Lily tiptoed through the living room in her school uniform and her backpack
on, hoping that Yuki wouldn't wake up.
Shuichi had insisted that she stay home from school until she was one hundred percent healthy and had left her alone with the heavy sleeping novelist.
Her hand reached for the door handle when Yuki spoke.
"Should have tried climbing down the drainpipe," he suggested with a yawn. He had just woken up and had read the note Shuichi had left on the pillow. He would have to think of some way to make him pay for leaving him to babysit all day.
Lily whirled around and had to take a puff of Ventolin to help her stop gasping. That was twice now Yuki had caught her off guard. If she didn't know any better she'd swear he did it on purpose.
"He would have fixed the lock," Yuki explained with another yawn as he walked to the kitchen to get his regular breakfast-beer. "You can't open it from the inside without a key. He can single handedly blow up the microwave, but he knows how to fix the lock. Amazing."
Lily slid down the door and sighed. By some totally unbelievable twist of fate Shuichi had outsmarted her. She smiled to herself at the thought and decided that maybe a day off school wouldn't be such a bad idea.
An empty can joined several others in the bin and Yuki walked back to his bedroom.
"Be ready to leave by the time I'm finished in the shower," he commanded.
"Why? Where are we going?" Lily asked with a curious look.
"Don't ask questions."
Half an hour later the two of them were sitting in silence as the black Mercedes made its way through the city. Lily had changed back into casual clothes and Yuki was dressed up rather nicely in a silk shirt, trousers and a long coat to keep the cold out. It was all black of course-to match his soul.
Lily was dying to turn on the radio to break the uncomfortable silence, but she got the feeling that Yuki would break her finger before she even touched the button.
He parked the car outside a café and the two were led to a table reserved for them inside. They sat down and Lily decided to attempt a conversation.
"This place is rather la-de-da," she stated as she looked at all the well dressed and well spoken people sitting around them.
Yuki lit up a cigarette and took a long drag. Perhaps he should have left her at the apartment.
"So who are we meeting anyway?" Lily asked after examining the flower on the table to see that it was actually real.
"I am meeting my editor," Yuki said blowing some smoke out as he looked up at the ceiling. "You are just going to sit here like a good little girl and say nothing."
"How nice," Lily said sarcastically and coughed as the smoke lingered under her nose. "How much are you going to nail him for?"
"What?"
"Well isn't that what you do when you sell your latest manuscript to a publishing company?" she asked tilting her head to one side. "Make them give you a cheque with an alarming amount of zeros on it so that it will cover your cigarette expenses until the next book?"
Yuki looked at her for a very long time. His hard cat eyes met her innocent kitten ones and he took another huge breath of tobacco. If his father thought that he was going to have any children then he had news for him.
"Sorry I'm late Yuki sama," a smiling lady said putting her handbag down and sitting opposite the author. Her smiling eyes feel on Lily, examining her curiously and she smiled some more.
"It's so nice that you decided to bring your little sister along with you today," she said pleasantly.
Yuki pulled his cigarette out of his mouth with great haste and assured the editor bluntly that he and Lily weren't related. Lily muttered something not very polite under her breath and Yuki pinched her leg under the table, causing her bite her knuckles to suppress a yell.
The two adults started to discuss the costs of the manuscript and Lily started to zone out. Looking around the café at all the posh people brought back memories of Wisconsin and jerk cousins. She sagged down in her chair but sat up again rather quickly when she noticed that all of Yuki's cigarette smoke was wafting in her direction.
"The chief editor has requested a personal meeting with you Yuki sama," the editor said as she slipped the large envelope that held the manuscript into her bag. "He wants to renegotiate your contract."
"What? Why?" Yuki asked halting his cigarette halfway to his mouth.
He'd known that the chief editor had been replaced a month ago, but he didn't know why. He didn't like the idea of renegotiating his contract, he liked the rather large amount of cash deposited into his bank account every month.
"I don't know sorry," the lady said honestly. "But if you could drop by his office some time this week it would be appreciated."
"Let's go," he ordered butting out his smoke and Lily stopped her flashback session.
She quickly said goodbye to the lady and had to run to catch up with Yuki, whom was already out the door. She was puffing and panting badly by the time she caught up with him.
"Hey please don't make me run," she asked and pulled her Ventolin out of her pocket. Her stomach dropped when she realised that it was almost empty. That was a really bad sign since it was the one she'd gotten from the hospital two nights ago.
"I didn't make you do anything," Yuki said with a shrug.
"You're the one who bolted out of there," Lily pointed out. "You didn't even say goodbye to your editor."
"So?"
"Well she is really nice," Lily said awkwardly. "And you left her to foot the bill."
"So?"
"It makes you look rude and cheap," she said bluntly.
"So?"
"It's not a good impression," Lily said with a certain stunned tone in her voice. It was quite clear now that Yuki wasn't someone who cared about what others thought of him.
"So?"
"Oh just forget it!" Lily snapped in frustration and opened the passenger side of the Mercedes. There was just no helping some people.
************************************************
13 years ago
"Noriko, Noriko! You're meant to stop at red lights! Ah, go round the roundabout, not through it! Oh my God! Boom gates! Boom gates!" Tohma screamed as Noriko drove like a nut through the oncoming traffic.
"Shut up Tohma!" she yelled as the car spun around three times before coming to a halt in a parking spot outside the hospital.
