Disclaimer: All characters are the property of Natsuki Takaya, FUNimation, and Tokyopop, and are used without permission. There is no intent to profit from this work.

AN: I know a lot of people are vehemently anti Machi x Yuki, and that's fine. Unfortunately for the Yukiru shippers, this seems to be the way Takaya is leaning, and I think they make an okay couple. This takes place after Machi's confession of her past—I believe this is chapter 102, but I'm not certain.

Yuki and Machi walked companionably together, crunching through the freshly fallen snow with no real sense of purpose other than enjoyment. After yesterday's outpouring of grief and pain, Machi seemed to have reverted to her usual reserved quietude. After a brief discussion of the events of the coming week and the current duties of the student council, a comfortable silence had sprung up between them, leaving Yuki to contemplate his companion.

After her confession of her painful past yesterday, Yuki felt the beginnings of a deeper connection to this girl whose life eerily echoed is own in so many ways. After all, they had both been used a tools by their parents. Parents who should have loved them instead used them as leverage to gain status in their respective families. Both had been given unreasonable standards of perfection to live up to. Both had been trained, shaped in the way their parents wished them to grow. Shaped with painstaking care, but with no affection, as one would shape a Bonsai to their liking. And both had, in their own way, rebelled against that shaping.

Yuki knew his rebellion had not been a conscious one, but rather a gradual separation of himself from the world that pained him so much. He had withdrawn into himself, stopped speaking, and erected an emotional wall that no one had been able to truly breach until Tohru.

Machi's rebellion had been much different—the polar opposite of his own methods. And Yuki envied her those explosions—an outlet for the storms of emotions raging within her. Envied her because he allowed himself no such outlet.

He admired her also—admired her ability to remain unapologetic when faced directly with the consequences of those explosions and her courage in standing up to those ridiculous fangirls and refusing to call him a prince.

She baffled him as well. For how was it she saw him as no one else at school, not even Tohru, did? As an ordinary boy. As just plain Yuki. Not someone to be admired, fawned over, or looked at like some kind of celebrity.

How was it that this awkward, strange girl saw what all the others didn't? Yuki wondered.

Not that Tohru expected him to be perfect. Anything he did was okay with her, and her acceptance still made him happy, but... She still thought he was "special," and not because of the curse.

So many of his schoolmates treated him with this strange, almost reverent respect. Not Machi, though. He laughed to himself as he thought back to when he had insulted one of the flowers she made for graduation. Instead of running off and crying like one of the fangirls, or stammering apologies over and over like Tohru, what did she do? She beaned him on the head with it!

Yuki looked down at Machi, her cheeks flushed pink form both the cold and the walk, and realized that somehow this strangely odd yet sweet girl had become his friend.

Maybe, just maybe, someday we can be something more, he thought.

But for right now...friendship is a good place to start.