Hi! I'm back (did you miss me? No? Okay). Thanks to my beta RosiePosieRW for betaing and putting up with my crap, now 5+ days a week. School has started again, which means more homework! (Yay!). Updates may be a little slower, I'll still try to update at least once a week, but it may end up being every fortnight.
Thank you all for the support, it really means a lot.
And of course, enjoy!

Just because it was Friday didn't mean that everybody would go home. Some would leave in the wee hours of the night or morning, waiting on storyboards, manuscripts or scripts and the such. That could be said for numerous of those poor souls working at Marukawa tonight. Luckily, it wasn't one of those days for the Emerald editing team. The cycle had only started a few days ago, so the office was still filled with stuffed animals, frills and pink, some young girl's fantasy.

"I'll be leaving now," Onodera Ritsu said, heaving a bag over his shoulder and bowing slightly. He carried some papers, he could do those at home so he left quickly. His co-workers that were still working gave him a gruntled wave. He walked over to the elevator. Ugh, I hate elevators, he thought bitterly.

He quickly descended to the first floor, to the reception in the empty elevator. As he was getting to the double glass doors, a hand grabbed him by his shoulder.

"Wait a second." A firm voice said.

"Mizuno-san?" The male said, turning around. He was shocked; what was she doing here? Maybe she was waiting for Takano?

"Um, Takano-san is still up there, if you -" he was cut off.

"If I was looking for him, why would I be talking to you?" She sounded pissed. "Come." She roughly grabbed the end of his scarf.

"Oi, I have work to do. Please help me!" he cried out, staring down the receptionists with pleading eyes. They simply smiled at him as if this was some cute lover's quarrel. They weren't going to be of any help, so he turned his head back to Mizuno.

"Hey, I can't breathe so would you mind letting go of my scarf?" he managed to get out of his mouth, which was a proud achievement when someone was strangling you with your own scarf. She did eventually let go, but began dragging the man by his coat arm. He sighed in both relief and exasperation. At least it wasn't by his collar. Sympathetic looks were thrown in his direction, occasional bypassers wondering what the poor sod did to deserve this.

"So..." the brunet murmured, fidgeting in his seat, "what exactly am I doing here?"

"To have dinner with me, why else?" she replied, scrutinizing Ritsu behind her glass. He felt out of place. Sure, this was a casual restaurant but he had come in with his mop of light brown hair sticking in directions he'd never thought was possible. He had faint red marks on his neck from his scarf and the man had looked as if he wanted to cry, earning a few stares from other customers. Mizuno took one look at him, began fawning over him and seemed to completely disregard the fact that she was the one dragged him here and forced him to eat with her.

"I can see that," Ritsu said, getting annoyed, "but why did you have to drag me halfway across the street to do that? And why do you want to have dinner with me?"

"Why, you ask?"

The answer was going to be 'because I want to!', wasn't it?

"Because I wanted to have a little chat with you and you never would have decided to come here of your own free will," she said simply, staring straight into his eyes. The first time he saw her face, it had been through shelves in the library. He could see her clearly now, this time, not dazed with sleep or attempting to escape the premises.

Instead of those loose light brown pigtails, both resting on her chest during high school, her bleached hair now barely reached her exposed elbows. For reasons Ritsu could not understand, the woman had decided to wear a short sleeved shirt while it was still cold. Sure, she had a thick coat and all, but Ritsu began feeling slightly concerned about her. He didn't realize that staring deeply into somebody's eyes for an extended bout of time was awkward until he saw that her eyes were a striking blue, emphasized by her eyeliner. She could probably hypnotise someone with those. He averted his own to avoid hers.

"Then just start," he said, trying to keep a scowl from appearing on his face. So I can leave faster, he added in his head.

"Excited, are we?" she teased, a smile tugging at her lips.

"I'm not," he huffed. This really was a large inconvenience. He had his own small stack of paperwork to do resting in his satchel. "I just have other stuff to do."

"You'll just have to wait. We're waiting for another person."

The man unknowingly furrowed his eyebrows. "And who is that?"

"A friend of mi-"

'Speak of the devil.' Mizuno thought.

"Ah! Nana-chan!" a familiar voice rang out. Ritsu racked his brain to find the owner of it. "Huh? Ricchan, what are you doing here?" There were only two people who called him that. Kisa-san and -

"An-chan?" Ritsu exclaimed in shock. "What are you doing here?"

"Do you two know each other?" Mizuno asked, a playful smile on her face as she absentmindedly stirred the liquid in her glass . "What a coincidence."

Coincidence, my ass! Ritsu thought, angrily. He needed a reason to leave. Anything. As he was planning ways to leave without being outlandishly rude, An gracefully placed herself in a seat next to him, a bit too close to the male to be comfortable.

"Mhmm! He's my fiancé!" she replied, cheerfully.

"An-chan! Like I said-"

"You have a fiancé?" Mizuno didn't seemed to be surprised. She said it in more of a teasing voice, it was as if she invited An here for the purpose of getting Ritsu flustered.

An and Ritsu both spoke at the same time: "That's right." "No!"

One would think that after going through situations like these often, Ritsu would be accustomed to them. Unfortunately, he wasn't. "It was actually an arranged marriage, so..." he explained. Wait. Why did he have to explain? He stopped halfway through. An didn't seem put off by his mention of this arrangement.

