Lessons Well Learned
By Violet Ice
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Aoshi walked to school that morning.
His car would need a day or so to cool down after all the stress it had been put under the day before. He could have easy blamed Misao and told her she owed him for repairs on the car, but he could tell she had been upset about something and wasn't about to rip into her more, even though he easily could have. He wasn't intentionally cruel; she just bothered him to no end.
He supposed things could have been worse. It could have been cold or rainy or just blah out in general. Fortunately, the weather was nice, the sun was shining, and the sky was a beautiful shade of cerulean.
The sky is the same color as her eyes…
And why did that thought just pop into my mind?
In his thoughts, Aoshi was going over the events of the previous day. It had been an odd day, all things considering. Classes had been dull, as usual, lunch time and homeroom were always consumed by the oddness that was Miru and Kamatari, then the little near-miss on the way home…
That scene played over and over again in the back of his mind. Himself, driving through the pelting rain as the wipers squeaked across the glass. Misao, running out into the road. Himself, slamming down the breaks. The terrified look on her face as she stood frozen, awaiting the impact. That feeling of relief that washed over him once he realized she was okay.
Relief; oh the relief. If he had killed her; if he had injured her, he never would have been able to live with that kind of guilt, no matter how much he disliked her.
After the walk home in the rain the previous evening, he had realized that he didn't even dislike her. Seeing her vulnerable like any other mortal had given him a new perspective of the being that was Misao. She was scared and broken, just like every one else who walked the earth. She was just as alone, just as in need of some one to treat her kindly. He had seen a sort of wild longing in her eyes; that yearning for some one to tell her everything would be okay.
And he hadn't been able to do it.
"Aoshi!"
He snapped back to the present at the sound of Kamatari's lilting, feminine voice. The transvestite was sprinting across the parking lot towards him, Miru hot on his tails. He waved enthusiastically, bracelets bouncing around his wrist, and, judging by the way he was dressed, he had spent the night with his friend.
It was easy to tell when Kamatari had decided not to go home for the night. Mornings he arrived at school wearing mostly black, anything faded or pants with a lot of straps on them, it was a sure sign he had gone to Miru's and never left. The strange thing about it though was that Kamatari looked good in the style and not just any one could pull it off. Truth be told, Kamatari looked good in almost anything he wore.
That day, he was sporting a black and white baseball jersey-style shirt, black pants loaded with straps and loops and his usual supply of jelly bracelets, along with the ever-present chain bearing the dare to shine and "raise your voice." Aoshi had never once seen Kamatari without that bracelet and often wondered about its significance.
"Hi Aoshi!" Kamatari was beaming at him, one scrawny hand clutching the strap on his over-the-shoulder book bag.
"Hello." Aoshi looked down at the other boy, his icy eyes meeting Kamatari's soft brown ones. It never ceased to amaze him that no matter how much pain and anguish there was in Kamatari's eyes, that bright, perky smile would always light his face. Then he looked over at Miru, breaking eye contact with the girlish gaze that was still settled on his handsome face. "Good morning."
"Where's your car?" Miru pushed a lock of hair from his eyes, blinking as he asked the question. He was wearing black jeans and wife-beater, a gray button-down shirt layered over it. He had this way of looking dangerous, simply by standing there, and Aoshi wondered if this was what made him so appealing to some one who was as shy about his feelings as Kamatari was.
"It died on me last night." He left it at that, not wishing for more questioning from the indomitable duo about Misao.
"Oh." A pause, "You gave Meibi a ride home."
"She was going crazy yesterday. What kind of gentleman would I be if I left her to fend for herself?"
Miru snorted. "Meibi can take plenty good care of herself, Aoshi. She's been taking care of herself since her mom disappeared. Her father certainly doesn't give a shit about her. He just cares about himself, my mom and Mitsu. To the two of them, she and I are just extra people living in the house. Oh, and this one over here too. They treat us the same as they treat him, like we're guests." He nudged Kamatari in the ribs and the older boy looked at him pointedly.
"Don't do that." He playfully pushed Miru away, the chain of the shine bracelet tinkling with his movements. He was behaving extremely lighthearted that morning, giggling and fawning over everything, clutching at his friend's hand and over-all acting somewhat clingy. This stemmed from his fear of further torment by the prior afternoon's bullies and Kamatari knew that the closer he was to Miru, the less likely it was anything would happen.
"Keh; you know you like it." A cocky grin spread its way across the dark-haired teen's face as he prodded the object of his affections a second time. "And you know I would do more than just that if I could." A certain smugness filled the boy's voice and his fingers rose, giving Kamatari's short hair a playful yank.
Kamatari wrinkled his nose as he hoisted the book bag strap higher on his shoulder. "Proves how much you know." He replied in a saucy voice, "I don't like you poking at me at all. And it doesn't matter where you're poking or what you're poking with." This said, he turned up his nose and flounced across the parking lot towards the main entrance of the school.
"I don't know what he could possibly mean by that." Another ostentatious grin crossed Miru's face as he ran along after his friend, waving over his shoulder at Aoshi. "See you in homeroom!"
