Disclaimer: Don't own YYH, Katrina is a fictional character. And I am thinking of changing my name...what could it be? Icy Pheonix sux, so help!
Chapter 19: Hiei"REALLY?!" YES! He's gonna let me!
"Yes," He looks glad to see me so happy. "Hiei will pick you up. Mie and Keiko are coming later in the year."
I groan. "CAN SOMEONE, MEANING YOU, tell me why it's always Hiei? Why can't it ever be you? Or even that idiotic Botan???"
Kurama actually giggles. A 15 year old boy giggling. Ugh. Not something you want to see very often. He kind of stuffs his knuckles in his mouth and chews on them. As in a toddler. "Well, I wasn't supposed to tell you this, but he always volunteers first. We don't even have to force him."
"H-he does?" Okay, not expecting that blow to my self-conscious. He caught me off guard.
"I think he enjoys..." Laughter. "Your---" Explosion of laughter. "Company..." I can see him rolling on the ground. Jeez, what is so funny?
I do my best to ignore him. "Well, that's a compliment, coming from Hiei."
"Oh, IT IS!"
"KURAMA, TELL ME WHAT THE HELL YOU'RE GETTING AT!"
"You're...sooo...dense..." More annoyingly high-pitched laughter. Gee, he is such an imbecile.
"DENSE TO WHAT?"
"It's so damn obvious..."
I get ready to scream, but reel myself in just in time. It really wouldn't be good to wake the whole dormitory up at 6:00! I'd have a mob of sleep-deprived zombies after me.
I take a deep breath. "Okay, what are you talking about already?"
More laughing. Then he hangs up. Quite rudely. He can't have meant...no...
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I read silently. I'm in Mrs. Yukimura's class, and as celebration for her return, she is giving out no homework today and we have 100 percent free time. I'm reading, even though I should be doing the work Spinach-Jelly's sub gave us. Most of the kids are behaving like animals, except for me. No one is bothering to act their age. I'm trying to shut out Kanerusa's loud, booming voice. I slam my book, "Call of the Wild" shut. Put it this way: IT'S NOT WORKING. A wolf trying to find his place in the wolves is nowhere near enough.
But Kanerusa isn't the only thing I'm trying to shut out. Kurama's words won't stop haunting me. I've figured out the meaning to the best of my ability. I mean, how would Kurama know if Hiei liked me or not? I don't think he does. Why would he? Hiei hates everyone I know for no good reason. It doesn't make sense why he should have focused on me. There is no reason. Kurama is just getting used to being a bro and is trying to ruin my life. Maybe I should get used to that.
Kurama also didn't tell me how I was going to get out of school to begin with. I just hope Hiei doesn't don the nun cape again. In that suit, he would have been able to crack a mirror just by looking into it. It's also the only time I've seen him look embarrassed in my life.
Except when he looked at me.
AHHHHHHHHHH! BRAIN, SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP! NOT TRUE NOT TRUE!
I'm hitting myself with an english textbook. Kanerusa is not the only one staring.
"Katrina, are you okay?"
"Other than planning my suicide, yes."
She looks uneasily at me, as does everyone else, but eventually talk bubbles up again. I'm ready to shoot myself by the time the bell rings. Panting as though I've run a mile, I stagger out through the door. I am confronted by Flomiki. It's one of the few times I've been unhapppy to see her pretty face.
"What's the matter, Katrina? You look like someone just asked you out!"
"Not quite..." I mutter, brushing past her and leaving her with a puzzled expression on her face. When I am almost to math class, the teacher being Mrs. Yetta, the loudspeaker turns on.
'KATRINA KON, PLEASE COME TO THE OFFICE, KATRINA KON TO THE OFFICE.'
There's my cue. It must have to do with me being smuggled out of school. I run to the office at top speed, which is not safe to do in a crowded hallway. I achieve everything, from 'Excuse yous' to fingers, from all those in the hallway who I bump into. Not that I can really blame them. For some reason, Jap people seem to be very thin, and their bones catch me at every angle. I'm hurting myself.
When I arrive at the office several minutes later, I stuff my fist in my mouth. Hiei is on stilts! I can't look him in the eyes. I'll burst out laughing.
"Ahhh, Miss Kon," begins the principal, a droopy, balding man. "Your...er...father is here to pick you up and take you on vacation in the southern islands. You will be gone most of the rest of the year, which will be about 3 months. Since it is February, you should be back in May," He adds, as if I didn't know. "Please enjoy your vacation, folks."
Hiei turns sharply, nearly falling over. I follow him. "So, Dad, which island will we be visiting?"
Hiei just grunts and motions me out, even though he doesn't seem to have mastered the usage of stilts yet, and he keeps swiveling. As we leave, I hear one of the secretaries say, "I thought Miss Kon's father was deceased...and that guy looked quite young...let me get the papers..."
"Yes," agrees the principal. "Her father looked quite young..."
"That's our ticket out of here," I hiss urgently. "GO!" I shove him out so fast that his stilts leave skid marks.
We run out to a parked car. I'm not sure if it's ours to take or not, but Hiei doesn't care. He gets off his stilts with some difficulty and pulls some keys out of his pocket. Then he looks at the car. And looks. And looks some more, obviously very, very confused.
