Chapter 37:

Admittance

Sanae was waiting for Ana outside her house that Saturday with a beach bag.

"Hurry up!" Sanae shouted at her and they made a dash for the bus stop. They boarded the bus that would take them an hour out of town to the nearest beach. As they rode, Ana's mind darted everywhere. All week she'd been trying hard to deny what she'd felt at the party, but there was only so much she could do to reject her feelings. She looked around to see if anyone was listening and leaned over to her best friend to whisper in her ear.

"Sanae, I think I like Amin-chan." Now that she'd said it out loud, she was even more sure of her feelings.

Her friend turned to her unsurprised and sighed. "Well, it took you long enough to figure that out. Is that why you've been acting weird all week?"

"Ugh." Ana couldn't say anything in response.

"So, what are you going to do?" Her friend asked her with a small smirk. "Confess?"

"No. If I do that and we… start really going out, grandpa will push for us to get married and I won't be able to go to college." She bit her lip and frowned.

To her surprise and irritation, her friend burst out laughing. After she calmed down, Sanae explained why she'd done so. "Ana-chan, do you really think Kaiba-san would roll over and obey anyone? If that's not what you want, then tell him your demands for a relationship. I bet he'll concede to most of them."

Ana pondered the idea. If Amin-chan refuses to get engaged, then grandpa can't do anything about it. Would he look for another fiancé for me though if that happens? After sitting on the bus for an hour, the bus pulled up to the beach, and they got off. Arata and few others had already arrived. They were standing on the road outside the beach. When he turned to Ana, she got the sense something was wrong.

"What happened? Why aren't you going in?" Ana asked as she approached.

"Well, the thing is we may have to cancel. It looks like someone booked the beach for a wedding," Arata explained.

The group of teens looked dejected as they stood outside, unsure of what to do. Arata frowned and then gave a forced smile.

"If you all want to go home, I'll wait for a while to let people know what happened as they—"

A flashy black motorbike drove up and stopped next to them. The man on the bike took off his helmet, revealing Seto. He stared at them, perplexed. He took one look at the beach and seemed to understand what happened.

"Ah, Kaiba-san—" Arata tried to tell him, but Seto ignored him and pulled out his phone to make a call.

"Mokuba, is the house you stayed at last week clean? … Send me the code... Because." Then he hung up. He pressed a few buttons on his phone and all of theirs rang. Ana looked at it and found an address that she could use to search with.

"It's a ten-minute walk. I'll go open it. Come or don't. I don't care either way." Seto put his helmet back on and sped off down the street.

Everyone looked around, confused. Ana put the address into her phone and zoomed in. Ah. That ass. At least give a better explanation. How did he get everyone's number? Sanae looked at her confused and the other students were looking around baffled.

"It looks like there's another beach." Ana explained and hauled her bag higher on her shoulder. She followed the map route. Hesitantly, the others followed her. When they got there, they found a high rock wall and a gate. Before Ana could press the call button, the gate swung open. She rolled her eyes and headed in. Inside they found a two-story house with large windows and a small private cove. Their group stared at the house, unsure, until Seto opened the door.

"Well, come in," he said and left the door open for them. The group shuffled in and found it furnished with sleek black leather couches and had an open concept kitchen/ living room. The door on the opposite side led out to a veranda. There were some steps that led down to the beach.

Ana noticed Arata texting at lightning speed. "What are you doing?"

"Letting the others know where to come. Kaiba-san, is this your place?" Arata asked, grinning as he typed blind.

Seto stared at him blankly. "No, I picked the lock and broke in."

Ana knew he was joking, but since he'd said it so blank faced, the rest of the group paused and looked at him nervously.

Seto seemed to understand they misunderstood his sense of humor. "It's my brothers."

Arata chuckled when he realized it was a joke, then he tilted his head in confusion. "Wait, isn't your brother like eleven."

"Twelve, he just had his birthday last month." Seto corrected him and turned to head out to the veranda.

Once Seto left the room, the students seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

"So… Is Kaiba-san saying we can use the beach and house here?" A girl with light blue hair and green eyes, named Jerico, asked looking at Ana.

"Why are you asking me?" Ana frowned.

Jerico smiled awkwardly. "Well… you too dated for a bit—"

"We fake dated. Don't expect me to understand everything about him." Ana corrected her.

"What?!" Everyone minus Sanae shouted.

Arata was the first to pounce. "Fake dated? Why?"

