2. Red

invisible. heated. flaming. glowing.


Kai is many things but a liar is not one of them.

So he admits to himself that during their teenage years, he had developed a crush on the angry red-eyed brunette. But those feelings had slowly fizzled out as they'd grown up because of distance and time and his constant team changes.

Afterwards, life had gotten little too hectic. Between branching Hiwatari Corps off in Bakuten, and finding an apartment next to hers that she helped decorate, and her starting college and then a career, he had somehow pushed his feelings for Hillary aside where they had remained for years and years –

Until –

"I think I'm in love with you."

Her words have been echoing in his head for 10 days, 13 hours and 22 minutes – and they're deafening. She says she's in love with him and suddenly everything has changed as if he's been shaken out of years and years and years of slumber -

He's noticing her in ways he has never noticed her before. The corner of her upper lip twitches just a little more than her lower lip when she smiles. She's always pouted when she's angry at Tyson, but sometimes he thinks there is also a small furrowing of the brows, just a tiny wrinkle on her forehead.

"Hils. Can you pass me the pepper?"

When she reaches up into the cabinet, he notices a series of freckles on her collar bone, trailing down to the side of her left shoulder; they were never there before. When their fingers brush together, he notices the small spark between them. More shockingly, he takes note of his own, almost instant attempts at repression of the stirred up feelings.

Her confession had led to confusion and silence and shock and eventually, I need time to process this, Hils. He had not told her how much and she had nodded, almost shrugging; as if she couldn't be bothered with the answer, nearly as if it had been of no special interest to her. She had told him I wasn't expecting anything, I just wanted you to know.

He had thanked her. And neither of them had brought up her hasty, nearly shocking, out-of-nowhere, standing-in-the-middle-of-a-messy-room, wild-eyed love confession again.

It changes nothing, he tells himself.

He still sees her everyday for breakfast at her house, or coffee at his and they run together to the Dojo afterwards. He still picks her up from her occasional meetings with a client or from dinner at her parents when it's a little too late.

She still listens to him when he's yanking off his tie and pacing around her living room after a particularly loud fight with his grandfather one day – she makes a joke or two, offers some comfort, her shoulder, her palms rubbing his back while he curses.

Everything is so achingly similar to the way it was before her words, that he entertains the idea of perhaps having had hallucinated the entire conversation.

But when he catches her eyeing him one day, stealing glances the other, blushing madly when he meets her eyes both of the times, and then complaining about not being able to sell all fifty-four shades of blue on Amazon from Bakuten – he concludes that he has not gone crazy. Not yet.

"You're my best friend, Hillary."

The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, cutting off her lazy ramblings about her day at the dinner table one night. There's a fond little smile when she meets his eye in the middle of cutting her stake.

"You're my best friend too, Kai."

And then she goes back to her rant about color theory and not being able to find the perfect shade of red to go with the midnight blue for the bedroom of her high school friends who are getting married –

" – they have such a spacious apartment by the beach, too. I really wanted to toy with some beach vibes, you know, like pale blues and greens but they seem to want more…saturated looks –"

His gaze lingers on her as she talks, noting the all-too-familiar fire in her eyes that is always there when she talks about work. What's new is the slight tightening that he feels in his chest as he looks at her when she talks – as if it's something has been trapped inside four walls for far too long and it's pooling over the edges now.

"Hillary."

She looks up at him, pausing her movement so that her fork is halfway to her mouth. Whatever she sees in his expression makes her place her utensils down and turn her attention fully towards him.

His predicament is simple; he's built a life in Bakuten for years and everything is good and he's happy. And his relationship with Hillary is perfect; they are good neighbors, the best of friends ,and an integral part of each other's lives.

Why, then, he finds himself asking, should he fix something that isn't broken?

He lets out a sigh.

"I'm attracted to you. But you're my best friend."

It takes her a moment to comprehend what he's saying, make the connection with her own words from last week, and before he knows it, she's already snapped at him.

"I'm not asking you for anything, Kai."

