Yes! Yes! Yes! Yeee-haw! It's the tenth chapter!
Still don't own it!!
Have a good time, everybody!
Chapter 10: Everything Intensified
Yukino tossed and turned, writhing with energy she didn't know what to do with. She twisted her body into countless positions. In a way, she was feeling restless. Her torso ached with something other than illness. She flushed and bit her lip belligerently. Yes, she remembered this feeling.
It was the want.
She had a need to be fulfilled. But she couldn't feel this way! Not without him there! What was she to do? The flush in her cheeks intensified. She knew of a lot she could do, but---no! That would only make things worse! Then it would be harder for her to keep their promise to put off the intimacy of their relationship until it was right for them!
She rolled over onto her stomach and grasped a corner of the sheets in her hand. She tried desperately to suppress the feelings that stormed over her being. She tried to forget-and failed.
Yukino hummed tunelessly as she plopped down at the dinner table the next morning. She felt so much better this morning! Her nose was clear, her throat, cool and healthy. Her joints weren't aching, just cracking a lot.
Her parents noticed her peppy mood and looked at each other with approval.
"So, you're feeling better, Yuki?" her sister Tsuki asked.
Yukino nodded cheerfully. "Yup! I feel really great this morning!"
"Wow, honey," her mother breathed, "You recovered from the flu much more quickly than I thought you would!"
Her father lifted his fork.
"I think it's all that running and exercising she does. Keeps her immune system powerful," he said through a mouthful off broiled fish.
"Yeah, and today I can go to school!" Yukino exclaimed, ignoring her father's nonexistent table manners.
Kano stared at her pointedly.
"You're excited because you can go to school?"
Yukino looked into her lap.
"Yeah."
*So I can finally tell Soichiro,* she thought silently to herself.
Yukino wrapped herself in her wool black wool coat and walked briskly through the crunchy, white snow. Her shoulders rose stiffly close to her ears, and her snugly gloved fingers tightened into a ball. She was eager to get it over with.
*And once I do, I'll feel so much better, and I can go back to feeling honest with Soichiro!*
She gulped.
*It's all a part of taking responsibility and being an adult. Just say it, and the rest of your day will be a breeze. There will be nothing else to worry about,* she reassured herself.
Slowly, her shoulders relaxed, and she released her fingers one by one.
Yukino stood outside of the main entrance of the school where she caught sight of her gaggle of friends. They seemed to be very much in deep conversation with each other.
Yukino smiled. Her friends always made her feel so carefree and happy, and the sight of them made her rush up to them, smiling. Rika pointed at her, and the rest turned their heads and bodies in her direction simultaneously. Their expressions were indifferent. Yukino's feet slowed to a stop in front of them.
"What's wrong?" she asked slowly.
They looked at the ground and said nothing for a moment. Hideaki put his arm around her shoulder and quietly led the group to an isolated bench on the school's snow-mounded lawn. He gently stood in front of her and, very slowly, placing both hands on her shoulders, applied pressure to signal her to sit. Her book bag slid off of her shoulder. Yukino lowered herself slowly, still looking up at her friend's worried faces.
"What's wrong?" she asked again. Hideaki sighed and ran a hand through his golden hair, messy and brittle from the parasitic winter winds.
Yukino averted her gaze to Tsubasa, who was suddenly very aware of the severity of her unkempt fingernails. Suddenly Yukino saw something that made her stomach churn. A boy of medium height stumbled weakly through the courtyard behind Tsubaka. His cheeks were black and blue and swollen to twice their size. Several sickening lumps bulged from his brow, slumping over one eye, causing it to shrink. His lips had strange-looking (were they growths?) sticking out from them, and they were puckered outward like the yellow beak of a duck. Every wrinkle and dent on his swelling mouth was enlarged, each line stretching widely. The boy glanced at her, and then, perhaps because he noticed her looking strangely at him, turned abruptly and hurried into the main entrance, his legs moving grotesquely and in a nervous and staccato manner.
Yukino slowly lifted her hand and pointed to where the boy had been standing.
"Who was that? What happened to that guy?"
Hideaki looked at her gravely.
"That was Koichi Katsutoshi. Arima did that to him after school yesterday."
Yukino was flabbergasted. Her heart sunk into the freezing pit of her stomach.
*Oh my God...*
She couldn't ask, but she dared to anyway.