She pulled the keys out of the ignition and stepped out into the scorching night. Tohma stayed in the seat breathing heavily until his purple haired friend pulled him out.
They ran along the hospital corridors until they came to a room that had "Barton" written beside the door. Noriko pushed the door open and the two musicians were greeted by loud screams.
"Just don't stand there you idiot!" Christina screamed at the midwife by her feet. "Get this thing out of me!"
"You just need to keep pushing Miss Barton," the midwife said soothingly.
"I am pushing you idiot!" she screamed back red in the face with sweat dripping off of her.
Noriko rushed to her side and Tohma discretely took a place next to Ryuichi on the opposite side of the bed.
"Oh Noriko, thank goodness you're here," Christina cried happily and squeezed the keyboardist's hand tightly. "I don't want to do this alone!"
"Hey I'm here," Ryuichi said in a hurt tone. His girlfriend turned to face him and her eyes shot daggers.
"You!" she screamed hysterically. "This is your fault!" She let go of Noriko's hand and grabbed Ryuichi by the throat.
"You little bastard!" she yelled hysterically and squeezed his throat. "If you ever do this to me again I'll kill you!"
Tohma tried to pull Ryuichi out of harms way as he turned blue in the face and Noriko tried to pry Christina's fingers off of Ryuichi's throat. Those vocal cords were their ticket to fortune, couldn't have them damaged.
The midwife ignored them and just continued shouting words of encouragement. This kind of scene was a regular occurrence in the working day of a midwife.
"If you hadn't of pulled the charm on me that night when we couldn't watch TV because I forgot to pay the electricity bill we wouldn't be here right now! Damn you and your huge amount sex appeal! I just had to fall for your body and gorgeous face didn't I? When I get off of this bed I'm going to grab your ahhhhhhhhhh!"
"Push Miss Barton!" the midwife's voice broke through Christina's screaming. Tohma dragged the nearly choked Ryuichi out of Christina's reach and sighed. With Noriko's driving and Christina's threats it was shaping up to be an interesting night.
The two men looked at the three screaming women. Christina was screaming with her contractions, Noriko screaming as her hand was being crushed and the midwife was screaming louder than both of them with words of encouragement.
"I think we should stay over here," Tohma whispered in his friend's ear.
"Uh-huh."
"She's here!" the midwife yelled and held the baby girl in her arms.
"She?" Christina asked weakly as her head fell back on the pillow and Noriko shook her throbbing hand. Ryuichi judged that it was now safe and walked over to the bed.
"See, I told you," he said with a wide grin and brushed some blonde hair off of her sweaty forehead.
************************************************
The door burst open and the handle made a dent in the wall where it hit. Yuki stomped out of the chief editor's office and stuffed his new contract in his jacket. After a few hostile negotiations he and the editor had come to the understanding that his pay wouldn't decrease, but in actual fact increase.
A few seconds later Lily came out and with a final apology to the man cowering behind the desk, hurried after Yuki. She'd been confused about what had happened for most of the meeting, but she had found one interesting nugget of information. Yuki's given name was actually Eiri.
Therefore, the novelist behind the book she had slagged off in the park a while back was actually him, Shuichi's Yuki.
'I'll make a note not to be so harsh the next time he asks for a review,' Lily thought as she caught up with him at the elevator. The number at the top of the doors showed that the elevator was coming up from the bottom floor so they would have to wait a while.
Lily occupied her mind by looking around the floor and saw that the secretary sitting at the desk behind them was fidgeting a heck of a lot as she looked at Yuki's back. In her hand she held a copy of 'Get'.
Lily turned back around and lent on Yuki's arm, making him look down with a glare. She was too close for his liking.
"Fangirl behind you," she whispered.
He moved his head around ever so slightly to see the squirming secretary.
"Oh no," he muttered and hit the elevator button again.
"Yuki sama! Please wait a minute!" she cried and put the book down.
"Fire exit on your left," Lily said.
"Can you run?"
"Not a chance."
The secretary got up and moved towards them. "I just have a few questions for you Yuki sama!"
It took Yuki half a second to jam Lily under his arm, kick the door to the stairs open and flee.
When they were back at the apartment Yuki made himself a cup of tea and sat down on the couch to study the sales reports he'd been given by his editor that morning. It seemed that his books were down a bit, and he didn't like that.
The less sales meant less readers and less readers meant less money for him. That annoyed him a lot since he'd just gone to all the trouble of renewing his contract.
"Are you looking at your sales reports?" Lily asked with a smile as she looked up at him. She was sitting on the floor with all her homework spread all over the coffee table.
"Mmmmm," Yuki grunted without looking at her.
"Are they up or down?" she asked curiously.
"Down," he muttered.
"That's not good," Lily said.
"Neither is having to listen to you talk," Yuki snapped looking over the paper.
Lily went back to her homework and didn't say anything else for a while. Yuki threw the papers down on the couch and opened his box of cigarettes. If he wanted to bring up his sales for the new book he would have to think of a new marketing strategy.
In the past he'd used the clever marketing schemes of lots of advertising and book signings. Now it was time for something new. He lit up his cigarette and tried to think.
Lily started coughing and he looked over at her. Geez that cough irritated him after a while. It was like living with a miner who had the black lung. Maybe he should throw some of those pills down her throat, just so they'd knock her out for a while. Now that he though about it he should probably botch a couple of them and slip them in Shuichi's food.
Then a possibility ran across his mind.
