Archive: NO.

Reviews: Appreciated. :D Actually I just feel like saying thank you to everyone who has reviewed this story, but especially to Merissala for leaving comments for every chapter XD I wasn't expecting it at all so it made me really happy :D

We're actually nearly at the end of this story, so I'll babble more next chapter XD

Satisfaction

Chapter 18

By Miki

Atobe put his mobile back down on his desk, a frown on his face. He really couldn't see why Yuuta's phone should be switched off at a time like this, and the stupid "This mobile phone is currently switched off and unavailable. Please try again later" woman was starting to peeve him.

Checking his watch, he figured that Yuuta should be back at the dormitory by now, and scrolled through his address book until he found the number for the office.

As he heard the phone ring, he hoped it wouldn't be that annoying man picking it up again. Right now, the last thing he wanted was to have to speak to that stupid idiot who couldn't even get his name right. But luck wasn't with Atobe.

"Hello, this is St Rudolph's boys dormitory. Hanashima Kei speaking," came the drawling voice on the other end of the phone.

Atobe drummed his fingers on his desk, biting back the urge to waste his words in insulting the stupid man. Instead, he took a deep breath and decided to make things quick. "This is Atobe Keigo calling. May I please speak to Fuji Yuuta?"

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Oh, it's Adobe again? I'm sorry but Yuuta isn't here right now," Hanashima responded, not sounding sorry at all.

Atobe frowned.

"Actually, it's Atobe, and what do you mean he's not there?"

Hanashima made a noise of irritation.

"Well, he isn't in the dormitory so I can't tell you where he is. I don't have ESP, Adobe-san."

"It's Atobe," Atobe snapped back, picking up his pen and gripping it tightly. "Look, I'm going to leave a message for Yuuta, so you had better pass it on to him absolutely verbatim, or I'm not going to waste my breath. Are you listening?"

"That's one message for one Fuji Yuuta from one Adobe Keigo…" Atobe heard mumbled, and twitched.

When Atobe didn't reply, Hanashima rolled his eyes a little. "Am I supposed to be handing Yuuta a blank message? Because I can, if that's what you want."

Atobe's pen snapped. "Okay, Hanajima, here's what I want you to tell him…"

"Actually, it's Hanashima."

"Like I said, Hanajima," Atobe drawled, "I'm speaking and you're writing so start listening."

(S)

"Fuji Yuuta!"

A shudder passed through Yuuta's body at the sound of that voice. He turned around where he stood and walked slowly back toward the office, giving a slight glare to the guy behind the counter. "Yes?"

He received a frown in response, and crossed his arms as he realised he was probably going to have to listen to a lecture or two. "While you were out," the man began, "you had several phone calls from your brother and sister and – Are you listening Fuji Yuuta?"

"Huh? Yeah," Yuuta scowled, trying to look as grumpy as possible. This old guy was always so annoying.

Peering over the top of his glasses for a moment, lips downturned, the man surveyed Yuuta. Then, deciding that this was as attentive as Yuuta got, he flicked the page of paper in his hand and ran a finger down it. "Well then, I'll assume you want to know what they were calling about, shall I? At 3:31 this afternoon, one Fuji Syuusuke called, asking you if you preferred… the nurse's uniform with flat shoes or with heels…"

Yuuta let out a strangled kind of sound, earning him a raised eyebrow before the list was again flicked and the finger continued down the page.

"After that, there was a call at 3:39 from a Fuji Yumiko, who wanted to let you know that Fuji Syuusuke would not be seeing you today because he was busy. Alas, your sister did not say with what he was busy, as I'm sure I'd like to know…"

Yuuta shook his head quickly. He wouldn't want to know even if Hanashima could tell him.

"At 4:22, there was another call from Fuji Syuusuke, telling you that you need not worry about returning his last call, but could you please turn on your mobile. At 4:24, your sister again, calling to tell you not to turn on your mobile phone and that Fuji Syuusuke would not be able to visit you for the next week because he was going to be unexpectedly busy detaching himself from the leg of the kitchen table. At 4:49, another call from one Fuji Syuusuke…" Hanashima paused. "And dare I say it, you ought to keep your siblings away from the telephone, Fuji Yuuta."

Yuuta sighed, abandoning trying to glare at the man and instead rubbing his hand against his forehead.

Aniki.

"Oh, that's right, the next call was from an Atobe Keigo. That's Atobe, not Adobe, and he wanted to tell you that there's no point in owning a mobile telephone if you're never going to turn it on and could you please-"

He paused.