"W-Why? What happened?"
No one said anything for awhile until Maho cleared her throat quietly.
"Well, it seems that Koichi has been spreading rumors about you and what you two do during your tutoring lessons."
Yukino's mouth dropped open.
"WHAT?" she pronounced each consonant tersely.
"He also says you like it," Maho continued.
"He said you were a good teacher," Tsubasa said softly.
Hideaki tightened his fist into a ball.
"Is it true, Yukino?" he asked carefully after a moment.
Yukino covered her nose and her mouth with her hands and shook her head in disbelief.
"Oh my God," she muttered shakily.
Yukino shook her head and saw another figure standing on the other side of the courtyard.
Arima was looking at her.
Yukino's shoulders rose. Her legs couldn't seem to be working. She couldn't stand up. She couldn't read his face. It was a mixture of many different emotions, but she could only recognize one-hurt.
*I hurt Soichiro.*
The thought filled her head, swelling outward and pushing painfully on her skull.
*I wonder what he is thinking?*
The cold breeze blew, sending his dark hair flying over his drooped eyelids. The piercing wind only seemed to rub salt into his wounds, and she could see it on his face.
Her legs wobbled as she pushed her hands down on the bench's icy metal armrests, and pushed herself up. She turned slowly and placed a shaking hand to her forehead. Her knees knocking together, she shivered into the school building.
She needed to go.
She needed to think.
She needed to cry.
Yukino blew her nose one last time on another piece of brittle toilet paper and leaned backwards, resting her head on the gray marble wall in the dark, narrow bathroom cubicle. Her nose burned from the all the tissue paper. She thought bitterly that the school needed to get more money and purchase some new paper for the bathrooms. Her mind wandered. It had been hard enough trying to concentrate in math, when she could just feel Arima's pernicious glares on her back of her stupid head. He had looked away coldly when she turned to face him. She noticed that the knuckles on his left hand were bandaged up with white tape. Aya must have seen Yukino staring at Arima's hand, because when she sadly looked back at her notebook, she whispered into Yukino's ear that Arima had hurt his hand when he busted Koichi's lip. He had given her mean glares all day in the hallways. He turned his head away from her every time she was on the brink of tears. He moved away angrily whenever she came within ten feet of him. The eyes that had looked so lovingly at her in the past now were filled with antipathy, and when they weren't they were packed with a constant loathing.
She simply couldn't believe it. Her once-loving Soichiro had been so sweet, but now she had hurt him arrantly, and hardened his heart to her desperate glances.
Yukino slumped downward and sat on the chilled bathroom floor. She hugged her knees.
*How come I can never tell him the things that are the most important to us? I'm afraid of everything! I'm so weak.* she thought.
She was so fallacious in their relationship; she always seemed to be deceiving him when she refused to tell him that she loved him because she was too afraid, or when she forgot to tell him how wonderful and kind, and beautiful and admirable he was.
The bell toned. Yukino checked her watch dismally. School was over. It was time for clubs.
"Argh!" she threw her head back in exasperation, her silky red hair flying from her face.
She sniffled.
"I am not in the mood for clubs."
She looked around where she was sitting. Her backpack was shoved in the corner next to her, she had a carbonated drink in her purse, and there was enough tissue paper to dab at her red-rimmed eyes.
*Maybe I can just stay in here for a while.*
She smiled forlornly to herself. She pressed her slender fingers to her forehead and hot tears spilled down her cheeks.
Yukino plodded down the empty language wing, her polished heels echoing off of the walls. She came to the end of the hallway, ready to exit out into the cold, winter weather when stopped suddenly.
And there was Koichi.
A dull rush of anger blew from her ankles to her heart.
He looked at her without saying a word.
Yukino tightened her hands into tiny fists, shaking with un-nameable furor.
Koichi moved slowly toward her. He stood before her for a moment, and nefariously wrapped his arm around her tiny waist. She pursed her lips together, two angry specks of red forming on her cheeks.
He brought his face to her ear.
"I told all the teachers that I got into a car accident, so your beloved Arima and I wouldn't get expelled for fighting."
He took his face away from her ear and moved his swelling lips closer to hers.
Her anger spread like a star burst out of her heart and diffused into the rest of her body. She didn't care that he had been beaten to a bloody pulp the afternoon before. She wouldn't have cared if his arms had been disconnected from the rest of his disgusting body. She didn't care.