Lily looked up as she heard Yuki sit down on the floor and he grabbed her chin, holding it firmly between his forefinger and his thumb.
"Oh stop looking so terrified!" he scoffed and turned her head from side to side. "Try to look a little bit more unintelligent will you."
"What are you doing?" Lily asked officially freaked out.
"How old are you?" he asked, his cigarette moving up and down in his lips.
"Thirteen," she said awkwardly and he let go of her.
"You're cute," he proclaimed and stood up.
"Um, thanks," Lily said with a smile. That was a big compliment coming from Yuki. "But why the sudden interest?"
"I have plans for you," he said with a dark smile and went to his study to make a phone call.
"What kind of plans?" Lily cried fearfully.
"You'll see," Yuki sang and closed the door.
'I wonder if I should call the police?' Lily thought and her watch beeped. It was time for another dose.
************************************************
Shuichi arrived home at the early hour of two that afternoon on cloud nine. After only a few hours of rummaging through the old shoebox he and his band mates had put together a new love song.
It was a little bit different from what he usually sang, but that didn't really matter. The lyrics were gold and with only about two weeks until Tokyo Bay Music Festival he didn't need to go into a slump trying to come up with something original.
'I should really thank Lily chan,' he thought as he floated out of the elevator. 'Not only did she give me her mother's songs, she got me the afternoon off.'
After the song had been completed Hiro had pushed Shuichi out of the building with a great deal of force.
"Just leave Fujisaki and me to take care of the rest," he said as he literally threw Shuichi out into the street. "Just go home and check on Lily chan. Hurry!"
'Honestly,' Shuichi thought with a frown at his friend's immaturity. 'Yuki isn't someone that would expose cute little Lily chan to something immoral.'
He opened the door to find Yuki sitting on the couch smoking while Lily slept on the floor, using one of the sofa cushions as a pillow. Yuki was using her as a footrest while he watched a naughty R rated movie with subtitles on the TV.
"Yu-Yuki!" Shuichi squealed and had to hold onto the doorframe to stay standing. "You-you can't watch that in front of Lily chan!"
"Why not?" Yuki asked blowing some smoke into the air. "She's been like this for about an hour now, ever since she took those pills." He then smirked and just for fun decided to stir Shuichi up a bit.
"And I've got to say, judging by how comfortable my right foot is, she's at least an E cup. Junior High students are certainly well endowed these day don't you think?"
Shuichi went beet red in the face. "Yuki don't be so perverse!" he screamed at the top of his lungs and then stopped. "What pills?"
The noise made Lily's eyes half-open and she started to stir from the floor. "Is breakfast ready?"
"No, go back to sleep," Yuki ordered and kicked her head back on the cushion.
He turned the TV off and looked at Shuichi. Shuichi looked at him.
"What?"
Two seconds later Shuichi was on the floor and fighting to keep his pants on.
"Wait, wait a sec!" he cried helplessly trying to keep Yuki's evasive hands at bay. "We can't do it now!"
"We had a deal," Yuki argued and pushed Shuichi's green T-shirt up. "Whatever and whenever. Remember?"
"Yea but," Shuichi trailed off and his eyes flicked over to the sleeping figure by the couch.
Yuki rolled his eyes and swore before getting off of Shuichi. Lily had a rude awakening as he picked her up, carried her to the door, opened it and threw her out into the hall.
Lily slid for half a meter before sitting up on the cold floor. She looked over at Yuki with his shirt open and belt unbuckled with total confusion. How she'd gone from sleeping off her painkillers to being thrown down a hallway she didn't know.
"Go out and don't come back for a while," Yuki snapped and went back inside the apartment.
"Where am I meant to go?" Lily yelled as she stood up slowly.
"I don't care," Yuki stated closing the door. "Just as long as it isn't here."
"How can I go anywhere if don't have any money!" Lily yelled at the door.
After a few seconds the door opened again.
'Great he's come to his senses,' she thought happily.
An airborne wallet smacked her in the head and she ended up once more on the hallway floor.
"Sex fiend," she muttered and rubbed her face. Her head was all groggy and her chest felt stiff from the painkillers.
The other thing that was making her feel worn was all the work her brain was putting into figuring out what Yuki's "plans" for her was. She was getting a really bad feeling.
Greensleeves started to play and something shook in her pocket. She stood up taking the phone out and put Yuki's wallet in her opposite pocket. She flipped the top open and greeted the caller.
"Hi! I'm back in the country! Wanna meet up?"
************************************************
"You're kidding! You're staying with Shindo Shuichi and his lover Yuki Eiri? Oh my God! You could like, sell that to a magazine for millions, no trillions for pounds!" Joan squealed excitedly and started kicking her legs while waving her arms at the same time.
"Yen you mean," Lily corrected and took a sip of her ice cold lemonade.
"Oh yea," Joan stopped acting like a jitterbug for a second while she thought about how strong the yen was on the world stock exchange before going jittery again.
"So is Yuki sama really as handsome as they say?" she asked with her eyes changing to beating love hearts.
"Drop dead gorgeous," Lily admitted and smiled as Joan rocked back and forth on her barstool. "How's your Grandma by the way?"
"Oh she'll be around for another century or two," Joan said waving her hand with a smile. "Anyway, why are you off of school today? I was quite surprised that you answered your phone, I just rang to leave rude messages on your message bank."
"Oh I have a cold," Lily lied and coughed the cough that Yuki despised.
