A/N: Hey guys. So, I'm not really happy with this chapter. It feels so cliché and so overdone. I've seen this scene play out in every romcom. But I just wanted to highlight some things with this chapter (although I did it very poorly…) – I'll explain what at the end, in my concluding author's note below. Enjoy, I guess?

Chapter 7: Talks

"Mochu!"

"Woah!" Mochu who had been quietly reading, jumped in his seat, surprised by Natsume's sudden voice and rather urgent tap on the shoulder. "Shit, man – you scared me! Don't grab people like that."

"I need to talk to you."

Mochu looked at his friend quizzically. Natsume seemed frenzied, confused: he seemed as if he was in dire need of a friend. Mochu closed his book shut, and turned to him. "I'm all ears. What's up?"

Natsume exhaled, "I'm just going to say this really quickly."

"Okay…"

"So… well, last night I slept-over at Mikan's." Mochu raised his eyebrows at this statement, urging him to go on. "And well, it was really nice. Her room was really nice. Well, everything was really nice, especially her." Mochu just looked confused now. "I had a really good time."

"… Good for you?"

"I mean, I had a really good time."

Mochu frowned. "Is that a euphemism?"

"What? No. I just had a really good time with her."

"…You know how you said you were going to say this really quickly? Well, hate to break it to you but you're not doing that. At all. I have no fucking clue in what you're trying to say."

"I think I like her." Natsume blurted out.

Mochu raised his eyebrow, like an adult would to an oblivious child. "Then you should have just said so."

"Didn't you hear me? I said I think I like her."

Mochu glanced back down at his book, his attention drifting. "I heard you the first time, mate."

"Do you understand me?" How could Mochu read at a time like this? Natsume pulled his book from his hand, and held it up away from him. Once Mochu's gaze (well, glare) was back on him, Natsume further clarified, "I'm saying I think I like her. Not just like her… like-like her."

Mochu sighed. "I understood the first time, mate. Can I have my book back?"

"I don't think you get it."

Mochu groaned and rolled his eyes as he cried, "God almighty! I get it, alright? You love Mikan! Did you really have to scare the shit out of me just to tell me that?"

Natsume looked scandalized. "Why are you so calm? Why aren't you surprised in the least?"

Mochu didn't know whether to laugh or groan. "Natsume, it's very obvious that you like Mikan. You spend most of your time with her nowadays, and more importantly, anyone can see that she makes you happy. Now, calm down and give me back my book."

"I am calm."

"Clearly."

"So, what do I do?"

Natsume was pathetically clueless, but as his friend, Mochu knew he should steer his clueless friend in the right direction. "You should tell her how you feel and ask her out."

Natsume's jaw clenched nervously. Natsume had thought of this last night, as he lay wide-awake in Mikan's bed, while Mikan slept peacefully in his arms. There, he concentrated on her breath, feeling how her chest rose and fell. He focused on feeling how their bodies were pressed against each other—how both her arm and leg were thrown over him. He fixated on their proximity; on the intimacy, his heart swelling every time she snuggled closer, molding her body against his.

When Natsume didn't say anything, Mochu continued, with a teasing voice, "And there I was thinking you'd be the type just to walk up to women and demand them to be your girlfriend."

Natsume frowned. "Only a psychopath would do that."

"I thought you always got what you wanted."

"What? No, of course I don't." Resignedly, he returned Mochu's book back.

Mochu could now see this was no time for light jokes. Natsume looked unamused, confused, agitated, scared even. And so, with no trace of that teasing smile, Mochu sincerely and seriously said, "Listen, Natsume. Mikan's a really nice girl. I like her. And I know you like her too—much more than I do. I like that she's challenging you to think, and broadening your mind. She's helping you becoming a more open-minded person. And I'm sure you're doing exactly the same for her, without you realizing so. So… so, it would be a pity and shame not to ask her out, just because you fear rejection."

