Chapter 2:

I walked down the hallway in a defeated way, and tried to avoid people's eyes like the plague. I was never good with confrontation, and this just really tested me.

"Why?" a voice asked.

I turned and there was Sira, standing there, looking at me.

"Huh?"

"You heard me." She said walking towards me.

"Why did I dump him, you mean?" I asked. She gave a solemn nod. "I couldn't deal with him anymore."

"That's part of life." She said walking next to me as I went up the stairwell.

"I-"

"I don't want to hear it." She said cutting me off, "Hiei was nice to you, and this is how you want to repay him? By dumping him?"

"It's just that-"

"Jeez, Yuriko, I thought that you had way more class than that." She said going into her next period classroom.

I continued walking down the hallway where it intersected with the hallway to my next period class- I was home free!

I hurried, but I saw him come around the corner. I saw him and I slowly put my head down, a tear forming in my eye. Hiei was smiling, and he was with another girl already. They weren't going out, but I could tell that she was next. He had that look in his eye, one that I had so much experience with. I ducked into my class, oblivious if he had even seen me.

Why did I care? We were over. Right?
"Hey!" Megumi said from behind me, "What's wrong? You were zoning all first period."

"It's just that I dumped Hiei last night, that's all." I said quietly.

"You what!"
"Yeah, I know! Stupid me, right?" I asked, wishing with all my heart that I could just curl into a little ball and go home, collapse on the coach and eat cookie dough all day.

"No," she said, "don't ever think that you're stupid for dumping a guy! If he was really bothering you that much then you did the right thing."

"Really?"

"Duh! Any guy who got me that annoyed, I couldn't have stuck around with as long as you did."

"It was only seven and a half months." I said.

"Yeah, but in high school that's, like, a freaking eternity!" she told me smiling.

"So?"

"Girl, you have to have the most patience I have ever seen!" she said bluntly.

"Thanks?"

"You better say thanks, I don't give out that many compliments, and you know it!"

"Saying someone has patience is not a compliment." I pointed out.

For the first time all morning, I was able to keep my mind off of things, especially Hiei.

"So really, tell me what happened." She said.

"Well," I said, "It all began when some of my other friends were getting annoyed at him, the whole bit, and he was just being stubborn about the whole thing, and then he was just giving me a whole lot of lip, which I didn't appreciate that much, and I finally dumped him out of anger and hostility." I explained in one breath. The image of seeing him in the hallway flooded into my mind as I tried to block it out, but it just kept on coming back.

Flashback

I was in lunch when I met him. He was sitting with one of the few guys in this school that I didn't consider perverted, Kurama, and so I sat down with them and began a conversation.

"Hey! What's up, Kurama?" I asked.

"Nothing much,'' he replied, "What about you?"
"Not much either." I said. "What about you?" I asked turning to his friend.

"Huh?"

"Yeah you. What about you?" I asked.

"I'm fine actually," he said, "I'm Hiei.''

"I'm Yuriko!" I said smiling.

End Flashback

That had been the first time I'd seen that look in his eye, but it certainly hadn't been the last. I stretched out my legs as far as they could possibly go, and studied the ceiling. That stupid knot was still there, in fact, I think that it had actually gotten even tighter.

"Juxtaposed," my social studied teacher said, "Who knows what the word 'juxtaposed' means?"

"I do." I said raising my hand.

"Yes.''

"It means to compare and contrast."

"Correct." He said turning and giving a lecture on that the whole period. I quietly passed notes with Megumi.

Hiei's voice kept on playing in my head, the last things that he said to me. They were just thick and layered with pain and hurt, somewhere that came from the true bottom of his heart, all the way to the top. According to Megumi, I'd even made him cry.

What a horrible person I was! I made Hiei do the impossible for him, cry. In all the time that I'd known him, in all the fights, never once did I see a tear form in his eye. It was just something that he didn't do; and I had caused him so much pain, that he finally did. I was such a lousy person.

"You going to Chorus next?" Megumi was asking.

"Umm, yeah." I told her.

"Good! Sort some of this out with Serena, she'll know what to do." She told me.

"Why does it matter?"

"It just does." Megumi said.

I sighed and just waited until the bell rang.