"Some cold," Joan observed and picked up her glass of Fanta.
A man dressed in tight bicycle clothes stopped by their table and looked down at his clipboard.
"Are one of you two ladies Barton Lily san?" he asked with a smile.
"That's me," Lily said and put her glass down. Just who was this guy and how did he know her name?
"I have a parcel to deliver to you," the bike man said putting the clipboard in front of her.
"How'd you know I was here?" Lily asked curiously. "I didn't tell anyone where I was going."
"The mail is under government control," the man whom Lily now figured was a courier said.
"So your saying that Big Brother really is watching and you use mega expensive satellites to track people down all over the nation to give them their parcels?" Joan asked with eyes bigger than her glasses.
"The mail is under government control," the courier repeated darkly and lent in really closely to Joan. "You'd also be advised not to share your theory with anyone else madam."
"Finished!" Lily said quickly and handed the government spy otherwise known as a courier back his clipboard with her signature.
"Great!" he said cheerfully and pushed a parcel with international postage marks into her hands. With a final dangerous look in Joan's direction the courier left the teashop and peddled off down the street.
"Well that was weird," Joan said awkwardly and made a mental note to hack into the postal service on her laptop later. There might be something incriminating in there after all.
Lily didn't reply because she'd just opened her parcel.
"Aww shit," she grumbled and dropped the velvet covered box and leather book on the table with a frown.
************************************************
"This looks important," Shuichi said as he held the package in his hands and read all the private and confidential stamps stamped on it.
"Of course," Lily muttered in an unkind tone and wrote some more stuff down on her project poster. "Lawyers sent it to me from America. Lawyers don't waste their time doing menial chores, they've got bigger fish to fry."
Shuichi looked up at her to see an unfamiliar frown on her pale face and an angry spark in her eyes.
"What is it?" he asked curiously. He knew that he shouldn't ask, but he did anyway.
"Take it out and see," Lily grunted without looking at him.
Shuichi reached into the open parcel and pulled out the large velvet box and the leather book. He opened the book but couldn't make out the handwriting because it was in English. So he slipped it back into the parcel and opened the velvet box.
Inside lay a large diamond on a thick gold chain. The diamond was so big that Shuichi could see tiny reflections of his face in each of its hand cut sides. Surrounding the diamond was hundreds of little pink and blue stones.
His jaw hit the floor and Lily sighed before giving an explanation.
"It's an heirloom that's been in my family since the 15 hundreds. It was handcrafted in France and it was bought by my great, great, oh heck who knows how many greats, grandfather. It's been passed down the family ever since. Some lawyers found it in one of my grandfather's foreign bank vaults last week."
"How come they sent it to you?" Shuichi asked, unable to pull his eyes away from the exquisite piece of jewellery. "Shouldn't of they have sent it to your Grandmother?"
"Come here," Lily sighed and putted the floor beside her. "I'll explain it all to you."
Shuichi shuffled next to her and put the box on the table. Lily closed it with a snap, almost as if the sight of the necklace made her sick.
"This is my family tree," she said waving her hand over the poster paper on the coffee table. "My Grandfather," she pointed to his name on the tree, "married twice and was the inheritor of the Barton Foundation."
"What? The multimillion dollar a year American beef export business?" Shuichi exclaimed falling off the cushion he was sitting on.
Lily didn't answer and continued with her story.
"He had five kids in his first marriage and six in the second. These two groups of children couldn't stand the sight of one another and are still fighting with each other today. They're all sponges trying to soak up the company money to put it bluntly, and they don't care about anyone other than themselves. However, there was one child who did love him for who he was, not for his wallet."
Lily's finger slid down the tree and stopped at the Katakana 'Christina.'
"Your mother!" Shuichi cried. Now things were slowly starting to click together.
"Huh? How'd you know my mother's name?" Lily asked with a surprised look.
"Me? Oh I uh, guessed," Shuichi lied, covering up his folly.
"Ok," Lily threw his an odd look but went on with the story.
"When my grandfather died relatives were queuing up for their share of the fortune. My Grandmother was at the head of the queue, believing that she would be the main inheritor of the business. However my Grandfather had the last laugh. He left everything to my mother, and that sure pissed a lot of people off. Things got worse though when my mother died, and all of the money was passed on to me."
"How come?"
"Because nobody wanted millions of dollars to go to Christina's mixed bastard child," Lily said softly.
"So you're a millionaire?" Shuichi asked trying to change the subject.
"Yea," Lily said with a shrug. "But most of the money is still tied up in European bank accounts. A whole team of lawyers are trying to get it all back still, even though my Grandfather died over ten years ago."
"What will you do when you have all the money?" Shuichi asked curiously.
Lily turned her head slowly and gave Shuichi a long and dark stare. Her blue eyes had darkened and her face was expressionless and hard.
"Let me tell you something Shuichi, I couldn't care less about my family or all of that money. It hasn't been worth what I've had to go through. If it was at my feet right now, I wouldn't pick it up."
************************************************ Hello there all of you who have bothered to read this far. Thanks for all of the reviews, support and ideas you have given me so far. First of all, sorry to all of you Tatsuha fans out there, but he wont be making another appearance in this fic (or at least I think he wont). I really just used him at the start as a cameo appearance that would give you a clue to Lily's identity. Also, I'm sorry about all of the angst that I've written of late, I only really wrote so that Lily relationship with her family would get clarified. This should be the last of it. Well, see you round,
Hikaru.