Mikan, Natsume knew, stimulated both his mind and libido.

"It's just… we're both so similar. Two months ago, I would have told you I didn't want a serious relationship 'til I was thirty. But now…"

"Well, if you've changed so much, no reason to why Mikan wouldn't change too. You said it yourself: you're both similar."

Out of nowhere, Anna barged in between them; she sat heavily on her boyfriend's lap, gave him a quick kiss, before she turned to Natsume. "Now, what were you two bookworms talking about, hm? You both look so serious!" She placed her hands on Mochu's cheeks, and pulled his lips upwards, joking, "Why so serious?"

"Hey, Anna," Natsume nodded, "you alright?"

She let her boyfriend go. "Fine, I guess. Well, as fine as anyone could be after a three hour lecture."

"Oh? So you medics are done for the day?"

"We finished two hours ago. I just woke up from a nap."

Natsume frowned slightly. That's odd. He had texted Mikan two hours ago; she hadn't replied, but he had assumed that was because she was held up in class. "Was Mikan in the lecture this morning?"

"Yup," Anna casually answered, "I sat next to her. That cow doodled all over my notes again."

He had texted her earlier, asking if she wanted to have lunch with him. Lunchtime was essentially over. Her silence meant no.

"Do you know where she is now?"

Anna yawned. "Well," she put a hand over her hand, and her eyes crinkled shut, "she was with Akira in the quad last time I saw her."

"Akira? Who's Akira?"

Mochu inwardly groaned when he saw the expression on Natsume's face. Jealousy, it would seem, didn't even suit the most handsome of faces. He wished he could direct the conversation elsewhere, but the determination in Natsume's eyes signaled that it was too late for any intervention. So, instead to put his faith in his girlfriend; inconspicuously he squeezed her waist, silently telling her to stop torturing Natsume unconsciously.

Anna didn't understand Mochu's squeezes. Thinking nothing of them, she nonchalantly delivered the final blow, "They were a thing back in first year. Second year too. Probably even now."

Abruptly, without saying anything, Natsume stood up and left.

Anna, blinked, baffled. She turned to Mochu, who gave a resigned shrug of the shoulders, before patting his girlfriend on her shoulder.

"Shit," Anna clapped a hand to her mouth, "I shouldn't have said that, should I?"

"It's fine, honey—"

"Oh shit… fuck!" Anna bit her lip, worried and regretful now. "I thought they weren't serious. I didn't mean to stir shit up!"

"Honey—"

Anna now looked irate. "Ugh! This is why 'casual' relationships never work out! They insist and insist that they are not 'serious', and that they are not each other's girlfriend or boyfriend, despite the predictable conclusion that one or the other always gets jealous, and suddenly, no one, including themselves, knows what they are. I mean, how was I supposed to know that Natsume was going to sulk at Akira's name, huh? Just three weeks ago he was still insisting he wasn't 'serious' with Mikan." She shook her head, muttering, "Fuck's sake…"

"Shhh…" Mochu was smiling; he always enjoyed her outbursts. "I know. That's why you're my girlfriend and I'm your boyfriend. That's why they're silly, and we're smart. No grey area between us."

"Good… because I hate grey."

Natsume found Mikan with a man with long black hair. They were sitting on a bench in the quad talking animatedly, and Natsume couldn't stand it. He walked straight up to them, his eyes focused on Mikan.

When they noticed his appearance, the conversation ceased. Mikan looked up at Natsume with a smile on her face—she looked happy to see him; there was no trace of guilt in her expression, and that dismayed Natsume even more.

"Natsume," Mikan's voice was welcoming, "hey—"

"Can we talk?"

Mikan's smile withered. She was perplexed by his cold, demanding tone. She agreed nonetheless. Sending Akira an apologetic look (a look she did not spare for him, Natsume noted), she sat up and walked away with Natsume to a nearby tree.

She looked concerned. "What's wrong, baby?"

