Chapter Thirty-six

"Kimi no tede!!!! KIRISAITE!!!"

Ace's left eye twitched. "Too much pitch…"

"TOOI HI NO… KIOOOOOOKUUU WOOOOOOO!!"

"Anna…"

"KANASHIMI NO!!! IKI NO NEEE WOOOOOO, TOMETEKURE YO..."

"Anna…"

"Saa… AI NI KOGORETA MUNE WO TSURANUKEEEEEEE!!!"

"ANNA!"

"WHAT?"

"SHUT UP!!!"

They glared at each other for a moment, before Anna gave up and faced stubbornly on the other side.

"Fine. Suggest something we can do then."

"Can't you just wait and keep quiet?"

Oh yeah… right. Who was he kidding?

He sighed. "Fine. Let's play something then."

--

He looked at her with a barely suppressed smirk and she quickly collected herself. In a second, she had shrugged her shoulders and pretended she didn't care.

He didn't break his gaze.

"W-Well," she started, looking a little unnerved by his unblinking stare. She tried to clear her throat, succeeding only in making a weird, gurgling noise. She blushed. "Th-That would be a bit dull, wouldn't you agree?"

When she began feeling a little too squeamish, he decided to give her a break. "You just like complicating things." he supplied, taking a large bite of apple. "I mean, pretending to kill your brother??? No one in their right mind would do that."

She mulled over it for a moment, then made a face that suggested she was tired of the subject and muttered unintelligible things under her breath.

He chuckled.

"It's not like it's the first time I did it anyway." Krizzie huffed, pale cheeks reddening once more. Genzou found it endearing and opened his mouth to remark but she continued, "It was all I could think of to help Ken remember Kaede and to help Kaede confront Ken. The date thing didn't work out. They had no communication, and with all the new people suddenly flocking in our dorm, I couldn't find squeeze anything out of my timetable."

"Yeah," Genzou agreed solemnly. "You were just so busy harassing our poor principal…"

"Hey!" He was amused at the genuine indignation she was expressing. "That jerk-off deserved it. He purposefully placed me in the same room with you. What schools agrees with a co-ed dormitory anyway? And in high-school???"

"We haven't done anything, have we? I doubt Kaede and Taro have done anything either." Genzou said. He avoided being frank and telling her that nobody in their right mind would sleep with her, having been reminded of a similar incident concerning a cousin's friend when he went to visit his mother during the holidays.

"Suppose it wasn't us." challenged Krizzie.

"But it was us, wasn't it?" he pressed, looking a little too smug for her own liking. "Your father knew you well enough."

Krizzie drew a sharp breath. "I forgot you knew about that."

"You forget a lot of things." said Genzou, with a subtle glance at her face. Truthfully, he couldn't see the resemblance. "Like your manners, for example."

"This is not the time for jokes, you know."

"I don't joke, Kurisaki." Genzou hid a smile at the glare she was giving him. "Not often anyway." He turned the knife in his fingers before placing it back carefully on the wooden table beside her bed. "But seriously, if you had the time for such an elaborate plan, why couldn't you manage to set them up on another date together?"

"My brother's busy with practice, school, and running away from his stupid fangirls." She enumerated these on her fingers. "Besides, my plan has so much more excitement in it. And I doubt they knew their feelings were mutual. Seriously… they're both just so blind about it all."

Genzou raised a brow. "And you're all-seeing, I assume."

"Hah." she took the apple that fell on the sheets and threw it across the room to the wastebasket tucked at the corner. It missed, and she scowled. "Not really. I'm just sensitive when it comes to my brother… and when I saw Kaede approaching the same classroom that morning… it just… clicked into my mind you know."

"Whoa… wait, rewind." Genzou leaned towards the bed, gears in his mind suddenly reeling. "You mean, you actually met Kakutama before?"

She glanced at him with an uncertain look in her eyes. "Well, not in a familiar basis if that's what you mean, no." she said. "But in a sense, yeah, I did know her…" She looked disdainfully at her hands and Genzou absent-mindedly handed her a bottle of rubbing alcohol. She grabbed the bottle and poured a significant amount on her palm. "It just strengthened my… uh… resolve, for lack of better words, when I saw her drawing my brother during art class." She stared at him. "You would do the same thing too, right? If you were at my place…"

Genzou blinked. That had been a surprise question. "Well, sure. Let's say I have a sister… maybe I would set them up together… but certainly in more subtle means."

"Well, subtle isn't exactly my middle name." she said with a sardonic smile. "Though I'll admit I went too far on this one. At least it worked, right?"

"…Except you probably lost the trust of the few people that do trust you."

"True… that." She was grinning maniacally.

"I can't see a reason for you to smile about." Genzou pointed out, but her smile was infectious, and he had an idea that she did have a reason, he just couldn't quite place his finger on it.

"Did you know I was the reason Ken and Kaede met in the first place?" She laughed, albeit cynically. "Maki ignored me for about a month or two, I remember."

That caught his attention. "What the hell are you talking about?" Genzou asked, now unmistakably bemused. "I thought they met through the accident?"

"Yes." Her eyes lost their light, but her smile remained, and now she just avoided looking at him. "You know the truck that hit them?"

"Yes." he answered, having a feeling where this was going.

"I was in there."

--

Kaede covered her mouth to sneeze, finding it amusing to hear Ken do the same on his end. She replaced the phone back against her ear with a grin. This was as a good a chance as any other.

"I take it the gods are playing with us."

"Huh?"

She laughed. "Someone's talking about us."

He laughed back.

"Don't you take that as a sign?"

"As sign of what?"

"That we should be together."

Ken cleared his throat, and she could almost feel the blush evaporating from the tiny holes of her phone.

"Aren't you the shy one?"

"Since when did you get so bold?" he countered back, not without a stutter in his voice.

"I've got you whipped."

Kaede pulled at the ends of her hair, a little surprised with this newfound aggressiveness herself. It just wasn't in her nature to come onto people, and to Ken of all people… it was… well, stimulating.

"That's highly improper, Kaede-chan."

She pouted. "But aren't we going out now?"

He became silent and she waited, not without bated breath, what he would say next. There, she had laid everything on the line. It's up to him whether he wanted to be with her or not. Kaede never did like feeling vulnerable, even if she often did, but she trusted him.

Finally she heard his voice, soft, hushed, and she'll go as far as to describe it as sweet, "Yes." he said obviously affected by her giddiness. "Yes… definitely."