Hey guys, it's Anya! I'm glad so many people like my fanfiction! I got a lot of reviews after posting up Chapter Two, so I got inspired to write Chapter Three. Chapter Four might take awhile, though, because I'm not too sure where I want to go with this. I'm pretty sure I know what's going to happen next, but whether or not I'll make this a long or short story is unknown to me. I mean, I can make this end in five or six chapters, but I think that I want to make this a tad longer than that. Any opinions? Anyways, I hope you enjoy reading and please R&R!

Chapter Three

Eventually my tears stopped. Even when I stopped crying I still held on to the man. I felt sorry for him; he had to stick around and embrace me as I cried. Then he had to deal with me not wanting to let go. Of course, normally I wouldn't be like this. I wanted to be able to believe in love and affection, but I knew that love and affection would only exist in my dreams. Therefore, I never wanted this dream to end. I wanted to stay in this dream.

"You're not very cute when you cry." He stated.

I looked up at him. I gave up on love and affection, but I still knew how to tease people. "You're not very cute when you embrace minors."

"You embraced me first; I'm simply returning the favor." He stated. As we spoke we were still in each other's arms. My arms were still around his rib cage and his arms were around my shoulders.

I raised an eyebrow. "If you embrace minors like that, you could be labeled as a pedophile."

This time he raised an eyebrow. "Is giving a sympathetic hug a federal crime now?"

I sighed; I knew the dream was coming to an end. I asked him, "Can I wake up now?"

He raised his eyebrow even higher. "Excuse me?"

Now I was confused. This was a dream, wasn't it? "I've had enough of my dream. I would love to wake up and go back to my regular life now." It was a lie, but I was afraid that if I lived in the dream for much longer, I would eventually never be able to go back to reality.

"You have dreams about pedophiles embracing you while you cry?" He asked teasingly. "You surely have strange dreams."

"This isn't funny; I want to wake up… now!" I told him straightforward. No way in Hell was I going to let this dream master keep me in his dream forever. This time I dropped my arms from around his ribcage and crossed them, he, too, dropped his arms. I said stubbornly, "I'll close my eyes, and when I count to ten I want to wake up back on that bench over there and be back in reality."

He put his arm in front of him as if he were a butler and bowed, as he did so he said, "As you wish, Miss."

"Thank you." I replied. I closed my eyes and began the countdown. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten—" Before I opened my eyes I felt a strange force on my body.

When I opened my eyes I could see his face right in front of mine. His lips were pressed up right against mine, practically crushing them with force. My eyes widened and my heart skipped several beats. I could feel my entire face blush with what I thought was embarrassment, and I thought my heart was beating faster and faster due to that embarrassment.

I pushed him away from me and shouted, "What do you think you're doing?"

He wiped his mouth and said, "I tried waking you up, but apparently it didn't work."

"You tried to do what?" I was utterly confused.

The man sighed, as if it were fairly obvious. He placed his right hand on his hip and explained, "You said that you wanted to wake up and you wanted me to wake you up. I couldn't think of anything. Then, of course, there's that one fairytale about Sleeping Beauty where the prince kissed the princess to wake her up. I thought that might work." He explained to me coolly.

"That makes absolutely no sense!" I snapped at him.

He sighed, "You're obviously awake, so stop trying to wake up."

My arms were still crossed, but my hands were now formed into shaky fists. I did not that to count as my first kiss. No way in hell was I going to let this stranger kiss me without even getting to know me! No… I wasn't even going to let him kiss me even if he knew me. No one was ever going to kiss me!

"Hey Ikuto," I turned to see a male about the strange man's age calling to him. He had brown hair chopped up into tons of layers and his eyes were a dark brown so dark that they were almost black. He was wearing a trench coat with a darker khaki color than the one the other man had, and his was unbuttoned to reveal a pale blue T-shirt with a fancy design of a cross on the front and a pair of mid-blue jeans. On his right foot he had an average brown hiking boot; on his left foot, however, he had a lime green cast on his foot. To help support him, the man had a crutch underneath his right arm. In his left hand was a black umbrella; he was a smart man for bringing an umbrella. "I finished up in there; doctor said that I had to keep the cast on for another two weeks."