With the speed of a ferocious cat, she grabbed him by the front of his uniform shirt and rammed him into the lockers standing at the edge of the hallway.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she snarled. "You can't just force your feelings on someone else like that!"
Koichi's eyelids drooped lazily and his pudgy mouth was set into a line. His bored expression made her nerves want to explode out of her body and electrocute him.
"I hate you," she spat, "Find another tutor."
She flattened her palm and hit the front of his lumpy brow, causing the back of his head to smack against the metal locker behind him.
She released him and stomped away, angry tears flowing down her cheeks.
*Why couldn't I have done that in the beginning?*
She felt as if a coal were burning just below her heart. No wonder Soichiro didn't like her anymore. She was always too slow to do everything. She was a horrible person. She was so naïve. She had spun her own web and now she was tangled within it. She was caught right in the middle of it. She turned and ran down the hall, flying past the open classroom doors, past the bathroom, everything. She passed through a million doors, pushing their wooded frames away from her, till she sped outside, the cold air combing its careless fingers through her strands of red.
She sobbed, her aching lids overflowing with teetering tears. She padded down the sidewalk, and caught the bus just in time. She glided down the aisle and found a seat in the back and tried to keep quiet, but managed instead to disrupt all of the passengers with her pathetic sniffles. She didn't care. Arima's hurt and disbelieving eyes kept appearing in the torn and dirty pages of her mind.
Still sniffling, she turned the key in the knob and pushed the door of her house open. Her sisters were on the couch in the living room, and their heads turned to face her. Yuknio closed the door behind her and leaned against it, her stringy hair hanging in front of her face. She ran a stressful hand through it, and then put her hand to her mouth. She didn't care if her sisters were right there. She wept and slid down the floor.
Her sisters leapt from their seat and rushed to her, crouching down to her level. Tuski grabbed hold of Yukino's left hand and Kano grasped the other.
"What's wrong, Yuki?" they asked, their voices filled with concern.
Yukino wailed.
"I think Arima and I have broken up."
****************************************************************** Yep. That was Chapter 10. I was listening to Coldplay while writing it, and everything just flowed. Please Review.
Still don't own it!!
Have a good time, everybody!
Chapter 10: Everything Intensified
Yukino tossed and turned, writhing with energy she didn't know what to do with. She twisted her body into countless positions. In a way, she was feeling restless. Her torso ached with something other than illness. She flushed and bit her lip belligerently. Yes, she remembered this feeling.
It was the want.
She had a need to be fulfilled. But she couldn't feel this way! Not without him there! What was she to do? The flush in her cheeks intensified. She knew of a lot she could do, but---no! That would only make things worse! Then it would be harder for her to keep their promise to put off the intimacy of their relationship until it was right for them!
She rolled over onto her stomach and grasped a corner of the sheets in her hand. She tried desperately to suppress the feelings that stormed over her being. She tried to forget-and failed.
Yukino hummed tunelessly as she plopped down at the dinner table the next morning. She felt so much better this morning! Her nose was clear, her throat, cool and healthy. Her joints weren't aching, just cracking a lot.
Her parents noticed her peppy mood and looked at each other with approval.
"So, you're feeling better, Yuki?" her sister Tsuki asked.
Yukino nodded cheerfully. "Yup! I feel really great this morning!"
"Wow, honey," her mother breathed, "You recovered from the flu much more quickly than I thought you would!"
Her father lifted his fork.
"I think it's all that running and exercising she does. Keeps her immune system powerful," he said through a mouthful off broiled fish.
"Yeah, and today I can go to school!" Yukino exclaimed, ignoring her father's nonexistent table manners.
Kano stared at her pointedly.
"You're excited because you can go to school?"
Yukino looked into her lap.
"Yeah."
*So I can finally tell Soichiro,* she thought silently to herself.
Yukino wrapped herself in her wool black wool coat and walked briskly through the crunchy, white snow. Her shoulders rose stiffly close to her ears, and her snugly gloved fingers tightened into a ball. She was eager to get it over with.
*And once I do, I'll feel so much better, and I can go back to feeling honest with Soichiro!*
She gulped.
*It's all a part of taking responsibility and being an adult. Just say it, and the rest of your day will be a breeze. There will be nothing else to worry about,* she reassured herself.
