AUTHORS NOTE:

The stuff from part 1 still applies to this part too. This is my first try at fanfiction ever, so I'm a little worried about OOCness. Of course, this is a reincarnation fic, and because they have lived different lives this time around, they won't be exactly the same. For those who for some reason haven't read part 1 or 2 (why you'd do that, I don't know), or don't remember, Nuriko and Tasuki are brothers in this story, twins.

Ummmm, sorry about being so late on this part...I hit writer's block for most of last school year. Now it's the summer, and I've hit another huge wave of writing...almost have another part to this story done too. Hopefully it won't die until I get some stories done. Anyone who actually waited for this is to be commended!

The title is still very much subject to change...and still has no basis in the story yet, though it will eventually. And, I love feedback! I crave feedback. I don't necessarily need it to write...but I have found that, like anime, it is addictive. That, and it makes me feel like people are actually reading my story, which is something I doubt is happening after taking so long with this part!! So...feedback GOOOOOOOOOD! Especially feedback about how I'm doing the characters...

DISCLAIMER:

Nuriko/Ryuuen, Tasuki/Genrou/Shun'u, Kouji, and Hotohori/Saihitei don't belong to me. Fushigi Yuugi doesn't belong to me. Eventually, once everyone else shows up, they won't belong to me either. I'm just borrowing them and playing with them (and giving Nuriko what he wants…Hotohori!) Suing me would do no good, because after losing my scholarship for college I have almost no money, and that that I do have is needed to buy books this year.

Himitsu on the other hand is mine, ALL MINE!!!!! I haven't let anyone take him yet...and I'm not about to either. The person in the trench coat is mine too, so that person's off limits too (and his/her identity will be revealed in the next part...I've already written it!). All others so far are just random characters, and if you take them I won't be too angry, but if you can't come up with your own random characters that's pretty sad...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

chapter 3: date

The next morning I woke to a bad trick of Genrou's. It was something he'd come up with not too long after he got back from reform school, and he'd done it over half of the days he'd been back so far. And, no matter what I did, I couldn't stop him from doing it.

What he did was simple, but very, very evil. He didn't wake up to an alarm, just didn't hear it. I had to practically shake him to get him to wake up. But for some reason he had lot of alarm clocks. I thought at first that he was trying to use all of them to somehow get himself up. Of course, that was before I found out what they were really for, the hard way.

About the third day he was back he set all of the alarms for a different, way too early, time and hid them around the room. Since they didn't work at getting him up, he didn't have to worry about them. But every single one of them woke me up, and then I had to go searching around the room to turn them off before falling back asleep. Then, when I woke him up later he laughed. He thought it was hilarious.

He did the same thing that morning. One alarm went off at 3:32 am, almost two hours before my alarm was set to go off. Another went off at 4:07, and after that I stopped looking at the time and tried my hardest to ignore them after hiding them. For some reason Genrou always had more of them, no matter how many I hid. It was getting to the point where I was going to start smashing them instead of hiding them.

I'd learned after the second time that trying to wake Genrou up early to get some sort of revenge just didn't work. He always just yawned, blinked at me, and went back to sleep. It didn't even bother him, which really frustrated me. He just didn't seem to notice it.

Unfortunately, I definitely did notice being woken up way too early. I may not be anywhere near as bad as Genrou at getting up, but I did not enjoy being woken up at insane hours. Of course, Genrou seemed to find it absolutely hilarious when I stumbled about half-asleep because I'd been woken too many times in the early morning to get a decent night's sleep.

That morning it didn't affect me anywhere near as bad as it had the first times. It sucked, being woken up early like that, but when time came for my alarm to go off I woke up easily, and I didn't feel any more tired than I usually did. I figured it was my lingering excitement about my date. After all, it was for that night.

As I shook him awake, Genrou noticed that I was in a much better mood than I usually was when he played that prank on me. He even commented on it, only to get a smile and a "Gen-chan" from me. That got a muttered streak of swearing from him as I almost bounced across the room to get ready for the day.

My choice of clothing that day got a sneer from Genrou, again. It was no more masculine than the day before, though it was for a much better reason this time. After all, I had a date later, and I wanted to look my best for that. And, Sai thought I was a girl, so I definitely wanted to wear a dress.