He raises an eyebrow questioningly and she continues, her eyes holding his with the same fiery red glare he knows all too well.

"I told you how I felt because I share everything with you. I will not take it back but you can pretend I never said it. I don't really care."

"Why not?"

He is genuinely curious when he asks but instead of answering, she looks away and starts nibbling at her pieces of stake again. She's fidgeting with her utensils, and patting away her stray strands of hair. He gauges her reaction, trying to guess where her heads at when he realizes –

Of course.

He grabs his fork and knife a little too loudly, and goes back to cutting his stake and poking his fork through some vegetables. His voice is gentle when he speaks.

"You've already made your decision, haven't you?"

Typical of her. Typical obsessive, control-freak, everything-has-to-be-structured-and-organized Hillary to have made a decision regarding her feelings and her life and her future with him without including him –

"I decided not to pursue my feelings as soon as I realized them. Before I shared them with you."

He chuckles humorlessly, feeling strangely bitter at her words.

"How exactly do you plan on going about…whatever it is that you want to accomplish?"

"Falling out of love with you?" She's quick to rebut, the fork previously hanging midway between them waving frantically, "I'll manage."

He wants to ask her how and why and can't we talk about this please and are you going to decide for me? and a gazillion other questions. But he shuts his mouth, chews silently on his food and lets the conversation ends then and there.

For the rest of the night, he says nothing and if Hillary has noticed, she does not comment.

They finish their dinner in silence.

He washes the dishes while she dries them; there's still tiny shivers up his spine every time their hands brush each other. And up close, he's noticing that the trail of freckles from her neck and down her shoulders is nearly shaped like a hexagon. He thinks she's blushing when he reaches over her head to place the dishes back into the cabinet and his arm hovers over her shoulders –

When he walks her to the door next door and she's fiddling with her keys, she asks in a hushed whisper.

"Are we good, Kai?"

As he stares down at her, unmoving, hands in his pocket, he wants to snap at her. He wants to make clear the bitterness at her words and the anger at being excluded from a decision about his own future.

But it's late and they're both exhausted. And, as much as it kills him to admit it, her obsessive nature usually means she's looked at it from every angle and her decision was probably the best possible outcome.

So he sighs, and flicks her forehead jokingly, and he hopes his smile can hide the sudden dull ache in his chest.

"We're okay, Hillary."


Nothing between them changes since she tells him she's in love with him.

They run together in the morning on the weekdays and he drives her back from her parents house on Fridays and they go to Tyson's together on the weekend. She still leaves him food and he still brings her breakfast and they still have the occasional dinners together because the other is too tired to cook.

Nothing between them changes since she tells him she's in love with him except one Sunday morning when he brings her coffee for breakfast.

When he steps into her house, he notices an extra pair of shoes – male shoes – at the entrance. When he peeks through the window there are clothes – male clothes – littered all across the lounge. A quick glance towards the open door to her bedroom reveal two figures sleeping soundly and huddled together for warmth –

Nothing between them changes since the day she has told him she's in love with him.

This is nothing new. They've both had their fair share of flings and one-night-stands and failed relationships that the other has seen them through.

So, why is it that when he walks away from her house with her coffee still in his hands, it feels as if his entire world shaken and its contents have fallen out their place? Why does it feel like some of the fallen pieces have shattered almost irreparably?


It's Sunday evening and there's a tightening in his chest when he sees her at the Dojo. He wants to confront her about the shoes and the clothes and the man in her bed.

But he says nothing. He does nothing.

He hands her a cup of coffee he's just made and he nods in a greeting when she meets his eye. He notes the way her smile brightens and her steps bounce just a little extra when she moves to sit next to him.

He never asks about her day because he never has to – she's always willing and open and out there for him to look into; a window tilted open 24/7.

So she tells him about her day, I had eggs for breakfast. She takes off her shoes. I tried talking to them about the beach house theme, but they shot down my idea immediately. She takes the mug from his hands. Can you massage my shoulders right here? I think I pulled a muscle.