Shuichi had insisted that she stay home from school until she was one hundred percent healthy and had left her alone with the heavy sleeping novelist.
Her hand reached for the door handle when Yuki spoke.
"Should have tried climbing down the drainpipe," he suggested with a yawn. He had just woken up and had read the note Shuichi had left on the pillow. He would have to think of some way to make him pay for leaving him to babysit all day.
Lily whirled around and had to take a puff of Ventolin to help her stop gasping. That was twice now Yuki had caught her off guard. If she didn't know any better she'd swear he did it on purpose.
"He would have fixed the lock," Yuki explained with another yawn as he walked to the kitchen to get his regular breakfast-beer. "You can't open it from the inside without a key. He can single handedly blow up the microwave, but he knows how to fix the lock. Amazing."
Lily slid down the door and sighed. By some totally unbelievable twist of fate Shuichi had outsmarted her. She smiled to herself at the thought and decided that maybe a day off school wouldn't be such a bad idea.
An empty can joined several others in the bin and Yuki walked back to his bedroom.
"Be ready to leave by the time I'm finished in the shower," he commanded.
"Why? Where are we going?" Lily asked with a curious look.
"Don't ask questions."
Half an hour later the two of them were sitting in silence as the black Mercedes made its way through the city. Lily had changed back into casual clothes and Yuki was dressed up rather nicely in a silk shirt, trousers and a long coat to keep the cold out. It was all black of course-to match his soul.
Lily was dying to turn on the radio to break the uncomfortable silence, but she got the feeling that Yuki would break her finger before she even touched the button.
He parked the car outside a café and the two were led to a table reserved for them inside. They sat down and Lily decided to attempt a conversation.
"This place is rather la-de-da," she stated as she looked at all the well dressed and well spoken people sitting around them.
Yuki lit up a cigarette and took a long drag. Perhaps he should have left her at the apartment.
"So who are we meeting anyway?" Lily asked after examining the flower on the table to see that it was actually real.
"I am meeting my editor," Yuki said blowing some smoke out as he looked up at the ceiling. "You are just going to sit here like a good little girl and say nothing."
"How nice," Lily said sarcastically and coughed as the smoke lingered under her nose. "How much are you going to nail him for?"
"What?"
"Well isn't that what you do when you sell your latest manuscript to a publishing company?" she asked tilting her head to one side. "Make them give you a cheque with an alarming amount of zeros on it so that it will cover your cigarette expenses until the next book?"
Yuki looked at her for a very long time. His hard cat eyes met her innocent kitten ones and he took another huge breath of tobacco. If his father thought that he was going to have any children then he had news for him.
"Sorry I'm late Yuki sama," a smiling lady said putting her handbag down and sitting opposite the author. Her smiling eyes feel on Lily, examining her curiously and she smiled some more.
"It's so nice that you decided to bring your little sister along with you today," she said pleasantly.
Yuki pulled his cigarette out of his mouth with great haste and assured the editor bluntly that he and Lily weren't related. Lily muttered something not very polite under her breath and Yuki pinched her leg under the table, causing her bite her knuckles to suppress a yell.
The two adults started to discuss the costs of the manuscript and Lily started to zone out. Looking around the café at all the posh people brought back memories of Wisconsin and jerk cousins. She sagged down in her chair but sat up again rather quickly when she noticed that all of Yuki's cigarette smoke was wafting in her direction.
"The chief editor has requested a personal meeting with you Yuki sama," the editor said as she slipped the large envelope that held the manuscript into her bag. "He wants to renegotiate your contract."
"What? Why?" Yuki asked halting his cigarette halfway to his mouth.
He'd known that the chief editor had been replaced a month ago, but he didn't know why. He didn't like the idea of renegotiating his contract, he liked the rather large amount of cash deposited into his bank account every month.
"I don't know sorry," the lady said honestly. "But if you could drop by his office some time this week it would be appreciated."
"Let's go," he ordered butting out his smoke and Lily stopped her flashback session.
She quickly said goodbye to the lady and had to run to catch up with Yuki, whom was already out the door. She was puffing and panting badly by the time she caught up with him.
"Hey please don't make me run," she asked and pulled her Ventolin out of her pocket. Her stomach dropped when she realised that it was almost empty. That was a really bad sign since it was the one she'd gotten from the hospital two nights ago.
"I didn't make you do anything," Yuki said with a shrug.
"You're the one who bolted out of there," Lily pointed out. "You didn't even say goodbye to your editor."
"So?"
"Well she is really nice," Lily said awkwardly. "And you left her to foot the bill."
"So?"
"It makes you look rude and cheap," she said bluntly.
"So?"
"It's not a good impression," Lily said with a certain stunned tone in her voice. It was quite clear now that Yuki wasn't someone who cared about what others thought of him.
"So?"
"Oh just forget it!" Lily snapped in frustration and opened the passenger side of the Mercedes. There was just no helping some people.
************************************************
13 years ago
"Noriko, Noriko! You're meant to stop at red lights! Ah, go round the roundabout, not through it! Oh my God! Boom gates! Boom gates!" Tohma screamed as Noriko drove like a nut through the oncoming traffic.
"Shut up Tohma!" she yelled as the car spun around three times before coming to a halt in a parking spot outside the hospital.
She pulled the keys out of the ignition and stepped out into the scorching night. Tohma stayed in the seat breathing heavily until his purple haired friend pulled him out.
