Wind of Purple Night
Me: Well, Here you are. I have chapter three done already. Happy Turkey day, to anybody who's celebrating it (Which I'm guessing all of you are) Remember, be very thankful for all you have. I'm thankful for anybody who stumbles across this story and happens to be kind enough to read it. I'm also thankful for anybody who is nice enough to leave his or her mark in form of review. Please, I love reviewers. Tell me what you think, mindless rambling, give advice, ask questions, or even make predictions or suggestions as to what might happen later on in the story. It takes a few minutes of your time, and I reply to anybody who leaves me a signed review. (Anonymous reviewers-I'm sorry, but whatever rules fanfiction lays down, I follow)
To the reviewers:
Seeing as fanfiction no longer allows it, I will not be replying to reviews in my stories anymore. However, I will reply to anybody who leaves either a signed review, or an e-mail address with his or her review.
Warnings and Disclaimer:
Nothing more than yaoi and some angst. Like my other story, I will say that I will be involving a lot more of the psychological aspects rather than ones filled with action. No, it will not involve depression or wrist-cutting of any kind, and I am pleased to inform you, that as of now, Hiei and Kurama's fates are looking pretty bright for the future. I will not kill off anyone too important in this story; I've already overdone it in my two other ones.
Chapter Three
So there Shuuichi sat on the floor of his dormitory, books spread out around him. There was no exaggeration in saying that he had a truckload of homework. Another advanced class added onto Shuuichi's course load hadn't helped the amount of homework he received in the slightest. He had over one hundred problems to do for his mathematics course, a sketch of the bones in the human arm with proper labels due for anatomy along with a paper about various fractures on bones, an entire essay due about an ancient folktale, not to mention the entire English story that had to be read, summarized, and translated along with the five long pages in the grammar workbook. Shuuichi groaned, this was despicable, and he had soccer practice in the morning too. He supposed he'd probably have to skip dinner, seeing as this huge workload would be keeping him awake well into the early morning. Maybe he could convince Botan to sneak him some food. He was ravenous because of choosing not to eat much food at lunch, and he now worried that he might have to skip breakfast as well.
He stood. It wouldn't be good to work off an empty stomach, so he had better just ask Botan to sneak him some food. She'd done it for him before, when he'd have to study for large tests, or if the workload just got too large. There were so many burdens of having to keep up with the advanced courses, his mother expected him to be smart and keep up with his studies. Although his mother never mentioned it, he knew she was expecting him to graduate early. Never had he disappointed his mother of such a thing as not living up to her expectations, and he didn't want to start now.
He walked out, savoring the quiet aura the campus held. Most students were already in their rooms doing their homework. Otherwise, they were off in their own little groups outside, chattering quietly before it came to be time for dinner. He went over to the girl's building for dormitories. It was a good thing he knew that Botan went to her room immediately to set off on homework with her small study group. The cheerful girl happened to be in a few advanced courses herself, so she often took a while to get her homework done as well.
He knocked a few times on a wooden door on the second floor before someone answered. A meek girl, who looked a year or two younger than Shuuichi peered out. "Hello, is Botan there?" he asked in a kind voice. The blue-haired schoolgirl ran quickly to the door and smiled.
"Shuu-kun, what brings you over here?" she asked in her bubbly voice.
"Botan, I have a lot of homework tonight, and I believe I'm going to have to work on it while everyone else goes to dinner, so I was wondering of you'd be so kind as to sneak me a small amount of food." The girl nodded and gave Kurama a thumbs-up. Shuuichi felt a wave of relief at this. He was really hungry, after all.
"Thanks a lot, Botan, you're really a lifesaver. I'll see you around, then?" Botan nodded and saw him off. Shuuichi ran back to his dormitory, he still had a lot of homework to do, after all. He pulled out his heavy-bound anatomy book and took out a sheet of blank paper, carefully referencing off the diagram on one page. Each intricate bone was drawn and erased many times. Shuuichi knew very well that if the drawing weren't neat or accurate enough, he'd get points off. He'd rather avoid that at any cost. He heard a knock on the door just as his hand was beginning to ache from drawing. While continuing to shade in the bones around the gliding joint of the wrist, he called "Come on in, Botan" He glanced quickly at his clock as Botan entered. 7:15? How had it gotten so late? He wasn't even done with this one assignment yet.
