here's my fourteenth chapter, along with the last one in this fanfiction for a while. it'll be at least until I can get all of my other fanfictions sorted out a bit from all over my document manager. that thing is a real pain in the ass, especially when it doesn't take more than two-hundred documents at a time. I'm basically struggling to stay within those limitations. anyway, this chapter of my 'Wedding Peach' fanfiction, 'The Love Angel and the Dark-Hearted Devil' is the fourteenth chapter and is worth at least a full-on five-thousand-eight-hundred-ninety-two words of storyline, give or take a comment or two from yours truly under the guise of an author's note, the headnote right here and the disclaimer following this very headnote there after. this fanfiction's title may make it sound like a parody of 'Beauty and the Beast', but it is really just the 'Wedding Peach' anime told from the point of view that is Yousuke Fuuma's. now, on with the disclaimer...
disclamation: I don't own the anime or the manga series of 'Wedding Peach' in any way, shape, or form. I don't know who owns either one of the series, but it sure ain't me. I am a humble fanfiction blogger on this very website and an author of other types of stories on the Internet, specifically on websites such as WattPad.
So, I was on my way to school on a day following everything that happened with the soccer team getting some coaching from Kaji's guest appearance at our school when I spotted Momoko Hanasaki just a few meters dead ahead of me on the way there. She seemed too busy looking at her finger to pay attention to where she was going for one reason or another. Catching up to her and inspecting her finger a lot closer, and I instantly realized that there was some kind of engagement ring on her finger.
Yours Truly: Yo, Momo-pi!
She jumped away from me before I can prepare myself to ask about that ring wrapped around her finger.
Yours Truly (continued): So what's with that ring on your finger? You getting married or something like that?
Of course, it was not like I was asking Momoko if she was engaged to anyone just because I liked her, which I definitely did not. Heck, it was not even any of my business whether or not she was engaged, at all. I was just curious what kind of guy would even consider such a horrid fate.
Of course, Momoko simply turned herself away from me before even answering my question, at all.
Momoko Hanasaki: Well, one thing's for sure; I'm not getting married to you!
My brain: Oh, was that supposed to offend me or something, Momo-pi? Because if that were the case, it would have failed miserably to insult me in any way, shape, or form.
I just laughed a scoffing laugh before actually shooting back at Momoko's cheap-butt comeback about getting married to me. As if I would ever even consider it.
Yours Truly: Of course, you're not getting married to me 'cuz I'd never asked you!
Then, Momoko suddenly began swinging her book bag around, heading towards my direction.
Momoko Hanasaki: Why you!
Of course, her book bag would have been easy for me to dodge. So I just stepped out of the way of it, and Momoko swung out of control in a rebound effect of having missed hitting me with her book bag.
Unfortunately for me, the rebound effect allowed her book bag to successfully hit me upon going even more out of control… and on the chin, no less. I slipped onto an empty coffee drink cannister on the ground at random and slammed my face right into the lamp post right next to me just hardly enough to knock me out cold.
The next thing I knew, several minutes had gone by and it was long since time for the both of us to be well enough at school. However, I just could not help but be far too pleased with wherever I was at the time to care much about that. I did not even know where I was. All I knew by then was that my eyes were covered by a cloth of some kind and I had a warm lap sitting from underneath my own head. I felt just like I was dreaming.
Yours Truly: Ah, I don't know where I am, but it feels pretty nice.
It was just around then that I suddenly heard the voice of whoever's lap on which my head lay at the time. I did not know why but as soon as I heard it, I near instantly recognized the voice to be that of none other than Momoko Hanasaki.
Momoko Hanasaki: Are you awake, now?
I was slightly dazed from hitting the lamp post earlier at the time, but it was not as though there were any truly permanent damage done to my head. I guess that my skull was just as thick as that even of Momoko, herself.
Yours Truly: Yeah, I woke up a second ago.
Momoko only giggled as a reaction to having easily gotten my little joke about already having been awake just before telling me to get up from off of her despite having only just woken up from being completely knocked out for the count at the time.
