The Terrible Enemy
Chapter two
By: Kowareta
Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu hakusho.
---
Like most brilliant plots, it began with an idea.
This idea, of course, came from one of the most vile, seedy, and unscrupulous minds imaginable.
"Oh, I wish he was mine!" exclaimed Seiryoku the Fangirl, who was clutching her hands close to her chest.
Seiryoku was a pretty girl. Seiryoku also knew she was pretty. Which made her vain. But she was also a very strong and stubborn girl. She was, after all, the leader of both the Swim Club and the Debate Club.
Seiryoku had short blonde hair. Really short. As in if someone didn't notice her feminine features they would think she was a guy. This hair was spiked up with gel and she wore a horrendous blend of blue lipstick and crimson mascara on her face. She had a strong chin and bright blue eyes.
"Are you talking about your crush, again?" inquired a self-assured male voice.
Seiryoku glanced at a boy who seemed to be in his late teens, that was sipping a steaming mug of coffee while reading a the newspaper want-ads. He wore a cotton bathrobe over a simple black T-shirt and baggy denim jeans. His hair appeared to be wet.
This was Konomi, Seiryoku's older brother.
"Are you looking for a job, still?" inquired the Fangirl scathingly.
Konomi, whose face had previously looked amused, glared. Both Seiryoku and Konomi were not morning people. He then returned to reading his newspaper.
It was early morning and through an average-sized window, weak white light glazed over the room. It was a very small kitchen. Cabinets cluttered the walls and counters took up the space. They had a refrigerator but they had no dishwasher. They washed all the dishes by hand. A low mahogany table sat in the room which was where Konomi sat.
Seiryoku hummed to herself while loading her bento with rice for lunch today at school. She had been the Fangirl who'd managed to glomp Kurama the day before. She was also the alpha of the Fangirl pack.
Konomi turned a page of his newspaper.
"You could just ask him out, you know."
Seiryoku stopped. Just stopped. And stared at her brother like he had suddenly turned into an octopus. Which wouldn't be unusual. His hair kind of looked like a bunch of tendrils when it was wet.
"What?"
Her brother raised an eyebrow at her and repeated what he had said, "You could ask him out. Your crush."
Seiryoku continued to stare. Gradually, a small, malevolent smile grew on her face.
She had an idea.
It was a brilliant idea.
It was a brilliantly evil idea.
And then it became a plot.
She would make Shuuichi like her and she would make Shuuichi hers. No matter who got in the way.
And then Seiryoku discovered that she had been plotting so long that she was late for school.
---
Kurama felt relieved. He also felt relatively safe. Ignoring the leers and lustful stares of most of the girls in his class, he felt almost invulnerable. Almost. He'd feel better if there were no girls in his class, but English class always provided a safe haven for him.
This was mostly because of the teacher who seemed to be the epitome of a military general.
"You!" exclaimed the teacher aiming at a student with a wooden pointer, "Define to me the function of the noble comma!"
The student stuttered, "It's-it's uh… uh… used to… used to--"
Slam!
The teacher's wooden pointer thundered down onto the student's desk.
"Do you, or do you not know the function of a comma?" demanded the teacher.
"N-no sir!" squeaked the student.
"Does anyone here know the function of a comma?" stipulated the teacher.
Kurama raised his hand.
"You!" barked the militaristic teacher, "The pretty boy! What is the function of a comma?"
Kurama responded calmly, "It is used to mark off separate elements in a sentence: introductory clauses, words in a series, parenthetical phrases, or interjections."
The teacher, in a rare fit of humanity, nodded approvingly.
"Good, very good."
Unexpectedly, the door to the classroom opened.
"You!" yelled the teacher pointing towards the intruder, "Define your purpose here!"
"I missed the bus," the intruding female student told him, "I'm late. This is my first class, Mr. Kusari."
"Very well then," said Mr. Kusari stiffly, "Find your seat."
She did and the class continued.
"I have a project to assign to you," said the teacher stiffly, "It will be completed in groups of three people. And no, you may not choose the groups. I have chosen them for you."
Most of the students groaned.
"Silence!" screeched Mr. Kusari waving the pointer about, "I will say the groups aloud. After I have read them you will find your classmates and will begin--" he started passing papers around, "this project. Now, we will begin with the names. Kotai, Ichijiku, and Koten, then Hotaru, Ichigo, and…"
Finally, Kurama's group was called off.
