A/N: I've decided to make this a four-act story plus a bonus one which will work as some sort of epilogue. I hope this makes jpn6438 happy :p

I've noticed that not many people seem to be reading this, probably due to the fact that Tohru and Nao are not very well known characters. I don't really mind though because I've got the satisfaction of having given a bit of well deserved spotlight to this lovely couple.

For those who ARE reading this, huge thanks goes to you!

The One True Love

Act 3.

It had been a week since Uesugi had got Tohru the money the young man needed to get his car fixed and, the morning after, Tohru had brought the car to the shop where, after being able to pay for the repairs in advance, the shop's owner had started working on it straight away.

Now that he had his car once again, he needed to focus on his second biggest problem: Nao.

It killed Tohru that, because of her father, he hadn't been able to see nor speak to his girlfriend ever since the accident. He hoped that her father's reluctance to let Tohru see his daughter wasn't due to the fact that, in reality, Nao didn't want to see him and was just using her father as a shield.

In any case, he was determined to see her that night so, once again, he found himself driving towards her place.

'You again,' her father said seeing him there, standing outside the door.

Tohru bowed and, keeping his head down, he said:

'Nakazawa-san, please, let me see her…'

'The answer is always no. Go away,' the man said with an arctic tone of voice.

'Please, I really need to speak to her…' Tohru begged and was seriously considering throwing himself onto his knees when he heard Nao's father closing the door.

'NAO! I KNOW YOU'RE THERE! NAOOO!' he shouted at the window which he knew belonged to the girl's room. Other than hurting his vocal cords, Tohru didn't get any results from that either.

He stood there for several minutes, shaking with fury, until he realised that he could stay there all night and nothing would change.

Tohru turned round and, kicking the house's gate open, he walked back to his car deciding that maybe, just maybe, it was time he started facing the fact that his relationship with Nao was over.

'No,' he muttered as he inserted the key inside the ignition, it wasn't over until one of them said it was and, so far, Nao hadn't told him anything and he as sure as hell didn't want to finish it.

He started driving home renewing his vow to try again the next day. Yes, he would keep trying to speak to her until her father would get sick of seeing Tohru at his doorstep.

After parking his car, he made his way to the house he shared with his parents and, just as he was getting his keys out of his pocket, he saw Uesugi there, waiting for him.

'Good evening,' he said and as usual, the guy's voice was enough for Tohru to feel uneasy.

'Hi.'

'Say, are you ready for a good race?' Uesugi asked.

'Tonight?' Tohru asked back.

'Yes, interested?'

'I've got to work tomorrow,' Tohru replied.

'Oh, don't worry, we won't take long, you should be home before midnight,' Uesugi said.

Tohru considered the whole thing for a few instants before deciding that maybe it was a good idea to start repaying the favour as soon as possible.

'Yeah, okay,' he agreed.

'Good, follow my car,' he said pointing at a red Mitsubishi 3000GT parked nearby.

'Where are we going?' Tohru asked.

'Momiji Lane, of course,' Uesugi replied with a smirk.

Driving behind the Mitsubishi, Tohru realised that Uesugi hadn't been lying when he'd said he was a racer for he really had a very refined style.

That and, the fact that Uesugi's 3000GT was a lot more powerful than his Mazda, despite of all the tuning he'd done to it, meant that Tohru had quite a few problems just keeping up.

Tohru was so concentrated on his driving that he didn't even have the time to notice that there were quite a few more people than usual at the galleries, especially taking in consideration that it was a Wednesday.

What he did notice was the dark blue Nissan S-14 which was parked at the mountain top's car park.

'Is that the guy I'm racing against?' Tohru asked the minute he'd parked the car where Uesugi had indicated.

'Yeah,' he replied then, taking Tohru by his arm, he said in a very low tone of voice, 'his car's more or less as powerful as yours and, even though I've been told the driver's not very good, it'd be very convenient for all of us if he won…'

Tohru breathed in sharply as he widened his eyes in surprise.

'Y-you want me to lose?'

'I see you're as smart as I thought you'd be,' Uesugi replied with so much nonchalance that it shocked Tohru even more.

'Wait, what…'

Uesugi shook his head and said:

'Be a good boy and don't ask so many questions. Just get in the car, drive as fast as you want but, make sure the Silvia gets to the finish line before you do, understood?'

'But…'

'Tohru, is anything I said not clear enough for you?' Uesugi asked making Tohru want to shout at him that nothing of what he'd said made any sense, instead, he just shook his head, 'good, because this race's worth a lot of money. You don't want to mess things up for me, do you?'

Tohru shook his head again.

'Good, now, get back in the car,' Uesugi ordered as poor Tohru finally understood everything:

Betting.

People were gambling on this race and Uesugi was involved into some sort of scam to make the bets go in his favour.

This explained the fact that the guy had given him a lot of money without even asking him to sign a single document. It also explained why all of his so-called friends seemed to drive extremely expensive, brand new cars, including Uesugi's own Mitsubishi 3000GT. For all Tohru knew, these guys could even be connected to the Yakuza and he was now at their complete mercy.

As he climed into his car, Tohru thought that he'd never been any more scared in his life, not even when he'd raced against Fujiwara.

'Shit,' he said as he felt his hand tremble so badly he had quite a lot of trouble inserting the key back in the ignition.

Taking a couple of steadying breaths, he turned on the engine of his red roadster and made it roll forward, parking it just behind of the dark blue Silvia.

'Hi, my name's Sorimachi Jin,' the S-14's driver, a guy around Tohru's same age, said.

