A/N: I love my reviewers. Thanks you guise!

Chapter 2

Hijikata yawned.

History class. A boring period if there ever was one.

Actually, Hijikata was fine with history. But the teacher - Hattori-sensei - spoke in a soft, monotonous voice, putting even the most enthusiastic student to sleep. Hijikata found his thoughts wandering.

"Okay, so these are your assignments for today. Can the class representatives please distribute them."

Tae and Kondo both stood up. As Tae walked past Hijikata's table, she nonchalantly dropped a piece of paper on his desk and continued to walk right to the front of the classroom, resolutely ignoring Kondo who was taking the chance to grin sappily at her.

As Tae and Kondo busied themselves in distributing the assignments for their respective sections - Tae for the students on the left side, Kondo on the right - Hijikata took a quick look round the classroom. No one had seemed to notice what Tae had done in their sleepy stupor, so he quickly unfolded the note she had dropped.

Girls' kendo clubroom. Lunch.

"Sumimasen, Hijikata-san."

"H-hai." Hijikata quickly jammed the note in his pencil case. Taking the stack of worksheets Shinpachi was holding out to him, he proceeded to pass them to Kyuubei, who sat behind him. As he turned back to face the front of the classroom, his eyes momentarily met Tae's, who was returning to her seat. Without missing a beat, she looked away and breezed past him back to her seat.

Hijikata stole a glance at his kendo team captain, also returning to his seat.

"Okay, so finish this over the weekend and hand it in to me on Monday," Hattori-sensei announced. The bell rang, signaling the end of the lesson - and lunch period.

"Hai," the class chorused, and immediately broke into chaos as everyone proceeded to forget whatever they had learnt and think about what to eat and who to hit on during lunch period.

"Toushi!" Kondo, as usual, made a beeline for Hijikata, Okita close behind. "Let's go!"

Hijikata stole a quick glance to his left, where Tae sat diagonally behind him. She was already walking away with Kyuubei and the gang of girls that made up her posse.

"Um...Sorry, Kondo-san," Hijikata got up. "I...have an appointment. With ...Sensei."

"Eh?" Kondo exclaimed in surprise, while Okita stared at him. Hijikata was sure that he was betraying himself in some way or another because he was a crap liar. But he had no choice. "See you guys later." Before Kondo or Okita could say another word, he hightailed it out of the classroom.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hijikata looked around. The building where the club rooms were was fairly deserted, but he wasn't taking any chances.

When he was satisfied that no one was watching him, he quickly dashed to the sports and games' section, heading straight to the kendo girls' team clubroom. The door was closed.

Hijikata took one last quick look around and raised his hand to knock.

Just before his fist made contact with the door, the door opened suddenly.

Hijikata blinked as his fist stopped about a millimetre from Tae's forehead.

Tae glared at him. "What do you think you're doing?"

Hijikata stared back at her. "Knocking. The door, I mean. Sorry." He withdrew his fist, and Tae stepped back to let him in, still scowling.

What a great start, Hijikata couldn't help thinking. It would have been kind of satisfying to knock her head though. Bet no one has ever managed to do that before. Ha ha-

"Hijikata-kun, what's so funny?"

That wiped off the half-smirk on his face. "N-nothing." He sat himself down on the benches in the middle of the small but neatly kept room. "Why are we here?"

"To discuss our plans, of course." Tae sat down next to him and proceeded to unwrap her own bento.

Hijikata withdrew his bun from his pocket and tore open the wrapper. "I know, but why here?"

"I'm the only one who has the key to the clubroom," Tae explained. "I've locked the door so no one can walk in and find us here."

Good thinking, Hijikata thought. I definitely do not want anyone walking in on us at any point in my high school life. "So?" He took a big bite out of his bun.

Tae got up. Grabbing a marker, she drew a female and male stick figure on the small whiteboard in front of them, proceeding to scribble Kondo's and her name below.

"The problem is," Tae intoned, "Kondo-san has fallen for me." She drew an arrow from the Kondo-stick figure to Tae's stick figure.

"Did you fail art?" Hijikata asked her.

Tae glared at him but ignored the comment. "So I figure...we can do this." She drew another stick figure next to her own. "If I became unavailable...Kondo-san would give up on me. Wouldn't that be the case for a guy?"

Hijikata thought about it and shook his head. "Nope. Not at all. If I liked a girl, and if she got a boyfriend, sure I'd be depressed but I don't think I'd stop liking her. Which is why..." Dumping his half-eaten bun on the bench, he got up and grabbed the marker from Tae. He drew another female stick figure next to stick-figure-Kondo. "What we need, is to get Kondo-san to forget about you. We need to distract him with another girl."

Tae made a small 'hmph' sound. "Hijikata-kun, I think you're forgetting something."

"What."

"It's me that Kondo-san has fallen for."

Hijikata raised his eyebrow.

"Do you really think that there is a girl in this school capable enough to divert his attention from me?" Tae started to count on her fingers. "I'm the class rep. I have great grades. I'm the captain of the kendo team. I'm kind, and cute."

"He definitely didn't fall for your humility," Hijikata deadpanned.

