I finished a chapter within a week, yay! But sorry, it's Hiro's, so no romance, just good old Hiro/Kai friendship. (Actually, not really 'good', the pacing in this chapter is awful! Blame Hiro, he's kind of a chaotic character).

There's only 3 more chapters to go. Oh wow, the end is approaching. Kinda depressing.

Thanks to my reviewers:

Annoying talking animal: I'm happy you liked the last chapter that much. :) As always, I love you for being such an awesome reviewer!

LightlessFallenAngel: Thank you so much for reviewing three chapters in one go, you rock! :D

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Never would I have expected that this would turn out to become some sort of romance fairytale between Max and Kai. Never would I have expected Kai to betray me like that. Considering that I had found out that my best friend was dating my beau behind my bad - from my brother of all the people- I felt I had every right to be appalled, angry and well, …somewhat disappointed. I could lie and claim that it was the fact that Kai had lied to me was the thing that upset me the most, but let's be honest, the fact that he decided to date Max in the first place is what really pissed me off. He knew very well how I felt about him. And hadn't he always been the one to go 'Hey Hiro, be careful around him, he's manipulating you. Don't get too attached, because he might really end up hurting you!'. Well in the end, it wasn't Max that had hurt me. It was my dear, oh so 'kind' and 'concerned' 'best friend': Kai. And I really didn't know how to go on from now on. In one way I was all: 'that backstabbing bastard' but then, let's face it, he was all I had. Yes, I was just that pathetic. Nobody was remotely interested in becoming my friend, -not even the group of normal, cool guys that I had spend the majority if my high school years stalking. And then he came along… I'm not too sure how exactly we became friends. He just started randomly showing up for detention. I think I first realized that we indeed were friends when he invited me over to his place for dinner. It had been a long time since anybody had invited me over to their place just to spend time with me. Sure there had been school projects, or me tagging along when my Grandpa went to visit family friends, but somebody going 'Hey, do you want to hang out at my place after school?' Woah! Not since ninth grade at least! That is kinda how I 'detect' friendship, when somebody invites you to their place. Of course there's billions of exceptions (fuckbuddies etc) but hey. And it really did mean a lot, not just because it was the first time in years that somebody had invited me over (we went over that already), but also because Kai is, well, he's kind of a closeted, reserved guy who likes keeping to himself and doesn't really reveal much about his life either. You should've seen the shock on my face when I found out he had a kid. It's not like he warned me beforehand or anything…

xxx

So you might wonder how I even found out about Kai and Max. Courtesy of my little brother! He had caught me flirting with Max, and it kinda slipped out of him. Max ran off right after and I cornered Tyson and made him tell me the entire story of what was going on. And he did. He told me about Max and Kai being involved in some sort of romantic relationship, even though they were both denying that they actually had some feelings for each other. He told me about Max flipping out at school once and Kai being the only one able to calm him. And he even told me about one time when him and Max went on a date. (Just to clarify, by him I mean TYSON). The last one shocked me the most!

Talking about being shocked, Ty certainly was after I confessed to him that Max and I had been fucking for a while.

'I didn't even know you were having sex.' he said, looking at me somewhat disgusted.

'Are you angry?' I asked him.

Tyson shook his head. He had always been the forgiving type. 'No, no, it's your life and your business.' He was disturbed by it, surely, but he tried to act all chilled.

'I broke my promise, remember?'

It felt like ages since I had promised him in that Mock Trial that I wouldn't flirt with 'subject Tate'.

He laughed as he was reminded of it: 'That was a fun day.'

'That was also the first day Max and I slept with each other.'

His smile faded. 'Well, the entire juristic trial thing was more of a joke anyways.' he stated awkwardly.

His eyes stared at me pleadingly. It was as if they were saying 'can't I just forgive you already and we stop talking about this, please!'

'I also do porn.' I told him. I felt I should come clean all the way.

He started giggling.

'No I'm serious.' I insisted.

He stared at me. 'You're kidding me, right?'

'No, I'm serious.' I repeated. Oh boy was I nervous. What if he'd reject me? Maybe I should have spread out my confessions over a longer period of time instead of telling him it all at once.

'Oh, wow.' he muttered. He scratched the back of his head. 'So, how's the sex in front of the camera… does it get awkward?'