'Suetsugu Tohru,' he replied happy to hear that, in spite of the sheer terror he was feeling, his voice was more or less as firm as his handshake.

Then the two drivers got back into their cars and, at the go, they drove out of the car park as fast as they could.

From his position aft of the S-14, Tohru saw that this Sorimachi guy was really a rather mediocre driver, very far from Tohru's level and light-years away from Fujiwara's.

As the Nissan cleared one of the course's fastest corners, Tohru swallowed seeing how freaking close the poor guy had been from losing control of his car, making Tohru brake so brusquely that his Mazda's bumper grazed the S-14's rear one.

'Fuck,' Tohru breathed as he slowed down trying to keep enough of a gap between himself and Sorimachi's car.

Remembering the not so veiled threat Uesugi had issued him just before the race, Tohru decided to stop pushing Sorimachi at all for he really thought that, if this guy kept driving as badly as this, it would be a freaking miracle if he finished the race in one piece.

Thinking he had to let someone as bad as that beat him on his home turf made Tohru feel so incredibly pissed off that he needed to use every single ounce of his self control not to floor the accelerator, overtake Sorimachi at full throttle and give him a lesson on how to drive Momiji Lane's downhill.

Unfortunately, he could not do any such thing so instead of that, he limited himself to just drive as safely as he could watching out in case Sorimachi made any potentially destructive mistakes.

Then it happened:

Half way through the race and while they were driving in the section where a wall delimited the right side of the road, Sorimachi drove his poor S-14 into one of the corners and, as he tried to drift his car through it, he lost control of his car's rear smashing it against the wall.

Tohru felt lucky he'd taken so many precautions for he was able to see the whole thing and still have enough time to avoid hitting the dark blue vehicle which now was right in the middle of the road.

He passed him and, braking as hard as he could, Tohru stopped his Mazda stepping out of it and starting to run towards where the S-14 was.

'Hey, are you alright?' he asked its driver.

'Yeah, oh shit,' Sorimachi said seeing the crumpled mass of metal the rear of his car had become.

Tohru felt the cold sensation coming back into his stomach as he realised that, by crashing the car, Sorimachi had actually lost the race.

'Fuck,' Tohru muttered and Sorimachi looked at him with a grateful smile. Tohru found almost funny the fact that the guy probably thought that he was trying to be sympathetic.

'Can you drive it back up?' Tohru asked.

'I think so, the engine is still running,' Sorimachi replied.

'Alright,' Tohru said and, with a knot tying his throat, he walked back to his Mazda and, as he climbed back into it he started considering his options.

He could run away. It wouldn't take much effort to re-start his car and drive away as fast as he could.

Yeah, he could do that.

'No,' he muttered as he listened to his more rational side: a guy like Uesugi would find him in no time and then, he feared the consequences would be much worse. For this reason, he turned the engine on and started driving back up, following Sorimachi's S-14 at an even slower pace than they had kept while going downhill.

A quick look at Uesugi's face as the guy looked at him while he parked his car made it clear to Tohru that the guy was beyond pissed off so, bracing himself against whatever he was about to face, he got out of the car and walked towards him.

Luckily for Tohru, Sorimachi decided to do the same thing too.

'Hey, bad luck, uh?' Uesugi said speaking to Sorimachi with his friendliest tone of voice.

'Yeah, this course's even harder than I thought…'

'What do you expect, you've only driven it a few times this afternoon,' Uesugi said, still being awfully nice to the S-14's driver.

'Yeah, next time I'll practice for longer,' Sorimachi replied then, turning to face Tohru, he said, 'thanks for this race.'

'No problem,' Tohru said while he felt Uesugi's eyes boring into him.

A few minutes later, and as everyone started moving out of the place, Uesugi grabbed Tohru by his shoulder pressing so hard that Tohru feared the guy would end up drawing blood.

'What in the hell happened?' Uesugi whispered angrily.

'He crashed,' Tohru said pointing out the obvious.

'Don't you think I could see that by myself?' he asked sarcastically.

'Listen, I did ev…'

'Quiet,' Uesugi started, 'do you have any fucking idea of how much money you've made me lose today?'

Tohru was about to say that he didn't know when Uesugi let go of him and said:

'Not to mention the fact that you've made the son of one of my best suppliers crash his car…'

'What? I…' Tohru tried again.

'SHUT THE FUCK UP!' Uesugi shouted and, for the first time, Tohru realised that, except Uesugi's friends, there was no one else left.

He swallowed as he tried to get rid of the knot in his throat.

'What are you going to do to fix this?' Uesugi asked him.

'I don't know, I…'

'Wrong answer,' Uesugi said, 'I really thought we could have a good business relationship here…'

'Hey, it wasn't my fault! When he crashed I wasn't…'

Tohru stopped speaking as Uesugi started laughing out loud, a cold, bitter and extremely nasty sounding laugh.

'Tohru, Tohru, Tohru,' Uesugi said once he stopped laughing, 'you don't seem to understand in how much trouble you are…'

'Uesugi, I…'

'I'm not going to waste anymore time with you,' Uesugi said, 'I want my money back by the end of this week…'

'What but…' Tohru started but then he saw three huge guys getting out of one of the cars.

'He's all yours,' Uesugi said to them, 'try not to kill him though: he owes me a lot of cash…'

'Uesugi, come on…' Tohru said pleadingly.

He couldn't say anything else for one of the guys who'd just climbed out of the car threw a punch at him sending him straight onto the ground.

Tohru tried his best to struggle as they picked him back up but, after the first few punches and kicks, he decided to remain still and hope that the thugs would remember that they couldn't kill him just yet.

To be continued…