Disclaimer: I do not own Yowamushi Pedal or any of its characters. Also, this is an AU. Please do not be upset if the characters are not exactly like those in the show/manga as I took my own liberties

Chapter 3

When I walk home from Makishima's house, I feel every step in my knee and my face. I want to get home quickly, but with what happened earlier, I don't want to risk running. To distract myself from the pain and the agonizingly slow pace, I gaze at the book in my hands and study its cover.

The Prince's Poison, it's called. The title is black and curly and intricate across the front of the pale sleeve, and a lace like pattern is embossed under the words and on the edges. Parts of the sleeve are already softer and smoother where Makishima's fingers pressed down as he read, and I can easily envision the way he held it as he read. I can almost see him sitting at his desk, elbows on that mess of papers, smiling ridiculously and beautifully down at the page as he reads. Just the thought bring a smile to my own face, and before I realize, I'm back home.

"I'm home," I say as I walk through the door and start heading to my room. My mom steps out from the kitchen as I pass, though, and halts my progress.

"Welcome home, Ji-" she begins, but cuts herself off abruptly. At first, I wonder why she quit speaking so suddenly, but when I see her eyes bore into my face worriedly then migrate down to give a similar treatment to my knee, I remember. I still have those big, ugly bruises. I'd forgotten somewhere along the way home, but now that I remember, pain is shooting through them again. "Oh my god, Jinpachi, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," I say, but this is obviously not the answer she wanted. Typical.

"You certainly don't look fine," she says, reaching out to touch my cheek. When I wince from the pain, she grabs my arm and drags me into the kitchen and forces me into one of the chairs at the table. "What happened to you?"

"I just fell, that's all." She doesn't look like she buys it, though, and I don't know how to convince her that it's the truth. "Don't look at me like that, mom! I'm telling the truth!"

"You fell, huh?" she says, and I can already hear the sarcasm in her next question. "Down how many flights of stairs, exactly?"

"Mom, please. I tripped and fell on the ground, okay? It isn't even that bad."

"Honey, have you seen yourself? It is that bad." She pinches the bridge of her nose for a second and looks back up at me. "Did you get in a fight? Tell me the truth. I'm not going to yell at you."

"I already told you the truth!" I yell, exasperated, but her brow only furrows deeper. She still doesn't believe me. "I went over to Makishima's house to borrow a book and I tripped and fell on the floor." I lift the book up and wave it around frantically. "See? Book!"

She grabs the book out of my hands and turns it over carefully, looking at every inch of the cover. "This doesn't look like one of our books," she announces. I bring my hand to my forehead in frustration.

"That's because it isn't ours! It's Makishima's! I borrowed it. I said that didn't I?" She nods and hands the book back, looking at me as if she finally gets it.

"Why are you borrowing a book?"

"You know, mom, I don't really think that's the issue of utmost importance right now." This snaps her back to the main focus of the discussion.

"Right," she says, much to my relief. I don't really feel like talking about my motives behind reading the book. "So, you didn't get in a fight. You fell. How did you fall?"

"Well, I raced him up the stairs and to his room, but I got really dizzy, so I fell when I got there."

"How'd you get dizzy?"

"I'm not really sure," I say, getting concerned myself. "All I remember is my heart was still beating really fast from running all the way to his house from the school, and when I got to the top of the stairs, the walls started to move."

"I see," she says with a sage nod. "And what kind of floor does he have in his room? Concrete? Those bruises are pretty bad."

"No, it's carpeted." She raises her eyebrows so high that I think they might meld with her hairline.

"And you still got bruises that bad? I don't think that's normal. And the dizziness, too. I think we need to take you to see a doctor."

"I think you're overreacting. I just fell pretty hard," I say, hoping it convinces my mom that it's not a big deal. I hate going to the doctor. "And I'm pretty sure I was just dehydrated. I'll drink more water, so please do not make me go to the doctor."

"Alright," she says reluctantly, "but if something like this happens again, you are not worming your way out of it." I nod and hope to god that this is a one-time thing. Shortly after, my dad opens the door and greets us loudly like he does every day.

"I'm hoooome," he booms, walking into the kitchen. When he sees me, he stops in his tracks. "Jinpachi. Please tell me you have joined theater and that is stage make-up on your face. Please tell me that is not an actual bruise." When I say nothing, he continues. "Please tell me, then, that you are merely a doppelganger who got punched in the face very hard and that my actual son is in his room right now unscathed. Please tell me that your continued silence is confirmation of one of my theories." My mom and I glance at each other and offer weak smiles as consolation.