What truly was awkward was this situation, I could tell Tyson just wanted to get away, or if not that, loosen the tension a little by making jokes. He was not really the type for frontal confrontation. I think he was more one of those people that preferred to not know about things, ignorance is bliss after all. I decided to finally let him off, I felt he needed some alone time, to play video games or read a comic book, -something to get his mind of what I'd just told him.

xxx

I was still in a bad mood the next day at school. And to top it all off, during English class, Kai just came up to me like normal, as if nothing had happened and he had nothing to be ashamed of. He smiled at me and raised his hand to greet me. He could have taken off a large top hat or taken a bow and it wouldn't have impressed me.

'Hey.'

'Piss off!' I told him and scowled at him with my most intense death glare..

'What's with you today?' he asked rather startled. He turned his head away from me and started to calmly unpack his textbooks onto the table next to mine.

'I know about you and Max.' I hissed.

He stalled and turned his eyes back on me. He had a horrified and worried look on his face

'Hiro…' he stuttered.

'Just don't bother! I rather have no friends than a friend like you.' I told him.

He nodded dolefully. Then he grabbed his books and moved them to a different table. Dammit, I had somehow hoped for him stay back and make an effort to… oh I don't even know, …to make it better perhaps. Even though I had been the one to send him away, I still kinda wanted him back. But then again, I was still so damn angry at him. I had trusted him. All along I had believed that cared about our friendship. Well, I had been wrong, obviously.

xxx

Kai and I didn't say a single word to each other the entire week. We still saw each other during our classes but whenever the teacher demanded for us students to do group projects, Kai and I didn't, like usually, do them together. I would just pick a random student and force him or her to work with me. And after a while, our classmates started to notice.

'What's with you and Kai? I though you two were like, BFF's.' this random girl hacked. She was your typical bimbo, loud, annoying and always on the hunt for the newest gossip.

'We had a fight.' I informed her.

'Aww, what about?' she asked in her fake-pity voice. I knew she was curious rather than caring, so I didn't bother to answer her question.

'That's none of your business.' I told her instead.

Thinking about it, that might have been a bit rude to say after all. No wonder I didn't have friends.

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So thing is, I got lonely, very lonely. So lonely that I even ended up seeing the school shrink, just to have somebody to talk to. Well, she didn't really help me at all, the opposite rather. Once I left her office I was in an even worse mood than before. Here's an excerpt of our conversation:

'So to summarize it. I am pissed at Kai because he is now sleeping with the guy, that I fell for, after we started a fuckbuddy relationship, because I'm a nymphomaniac.'

I said it all in one breath. I had explained her the story in greater detail already but had decided to do a recap because she had been staring at me somewhat puzzled for about five minutes. She still was, actually. Then, finally, she sighed and decided to say something:

'Hiro, I'm disappointed. These meetings are designed for students that actually have some real issues they need to discuss. You are the last person I expected to come in and make up some ridiculous story for your personal amusement.'

I couldn't believe she had actually said that.

'I'm not making this up.' I insisted.

'Hiro, get out of here, you're just wasting my time.'

She closed her notebook and put it back onto a bookshelf.

'Wasting your time?' I yelled. 'This is your JOB.'

I was normally a very calm and shy person, but that day I had already been provoked and annoyed, I guess I just kinda flipped out.

'My job is to help people and assist them with their problems, not dealing with some nonsense prank you just made up.' she retorted.

I figured there was no point in discussing it with her.

'Whatever.' I got up and grabbed for my backpack. I was just about to walk out of the door when I stalled and turned around.

'Just so you know, you're awful at doing your job.'

Then I left. Damn. What a BITCH. I was furious, this had been so utterly pointless. I had gone through that embarrassing and awkward procedure of emptying my soul out to a member of the teaching staff, and what did I get in return? That bitch had insulted me. I marched back and forth in the hallway for another while, wildly cussing, which earned me a few surprised looks from the students passing by me. So what? Did they expect me Mr Perfect or something? Well obviously I wasn't perfect enough to get any of those scholarships that I had applied for. So me being the student body president and hence automatically the school's biggest loser had been for nothing, all along. To add to my pain, I was to host a school assembly third period. A point on my agenda was to read out and congratulate all those students that HAD received scholarships. Isn't it always nice to hear that the schools biggest idiots who didn't do shit all year long got scholarships, just because they played some stupid sport? Life just isn't fair.