Natsume felt anguish when she called him that. He felt so human when she called him baby—he felt like a packet of dust made up of jealousy. It was painful to feel such powerful human emotions.

"Are you fucking that guy?"

Mikan's concern dissipated immediately. She blinked, shocked, but then composed herself: with an alert gleam in her eye, she warily demanded, "What did you say?"

"I said," he sounded like a mean child, "are you fucking that guy?"

Mikan squared her shoulders and stood her ground defiantly. "Is that any of your business?"

Natsume stared, offended. "What! Yes! Of course!"

But Mikan was just as offended. How dare he take her away from her so unceremoniously, and demand questions in that seething tone? And to think of yesterday—yesterday when everything was so sweet, so lovely between them in her room, buried in her bed, when they whispered warm words against each other's skin…

"What," Mikan spat back, "just because you wrote one sloppy poem about my cunt, it's yours now?"

Natsume menacingly leered, "Hey, it wasn't my poem that was sloppy: it was your cunt that was wet. Wet for me."

Mikan fiercely glared at him. "What do you want, Natsume?"

"I just came to ask whether you're sleeping with that guy. Or any other guy for that matter." Underneath that callous gaze, Natsume was afraid; he was scared of her answer. His heart was beating fatalistically, terrified, as his mind pleaded and begged, 'please no, please no, please no, please no, oh God, please no, please no…'

Her nostrils flared. "That guy is Akira. He's my friend."

His heart sunk. "So you are—"

"When did I say that?!" She cried, furious. "I didn't say that!"

"But you didn't not say that!" Natsume cried, just as passionately.

"Because I don't want to dignify your question with a response! How dare you, Natsume!"

"What have I done!"

"What have I done?" Mikan questioned, her gaze fierce and blazing. "What have I done wrong, Natsume? As far as I'm concerned, I have done nothing wrong. Not to mention, as far as I'm concerned, we're having a casual relationship so your possessiveness has no valid founding in the first place."

To Natsume, she had essentially just confirmed that she was seeing other people besides him. He felt his chest tightening—but not in the same ecstatic way it had done the night before, but instead, he felt empty despite the painful tightening.

"… I haven't been with anyone else since the first day I met you at Luca's."

If he was hoping to garner sympathy from her with that comment, he did not succeed. Mikan, who was still affronted, showed Natsume no compassion. "So what? Do you want an award for that? Natsume," she exhaled, "we're not allowed to get suspicious so long as we're in a casual relationship."

Natsume's sadness contorted into anger. He bristled coldly, "So you wouldn't mind if I just walked up to that girl and invited her to my bed? You wouldn't care?"

"I might care. I would care." Natsume was taken aback by Mikan's honesty. "Yes, I'd care very much. But you're not my boyfriend, so if you wanted to go up to that girl, I can't stop you. At least, right now I don't have any right to stop you. Do you understand me?"

Despite her honesty, he continued to glare at her. "Sounds like bullshit to me." And with those unkind words accompanied with his unkind eyes, he stalked off, away from Mikan and Akira.

She called after him, angrily, "So much for your feminist awakening, asshole!"

Ignoring her, she strode away. He was going back to his room: he wanted to be alone with his thoughts in the darkness.

"I thought you both weren't looking for a relationship." Persona deadpanned, sighing slightly, "In fact, I seem to recall you being happy to know that she wasn't a 'relationship type of girl'."

Natsume was unsure how their Literary Club meeting that somehow morphed into a 'Give Natsume Advice' meeting. Honestly, it had happened so fast—and here he was now, sitting, listening to Persona's advice. (Could his morning get any weirder?)

"You kept on saying that it wasn't serious," Yuu pointed out, "in front of Mikan. So how on earth is she to know you suddenly feel differently about your relationship? I think it's completely unfair that you suddenly sprung this on her." Yuu may not have that much experience, granted, but he knew right from wrong and the difference between justified anger and unjustified anger. "And the manner in how you sprung it on her was unfair too. What you should have done is tell her you want to be exclusive and have a relationship with her. How else is she supposed to understand you?"