Slowly, her shoulders relaxed, and she released her fingers one by one.
Yukino stood outside of the main entrance of the school where she caught sight of her gaggle of friends. They seemed to be very much in deep conversation with each other.
Yukino smiled. Her friends always made her feel so carefree and happy, and the sight of them made her rush up to them, smiling. Rika pointed at her, and the rest turned their heads and bodies in her direction simultaneously. Their expressions were indifferent. Yukino's feet slowed to a stop in front of them.
"What's wrong?" she asked slowly.
They looked at the ground and said nothing for a moment. Hideaki put his arm around her shoulder and quietly led the group to an isolated bench on the school's snow-mounded lawn. He gently stood in front of her and, very slowly, placing both hands on her shoulders, applied pressure to signal her to sit. Her book bag slid off of her shoulder. Yukino lowered herself slowly, still looking up at her friend's worried faces.
"What's wrong?" she asked again. Hideaki sighed and ran a hand through his golden hair, messy and brittle from the parasitic winter winds.
Yukino averted her gaze to Tsubasa, who was suddenly very aware of the severity of her unkempt fingernails. Suddenly Yukino saw something that made her stomach churn. A boy of medium height stumbled weakly through the courtyard behind Tsubaka. His cheeks were black and blue and swollen to twice their size. Several sickening lumps bulged from his brow, slumping over one eye, causing it to shrink. His lips had strange-looking (were they growths?) sticking out from them, and they were puckered outward like the yellow beak of a duck. Every wrinkle and dent on his swelling mouth was enlarged, each line stretching widely. The boy glanced at her, and then, perhaps because he noticed her looking strangely at him, turned abruptly and hurried into the main entrance, his legs moving grotesquely and in a nervous and staccato manner.
Yukino slowly lifted her hand and pointed to where the boy had been standing.
"Who was that? What happened to that guy?"
Hideaki looked at her gravely.
"That was Koichi Katsutoshi. Arima did that to him after school yesterday."
Yukino was flabbergasted. Her heart sunk into the freezing pit of her stomach.
*Oh my God...*
She couldn't ask, but she dared to anyway.
"W-Why? What happened?"
No one said anything for awhile until Maho cleared her throat quietly.
"Well, it seems that Koichi has been spreading rumors about you and what you two do during your tutoring lessons."
Yukino's mouth dropped open.
"WHAT?" she pronounced each consonant tersely.
"He also says you like it," Maho continued.
"He said you were a good teacher," Tsubasa said softly.
Hideaki tightened his fist into a ball.
"Is it true, Yukino?" he asked carefully after a moment.
Yukino covered her nose and her mouth with her hands and shook her head in disbelief.
"Oh my God," she muttered shakily.
Yukino shook her head and saw another figure standing on the other side of the courtyard.
Arima was looking at her.
Yukino's shoulders rose. Her legs couldn't seem to be working. She couldn't stand up. She couldn't read his face. It was a mixture of many different emotions, but she could only recognize one-hurt.
*I hurt Soichiro.*
The thought filled her head, swelling outward and pushing painfully on her skull.
*I wonder what he is thinking?*
The cold breeze blew, sending his dark hair flying over his drooped eyelids. The piercing wind only seemed to rub salt into his wounds, and she could see it on his face.
Her legs wobbled as she pushed her hands down on the bench's icy metal armrests, and pushed herself up. She turned slowly and placed a shaking hand to her forehead. Her knees knocking together, she shivered into the school building.
She needed to go.
She needed to think.
She needed to cry.
Yukino blew her nose one last time on another piece of brittle toilet paper and leaned backwards, resting her head on the gray marble wall in the dark, narrow bathroom cubicle. Her nose burned from the all the tissue paper. She thought bitterly that the school needed to get more money and purchase some new paper for the bathrooms. Her mind wandered. It had been hard enough trying to concentrate in math, when she could just feel Arima's pernicious glares on her back of her stupid head. He had looked away coldly when she turned to face him. She noticed that the knuckles on his left hand were bandaged up with white tape. Aya must have seen Yukino staring at Arima's hand, because when she sadly looked back at her notebook, she whispered into Yukino's ear that Arima had hurt his hand when he busted Koichi's lip. He had given her mean glares all day in the hallways. He turned his head away from her every time she was on the brink of tears. He moved away angrily whenever she came within ten feet of him. The eyes that had looked so lovingly at her in the past now were filled with antipathy, and when they weren't they were packed with a constant loathing.
