The Ordinary Life of Chizuru Yukimura

Disclaimer: Hakuouki isn't mine.

The first thing Chizuru did when she walked into the classroom was sit at her desk and lay her head against the cool surface. She really wasn't in the mood for learning since she was pissed off right now. Kaoru couldn't just settle for making her act like a boy all of the time, he had to further ruin her freedoms.

"Ruo? You alive in there?" Heisuke was sat behind her and poking her with his pen between the shoulder blades.

"Mostly." As she was still face down on the desk, this was muffled.

"What happened?" She looked over her shoulder at Heisuke who looked really worried. This guy really was nice.

"…My sister."

"What did she do?"

"She's having her friend over tonight so apparently I cannot be in the same house." He'd decided to drop this on her just before she went to bed, also informing her that she'd need to hide a few things and switch round some stuff. Before she had been able to yell at him, Kaoru had shot up the stairs and she'd been left to angrily tidy the house until the early hours of the morning.

"Really? Wow, screw her! We should all go round there."

"We?"

"All of us. The whole kendo club. We could swarm the place." From the look on his face, this was a plan he was very keen on doing.

"It's fine… I was going to go to the library so…" She did appreciate that he'd been angry on her behalf though.

"You can't do that!" In his view, the library was the opposite of interesting. "Come round mine!"

"What?"

"Come round to my house! We could invite the guys too, it'll be awesome."

"Wouldn't that be a hassle?" She didn't want to cause problems for other people.

"No, I haven't had the guys round in ages. Plus you haven't properly met up with everyone either." He seemed so happy that in the end she to say yes. And after practice that evening, Heisuke tried to persuade everyone else.

"Ruo's coming round mine tonight, who wants to join us?"

"I've got nothing better to do so fine."

"Thanks for that Shin, I feel so loved."

"And I need to make sure he doesn't do anything stupid so I'll go."

"So Shin and Sano… Hijikata?"

"If I didn't have a ton of work to do, I would." He looked over at his school bag and sighed.

"Killjoy. Saito? Souji?"

"I've already got something with the family. I'm sorry." Saito even looked ashamed of this.

"Souji, you have to come."

"Yeah, I guess I can watch you guys slam your heads into the wall for a few hours."

"That's kind of insulting but yay, five of us."

As there were more of them, Chizuru figured it would be easier to blend into the background. And Hijikata, the moodiest one, wasn't going to be there either. At times she really felt like a coward.

Heisuke's house was actually not too far from hers, something she figured was pretty common in a town like this. Inside, most of the house was pretty clean until they reached Heisuke's room. It looked like a small explosion had occurred.

"You lazy brat. Clean up your room before you invite people over." Sano kicked a few clothes out of the way and sat on the floor, looking kind of repulsed.

"I didn't have time; Ruo had to come round cause his sister was being a bitch."

"What did she do?" And now everyone was staring at her.

"S-she told me to stay away from the house because her friend was coming over."

"Why didn't you tell her to go screw off?"

"Shin, you are terrified of women. You wouldn't have been able to either."

"Shut up!" And Shin and Sano started attempting to throttle each other with bits of clothing from the floor.

"I'll go get some snacks~." Heisuke chose to ignore the chaos and left. Probably because it was so normal for these two. Chizuru carefully slid to the ground, making sure to sit away from the fight. And the pile of used plates that had what was quite likely mould growing on them.

"Those two are idiots, right?" She jumped slightly as Souji sat down next to her.

"Well they're very… loud."

"You don't have to be nice about it. If they're being dumbasses, tell them."

"But…" She didn't like being overly harsh to people, mainly because she hated hurting others. Probably she needed to get over that. Where Kaoru was involved anyway. At this point Shin accidentally knocked a load of books over with his foot. Souji rolled his eyes, grabbed a ball, and threw it at Shin's head.

"Hey! Screw off!"

"Don't act like a dumbass in someone else's house then."

"You hypocrite! You're always doing shit in Hijikata's house!"

"That's different." Souji looked kind of bored as he said this. "He's such a tightass, he needs it."

"What do you do?" Chizuru couldn't imagine anyone getting away with doing anything to Hijikata. The boy seemed like he wouldn't take any bullshit.

"Only little things."

"You went into his house when he was on holiday and wrapped up everything in his room in brown paper." Chizuru almost choked.

"Paper?" Souji chuckled slightly.

"Oh yeah that. He was not happy."

"But… Why?" She couldn't think of any reason to do this, especially considering the effort involved.

"He was being a moany bastard so I thought he should be told."

"I'd rather you did it than me." She agreed with Shin on that one. "He's always let Souji get away with murder, Ruo. No one else could do anything like that. It's bloody unfair."

"Oh?" Souji was even more amused at Shin's annoyance.

"Smarmy bastard."

"I brought cakes!" Heisuke chose this moment to return carrying a tray with drink cans and cake.