"Minamino, Geraku, and Yuubi-sa."
Kurama felt an imminent doom fall upon his shoulders as two girls snapped their heads around to look at him. One was a very slim girl, and one was a rather plump girl. Kurama knew both girls' names.
Seiryoku Geraku and Nakita Yuubi-sa.
Kurama's paranoia was back!
---
"So let me get this straight, you've been assigned a group project and you have to work with these two girls who are so all over you?"
"That's the gist of it, Yusuke," said Kurama watching warily as a girl bent over nearby to tie her shoe.
It was the end of the school day and most of the students were rushing home in great flocks to catch buses or trains. It was a cloudy day, but sometimes great beams of sunlight burst through the clouds to warm the people below. The autumn trees still bore leaves of all different colors. Swarms of cars drove by the street nearby only to join up in the traffic that makes Tokyo, Tokyo. The sidewalks were crammed with people.
They were just outside the entrance of the school. A cool breeze ruffled their clothes and shifted their hair. Yusuke was dressed in his usual green jumpsuit and Kurama in his required Meio uniform.
Yusuke scratched his head, "Sucks to be you then."
Throughout the school day Kurama had noticed that Seiryuko had flanked him with about two other girls in the corridors to talk about the "project." If Kurama knew any better he'd figure the "project" was him. Nakita had hardly given him any trouble. A couple of shy looks here in there. Whenever he met her glances she'd turn away, embarrassed, to work on something or talk to one of her friends in the hallways. He didn't mind her, he was just very suspicious of her. She was the one who had offered to work on the project at her house over the weekend.
Right now, it was a Friday and school was over. Yusuke had taken it upon himself to walk Kurama home so that no more obsessive girls decided to stalk him. For some reason most girls tended to avoid Yusuke. Which was why Kurama chose to hang around him a lot more.
"Do you think maybe if you pretend that you're homosexual then they'll stop bothering you?"
A flock of students passed by and both Yusuke and Kurama saw some of the female students look at them with a mixture of lust (towards the red-head) and disgust or mild curiosity (towards Yusuke). Needless to say that Yusuke's presence was working perfectly in warding off unwanted Fangirls.
Through the corner of his eye Kurama saw the girl that had bent over to tie her shoe now stood up and appeared to be waiting for someone. She wasn't even looking his way.
"I doubt it," said Kurama, "besides, I'd rather keep my sexuality ambiguous."
Yusuke stroked his chin and wondered aloud, "You think maybe they'd start flashing you just to make sure you're really not interested?"
"I hope not," Kurama declared, and then came a small amused look in his eyes, "And don't let Keiko catch you saying things like that."
"Hah. Anyway, hey, Kurama, are you busy this weekend? I mean this Sunday?"
The crimson-haired youth glanced around distrustfully to see if anyone had heard Yusuke use his name. The only person close enough to hear was that one girl over there waiting and seemed oblivious to their existence. Other than that no one was even in range. Or rather, with everyone walking around, no one stayed long enough in one place to be in range.
"I have that project to work on this Saturday. Other than that I think I am free. I do not think my mother and I are doing anything this Sunday. Why? What is it?"
"Would you like to go to a matsuri with me, Keiko, and Kuwabara?"
"I'll think about it," Kurama answered, confirming nothing. He didn't really feel up to going anywhere with an excessive amount of people. There was a chance one of those Fangirls might be there.
"Hey!" called a voice in one of the flocks of students leaving the school. Kurama noticed the waiting girl perk up.
"Hey, Moeko!" called the voice again. The girl gave a small wave and Kurama noticed a tall black boy emerge from the flock of students leaving to go home.
"You're late, Ronjiru" he heard the girl tell the black boy. The boy shrugged and they started to walk off. But not before the red-head noticed something.
At first it looked as though the girl's head turned to tell something to her friend. And she did. But he could also tell that she was looking at him as if causually sizing up a prey from the corner of her eye.
Kurama's suspicion of about every girl just rose about nine hundred degrees. This girl had been sneaky. Very sneaky. What was it she had been trying to do? Had she been listening in to his conversation with Yusuke? Was she just another Fangirl? Kurama didn't have time to wonder because right at that moment, none other than the leader of the Fangirls appeared. Seiryoku Geraku.
"Shuuichi?"
Yusuke looked at the girl like she was a bug. It was a look the girl noticed and returned. Then she looked up at Kurama.
"Hi," she greeted enthusiastically.