"Yuuta? Where are you going?"

There was no reply.

"Yuuta?"

Hanashima stood up and peered over the counter, but Yuuta was already disappearing up the stairs.

(S)

Oshitari leaned back against the locker with a look of annoyance on his face. He wasn't about to admit it, but Atobe was doing rather a good job of keeping Yuu-chan a secret. In four afternoons, all he and Gakuto had seen were the normalities of Atobe's daily routines.

They'd seen one manicure, one pedicure, one facial and two body massages, one visit to a public library, one visit to a bookstore, several visits to Atobe's usual shopping places, a visit to an ice cream parlour with Jirou and numerous trips in the limousine. But they hadn't seen a single sign of the elusive Yuu-chan.

Of course, Oshitari had pointed out, it would help if they had a clue what they were looking for.

Mukahi had somehow gotten it into his head that Yuu-chan was a cute, little sort of girl with a big mouth that was obviously bigger than Atobe's because otherwise he couldn't imagine Atobe paying attention to anyone else at all. But she was probably still little and cute, because Atobe wouldn't like someone who was taller than he was, and most girls weren't anyway, which was convenient.

Then somewhere along the way, he'd also decided she probably wasn't a Hyoutei student, or everyone would have heard about it by now. That, and there was something about Hyoutei girls…

Oshitari hadn't told Gakuto that he was lacking any empirical evidence to back up his assumptions, but that was okay.

No, if Atobe had really wanted to date a Hyoutei girl, he'd just have asked her out and everyone would have known about it five minutes later, Oshitari thought. Atobe was being really secretive about it, which seemed to imply that he was either afraid of people intruding upon their privacy, or perhaps…

"Hey," Mukahi's voice interrupted his train of thought.

Oshitari looked down, remembering he'd been in the middle of changing his clothes.

Mukahi sat next to him on the bench, a piece of cake bar in his hand. "I think it would be faster if we stole his phone," he said, bluntly.

Oshitari pushed up his glasses with a finger and regarded his friend with amusement. "I suspect you'd find that rather hard to do," he mused, unbuttoning his shirt.

Mukahi looked put out for a moment, frowning and taking a large bite of his cake. "But Yuushi, isn't that the easiest way to do it? It's easier than following him around, don't you think?"

Oshitari smiled. Mukahi was taking this all so seriously. Personally, he did find it rather an amusing thought that Atobe was worrying over, of all things, a girl, and it was fun to tease the other boy about it… But after tramping around after Atobe for four afternoons already, he was starting to wonder about Yuu-chan.

It was entirely possible, after all, that things weren't as they seemed.

"What are you talking about?"

Oshitari looked across the room at the sound of the voice. He hadn't even noticed the door open, but apparently it had, since Shishido and Ootori were now making their way in. He gave a shrug in response to Shishido's question, and stared for a moment at the two.

Was it just his imagination, or were they standing even closer to each other than usual? Most days Ootori gave him the impression that he'd like to glue himself to his dear Shishido-senpai, but today it almost looked as though he'd succeeded.

Curiosity piqued, Oshitari finished tying his shoelaces and leaned back against the locker again to wait for Atobe's appearance. He was late.

"So," he began, eyeing Shishido, "do anything interesting on the weekend?"

Nevermind the fact that today was Tuesday and he'd seen the two of them yesterday; he had a feeling he must have missed something.

Shishido hesitated in answering for a moment. "Shopping," he finally said, hurrying to change his clothes.

"Oh?"

"With Atobe," Ootori clarified.

"Ah," Oshitari said, for lack of anything else to say to that. He'd thought maybe there was something else to it, but perhaps it really was his imagination after all. All this thinking about Yuu-chan was apparently messing with his head.

"Where?" he enquired, now suddenly bored of the conversation.

"Usual place," Shishido grunted, picking up his racquet and stretching his arms above his head.

"Oh, I assume Atobe bought the entire store then," Oshitari drawled, watching Mukahi lace up his sneakers.

"Almost," came Shishido's reply, and Oshitari couldn't really say he was sorry for having turned down that invitation – perhaps he ought to say it was more of a demand – in favour of more pleasurable activities.

Shopping trips with Atobe tended to be tedious and long, and from what Oshitari had seen of Atobe's shopping habits, those sorts of trips only really served to remind one how much money Atobe could spend on a plastic credit card, and how fast he could spend it.

"Don't you have anything better to do on the weekend?" Gakuto suddenly asked, growing irritated at the fact that Oshitari was ignoring him.