My choice of dress was a light, cream-colored dress with little purple and blue flowers on it. It was a two-piece dress, a sleeveless main part that went down to my knees and a little jacket like part to go over that. It was also one of my favorites in my wardrobe.

I put my hair up instead of just braiding it like I had the day before. I decided that I wanted to go for a bun (though I hated thinking of it as a bun, because buns make me think of old ladies). Instead of a full bun though I only put some of it in the bun and the rest I let hang down, enough to reach to the middle of my back.

The final touch was makeup, and after that I went down for breakfast. Genrou was already there by then, since he needed a lot less time to get dressed and ready even though I had claimed the shower first. Mom sighed when she saw me, having already given up on trying to get me to dress like a normal guy, and Genrou snorted.

"You look very pretty today Ryuuen," Mom said. "But wouldn't you rather wear some pants? I would think wearing dresses to school every day must be a hassle." Mom knew better than to come out and say, "Dress like a man, Ryuuen."

"Yeah, real pretty," Genrou added. "Too bad guys aren't supposed to be pretty."

"Shun'u!" Mom exclaimed.

"It's Genrou now Mom," he said. "Not Shun'u. How many times do I need to tell ya?"

"Of course," Mom said.

After that things were pretty boring and normal. We finished breakfast and left for school. Genrou didn't walk with me this time, since the walk yesterday had reminded him how to get to school. I met up with Beth and a few others at school and got the usual taunts and sneers from half of the others in the halls.

We didn't have homeroom, that day, since it wasn't the first day of school anymore, and it wasn't Tuesday, which was the day we normally had a half hour homeroom period between first and second hour. Instead we just went to first hour at the beginning of the day, and I didn't see Genrou or Himitsu until seventh hour, history.

Surprisingly, Genrou was there again. It seemed that his two years at reform school really had done some good. Our freshman year he had started skipping class the second day of school, and he hadn't been to more than two-thirds of his classes that year, though somehow he'd still passed everything.

Himitsu's class was great. I normally didn't care much about history of any kind, but he had been really interesting the day before, and he seemed like a really good teacher. After just one class I had decided he was one of the best teachers I had that year. And because of that, calling him just plain Himitsu was starting to bug me.

It was probably something left over from when we'd lived in Japan, but I didn't just want to call him by his first name. I wasn't about to call him Mr. Ryuujin either, because he said he didn't want to be called that, and Mr. Himitsu just sounded weird, and wasn't right.

So, halfway through class, I finally decided what I could do. Right about then I had a question to ask, and when he finally called on me to ask I addressed him as Himitsu-sensei, instead of just Himitsu. It earned me a few weird looks from the rest of the class, and Genrou rolled his eyes. Himitsu, on the other hand, looked like he would have sweatdropped had he been an anime character. But no one said anything about it, and I decided to continue it.

After class one of the girls in the class, not one of the nasty ones who said things about me, but a girl that I didn't know all that well, walked up to me and asked me why I'd called Himitsu that. I saw half of the rest of the class watching and listening; they were curious but didn't want to be caught associating with the freak. She, on the other hand, was just popular enough that she wouldn't be affected by talking to me.

She told me that she'd heard sensei before, in the movies, and always associated with karate and stuff like that, so she wondered what it really meant. She was really nice about it, so I told her what it means and why I decided to start calling Himitsu that. After that she thanked me and walked away, and I had time left over to get to my next class.

-

Nothing much happened during eighth hour, or after school. Class was English (world literature this year) and boring as English classes usually were. I didn't do much after school, just went to spend time with my small group of friends, of which I was the only male. One of the others had to go shopping, so we did that.

I'd told my friends that I had a date, and, unlike Genrou, they didn't assume that it was a girl. Most of my friends had known for a while that I liked guys, since I talked about which guys were cute with them when I claimed to be Kourin, and hadn't stopped now that I was admitting to being Ryuuen. They just wished me luck. I didn't tell them that he thought I was a girl.