That got him a good uppercut to the jaw. "Just stating facts. Also, what girl would fall for him?"

That set Hijikata thinking. She does have a fair point, he mused, as he rubbed his bruised jaw.

"So," Tae continued as Hijikata fell silent, "we should go with this plan." She knocked the marker against the her stick-figure boyfriend.

Hijikata stared at her. "And where are you going to find a boyfriend?"

Tae stared at him. "That's easy. Who else could it be?"

Hijikata stared at her.

She stared back.

Slowly, Hijikata brought up a shaking finger to point at himself. "You...you can't mean...me?"

Tae grinned, her eyes sparkling. "Good! It's settled."

"Whoa whoa, hang on!" Hijikata held his hands out in a wait-you've-got-to-be-kidding-me signal. "Are you crazy? Do you want to get me killed? I'm Kondo-san's vice-captain in the club!"

"I know."

"So? This will completely ruin not only our friendship, but the team will be destroyed! And we haven't even reached the Regionals yet!"

Tae waved him away. "Details, schmetails." She plopped back down on the bench. "You'll figure it out, Hijikata-kun. You always do!"

"What?" Hijikata was half-panicking, half-incredulous at the situation he was in. "No! Get someone else!"

"Who?" Tae raised an eyebrow.

Hijikata stopped to think. "Yamazaki!"

"No. If we make our circle bigger it would make things complicated."

"No it won't," Hijikata retorted. "Isn't involving me worse? Yamazaki is at least in the badminton club. If Kondo-san hates him nothing will change. You're putting the whole kendo team at stake here, Shimura!"

Tae glared at him. "Excuse me? Me, Shimura Tae, go out with Yamazaki Sagaru? The most utterly boring and plain guy that can be found on the face of this earth? I've got standards, Hijikata. A reputation to uphold."

Hijikata fell back down to the bench and clutched his head. "I'm done for."

"Hijikata-kun." Tae looked down at her lap, and then looked up to meet his eyes. "Am I... really that bad?"

Her question jolted him temporarily. "E-eh? I mean...well..." Hijikata looked into her questioning brown eyes, staring straight into his metallic blue ones.

Chocolate, he randomly thought.

At that moment, the club room door opened. Hijikata and Tae froze.

"...Shimura...taichou?"

From the doorway, a black-haired pigtailed girl clapped her hand to her mouth in shock at seeing the captain of the girls' kendo team and the vice-captain of the boys' team sitting together, staring into each other's eyes. In the club room. Alone.

"Hanako-chan?" Tae's chopsticks clattered to the floor.

Hijikata gaped at her. "I thought you said you locked the door!"

Right at the same moment, both realised how ill-timed the comment was.

"I'm sorry for intruding!" Hanako cried out and ran, slamming the door shut behind her.

Hijikata's eyebrow twitched. "We're done for."

Tae looked pale, but she calmly bent down and picked up her chopsticks. "Guess there's no arguing about it then. If Hanako is going to go round thinking that we're a couple and spreading it, we might as well just keep up the act."

"Yeah, and at the same time, guess I'll quit the kendo team," Hijikata muttered, picking up his half-eaten bun.

"Don't be silly. It'll work out."

"Yeah right."

"You're on the basketball team too anyway. You might as well concentrate on that."

Hijikata glared at her.

"All right, I'm sorry," Tae gave in. "But maybe it will do for the time being. Until we can figure out who we can hire to make Kondo-san forget about me, anyway." She suddenly brightened up. "Like a two pronged attack!"

Hijikata didn't even bother to respond as he stared dully at his poor bun, bidding farewell to high school life as he knew it.

"As Kondo-san becomes depressed over the news that I, Shimura Tae, is now unavailable..." Tae was off and running now, "he will run into the first pair of arms that comfort him. Then he'll eventually forget me!"

Hijikata just looked at her silently. Tae leaned forward and flicked his forehead.

"Stop looking like that!" Tae stood up. "Lunch is almost over. We better go."

"Yeah." Hijikata got up and trudged to the door. "See ya."

"Hijikata-kun!"

Wordlessly, he turned back round.

Tae gave him a thumbs-up sign and a sparkling grin. "In exchange for losing your spot on the kendo team and all your friends, I will be the best girlfriend ever!"

Hijikata groaned.

tbc

A/N: Fluff is coming. Lots and lotssss of it. Get ready to get diabetes, people.

This is actually pretty similar to a fic that I once read that isn't on , unfortunately...where Hijikata is basically being forced by Tae to pretend to be her boyfriend or something. I ripped the idea in order to give myself an excuse to write tons and tons of high school fluff (I can't imagine how else they would get together really). Do look for that fic if you can. Awesome read although it's unfinished.

Another thing to my readers - it is likely that I will slow down on my other fics. I'm the kind of person who writes depending on what I'm inspired by (actually who isn't?) so because I'm so caught up with high school romances currently, I might be writing a lot of Yukue. But don't worry. Those fics are definitely not dead yet and I'm trying my best to come up with something that I'll be happy with. I don't publish until I'm completely satisfied (who does?)