Over dinner, mom explains the entire ordeal to dad, but I have to keep interjecting to correct some accidental mistruths and to debunk various fictitious tidbits that she is for some reason making up on the fly. Dad accepts the explanation far more readily than mom did, but he still wants to take me to see a doctor. After vehement reassurance on my part that I do not need medical attention, I excuse myself and retire to my room with the book that has caused me so much trouble today.

I crack it open and start reading, and when I see a word on the third page and am not entirely sure what it means, I feel regret start to sink in. I never should have asked to borrow this book. I groan. I never should have asked what it was. I should've just let him be. Curse me, curse me and my stupid curiosity! And curse Makishima, too, for being so lovable and interesting!

However, after I finish the first chapter, I realize that I actually really like it. I like the way the sentences flow together, and I like the word choice, and I'm interested by the plot. Before I realize, I've read a third of the book and it's three in the morning. I curse aloud and try to fall asleep, but I can't stop thinking about the book and how tired I'm going to be tomorrow so it's a challenge. Eventually, sleep takes me, and I wake up feeling more exhausted than I can ever remember feeling before.

I drag myself out of bed and over to the mirror. My face looks a little better than it did last night, but not by much, and compared to normal, it still looks horrible. I can't do anything about it at the point, though, so I just push my hair back with a headband and get dressed like usual. It hurts to bend my knee, so putting my pants on is a struggle, but somehow through my haze of sleep deprivation I eventually manage to do it and make my way out to the kitchen for breakfast. It's then that I realize I'm so tired I'm not even hungry, so I just grab a granola bar and head out the door, figuring I'll probably make it to school right on time if I keep up such a sluggish pace.

It still hurts to take every step, but if I focus enough on something else, I don't feel it, so I distract myself by thinking about how great it's going to be when I finally sit down in my desk at school. After many grueling minutes of picturing my desk in various angles, I finally reach the school. I limp weakly to my desk and plop down in the seat immediately. I slightly over hyped how amazing it would feel, but I am relieved all the same, and I lay my head down and close my eyes only to be roused moments later.

I drag my face up from its position on the desk to see Makishima standing before me. "You look terrible," he says, but his voice is devoid of sympathy; his eyes twinkle. "And I don't just mean the bruise. Did you even go to sleep last night?"

"Yeah," I barely manage to get out around a yawn. "But I didn't... Until three." I lay my head back down on my right cheek and close my eyes. I am facing an internal conflict between my desire to talk to Makishima and my desire to sleep, but I'm too tired to decide which is really more important to me; my inability to keep my eyes open leads me to believe it is the latter.

"Whoa, three? You weren't at the hospital or anything, were you?" I can hear genuine concern in his voice now, and it's sweet, but I'm not awake enough to be touched. "Hey, don't go to sleep while I'm talking to you!"

"No... Reading..." And the next thing I know, it's third period.

I still feel awful, but I don't feel as awful as I did this morning. I can't believe I slept through two entire periods and then some without the teacher yelling at me to wake up. I look groggily up to the front of the class, and while I hear the teacher speaking, none of her words reach me. I look down at my desk to see a little note folded up resting near its front edge. I open it up as quietly as I can manage, which is still pretty loud, but the teacher doesn't say anything. I turn my attention to the note and the slanted handwriting that I know so well.

You can copy my notes later.

A thin smile stretches across my lips and I look up at the waves of iridescent hair in front of me. I love you so much, I think to myself, then look around quickly to make sure I didn't actually say it aloud; if I did, the class is surprisingly accepting. I fold the note back up and try once more to pay attention to the lesson, but this time it's Makishima, not my exhaustion, that's distracting me.

By the time we're released for lunch, I feel like I can focus again. I stand up to go to the cafeteria, and an immediate throb in my leg gets me leaning against my desk and wincing. Makishima sets his hand lightly on my shoulder. "Are you alright to walk?" he asks, concern clouding his eyes. I smile in response and stand up straight. At a light not from me, he smiles back, and we start our journey to the lunchroom.

When we finally arrive and sit down, I tear into my lunch like I haven't eaten in days. I can't believe how hungry I am, even though I only had a granola bar for breakfast this morning. I finish my entire lunch in minutes and frown because I'm still hungry. I look at Makishima, noticing that he's just been watching me, and he starts laughing.

"What are you laughing at?" I ask, disgruntled. "There's nothing funny here."

