AN: Hello everyone! I must say that after working in the Death Note fandom, this fandom seems quite barren. I wasn't expecting such a lack of response :'( That said, I am extremely grateful to my reviewers so far. I am perhaps even more grateful than I would have been normally. So thank you so much! I WILL continue this story whether or not I receive encouragement, but I would, of course, appreciate reviews.
Thank you for reading!
"No, no, no! There is no way I am doing this! Kouno! Shihoudani! Where are you going!"
The two Princesses in question were strolling out of the student council room. The lunch bell had rung ten minutes ago, and, although he was excused, Tooru disliked being too late for class.
"Can't you guys hear me?" Mikoto called after the pair.
"Yes, idiot," they replied in unison. The truth was, Tooru hadn't slept very well the night before, and the pink-haired princess was giving him a monstrous head-ache. Tooru stole a sidelong glance at Yuujiro. His friend didn't exactly look like he'd had his beauty sleep either.
"Hey!" Mikoto dashed around his two friends and stood before them in the hallway, effectively blocking their path. "This isn't just any old task! I-I-I... I can't be in a kissing booth!"
"Yes you can." Tooru and Yuujiro drawled.
"I have a girlfriend!"
"Mikoto..." Yuujiro's expression darkened, and he leered menacingly over the smaller boy. "You're not letting your girlfriend come before your princess work, are you?"
Mikoto gasped scandalously and shrunk away, wagging his head.
Tooru nodded solemnly. "I didn't know you were so untrustworthy, Mikoto."
"I'm not!" he cried.
"And to think, we opened our hearts to you!" Yuujiro grasped Tooru's hands and gazed into the distance.
"Only to have you betray us!" Tooru matched his friend's melodrama.
"No!" Mikoto cried and promptly collapsed to the floor.
Yuujiro and Tooru held their pose for a good two seconds before crossing their arms and smirking down at their victim.
"Look Mikoto, we understand that you don't want to kiss boys when you have a girlfriend..." Tooru began.
"But you just have to do your job, simple as that," Yuujiro finished.
"Kouno... Shihoudani..." Mikoto glanced up with tears in his eyes. "If you loved someone, would you really feel okay about kissing someone else?"
"Well," Yuujiro chuckled lightly and waved his hand dismissively, "I've never been in love, so I can't say!"
For some unfathomable reason, something inside Tooru's chest twisted painfully at those words.
"Kouno?" Mikoto turned to him.
"Um..." Why were images of Yuujiro flying through his head? Just because Yuujiro was his first and second kiss didn't mean he was anything special. Certainly not comparable to Mikoto's girlfriend. "Well... I... um... it doesn't matter if I'm in love or not. I just do my job regardless, Mikoto, and you should too."
Yuujiro raised his brows. Mikoto tilted his head. The three princesses sunk into a heavy silence, and Tooru mentally kicked himself.
Now they'll think I'm in love
Which he wasn't. Definitely not.
Tooru couldn't keep a light pink from slowly creeping over his cheeks.
"So..." Yuujiro was the one to break the silence. "We should go to class."
"Yeah." Tooru ventured a glance at his two friends. Yuujiro looked oddly contemplative. Mikoto, thoroughly perplexed.
Yuujiro gently tugged Tooru's elbow, and they began walking down the hallway. Mikoto trailed behind them for a minute before turning down another hallway.
"Must he always throw a fit about every princess job?" Yuujiro muttered.
"It comes with his princess image," Tooru grinned. "Resistant and childish. He's just an adorable little brat."
The two sniggered, and just like that, the spell of awkwardness was broken.
The two friends turned into their classroom, now about twenty minutes late. Before they could each take their respective seats, however, the teacher called out to them. "Oh, there they are! Congratulations, Kouno-kun."
Tooru looked past the sea of spaced, blushing faces to find his teacher standing in front of the class, waving a few notebook pages around. "What?"
"The best memoir-of-the-week is Kouno-kun's memoir titled, 'My Sunshine.'"
"W-w-what?" No. No, this couldn't be happening.
"And now, if you'll take your seat Kouno-kun, I will read aloud what I found to be the most striking and beautiful excerpt."
Tooru sunk into his chair, face redder than Mikoto's hair, and desperately tried to think of a passage that wasn't horrifyingly humiliating.