"Hi," Kurama replied timidly.
"I was just talking to Nakita and we decided that we should probably exchange phone numbers."
She held out a slip of paper for him, which the poor boy reluctantly took.
"Those are mine and Nakita's phone numbers. Would you mind giving me yours so Nakita and I could call if something came up?"
Yusuke shifted from one foot to the other. Kurama could tell that he was either impatient or about to hustle this girl out of here.
"Certainly," Kurama said softly even though the thought of giving this girl or the other one his phone number made him wretch. He wrote his number on two different slips of paper with a pen provided by Seiryoku.
The girl smiled a smile that was not a smile. It was a predatory grin. Kurama fervently hoped that she would not try to molest the phone dialing his number over and over again.
Seiryoku smiled, "Thanks. I'm going to go give this to Nakita now."
And then the threat was gone. The red-head gave a sigh of great relief.
"Man, I don't know how you deal with it," Yusuke grumbled, shoving his hands into his pockets, "I'd blow up and start yelling at them."
Kurama smiled at the teen and stated, "Well, each to his own as they say."
"Yes, but has it ever been said 'each to her own'? What do you think will happen when these two Fangirls begin to fight over you? That's a clash I don't want to be around."
That was a thought that had never occurred to Kurama.
"You wanna go hang out somewhere? My house maybe?"
"No Yusuke," sighed Kurama heavily, "I just want to go home."
---
Of course, Nakita had no clue that Seiryoku had gone off and gotten Kurama's phone number. Nakita also had no idea that Seiryoku had even gotten a hold of her phone number. Nakita was also distracted. Very distracted. Because right now, she faced one of the most horrible monsters of all: A child.
"Waaah!" cried the infant in her arms.
"Shush, shush, my dear!" cried Nakita.
"Waaah!" cried the infant, still.
Today, the Volunteer Club was focusing it's efforts for taking care of infants at a nursery. Through the course of her stay she had been sprayed with urine and attacked by poop. Moeko had nothing on her. Peeing in a cup, hah! Nakita was feeling so not glamorous right now.
However, Nakita really did adore children. Moeko would probably roll her eyes at that, but Nakita really adored children. Their eyes, their hands, their noses, their toes. She loved them. Except when they soiled themselves. So both she and the baby wailed as she changed the diaper.
It was a fairly large room filled with bright, colorful toys and boxes full of dispensable diapers. Wide windows allowed great streams of light to cover the room. The walls were painted a deep blue, however, there seemed to be several unidentifiable stains on them. There was a collective amount of cribs with infants in them. Some were sleeping, some were screaming, some were giggling. It was crazy!
"Waaah!" cried Nakita.
"Waaah!" cried the infant.
"Are you done yet?" asked an exasperated teenager rocking yet another infant in her arms. This was Hasu, leader of the Volunteer Club.
"Almost," mumbled Nakita, hand held tightly over her nose as she distributed the soiled, sordid, repugnant diaper into the garbage. She then cleaned the baby's bottom, shuddering spastically as she did so, and wrapped the diaper on it. One more hour of this, and then Nakita would be long gone. And when she was long gone she hoped to come home to a nice dinner. And hopefully no one will bring up the concept of the many manifestations of a child's waste.
"I heard something today," Hasu commented vaguely. Watching as other girls and boys of the Volunteer Club cooed over the babies to get them to sleep.
Nakita's curiosity perked and she inquired, "What?"
"You, Seiryoku, and Shuuichi. Quite the group, don't you think?"
Nakita's brain turned to mush as she swooned, "I know! I am so lucky!"
"So… are you going to make a move?"
Nakita blinked, astonished, "No, no! I couldn't! That would probably creep him out. Moeko's said that around half of the school girls already chase him around. I wouldn't want to add to his problems."
Hasu laughed, "Ha-hah! Moeko is probably right. Still, you can try in a way that's not obvious."
Nakita grinned as she lay down the infant inside it's crib. The little infant had finally stopped crying and had fallen asleep.
"I am almost completely sure that Shuuichi could probably recognize any type of advance from a girl."
Hasu shrugged, "Then you have no choice but to be yourself and hope for the best."
The plump girl considered a moment before nodding. She could different and more "alluring", if she was capable of that word, and risk Shuuichi disliking her. Or she could be herself and risk the very same thing.
She glanced at the sleeping infant and placed a hand above her heart. Nakita figured it was better to be hated for who you are than liked for who you're not.
---
