Hey, peoples! *stares at reviews* Wow. That's... a lot of reviews for an hour. There were like, six people who reviewed this story within an hour or two of it being posted. (Layla: What, so first you're depressed that there weren't a lot of people reviewing and now it's too much? Jeez. Make up your mind. Me: No, it's not that. It's great getting lots of reviews. It's just... Wow. Didn't expect that.) Okay. So since you guys have all been so lovely, I've decided that I'm gonna try and get this up fast. Hope that it works. XP So hope you like it!

To Bear Love's Cross

Chapter 7

After all of the high school girls who had mobbed Utau and Amu left, the two said girls had collapsed on the table Ikuto had been sitting on. Their hands were cramping up and neither of them could catch their breath. About five minutes later when they'd managed to get back to normal, Amu sat up and flipped through the pages that had all been filled up. She counted eleven and a half.

"Utau," Amu asked slowly, "How many pages do you have."

Utau groaned. "I don't even want to think about those pages for the next week." But she obligingly sat up and counted hers. "Eight. I probably got less than you because my oh-so-lovely brother called you out and not me."

Amu's heart lifted. "Utau, do you realize how much money this can make us? This will probably be all that it takes to reach our thousand dollar goal."

Utau's face lit up. "This won't just be enough. This will be more than enough! Think about it. How many lines were on each page?"

Amu's eyes glowed. "There were thirty-two on each page. So eight times thirty two equals two hundred and fifty-six-"

"And eleven and a half time thirty-two is three hundred and sixty-eight, and if you add those together you get-"

"Six hundred and twenty-four." All of the breath rushed out of Amu's lungs.

"And all of them ordered about five things apiece. Three thousand and twenty. We just sold three thousand and twenty products. Even after you subtract whatever the cost to make them will be, we have way more than one thousand."

The two girls smiled giddily and laughed. This was great! They would be able to pull off the carnival now! Neither one of them had to do the exact math to how much the ingredients would cost and subtract the amount they would make. It would cost way less than the overall.

"Amu... We did it, didn't we? We got the money." Amu grinned widely and nodded. There was a brief pause and they both squealed, hugging each other.

Suddenly, the school bell rang. Amu sprung up. "I have to get back to school!" As she ran away, she screamed, "Bye, Utau!" The older girl smiled and waved at her retreating back. When the girl disappeared, Utau sighed. This is going to be so much work...

Meanwhile, Amu had spotted Tadase leaning against the wall right outside the cafeteria. "Tadase!" Amu exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"

Some girls love a little kiddy king like you, but all girls love a big bad boy like me. Tadase put a hand behind his back and formed it into a fist. Ikuto. Tadase shook his head. No, he had to get him out of his head. I mean, there's no way that he likes Amu. He's probably seventeen at the youngest. Amu's only twelve. There's no way he could feel about her like that. Tadase tensed. Is there?

"Tadase?" The blonde boy jumped. "Are you okay, Tadase?"

He laughed nervously. "Of course I'm okay! Why do you ask? Oh! You asked why I'm here. It's just that I couldn't find you and I was worried about where you were. Wouldn't want you to be getting into any kind of trouble, would we?" He laughed again. Amu paused before shrugging. Tadase breathed out a sigh of relief. Amu apparently didn't notice it because she showed no expression.

Amu grabbed Tadase's wrist. "Come on! We have to run or we're going to be late for class!" The world slowed down around Tadase as he stared at Amu's hand around his wrist. Amu was touching him. Almost holding his hand. Just a slight adjustment and they'd be holding hands. How hard would it be to do that? And that would certainly show Ikuto what he thought about his little contest. Just a little bit farther-

No! Tadase scolded himself. That's ridiculous! And Amu needs her space. Everyone deserves their own space. Tadase couldn't believe the thought had even crossed his mind. He ran after Amu, ignoring the thoughts he'd had before. How ridiculous could he get?

He didn't know it yet, but he could become quite ridiculous under the right-or wrong-circumstances.


Ikuto looked out the window of his classroom while his teacher lectured about the history of Japan.

He hated teachers when they were lecturing; they would always see him looking out the window and would get upset with him, yelling that he never listened to what they were saying and that it was disrespectful of him to completely ignore those older than him. He didn't understand why they didn't stop; he aced almost all of his tests-when he took them, that is. He wasn't here most of the time. He only showed up just as many days as necessary to pass the grade. He tended to skip days at a time, doing as he pleased.

It wasn't just the teachers though. For entire class periods he could see out of his peripheral vision the girls peeking quick glances at him, always brushing their hair out of their face, or make a face that was meant to be seductive, or something of the sort; it was as if they thought that making looks like that would attract him, or something of that sort. He ignored the glances. He had no use for anything like that.