They ran along the hospital corridors until they came to a room that had "Barton" written beside the door. Noriko pushed the door open and the two musicians were greeted by loud screams.
"Just don't stand there you idiot!" Christina screamed at the midwife by her feet. "Get this thing out of me!"
"You just need to keep pushing Miss Barton," the midwife said soothingly.
"I am pushing you idiot!" she screamed back red in the face with sweat dripping off of her.
Noriko rushed to her side and Tohma discretely took a place next to Ryuichi on the opposite side of the bed.
"Oh Noriko, thank goodness you're here," Christina cried happily and squeezed the keyboardist's hand tightly. "I don't want to do this alone!"
"Hey I'm here," Ryuichi said in a hurt tone. His girlfriend turned to face him and her eyes shot daggers.
"You!" she screamed hysterically. "This is your fault!" She let go of Noriko's hand and grabbed Ryuichi by the throat.
"You little bastard!" she yelled hysterically and squeezed his throat. "If you ever do this to me again I'll kill you!"
Tohma tried to pull Ryuichi out of harms way as he turned blue in the face and Noriko tried to pry Christina's fingers off of Ryuichi's throat. Those vocal cords were their ticket to fortune, couldn't have them damaged.
The midwife ignored them and just continued shouting words of encouragement. This kind of scene was a regular occurrence in the working day of a midwife.
"If you hadn't of pulled the charm on me that night when we couldn't watch TV because I forgot to pay the electricity bill we wouldn't be here right now! Damn you and your huge amount sex appeal! I just had to fall for your body and gorgeous face didn't I? When I get off of this bed I'm going to grab your ahhhhhhhhhh!"
"Push Miss Barton!" the midwife's voice broke through Christina's screaming. Tohma dragged the nearly choked Ryuichi out of Christina's reach and sighed. With Noriko's driving and Christina's threats it was shaping up to be an interesting night.
The two men looked at the three screaming women. Christina was screaming with her contractions, Noriko screaming as her hand was being crushed and the midwife was screaming louder than both of them with words of encouragement.
"I think we should stay over here," Tohma whispered in his friend's ear.
"Uh-huh."
"She's here!" the midwife yelled and held the baby girl in her arms.
"She?" Christina asked weakly as her head fell back on the pillow and Noriko shook her throbbing hand. Ryuichi judged that it was now safe and walked over to the bed.
"See, I told you," he said with a wide grin and brushed some blonde hair off of her sweaty forehead.
************************************************
The door burst open and the handle made a dent in the wall where it hit. Yuki stomped out of the chief editor's office and stuffed his new contract in his jacket. After a few hostile negotiations he and the editor had come to the understanding that his pay wouldn't decrease, but in actual fact increase.
A few seconds later Lily came out and with a final apology to the man cowering behind the desk, hurried after Yuki. She'd been confused about what had happened for most of the meeting, but she had found one interesting nugget of information. Yuki's given name was actually Eiri.
Therefore, the novelist behind the book she had slagged off in the park a while back was actually him, Shuichi's Yuki.
'I'll make a note not to be so harsh the next time he asks for a review,' Lily thought as she caught up with him at the elevator. The number at the top of the doors showed that the elevator was coming up from the bottom floor so they would have to wait a while.
Lily occupied her mind by looking around the floor and saw that the secretary sitting at the desk behind them was fidgeting a heck of a lot as she looked at Yuki's back. In her hand she held a copy of 'Get'.
Lily turned back around and lent on Yuki's arm, making him look down with a glare. She was too close for his liking.
"Fangirl behind you," she whispered.
He moved his head around ever so slightly to see the squirming secretary.
"Oh no," he muttered and hit the elevator button again.
"Yuki sama! Please wait a minute!" she cried and put the book down.
"Fire exit on your left," Lily said.
"Can you run?"
"Not a chance."
The secretary got up and moved towards them. "I just have a few questions for you Yuki sama!"
It took Yuki half a second to jam Lily under his arm, kick the door to the stairs open and flee.
When they were back at the apartment Yuki made himself a cup of tea and sat down on the couch to study the sales reports he'd been given by his editor that morning. It seemed that his books were down a bit, and he didn't like that.
The less sales meant less readers and less readers meant less money for him. That annoyed him a lot since he'd just gone to all the trouble of renewing his contract.
"Are you looking at your sales reports?" Lily asked with a smile as she looked up at him. She was sitting on the floor with all her homework spread all over the coffee table.
"Mmmmm," Yuki grunted without looking at her.
"Are they up or down?" she asked curiously.
"Down," he muttered.
"That's not good," Lily said.
"Neither is having to listen to you talk," Yuki snapped looking over the paper.
Lily went back to her homework and didn't say anything else for a while. Yuki threw the papers down on the couch and opened his box of cigarettes. If he wanted to bring up his sales for the new book he would have to think of a new marketing strategy.
In the past he'd used the clever marketing schemes of lots of advertising and book signings. Now it was time for something new. He lit up his cigarette and tried to think.
Lily started coughing and he looked over at her. Geez that cough irritated him after a while. It was like living with a miner who had the black lung. Maybe he should throw some of those pills down her throat, just so they'd knock her out for a while. Now that he though about it he should probably botch a couple of them and slip them in Shuichi's food.
Then a possibility ran across his mind.