The teacher cleared his throat. "Sometimes, when the light struck her just right, Yuu-chan's beauty was too much to bear. Whenever the bright sun reflected on her long, yellow hair, I felt as if she were the sun itself; she was too bright and too brilliant to gaze at for long, but I could feel her warm radiance. When she was in my dorm-room that night, it was the first time I had seen her without the bright summer sun. That's when I realized that she didn't need the sunshine to make her beautiful, she radiated a light of her own. I can't tell you what she said that night, only that I couldn't form a coherent sentence in return. I was drawn to her like a fly to a flame. We were so close, I could feel her sweet breath on my lips. All I knew in that moment was that Yuu-chan was my best friend and the most important person in my universe, and that I wanted, so very desperately, only one thing - to kiss him - oh, uh... you meant her." The teacher cleared his throat. "...and that I wanted, so very desperately, only one thing - to kiss her." He corrected.
You could have heard a pin drop. Every eye in the room was transfixed on Tooru. Every mouth was unhinged. Every face was flushed, though none were so red as Tooru's himself.
Tooru scanned every identical face in the room excluding Yuujiro's... he couldn't bear to look at his friend... his best friend.
Yuu-Chan was my best friend.
Why on Earth did he write that? Tooru fervently wished a giant chasm would divide the earth beneath his desk so that he might fall in. He could fall forever or simply die, he didn't care, just so long as he was swallowed by darkness and infinitely far from-
"Princess Tooru, your love is beautiful!" A voice emerged from the masses.
Tooru snapped out of his morbid fantasy and swiftly donned his Princess mask. He couldn't just sit there blushing. Who was he, Mikoto? "Thank you very much."
"Who was she?"
"How did you meet?"
"No one is more beautiful than you, Princess!"
"No one can resist Princess Tooru's charm!"
None of the students were in their seats anymore. Tooru was surrounded by hormonal male students who, thankfully, kept a strict two foot radius around him. The teacher didn't seem to mind; in fact, he was virtually indistinguishable from Tooru's fans.
"Oh, Princess, will you shower us with your overflowing love?"
Tooru tilted his head and blew a kiss. His peers swooned. Tooru imagined little cartoon hearts bugging out of their eyes.
"I wish I could be kissed by Princess Tooru!"
"Oh me too!"
"Me too!"
"Kiss me, Princess!"
"Actually," Tooru folded his hands on his desk, "my fellow Princesses and I will be hosting a kissing booth at the next school festival. Be sure to come!" Wouldn't President Arisada be proud?
Tooru, in the throws of his Princess duties, had nearly forgotten his embarrassment when-
"Oh, but what will Yuu-chan say?"
"I don't want to ruin your love!"
"A-actually," Tooru's smile almost faltered, "Yuu-chan and I aren't together."
"What!"
"How come?"
"She wasn't good enough for you!"
"That dirty harlot!"
"No, no, no!" Tooru's voice rose above the rabble. "It just turned out that he... uh... she didn't feel the way... that... that I thought she felt about me."
His classmates' eyes widened in shock and every mouth choked back further praise and compliments. Tooru internally rolled his eyes. It would seem that no one could believe that the marvelous Princess Tooru could possibly be rejected. Though, Tooru mused, if they knew "Yuu-chan" was in fact the Western Princess, they may have a different opinion. Tooru was beautiful, yes, but Yuujiro was on a separate plane. He was the epitome of untouchable, unreachable, pure beauty.
Tooru searched the sea of shock for his fellow Princess, half-hoping to find an encouraging look and half-hoping to not find him at all. If Yuujiro were to simply slip off the face of the Earth, it certainly would solve a lot of Tooru's problems.
"I've met Yuu-chan." The excitable herd of students (and one teacher) shuffled around to find Yuujiro, who was calmly sitting atop a desk in the far corner of the room, distinctly separate from his audience. "Yuu-chan is beautiful."
"Not more beautiful than you, Princess!" Yuujiro smirked conspiratorially.
"No, no, impossible!"
"She is probably the loveliest creature on Earth," Yuujiro nodded solemnly.
Tooru was unsure whether his friend was saving his own ass or simply taking the opportunity to gloat.
