and through. True to her more irritable nature, Rika muttered an insult under her breath.

"Is it because of a boy?" Yasuka inquired. "Is it the Boy?"

"Maybe I'm just trying to understand why you waste so much time trying to impress other people this way." Rika offered.

"After seventeen years?"

"I said maybe."

"So, it's that guy you like then?" decided Yasuka, needing no further talk to infer this. What was fundamental to understanding the difference between the two was that Yasuka always cared about how she looked, and Rika never did.

"Maybe!" reiterated Rika, "Is there a problem with that?"

"Whether you want to look good for yourself or for someone else, it's okay. So long as it's your choice, and it's what you're comfortable with-"

"That's why I would never wear some of this stuff. Besides, I'm just too tall…"

Yasuka dumped her bag in the corner of her bedroom. "Every girl can be beautiful if they try hard enough. Really hard, in your case."

The swish of the magazine pages could be heard, quickly followed by a thud as it collided with Yasuka's head.

"Shut up." growled Rika.

"Don't come here if you don't want to talk to me then."

"Did you not hear what I just said?"

"You said 'shut up'."

"So shut up."

Yasuka grinned, not in the childishly innocent way she did as school, but broadly and with obvious delight at her friend's irritation.

A conversation persisted as Yasuka moved around her room, tidying the few things that had been left out of place in Rika's presence.

"Anyway, how's your situation with the Boy going?" she short haired girl asked.

"It's not."

"Why don't you just tell him how you feel, instead of tiptoeing around each other?"

Rika let out a strangled sigh. "You wouldn't understand." She decided.

Having made her way to her bed, Yasuka took a seat and turned her attention towards he friend. "Wouldn't I?" she retorted after a moment's hesitation.

"Wouldn't you?" Rika echoed, growing confused, "Do you like someone?"

"Ah, no."

"You do."

"I so do not."

"Who is it? From your school or mine?"

"Rika," Yasuka declared, "everyone at your school is either obnoxiously talented, or a complete idiot. Your boyfriend is both."

"He's not my boyfriend-!" Rika exclaimed, vehement for no particular reason; especially given how much she did like him and would very much like him to be what Yasuka called him.

"He is."

"-And he's called Atsushi."

"I'm definitely not going to be calling him one of your weird, couple names." Yasuka teased.

Had Rika not been so far away and so comfortable on the bed, she might have slapped the other girl. "It's his first name, and you would call him Murasakibara."

"Jeez, what a mouthful."

Her knee slammed into Yasuka's calf. Given how remarkably tall Rika was, it was unsurprising that she had accumulated most of the space on the double bed.

"Don't complain," snapped Rika, "Anyway, back to the point; are you having…what do you call it? Boy troubles?"

Yasuko scowled at the thoughts then provoked. "Remember almost two weeks ago?"

"Yeah."

"And we were out after dark? And I was dressed as a boy then, and you crashed into that idiot with the blue hair?"

"I remember."

"His name is Daiki Aomine."

Rika clapped her hands twice. "What?! Really?" she enthused, with an extreme amount of sarcasm and over exaggerated facial expressions.

"No, you really don't understand how terrible this." Yasuka denied. "Aomine goes to Tōō Academy with me, and he knows."

"That you cross-dress?"

She nodded. "He saw the scar on my hand, and obviously connected the dots and well…he hasn't told anyone yet, but so far I've had to buy him chocolate, lunch for three days, and he won't leave me alone."

"File a complaint." Rika offered mildly.

"You're a terrible confident, you know?" Yasuka informed her friend.

"I know."

Rika refrained from elaborating immediately. It gave Yasuka the chance to glance in the mirror, running her fingers through her hair to neaten it up. Short though it was already was, she was considering a haircut to trim away all the split ends.

"What's so bad about someone knowing anyway?" Rika continued eventually, staring at the ceiling, "So what you dress as a boy and run around with your thug group?"

Yasuka corrected her out of habit. "Friends."

"Underlings."

"Friends."

"And also members of your gang."

A long, weighted sigh escaped Yasuka. "Fine, we're a gang; but don't talk about it so loudly. I can't have my mum or sister hearing."

"I thought your sister knew about it already."

"Nah. Only that all those late night outs aren't exactly spent the way I say they are."

"And here I was thinking you were such a goody-two-shoes…" Rika lamented sardonically.

Yasuka merely pulled her legs closer to her, using her feet to hold up her uniform skirt. "Come on Rika, you know that's just an act for school."

"Well, thank god for that. Imagine if people actually liked you for you."

"If you're going to be a bitch about it, you can leave." concluded Yasuka irritably. Every time this topic was brought up, squabbling was assured.

Rika lifted her hands up until they cushioned her head. Today, she had forgone her floral hair decorations, leaving shoulder-length black hair to hang straight and unbound. "I just think," she muttered, "That you're not happy, and it's because you're so caught up in these lies."

"These lies are there for a reason."

"Hm?"

"A gang lifestyle isn't exactly suited for everyone. It's dangerous, and I'm not," Yasuka emphasised this with a vague hand gesture, "going to involve my family. I'd rather have everyone think I'm a boy, and have them target a fake me, then ever put my mum or Chihiro in any kind of danger."

"Oh, right." Rika remarked, remembering even as Yasuka explained it.

Yasuka, from her sitting position on the bed, could watch the change of emotions openly displayed upon her friend's face. Understanding morphed to curiosity.

"What is it?" inquired Yasuka.

"Nothing." Rika lied quickly.

Taking this to mean it was anything but, the other persisted. "What?"

"It's not true, so it doesn't matter."

"Clearly it does."

"I said it was nothing. In what world does 'nothing' translate to 'it matters'?"

Yasuka scowled without realising it. Around Rika, it was so blissfully easy to forget about reputation or the pressures of society; friends like that were rare and best kept close. Only Yasuka wasn't mindful of this, and so didn't hesitate to recorrect her friend with a quick kick to the leg.

"Ow!"

"How dare you come into my house-"

"What the hell-?!"

"My room-"

It was blatantly clear that Yasuka was being dramatic for the sake of drama.

"Will you shut up?" Rika moaned.

"How rude! Why am I even friends with you?"

Rika gifted Yasuka with a violent nudge with her own foot. "Fine!" the taller girl relented. "Jeez, it wasn't even that big of a deal…"

"You're the one who made it one." Yasuka noted.

"That was you."

The short haired girl smiled brightly, abruptly changing the subject. "So, what were you thinking?"

Rika probably would've shrugged if she hadn't been lying down. "Just that maybe you dress as a boy around your gang because you think they might respect you more."

"I-"

"Which is stupid, of course." Rika quickly added. She was right, as Yasuka well knew she was living proof of a women's capability. Rika even had her very own fan club, due to the commonness of her fist fights.

Yasuka nodded, twirling a curl of her hair around her finger. "I know." She said.

But you're right, she thought.

And so I suppose I should mention the Murasakibara/OC story that interacts with this. Really, it's more of a backstory and the details of it won't be mentioned.

Next chapter: Yasuka finds herself in a strangely normal situation with a very particular person who cannot keep his mouth shut.