Botan knelt down and took a plastic bag out of her school bag. She had to be careful; you weren't supposed to have food outside of the cafeteria. Inside, Kurama found a rice ball and a leg of chicken. The school enjoyed serving a lot of western food, and for that Shuuichi was grateful Japanese food was a lot harder to sneak than this. He bit down into the chicken, looking over the neat drawing and checking to see that it was entirely accurate. While holding the chicken with one hand and a pencil in the other, he began to label each bone, looking back to his book often to check that he wasn't getting anything incorrect.
"How much homework did you have tonight?" asked the girl, who was sitting on the bed, watching Shuuichi as he multi-tasked, trying to eat and work at the same time. Without one word, he handed her a planner full of writing for that day, her eyes grew to the size of saucers and she handed the planner back to Shuuichi, bidding her farewell so the boy could work in peace.
Hours passed monotonously, only the sound of a scribbling of a pen to keep Shuuichi close to reality. More than once, he found his mind drifting off to Hiei again, but he forced himself back to his papers and problems, forcing Hiei rather unsuccessfully out of his mind, only to find more daydreams about him drifting back into his mind only seconds later.
He was a mess, his hair was a mess, his eyes were red from fatigue, and a constant blush present on his pale cheeks. As he struggled through the mess of paragraphs that was called an English story, he found himself glancing at the clock again and again. 4:15... what was he getting at, trying to figure out this English story. He couldn't make heads or tails of it, and with his lids growing heavier second by second; he pushed himself harder to finish. Looking up the last word in the dictionary and writing the last answer in his neat script. He sighed happily. He could finally go to sleep now. With one last yawn, the redhead crawled into bed and curled up under the warm covers. Sleep was found almost instantly and within minutes, Shuuichi found comfort in the revitalizing depths of deep sleep.
A screeching alarm clock woke him up what seemed only seconds later. His hand rose to find the source of the irritating noise, searching blindly across the nightstand before finally finding the alarms off button. With a sleepy sounding yawn, Shuuichi stretched in his usual cat-like way and sat up, rubbing fatigue out of his eyes. His clock already read 6:30. An hour and fifteen minute's sleep hadn't done him much good, Shuuichi felt dead tired.
As the redhead's eyes came into focus, he turned on the lamp on his bedside table and stretched once more. Gentle rays of early morning light streamed in, illumination the space considerably. The light stung the redheaded boy's eyes for a moment, but after blinking a few times to adjust his eyes to the light, he smiled. Overwhelming fatigue still weighted down his eyelids like a ton of bricks, even though Shuuichi wasn't acting too tired. He unbuttoned his nightshirt as he made way to the shower, allowing the garment to hang off his shoulders while he reached into the shower and turned the water on.
Stripping off the rest of his attire, he stepped into the shower. Freezing cold water met the boys back and a yelp of surprise escaped his lips while he jumped off the ground. By impulse, the boy moved away from the stream off cool water, but then forced himself back. It wasn't as if he hadn't expected it, but he was very used to hot showers. There was one problem with a hot shower, though; they only seemed to make the teen sleepier in the mornings. For fear of falling asleep again, simply die to lack of sleep; Shuuichi assumed that a very cold shower would be the best remedy, if any, for this fatigue. He'd just have to get some extra sleep tonight. What was really important now was being alert for this first soccer practice.
Shuuichi stood still for a few minutes, allowing his body to acclimate itself to the frigid temperature of the water as best it could. He then proceeded to lather his hair with fragrant shampoo, adding in conditioner after rinsing the last trace of shampoo from his head. After a minute or so of waiting, he stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel, wrapping it around his lower half. Although this shower had helped a bit to awaken him and heighten how alert he was, he could still feel his eyelids droop every few seconds, his breathing being interrupted often by long, drawn-out yawns.
