Oh, thank goodness i can copy and paste my story again *.* uploading the whole thing was horrible... ehem.. in other news: new chapter :D I hope you guys like it! also: thanks everyone for reading, reviewing and all that stuff thus far, it really makes me happy :)

"Jinguji?! What the hell are you doing here?!"

"Is that really the way to receive a guest?" he asked. As he did so, he ignored her question and started to make his way down to her.

"A guest?! You were here before me! How did you even do that?! Did you break in?!"

"Oh, dear, that's just not my style. I just visited a little early and your composer was kind enough to let me in. He left already, clearly, but he let me stay in… I was waiting for you" When he finished talking he had finally made his way to stand right next to her.

"Well… then… What do you want?!"

"Could you please stop screaming, darling. There is no need for it; I could hear you just as fine if you were to…" Then he leaned down and just inches away from her face, finished in a very low tone: "… whisper to me"

Embarrassment clouded her judgment as she pushed him away from her. What she wasn't expecting was him to grab onto her arm as she did so. Because of that: she landed on top of him on the couch.

"Quite a compromising position, isn't it?" he said, smiling mischievously.

She quickly got off of him, feeling her cheeks burn and her heart beat as fast as humanly possible. She turned around to avoid him from seeing her that way, but he had noticed her blush before she did so. He stood up and taking advantage of her distraction and the fact that her back was facing him, he hugged her from behind and whispered in her ear: "Congratulations on your concert, Tomo-chan"

She took a couple of steps forward with as much strength as she could muster, getting out of his grasp. Then she turned around to face him and said: "What the hell is your problem?! This is straight up sexual assault!"

"It would be if it wasn't consensual"

"It is not!"

"You're right. I'm not that into you…"

"WHAT?! Then why the hell-" before she could finish, he interrupted her.

"I'm just really affectionate, sorry"

"I… just… Get out of here!"

"Wait. I came here for a reason"

"And that is…?"

"I didn't have the chance to properly congratulate you before, so I wanted to come by and do it now: You were an amazing opening number to the festival. I'm sure your popularity rose to the skies by now"

She was taken aback by his words, but she quickly regained composure and replied to him as usual. "You're a little late for congratulations now; the concert was a week ago"

"I am aware, my Lady. I don't have any excuse for my lateness, but it would be incredibly appreciated if you took into account that I didn't have a day off until today, and that a certain pink haired girl refused to give me your new phone number. Which begs the question: why did you change it?"

"If you're implying that buying a new phone has something to do with you, you're completely wrong. The last one I was using wasn't actually mine, so now that I can afford the one that I wanted for a while… I got a new one. End of story"

"That's all there is to it?"

"Yes, that's it"

With the last couple of words still hanging in the air, silence fell upon them. Weirdly enough, just a little bit of calm between them smoothed things over and made the atmosphere a bit more comfortable.

Ren took a step back and sat on the couch behind him, looking more tired than he should've been for a young man that was just standing seconds ago.

"Are you okay?" she said, interrupting the silence.

Instead of instantly replying with one of his usual flirty comments, he just lifted his head so that their eyes would lock. It was as if he was talking to her through them and for some reason: she actually got what he was trying to say. She had forgotten until that moment that not that long ago the members of Starish had gotten into a fight and that a couple of days later Ren was pushed into exercising machinery. Of course, the fact that she had pushed him during their 'date' with such strength that he could barely speak a word hadn't been the best to recover either. At least she hadn't pushed him this time around, right?

"Have your bruises gotten any better?"

"Bruises? I wish they were just bruises…" he said, and then sighed. "The doctor said I pulled a couple of my muscles after all that effort. I tried not to overwork myself, but I need to stay in shape and… I just can't let my abs turn into fat"

Tomochika crossed her arms in response to his carelessness and then said: "You really should be more careful, if you keep pushing yourself like this then I'm sure the only option you'll have is going into surgery… And I'm sure you're not too keen on scars"

"Yeah, well… It's not entirely up to me, you know"

"Come on, are you telling me you can't just exercise a little less until your body is back in shape? You're not going to transform into a uniform mass in a couple of months"

Once again, he replied with a solemn expression and absolute quietness. She took this as his way of saying he didn't want to argue, but disagreed with her completely. So with her arms still crossed over her chest, she decided to talk about something else. "How is Masato doing?"

At the mention of his friend, Ren's eyes shot upwards instantly. "He's doing good… Why are you asking?"

"Well, he is my disciple after all, I wanna know if he's following my teachings"

"Wow, what is this about?"

"To shorten things up: I basically hanged up with him a couple of times and explained to him how he should handle certain situations and interactions, but then I'm really busy so I've just been e-mailing him a bunch of advice. He hasn't replied more than 'ok' or 'alright' though so I'm not really sure how he's doing with it"

"Oh" was everything Ren could muster amidst his confusion. What she had just told him made him remember all the reading that Masato was doing lately. Perhaps he was reading her advice? That was pretty ridiculous. But he had noticed a change in the way his friend behaved. A little more open, a little less blunt, more charming (but not overly) and just overall easier to hang out with. To anyone that didn't know him as much as Ren did, those changes would've been imperceptible, but he noticed, and truth be told, they mattered. "Why are you helping him?" he asked, out of the sudden.

"Mmmm? What do you mean?"

"I mean that I asked you to be his friend, not to give him a life makeover"

"Unfortunately for you, this is what I do for friends. And I'm sure you'll recall that I told you I would be his friend for him and not because you asked me"

"I do, but I'd like to remind you that if I hadn't told you anything you wouldn't have approached him" he said, cockily.