The strange man, whose name I presumed to be Ikuto, watched him as he walked up to us. While my little scene with Ikuto was going on, my back was turned to the hospital so I had no idea how long the man with the cast had been standing there. In order to even see him I had to turn my entire body around.

"That's good," Ikuto replied, his voice was practically apathetic. Apathetic… now where have I heard a voice like that? Oh, yeah… "Are you ready to go home?"

The man with the cast looked over to me as if he had just noticed me. He said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see you standing there. Were you two in the middle of something?" He looked back and forth between us once or twice expectantly, his eyes finally ended up resting on me.

"Not at all, we just finished here." I said, I returned back to my indifferent tone that I used most of the time, except this time it had a hint of bitterness.

"Oh, okay," He seemed nice. He was probably one of those really nice, athletic, understanding guys whom the girls just go crazy over. At least, every girl except for me would go crazy over him, anyways. "I'm Okazaki Akatsuki, but you can call me Akatsuki. And you are?"

I looked at Akatsuki; he had put out a hand, as if he wanted me to shake it. I grimaced at the hand, but soon enough I wiped the grimace off my face and reluctantly shook it. "Hinamori Amu, nice to meet you, I guess."

Our handshake was cut short, thanks to my reluctance, and I stood there like an idiot, wondering what I was going to do next. I could just leave, but since Akatsuki was so nice it seemed rude to just get up and leave. If it was just Ikuto, however, I could leave without another blink of an eye.

"Man, you two are soaked, why are you guys standing out in the rain?" Akatsuki asked. I'm sure that if he wasn't so awkward with his cast, he would have let us share his umbrella with him.

"Long story," I replied. I took my phone out and flipped it open, surprised that despite the wetness of my pocket my cell phone was still okay, the time said it was already four forty-two. "Anyways, I should get going—"

I was surprised to have my phone snatched out of my hand. I looked over to see Ikuto had grabbed it out of my grasp. I was insanely angry at him, how many rights did he think he had? First the kiss and now he was taking my phone? What a character! And no, I do not mean that in a good way.

"What are you doing?" I asked, trying to keep my cool.

Ikuto punched the buttons on my phone faster than I could ever imagine someone to punch numbers. Actually, scratch that, I think it was just because I couldn't punch the buttons in that fast. It always took me a long time to figure out which button was which.

"You have one contact one here." Ikuto simply replied, as if it was obvious. Now he flipped out his own dark grey cell phone and began punching in all sorts of numbers.

"So what?" I was getting impatient with him. He explained nothing to me.

He tossed my phone back to me, which I barely caught, and said, "If you ever need help, there. It's not safe for someone to only know two phone numbers."

Unable to make the connection, I asked, "What?"

He sighed. He closed his phone by simply pressing down the top part with his index finger and explained coolly, "You know Fujibayashi Ryuu's phone number and you probably know the phone number of 119. If your little Ryuu is busy and you're in dire need of help, it's not safe to only rely on 119."

"The man's got a point." Akatsuki agreed. Now I was confused, I was taught to always rely on 119 for emergencies. "So you gave her your phone number?"

"Yours too," Ikuto replied as if it were obvious. "Akatsuki, let's go."

"Sure…" Akatsuki raised an eyebrow; he was probably wondering why Ikuto had given him my phone number. "Bye-bye, Amu-chan."

I watched the two leave, standing there like what I thought was an idiot. Once they were out of sight, I flipped open my phone and looked into my contacts. Surely enough, there were two brand new contacts in there: Okazaki Akatsuki and Tsukiyomi Ikuto.

Now Amu has been granted two new phone numbers. Will she use them? Will Amu come out of her reserved state or will she just be dragged in even deeper? What will happen to her next as she continues to live on through her life? Until next time!