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Assembly. I really don't get why people hate it that much. I mean, okay, I hate it too, but I have a REASON. I actually need to hold a speech. Everybody else just has to sit and listen, -and they don't even need to directly listen to my voice because the school is ghetto enough for the teacher to not give a damn if someone's wearing their headphones. Plus they get to miss out on at least 20 minutes of class time, so I don't see why they're complaining.

'Now your student body president, Hiro Kinomiya will read out some student achievements. We as a school are especially proud of all the scholarship recipients.;

Yuck! My turn. There was half-hearted applause (mostly from the teacher staff) when I walked up onto the podium. I adjusted the microphone and started reading out my speech:

'So this has been quite an eventful week.' I had to suppress the urge to let out a sarcastic laugh. Yes, it had been eventful indeed. For me at least. I pondered over it for a sec and then continued my stupid speech that nobody really cared about anyways:

'Our girls soccer team beat the Cold Rock High team on Monday night. Our Baseball team tied with the Regnesburry Lancers on Wednesday. But now onto something even more exciting…'

Exciting? My ass! Who wrote this stupid speech anyways?

'Several students have received scholarships. Logan Jones received a Football scholarship to Tennessee State University. Nathan Woolanga received a Football scholarship, also, but he'll be off to Georgetown University.'

That one pissed me off the most. Nathan was an idiot. Seriously! If you'd ask him, he wouldn't even be able to list you our neighbouring planets. I had him in detention once, he asked me where to find the 'element' fire on the periodic table. Well this idiot would be going to Georgetown for free. Georgetown, the University that had not just rejected my scholarship application, but me all the way.

'Theo Rodrick will be only a few miles away. He received a Baseball Scholarship to Maryland State University. Now congratulations to all of you.'

The students in the auditorium were slightly less unengaged than normal. The jocks and cheerleaders were clapping and cheering for Nathan and Logan (nobody really cared for Theo). Once again I felt reminded that life just wasn't fair. I had worked so hard and the only ones that showed and interest in me and wanted me to 'enrich their community' were porn studios. Okay, so there was this one adult film company in the Netherlands, which was actually quite a big deal, because it was Europe and all, but still. My efforts felt like such waste all of the sudden. I was about to turn around and hand the microphone over to the vice principal, when the school shrink caught my eye. That bitch that had accused me of lying. I smirked, an awesome idea had popped into my mind. Thinking about it in retrospect, it was an awful idea. But anyways, the thing is: at the time, I felt that for all I had sacrificed, surely I did deserve some personal mic time.

'Okay, I'm assuming none of you actually want to return to class…'

'I do.' some nerdy looking boy interrupted me. Damn him.

'Well on behalf of your classmates I'm just going to ignore that statement and continue with my plan. Who knows, maybe you really should listen before you end up like me. Okay, now, everyone: I have a personal announcement to make!'

The vice principal sent me an estranged look but shrugged. I guess he trusted me enough to not say anything offensive. Oh how wrong he was. This was the angry, frustrated Hiro now. Not the calm and reserved Hiro that he was used to dealing with.

'Okay, first of all, I have a message addressed at my best friend Kai.' I begun.

'Are you going to declare your undying love, faggot?' some random jock yelled, which resulted in quite a lot of laughter and applause. I waited until everyone had calmed down and then snickered.

'Quite the opposite actually.'

People stared at me rather puzzled and I just smirked and continued my speech:

'Fuck you Kai, you selfish, backstabbing asshole.'

Silence.

I don't think I can remember ever having experienced such silence during a school assembly. People were just staring at me dumbfounded. Especially Kai. Then the vice principal started marching towards me, he was shaking in anger.

'Wait, wait, I'm not done yet. I wont cuss anymore, I promise!'

Lucky thing that he was probably pretty curious himself as to what I was going to say, so he let me do my thing.

'So Kai.' I said. 'You're kinda my only friend and I don't wanna lose you, so how about we say that, if you forgive me for publicly insulting you, I'll forgive you for having fucked Max, even though you knew that I was hitting on him.'

The vice principal glared at me accusingly.

I started to desperately apologise to him. 'Oh no, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say the F-word, it just kinda slipped.'