Momoko Hanasaki: If you're awake, you'd better get off me.
Momoko had already sounded as though she were just about ready to slap me further awake.
My brain: Sorry, Momo-pi. I know you want me off of your lap right now, but I just can't obey that request from you… not just yet, that is.
Still, I had to try and reason with her that time. The situation in which I was with her at the time called for the surefire diplomatic approach. No teasing or taunting was permitted on my part in that kind of situation, especially when simply needing to take my own position in the situation into consideration. It was… slightly compromising, to say the least.
Yours Truly: Wait! Would it be OK if I stayed here for a little while?
To be perfectly honest with you, I did not realize just how soft Momoko's lap actually was. It was like an ultra-soft pillow I only ever had any a chance to sleep on when I was asleep in my bed, dreaming up the best soccer game I could have ever played as the team's front running goal keeper, and not just the back-up goalie like in the real world.
Momoko sounded a tad reluctant at first to accept my request but after a few short seconds, she finally gave in.
Momoko Hanasaki: I guess so. Whatever!
I will tell you this about Momoko being my pillow; her lap was softer than any of the pillows in the nurse's office by over one-hundred-trillion fold.
A short while later, I had finally gotten up from off of Momoko's lap and just stretched my arms towards the sky above just before turning myself back towards the girl in question.
Yours Truly: Well, we're completely late now, aren't we? The weather's so nice and since we're already late for school, we should take our time getting there. Come on. I'll buy ya a juice or something.
Momoko reached her arm out to try and stop me.
Momoko Hanasaki: Yousuke!
I was already on my way to get that juice for her, anyway, though.
Of course, when I finally made it to the juice machine, I took my time considering what flavor of juice Momoko would have wanted over all the others. I just settled on getting both orange and apple juice and chose to let Momoko, herself, decide which one of those two juices she wanted more.
By my time finally making it back to where the two of us had been sitting on the park bench before then, however, Momoko had managed to get away from the bench and out of sight from it.
Yours Truly: Hey, Momo-pi. What kind of juice would you rather have? Orange or apple?
I looked around and saw her in the park fountain, getting completely soaked for one reason or another. I rushed over to said fountain.
Yours Truly (continued): Hey, what're ya doin'?
I just heard her mumble something from within the fountain as she just sat there, getting her uniform soaked even further. Not long following that, I noticed that the engagement ring that was wrapped around her finger just before I had gone off to purchase those juices from the machine had suddenly disappeared by that point.
Yours Truly (continued): Not that it's really any of my business, but what the heck happened to that ring that was on your finger before?
Momoko finally responded to my questions, albeit only by more mumbling.
Momoko Hanasaki: I'd completely lost the ring.
Suddenly, there was a pounding sensation in my head and in my heart over her loss of that ring. I just could not help but feel like it was all my fault. If I had not suggested we take our time getting to school, maybe she would not have lost the ring that she seemed like she had cherished so much.
Yours Truly: It'll be fine, Momo-pi. I'm sure you probably just lost your ring in the fountain when you most likely fell in. You'll see. I'm sure I can find it in the fountain within two shakes of a cat's tail.
My brain: Why I even used a line like that, I'll never know.
A/N: afraid that it might be all my fault you said that kind of thing, Yousuke. I made you say it because, well basically 'cuz I'm a cat-person.
Of course, I stepped into the fountain if only to look for that beautiful ruby ring which Momoko had been wearing just minutes before. I had also managed to help her make her way out of the fountain and keep her from getting soaked any more than she already had been.
Yours Truly (continued): You wait right there, and I'll look around for your ring. I should be able to spot it soon enough.
Momoko just responded even further to my efforts about looking for her ring with nothing but more despair.
Momoko Hanasaki: It's not in there, Yosuke. I didn't drop it in the fountain.
Yours Truly: Huh?
What? 'Momoko did not drop the ring into the fountain'? What was that even about?
