Disclaimer: I do not own Gravitation in any way, shape or form...erm...yeah...
SIDE NOTE: Last chapter was short...I'll try to make this one longer, but I kind of have a habit for making my chapters unbearably short. I do appreciate all the reviews...wow. I never thought I could get so many! I guess this is a popular fic, ne? Well, here ya go!! Chapter three!!
After Yuki left, Shuichi stood for a moment at the doorway and thought about what he had to do. That novel wouldn't finish itself...but could he write a novel?
Sure I can! Shuichi reassured himself. I've written love songs before...a novel shouldn't be any different, right?
With a confident smile, Shuichi sat at Yuki's normal desk. He sat and stared at the laptop in front of him for a moment before realizing that he didn't know the first thing about it.
"That's okay!" he said to himself. "I'll get to it...um...what else does Yuki do? Oh! Coffee! He drinks coffee! And...eats cake...lots of cake! Hmm..." The pink-haired boy hunted for the items he'd listed. He found a slice of cake, leftover from the last time Tohma visited, in the fridge. He hunted some more, with cake halfway in his mouth, for anything that had to do with coffee. How do you make coffee? He wondered.
After several minutes, Shuichi finally managed to find all the things he needed (or what he thought he needed) to make coffee, but he still didn't know what to do. So he just stared at the stuff. He finally picked up the container of coffee beans.
"Oh well. So I don't know how to make coffee." He sighed and shook the container. "This is the stuff coffee's made of, right? So it's gotta taste something like coffee, right?" A pause. The boy shrugged. "Why not?" He opened the container, picked up a handful of the beans, and immediately consumed them. Another moment's pause.
"BLEEEEAAAAGGH! WHAT KINDA CRAP IS THIS?!" The pink-haired boy ran to the sink and took a long drink from the faucet to wash down the awful taste. "Why Yuki drinks that stuff, I'll never know. It needs to go, though." He picked up all the coffee-making things and dumped them into the trash. He paused again and pulled the coffee beans out of the trash. "I still have to act like Yuki, so I should at least keep these to seem convincing," he decided with a nod. "Now...back to the laptop!"
He ventured back to the device and slumped in front of it, still contemplating a way to get it open. He tried several methods: banging on it, shouting at it, trying to pry it open. Eventually he figured it out and got the contraption open. To his surprise, he spotted the picture he and Yuki had taken together...stuck to the corner of the screen. Shuichi was touched.
Back in character Shuichi, back in character! He thought. Yuki's been mean, and you wanna show him that you are tough! Yeah! He took a deep breath and...then tried to figure out how you turned on a laptop. I'm never gonna get this right...
The answering machine beeped. A woman's voice came on. Shuichi found himself grateful for a distraction. "Hi, Eiri, it's me, the editor you seem to have abandoned. Look, I'm stopping by, in fact I'm almost at your door, and you can't do anything about it. Alright, Eiri? I'm walking up to the door...I'm going to knock..." The answering machine clicked off as a knock sounded at the door. Shuichi went to answer it.
"Hello Ei—" the woman paused. Shuichi was definitely not who she'd expected to see. Wasn't he supposed to be working or something? "Shuichi...can you tell me where Eiri is?"
"Eiri is at work," Shuichi said seriously; which is, in his case, quite funny. "Well, come in."
The woman stepped inside, following Shuichi back to Yuki's desk. "At work? What does that mean?"
"He is practicing with 'Bad Luck'," Shuichi explained, keeping in character and once again searching for the on-switch. Yuki's editor helped him out and turned it on.
"But...isn't that your job?" she asked. Shuichi sighed and nodded. He slightly broke character for a moment.
"Yuki and I—well, we're kind of switching lives for a while." He bit his lip. "See, we kind of had a fight and...this is the result." He then focused on the laptop and began roving his eyes over Yuki's current writing. Observing the young boy like this, the woman felt sorry and even a bit angry.
Eiri, how could you hurt such a sensitive heart? She thought. Then she glanced down and noticed the picture on the screen. "Oh, that picture...did you and Eiri take it together." Shuichi nodded. "No doubt you stuck it everywhere else, hmm?"
"Actually..." Shuichi smiled a bit. "I didn't put that one there...Yuki did."
The woman was slightly taken aback by this. "He did, did he? Well...that would explain why he's so lost in space when I call him. Probably always staring at it."
Shuichi's smile drooped a little. "Or maybe...he's wondering why he ever took it with me in the first place..." He stopped speaking for the rest of the time and began typing:
"How could he do this to me? Haven't I shed enough tears...?"
SIDE NOTE: Aww, isn't that sad? Erm, by the way, how many ppl have tried to eat plain old coffee beans? ((raises hand)) It's icky!! Anyway, yeah, I'm sorry I haven't updated in a while...with school going on I've had to decide to limit updates to the weekends, and before tonight I haven't had any ideas. And you all know how I want my stories to be perfect for my readers. Plz review!!