So, at a tired pace, Shuuichi walked back out, grabbed a suitable outfit for casual wear, dressing quickly and heading back into the bathroom to dry his hair. He retrieved his blow dryer from the small cabinet space beneath the bathroom sink, rolling his eyes as memories flashed through his mind. He had decided to grow his hair out two years ago, and at that time, made a decision to use a blow dryer instead of doing what most boys did-- letting their hair air-dry. His roommate had been very amused, and had taunted him endlessly about how feminine it was to do such a thing all the way up until he had transferred schools. It had actually got sickening how much he went on about how feminine Shuuichi was, not that he really cared. Besides, the classification of being feminine because you had long hair was only a belief, a stereotype, if you wish.
Gently running a brush through his hair, Shuuichi checked the front and the back for tangles he might have missed. He didn't stop running the brush through his hair until each strand lay obediently where Kurama wished it to lay, until it was beautifully sleek and smooth, showing off the best color of crimson one could ever imagine. If there was one thing Shuuichi took pride in, it was his hair. He slaved over it endlessly sometimes to get it the way he wanted to look. Maybe his old roommate was right, maybe he was a little on the feminine side.
He turned and went t clean up the mess he had made last night. He had been so tired; he hadn't even bothered to clean up the mess of books, folders, and crumpled papers that had missed the wastebasket. He checked to be sure that every piece of paper containing his homework was there. With how hard he had worked on the assignments, he would have exploded had he reached any of his classes to find that he had happened to leave a sheet behind, or maybe have accidentally thrown it out with all the crumpled papers that contained half-written essays that he had started writing, and then found utterly horrible.
When he tucked the last of his books into the large schoolbag he liked to carry around and all the pieces of used paper had been discarded, Shuuichi moved on to the bed. What do you say? Shuuichi was a very neat person, by nature. It bothered him for some reason, seeing a bed that didn't have it's covered perfectly folded and it's pillows laid neat at the head of the bed. He had always had a problem with being a tiny bit of a perfectionist, with not only the order of things, but with schoolwork as well. That was part of the reason it took so long, he always redid everything he wrote at least once, wanting to make it as perfect as he possibly could. So, people said it was an unhealthy thing to do.
Often, people noticing these traits would mention to Shuuichi that it was okay to not to try to be perfect. The redhead certainly acknowledged that what they spoke was the truth, but he really couldn't help it. For some reason, it was almost addictive for Shuuichi to have a very neat and orderly lifestyle, filled with success. He HAD to have his bed nice and made, his schoolwork neat and without errors. His floor HAD to be free of any clutter what so ever. Most of all, his hair HAD to be neat and perfect, without tangles, knots, or frizz. His life may not be perfect, but there was nothing stopping him from trying to make his life as neat and orderly as it possibly could get. Besides, he wasn't doing to well anyways, so if he tried, he'd achieve success, right? Hiei was loads better than he was, and he didn't even seem to have any problems with doing it. Hiei was so perfect... How Shuuichi longed to be able to do things as easily as the older, black-haired boy.
He heard a knock at the door. Without responding, he went to straightening his room further. Eventually, after the knocking had persisted for thirty seconds, Shuuichi called, "Come in, the doors unlocked." A familiar, blue-haired schoolgirl burst in happily, smiling cheerfully.
"Hello Shuu-kun! How did you homework go last night?" Shuuichi turned to him with a tired expression; it answered it all for her. She gasped at the horrendous view of the dull emeralds, dull and bearing dark circles under the, from lack of sleep. He tried to smile at her halfheartedly, though.
"Shuu-kun! Heavens, how long did you stay up? Why are you out of bed, you should be in the nurse's office. Really, you look deathly ill!" She grabbed his arm after the sudden, worried outburst. Shuuichi wondered why the heck she was acting like this, he really didn't look that bad. After all, he'd seen the dark circles under his own eyes when he brushed his hair, obviously checking to make sure his hair looked nice in the mirror. He wasn't stupid, he knew that he had dark circles under his eyes and he looked tired. But certainly, he didn't look sick.