Yours Truly (continued): OK. Now, I'm thoroughly confused, Momo-pi. If ya didn't even drop the ring in the fountain to begin with, then how'd you manage to lose it, at all?
Momoko only turned her head in my direction with an obviously broken expression on her face and tears of remorse decorating her eyes like it was nobody's business.
Momoko Hanasaki: Someone up and stole my ring from me while I was waiting on the park bench.
So, that was why Momoko had lost that ring on her finger, at all. She had not been clumsy. She had been victimized by the act of grand-theft engagement ring.
Yours Truly: Someone stole your ring from you? Where are they, now?
Momoko just continued wearing her face's broken expression.
Momoko Hanasaki: She's completely gone, now. She left a short while just before you came back.
It was a 'she' that stole that ring that was so important for one reason or another to Momoko? I did not care how much 'she' wanted her own engagement ring or to get married, at all. That was no reason to steal one from another girl.
Momoko Hanasaki (continued): I think I just wanna go home, now, so I can give my father the terrible news.
Momoko was willing to give up on getting back that stolen ring of hers that easily? I had always thought that she was a lot tougher and more of a fighter than that. I walked her back home, anyway, and chose to discuss it with her on the way back to her house.
Yours Truly: This isn't like you, Momo-pi, to get so upset about losing a ring.
I admit that I may or may not have been trying to cheer Momoko up with that kind of comment as a joke from me. She did even not crack so much as the tiniest smirk at my joke, though. She only replied with a saddening response further explaining the very importance that ring had to her.
Momoko Hanasaki: It-It was a memento from my mom.
Yikes! That ring was something of hers that she had received from her late mother? With that one sentence, I suddenly understood the gravity of her situation regarding that singular engagement ring. It was the only thing she had left by which to remember her own mother. I may not have been able to be all that sensitive about her situation regarding the ring before, but I surely HAD to try being sensitive about it by that point, especially since I had secretly understood from just where she was coming. It would have easily been the exact same thing as if that bell my father gave to me during the last time I ever saw him under mysterious circumstances like that of Momoko having just by then lost her own mother's memento ring. What had killed me even more about the only thing Momoko had left of her mother was that I just knew that it was all my fault that ring had been stolen from her in the first place.
Yours Truly: I'm sorry.
As little as I knew it probably meant with the far beyond disastrous consequences of what I had let happen to her and to her mother's memento ring, I just felt like I had no choice but to start somewhere when it came down to apologizing to Momoko for what had become of that memento ring of hers which was from her own mother. I had been completely selfish about her and just took a good, long look for myself at what had happened because of it.
Upon finally making it back to her house, Mr. Hanasaki showed up just at the front door once the two of us had both walked in. Of course, Momoko's father was a lot more worried about his daughter than the possibility of the news she had to break to him about his late wife's engagement ring turned into the only memento left by which he and their daughter had so much as to even remember the poor woman.
Mr. Hanasaki: Momoko! What on earth happened to you?
I only handed her book bag back to her father.
Yours Truly: I'm sorry, sir. I'll leave the rest of it to you.
It was doubtlessly the responsible thing to do with everything that had happened to Momoko on my watch. I bowed my head to the man respectfully and walked out the door, but not before he had tried to stop me.
Mr. Hanasaki: Hold on, you_
Just a little later after I had finally made it to school, very, very late in the day, I might add, I looked into Momoko's classroom to see for myself whether or not she had made it to school that day. I ran into both of her friends from the newspaper club, Yuri and Hinagiku. I just could not believe that I had actually managed to forget that all three of the newspaper club's reporters were in the same class that year.
Hinagiku Tamano: If you're lookin' for Momoko, she's not here.
Yours Truly: I see.
Hinagiku Tamano: What's up? Got Momoko in your sights, now?
What was that insane tomboy even implying with a question like that? Was she trying to imply that I had a sick, little crush on Momoko or something? Gross!
Yours Truly: That's not it, at all!