Lily looked up as she heard Yuki sit down on the floor and he grabbed her chin, holding it firmly between his forefinger and his thumb.
"Oh stop looking so terrified!" he scoffed and turned her head from side to side. "Try to look a little bit more unintelligent will you."
"What are you doing?" Lily asked officially freaked out.
"How old are you?" he asked, his cigarette moving up and down in his lips.
"Thirteen," she said awkwardly and he let go of her.
"You're cute," he proclaimed and stood up.
"Um, thanks," Lily said with a smile. That was a big compliment coming from Yuki. "But why the sudden interest?"
"I have plans for you," he said with a dark smile and went to his study to make a phone call.
"What kind of plans?" Lily cried fearfully.
"You'll see," Yuki sang and closed the door.
'I wonder if I should call the police?' Lily thought and her watch beeped. It was time for another dose.
************************************************
Shuichi arrived home at the early hour of two that afternoon on cloud nine. After only a few hours of rummaging through the old shoebox he and his band mates had put together a new love song.
It was a little bit different from what he usually sang, but that didn't really matter. The lyrics were gold and with only about two weeks until Tokyo Bay Music Festival he didn't need to go into a slump trying to come up with something original.
'I should really thank Lily chan,' he thought as he floated out of the elevator. 'Not only did she give me her mother's songs, she got me the afternoon off.'
After the song had been completed Hiro had pushed Shuichi out of the building with a great deal of force.
"Just leave Fujisaki and me to take care of the rest," he said as he literally threw Shuichi out into the street. "Just go home and check on Lily chan. Hurry!"
'Honestly,' Shuichi thought with a frown at his friend's immaturity. 'Yuki isn't someone that would expose cute little Lily chan to something immoral.'
He opened the door to find Yuki sitting on the couch smoking while Lily slept on the floor, using one of the sofa cushions as a pillow. Yuki was using her as a footrest while he watched a naughty R rated movie with subtitles on the TV.
"Yu-Yuki!" Shuichi squealed and had to hold onto the doorframe to stay standing. "You-you can't watch that in front of Lily chan!"
"Why not?" Yuki asked blowing some smoke into the air. "She's been like this for about an hour now, ever since she took those pills." He then smirked and just for fun decided to stir Shuichi up a bit.
"And I've got to say, judging by how comfortable my right foot is, she's at least an E cup. Junior High students are certainly well endowed these day don't you think?"
Shuichi went beet red in the face. "Yuki don't be so perverse!" he screamed at the top of his lungs and then stopped. "What pills?"
The noise made Lily's eyes half-open and she started to stir from the floor. "Is breakfast ready?"
"No, go back to sleep," Yuki ordered and kicked her head back on the cushion.
He turned the TV off and looked at Shuichi. Shuichi looked at him.
"What?"
Two seconds later Shuichi was on the floor and fighting to keep his pants on.
"Wait, wait a sec!" he cried helplessly trying to keep Yuki's evasive hands at bay. "We can't do it now!"
"We had a deal," Yuki argued and pushed Shuichi's green T-shirt up. "Whatever and whenever. Remember?"
"Yea but," Shuichi trailed off and his eyes flicked over to the sleeping figure by the couch.
Yuki rolled his eyes and swore before getting off of Shuichi. Lily had a rude awakening as he picked her up, carried her to the door, opened it and threw her out into the hall.
Lily slid for half a meter before sitting up on the cold floor. She looked over at Yuki with his shirt open and belt unbuckled with total confusion. How she'd gone from sleeping off her painkillers to being thrown down a hallway she didn't know.
"Go out and don't come back for a while," Yuki snapped and went back inside the apartment.
"Where am I meant to go?" Lily yelled as she stood up slowly.
"I don't care," Yuki stated closing the door. "Just as long as it isn't here."
"How can I go anywhere if don't have any money!" Lily yelled at the door.
After a few seconds the door opened again.
'Great he's come to his senses,' she thought happily.
An airborne wallet smacked her in the head and she ended up once more on the hallway floor.
"Sex fiend," she muttered and rubbed her face. Her head was all groggy and her chest felt stiff from the painkillers.
The other thing that was making her feel worn was all the work her brain was putting into figuring out what Yuki's "plans" for her was. She was getting a really bad feeling.
Greensleeves started to play and something shook in her pocket. She stood up taking the phone out and put Yuki's wallet in her opposite pocket. She flipped the top open and greeted the caller.
"Hi! I'm back in the country! Wanna meet up?"
************************************************
"You're kidding! You're staying with Shindo Shuichi and his lover Yuki Eiri? Oh my God! You could like, sell that to a magazine for millions, no trillions for pounds!" Joan squealed excitedly and started kicking her legs while waving her arms at the same time.
"Yen you mean," Lily corrected and took a sip of her ice cold lemonade.
"Oh yea," Joan stopped acting like a jitterbug for a second while she thought about how strong the yen was on the world stock exchange before going jittery again.
"So is Yuki sama really as handsome as they say?" she asked with her eyes changing to beating love hearts.
"Drop dead gorgeous," Lily admitted and smiled as Joan rocked back and forth on her barstool. "How's your Grandma by the way?"
"Oh she'll be around for another century or two," Joan said waving her hand with a smile. "Anyway, why are you off of school today? I was quite surprised that you answered your phone, I just rang to leave rude messages on your message bank."
"Oh I have a cold," Lily lied and coughed the cough that Yuki despised.
"Some cold," Joan observed and picked up her glass of Fanta.