Shishido scowled for a moment, assuming – correctly – that Gakuto's childish jibe was directed at him. "At least I wasn't at home stuffing myself with cake," was the only thing he could retort with.

He was feeling really scatterbrained today. It probably had something to do with Ootori, but he didn't really want to think about it right now. He'd thought about it during English and now he had a 500-word essay to write as punishment.

"We bumped into some of the St Rudolph players there," Ootori interrupted, changing the topic slightly.

Gakuto looked annoyed.

"St Rudolph? Oh, those guys," Oshitari mused. "How are they? Still losing, I suppose."

There was a click and four sets of eyes looked toward the door as it opened. "What are you talking about?" Jirou asked, blinking at all the attention focused on him.

"St Rudolph," Ootori answered, with a slight sigh of relief.

Jirou smiled. "Really? That was fun on Sunday, wasn't it? Too bad Atobe didn't want ice cream afterwards, but seeing Akazawa and Fuji was kind of interesting, wasn't it?"

"Fuji?" Oshitari interrupted quickly.

He stared at Jirou for a moment, wondering why Ootori and Shishido hadn't mentioned Fuji.

"Oh, you know, Fuji Syuusuke's little brother," Jirou smiled, happily. "His name's Fuji Y-"

He stopped suddenly, frowning.

"Oh, the other Fuji," Oshitari sighed, tiring of waiting.

He made his way to the door, not caring whether Atobe was here or not. He was probably somewhere playing with his phone again, as he seemed more and more prone to doing lately. Mukahi did have a point when he said stealing Atobe's phone would be faster than trailing him…

Mukahi followed Oshitari out of the clubroom, glad to get away from Shishido. He ignored the way Jirou was staring after him. The boy probably just didn't get enough sleep or something.

"Jirou-senpai?" Ootori asked, after a moment.

"Huh?"

"Are you okay?"

Jirou blinked, and looked at Ootori's smiling face. "Er, yes?"

Ootori couldn't help but laugh at the look on Jirou's face. "Are you sure?" he questioned, wondering if he ought to do something.

Jirou smiled and nodded his head a little. "I just realised something, that's all."

(S)

Yuuta opened his desk drawer. He stared at the phone in there for a moment, and then slid the drawer shut again. Picking up his pen, he flicked the pages of his mathematics textbook for a moment, then he sighed and opened the drawer again.

It seemed like a long time since he'd seen Atobe, and even after the phone message – the one he hadn't listened to at all – he couldn't… He just didn't want to turn on his phone.

Maybe it was because he was being stupid about the whole thing.

He could see the bag with Atobe's books in it, and he stared at it. It was still there, just under his bed where he'd put it the other day. Truthfully, he couldn't even remember which books Atobe had lent to him at all.

(S)

Mizuki knocked on Yuuta's door and opened it, not waiting for a reply.

"Mizuki," Yuuta said, having turned around at the noise.

"Are you still studying that thing?" Mizuki asked, a little annoyed.

"Yeah," Yuuta sighed a little.

He fingered the cover of the book, embarrassed in case Mizuki noticed the number of words he'd been writing down in his notebook beside him. Atobe's books were hard to read.

"Why are you reading those books anyway?" Mizuki asked, dropping down onto the edge of Yuuta's bed. "Why don't you just give them back?"

Yuuta didn't look at him. "I want to read them," he replied, turning another page and deliberately ignoring the other boy.

"Well, it's your choice," Mizuki said flatly, unimpressed.

He didn't particularly care if Yuuta wanted to waste his time struggling through English novels, but he couldn't really see any benefit in it. Besides, he wasn't about to admit it, but he was annoyed Yuuta thought more of Atobe's English than he did of his.

(S)

Later, when Mizuki had left, Yuuta stopped reading and sat, with his finger marking the page he was up to.

He didn't like reading them; Mizuki was right. There was nothing fun about the books Atobe had lent to him. It was just that Atobe had lent them to him, and he didn't want to give them back and have to admit he hadn't touched them.

That, and if he took a week or two to read them… He'd have more time until he saw Atobe again.

Opening his desk drawer, he stared miserably at his telephone. His fingers twitched, holding the book still. A part of him really wanted to turn it on, just to see if Atobe had sent him anything.

A part of him also really wanted to see Atobe.

But in the back of his mind, he wasn't really sure what he was going to say to Atobe when he saw him again. And so he closed the drawer again, sighing, as he found his spot in the book and started reading again.

.tbc.