I curl my lip. "I'll drive!"
He looks at me in surprise. "You? But you're thirteen!"
"Sixteen's no better, pal. Besides, it looks easy, don't be such a pessimist." I grab the keys from his hand and open the car. Then I jump in the drivers seat and Hiei sits in the passenger seat. Then I start up the car.
I press on the gas tentatively. I back out of the parking lot with surprising ease. Then I put the pedal to the metal.
Five minutes into our drive, something occurs to me. "Hiei, where exactly are we going?"
"I have absolutely no idea." Hiei is frozen with fear of my vicious driving. "Oh yeah, we go to the Tokyo Interstate Train Station. We meet the Spirit King in a nearby meadow."
"OH! I know where that is!" ZOOM!
"I never knew driving could be this much fun!" I say enthusiastically, trying to lighten up the mood that Hiei is sporting. He looks sick.
I grumble, and stare out the window, checking in front of me every once in a while. I suddenly notice something. Mr. Spinach-jelly is in the car next to mine. Now I know why he had a sub.
"Eeeeeeeek!" I screech. 'That's my teacher, that's my teacher, HIDE!" I don't have time to do anything else. I grab Hiei's head, twist him around me, and press his face against the window. Mr. Spinach-Jelly, from what I can see of him, because I only have a slight view past Hiei's cheek, is staring at Hiei's mashed face like he would a bomb. After a while a nervous staring, he pulls up ahead of our car.
I peel Hiei's cheek away from the window. "Sorry!"
"Never mind that," he says, massaging the right side of his face. "Watch the road. I never thought humans had such horrid transportation systems." He mutters as an afterthought.
I study him. He's kind of red. Is he mad? Or just annoyed? Or is it just because of the window mark? Or both?
"Watch the road!" He says when he catches me staring at him, turning redder, possibly from rage at my stupidity.
"I AM!!" A few more minutes of this general clash of personalities continues, and then I pull us into the train station. "WE'RE HERE!"
"Stop being so frickin' happy!" He growls, his redness fading. He looks up at the digital clock. "The time is 13:24 already? But our train comes at 4:00!"
"Hiei, can you answer one thing truthfully to me?"
"What?"
"You can't really read, can you?"
Silence.
"Hiei, there's no such time as 13:24."
"All right, so I can't. No one ever taught me," he growls.
I laugh.
"I knew you'd laugh."
I stop. "I could teach you. How to read, anyway."
He shruggs. "If ya want."
I smile at him. He actually gives a tiny smirk in reply. From Hiei, that is a major good start.
Since it is only 3:09 now, Hiei and I wait on a park bench. He explains to me that the train stop we are headed for is near a meadow where a portal to the Spirit World exists.
After that, Hiei doesn't talk much. Mostly because I'm teaching him numbers, and he looks lke he's having the time of his life. Really sad.
"So, so this one here's a-a ten? COOL!" But an hour later, even his enthusiam is wearing thin, so I call it quits. He sits with his eyes wide on the left side, I sit on the right. We just watch all of the people going by and wait for our train to arrive.
'4:00. TRAIN IN SECTION 3 HAS ARRIVED. IT IS 4:00.' I watch as a copper colored engine pulls up in one of the stations.
"That's us! C'mon, Hiei! C'mon!" Hiei seems to be in a daze. I tap his shoulder, flick him, make faces, but it's like he's meditating or something. I grab his hand and drag him over to the shiny train. For such a small freak, he's awfully heavy. I notice his shirt is ripping. Too bad for him, the way I see it.
"A fine time to do yoga," I grumble. I make my way to the ticket booth with much difficulty and fish the tickets out of Hiei's back pocket.
The ticket master watches me warily. "Hello sir (gasp) I'm here for (gasp) the 4 (gasp) o'clock train (gasp)." I say exhaustedly. (pantpant) "I would like 2nd class seats, please."
"And your friend? He would be with you?"
"Yes, sir."
"Make sure he's buckled in. You may pass."
Hmmm. I was expecting more of a fight than that. At the very least, Hiei looks drunk, if not dead. I guess that guy's really seen too much of them to care.
I board the second place car, still tugging Hiei's limp body. I drag him over to the nearest empty two seats and place him in one. Roughly, cursing his not-so-fine time to take a nap, I strap him in. I feel like a parent, and Hiei's a full 3 years older than me. Hiei sure isn't as tough as he acts. I mean, Hiei napping? Who'd've thought?
We take off. About halfway through the 2 hour long ride, Hiei starts to snore. Quite loudly. Another quality I would not have expect from such a small teen. People in seats near him move to different ones. That's how incredibly annoying it is. My god, I should learn mind control. Or at least snore control.
An hour later, I'm going to scream. Hiei's snoring is like the Chinese water torture, only much worse. Much, much worse. When I'm about to really knock him out, he rolls over and his head falls on the floor. If he wasn't dead before, he is now. Playing the nice person, I try to get it off. But it is stuck there. Almost as if it were glued there.
After five minutes of struggling, I give up. Maybe he really is tired out. I got that bored when I was learning numbers too. I giggle. My anger is softened, but he's still going to get it when he wakes up.
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A/N Please don't lose faith in me yet! This was another normal chapter, but it would be too long if I put in the portal also. Review!