She opened her mouth to protest, but found that infuriately enough: he was right. If she hadn't been aware of the other boy's troubles she would've probably kept on with her life as always. But she didn't want Ren to be on the right. Surely there would be a way to reject what he was saying, right? Nope.

"When are you going to leave though?"

"Rude. You should be enjoying my presence"

"Shut up"

He smiled at her quick comeback, amused at its childishness. He found it really cute how she would revert back to those kinds of arguments when she was annoyed by his attitude.

The sight of his smile was quite an alluring one indeed, and the fact that she could see it extend also to his eyes only worried her further for her own sanity. He was too attractive to begin with, but after all the scarring in his face disappeared (or at least: was covered by really good makeup), she found it more and more difficult not to swoon for his looks. Because she truly found him annoying, conceited and really douchy (and never mind his endless assaults), but… 'No! Stop it, me! He's a dumbass; now stop it with that little blush. And let's go somewhere else to remind ourselves that he is still a dingbat no matter how he looks' she thought. "I'll go make some tea!" she said before running into the kitchen. Once she was alone she tried to shake his image away, but it was to no avail. Her heart was beating really fast again, and she couldn't help but hope that it was just because of the small stroll.

She moved to grab a couple of teacups right before putting the water to boil, and tried to collect her thoughts once again in the process. She remembered the night of her concert, how freaked out she had been until her friends showed up. She always thought back to those moments because they made her calm when she needed it every now and again, but it wasn't until then that she put more thought into her reaction to Masato's words. She remembered looking at his reflection in the mirror and feeling her heart almost flying out of her chest. She had put those thoughts at the back of her mind, but now that she saw Ren again… 'What happened, then? It almost felt as if I had a little crush on Blueberry… But, then-' her wave of thought was rapidly interrupted as the door to the kitchen locked behind her. She turned around instinctually, looking at the person she was trying not to see.

"You're taking too long" he said.

"Sorry, I think I put too much water, it hasn't boiled yet"

He nodded in response, understandably. But then he walked closer to her, maybe a little too close for her comfort, but not so close that she would have to yell or push him away. "What's in your mind, Lady?"

"Mmm? I… I don't know what you mean"

"Sure you do, you looked way too focused on your teacup before I closed the door"

"… I was just being careful not to put too much sugar or anything"

As if mimicking her previous expressions, he crossed his arms. "If there's something you and The Little Lamb share is that you're both terrible liars"

"I'm not-"

"Come on, you can trust me"

"Can I? I don't think we even qualify as friends but then here you are, bothering me, invading my personal space, and asking all these questions that I'd rather just ignore"

She would've guessed he'd pretend he was hurt and somehow manipulate her into saying that they're actually friends, but his response was actually pretty surprising. He took two steps back, and said: "Sorry, I didn't mean to" to which she could only respond with her mouth open, surprised out of her mind.

~h~o~~h~o~~h~o~~h~o~~h~o~~h~o~~h~o~~h~o~~h~o~~h~o~~h~o~

Back at the dormitories ~

Otoya walked out of Shining's office at an increasingly fast pace. Every step he took farther away from there was another step closer to his girlfriend and considering how close he was to losing his grip on the whole situation: he really needed to talk to her about it. But then: Didn't she have enough on her plate already? Wasn't yet another problem going to stress her out even more? He was his own self after all; he surely could face the situation on his own, right?

'I should seriously just think this through, no need to bother her with something like this right now… I'll just… Help her with composing. It'll work out' he thought as he walked through the halls.

When he finally reached her room he heard the distinct laugh of one of his friends coming from inside the closed door. With a resolution on his mind, he suppressed his impulse to think anything bad of it and just waited a couple of seconds before knocking.

It only took a moment before the door was opened and she jumped into his arms once again. He hugged her back smiling at the happy surprise, and took care that the force she put into jumping didn't push them both to the ground.

After they pulled away, he looked straight at Tokiya. He guessed his friend would get a clue about what he wanted to know only with that.

Looking right back at the redhead, Tokiya stood up from the piano bench and made his way closer to the door.

"Tokiya…"

"Otoya"

Feeling the tense air about them, Haruka looked from one boy to the other, and tried to figure out what was going on. But as she looked at her boyfriend's eyes, she saw it again: jealousy. The last time he had acted upon his jealousy hadn't been particularly pleasant for anyone, but she recalled both senpais and teachers claiming that there wouldn't be second chances on the matter. That if Otoya flipped out again that would be the last of it. But it wasn't that she didn't trust him to stay calm. She knew that back when they started dating he had been way more sensible and irritable than in any other point since they met, so it must've been just an exception. Surely, that's what it was. But as she thought more about it, she realized that time kept passing and neither of them was saying a word, they were just staring at each other and she just couldn't handle that. Normally Otoya would act completely mesmerized by Tokiya's actions, consider him an inspiration regarding the whole fact that he had more experience than the rest of them, but once again the whole dating shenanigans had taken its toll on their relationship.

Just as she was about to say something, anything to finish the awful moment: they started laughing. Right at the same exact second they both burst into uncontrollable laughter. She stared at them, confused as ever, trying to figure out what she wasn't getting. For some reason her seriousness got them more riled up as they stared pointing at her general direction and laughing even harder. At that point it got annoying to her. Because on one side she was relieved that they weren't going to fight or anything, but the fact that they were practically laughing at her wasn't particularly pleasant. And the worst part was that their laughter was incredibly contagious, only hearing them for a moment made her want to laugh as well, but she had to stand her ground until she knew what was going on. Unfortunately for her, in a moment of distraction on her part, Otoya started tickling her and she just lost it.

Moments later they were all trying to catch their breath, drying the happy tears from their faces, feeling the ache both in their stomachs and cheeks.

"What was that?" she finally asked.