A/N: I never knew I was able to write such short chapters. Ah well, here's another. Disclaimer applies as always.

Chapter Four- Candy Pebbles

Kaoru was convinced, as he sat in the metal bathtub scrubbing his legs again that English mud was somehow stickier than anywhere else in the world and somehow got through everything. Despite the wellington boots and the jeans he had been wearing the day before, he had still come and found mud on his legs. He had washed a dozen times last night, but even this morning he was convinced his legs were still stained. He would have complained to Ellie, except he hadn't seen her. She was always up far earlier than him, but she would usually come down and make him breakfast and sit with him while he ate. This morning there had been just a bowl and spoon and box of cereal on the table with a note giving directions to the fridge and she was nowhere in sight. He wondered if she was even in the house. She had said she had things she had to do today, although she had yet to be more specific. Oh well, it wasn't like he cared. A day away from her dull company had to be beneficial. He had definitely been too nice to her yesterday. His target of 'the end of the week' seemed to be less and less within his reach. After all, that only left today and he wasn't even going to see her. Unless he forced himself on her.

Resigning himself to having tan-coloured knees for the rest of his life, Kaoru got out of the bath and picked up his clothes. Then he had a better idea and wrapped his towel around his waist instead, walking down the landing to bang on Ellie's door.

"Yes?" She opened the door, eyes and hair wild. She looked like she hadn't slept.

"I haven't got any clean clothes." Kaoru lied, trying to sound as rude as possible. "I'm supposed to be your guest and you haven't even done any laundry? What kind of host are you? I'm having a hard enough time being here as it is, when my brother is lying all alone on his sick bed on the other side of the world, and I haven't even the solace of clean clothes. You're meant to be looking after me and so far all you've done is get my clothes dirty and not give me any clean ones. It's kind of bad manners, you know?"

"You'd know all about bad manners." She sighed. "Kaoru-san, I'm sorry, I don't have time for this right now. If you need clean clothes, the washing machine is in the kitchen. The instruction manual is on top." She added, correctly guessing he wouldn't have used one before. With that she shut the door. Kaoru looked at it, stunned. Had Ellie just stood up to him? It seemed almost impossible. Still, if she was getting fed up, it couldn't take much more to get her to lose her temper and send him home. He just had to needle her a little more.

"Hey." He shouted through the door. "I'm worried about Hikaru and missing him a lot, you know. You could be a little more sympathetic!"

"Hikaru-san only has the chicken pox." She answered, flatly. "You'll be able to go home soon. My parents have been gone for over a year now."

Kaoru didn't answer. For the first time, he wondered if that fact bothered her. Then he realised what time he had seen on the clock behind her when she had opened her door. Victoria would be here any minute.

He dashed back to the bathroom to get dressed. Annoying Ellie would have to wait. Surely it couldn't take long now. All he had to do was nag her to do laundry and ironing and wait until she did to reveal he had enough clothes to last a month. Then she would hate him for sure.

*

For the first time, Kaoru felt he might actually be able to like England, given enough time. This was closer to what he had imagined when he had said in the past he wanted to holiday here. The sun was shining properly and it was pleasantly warm. Strolling along Worcester's canals, under old stone bridges, stopping occasionally to look at flowers or a plaque to a great fisherman or markers showing how high the river had flooded, he could almost ignore the cars zooming around the roundabouts and car parks nearby. There were swans on the canal and boats of all kinds. His companion saw him looking at them.

"Want to take a boat ride?" Victoria asked.

"Sure." He answered, and they went to join the queue for a boat trip. There wasn't much to see, but it was pleasant and relaxing as they floated along in the sun, and conversation flowed easily between them. Here, Kaoru thought, was a kindred spirit- not like Ellie, who he seemed to have nothing in common with. If only his parents had arranged for him to stay with Victoria instead...

"Kaoru, look!" She said excitedly, pointing at a narrow boat opposite. These boats fascinated Kaoru, the long thin brightly painted boats that people could live on. It seemed impossible to him, but he loved them all the same. The one Victoria was pointing at had its name on the side like the rest, but this time in kanji. "It's written in Japanese! What does it say?"

Truthfully, Kaoru didn't have a clue. It was written in Chinese rather than Japanese. Had Ellie made that mistake, he would have teased her brutally, but he couldn't bring himself to do it to Victoria. So instead of telling the truth, he said "It's called...um... The Summer Serenade."

"That sounds nice." Victoria sighed, resting her head on his shoulder. "Kind of... romantic."

Kaoru was about to reply when he noticed the Chinese tourists on the other side of the boat smirking at him knowingly. He blushed and said nothing, feeling the warm weight of her head nuzzling into his neck the rest of the journey.

*

They walked along the high street, but underneath the old fashioned buildings, all swirling Victorian stone work, were just ordinary shops, the international brands Kaoru had in Japan. Smiling, Victoria suggested they visited the Shambles.

