Disclaimer: You know… more and more as I look at the prices for the Japanese tankobans… I reallyreally wish YYH was mine. I'm buying the two tankobans that have Kurama on the cover (shut up…) but they're like 13 dollars apiece. Kurama is pretty and all, but…

AN: Sorry about lateness, the whole summer's gonna be this way. I'm going everywhere (camp, vacation, checking out colleges), with no computer access half the time.

By the way, 100 reviews… that made me happy. (And Animegirl13, you're completely forgiven. Heh. One of my friends called me a review whore… I wonder why).

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The news of Hiei's situation had spread surprisingly quickly- we always love to hear of others' misfortune- and it had taken only a day for everyone to be informed of occurrences both real and imagined. Takahashi's father was an abusive alcoholic who was currently languishing in prison. Takahashi was living with Minaminosaaaan, a situation arranged through his skillful use of evil threats, holding Shuuichi at swordpoint, etc. After all, Takahashi was a gang leader with half of Toukyou under his control.

Shuuichi actually found it rather funny, and fully expected at any moment the announcement that, this just in, Takahashi is actually a unicorn sent by GOD.

That was on a good day.

On a bad day, he tended to have trouble ignoring the people who wanted so desperately to know why he would take in someone like Hiei. It was no secret that they were partners for math homework, but nobody actually believed that to be the sort of thing that fostered long-term live-in relationships. This observation led to a great deal of speculation, none of which seemed to come close to the truth- that maybe, just maybe, Shuuichi… was friends with Hiei?

Hiei, for his part, seemed not to mind, but then he always seemed not to mind. Shuuichi couldn't see how the rumors could not bother him. He had never exactly been well liked, but at the same time, he had never warranted any such attention. The change had to at least have been disconcerting.

Then again, we're all different… aren't we?

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"Some girls tried to kill me," Hiei muttered as they walked into the house. "It was all 'oh my gawd, how dare you torment Shuuichikun?'" he elaborated in a falsetto, completely unsuited to the expression on his face, which was at the moment a mixture of disgust and disbelief.

"Really." Shuuichi raised his eyebrows. "And this amounts to an attempt on your life because…?"

"Have you ever been hit with the full force of a group of love-crazed girls?"

"Oh," Shuuichi said delicately. "Right."

Putting his books down, Hiei looked around curiously. "Umm… where's your mom?"

"Doctor's appointment." Shuuichi's emerald eyes were bitter. "They always try to make her go in for more testing, especially after they come up with a new life expectancy. Every time they suggest some other treatment option."

"Isn't that good?"

"We can't afford it," he replied shortly. "My mom is insistent that all of my father's money has to go to my college education. She wants me to have a future, she says. And it's true that even the best treatment would probably only give her a year more, but… Dammit… I don't want to lose her. I know the doctors are trying to help as much as they can, but they won't do anything really useful unless there's money involved, and I hate them for it. They're just building up false hope…"

Hiei nodded slowly.

"It's bad of me, isn't it? To hate people who are just doing their jobs…"

"No! Your mom is really important to you. Not that I can really relate to wanting your parents alive, but I think you should be allowed to be selfish once in a while. You can't always pretend everything's okay."

"What about you?" Shuuichi asked after a pause.

"What about me?"

"Doesn't anything ever get to you? You have to have heard all of the things people are saying at school about you."

His expression settled into faint amusement as he began to count off on his fingers. "Well, let's see. First off, I'm a gang leader. I'm also a demon overlord, a guy with all of the teachers in his domain, a millionaire from all the tributes I get, Shuuichichan's oppressor," he said with a glance at the oppressee, "among other things."

"And none of the talk even makes you angry?"

"None of it's true," he said with a shrug.

"Yeah, but…" Shuuichi gestured with his hands, trying to get the point across. "The words don't mean anything, but the feeling behind it is real. You know? Like they do hate you, but they don't know how to express it, so they settle for accusations that can't possibly be true."

"I'm used to abuse," Hiei countered quietly.

Shuuichi watched his face for a few moments, something unreadable in his eyes. "Are you really?"

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It's almost sad how much people will do for even the smallest bit of attention. We want more than anything for others to talk about us, for them to acknowledge our existences. To that end, we become desperate. If they can't set ourselves apart by being brilliant, if they're destined to be nothing but still more faces in the crowd, then rather than do so, many go to the other extreme. Some threaten suicide, some change their appearances completely, all with the same mantra-

Look at me.

Then there are those to whom attention comes, even when it is unwanted. They shun the spotlight, though at the same time enjoying it. The fact that anyone would even notice they were trying to avoid attention is amazing in itself.

Please don't…

Look at me.

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"Why won't you open up, Hiei?" Shuuichi asked rather suddenly while they were working on trigonometry, a subject neither found extraordinarily challenging. "You tell me not to pretend, but you're always hiding behind a mask."

"Huh?" Hiei continued to work, pencil tapping his book as he tried to compare two similar triangles. It was accursedly difficult when you weren't willing to redraw them. "What do you mean?"

"It's been almost a month, and I still don't know how you think. All I know is that you're nicer than you look, and you have a future in theater, if nothing else. I have no idea what makes you angry or sad."

"That's easy," he answered, entering some numbers into his calculator. "My dad makes me angry. Not eating makes me sad."

Shuuichi had long since stopped working, watching Hiei scribble numbers on his paper. "Aren't we friends? I told you I liked you, why can't you trust me?"

Now he was writing out the law of cosines, carefully adding in the corresponding values. "Yeah, we're friends. I'm sure you have lots of friends. Do they all tell you every time they cry?"

"You know I only have classmates. You're the only one who counts as a friend."

"Is that so." He cursed under his breath as he realized that he'd put the decimal point for his first value in the wrong place. "I feel very special now."

"That's what I mean!" Shuuichi said exasperatedly. "You always act so sarcastic, like you don't care. I know you care somewhere in there. You just won't let anyone see it."

"Should I? You can't change yourself very easily." He sighed, redrew all of the triangles, and made a mental note to find a better calculator. "What is it that people say? Be true to yourself?"

"Yeah, and no man is an island."

"I've always thought that one was a bit suspicious," he commented as he tried to remember his double-angle formulas.

"You're not being true to yourself anyways," Shuuichi protested. "You're hiding how you feel because you're afraid of getting hurt. Why won't you believe that I'm not going to hurt you?"

"Aha. You know what I'm afraid of." Those demonic ambiguous cases… "You know, Shuuichi?"

"What, Hiei?"

"The fact that we're friends and you like me and I suppose I like you too and we're living together, all of that…" He wrote the correct answer in the blank. "It doesn't mean I have to tell you anything, you know."

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Alas, poor Shuuichi. How he suffers… I don't know. I don't like to have tension in relationships (it makes me sad…) but I felt that was the natural flow of the story, so ha. Hiei still has a strong self-preservation instinct against having people he loves hurt him.

Yes, the chapter was short. I am in a hurry… this took me quite a while and I have to pack for a long journey… No idea when the next update will be…

Ah, to lunarmercury: Hiei is not living with Yukina for a number of reasons. Firstly, their mother ditched him when he was born, so he has some reservations. Secondly, for some reason he finds it easier to impose on friends than family. It's a psychological thing… Thirdly, it makes an excellent narrative device. And fourthly… I forgot to consider it. (sweatdrop……)

Please review… now that FF has these excellent stat things, I'm going to cry if I get 2309857986798 hits and 2 reviews.