After shopping, I went home for dinner and, to my surprise, found Genrou there already. That was odd, considering he hadn't been home for dinner once since he'd come home. But even though he was there, dinner was just like normal, not that I had anything connected with dinner on my mind while I ate. After all, what I'd been waiting for all day, my date with the guy from my dreams, was after dinner.

I was there in the park a half hour early. I was so nervous and afraid I was going to be late that I ended up leaving far too early. So I ended up waiting in the park for a while, staring at the trees like I had the day before. That helped a lot to calm my nerves.

Sai got to the park right on time, as in exactly when the clock in the park hit seven o'clock. I was sitting there demurely, waiting for him, though my appearance did not reflect the state of panic that my mind was in. I was starting to have second thoughts about the whole date thing, regretting that I hadn't told him that I was male, again, and it was making me a nervous wreck.

"Hello, fair lady," he greeted me. Another wave of uneasiness swept over me at the word lady, but I pushed it back. "You look radiant."

"Th-thank you," I stammered, my cheeks growing warm. Just those few words washed away the nervousness of not telling him I was male. I was still worried about it, but it wasn't about to make me start screaming anymore. "You look wonderful too."

"Thank you," he said graciously. Then he offered me his arm. "Shall we?"

I tried not to make a fool of myself as I rose from the bench to join him and take him arm. Luckily, I managed to stand up without falling flat on my face and embarrassing myself beyond all hope of saving face, and he smiled at me as he led me toward the street. There was a red convertible parked on the street, one of those obviously expensive cars that every teenager with even a tiny desire to own a car wants. I was ready to just pass it by, but that was where he led me. It took me a moment to realize that that was his car.

He opened the passenger side door for me and stepped back to allow me to sit down. I was sure I was going to make a fool of myself somehow, maybe get my dress caught in the door, or maybe just fall over while trying to sit down, but somehow I managed to get into the car without even a single incident. He closed the door, checking to make sure there was nothing in the way first, and then went around to the driver's side.

By then I was even more sure that I was making a huge mistake not telling him that I was male. He was being the ultimate gentleman, much more than any other high school student I'd ever met. And he was so beautiful... I felt wrong for not telling him, which was almost like lying to him, since I knew very well he thought I was female.

But I still couldn't bring myself to burst the bubble. After all, it was just too perfect. It felt nice to be treated like a beautiful lady, even if that wasn't what I was. It was nice to be treated special, instead of like the school freak, and I knew that if I told him I was male that special treatment would go away. So, I stayed quiet.

I didn't even know where he was taking me. He could have changed his attitude completely at that point, and I probably wouldn't have noticed one bit. Even if he had suddenly started the car and driven me to some slum to do unspeakable things, I wouldn't have cared. His gentlemanly act had won me over completely, and I was almost at cloud nine.

Of course, he didn't do any of those horrid things. Instead, he started the car, and gracefully pulled away from the curb. If I'd been watching the streets, instead of staring worshipfully at his profile (which is what I was doing), I would have noticed that we were making a beeline for a nearby movie theater. As it was, I didn't notice the destination until he pulled into a parking space and announced, "We have arrived."

I blinked at that, and it actually took me a while to pull my gaze away from him. He didn't seem to mind the staring either, almost as if he was used to it and almost expected it. When I finally did that, I noticed where we were, and I sent up a silent plea that he wouldn't be disappointed in my taste for movies.

I hate to admit it sometimes, but I like a good action movie. It doesn't fit with my "girlish" image, but that's what I like. I like the sappy romances too, but nowhere near as much as something with a little action. At that moment, seeing where Sai had taken me, I realized that that wasn't a very good thing for the "lady" he thought I was.

"What are we going to see?" I asked him, trying to push down my nervousness.

He named a movie. To be honest, I don't remember what movie it was anymore. I just remember that it wasn't quite a romance, but that it was definitely not an action movie either. It was a refined movie, one that fit with his image, if not with my tastes.

As I said, I don't remember what the movie was called. This is probably because I spent most of the movie either watching his face (watching him be so intent on the movie, which he was, was definitely a highlight of the night) or staring at my feet nervously, trying to convince myself that I wasn't a horrible person for not telling him I was male. I did watch parts of the movie, even if I don't remember what happened.