"I'm fine, Botan. I really didn't stay that late, I'll be fine." he glanced at the clock and added on to it. "Besides, I need to get going for this soccer practice in a few minutes, I don't have time to go to the nurses office. I really appreciate your concern, Botan, but contrary to what you say, I'm perfectly healthy." Botan didn't look as if she believed him, but she'd take his word for it. They were best friend. So if there were something wrong with him, she'd be the first one he talked to about it, right? She hoped so; it was hard for her to watch any friend of hers go through pain while she just sat on the sidelines, watching it happen.
"Are you absolutely sure, Shuu-kun? I'm pretty sure your coach wouldn't be angry with you if you were to just explain you situation Shuuichi shook his head and smiled his convincing, yet still masking the real feelings type smile. Somehow, it seems he had been able to trick Botan with his mask this time. That was a very rare feat, accounting that Botan had seen through just about every mask he'd ever put on. He just had to practice before soccer practice so he wouldn't look too stupid. He had a deep longing to win Hiei's love, and if he didn't sate it soon, he felt like he'd explode from the feeling.
"Botan, I'm perfectly fine. Stop worrying about me, okay?" he told her, in his most confident, reassuring voice. Botan nodded. She supposed that she believed him, but still... She had a feeling that Hiei had to do with Shuuichi's odd behavior as of late. She had never liked him much. It wasn't like Botan hated Hiei. She just saw him as a cold person who scared her.
The last time they had come face to face hadn't been under good terms. When she first found out that Shuuichi's crush had been the coldest boy in school, she had wanted to go and talk to Hiei about it. Like so may other people, she and the black haired boy hadn't gotten off on the best of terms. Their conversation had ended with Hiei threatening Botan. He had threatened her in quite a serious way too, mind you. Wouldn't you be scared of such a dangerous-seeming guy in Botan's place? A shiver ran down her spine as she thought back to their encounter. After that, she kept her distance. It made her wonder how Shuuichi could ever like in such an unattractive boy. Sure, he was extremely smart and athletic too, not to mention handsome, but his temper ruined it all so that nobody liked to be around him.
"Well, than, would you at least like some breakfast before you go. I know you must be hungry, if we grab a granola bar or something you could eat before practice begins," she suggested. It worried her to see what Shuuichi did next. He shook his head at the offer. It was something Shuuichi had never ever done before. He hadn't been a fanatic of eating, but he certainly ate three square meals a day, that was for sure!
"Come to think of it Botan, I'm not really that hungry this morning. It must just be because I ate quite late last night. Don't worry; I'll eat extra food to make up for it at lunch. You can even make sure, okay?" he said. His statement wasn't a lie, because he really wasn't hungry. Besides. He wanted to be able to practice during breakfast. If he wanted to really get good enough to be on this team, he would need to practice very hard. If he were to prove himself to Hiei, he needed to get as good as him and prove to Hiei that he'd be worth begin in a relationship with. He wouldn't be satisfied with what he had done until Hiei considered him worthy. Maybe it wasn't in character for him to say that, but he'd had a growing crush on Hiei for a very, very, long time now. It killed him inside to go past time, knowing that Hiei hated him, thinking that he would never be good for the 'perfect' Hiei. In his wildest dreams, Hiei would hold him close and kiss, him, loving him for who he was. Shuuichi was always striving to achieve that dream, even though it seemed to grow more distant of a possibility, day by day.
As Shuuichi headed out to the soccer field, he looked up at the rising sun. It was a very beautiful sight right now. Sure, he'd seen these kinds of things before, but he really appreciated how beautiful and calm it made him feel. The pretty pinks and blues blended together in a good portion, while a deep purple down near the end of the horizon line, the only thing left of the previous twilight. A light breeze rustled through the trees and picked up stray strands of crimson tresses. The redhead stopped and sniffed the crisp morning air in a very appreciating way. As he reached the soccer field, he spotted Hiei. Like last night, he was sitting in the bleachers, nose buried in that book of his. It made him wonder what he was reading, or even what language that it was written in. Soon enough he'd be able to talk to Hiei as casually as a friend might have, he swore it to himself.