AN: Konnichiwa! At least, I hope it's daytime wherever you are. As promised, a chapter fic already. Hope you laughed. Hope you got the same mental image I did (and Keiko!) when you read 'teach Hiei to dance.'
"Dance Class"
The sun was shining bright and beautiful outside the ground-floor studio in a quiet corner of the Tokyo suburb. Inside, the curtains were all thrown aside and the windows were cracked open. Soft music played from a stereo system on one wall. The polished wood floor gleamed, freshly swept. Mirrors lining one wall made the room seem bigger and brighter than it was, something which its sole occupant wasn't really paying attention to as she stared at nothing, the phone cord wrapping around her finger.
"I'm sorry, what? Keiko-chan, slow down! You want me to teach a class for you? When? No, I mean what days? I already have afternoon classes on Monday and Friday." She listened to her friend's proposal with more than a little surprise. "You want me to teach your friends how to dance?" She listened some more. "Four guys and four girls? What kind of dancing? Oh, every kind. I think I can handle that. You don't have a time-frame, do you? Oh. Oh, I see. Okay. Well, in that case...no, I think that's perfectly fair. Of course. You can have all my free afternoons, if you want them. But I do have exams to study for." She blinked. "No! Shuichi Minamino? Okay. Well, with that offer, how can I refuse you? Okay. I'm free for the rest of the weekend if you want to start immediately. All right, Keiko-chan. I'll see you in an hour."
She hung up the phone and shook her head. Really, she shouldn't be taking on such a demanding dance class with university entrance exams coming up. But Keiko's offer was more than generous, almost exorbient. It would go a long way to paying for school. And the added offer of study sessions with Shuichi Minamino? Okay, yes was the only logical answer. Now that she'd hung up, however...she was starting to wonder what was wrong with them. Why had Keiko sounded so desperate?
Shrugging, she returned to her music, and the dance she was supposed to be choreographing for her Monday class. She only had an hour in which to totally concentrate before she discovered what was, indeed, wrong with them.
"No, Hiei, you'll have to leave your katana in Reikai," Kurama patiently explained. "She's a simple human girl, and chopping her to bits is only going to get you thrown in prison. Besides, it's just a dance lesson. Nothing's going to happen."
"Why do you say that?" demanded Kuwabara. "Why does someone always say that? Whenever someone says that, something always happens!"
"I hate to admit it, but I agree with the baka," Hiei grunted. "With our luck, some low-class demon will sense our collective youki and come after us while we're with this oban(1)." Hiei quickly ducked back from the fury in Keiko's glare.
"She is not an oban!" she screeched furiously. "She's my friend!"
"Hn," the diminutive hi-youkai replied, feigning indifference. Keiko could frighten him when she was righteously furious, same as anyone else; he just hid it better.
"Hiei, so help me, if you screw this up...!" Yuusuke growled, putting an arm around Keiko's shoulders and leading her away, still fuming. Botan, grinning, fell into step behind them. Hiei growled when Yukina slipped her small hand into Kuwabara's larger one and tugged him after them. Shizuru grinned, lighting up a cigarette and following. Kurama motioned with his head and the two youkai fell into step at the end of the group.
"So, where are we going, Keiko-chan?" asked Botan cheerfully. Not that the Grim Reaper was anything but cheerful. She grinned as she walked, messy blue ponytail blowing in the wind.
"She said to come to her studio. That isn't at the youth center. She only teaches special classes at her house. Oh, and Kurama?" Keiko said sweetly. The redhead's stomach sank. No one could refuse Keiko when she turned sweet. He had a bad feeling about this.
"Hai?"
"She's doing us an awfully big favor, taking us on like this. Since you're studying for uni exams and she's studying for uni exams...I kind of told her that you'd be helping her out a bit." He kept waiting for the catch. It never came, so he had to ask.
"And?"
"And...that's it. I thought, since you're Kurama, and have so many years of knowledge, that it shouldn't hurt you too much to help her out. I mean, it's not like you aren't already studying for the same exams anyway." She was using that reasonable tone, damn her! The tone that said 'how can you fault my logic?' He sighed and nodded.
"Brilliant idea, Keiko-san," he replied. "I could use a study partner." She grinned and nodded, knowing that he'd agree.
She blinked silently, staring. She knew she was staring, knew it was bad manners, and knew that right then, she didn't care. Standing in her ground-floor studio were only the two biggest punks at Sara Yashiki, the smartest girl at same, the most brilliant mind of their generation, two blue-haired young women, a brunette that looked bored, and a decidedly dangerous-looking younger boy. She blinked again and tuned into Keiko's introductions.
When they were done and she had politely greeted her guests- she hesitated to call the students since most of them were her own age- she grabbed Keiko's arm and dragged her over by the stereo. "Keiko-chan, these are the people you want me to teach?"
"And me, of course," the brunette responded brightly.
"Keiko-chan, that little one, he's been glaring at me since he walked in."
"Hiei...Hiei's a little...um, tense, that's all. He's never tried to dance before."
"Keiko-chan, he doesn't want to be here!" The brunette looked at her strangely. "Well, how do you expect me to teach someone who doesn't want to learn? That's what teaching is, you know. You can't force someone to learn. A part of them, at least, has to want it."
"Don't mind him. He'll learn." Her voice hardened. "He'll learn if I have to beat him into it." Lifting an eyebrow at her gentle friend's words, she glanced back once more.
"I don't promise any miracles," she finally sighed. Keiko spontaneously squeezed her, hard.
"Arigatou, Hime-chan!" she squealed. Then she ran back to her friends to tell them the good news while Himeko Arashi sighed and rubbed her temples. It was definately going to be a very long weekend.
AN: Chapter two already! I couldn't figure out what to do with the end of it, so I left it there. Read and Review!
1) oban means, roughly, bitchy hag