"Wait, so you're the guy An's been infatuated with for ages now?" Mizuno said, with an element of shock in her voice. She scanned Ritsu from head to toe. The fair-haired woman snorted, not bothering to hide it. That was the excuse Ritsu was looking for. On a normal day, Ritsu would have been offended. Hell, he was offended. But the current task at hand required him to make up some white lie. The task? Escaping this restaurant.

Ritsu stood up and re-wrapped his scarf, previously abandoned along with his bag, around his neck. "If you're just here to laugh at me, then I might as well leave," Ritsu muttered, loud enough for only the two women to hear. The bag slumped beside him, leaning on his side, was now slung over his shoulder. He left enough money on the table to cover for his untouched drink.

"If you have any questions you might as well ask An-chan. She knows me well." When Mizuno began to coax Ritsu into staying, Ritsu bowed and added, "I have work to do. Please excuse me."

His legs carried him out of the restaurant despite An's protests. Initially, he felt a pang of guilt as he left, leaving her there. But they were friends, they could go watch a movie or something together, right?
There was also no way in hell that Saga was the same as Takano. Judging by the fact that Mizuno and An were close friends, maybe An told Mizuno about Ritsu and his stalker-ish behaviors. Then to mess with Ritsu's head, Mizuno told Takano to act as Saga. And in reality, Mizuno was in fact dating Saga and...

Ritsu sighed at his stupid theory. Even he had a difficult time believing that. As these thoughts swirled around in his head, he instinctively stopped at a bookstore. Ever since starting work again, he hadn't visited any bookstores yet. He'd only returned a few overdue books to the library recently. As he entered Marimo Books, the automatic doors slid open. He went downstairs first, into the manga section. Takano would occasionally reprimand Ritsu about half-assed work, pissing Ritsu off. He really wanted to show that he could do his job so if it meant reading shoujo manga at two in the morning, then so be it.

The store was brightly lit, the amount of shelves and manga almost baffled Ritsu. Then he reminded himself that Marimo Books was of the largest bookstores in the city. As he strolled his way to the shoujo manga section, he had a burning desire to go to another floor, namely the ones with literature. He feverishly shook his head. No, he should do this at least once. Tentatively, he browsed one of the shelves. After a few minutes of tracing his finger alongside the spines of the books, he realized something. He had no idea what he was doing.
Maybe he could find a salesman or saleswoman or something.
Ah, but sometimes they're so scary and hard to approach, he thought, contemplating whether or not to find somebody when he noticed a few girls at the end of the aisle, muttering and hiding behind books, staring and pointing at something. Or rather someone, as he found out later.

The thing they were pointing to quickly hooked Ritsu's attention. What was so interesting that it made numerous people stare? He brushed by the girls to see what they were staring at. He scoffed. It was a guy. For a second, he was amused at how easily their attention was caught. A few seconds later, he was embarrassed. He had done the same thing for three years. After a minute of self-directed shame, he remembered his purpose here. To buy manga.

Reluctantly, he approached the man. The first thing Ritsu had noticed about him was 'sparkles'. He was almost literally emitting sparkles. The tall man gave off an impression that he was easy to approach. For reasons he could not fathom, he had no desire to go to him. Maybe it was because he reminded him of Saga, even if they had next to nothing in common. He turned his head in both directions to find somebody else, but they were either already occupied with another customer or behind the register. He got closer to him.

"Um, excuse me..." he said in a small voice, half-hoping that he didn't hear him.

"Yes?" the taller man said, spinning around and after spotting the shorter man, "what can I help you with?"

The man waited patiently as Ritsu took a deep breath and said, "Well, I'm sorta new to shoujo manga...and I thought I'd ask you for some recommendations." Ritsu glanced at his nametag, Yukina. At least the tall man had a name now. Yukina's eyes lit up a little and smiled.

"Well, have you read anything by Emerald? The stuff from that magazine is really good," he suggested while his smile lit up more, as if Emerald was one of his favourite magazines.

"I'm actually a new editor for Emerald and I thought I should start by reading some other manga," Ritsu stated, trying not to sound boastful even if he felt a bit of pride because he worked there. Yukina's strong aura of sparkles was now even more evident.

"No way! Really?" he exclaimed. "I'm Yukina, by the way. Yukina Kou."

Ritsu wasn't sure why the man sounded so excited. Shouldn't he be excited if he met the author? He was only an editor, after all.

"Yeah...and I'm Onodera Ritsu." The two of them quickly exchanged business cards.

"Say, do you know a guy called Kisa-san?" he inquired after a few seconds. "I asked him to meet me a while ago..."

"Yeah, I think he's still at the office, sorry." If Ritsu had remembered correctly, Kisa was still at the office, finishing up a proposal. Who exactly was he, anyway. A friend? An acquaintance? Yukina suggested a few manga and artists before Ritsu thought he saw a familiar face walking down the stairs.

"Hey, I think that's Kisa-san..." Ritsu said, prompting the taller man to glance around quickly.

"Ah, thank you. I'll see you around," he said, before calling out Kisa's name. Ritsu, still a bit shocked as to how abrupt that goodbye was, went into the shelves in pursuit of Blue Rose. It was getting late. The brunet slid his hand into his pocket to get out his phone. As he opened it, a message popped up.

Oi, Onodera. I'm coming over to your place. You better be there.

~ Mizuno

How she got his number, Ritsu did not know. Her intentions for chasing him down to his apartment, he did not know either. However, what he did know was that he needed to find another place to stay tonight.