"She probably thought you were seeing other people too." Persona added.

"I never gave that impression," Natsume tried to make a case for himself, "I was with her practically every night!"

"Irrelevant." Persona swatted away his argument. "Your reputation, nonchalance and dating history most likely hinted to her the possibility that you were seeing other people. Even if you thought you were being exclusively kind to her, if you didn't communicate your feelings with her, of course she's going to make her own assumptions, thinking that was just the way you act around all girls—"

"But she—"

"Natsume, enough. Seriously, shut up." Mochu finally stepped in. "Look, men have been bitching about how women are inconstant since the Bible."

"Since classical literature." Yuu corrected.

"Since the Epic of Gilgamesh." Persona further corrected with a tone of finality.

"My point is," Mochu did not seem impressed with the intellectual interruptions and did not let his eyes wander off Natsume, "what you want to say has already been said before for thousands of years. And frankly, after all these years, it's getting really quite boring."

Yuu nodded, hearteningly, "Imagine this was the other way around, Natsume. Imagine she came up to you when you were talking to a friend, and demanded to know whether you were sleeping with this friend or not. You wouldn't think you had done anything wrong either. Because… because she hasn't done anything wrong. Frankly, you're in the wrong."

"You're just upset at the possibility of her liking someone else more than you. You're scared at the thought that she can be intimate with other people, but you have no right to fear for that if you're not her boyfriend."

Natsume sighed deeply. He stayed silent for a while. But then, with a resigned look, he surrendered, "You're right." He rubbed his chin, with his hand, "You're all right."

Mochu grimaced before give Natsume's shoulders two hard pats. "Glad we stopped you before that got ugly."

Rather than apologising over the phone, Natsume thought it would be best to apologise to Mikan vis-à-vis, so to help his 'communication' with her, as his friends put it. So, remembering where her room was, carefully tracing his memory, Natsume found himself standing outside her door, hoping for the best.

He knocked, then exhaled, feeling a lump in his throat – a lump, he knew, that was made up of sickening guilt and deafening fear.

After some shuffling, Mikan opened her door, with her reading glasses perched on her nose, and her hair all atop of her head. "Oh," she slightly closed the door, "I didn't expect to see you. I was… I'm studying." Although her words and actions weren't so encouraging, her tone was not cold and mean, but soft and honest. "Look," she sighed slightly, "before you give me the slut lecture, I'm just going to say now that I'm not apologising for my actions—"

"I'm not here to lecture you," Natsume promised, "and I don't expect an apology from you. In fact, I just got the reverse-slut lecture from my friends, and I'm here to apologise to you, about what I said to you yesterday. You were right, and I had no right in treating you that way, especially so cruelly. I was wrong."

Her door opened slightly. Instead of standing behind her door, Mikan stepped out to face him on her doorstep. "You acted like an asshole yesterday."

"I know."

"You really hurt my feelings."

"I'm sorry."

"I told you Akira was my friend, and you just jumped to conclusions anyway."

"I know. I'm sorry." Natsume tried to explain himself, "When you said he was your friend, I just thought he was a friend… you know, like me. I got really ugly and jealous. But like you said yesterday, I'm not your boyfriend. So," he swallowed, "instead of allowing myself to get to the point of jealousy, I should have just acted sooner. But now I'm scared I've blown my chances, considering my behavior yesterday." She edged closer to him, with an anticipatory gleam in her eyes; he sighed and admitted, "Mikan, I really like you. And I don't think you know how much I like you, but that's not surprising, because I haven't told you until now. And you're probably still mad at me, but I just need to get this out. I want you to be my girlfriend."

Mikan didn't look too stunned at this confession. In fact, she didn't really react.

Natsume then felt he needed to fill the silence, "I understand if you say no. I just thought I should ask you, so you know how I feel about you. Just so there's no misunderstanding on my part."