"Yes," Yuujiro continued, strolling toward the front of the classroom, "she is stunning, captivating, and mind-blowing-ly sexy. I would have taken her for myself if I could."
"Oh, Princess-" an unremarkable student began to proclaim, but Yuujiro silenced him with a cold, fierce look: the Princess was clearly in the midst of a dramatic monologue.
"However," Yuujiro's glare melted into a mask of distant melancholy, "Yuu-chan had a dreadful personality. She was cold, and she delighted in the torment of others. But Princess Tooru could withstand all this, and he was the best friend and companion she had ever had. Yuu-chan didn't reject Tooru. She simply disappeared after that one, lovely kiss. Like a dream, or..." Yuujiro's eyes flickered toward Tooru, "a fantasy. But perhaps one day, if we all believe, she will return." Yuujiro donned his standard princess smile and bowed with flourish. "Thank you."
The room erupted into applause. Boys wiped tears from their eyes. Their teacher, sobbing, waved his handkerchief about blubbering "Bravo! Brava! Bravissimo!"
The crowd migrated to Yuujiro. The encircled him, kissing the floor before him (they didn't dare kiss his feet) and singing his praises. The students of Fujimori were notoriously incapable of distinguishing fact from fantasy. The validity of Yuujiro's claims and even those of Tooru weren't praised for their sincerity but for their beauty. Every word the Princesses uttered were an extension of the school-wide fantasy, no matter how illogical, inconsequential, or immaterial those words may be.
Tooru, as an admittedly beautiful person, fit quite well into a school obsessed with beauty. He could intellectually understand the need for the Princess system and he happily accepted his central role within it. The ambiguity of this fantasy, however, was more difficult to accept. His fellow students may be able to accept and laud Yuujiro's contribution to Tooru's story, but as a player within that tale, Tooru didn't have that luxury.
Tooru slumped into his seat and calmly waited for the classroom to return to equilibrium, which he knew would take a considerable amount of time. Tooru subtly sought to lock eyes with his friend, hoping that a glance between them would elucidate the meaning behind the romance of Tooru and Yuu-chan, but his hopes were dashed when he met the unnaturally neutral eyes of Yuujiro.
Tooru dutifully tuned out his flailing teacher who was vainly attempting to salvage some part of his lesson plan and pointedly ignored the blushing boys ogling him.
Yuu-chan didn't reject Tooru.
Yes, "Yuu-chan" didn't reject him, but that didn't say anything about Yuujiro. Just because Tooru happened to blur the line between his fake girlfriend and his best friend didn't mean that Yuujiro suffered the same delusion.
The bell rang, and the obtrusive noise didn't quite register in Tooru's wandering mind until the classroom was already emptied.
"Tooru." Yuujiro's voice was frustratingly hollow.
Tooru dutifully rose and trailed after Yuujiro. Only after they were fully protected by the privacy of the P-Room did Yuujiro speak. "You know," he began, seemingly addressing the naked wall, "I don't care if you're in love with a female version of myself. I mean... so is the rest of the school. And... if you want... we can... um... pretend that..." Tooru's eyes widened in realization. "I mean..." Yuujiro's face slowly faded from pink to cherry red. "I'm just saying that, since we're friends... I don't care if you would want to um... pretend... more?"
Tooru found himself physically incapable of response.
Yuujiro's eyes flickered toward Tooru, then darted away once more. He slowly crossed the room and flopped on his bed, feigning nonchalance. "Am I wrong? Isn't that what your story meant?" Tooru still couldn't connect his mind to his tongue. "I'm just trying to be a good friend, you know. The rest of the school has us to save them from the misery of an all boys school, and we don't have that but... we do-"
"...have each other," Tooru finished.
"So...?" Yuujiro inquired of the ceiling.
In answer, Tooru crossed the room the three long strides and planted a kiss on his friend's lips. Yuujiro's uncertainty melted from his face, replaced with a wide grin. He grabbed the back of Tooru's head and pulled him into a kiss that very closely mimicked the occurrences of the night before.
Yuujiro was wrong, of course. Tooru didn't love a female version of Yuujiro. But then again...
Tooru gasped as Yuujiro bit into his neck.
...this was most certainly close enough.
AN: Thank you!
BTW, readers should expect the rating to change to M at some point in the future. ;)