What I remember most vividly is that at some point during the movie I leaned against him, and he put his arm around my shoulders (at least I think I leaned first...it might have been the other way around). The chair's arm was in the way, but it was still quite comfortable, and I have absolutely no idea what possessed me to do it. It was all I could do to keep from jumping away in embarrassment when the movie ended and I realized what I'd done. He didn't seem to mind it though, and we sat there for a few moments while the credits ran before separating and getting up.

Then he drove me home. I tried to convince him to drop me off at the park, where we had met, but he refused. It was dark by then, and he didn't want to leave me alone in the park in the dark. He insisted on dropping me off at the house.

"Thank you for a wonderful evening," he said, kissing the back of my hand gently before I could exit the car. "Perhaps we could do it again some night?"

"I'd love to," I managed to say, for once without stammering or blushing.

"Are you free Saturday?" he asked me. I nodded. "Perhaps we could do dinner?"

"That would be great," I said.

"Very well then," he replied. "Would 7:00 again be too late?"

"No," I said.

"Then, I shall pick you up at seven on Saturday," he said, before I could tell him not to come to the house. I was afraid Genrou would get involved, but it was too late. "Farewell, Kourin."

I waved numbly as he pulled away. His use of the name I had given me had just made all of my carefully built excuses not to tell him I was male come crashing down. I had sworn to myself a little over a year ago that I would never use the name Kourin again, that I would never pretend to be a female again, yet there I was, letting my dream guy call me "fair lady" and Kourin.

I felt both exhilarated from a wonderful date and like the worst scum on earth when I entered the house. I was almost floating from the happiness, and that was what showed the most. That was certainly what Genrou saw when he looked up from making a sandwich to see me enter.

"What's with ya?" he asked me. "And who was that in the fancy car?"

"That was Sai..." I said, my voice more than a little dreamy. "The most wonderful person on Earth."

"Wait, ya went on that date of yours in that?" he asked.

"Of course," I said. "What else would I wear?"

"Some pants," he said. "Most girls wouldn't be caught dead with a date who's wearing a dress."

I didn't say anything, just gave him a rather pointed look. He stared at me for a moment, and then it actually dawned on him what it meant for me to get back from a date, wearing a dress. It was almost funny to watch his face while it happened. He probably would have choked had he been eating the sandwich he was making.

"Yer gay, aren't ya?" he asked me bluntly.

"It took you this long to figure that out?" I shot back. "I've only been discussing cute guys with my friends for years now."

"That doesn't mean anything," he said. "Guys usually don't like other guys ya know. Or did ya forget that?"

"I know that!" I exclaimed. "I just didn't really think about that until after I was Ryuuen again. Before that I was just one of the girls, and that was normal."

"So ya spent so long pretendin' to be a girl that it turned ya gay?" he asked.

"No, but you wouldn't understand if I tried to explain it to you anyway," I said.

"If ya say so," he said. "So that guy ya were with, he's gay too? Some rich gay boy with a fancy car?"

"No!" I exclaimed, and he gave me a funny look. "I mean, he...ummm...doesn't know I'm a guy yet... He thought I was a girl, and I couldn't bring myself to tell him because he's...well..."

"Hot?" he asked as I trailed off, too embarrassed to continue.

"More like beautiful," I said, and he snorted. "Anyway, he doesn't know I'm a guy...so I guess that makes him straight."

"He's gonna hate ya when he finds out," he said. I stared at the floor.

"I know," I said.

"Yer one screwed up guy, ya know that?" he said.

"I know," I repeated. As he sliced his sandwich in half, I started up the stairs toward our room. Before I got too far though, I thought of something and turned back. "Oh, and Gen-chan?" I said in my sweetest voice.

"What?" he asked, scowling at the "Gen-chan."

"If Sai finds out that I'm Ryuuen and not Kourin," I said, smiling sweetly and putting as much venom in my voice as I possibly could, "And it's not because I told him myself, you'll wish you were dead."

The attempt to threaten him must have worked, because he did choke on his sandwich this time. Once he was breathing normally again he swallowed nervously and nodded at me. All smiles again, I floated up the stairs happily to get ready for bed.