Kaoru wasn't familiar with the word shambles, but when she explained what it meant he wasn't sure why he would have any reason to go to a place that was in such ruin. Still, it was Victoria, and when she was leading him by the hand he couldn't stop himself from following.

Not far from the high street, too close to be believed, was a place like stepping back in time. Narrow cobbled streets wound between buildings Victoria said were hundreds of years old, the black and white kind with beams, where the top floor was bigger than the bottom floor because they couldn't get it to balance any other way. There were tea shops and old fashioned sweet shops and all sorts of proper English things tucked away in there, and Kaoru finally felt as if he was enjoying himself. Stooping slightly to get under the low door frame, he ducked into the sweet shop, looking at all the old confectionary standing on shelves in jars.

"I love places like this." Victoria twittered. "It's like pick and mix but more fun."

"How do I order?" Kaoru asked.

"You just ask for what you want. It's sold by weight." She looked at the jars herself. "Hmm... I'll have a hundred grams of chocolate raisins, please."

"It's alright." Kaoru said as the shopkeeper reached up for the jar. "Don't worry about it. I'll just have a hundred grams of everything. Oh, and two sticks of rock and five of those sugar mice things."

"Kaoru!" Victoria was shocked. "It's two pounds for every hundred grams! And the sugar mice are a pound each! Do you know how much it will cost?!"

"Do you know how much money I have?" Kaoru answered.

She laughed. "Fine, if you want to spend it all on sweeties, go ahead. You're going to be sick."

"We can share." Kaoru shrugged. "I'll take the rest home for Hikaru."

"Aww... that's so nice..." She wrapped her arm around him and squeezed him in a half hug as the shop keeper got to work. "You're a sweet guy, Kaoru."

He smirked. "Yeah. With all this lot, I'll be a really sweet guy."

Victoria blinked, then shook her head in exasperation. "A bad pun. Now you're really British."

They left the shop some time later, Kaoru carrying a carrier bag with many little separate paper bags inside so the sweets didn't get mixed up. Inside those bags were Pear drops, fruit drops, cherry drops, rhurbarbs and custards, toffee bon bons, strawberry bon bons, lemon bon bons, jelly teddies, jazz drops, white jazz drops, nut clusters, sherbet lemons, cola cubes, silver ball bearings, white mice, pink pigs, chocolate raisins, chocolate buttons, white chocolate buttons, strawberry and white chocolate buttons, smarties, minstrels, fizzy strawberries, jelly cherries, fizzy keys, foam snakes, foam mushrooms, cola bottles, fizzy cola bottles, milk bottles, strawberry milkshake bottles, jelly rings, orange boiled sweets, lemon boiled sweets, pear boiled sweets, raspberry boiled sweets, strawberry boiled sweets, strawberry shoelaces, lime shoelaces, fizzy shoelaces, flying saucers, mini eggs, tooti fruiti, fruit rock pieces, mint humbugs, candy pebbles and wine gums; as well as the rock and the sugar mice.

It had been a well-stocked sweet shop. Not so much any more. He was so excited over them that Victoria didn't have the heart to point out that more than half of what he had bought had probably been ripped off a Haribo recipe in the 1970s. There were only so many traditional English sweet recipes still in existence, after all.

"We still have some time before the last bus home." Victoria said. "Why don 't we go see a film?"

"Sounds good." Kaoru agreed. "At least we'll have plenty to eat."

She laughed again and lead the way. It was such a pretty sound.

*

They ended up watching what was a fairly standard rom-com, but after such a nice day and in such good company he couldn't help but enjoy it. They laughed a lot, not at the jokes in the film but at the comments the other passed on how stupid or rubbish it was. The film had every cliché in the book, and yet Kaoru knew it would be one of his best cinema experiences. It felt good to be beside her, knowing she was paying more attention to him than to the film.

He had pulled a bag of sweets out at random and it had turned out to be the candy pebbles. They chewed their way through happily, until Kaoru realised there was only one left in the bag.

"There's only one left?" He frowned. "I should save it for Hikaru. Unless we go back for more..."

"I only just ate one." Victoria replied, quietly. "Maybe you can still taste it."

With that, she reached up and pressed her lips to his.

On screen, the romantic music swelled.

*

A/N: You know, Kaoru must have spent about £100 in that sweet shop. D: Did everyone recognise all the different kinds of sweets? It reminds me of childhood... At time of writing, he spent about $156.12, according to the currency convertor. Actually, I'm surprised, I didn't realise the pound was quite so weak... although, saying that, when the Euro first came in I remember the conversion was about 1 Euro to 60p. Then it was 75p, then 80p, now 87p. Whoo, recession... although if there wasn't a recession I might have been able to get a job by now so I wouldn't be sitting here, you know, writing bad fanfiction. XD Swings and roundabouts, as they say...

Next time is the aftermath of the kiss. How will Kaoru react?! Dun dun duuuuuuuuun, etc.