Epilogue

News about the fashion model, Ayase Chitose's younger sister starting to date the soccer heartthrob, Mashima Taichi, spread through campus like wildfire, thanks to a group of friends – who would remain unnamed in the meantime – who had made too much of a big deal of it when Taichi had told them about the night he had finally confessed to Chihaya.

While Nishida and Komano had been quite satisfied with the outcome of his story, Oe-san and Hanano-san had practically chewed his ears off for settling for such a half-baked answer from the oblivious Chihaya.

"So, what, are you guys dating already?" Hanano-san had asked him when he called her on the phone to inform her of his breakthrough.

"Isn't that what usually happens after two people decide they like each other?" Taichi had countered.

"Oh, god… You didn't ask her if she'd go out with you, did you?"

"I don't think that was necessary. I told her I love her, and she… well… she kind of said she did, too."

"We're talking about Ayase-senpai here!"

Crap…

Taichi wondered how women could be so annoyingly accurate. Chihaya had avoided him for two days before finally having the decency to pick up her phone when he called her the hundredth time to ask what was wrong. When Chihaya had done nothing but stutter at him before hanging up, Taichi had started to believe that perhaps Oe-san and Hanano-san had been right; Chihaya had no clue whatsoever on what to do with Taichi's feelings for her. Or better yet, she had no clue on what to do with her feelings.

Taichi felt an angry vein throb on his forehead as he stuffed his mobile phone into his back pocket. This was not what he had imagined how things were going to be after his confession.

Then again, he had imagined something far, far worse…

But to have finally poured his heart out to her, then even came as far as kiss her…

"She has the emotional capacity of a nine-year-old," Taichi muttered to himself as he slammed his locker door shut, frustrated at the turn of events. He could not believe he had antagonized himself for years and years to come up with a way for him to tell her he loved her.

And it had been perfect.

Well, maybe not really perfect. But it came very close to being perfect. She even did not deny the fact that she needed him.

And then they kissed.

And now Chihaya was no where to be found.

Damn her.

"Excuse us…"

He glanced up to see two blushing girls standing beside him, looking up at him with watery eyes. They were clutching at each others' hands the way girls did when they were watching a very, very intense noonday drama.

"I-is it true, Mashima-san? A-are you really seeing Ayase Chihaya-san?" one of the smaller of the girls asked, then gripped the hand of her friend even tighter.

Taichi could not help but take a quick step back at the sudden realization, utterly at a loss for words. Oe-san and Hanano-san were right! His confession had not been perfect! If he had made a fool-proof proposal, he would have taken this sudden interview into stride, smile down at the girls and say, "Yes, Chihaya and I are dating."

But no. He did not know if he and Chihaya were dating. He had just assumed that this led to that, and now Chihaya was avoiding him like the plague.

Definitely not something a girl would do to a guy she was seeing.

Crap, crap, crap…

"There you are, Taichi." Arata appeared from around the corner of their locker hall, his book bag tucked under one arm. "Been lookin' all over for you."

The two girls turned around and shyly smiled up at Arata. "Wataya-kun. No karuta practice today?"

Arata grinned down at them. "The freshmen are startin' late today. The regulars have the whole club room occupied for practice."

Taichi took the opportunity to squirm away from the two girls' questions and made to run off the opposite direction. "Yeah, well I have soccer practice. I'll see you around, Arata."

"Ah, wait Taichi!" Arata called to him, then in a loud voice said, "Your girlfriend was lookin' for you!"

The two girls' eyes widened even more, and Taichi stopped in his tracks, feeling the hairs at the back of his neck stand on end. He whirled around and found Arata shooing away the two girls who looked like they were about to cry.

"Chihaya was looking for me?" Taichi asked in disbelief.

Arata scratched his head as he started walking down the hall with him. "Actually, she was hidin' under a table in Modern Lit after class."

Taichi felt the angry vein once again throb on his temple. "Did she say anything?"

Arata shrugged. "She was mutterin' something to herself. I couldn't make it out, so I left her under the table and went to look for you."

Somehow, that did not make Taichi feel any better. "It's been two days."

"You avoided her for a month," Arata pointed out, sounding so very close to accusing him.