She never mentions the boy or the shoes or the clothes or the night or her morning after - something she has never previously hidden from him. He is beginning to wonder if the window he always thought was open is starting to edge close – and he wonders why the very thought of it bothers him so much.

He isn't sure what these feelings were - jealousy because she had reignited his old feelings or fear at the possibility of her slowly leaving his life when he'd grown so accustomed to her? All he knows is that neither of them is 'love'. And asking her anything based on jealousy and fear is…insulting to the relationship that they have.

So he resumes their normal conversation all through dinner at the Dojo. He's quiet when they're walking down their shared street and there's an unknown car in her driveway. He pockets his fists when Johnny McGregor steps out and greets them both.

Hillary kisses Kai's cheeks in a goodbye before leading McGregor to her house.

There is nothing to say.

She's made her choice.


Kai has known Hillary Tatibana's fire since they were kids - he's been witnessing her fury and determination and passion firsthand for a decade, now.

There's a gleam in her eyes when bickers with Tyson over dumb shit that Kai stopped paying mind to ages ago. It's there when she talks to her mother on the phone. Or when she's getting dressed for her Friday dinners with her parents so he can drop her off while he takes some evening classes. It's there when he occasionally runs into her at the coffee shop that they both love where she's sitting with her clients and explaining her ideas and laughing at one thing or the other.

Everything she touches lights up like burning flames - breathing and coming alive.

Her college days when she would be hunched over her files and files of her projects, trying to put the colors and textures and samples of carpet and wood perfectly together. The pre-exam allnighters in college when he would make her coffee in the morning and drive her to class. The occasional obsessive research projects on her bedside table and on her bed, the heavily-annotated textbooks scattered all over the small apartment, the stationary-filled shopping bags every month. The waytoomany pieces of art are scattered all across her couch, on her walls, under the kitchen table, along all the four corners of the centerpiece table.

She's a passionate about her friends, her parents, her work, her clients, her art.

It's who she is.

Kai knows her passion and her fury and her fire and her determination and her obsessions like the back of his hand.

But he's only just started to pay attention to the softness.

It's in the happy tears she cries when Max announces his engagement to Mariam. It's in the careful caress of her hand when she hits Tyson a little bit too hard. It's in the encouraging smile and gentle touches she showers Lin with when she's helping her with homework because Mariah and Ray need a day out and they drop her off at Hillary's.

There's gentleness in the way she rubs Kai's back and caresses his almost-black head when he's come to her to 'rant' after yelling a little too loudly at his asshole of a Grandfather who is hell bent on overworking him.

It's in the coffee she hands over to him on their morning run together, the freshly made food she occasionally leaves on his doorstep, and how she refills his prescriptions without asking ("I have to refill mine too. Might as well."), and the way the edges of her eyes soften and her voice is an octave lower every time she looks at him or talks to him.

He wonders how he could have known her for nearly a decade so intimately and have her so incorporated into his life that they do practically everything together and still be so fucking blind to everything that she fully and truly is.

He wonders how he had it in him to be so callous and dismissive. He wonders when exactly was it that his attempts to bury his attraction to his beautiful crazy obsessive brunette neighbor turned into him trying to bury all parts of her – the good, the soft, the kind, the loving Hillary.

He hates himself for it.


One day, he hates himself a little too much and he's confused and lost and filled with self-loathing and bitterness and hurt.

And that day he ends up in the middle of Bakuten Park on a Monday morning during his lunch break with Tyson across him while their beyblades circle each other in the stranded beydish under the bridge.

"So, you're both in love with each other?" Tyson questions when Kai shares what's been plaguing his mind for nearly a month now.

The match drags on and they're both scratched and battered and their clothes torn and some pedestrians have gathered at the corners of the bridge to watch. Kai glares at Tyson when Dranzer shrieks as Dragoon sends her spiraling towards the edge of the dish.

"Don't be so loud, idiot." He mumbles in annoyance. Tyson only shrugs his shoulders, and suddenly Dragoon is at the center of the dish, slowing down, wobbling a little before it jumps back to Tyson's outstretched hand.