I would have easily sworn to her that I was not in love with her friend, Momoko, in any way, shape, or form if I only had the voice for it. That was around when Yuri walked up towards the classroom's hallway window and joined in on my conversation with her friend, Hinagiku, about their joint friend, Momoko.
Yuri Tanima: It's pretty unusual for Momoko to be absent like this. I wonder if she caught a cold or the flu or something.
Of course, Hinagiku only replied to her friend, Yuri's, concerns with a small tone of indifference in her voice.
Hinagiku Tamano: Nah! She's so slow, she couldn't even catch a cold.
Of course, there was still a slight chance that she might have caught even a cold just from getting completely soaked by the water from that fountain at the park. The reason behind that possibility was what I had said about it following all those remarks from Momoko's two newspaper club friends.
Yours Truly: The water in that fountain at the park was awfully chilly.
I said it more to myself than to the both of them, but ever the eavesdroppers, Hinagiku started questioning me about any possible condition in which Momoko could have been at the time.
Hinagiku Tamano: Do you know something we don't?
This was so not good. Hinagiku had gotten suspicious, and Yuri was sure to follow those suspicions from her friend.
Yours Truly: No! I know nothing, at all!
Hinagiku's questioning of me was swiftly followed by even Yuri's suspicions of anything I could have possibly known about Momoko that the both of them did not, as though it were all right on cue.
Yuri Tanima: He's acting a little fishy!
Not long thereafter, Hinagiku pulled my head into a headlock.
Hinagiku Tamano: Alright, buddy boy, start talking!
She was a tomboy, alright.
Yours Truly: It's nothing; I'm telling ya!
And just when I thought that Momoko's other friend would want to show me at least some mercy, Yuri supported her friend, Hinagiku, basically strangling me, instead.
Yuri Tanima: Give it to him, Hinagiku!
That was when I suddenly felt Hinagiku finally showing me some mercy. It turned out that Momoko had made it to school after all, just slightly later than even me.
Yuri Tanima (continued): Oh, Momoko! She's right. You are too slow to catch a cold.
Yuri then walked up to her friend, Momoko, concernedly.
Yuri Tanima (continued): Momoko, what happened to you today?
Momoko Hanasaki: Oh, nothing much.
I noticed that she was completely calm for one reason or another. Hinagiku followed her friend, Yuri, up to Momoko's desk in the classroom with her headlock over me in tow like I was the reason she looked so depressed which technically speaking, I really was, more or less.
Hinagiku Tamano: Did something happen with this guy?
Momoko just shook her head 'no' at her friend, Hinagiku. 'No'? What did Momoko even mean by 'no'? Of course, it was all my fault she felt that depressed that day, unless something else had happened since our time together in the park that made us late for the school day.
Hinagiku Tamano (continued): Fine!
If any good came out of Momoko suddenly treating the loss of her mother's memento ring as though it were not the end of hers and her father's whole world any longer, it was the fact that Hinagiku had finally let me loose from the headlock in which she basically held me as her hostage since it did not seem to be my fault anymore.
I was still getting detention for arriving as late as I had to the school that day. There went any chance I had at practicing with the rest of the soccer team after school for that day.
It was a little later in the school day, just before I had to serve my detention as a matter of fact, that I went to Captain Yanagiba with a ring that looked just like the memento from her mother that had been stolen from Momoko earlier that day at the park. I had my head and my entire torso bowed to him with nothing short of my absolute highest respects, asking him to do me a favor for Momoko and holding the replacement ring out to him, practically shoving it in the captain's face.
Yours Truly: Sorry to bother you, sir. Please give this to Momoko Hanasaki and tell her that it's a present from you!
Captain Yanagiba just pat me on the back as I held it out to him before offering me advice that I hardly needed at the time.
Captain Kazuya Yanagiba: Listen to me, Yousuke. If you don't give Momoko this ring yourself, she'll never know how you really feel about her.
