1. Airhead

Characters/Pairings: HotohorixChichiri (one-sided), Chiriko

Rating: PG-13

Quick Summary: Hotohori is an airhead.

Author's Notes: I love how Hotohori is when he's being dumb and vain!

"Hotohori-sama is so beautiful! Such a pity that he's rather dim-witted."

"He has such lovely long hair! If only he had a brain underneath it!"

"Sigh, if only Hotohori-sama wasn't so dumb, I'll jump in bed with him in an instance!"

Hotohori often had to endure such thoughtless and hurtful comments and rumours that the palace maids whispered behind his back when he took his daily walk in the palace gardens. And quite frankly, he had had enough of it. After all, he wasn't really dumb, of course not. He was just playing stupid. If he wanted to use that marvellous brain of his, he would have beaten even that smart aleck Chiriko.

Just because he constantly made up excuses to delegate the mounds of paperwork and petitions to Chichiri and read cute, girly shoujo manga with lots of pictures didn't mean that he was dumb. It just, well, if Hotohori dared admit to himself, it seemed that strange things would happen to his fragile and frail body whenever he tried to utilise his brain.

He remembered doing Math tuition with Chiriko on a hot summer day where the kid had impatiently tried to explain the difference between a plus sign and a minus sign. He mentally counted twelve times when Chiriko had screamed, rather girlishly in his opinion, before banging his head on the desk.

It had not gotten any better when he took three hours to solve a sum and Chiriko offered to lend him the abacus so that he could calculate better. The wooden beads sitting neatly in the lacquered wooden racks made him think about ice-cream mounds and his mind wondered to the manga he had been reading earlier where he thought of the male character's huge, muscular bottom and imagined bouncing on top…

That had promptly set off a monumental nosebleed that resolutely refused to stop despite Chiriko's selfless attempts to stick writing paper up his nose and Hotohori had to be carried, squealing and wiggling to avoid getting blood on his beautiful, luxurious robes, back to bed where the physician prohibited him from doing any more Math.

Poem writing and language classes with Chichiri had not been any better either because he kept imagining glomping the cute, blue-haired monk and had inappropriately strange urges to grab the monk's hard, toned bum whenever he turned around. One fine autumn morning as Chichiri bent down to pick up a brush, he had felt a very firm and strong grip on his bum and promptly fled the classroom crying and hysterical.

That had effectively put an end to language classes for the rest of the year and most probably, forever.

After that, none of the palace officials dared to suggest to their emperor that he go for lessons. After all, it was much safer that he be left to taking his daily palace walks, causing harm to no one but the palace maids who had to put up with his nonsensical, mindless and often narcissistic self-conversation.

So it really wasn't Hotohori's fault that he was considered dumb. He really, really wanted to be able to beat Chiriko at Math and spout lines of lovely, rhyming poetry at whim, but his body couldn't help itself.

But it was for the best really, Hotohori reasoned with himself. After all, he was already such a handsome, charming, gorgeous man, if he were unbearably intelligent to boot, Konan's women might all kill themselves in a stampede to force him into their beds.

So it was for the good of the country really.

Happily satisfied with that, Hotohori went back to working on the cute blue-haired monk plushie that he was sewing.

This time, he would stuff lots of cotton into that bum.

THE END