"I had wanted to forget about her, because I thought she was already going out with you," Taichi shot back, but instantly felt guilty because he knew that Arata did not deserve to be the victim of his bad mood. He ran a hand through his hair. "Sorry. This just sucks."

Arata had to laugh. "Why do you always have to over-analyze things? Chihaya is different from other girls out there who fall at your feet because you smile at them. She's probably mullin' things over about what happened in your apartment that night."

This was probably true, though it annoyed him that Chihaya chose to try to solve her feelings alone. At this rate, she would probably be 'mulling things over' until they graduated.

"I'm kind of surprised, though," Arata said suddenly as they crossed the field towards the athletics building. "Who would have thought you'd have the courage to kiss her."

Taichi nearly missed a step, and he turned to Arata, embarrassed. "I should never have told you, had I known you were going to make fun of me."

"I'm not makin' fun of you. I'm just surprised is all. You were always too busy protectin' your pride that you always thought ahead on how you're going to put up a face after you lose. I assumed you would've have stopped half-way when Chihaya started laughin' at you. Tell me, what made you change your mind?"

Taichi found himself stopping in his tracks, blinking. It was strange how Arata could always invoke in him a peace of mind to think things clearly, when all the while he had considered him to be his hundred and first rival.

But, come to think of it, now that he had openly declared all the feelings he had denied himself, he wondered where those rivals had gone. Chihaya had gotten over her obsession at becoming the Queen, and instead was now actually concentrating on her studies. Of all things, she was seriously studying. She wasn't running off to play karuta with Harada-sensei, nor was she obsessing over Wakamiya Shinobu. In the month he had avoided Chihaya, she had evolved into someone he could not believe she was capable of being.

And in that month, without him even openly noticing, the hundred rivals he had between them had turned into nothing more than what they really were; mere cards in a game.

And Arata…

Arata was his friend.

"You changed my mind," Taichi said, finally answering Arata's question.

Arata blinked at him, confused, as he also stopped walking.

Taichi's grip on his book bag tightened, and he took a step forward, determined to tell Arata what he knew he needed to say. "When we were kids, I knew nothing but winning, and it wasn't until I met you that I appreciated the pain of losing at something. And that made me realize a lot of things I didn't know about myself, until that first time we had a match, and I had to steal your glasses just to make sure you didn't beat me when I knew Chihaya was looking. I discovered what I hated about myself, and after that day, I knew what you had that I didn't, and it was something Chihaya saw in you that had always made me feel less than what you were."

Arata did not say anything, but he had closed his eyes as he waited for Taichi to continue. He had a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips, and he had leaned his weight on one leg.

"Arata, at one point in time, I had thought you to be my enemy. What does that say about me?"

Arata's eyes opened slightly, and he shook his head. "That makes you somethin' what you could call what I am. There was a time when I thought the same thing, because I was jealous of the proximity you shared with her. And now that things turned out this way, I knew it was right of me to be jealous."

Taichi bit the insides of his cheeks, suddenly getting worried. He asked, "You still love her, don't you?"

Arata laughed again. "I will always love her, Taichi. You know that."

Taichi gave him a small smile, then said, "How could I forget?"

Arata raised an eyebrow at him, wordlessly sending him a message Taichi already knew the meaning of.

Taichi turned on his heel and started towards the opposite direction of the athletics building. Screw soccer practice.

"Hey, what are you doin'?" Arata asked after him, and Taichi could detect the humor in his voice.

Taichi didn't even bother to look back as he said, "I'm taking your threat seriously."

And he broke into a run.

"Taichi! Modern Lit! Under the table!" he heard Arata call out to him.

People around them turned to stare rudely as Taichi ran past them. With the way Arata had shouted out to him, one could have thought they were talking about a book or an eraser he had forgotten in class.

Girls did double-takes as he dashed across the field, his bag slapping across his back from his shoulder. Some tried to stop him, wanting to ask something or another, which he could actually care less about. And so he kept running. Across the field, down the alley between the Administrations Building and Home Economics Lab, through the hall of the Faculty of Letters, up the stairs.

And finally, in front of the classroom for Modern Literature at the second floor of that building.