"Aww, housewife Heisuke appears."

"Fuck you." Heisuke kicked over a pile of clothes in the centre of the room, revealing a small table onto which he placed the tray. "Help yourselves dickheads."

"As long as it's decent stuff and not that fat free crap."

"You could do with a diet Shin."

"Shut it you bastard." Heisuke responded by pushing cake cream onto Shin's face and the fighting started up once more.

"Go for it Heisuke!" Sano started throwing stuff at Shin, whilst Souji just sat back and laughed. In the middle of the chaos sat Chizuru, wondering why she was even here. Figuring there was nothing better to do, she grabbed a cake.

"Is it good?" Souji, it seemed, had an irritating habit of coming in close when you weren't expecting it. Chizuru nearly screamed.

"I-It's great."

"You forgot to let your face know." This was a very confusing statement to her. Souji clearly could tell this as he added "you always look pretty miserable."

"I do?!" That's wonderful. Just great. She wasn't the happiest person in the world but she wasn't depressing either. She hoped.

"I don't remember ever seeing you smile."

"But I must have done at least once." But thinking back over the past week, she couldn't remember doing this at all. As a girl she had smiled fairly often but as a guy she felt kind of awkward.

"Nope."

"He's right." Unbeknownst to her the others had heard the conversation and jumped in. "Why are you always so depressed?"

"He does smile sometimes."

"Not often Heisuke." They were all really staring in her direction and weirding her out.

"I know how to make him smile." Oh no. She didn't like the way Souji was looking at her.

"Um… Senpai? Could you move away please?" Souji grinned widely and then grabbed her foot. "What are you-?"

"Tickle him Souji!" What?! There was no time to react before Souji started tickling her. Of course she laughed really hard.

"No! No, stop!" This is so embarrassing!

"Wow, he can smile."

"It looks more like he's in pain."

"Yeah, I guess so." Souji released her and she crawled away quickly to another corner where she tucked her feet under her body.

"Ohhh, he's pissed."

"You ok, Ruo?"

"Yes…" Aside from the fact that her face was now bright red and she felt like an idiot.

"That was weird though, you looked loads like your sister."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I guess 'cause she smiles all the time."

"I've seen, she is pretty cute." Chizuru stared at Shin with a look of horror on her face. "What?"

"Nothing!" She couldn't tell the poor guy.

"So if I asked your sister out, do you think she'd say yes?" Oh no. It would be bad enough if someone she didn't know got tricked by Kaoru, but someone who was starting to become her friend would be terrible.

"I-I couldn't say."

"Ah, guess I'll just have to find out." The guilt was starting to crush her and she felt sick.

"…I need to get some air!"

"Eh?" She stood up and made her way out of the room, down the stairs and out the front door, into the fresh air. Here, she felt like she could actually breathe. It had already gotten quite dark and she watched the street lights flickering on as she pondered on what she was going to do.

No way could she allow a kind-of friend to get tricked by Kaoru. She would tell him to nicely turn Shin down and hopefully that would be the end of it. The boy had been nice to her so she didn't want him to get hurt.

"Are you ok?" Holy shit! Souji had creeped up on her very well.

"How do you do that?"

"It's a gift." He smiled. "So, why did you run?

"Um… I just felt a little hot."

"Lies." Damn. "Something to do with your sister?"

"...I'm kind of worried." She couldn't tell the whole truth but an adjusted version would be ok. Souji had been decent to talk to the other day after all.

"About?"

"Kaori isn't exactly nice to guys… I don't want her hurting anybody I know…"

"Ohh you're worried about Shin. Don't be, he'll be fine. Girls are always dicking him about cause he's too nice. He can't see through it either."

"Eh?" Surely that was an even better reason to stop him.

"He needs to learn." Souji seemed unbothered about all this. And she'd told someone else; something which kind of took the weight off her chest. At this point, Heisuke appeared.

"Are you ok, Ruo?"

"Oh! Yes." Think of an excuse! Quickly!

"He thought he was going to puke but he's fine now." Souji luckily jumped in.

"Really? Damn, are you sure you're ok?"

"I'm fine."

"Well come up when you're feeling better." When Heisuke had left Souji winked at her.

"Why did you say that?"

"Because he's a blabbermouth."

"Oh… But why are you being so nice?" The fact that this statement could be considered rude didn't occur to her until after she'd said it.

"I'm not allowed to be nice?"

"No! That's not what I meant… But you barely know me and you came down here."

"I'm paying you back." She showed no sign of understanding so he sighed. "You helped me out the other day."

"I didn't do anything though…"

"Yeah, but I felt like I owed you something." He clearly thought she was a jackass. "And now we're even so let's go back inside."

"Oh! Ok." She might as well enjoy herself since she was supposed to be around 'friends.' And maybe one day she wouldn't feel so fake around them.

"And smile a little, you look kind of depressed."

"…Sorry."