"Talk." Tyson's looking at him expectantly, eyebrow raised. Kai snatches Dranzer mid-air, pocketing it before answering simply.

"She said she's in love with me. Then decided she wants to fall out of love with me. Now, she's fucking McGregor."

Tyson frowns. Kai grunts. It's only when the crowd around them disperses that Tyson speaks next.

"You know what, even I'm not surprised you and Hils are in love with each other." Tyson raises his fingers to his chin in thought, "Both of you have been tied to the hip since you moved next to her. I do wonder why she isn't giving you a chance though."

"She's decided that she does not want to ruin our friendship." Kai simply states, pocketing his hands and turning to walk towards his car, "She's anything if not decisive."

He absently wonders what her Fall Out of Love with Kai Hiwatari Calender looks like: Month one, fuck someone. Month two, stop having breakfast and dinner with Kai. Month three, travel back from parents on your own. Month four, move out from the neighborhood –

He hears Tyson scoff from next to him, his hands thrown casually to the back of his neck.

"Oh please. You guys crossed that line as soon as you started spending every waking moment of the week together." With a teasing smile, he adds, "The only difference between you both and a married couple is that a married couple gets to have sex with each other."

Kai narrows his eyes at his laughing blue-haired friend, his fists tighten in his pocket but he says nothing.

The car ride back to the Dojo is quiet and when Tyson exits, he throws Kai a thumbs up and his smile is genuine when he says his next words.

"Ask her out. What's the harm? You're practically in a live-in relationship with each other anyways."


It takes him 25 days and 13 hours since she tells him she's in love with him to fully realize that he's in love with her too.

She's always stolen glances and now he steals them too.

He finds himself staring at her when she's walking ahead of him, or laughing with Max across the table at the Dojo, and he finds that when she's humming silently in the car as they drive home he likes it.

She's always blushed whenever they touch on accident, and now he feels his ears get warm when she's next to him, or hugs him in greeting, or rubs his shoulder when he's upset.

He thinks of her when he wakes up and she's the last person he sees when he heads home because she's so intimately tied with his schedule.

She's always been Hillary and he's always been Kai but she's coming alive, and her edges in the fog are sharpening. Her laugh is just a little sweeter and her touch is just a little bit more warm and that gleam in her eyes is just a little more clear.

He'd pushed his feelings aside when they were way too young and now they're coming into focus as if fog clearing up on a sunny day – and every day is a sunny day.

On their morning run together, they're both quiet and she has her pretty brown hair tied up in a ponytail that swings sideways with every step and there's beads of sweat trailing down her forehead, her freckled neck, down her shoulders. Neither of them talk and he realizes that he feels strangely content and fulfilled and happy because he starts his morning next to someone who loves him genuinely, unconditionally, wholly.

And he's starting to realize that his feelings have nothing to do with the comfort and routine and predictability of her presence; its her.

He wouldn't like sharing his meals with anyone less obsessive and neurotic.

He wouldn't want be anyone else's chauffeur.

He feels good making sure she's had her coffee and her supplements and her finances are in order and she goes to sleep without worrying about intruders in the middle of the night and she has her morning walk and it hurts him when she's upset and has had a bad day.

He cares for her.

He likes caring for her.

It makes him happy to care for her.

It's 25 days and 13 hours since she tells him she's in love with him and he comes to a realization that he's in love with her too.

It's 25 days and 13.5 hours since she has told him she's in love with him and he's on his way home in his car and he feels excited and on edge because he's ready to tell her, he's going to ask her out to dinner, and he's going to kiss her.

It's 25 days and 13.5 hours since she Hillary has told him she's in love with him when he gets the call from Bakuten Hospital and it's Hillary and she's sobbing on the phone when she asks him to come over.

"It's Mom and Dad." She cries and his heart twists as he quickly turns the wheel around to drive in the direction of the hospital.

"I don't think they're going to make it."


A/N: Quarantine time killing me. Going back to old obsessions.