By the time he had slid the door open, Taichi was starting to wonder what it was with Chihaya and cramped spaces, because he could recall back in their first year when Chihaya had locked herself inside a closet after losing a match to Yamamoto Yumi-san. It had been the first – though not the last – that Taichi had seen her so upset about something regarding Karuta. Although Taichi had already known Chihaya to always wear her heart on her sleeve, she had never tried to run away from her feelings, and so the memory of her hiding away in a small closet had stayed with him all these years.

That, and that had been the very first time he had actually admitted to himself that he was hopelessly in love with her.

And it had been the very first time he had acknowledged that only Arata could have been able to comfort Chihaya better than he could have done himself.

But it wasn't Arata who Chihaya was hiding from right now. And it wasn't Arata who was looking for her.

"I know you're in there, Chihaya," Taichi called, and he heard something move at the back of the classroom, making one of the desks scrape its legs against the linoleum floor. Oh, she was in there, all right. Taichi stepped inside the room and slid the door closed behind him. "Are you hiding from me because of what I said two days ago?"

There was more movement at the back of the room and Taichi caught a visual of Chihaya's familiar ponytail peeking from under the second table from the west-side window. Chihaya was not an especially small girl, and Taichi could only wonder how she had managed to fit under that table. But then again, Chihaya was capable of doing anything once she put her mind into it.

Sighing deeply, Taichi decided to keep a safe distance from her for the moment and made his way towards the teacher's desk, hopping onto it and sitting facing the blackboard, letting his feet dangle loosely a few inches above the platform.

"Talk to me, Chihaya," he said quietly, leaning back onto his hands. He had thought that everything had been resolved that night after he had kissed her. For someone who was so smart as he, he wondered why kissing her had been such a good idea then, when now that he looked back at it, it had been a careless, aggressive course of action, especially since he was dealing with a girl who had never been too experienced with anything regarding love to begin with.

She had reacted the way she would always react about so many things, as if they did not bother her. But now that the pressure of telling her his feelings was no longer in the equation, he was able to think clearly enough to deduct that there was just no way that this wasn't bothering her. Of course it would bother her! Her best friend had just told her he loved her. Had kissed her without warning. Had concluded for her that she felt the same way.

Now that he thought about it, Chihaya never said what she felt about him.

He had just assumed.

And now Chihaya was hiding under a stupid table.

He sighed again. Had he messed up? Lately, he felt like it was the only thing he had been doing lately, messing up relationships with friends. "You were always so easy to understand, you know. You say things the way you saw them, and you never sugar-coat anything you wanted to say. You set your heart on something, and you've always fought for it a hundred percent, regardless of winning or losing. It was always something I had admired about you. All throughout high school, I had thought, 'Man, she's so great,' while thinking that you had your heart set on someone else…"

He could hear her moving again, and judging from the sound of the table, she must have moved from under the space and out in the open. He didn't dare turn around, afraid that she might suddenly retreat again. He wondered why he felt like he was dealing with some wild animal, but pushed the thought aside and continued talking.

"The past two days you were avoiding me, I thought to myself that my confession had been perfect. But then again, that may have been just my pride talking. You deserved more than a half-rushed confession like that." Taichi paused, then could not help but add, "But I had you to blame for that for barging in on me when I wasn't emotionally prepared yet."

He nearly looked over his shoulder when he heard a gasp, a snarl, then a yelp from her direction. He was completely caught off-guard when he felt arms wrap themselves around his waist from behind, and the smell of strawberry-scented shampoo wafted around him as he felt her head rest itself against his shoulder.

Taichi felt all the blood rush to his ears, and for a brief moment he was unsure of what to do. Chihaya had never been stingy with hugs back in their high school days; they hugged each other all the time when they won in team matches and the like. But hugs from Chihaya always came in tackle-form, and so this gentle embrace, almost close to being a caress, made him feel a bit light-headed.

Taichi lowered his chin to his chest, took a deep breath, and then another. Breathing always calmed him down. In. Out. Deep breaths. He cleared his throat and took the plunge. "The greatest fear I had back in high school was the very, very big possibility of you being in love with Arata. When Arata and I helped you move into your dorm room, I heard him confess to you, and I was a coward to even listen till the end that I ran away from him, and from you. I avoided you because I know myself enough that I could never be sincerely happy for you if you two had started seeing each other.