I just looked at the captain like he was crazy or something. Did he think I was in love with Momoko, too?! Geez, why did everyone I had ever even once known always instantly stampede to that conclusion?! Did they all think that I was stupid or something?!
Yours Truly: That's not what I mean, Captain! I know her. Momoko would be a whole lot happier with this gift if she got it from you, Captain. So please, sir?!
Sure, I cared about how to make her happy now, but that was only because Momoko was basically crying about having lost her mother's memento ring from the inside out at the time.
Captain Kazuya Yanagiba: OK then, I'll give it to Momoko for you, Yousuke. I just think that you should have the courage to give a ring to a girl you like on your own is all I was saying with that advice.
Yours Truly: I don't like her like that. This is just a ring to replace the one she lost that was a memento from her late mother. God, why does everyone always jump straight to that conclusion, anyway?
Suddenly that ever-present and ever-pestering voice in my head commented on just what I had asked the captain out of the blue at the time.
My conscience: I don't know. Sounds a lot like being in love with someone to me.
My brain: Would you just stick a sock in it and stay outta this?
Once I had made it down to the vice principal's office to receive my detention, she had told me that I was to clean up in and around the pool area after school for the next week. I was just lucky that it was only for a week.
So, I was in the middle of merely cleaning up the pool area to serve my detention for the next week when someone drove right past me with another broom.
Person speeding past me: Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!
Upon looking right in their direction, I noticed that the person who had joined me in the midst of my punishment was none other than Momoko Hanasaki, herself, and she was smiling at me about it, too. I had to say that she was certainly very cute when she smiled genuinely.
Wait a minute! 'Cute'?! It was completely impossible that I liked her like that. She was the sole reason I always got either in trouble or just flat out beat up, after all.
Momoko Hanasaki: If you keep working at that ridiculous rate, you won't get home before sundown, right, Mr. Detention Boy?
I just looked at her with a surprised expression on my face just before finally smiling my own genuine smile at her.
Yours Truly: Huh? And exactly whose fault do you think my detention is, anyway?
Momoko suddenly pretended not to hear the question which I had asked her.
Momoko Hanasaki: Huh? What did you say?
With that, I suddenly understood just what she was doing at my detention. Momoko had turned my pool cleaning detention into a challenge and was there just to be my challenger.
Yours Truly: I said that when I get serious about it, I could clean two pools in a single day and still have time for a swim.
I just ran past Momoko on my own broom. Of course, she had her own comeback to my witty remark.
Momoko Hanasaki: Oh, yeah? Then, get to it, pool boy!
With that comeback from her, I started working a lot faster on sweeping up the pool and before I had even seen it coming, Momoko and I were head-to-head in the pool-cleaning race into which she had gone and turned my detention punishment from the vice principal. Suddenly, her broom had up and slipped. As a result, so did she. As an even further rebounding result, so did I. Then, the two of us both fell onto the pavement surrounding the pool.
Yours Truly: Oh, tell me; where did you learn to drive a broom, anyway?
She just chuckled nervously in response before her reply.
Momoko Hanasaki: I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Momoko may have admittingly apologized for it, but her apology did little to ease the cracked disk that was in my back by the time. It was thereafter that she said my name in a flattering manner for what had probably been the first time since I met her.
Momoko Hanasaki (continued): Yousuke?
It was by that time that I noticed her hold her hand out which held the ring I had asked Captain Yanagiba to give her as a gift from him.
Momoko Hanasaki (continued): Thank you!
Admittingly, I grew completely nervous upon Momoko thanking me for that ring to replace her mother's memento if I had asked the captain to give it to her and say it was from him. So nervous, in fact, that I almost felt myself completely blush at just the sight of that very ring. I just tried covering it up by playing dumb.
Yours Truly: Wha-what are ya talkin' about?
Playing dumb did not work, however, especially when she had demonstrated already having known I was the one from whom that replacement ring really was by slapping me on the back, and right where I had that crazy disk crack on my spinal column. The slapping came after what she had said to me following my actions of playing dumb.