"You are a ridiculous human being," he says through hearty chuckles. He hands me a cookie. "Take this. I'm not gonna eat it, and I can see you're still hungry." He smiles when he offers it to me, so I can't say no even if I want to.

"So," I say, shoving the cookie in my mouth. "Why didn't the teacher wake me up this morning? I've never slept so soundly in class before."

"You're kidding, right?" When I just look at him dumbly, he taps his finger on his cheek. I reach up to my own cheek, when when it stings, I remember that I have an enormous bruise over half my face. I groan. "She thinks you got beat up yesterday and had to go to the hospital or something."

"Christ! She's just like my parents!" I bury my face in my hands. After a few seconds, I realize something and look back up at Makishima. "Why didn't you tell her what happened?" He shrugs.

"I didn't want her to wake you up." I can't help but smile so big it hurts my face. What did I ever do to deserve you as a friend? "What're you grinning about?"

"Oh, nothing. So, about the notes," I say, getting straight to business. "I've been awake since third period, but I absolutely couldn't pay attention. So I'm going to need to borrow all of your notes from this morning."

"You really are ridiculous," he says while his eyes. "But fine. You can copy all of them."

"You're my hero!" I mean it, but he just waves it away.

"Yeah, yeah. Pay attention during the afternoon classes, though, will you?"

"Sure."

After the end of seventh period, the class rushes out of their seats and the classroom at a nearly superhuman speed. It's Friday, so everybody wants to get home as quickly as possible. Except for me and Makishima, of course; we walk slowly both because I'm in pain and because he's trying to dig notes out of his back pack. Finally, he hands them to me with a heavy sigh.

"That's all of them. You better copy them tonight, though, because I also need to study them and therefore am coming to retrieve them tomorrow."

"Yeah, okay," I say and hobble off in the direction of my house. It really won't be a problem. I plan on getting them out of the way as quickly as possible so I can get back to reading, and once I get home, that's exactly what I do. I copy them down almost verbatim in record time and fling myself onto my bed. It hurts my knee a bit, but I flip open to my stopping point and jump straight into reading anyway.

As I read, I start to like the book more and more. It follows a prince named Otgonbayar, the thirteenth son of his parents and the only one to survive more than a few days after his birth. By the time he's born, his parents are already old, and his mother dies when he's a toddler. When he's in his teens, his dad dies too, leaving him in power. He calls in love with a servant named Nergüi who plays music for him at his palace, and when he learns that one of his advisors plans to force out the town where her family lives, he goes to an apothecary to buy poison and puts it in his drink at a palace dinner, killing him. The entire palace is in uproar trying to figure out who the killer is, and as his other advisors start to connect the dots and he fears Nergüi may get blamed and punished, he poisons them as well. When only a few remain and he realizes what he's done, he fakes his own death by burning his room to the ground. He then flees to Nergüi's hometown and becomes a servant to her family, shrouding his face in a white veil his mother had left behind, both to hide his identity and hideous burn scars, which explains the cover.

After I finish the book, I look over to the clock and nearly fall off my bed. It's 5:15 in the morning. I can't remember if I even ate dinner last night, but my stomach growls loud enough to answer me. I stumble out to the kitchen, but it's easy enough to see with the early morning light coming in through the bottoms of the windows. I grab a granola bar out of the cabinet and eat it quickly, then shuffle back to my room. I let all my weight fall onto the bed and I'm asleep before I even touch the mattress.

I wake to my mom shaking me furiously. "Wake up, Jinpachi! It's NOON."

"But I don't have anything to do today, Mom," I groan, rolling away to press my face in my pillow.

"That doesn't mean you're allowed to sleep all day," she cries, forcing me to roll back over. "Get UP."

I sit up and rub my eyes, gazing over at the book on my nightstand. I can't believe I finished it so quickly. But I do think I understand why Makishima likes it so much. I think he likes it because the main character is so flawed, and I think he likes it because the main character recognizes that he's flawed. I also think he likes it because it doesn't have a happy ending, but it doesn't have a bad ending either, and I don't think he's the kind of guy to believe in perfect happy endings. I don't think I would've liked it half as much if I hadn't tried to read it through his eyes or borrows his copy. I can't wait for him to come get his notes later so I can return his book so we can talk about it.

At around four my mom tells me that she and my dad are going to have a "date night" and won't be back until late, and that's when I make a decision.

When Makishima comes over later, I'm going to tell him that I love him.

~author's note~

Thanks for reading! This chapter is a little long, sorry. I'm gonna hurry with the next one.