The morning after.

"Unn...uh..."

"Are you awake?"

"...huh...?" Kyou sleepily opens one eye, then another, blinking at the bright morning sun. He sits up slowly and looks around, holding his head as if it would make the dull pain go away. Where...? It was a nice fancy room relatively clean with the exception of clothes strewn all over the place. Wait a sec...those were his clothes! What the-?

"You okay? You look like...well, you'd seen a ghost." A soft giggle.

Kyou, fully alert now and headache forgotten, whips his head around to see a girl roughly his age, dressed in a long open black coat with a white tube-top and blue jeans underneath, drying her shoulder-length reddish-brown hair. Recognition struck immediately but took the cat a few seconds to find his voice, "Hisu?"

She plopped down before him on the edge of the bed. "Uh, yeah."

He was pale and utterly speechless. The sneaky fortuneteller gave a flip of her hair to shake out any remaining drops of water, watching Kyou patiently as he tried to find his voice again.

"...w-what, uh..." he managed to stammer, and a faint blush slowly rose onto his cheeks.

"You don't remember anything at all?" her young face creased into a frown. "Were you that drunk?"

"Was I..." he stopped in mid-sentence, fiery eyes widening. All of the previous day's events came flooding back to him. The hotel, the nightclub, Tohru's confession...

The neko boy suddenly became considerably sadder, maybe more so than ever in his life as the zodiac's outcast, making the ache in his heart much worse than the pounding in his head. But we can't have that now can we? In an attempt to bring the poor boy out of his stupor, Hisu once again produced from out of nowhere that infamous vial. Only this time, it was full.

"...I-is that...?"

Grin. "Uh-huh!"

"...why-!"

Grin evolves to evil grin. "I told Yuki that I'd get my payment somehow."

Kyou stared at the crazy girl some more, who was currently staring intently at the bottle as if Kyou himself wasn't even there. At that very moment he wanted nothing more than to get as far away from this obvious maniac as possible, but...

Even though she was very much insane, he knew she was also very much holding information he wouldn't mind having shared with him.

"P-payment? For what? What the hell is this!"

"Hmm...perhaps I start at the beginning?" She stuffed the glass container into a coat pocket and for the most part fixed her full attention on Kyou. Some part of her always had to do something else though; one hand was absently playing with her damp hair, twisting a clump around her finger.

"...do you remember nearly two weeks ago when you three happened upon a fortuneteller's shop?"

He nodded, confused at how she knew this.

"...do you not see where I'm going with this?"

Blink.

Sigh. "I'm the fortuneteller."

"You what!"

Oookaaayyy...not the brightest crayon in the box... "The next day, Yuki came to me...I guess you could say about a problem of his, of which I naturally offered my assistance. He turned my offer down when I voiced my payment, but...I can't let a person in need go without help, that I could easily give."

Kyou was getting slightly ticked, for no reason other than he is simply Kyou. "What does this have to do with me or what you did...you seduced me while I was drunk!"

"Maybe...but it's your fault for getting drunk, you made yourself so helpless."

He glared daggers as the word 'helpless' rolled off of her tongue. "I'm never helpless," he sulked childishly.

She rolled her azure eyes. "Anyway, what it has to do with you and why you're here, is in actuality Yuki's problem, and even though I said I wouldn't say anything, I also said if it was the other person's right to know-"

"Just spit it out!"

"Yuki's in love with you."

Now this was more aptly named a stupor. Kyou's mouth opened and closed a few times trying to form words, and he looked like he didn't know whether to scream or remain speechless. Hisu took this opportunity to continue her explanation, confident she wouldn't have much interruption from him.

"And I know your mind's been convincing you that you ran away because you're afraid you've lost Tohru-"

His mouth moved again and made a near audible squeak.

"-which really you haven't, since it's obvious Yuki isn't interested in her-"

A hard swallow.

"-but the real truth of the matter is, after hearing Tohru's confession, you were afraid that you would lose Yuki to her."

Wouldn't something like that break anyone out of a stupor?

"Like HELL, I was! What the fuck are you playing at? I'm-" She quickly reached over and covered his mouth, saying in hushed tones, "Think things through before you speak. You don't want to say anything you will regret later."

He paused a moment, as if to contemplate her words, then, "I don't-! Like-! Yuki! That faggot rat can rot in hell for all I care, and he can stay the fuck away from me, too!"

Hisu stared at him with an emotionless expression, the tone of her voice matching it as she spoke, "Do you really mean that?"

He paused again at her question before snapping back, "Of course!"

"Well, if you insist on denying your feelings for him, there's not much I can do. I'm sorry for you both." With that said, she left him alone in the hotel room to muse over his own thoughts.