Momoko Hanasaki: Oh, come on. It's all out in the open, now!
Of course, I coughed up a storm upon having been smacked in the back. I was also pretty mad with the captain for not keeping my secret away from Momoko's ears.
Yours Truly: That lousy Yanagiba blabbed, didn't he?
Not long thereafter, however, our 'loving' moment was suddenly interrupted by the water of the school pool, itself, when it formed into a dragon, defying all sense of logic, along with the basic laws of physics and every other type of science found on the planet, perhaps.
Yours Truly (continued): What is that thing?!
That was around when I had suddenly noticed two people floating in mid-air and defying gravity, a man with forest green hair and a woman with aqua blue hair.
Woman with aqua blue hair: I use it to throw a little cold water on hot lovers like you.
What the heck was going on with these two people floating in the sky like aliens?
Wait a minute. Did the woman with the aqua blue hair just call Momoko and I 'hot lovers'? Even these weirdo alien-types immediately thought that Momoko and I were a couple? Just what was up with my life?
I had wanted to speak up in retaliation for that aqua-blue-haired woman calling the two of us 'hot lovers', but it suddenly seemed as though Momoko had already beaten me to it. She even seemed to call the woman with the aqua blue hair and man with the forest green hair by what I had just as easily guessed were more likely than not at all their respective names.
Momoko Hanasaki: Aquelda and Pluie.
This 'Aquelda' person seemed to fully acknowledge Momoko calling her by name.
'Aquelda': So, we meet again, little girl.
It seemed as though the two of them certainly knew Momoko. From the sound of her demand following that comment from that 'Aquelda' woman, Momoko definitely seemed to know exactly who she was.
Momoko Hanasaki: Give me back my mother's ring, you two-bit river dancer!
Well, I did not have to be a genius to know that I had finally gotten my answer to just who stole Momoko's mother's memento ring from her that morning on our way to school from our stop in the park.
Yours Truly: It was you?
Then, that 'Aquelda' woman just scoffed at Momoko's demand for the aqua-blue-haired woman to return that which was rightfully hers.
'Aquelda': If I was going to give it back, I wouldn't have stolen it in the first place.
Well, that went and did it for me. Not only was this two-bit shark woman not willing to give back what she had stolen from Momoko, but she did not even want it to feel like a bride in the first place. She only stole the ring from Momoko that was the memento from her late mother simply for the idea of reaping rewards from the green-haired man in the sky with her who I bet was her employer, that 'Pluie' character or whatever his stupid name even was. I readied myself to protect Momoko from the two of them, even at the cost of my own safety.
Yours Truly: Momoko!
It had to have been my first time ever calling Momoko by name. I chose to attack that 'Aquelda' woman's water dragon with the broom I had been using during my detention to clean the pool. Honestly, a broom might not have been the best weapon against anything like a water dragon in retrospect, especially considering that her water dragon basically snapped my broom in two like it was nothing but a twig. When that failed for obvious reasons, I settled on just shielding Momoko with my own body.
Yours Truly (continued): Is she the one? She's the one, isn't she?
I could just faintly hear Momoko's voice from behind me.
Momoko Hanasaki: Yousuke.
Just as the water dragon continued to lunge itself forward towards me and Momoko, I threw my arms around her and that 'Aquelda' person's dragon had stopped for some reason. This was such a strange sensation that came over me, and yet it felt so warm. I could not identify it, at all. It certainly seemed to be keeping the water dragon a safe distance away from the two of us. I suppose that the sensation had to be love.
'Aquelda' and 'Pluie': What?!
The longer I held onto Momoko, the further away that 'Aquelda' woman's water dragon seemed to stay from the two of us. This sensation of mine seemed to throw her and that 'Pluie' guy straight off their guard with such confusion.
'Aquelda': What's the matter with you? Pulverize them!
It did not seem to matter what that 'Aquelda' woman ordered her water dragon to do to us at that point. It suddenly seemed far too hesitant and frightened to listen to even its own master's commands.
