Hi guys! I know I've been horrible and not updated for like forever. So I present to you... DOUBLE UPDATE! DUN DUN DUN!
Telly: Zomg. SO.
Vaness: The second chapter begins!
Telly: We shall dally no longer. Sadly, this is an angst fic (or at least it's supposed to be...), which means we cannot talk as much as we normally could in the humor and action fics we wrote previously. Yeah... onward ho!
Don't jump to conclusions. That is all I'm saying.
Please review! D: Reviews are my crack!
And I really need a beta. Preferably someone nitpicky who can give me the goods and bads of my chapters. Please leave it in a review or PM me if interested! Thank you!
And is it me or did Harry somehow turn into Fai from Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle? o.o -slaps self- I'm horrible at him.
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Chapter 2:
"These people only have one wish:
To be who they really are, show the one within;
To not change themselves at someone's whim."
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"Tougou, do you like me?"
The question came out of the blue. Tougou dismissed it and raised his glass to his lips, then froze as the true meaning of the question hit him.
"Aibou..." he said uncertainly. "Of course I do. We're friends, aren't we?"
Harry quirked a smile, eyes twinkling. "Not in that way."
"Come now," Tougou said, faltering. "Don't be ridiculous."
"That's true," Harry said, still smiling. "Can't joke about these things, can we."
They sat there for a little while.
"I have to go," Harry said abruptly. "Say hi to your sister for me, yeah?"
Tougou's younger sister, Masaki, liked Harry very much and a greeting from him would make her squeal uncharacteristically like there was no tomorrow. Tougou smiled wryly and watched him go.
'Don't be ridiculous, Tougou. This won't happen.'
"Gay people," Tougou's father said, "should not have the right to exist on this earth."
"Don't be ridiculous..." he said again.
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"So... is this the place...?" Asou wondered aloud as he poked through an alleyway to reach the entrance of a small club. "Renjéz Club, huh?" He started to go in but was stopped by the doorman, who had been looking at him oddly since he'd made himself visible.
"Kid, this club isn't for minors. Sorry," he said.
"The yakuza are in there, right?" Asou replied levelly.
The doorman stared at him incredulously. "Kid, no way... do you have a death wish? You don't cross with these yakuza, they'd kill you... in a heartbeat!"
"Please let me through," Asou said politely. "I'm not going to get myself killed. I only want to have a little talk with them."
"Kid... you're a weird one. A fighting spirit... I admire that," the doorman conceded. "Sorry, but no can do. I don't want the law coming after me. Come back when you look a little older, yeah?" He smiled at Asou.
Asou gave a small, grateful smile in return. "All right," he replied.
Later, when a slightly taller Asou-in-sunglasses-and-long-hooded-overcoat entered the club, the doorman didn't stop him.
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Wild, raucous laughter came from one of the rooms of the club. "Do it again, Goro! That was a good one!" a loud, gravelly voice roared. Goro was just about to when suddenly, someone bumped into him and walked off without apologizing. The ultimate sacrilege to a yakuza member.
Snarling, Goro went to the hooded stranger and grabbed him by the collar. "Look here, you—! Didn't your mother teach you any manners, huh?" Then the stranger's hood fell off, revealing his youth and Goro immediately put him down. Even he wouldn't mistreat a kid on purpose.
Asou shook himself and looked around, wincing at the smoke. "Where's your leader?" he asked Goro. "Is he anywhere in this room?"
The person who had laughed at Goro earlier spoke. "What if he is?" he asked Asou, eyes narrowing. "You're just a kid. Why are you here? What do you want?"
Asou looked him in the eye and said, "I want you to stop bothering my parents. We're from the Kouraku Chinese Restaurant."
"Kouraku, huh?" the leader said, thinking. "Oh yeah, I remember now. I love your dim sims, you know."
'It's dim sums...' Asou thought, slightly irritated but did not let that show on his face. "Thanks," he said politely.
"Kouraku, huh?" the leader continued. "Your parents send you here or something? Not very nice, are they?"
"I came by myself," Asou replied. "They don't know I'm here."
The leader suddenly grinned. "So, you want us to lay off the restaurant, huh? What're you willing to do, huh?"
"Anything," Asou immediately replied. The absolute worst thing to say when you were in this type of situation.
The leader's grin widened. "That's my boy. I'll let you off easy because of your delicious dim sims," Asou's eye twitched, "So, how does 50,000 yen in three days sound? Hush-hush money, huh? None of this will reach anyone's ears as long as you pay up."
"And you're off my back forever?" Asou asked, suspicious.
The leader shot a look towards Goro and Goro gave a curt nod.