I glanced over at the crowd. It looked like that one jock did get his love declaration after all, if not aimed at Kai. Then I realised that fuck my life: I had just come out to the entire school. This was bad. I saw Max covering his head in shame and Kai who just facepalmed himself. But I also noticed how he was giggling (Kai, I mean). Not in a mocking way but rather in a 'I can't believe you just said that you crazy moron'-way. And his smile kinda encouraged me to go on. I had, once again, been close to handing the mic over to the vice principal when I changed my mind. I had a lot more to say, after all.

'Sorry sir, but there's more to come.'

'Hiro, if you don't turn over the microphone immediately you are going to loose your position as student body president.' he threatened me.

'It doesn't matter anyways.' I announced. I turned towards the crowd again. 'That's right. I, Hiro Kinomiya don't give a fuck about I loosing my position as student body president, because as a matter of fact, I don't care about getting a scholarship anymore. I didn't get one with all my engagement in the student council, voluntary detention supervision and to top it all, this idiotic position as student body president. And why? Well because all the funding goes to stupid, arrogant athletes that don't even deserve it. I'm not going to bother re-applying for the winter semester. In fact, I'm am going to put off my plan of going to University all together. Instead, I'm going to do porn!'

There was mumbling and laughter going through the crowd.

'Yea right, as if you would ever land a job as a porn star.' somebody shouted.

And the following moment was one of the most satisfactory moments of my life:

'Actually, you're wrong!' I announced. 'To be completely honest, I have been working in the adult film industry for about six months now. And while Universities were being depressingly disinterested in me, I got plenty of offers from porn studios. And I have decided.' (In reality, I had just decided it in that very moment) 'I am going accept a specific offer from one of the Netherlands's most famous adult film production companies. So I am going to earn my money, fair and square, until I'll be able to afford 5 years of undergraduate plus doctors degree and independent accommodation. Oh, and by the way, I'm a nymphomaniac, I like to fuck! Well, thanks for listening, suckers!'

Then I finally handed over my microphone and proudly marched off the podium. I couldn't help but smirk. And then, the strangest thing ever occurred: Applause! I couldn't believe it. Students were applauding me! Hmm, I guess any person of authority using the F-word in public was something they enjoyed.

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'Eh, Hiro!' it came from Kai. He was standing by the exit of the auditorium, his back against the wall and his arms crossed.

'Hi.' I said. 'I wasn't quite sure how to react to him being there, waiting for me.

'I liked your speech.' he smiled. 'Especially the part about you calling me a selfish, back-stabbing asshole.'

'Yea, that part…' I mumbled. 'Sorry about that.'

'No, I deserved it.' he sighed. 'I'm sorry Hiro, for real.'

I just stared at him, this had worked out better than I had ever expected. He wasn't angry at me. At all! I then startlingly realised that it was my turn to forgive him. 'It's fine.' I ensured him. 'Don't worry about it.'

He brushed a few strands of his wavy, black hair out of his eyes. 'Things no longer make sense to me like they used to.' he confessed. His voice sounded bitter and sad. 'First I introduced you to Max out of the selfish reason that I was getting annoyed with your constant talk about how you didn't get laid. Then I started to get worried about you, about Max manipulating you and hurting your feelings somehow. Then, I -of all the people, got attracted to Max. I guess I was just so used to taking what I wanted, without caring about the consequences it had on other people, so I kept on reassuring myself that it was okay. And then, ironically, it ended up being me who hurt your feelings.'

So he had arrived at the same conclusion as I had earlier. It was a very emotional moment for the both of us, we didn't dare to look each other in the eyes.

'Max manipulated us both.' I said, to break the silence.

He nodded. ' And still we both fell for him.'

'I feel like an idiot.'

Kai laughed. 'So do I.'

I slung my arm around him and ruffled his hair. 'Well anyways, good to have my best friend back.'

He also put his arm around me. 'Yes, good to have you back too.'

People were giving us weird looks again. Only minutes earlier, I had insulted him in front of the entire school and now I was hugging him. I guess they finally had a good reason to stare, so I couldn't blame them for it. Still, in that moment I didn't care. Not about their puzzled looks, not about Max, not about my depressing lack of scholarships. Kai and I were back to being friends. Official friends, this time! And it felt great.

'By the way.' Kai muttered. 'I never had sex with Max.'

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