A man dressed in tight bicycle clothes stopped by their table and looked down at his clipboard.
"Are one of you two ladies Barton Lily san?" he asked with a smile.
"That's me," Lily said and put her glass down. Just who was this guy and how did he know her name?
"I have a parcel to deliver to you," the bike man said putting the clipboard in front of her.
"How'd you know I was here?" Lily asked curiously. "I didn't tell anyone where I was going."
"The mail is under government control," the man whom Lily now figured was a courier said.
"So your saying that Big Brother really is watching and you use mega expensive satellites to track people down all over the nation to give them their parcels?" Joan asked with eyes bigger than her glasses.
"The mail is under government control," the courier repeated darkly and lent in really closely to Joan. "You'd also be advised not to share your theory with anyone else madam."
"Finished!" Lily said quickly and handed the government spy otherwise known as a courier back his clipboard with her signature.
"Great!" he said cheerfully and pushed a parcel with international postage marks into her hands. With a final dangerous look in Joan's direction the courier left the teashop and peddled off down the street.
"Well that was weird," Joan said awkwardly and made a mental note to hack into the postal service on her laptop later. There might be something incriminating in there after all.
Lily didn't reply because she'd just opened her parcel.
"Aww shit," she grumbled and dropped the velvet covered box and leather book on the table with a frown.
************************************************
"This looks important," Shuichi said as he held the package in his hands and read all the private and confidential stamps stamped on it.
"Of course," Lily muttered in an unkind tone and wrote some more stuff down on her project poster. "Lawyers sent it to me from America. Lawyers don't waste their time doing menial chores, they've got bigger fish to fry."
Shuichi looked up at her to see an unfamiliar frown on her pale face and an angry spark in her eyes.
"What is it?" he asked curiously. He knew that he shouldn't ask, but he did anyway.
"Take it out and see," Lily grunted without looking at him.
Shuichi reached into the open parcel and pulled out the large velvet box and the leather book. He opened the book but couldn't make out the handwriting because it was in English. So he slipped it back into the parcel and opened the velvet box.
Inside lay a large diamond on a thick gold chain. The diamond was so big that Shuichi could see tiny reflections of his face in each of its hand cut sides. Surrounding the diamond was hundreds of little pink and blue stones.
His jaw hit the floor and Lily sighed before giving an explanation.
"It's an heirloom that's been in my family since the 15 hundreds. It was handcrafted in France and it was bought by my great, great, oh heck who knows how many greats, grandfather. It's been passed down the family ever since. Some lawyers found it in one of my grandfather's foreign bank vaults last week."
"How come they sent it to you?" Shuichi asked, unable to pull his eyes away from the exquisite piece of jewellery. "Shouldn't of they have sent it to your Grandmother?"
"Come here," Lily sighed and putted the floor beside her. "I'll explain it all to you."
Shuichi shuffled next to her and put the box on the table. Lily closed it with a snap, almost as if the sight of the necklace made her sick.
"This is my family tree," she said waving her hand over the poster paper on the coffee table. "My Grandfather," she pointed to his name on the tree, "married twice and was the inheritor of the Barton Foundation."
"What? The multimillion dollar a year American beef export business?" Shuichi exclaimed falling off the cushion he was sitting on.
Lily didn't answer and continued with her story.
"He had five kids in his first marriage and six in the second. These two groups of children couldn't stand the sight of one another and are still fighting with each other today. They're all sponges trying to soak up the company money to put it bluntly, and they don't care about anyone other than themselves. However, there was one child who did love him for who he was, not for his wallet."
Lily's finger slid down the tree and stopped at the Katakana 'Christina.'
"Your mother!" Shuichi cried. Now things were slowly starting to click together.
"Huh? How'd you know my mother's name?" Lily asked with a surprised look.
"Me? Oh I uh, guessed," Shuichi lied, covering up his folly.
"Ok," Lily threw his an odd look but went on with the story.
"When my grandfather died relatives were queuing up for their share of the fortune. My Grandmother was at the head of the queue, believing that she would be the main inheritor of the business. However my Grandfather had the last laugh. He left everything to my mother, and that sure pissed a lot of people off. Things got worse though when my mother died, and all of the money was passed on to me."
"How come?"
"Because nobody wanted millions of dollars to go to Christina's mixed bastard child," Lily said softly.
"So you're a millionaire?" Shuichi asked trying to change the subject.
"Yea," Lily said with a shrug. "But most of the money is still tied up in European bank accounts. A whole team of lawyers are trying to get it all back still, even though my Grandfather died over ten years ago."
"What will you do when you have all the money?" Shuichi asked curiously.
Lily turned her head slowly and gave Shuichi a long and dark stare. Her blue eyes had darkened and her face was expressionless and hard.
"Let me tell you something Shuichi, I couldn't care less about my family or all of that money. It hasn't been worth what I've had to go through. If it was at my feet right now, I wouldn't pick it up."
************************************************ Hello there all of you who have bothered to read this far. Thanks for all of the reviews, support and ideas you have given me so far. First of all, sorry to all of you Tatsuha fans out there, but he wont be making another appearance in this fic (or at least I think he wont). I really just used him at the start as a cameo appearance that would give you a clue to Lily's identity. Also, I'm sorry about all of the angst that I've written of late, I only really wrote so that Lily relationship with her family would get clarified. This should be the last of it. Well, see you round,
Hikaru.