She then softly pulled his hands into hers. With a small smile, she said, "Come in."

He followed her inside her sweet smelling room. It felt like home. She felt like home. His heart sighed.

"Medicine takes up about 95 percent of my time." Mikan said quietly, as she moved towards her desk. On her desk lay her laptop and her thick medical textbooks that made the Riverside Chaucer seem like a light read. Pens and paper were scattered, and Natsume saw she had doodled on the corners of some pages. "That means I get 5 percent to myself. I've always stayed away from relationships because I felt that I couldn't accommodate one into my lifestyle. But when I'm with you, the 5 percent doesn't feel so little. You're the only person I know that seeks me out during the 5 percent. You do it so effortlessly. You make 5 percent seem like 100 percent. You make my life better. I know this is all sounding very selfish – like I'm just using you in my free time, but I want you to know that it's you who makes the difference, and I'm so happy that during these past few weeks, you chose to spend time with me. Thanks to you, I know now that saying a relationship was impossible because of my study was just a bullshit excuse. It was impossible before you because I hadn't met you."

Mikan hands crawled behind his back, and she held his shoulders, as she pressed her face against his chest. He held her tightly there.

"I think I love you." she mumbled against him.

"I know I love you."

"No one's ever made this happy or this sad before."

"I'm sorry."

She looked up to him. "You don't understand. I don't cry. Honestly! I don't. But you made me cry really easily yesterday."

"I'm sorry."

"You're apologising for the right reason, but, I won't lie to you, if I didn't cry last night, I probably wouldn't have realized my feelings towards you." She buried her head against him again. "But please never treat me like that against."

"I promise."

"Don't make promises if you can't keep them."

"I can keep this one."

She sniffed, and for a moment, Natsume was worried that she was crying. But when she shifted slightly, he saw that she was scratching her nose. "Your jumper's itchy."

He held her chin. He kissed her. She kissed him back. It started off soft and gentle, but soon, Mikan's arms were around his neck, and his were clutching her hair. They breathed against each other, but before it got too passionate, Mikan rested her forehead on his lips. He automatically kissed it, over and over.

She sighed, as she looked in the direction of her desk. "I'm really sorry, but I need to submit this before 9pm."

"That's okay. I understand."

"Stay here?"

He nodded.

"I'll be done soon."

And so, Natsume stripped down to his boxers and climbed into her soft bed. She had turned off the lights, and so only the desk lamp illuminated the room, and he silently watched her back, as she scribbled on paper and typed on her laptop. He didn't know whether it was the relief of this evening going even better than he had ever hoped, or whether it was because he was just so content, but Natsume found himself drifting in and out of sleep.

He was snug in her bed, in her sweet smelling room, and the peaceful sight of her studying all became a warm lullaby to him…

As soon as Mikan clicked the 'submit' button, she swiveled on her chair with a bright smile, hoping to be greeted by Natsume. Instead, she found a sleeping Natsume. Her smile turned serene; she turned her light off before she let herself into her bed. It was still only 20:47pm, but there was nowhere else she would rather be. Natsume was facing in the opposite direction, so she crawled towards him, pressed her body against his, and spooned him from behind.

He sleepily reacted by unconsciously turning to face her, and so, she cradled his head under her chin and stroked his hair. She felt his breath against her collarbone.

She let him sleep, and soon, she was asleep. Together, early in the evening, they slept.

A/N: I am SO SORRY for the delay! Yeah… this "Summer" project has clearly failed (um, how is it already October… what the actual hell. Did we just skip two months or something…?). I won't abandon it though – I'll keep it going. Maybe it'll be completed by next summer, haha. Blame life and all its curveballs and complications!

So, yes, this chapter. Confusion, anger, forgiveness and love: see what I mean by cliché rom-com trope? Ah well. But I wanted Natsume to understand his mistake because I feel like men get away with saying shit like that so easily…