Jerico spoke up next. "Yeah, what would make you want to fake date Kaiba-san? He's kind of a jerk."

Ana groaned. She didn't answer because it seemed like a pain to explain. Instead of letting them bomb bard her with questions, she stormed out onto the veranda and found Seto setting up a grill.

"Hey, Amin-chan! Everyone seems worried you're going to charge them or something for using this house and beach." Ana shouted at him, annoyed and embarrassed. I really should have kept my mouth shut.

Seto rolled his eyes. "Like I need their pocket change. I don't care if they use it, but if they break anything I'll be pissed."

Ana turned back to the group of people who were looking at them, terrified. "There you have it."

The teens settled in after that. Ana turned back to Seto and found him staring at her.

"What?" She asked.

"Oh, are you not avoiding me today?" He raised an eyebrow.

Her face grew warm, and she quickly went back into the house. She grabbed her bag and found a room that the girls had designated as a changing room. Her bathing suit was a blue athletic one piece. She tied a bathing suit cloth over her bottom halve.

"Ana, you'd look cuter in a two piece." A busty girl with long brown hair named Umiko commented.

She laughed. "Nah, I don't have the right build for that."

"But you're tall and have nice legs." Umiko countered.

"But I also have a six-pack and muscles." Ana flexed her arm, showing off her muscles. "Thin less bulky girls look better in a two piece. This suits me better. Plus, I just feel more comfortable in this."

Jerico was staring at her. "So, you really weren't dating Kaiba-san for real?"

Ana blushed. "No, I wasn't. There's a long reason behind it and it would take too long to explain."

"Oh, no wonder it didn't seem to bother you that idol asked him out." Jerico mused.

Ana paused, and her stomach clenched. "Idol?"

Sanae sighed and pulled out her phone. She pulled up an app and showed her some photos. It was of the pink-haired girl who'd asked Seto out in the hall. She was wearing a frilly dress and posing. Oh, her. That was pretty shocking to witness. She was really cute, but since Amin-chan turned her down in a nanosecond and followed me, I'm not too worried about her swaying him… Though she is really tiny and cute.

"I didn't know she was an idol." Ana admitted. "Her confession in the hallway surprised me."

"Wait, you were there for that?" Jerico jumped at the topic. She was the type of gossip loving girl. Anything dealing with love or confessions she wanted to know about.

"Yeah… Why did she ask Kaiba-san out?" Ana had been wondering where that had come from.

Sanae huffed. "I guess you wouldn't know since you missed a lot of the first part of school, but she caused quite a stir among the guys when she started at our school. Apparently, when Kaiba-san transferred back in, she set her sights on him and declared to her friends that she would date him."

Ah, she did seem really confidant when she asked him and seemed even more surprised when he turned her down.

"Ana-chan…" Umiko drew her attention. "What's Amin-chan mean?"

"What?" Ana snapped back to reality and the rest of the girls looked at her expectingly. Sanae grinned at the question. "W-what do you mean?"

"Well, earlier you called Kaiba-san, Amin-chan. He even responded to it, so I was wondering what it meant?" Umiko asked her, looking at her with innocent eyes.

I… I don't want to tell them. It's my inside joke.

She quickly grabbed her towel and headed for the door. "Nothing much. Let's head to the beach."

She fled the room and out to the veranda. Seto was cooking some sort of barbeque. Most of the guys had already headed down to the beach except Arata. Ana notice that the other people had also shown up and were enjoying themselves.

"What did she mean fake dating? That can't be right. It's so obvious you really like her!" Arata was franticly waving his arms around. Seto grabbed Arata's head and his eyes oozed blood lust.

"Yugi, go play with your friends before I throw you off the veranda." Seto growled.

Arata backed away from him and pouted. "My name's not Yugi!"

He ran down the steps to the beach. Seto went back to making skewers. Ana could feel the group of girls behind her staring. She glanced over her shoulder. Sanae was holding back laughter as Jerico's eyes lit up. Did they hear what Arata said?

"Kaiba-san, do you like Ana-chan?" Umiko asked and the entire group held their breath.

Seto turned around to them and frowned. "Yes, now go to the beach and leave me the hell alone. Or do you want to be thrown over the veranda?"

The girls flinched and hurried away from Seto's death glare. Ana sighed from annoyance and followed them. When she reached the bottom, she found Sanae hadn't followed them. Looking up, she saw her friend talking with Seto, who didn't seem pleased. Wait, what's that about. She's not telling him what I said this morning, is she?