Aoshi sighed. How had he been saddled with those two? Did their weirdness never end? How much more of this could he take before he lost his sanity? At least neither of them tried to hit on him…
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Kaoru was at her locker when she felt some one tap her on the shoulder.
She half-turned, expecting it to be Misao and was somewhat surprised to find herself staring at the pink shag that was Meibi's bangs. The magenta-haired girl was wearing layer upon layer that day, several shirts one on top of the other, jeans torn in several places revealing stripped knee-socks below. Her entire outfit was brilliant greens and blues paired off with white and it all clashed terribly with the streaks in her hair.
"You dropped this." Her voice was noncommittal as she handed Kaoru a sparkly gel pen that had descended from somewhere amidst the piles of junk in her locker.
"Thanks." Kaoru accepted the pen and offered a smile in return. She saw Meibi's mass of hair twitch and wondered what the rest of her face looked like under all those bangs; she had never seen more than a mouth and part of a nose.
"Yeah, whatever." A slight shrug and Meibi was on her way down the hall, key chains clattering together as her book bag bounced against her back.
"Hey, Meibi…" Kaoru sort of trailed off. She had always been intrigued by Meibi, always wondered what kind of friend she would be. "Meibi, wait a minute!"
In a flash of magenta, the other girl whipped around to face Kaoru again. "What?"
"Look, I'm sorry I was rude to you yesterday. But it's just…Misao and I are supposed to be friends, you know, and I'm supposed to hate the things she hates and like the things she likes…"
"Sounds like a crappy friendship to me." Came the scathing reply, "If that's what being popular is like, damn am I glad I'm not popular."
"I'm not either." Kaoru admitted, "I'm not popular. I'm just riding on her glory…She's the one that everybody pretends to like, not me."
"Did you guys have a fight or something? I've never heard you say a bad word about her before." Meibi tipped her head to the side, her bangs parting slightly and revealing a sliver of her face.
"Yeah…We got into a big fight last night. Over, surprisingly enough, your brother and his little 'girlfriend.' We saw a bunch of guys threatening Kamatari yesterday and Miru went insane defending him. She asked me what I would do if some one tried shit like that with her and I told her…Well, the truth."
"Wait, what happened yesterday?" This was interesting. Meibi parted her mass of hair to look directly at Kaoru. "I didn't hear anything about it."
For a moment, the other girl couldn't speak. She had never though she would see Meibi's face beneath her hair. She was surprised by how bright and inquisitive her eyes were. "We were going to my car after school…Kamatari was waiting for your brother by those garbage cans at the side of the parking lot and a bunch of the jocks attacked him."
"Wow…I didn't know." Meibi frowned slightly. That would explain why Miru was crying yesterday. "Stuff like that happens to Kamatari a lot. Those idiots think he's going to disease them or something. They don't understand anything." Poor guy…He's never done a thing to them. It's not his fault…
"I guess not." Kaoru pushed her locker shut and hoisted her backpack up to her shoulder.
"So, are you and Misao not talking now or something? I mean, normally you wouldn't be seen with me."
"It's getting harder and harder to be her friend. She just gets more and more full of herself as she gets older. I think Aoshi is really starting to get to her though and I'm glad. It'll be good for her, getting a dose of reality."
"So, this is the only reason you're talking to me?" Meibi looked directly at Kaoru, her wide jade eyes assessing the other teen's face, "To annoy Misao?"
"No! Oh, no! Did you think that? I'm sorry. I just never did before because she didn't want me to. I've been her friend for a long time…Since before she was like this…And I guess I thought her friendship was worth doing anything for." A shrug, "But I think I'm going to start making my own decisions now."
"But why me? Why the pathetic poor girl with no future? The girl who's probably as queer as her brother, who has a terrible family and every one hates or pities her. Why me, Kaoru? You could do a lot better than me." The bangs fell back in place, covering those emerald eyes and all the secrets they held.
"What do I care what other people say about you? You're not Miru and you're not pathetic. You're, you know, real. And not many people are any more. So I guess I've always been kinda curious about what you were like behind all the hair."
"Fair enough. Where do we go from here though? Won't that ruin things with Misao more if you start hanging around with me? I mean, if you've really been friends with her since before she got so spoiled, do you want to lose that for me?"
"If she doesn't want to be friends with me because I'm hanging out with you, then I don't want to be friends with her at all. I can do things with whoever I damn well please. Now c'mon or we'll be late for homeroom."
"Yeah, okay."
Meibi followed Kaoru down the hall, watching as the dark-haired girl's ponytail swung with her movements. It was odd thinking of Kaoru as some one she could consider an ally. She was, after all, Misao's best and closest friend. Suppose this was some sort of plot by the rich little snob to further destroy her reputation? Well, Meibi wasn't that ignorant. She would stay on her guard and see how this progressed; watching, waiting, looking for signs of any kind of foul play. And the second either of them showed signs of toying with her, she'd mess them up pretty good.
She was nobody's fool.
They try to burn her and there'd be hell to pay.