He smirked. He had no use for it before. Today was a different story. He'd never really done anything like what he did before, but he'd always known how to. He'd been happy to do it today. Helping Amu out like that had made him really happy. He didn't understand why; they'd only seen each other two times. He didn't feel like that for most people he'd known his entire life. It was probably the faces that she'd make. The surprised looks, the blushing and embarrassed looks, the happy looks. And the his favorite. Her smiling face.

"Ikuto!"

He glanced at the teacher out of the corner of his eye. "Yes, sensei?" The word tasted bad in his mouth; he hardly considered this teacher a teacher.

"Just because you get good grades in this class doesn't give you permission to ignore me altogether! If you keep this up then you'll fail!"

Ikuto sighed. "Sensei, if I may say so, I learn better when I only half-focus. When I give my full-on attention to something, I start thinking about other things or get distracted. And then I manage to completely tune the teacher out." Ikuto smirked. "And we wouldn't want that, would we?"

The teacher looked like he would've growled but he restrained himself. "Fine. Do as you wish. But one of these days you'll start getting bad grades and then you'll be sorry."

Ikuto smirked wider. "I'll be waiting."

The teacher glared at him for one more moment before continuing with his lecture. Ikuto turned back to the window. He was surprised at himself. Normally he would act weary about being called back and would just say, "Yes, sensei." But for some reason today he'd gone farther than normal. He wondered why. Maybe it was because he was distracted. More so than usual, that is. He didn't know why.

Ikuto shook his head. It didn't really matter. He would still get an A on the test. He always did. Who really cared why he was distracted?

But a voice in the back of his mind still held on to the matter and reminded him distantly of it for the rest of the day.


Amu and Utau met up after school that day. They were discussing when they would meet up to make the baked goods.

"We could start tomorrow. We can work for a while and try to get as much done as possible. Then we can work every other day."

"Yeah, but if we do that, the ones we make tomorrow will get stale. Then they'd be paying more than what the quality would offer."

"Yeah... We could start tonight and get a lot done. Then we could... Um..."

"How about we get the longer-lasting things done tonight? Like the lemon squares and the taffy. We can just keep those in the refrigerator and they'll be good for whenever we finish everything else."

"But what refrigerator? There's not enough room in both our refrigerators combined to hold all of it."

"Hmm..." Amu thought. "Oh! Don't they have one at the youth center? A really big one that's big enough to hold all of it?"

Utau paused before slowly smiling. "Yep. So we've got it. We can do it. Hey, let's head over there now so we can get started. They have all the stuff we need there. I brought it over before because there wasn't enough room in our house, so I left it over there. We can begin tonight!"

Amu laughed. "Let's go!" Since neither of them had anyone to pick them up, the two of them ran to the center.

When they arrived, Sanjo-san was there, doing paperwork for the youth group. Somehow, she seemed disturbed about something. Maybe it was the way she appeared to be focusing much harder than necessary on the papers.

Amu smiled. It'll make her so happy to hear that we already have the thousand dollars. Especially since we have surplus. Amu skipped up to Sanjo-san, grinning widely. "Sanjou-san!"

The woman jumped and she looked up at Amu. "Oh... Amu. What are you doing here?"

Amu's grin widened. "We passed the thousand dollar mark."

Sanjo-san's eyes widened. "You what?"

Amu nodded. "Yep. We probably have at least two thousand dollars. Isn't this awesome?"

Sanjo-san smiled before her happy expression faded. "We can't."

Amu blinked. Aimultaneously, Amu and Utau said, "What?" Utau walked up beside Amu, not comprehending.

Sanjo-san sighed. "We can do the carnival. We don't have the money."

"What do you mean?" Utau exclaimed. "We just said we have the money. We have more than the money you said we needed. We definitely have-"

"I only required that you make one thousand dollars. That's not enough to hold the carnival you all are thinking of. The Church usually pays for the rest. But we're a small church, and we don't have the money to pay for something like this. I asked the board if directors, but they said no."

There was silence. Then Amu asked the forbidden question: "How much money do we need to pull it off?"

Sanjo-san made a face like she'd really wished Amu hadn't asked. She sighed regretfully before saying the number.

"At least ten thousand dollars."

Dear Lord,
Help me find firm ground in this shaky economy.
As I seek work and assistance,
Give me strength not to be anxious when I seem to be going nowhere;
Give me patience not to despair when things look bleak;
Give me serenity to know you are here with me, helping me to carry my crosses each day;
So that I may do Your will,
For the salvation of souls
And my Eternal Life.
Amen.

Uh oh! What shall they do now? Ten thousand dollars? Oh no! (Layla: What's with the way you're talking? You never talk like that. Me: I just feel like it. It's fun. :) Lol this is fun.) I'm sorry if this chapter is kinda boring... I just needed a chapter to go between this one and the next one cuz having chapter six and the next chapter one right after the other just didn't make any sense. It really cramped time down and it wasn't realistic at all. As realistic as this story can be, that is. XP So what do you guys think? Good, bad? Review, fave, follow, please! :)