The King of Hell
by Lamenting Fox

Chapter Six: Thoughts from Heaven

Yuuto moaned lightly and opened his eyes, squinting at the sudden light accosting his vision. A pale, pretty face swam into view.

"Mmm...an angel..." he mumbled.

"Cut it out, you pervert," a disembodied voice snapped. "Being hurt doesn't make you any less creepy, that's for sure."

The light shifted, and the objects around him lost their wobbly appearance. He looked again at the face hovering above him and blinked in surprise. "Karen?"

She raised one eyebrow. "You're a quick one, aren't you?"

"No, I mean--what are you doing here?" he asked as she helped him sit up. He pressed one hand to his forehead, happy to find that she'd untied him. The gag was gone, too.

"I was following your friends," she confessed. "I wanted to get some good pictures, but I..." She stopped and looked away.

Yuuto examined her aura. Blue and purple...She's sad and afraid, but why?

"Tatsuki and Kotarou are here?" he asked. "Where are they?"

She opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by another voice that came from the direction of the door.

"Here," Kotarou said. "We're right here."

Yuuto craned his neck to look past Karen, and his eyes widened.

Karen just gaped. "You're alive?"

Just barely, it seems, Yuuto thought grimly. Tatsuki was leaning heavily on Kotarou. Bruises were forming all over his body, blood flowed freely from some point on his forehead, and his bottom lip was badly cut.

It was then that he noticed everyone's wet clothes.

"Okay," he clapped his hands. "So what'd I miss?"

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"So you're saying you have pretty much the whole fight on film?" Yuuto asked in amazement. He and Karen were both sitting in the hospital, waiting for the doctor to sign his release papers.

"Yeah. I took the pictures without even thinking," Karen replied, looking at him suspiciously. "Are you going to try to make me destroy them like your friend did last time? Because after the hell I went through tonight, I think I've earned--"

"No," Yuuto said simply. He smiled and rested his chin on the palm of one hand. "I'm going to make you develop them."

Karen blinked in surprise. "What?"

Yuuto's smiled widened into a grin. "You're going to develop the film and make plenty of copies of the pictures for me."

"Why?" Karen asked in confusion.

"I want to have a little fun with Koutari tomorrow."

Karen almost shivered at the hateful gleam in Yuuto's eyes when he mentioned the brown-haired guy who had tried to kill Tatsuki. "Why should I help you?" she asked to cover her nervousness, not knowing that Yuuto could see right through her.

"If you do, I'll try to make sure Tatsuki doesn't break your camera when he finds out you've been stalking him for the last few months," he said, holding her gaze. Gone was the hatred, replaced by an intensity she found both comforting and unnerving. It was as if he was looking through her to her very soul.

Karen paled at his words. He knows?

She set her jaw firmly. "Fine. I'll do it."

"Good. I'll need you to do something else, too, but that can wait. Right now I have a more important question to ask you."

"What is it?" she asked warily.

Yuuto flashed her a beautiful smile and her heart skipped a beat. "Will you honor me by being the first person to sign my cast, gorgeous?"

"You're such a creep," she said, but smiled back anyway, and took the marker he offered.

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A/N: Aww, isn't it sweet? I had to throw in a little Y/K fluff somewhere. After all, Yuuto deserves love too, right? You ever notice that in the books he's supposed to have gone out with all of these girls and yet you never actually see him out with one. Instead they all shoot him down and slap him and...well, you get the idea. So since I had him beaten, kidnapped, and injured, I decided he needed something good to happen to him to make up for it. :)