"It was unfair of me, I knew. But I just couldn't bring myself to accept the fact that you belonged with someone else. It wasn't until Arata finally approached me and told me you had turned him down. And at that moment, I was so happy I didn't know what to do. I called everyone to apologize, and I told them I was going to tell you what I felt about you, and I was so excited because they were cheering me on. I was about to call you, but I didn't know what to say. And when you came banging on my door, I panicked… " Taichi took another deep breath, wracking his brains for more things to say. He felt like he needed to explain to her everything, because he was afraid she was going to misunderstand. And they've had too much of those as of late.

"I'm sorry," Chihaya suddenly said, her arms tightening around him. "I'm not exceptionally smart when it comes to anything. Sometimes, I wonder if the only thing I'm really good at is karuta." She paused for a while, as if thinking how to continue, then, "Taichi, do you remember that time when we had an overnight practice session at your house the night of my birthday?"

Taichi nodded silently. He knew of that night very well. They had arranged everything for her surprise birthday cake, and it would have turned out pretty well had it not been for his mother and sister coming home.

"I was so fixated on karuta that you had to point out to me that Kana-chan and Tsukue-kun were at breaking point then. I'm… I'm not good at empathizing when it comes to the people around me. Maybe it was because I was too set on the game that I forget the more important aspects of it." She shifted her head on his shoulder, and Taichi could feel her heart pounding against his back. "I'm sorry I'm not good at this kind of thing. I had to think things through for the last two days about what you asked me back in your apartment. I know there could have been better ways of solving this, but I guess I suck at decision-making, too."

And it was that time when Taichi actually started feeling nervous. Chihaya had been thinking things through. She had been thinking about him. Back in high school, he had been so convinced that she had a way with prioritizing everything in her own little karuta world where he thought that he did not really matter. But here she was, thinking about him.

"Wh-what have you decided?" He was almost too scared to ask.

Chihaya's embrace tightened once again, making it hard for Taichi to breathe, but the words that came out of her mouth was even more overwhelming that for a moment he didn't care if she choked the life out of him.

"I think I really do love you, too."

And it was in that one sentence did Taichi feel the years he had wasted on loving her secretly had all been worth it. It was new to find her all emotional about something that did not concern karuta, and Taichi felt his heart racing at the mere thought that she had actually been busy for the last two days thinking about him, and sorting out her feelings.

In one swift move, he pushed himself around and grabbed her in a stifling embrace that left her laughing against his chest. He buried his face into her neck, inhaling the scent of downy on her shirt. It somehow helped him calm down.

And Mashima Taichi was always rational when he was calm.

And after all this soul-searching, he finally had enough emotional leeway to ask Chihaya something he had always wanted to ask ever since graduation day.

"Do… you want to attend the Shiranami's practice session this weekend? We can ask Arata to join us…" he asked into her shoulder, not caring that a few strands of her hair had snaked their way into his shirt collar and was tickling him like crazy.

The way Chihaya's hands clawed at the back of his shirt and the excited squeal that bubbled out of her throat was more of an answer. She nodded. "I'd love that." Then she added, "It would be just like old times."

And all the insecurity, all the hopeless, helpless self-pity he had put himself through for thinking that Arata had always been the hundred and first of those that were standing in his way of happiness, suddenly felt like nothing more than a distant, very insignificant memory.

And Taichi couldn't help but pull away, rest his forehead against hers, and – finally – sincerely say, "It would be just like old times," he agreed.

~Fin~

A/N: Ah, it feels good finishing this story. I love this manga so much and I'm crossing my fingers for a season 3.

Anyway, it's time to thank you all for sticking to me till the very end of this little project. For all of those who have favorited, alerted and reviewed this, thank you. It had been a great joy to share my love to fellow TaichixChihaya fans. It was an enjoyable ride because you had been an awesome audience.

In the near future, I'd like to write more about these two, but for some reason, I have a fetish for underrated shoujou and it's been a week now since a Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun plot bunny had started hopping around in my head.

That said, I'm signing off for now to shower some of the stories I have in another fandom that I had been ignoring lately because of this fic. Here's to hoping we have good updates on the Chihayafuru manga.

Well, till then! Yuugiri says bye-bye!