Asou hesitated, then nodded.
xxxxx
Eri leaned on the wall next to the giraffe exhibit in the zoo and closed her eyes. The zoo may have been noisy, but the noise, in a way, helped her relax. A single, grating voice in her head telling her to confess ALREADY was hard to ignore; but it was relatively easy to block out the buzz of loud noise.
Besides, the giraffe was cute. It was a pleasure to watch.
"Pyotr!" someone called and Eri watched, bemused as the giraffe ambled towards the caller. The giraffe had a name?
Then she looked again.
This was too much! It was already unfair that Harima was the main subject of the conversations between herself and that annoying inner voice, but no! He had to even intrude upon her favorite place, the zoo! Huffing, she went to the penguin exhibit, only to meet a similar situation ten minutes or so later.
So she went to the petting zoo to take her mind off Harima, for once, but he then came in to check on Napoleon.
When she saw him again in the amphibians exhibit, she could not restrain it any longer. "Hige!" she called, trying to smile.
"Eh?" Harima turned to look at the person who'd called him by that nickname. Obviously it was the Princess, Harima realized with a sinking heart as he turned to face her. "Princess," he greeted her neutrally. By now Harima had learnt that the slightest wrong move could send her on the warpath, so he had to be as neutral as possible in order to protect himself.
"I didn't know you knew the animals here," Eri remarked conversationally.
"Huh? Oh, well... um, yeah," Harima replied rather intelligently. "They were from my stint as a fortune-teller. Don't you remember them?"
Eri suddenly laughed, surprising Harima. "You mean that frog was the one who predicted what my father liked? Curry and not nikujaga?"
This was dangerous ground. Harima needed to steer clear! "Well... have you met Anastasia? The penguin. She's very nice and intelligent, you know."
"Intelligent?" Eri replied skeptically. "How would you know? Do you talk to them or something?"
"Well... yes," Harima confessed and Eri's mood suddenly did a complete 180.
"I don't believe you," she said coldly, walking off. Then she turned around and added, "And for your information, I made nikujaga for Father a few days ago and he loved it."
Harima watched her go, eye twitching. He was now sinking into quicksand...
xxxxx
He ran, he ran, he ran! Panting heavily as he rounded a corner, he looked back to see if they were still there. They weren't.
He closed his eyes, exhaled deeply and allowed himself to relax as he leaned against the fence to take a breather. He opened his eyes, however, to see the bullies.
Harima Shuuji, their leader, smirked, his sandy blond hair glinting in the sun.
"Not feeling so confident now, are you now, Kousuke?"
Terrified, Ichijou Kousuke tried to back into the fence but it refused to budge and he could not go any further.
"Dojibiron won't help you now!" one of Shuuji's cronies snickered, moving closer to him.
Kousuke closed his eyes and waited for it. 'If only my sister were here...' he thought desperately.
"Harima Shuuji, you stop right now!" a righteous, indignant voice yelled at them and Kousuke opened his eyes, incredulous, to see Tennouji Mio and a shocked Harima Shuuji staring at her.
"M— Tennouji..." Harima said. Kousuke did not miss the M.
"Shuuji, you shouldn't treat people like that!" Mio scolded him. "You've frightened poor Ichijou-kun to death! Don't ever do that again!"
There was a slight pause. To others it may have lasted about 5 seconds or so but to Kousuke it lasted just about forever. Such an awkward silence...
"...whatever, Tennouji," Harima said after the pause. "We're leaving!" he told his gang and they disappeared.
"Ichijou-kun, are you all right?" Mio asked him, concerned. "I'm sorry about the way Shuuji acted... he's really very nice. Really!" she said, seeing him snort.
"Whatever you say, Tennouji," Kousuke replied. "Thanks... although I'll never live this down... being saved by a girl..."
"No problem!" Mio said, a bright grin lighting up her delicate features. "See you tomorrow at school, then!" she said, waved at him, then walked off.
Kousuke watched her go.
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Heh heh heh, pre-pubescent kids and their love problems!
And seriously... English doesn't have a word for what I meant when Shuuji said, "We're leaving!". Because in Chinese there's "Zou!" and in Japanese there's "Ikou!", which is just "Go!". But in English that makes no sense. Huh!
And you know what? Tenma's birthday is November 30, right? And Harima goes to her party, yeah? Well, his brother Shuuji's birthday is also the 30th. Figures that their relationship must be so bad that Harima doesn't even show up at his party...
And (last and! I promise!) I'm writing really little for this fic. O.O Because for my HP x YGO fic that is now sadly discontinued, each chapter was like... 3000 words. Yeah... and now it's half of that. It's not a bad thing though! Before I wrote this I read lots of stories that managed to tell a good story with less words (word amount kinda like mine so far) and I always thought 'Why can't I do it? D: D:' So yeah.
