This is literally 100% pretty much plotless fluff; I'd say I'm sorry but I'm really not.
"you know how in musicals the couple will start singing the same song no matter how far apart they are? what if that happened in real life. what if you were just at a restaurant one day and you started rANDOMLY SINGING because your soulmate decided to sing a duet in the shower." "what if this is why you get a song stuck in your head! because your soulmate is singing it somewhere!" "i don't want to be soulmates with someone who keeps singing cotton eyed joe." (the-vashta-nerada, kauthecat, and yuekono on tumblr)
PAIRING: EIZAN ETSUYA x YOSHINO YŪKI
"Eizan-san? Are you… humming?"
Etsuya started, furrowing his brow at the sudden and unwanted accusation. He had been laying low at this Elite Ten meeting, as he had been since Central's downfall. While it was true that he had regained some favor among his schoolmates since the insidious plot had been quelled, he wasn't ignorant to the fact that he hadn't been the main catalyst of that. In fact, the real reason why the other students had begun to think he had turned over a new leaf was probably the same reason as to why he was apparently humming out loud in the middle of a meeting.
"No," he denied, though just a second too late.
"He was! He so totally was!" Terunori was cackling now, pointing at the Ninth Seat with no disregard. "Eizan-san, you were definitely humming and I have audio proof!"
"Did you seriously record part of our meeting solely to get blackmail material on our resident Yankee?" Nene asked. "That's both tiring and on-brand for you."
"Look, Glasses-san, he's already derailed us once with his daydreaming of Hood-chan, so it's not like we're interrupting something important," the Third Seat retorted. Nene just began to massage her temples, looking irritated.
"Alright, alright, let's rein it back in," Satoshi said. "We're almost at the end of this meeting, and then Eizan-san can continue to serenade us with his dulcet tones, right?" Etsuya met Satoshi's serene smile with a snarl and a rude hand gesture.
"Okay, okay, order," Sōma called out. "We still need to figure out how we want to allocate some of the RS funds. According to our surveys, some RS's definitely have more money than they'll ever need and others don't have enough to do any worthwhile research. Some of the steps that we've taken include—"
"Is your girlfriend just feeding you these lines?" Alice asked innocently from the side. When met with exasperated looks from the others, she raised her hands in a gesture of mercy. "Hey, I know my cousin, and I know that's how she would talk and not how our darling Sōma-kun chooses to speak. Isn't that right, Ryō-kun?"
The broad-shouldered boy sitting beside her shrugged obediently.
As the other half of the table began to bicker in earnest (Sōma defending his word choice, and denying that he had a girlfriend at all, Alice and Terunori teaming up to tease him further on being coached by Erina on public speaking and how adorable it was, Satoshi halfheartedly trying to settle them down while also "unintentionally" throwing fuel on the fire), Etsuya began to hum mindlessly again. An earworm of a song was stuck in his head again, and at this point he was desperate enough to get it out that he was fine with being caught humming again. The line began to repeat itself in his head, as it had been for the past half an hour, and he felt his sanity slipping away with each beat that passed in the cheerful tune.
"Um, Eizan-senpai? Could you hum that again?"
Etsuya turned to give Megumi a confused and incredulous look. The Tenth Seat flushed but didn't back down, her slightly perplexed expression not fading. "It sounds familiar," she said defensively, "and I want to make sure that my hunch is true."
The Ninth Seat just looked her up and down before reluctantly humming the refrain for her again. Megumi quietly echoed the melody to herself, hesitating a bit before repeating a section. Etsuya drummed his fingers on the table, hoping that the song would leave his head soon. He wasn't the type to keep up with the latest music, so he didn't have much to counter it with, but soon he'd have to try and come up with a different, more preferable melody to hum to himself.
"Oh-!" Megumi exclaimed. The rest of the table cut off their conversation and turned to her, curious about what the normally quiet girl was thinking. Megumi flushed furiously and began to mumble, "Ah, I was looking at some of Sōma-kun's plans and I thought some of the ideas were really good! I just didn't know how to bring it up because we weren't, ah, talking about them..?" Her words trailed off as everyone seemed to collectively realize that they were still obligated to continue their Elite Ten duties despite wanting to spend the rest of the hour teasing Sōma for his denial and obliviousness.
Sōma, for his part, looked extraordinarily relieved and beamed openly at Megumi. "Thanks, Tadokoro. So, back to our original topic, some of the RS's have too much money and others need more. We need to find ways to solve this issue…"
Etsuya found himself zoning out again. He didn't have much he could truly contribute to this discussion, despite all of his connections, if only because the others would definitely not appreciate what he had to add about how horribly the RS's tended to run themselves as businesses. Not everyone had the knowledge of how to intelligently run something of that scale, after all, and just giving children the supplies to do whatever meant that there was going to be some waste.
And that damn song was still stuck in his head. He briefly wondered what god he angered to make this happen.
Etsuya felt a light tap on his arm. When he looked over, baffled, he noticed that it was a note that Megumi was passing to him while looking enraptured in whatever it was that Sōma was saying. Sneering at her expression, Etsuya took the note from her.
"I heard Yoshino-chan singing that the other day while working at the gardens. She learned it overseas. I can't remember what it's called though."
Etsuya resisted the urge to slam his head in the desk. Of course. Of fucking course. It all traced back to the ginger. He began to silently count down the seconds before he could get out of this meeting and go find her and give her a piece of his mind.
