A/N: Chappie two! Woo! ...I'm so weird... thanks fer readin'! X3

Black Roses - Ch.2

Hitoshi -

I may never know when she first sparked my interest.

I never was into high school girls with short skirts, and certainly am not now. So justifiably then, Minmin did not have the means to hold my attention for very long. Yet somehow...

Now she is my world, cliche as that sounds. I can't imagine life without her...

I will, however, always remember our first kiss. She's just 17 now, but at the time she was only 15. I had known then exactly what would happen if anybody found out. I knew what would happen if she rejected me. But I had also known we would not be caught at the time, and that she could not say no.

But maybe I'm going a bit fast.

Around three or four weeks after Takao's win against BEGA, I had mastered myself a home in the suburbs of Tokyo, almost an hour away from the actual city. I had myself a freelancing job that payed more than enough. My entire life was set, but I couln't sit still for long. I never could.

So, sitting outside a small coffee shop in the center of the city, I set my laptop up against the sun and set to work, focusing most of my attention on Italy. That was the next time I saw her after BEGA. I was cloaked in the shadow of a large cherry tree, clothed in non-descriptive, every day clothing, and hidden behind a light jacket and a new pair of sunglasses. But she still managed to pick me out.

"Jin-sempai! Is that you? Wow! It's been forever!"

She had done a very nice job for startling me. That much was certain.

"Minmin? What are you doing here?"

"Oh, looking for a site to practice with my band. But you're a surprise! So what's been going on?"

She plopped herself down in the chair next to me, not too close for discomfort, but close enough that she could see what I was doing. She had her hair up in the usual style, wore the same make-up, had the same voice--in fact, the only thing that had changed about her in three and a half weeks was her clothing choice for the day: her school uniform. Interestingly enough, I had never seen her in a school uniform. I must have, at some point, assumed she was home-schooled.

I answered her questions with another question of my own.

"Just get out of school?"

"Oh! ...um, yeah. It's a ways from here, though."

"Well. The uniform is cute."

She blushed. Grinning and shifting slightly, her 'thank you, Jin-sempai' was murmured. She says now that she can't remember when she first started liking me, but I think that it must have been before then. Maybe near the end of the BEGA tournament.

I, however, am a different matter.

"So you're going to Italy, huh?"

"Thinking about it."

"I thought that you were going to stay here? At least for a while?"

"It's boring here. There're more new bladers in Italy than Japan."

"Aa... and... you're going to go train them, huh?"

"I might."

I did not know what compelled me to be so open with her. The end of that conversation was a surprise as well.

"I really had hoped you'd be staying. We barely spend any time with each other, and you were my trainer and all... well, sort of."

"And that constitutes a friendship?"

"Well, of a sort, yeah."

She smiled up at me.

"Let's go somewhere some time, Jim-sempai. Before you leave--just the two of us friends. Sound good?"

I accepted. I don't know why or how; but I accepted. It was set up for the following Saturday evening, and it wasn't until after I had arrived home that I realized just what I had done.

I had a date with Minmin.