She simply couldn't believe it. Her once-loving Soichiro had been so sweet, but now she had hurt him arrantly, and hardened his heart to her desperate glances.
Yukino slumped downward and sat on the chilled bathroom floor. She hugged her knees.
*How come I can never tell him the things that are the most important to us? I'm afraid of everything! I'm so weak.* she thought.
She was so fallacious in their relationship; she always seemed to be deceiving him when she refused to tell him that she loved him because she was too afraid, or when she forgot to tell him how wonderful and kind, and beautiful and admirable he was.
The bell toned. Yukino checked her watch dismally. School was over. It was time for clubs.
"Argh!" she threw her head back in exasperation, her silky red hair flying from her face.
She sniffled.
"I am not in the mood for clubs."
She looked around where she was sitting. Her backpack was shoved in the corner next to her, she had a carbonated drink in her purse, and there was enough tissue paper to dab at her red-rimmed eyes.
*Maybe I can just stay in here for a while.*
She smiled forlornly to herself. She pressed her slender fingers to her forehead and hot tears spilled down her cheeks.
Yukino plodded down the empty language wing, her polished heels echoing off of the walls. She came to the end of the hallway, ready to exit out into the cold, winter weather when stopped suddenly.
And there was Koichi.
A dull rush of anger blew from her ankles to her heart.
He looked at her without saying a word.
Yukino tightened her hands into tiny fists, shaking with un-nameable furor.
Koichi moved slowly toward her. He stood before her for a moment, and nefariously wrapped his arm around her tiny waist. She pursed her lips together, two angry specks of red forming on her cheeks.
He brought his face to her ear.
"I told all the teachers that I got into a car accident, so your beloved Arima and I wouldn't get expelled for fighting."
He took his face away from her ear and moved his swelling lips closer to hers.
Her anger spread like a star burst out of her heart and diffused into the rest of her body. She didn't care that he had been beaten to a bloody pulp the afternoon before. She wouldn't have cared if his arms had been disconnected from the rest of his disgusting body. She didn't care.
With the speed of a ferocious cat, she grabbed him by the front of his uniform shirt and rammed him into the lockers standing at the edge of the hallway.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she snarled. "You can't just force your feelings on someone else like that!"
Koichi's eyelids drooped lazily and his pudgy mouth was set into a line. His bored expression made her nerves want to explode out of her body and electrocute him.
"I hate you," she spat, "Find another tutor."
She flattened her palm and hit the front of his lumpy brow, causing the back of his head to smack against the metal locker behind him.
She released him and stomped away, angry tears flowing down her cheeks.
*Why couldn't I have done that in the beginning?*
She felt as if a coal were burning just below her heart. No wonder Soichiro didn't like her anymore. She was always too slow to do everything. She was a horrible person. She was so naïve. She had spun her own web and now she was tangled within it. She was caught right in the middle of it. She turned and ran down the hall, flying past the open classroom doors, past the bathroom, everything. She passed through a million doors, pushing their wooded frames away from her, till she sped outside, the cold air combing its careless fingers through her strands of red.
She sobbed, her aching lids overflowing with teetering tears. She padded down the sidewalk, and caught the bus just in time. She glided down the aisle and found a seat in the back and tried to keep quiet, but managed instead to disrupt all of the passengers with her pathetic sniffles. She didn't care. Arima's hurt and disbelieving eyes kept appearing in the torn and dirty pages of her mind.
Still sniffling, she turned the key in the knob and pushed the door of her house open. Her sisters were on the couch in the living room, and their heads turned to face her. Yuknio closed the door behind her and leaned against it, her stringy hair hanging in front of her face. She ran a stressful hand through it, and then put her hand to her mouth. She didn't care if her sisters were right there. She wept and slid down the floor.
Her sisters leapt from their seat and rushed to her, crouching down to her level. Tuski grabbed hold of Yukino's left hand and Kano grasped the other.
"What's wrong, Yuki?" they asked, their voices filled with concern.
Yukino wailed.
"I think Arima and I have broken up."
****************************************************************** Yep. That was Chapter 10. I was listening to Coldplay while writing it, and everything just flowed. Please Review.