Perhaps it was because he was trying to make time move faster that it felt as though it slowed down just to taunt him. As soon as the meeting was closed, Etsuya stood up quickly, threw his papers haphazardly into a briefcase (he got a lot of strange looks for this, as Etsuya was known for his extreme diligence in keeping any important documents pristine), and stormed out.
Sōma blinked. "What do you think that was about?" he wondered out loud.
Satoshi merely chuckled. "Perhaps we will hear of it at dinner tonight," he said, earning himself a few confused looks from all but Megumi, who just smiled at him knowingly.
Etsuya had stormed off to Polar Star in his motor scooter at this point. Pissed didn't quite describe just how utterly annoyed he felt at this entire scenario.
Why the fuck did this girl love to mess with their bond like this?
"Yoshino!" he shouted the second he knew he was in earshot, throwing his scooter to the ground as he marched up to the house, still holding his briefcase. He noticed another girl—the one with the pinkish-red hair and excessive cleavage—and demanded, "Where is that idiot?"
Ryōko just smiled, balancing some of the natto and sake in a woven basket she held as she responded. "She's probably with her livestock again; it's around the time when she goes out to feed them for the afternoon."
Etsuya's nose twitched at the thought of traipsing over to the filthy animals, but he just nodded stiffly to Ryōko before storming off again. Ryōko watched him go before sighing, putting her basket down, and walked over to take care of Etsuya's scooter for him. This was practically routine for them at this point; she knew that she would want to make herself scarce before they really got to screaming at each other.
As promised, Yūki was whistling as she sprinkled some dried corn for her prized chickens. She threw in the last few handfuls of kernels into her pigs' trough before leaning over to grab some of the grass mix that she prepared for the few caribou she managed to get in her collection. Right as she grabbed the handful of hay, a hand laden with thick golden rings clasped her wrist, forcing her to let go of the grass mix.
Yūki smiled but tried to conceal it from her face. She managed to wipe the glee from her face before standing up with her nose to the air.
"I'm sorry, can I help you?" she said with a slight huff.
"Help me? Help me?!" Etsuya let go of her wrist to grab her by the shoulders. "What help could you possibly be, if all you somehow managed to do is distract me from my meetings by singing that silly ditty of yours for days straight! It's all I can hear, it's all I can think of—I was caught humming it today, Yoshino! Humming, and by that idiot Kuga too!"
"It's not my fault that you can't appreciate the finest folk songs that America has to offer," she said with a sniff. "It has a great dance that goes with it as well; I learned it in my trip to Texas."
Etsuya actually snarled at her, taking one step closer to her while still gripping her shoulders. Yūki retaliated by taking a step back, holding her arms behind her so that she knew when she was leaning against the wooden slats of a fence.
"I've tried to be nice to you," he said, his lip curled. His right hand briefly let go of Yūki's shoulder so that he could take his glasses off. "I tried telling you that I was in a precarious position that I didn't need you messing with. I was kind enough to let it go when you babbled off to all of your wonderful housemates" –he spat those last two words— "even when I knew that you knew Isshiki and Yukihira wouldn't be able to keep it in so now the entire rest of the Elite Ten, let alone the entire goddamn school, knows about the two of us being—" He cut himself off.
"Being what, Eizan-san?" Yūki sang out, smirking as she looked up at him through her eyelashes.
Yūki decided that she could definitely make Etsuya's face redder than that with a little bit of effort.
"You are an inexplicable airhead," Etsuya said through his teeth, leaning even farther forward and towering over her.
"I'm your inexplicable airhead," Yūki shot back, raising a hand to run it through his hair. When she managed to grab a good handful of it from the back, she pulled his head backwards slightly, giving herself a little more breathing room. Etsuya growled before forcing himself forward again and kissing her, pressing her against the wooden fence with his fervor. Yūki squeaked slightly in the back of her throat before leaning into the kiss, and Etsuya's arms gradually fell from her shoulders to wrap around her back. At some point, they broke off from each other, partially to catch their breath and partially because their latest round of chase had lost some of its fun with the end of the hunt.
Etsuya was still trying to regain his composure when he heard Yūki hum the first few notes of that infernal melody, but it seemed as though she was starting to sing the words along with the melody now.
"Where did you come from, where did you go?" she twittered, the crafty smile beginning to curl across her face.
"Don't you dare," Etsuya growled, trying to put a hand over her mouth. Yūki managed to slither out of his grasp, ducking beneath his taller form and dancing away from his grasp.
"Where did you come from, Cotton-eye Joe?" she finished, shrieking as Etsuya began to run after her, shouting curses and promises of what he would do to shut her up when he finally caught her for good. It was in those moments that the two forgot their strange, rocky path; the Red-Riding Hood of Polar Star had once stood in stark opposition to the Alquimista, and it had taken the past few weeks of realizing their strange internal bond to get past the inherent hurdles of their strange courtship. Yet, for now, Etsuya was merely a boy who knew that he would one day finally catch the girl whose heart was as wild as the animals she tamed, and that day would mark the beginning of an all new headache, in part due to her horrible music tastes.
I was staring at Eizan's wiki page to write this entire thing because I almost forgot what his character was like. Hopefully this is accurate? I really need to reread the manga, lol.
Hint for next time: I'm having a bit of fun not writing Sōma; let's keep this train rolling. We'll be in a more European country as well, though I think it'll be fun to bring in a girl with firmer roots in Japan along for the ride.