The only real problem that such a sensation was giving me was that it seemed to leave me completely exhausted to the point of collapsing onto the ground as soon as I felt like I needed to let go of Momoko. I called her by name for a second time not long before I had basically passed out just after I let go of her.
Yours Truly: Mo_ Momoko.
And here I always thought that love was supposed to give strength to those who felt it towards others, not drain them like an electronic sucking the life from its own batteries until the batteries were finally dead. I had completely blacked out following that.
It was then just a little later when I finally woke back up from being knocked out by my own wave of love and had basically just blacked out thereafter. I heard Momoko's voice call out to me, but just faintly.
Momoko Hanasaki: Yousuke? Can you hear me? Yousuke?
My vision had basically been blurred upon my wake-up call from none other than Momoko Hanasaki, herself. At least, I got to see her face in full upon waking up totally.
Momoko Hanasaki (continued): Yousuke, you're OK.
I quickly got up and began questioning her about whether or not she had been alright, herself, upon me waking up, though.
Yours Truly: Momoko?
I placed my hands on Momoko's shoulders in hopes that she was alright after those two alien-types had up and attacked the two of us.
Yours Truly (continued): Speak to me. Are you alright?
Then, I only wrapped my arms around Momoko's torso so as to try to protect her from any possible further attacks from the both of them.
Yours Truly (continued): Where are those two flying people and that water dragon?
I just could not easily forget about that water dragon that that aqua-blue-haired woman, that 'Aquelda', had as her pet either.
That was around when Hinagiku and Yuri both made me aware of their own presences in the pool area, along with Momoko and I, where I was supposed to have been serving my detention for being late to school that morning.
Hinagiku Tamano: What are ya talkin' about, goofball?
Yuri Tanima: You must've had some kind of nightmare while you were unconscious.
I grew admittingly nervous about having just blurted out all of that to Momoko with her two friends, Yuri and Hinagiku, listening in on the whole thing. Granted that I knew only a chicken-heart feared getting a love confession edgewise while other friends were in the room, but Yuri and Hinagiku were the only two people in the world that I could never risk finding out exactly how I had felt about their joint friend, Momoko, at least not until I, myself, had found out just how I had felt about her. I still held onto Momoko, however, tightly too, I might add. Of course, Hinagiku and Yuri, themselves, just had to go and interrupt Momoko actually seeming to cuddle up against me with their own teasing and taunting.
Hinagiku Tamano: Uh, it's none of my business, but since when have you two had this kind of relationship goin' on?
Yuri Tanima: I have to admit I'm jealous. New love is so exciting!
At those two comments from both Hinagiku and Yuri, I just could not help but blush a bright infra-red. Momoko's reaction to her own friends' joint teasing of the two of us, however, only made her push me into the very pool of which I had to clean as my detention for that day and the next for the following week.
Momoko Hanasaki: No way! I would never go out with this guy!
The newspaper girls were just lucky I could actually swim, since I had emerged from the water shortly thereafter.
Yours Truly: What's the big idea, Momo-pi? You trying to kill me?
Momoko Hanasaki: I-I'm sorry!
Yuri and Hinagiku just began laughing at the two of us over Momoko pushing me into the pool. I would have easily been laughing at Momoko getting all nervous about getting teased over me in addition to her friends from the newspaper club had it not affected me so much and so directly.
I could barely even believe it, at all. I was actually falling in love with Momoko Hanasaki, of all the girls attending St. Hanazono Junior High School. Or maybe, just maybe, I had already been in love with her the whole time ever since first getting to even know her. I was in love with Momoko Hanasaki. I just knew that she would never love me in return, anyway, though. Her heart belonged totally and completely to Captain Yanagiba. In the end, even a girl with whom I would fall in love, whether I would know I fell in love with them or not, was exactly the same as all of the captain's fan girls and only ever went as crazy as a lunatic for the absolute nicest of the guys in the school, like him.
