A/N: Just a sprinkle of random drabbles bundled into one chapter for Kobayashi and Yoshino. Somehow the anime was aiming for some guy from Hanadera to pair up with Yoshino (at least in season 3) but you know how we love Rei/Yoshino more. But then again, this is just another setting for a probable future. How things went from "Yamayurikai" to college crap and all that, I don't know. It's just that I like to imagine them to be good friends.

So here goes.

HOW THEY WISH IT WAS RAINING

-TheSilentReader-

CHAPTER 14

Just Good Friends

There is nothing wrong with puffing a cigarette after she come across him. Tonight was the end of the long, sleepless week, and she knew that once she throws away the butt of a well-consumed cigarette, she would soon fall into a long sleep. She just had an exam critical enough to change a semester of crudely-made schedule, and she thought she might rethink of those plans because her score would probably as worthy as the energy-drink bottle she took this morning to stay awake. Enough to wish to God that she would pass, and enough, too (ironically), to make her repeat that course again.

Then she remembered. Just, ugh, for the love of—

"Last class for the semester?" He whispered, as he sat down next to her. The professor was his adviser, and he was close to him to barge in any of his classes without making the grumpy Professor Ikuhara go apeshit for anyone to open the lecture hall door while he passionately discusses about the worsening economy.

She just nodded to respond to his question, and at the same time to agree with Ikuhara's long soliloquy, just to make anyone who sees her understand that she was actually listening to the lecture.

Enough that the professor to notice her and Kobayashi. "Any thoughts, Shimazu-san?"

Crap.

In the middle of searching for something relevant to say to the terrorist-professor, Kobayashi murmured, "Agreeing with you is too fast to judge when there is still two years of observation until we can say that he's crap doing his job."

She said loud enough for her professor to hear her from the back—". . . crap doing—" And all that while she was repeating his words to the professor. And she just said an inappropriate word, ". . . well, doing his job."

"Yes. That was the point."

She heard a classmate—her over-eager classmate—gasped and looked Yoshino with a shocked face. Then, it all came to her; she just made her professor nod at her answer. No one had ever made Ikuhara agree to anyone's opinion ever since the semester started. And all that from Kobayashi. She just made an impression to a grumbling professor with the help of the latter's advisee.

That too made a different note about Kobayashi, the only pupil that had reached a year under Ikuhara without requesting for a change of adviser. Kobayashi must've found Ikuhara's dirtiest, darkest secret.

The professor turned away from them and proceeded to his lecture.

"I don't owe you anything." Yoshino mumbled, threatening.

"I just got you to his good side. What more can you ask?" Kobayashi stared at the black board, as if not they were really listening to the lecture.

"This is the end of the semester."

"A good way to impress him to pass you then."

When she thought that she'd finally gain something from this friendship, he just barged in her door, looking and smelling bad as ever.

"What the hell, Kobayashi—"

"Yoshino-saaaaan, I need your bathroom—" He complained as rushed to the toilet and belched out the junk of all that he drank. It was Friday, and finals are over. It was time for everyone to get sloshed and get laid.

She heard the flush of toilet then shouted, "Why are you not in your dorm room?"

She went inside just as she reflexively caught the T-shirt that Kobayashi threw away. Then she heard water flowing in the tub. Great.

"You have the best apartment, ever. You have a private bathroom, while everyone's going to the public baths."

"You didn't answer the question."

Yoshino let him finish the shower. A few minutes later, she saw him went out in her robe. She rolled her eyes as she wondered silently why she'd allow this kind of freedom for someone like Kobayashi. They act more than the defined customs for something like friendship. She rubbed her forehead and asked again.

"Why are you here, Kobayashi?"

Then she heard a laugh, "Someone's getting it. Finally. And I am a good friend."

"Ah."

Yuuki-san, that bastard. But not really, when he wasn't getting laid because of some reason.

"Is it Touko-chan?"

"Maybe. I dunno. I'll probably know tomorrow. They were fucking loud, actually. Too good to be true, but they sound like some good porn. I ran away just not to get an erection."

At this point, Yoshino just want to throw him out of the room. She wasn't getting any too, that's what came in her mind, and for Kobayashi to indirectly point that out was a good swing on how ironically depressing tonight was. It's the end of the grueling semester, but she's not getting any happier.

"You are disgusting. Can't you be more insensitive?"

Kobayashi looked at her like she'd said something stupid. "Yoshino-san, I get it. But don't get your 'I'm a woman and you're impolite' all over me. You're not like that."

He's got a point. "Dammit." Yep, but it's not an excuse to be so informal around her. But then, the room became quiet when they realized that Yuuki-san, finally, that bastard Yuuki-san, is finally getting some steam out. It was so amazing, Yoshino wanted to cry.

"Yeah. Blueball's getting it all out."

"Good for him."

The alcohol did get out of Kobayashi's system, and after hours of napping in Yoshino's bed, he woke up in her robe and found her sitting on her small balcony and taking small shots of . . . he can't tell. On the balcony, a cigarette was left to burn on the ashtray. He looked at his watch and found out that four hours has passed after midnight.

"Can I have that?" He pointed out to the cigarette that Yoshino was wasting.

"Sure."

"He's just getting it. That bastard Yuuki-san." She said after Kobayashi sat on the other side of the balcony.

"Yeah. You want it to be you?"

He asked as if she wasn't a girl. He reached for her glass and drank the remaining contents, leaving Yoshino in another suppressed fit. Rude to share glasses, but he didn't care. He seemed not waiting for a reply. But it was such a long day, and it sucked too, and it's after midnight, so she breached the subject as if it won't be brought up in the future.

"Yeah."

The comment was immediate: "You still can't get over him? I thought you got over him."

She stared at him with contempt. "Obviously I didn't."

He tore away from her glare and looked at the dark sky. "Lookit, Yoshino-san. You can't help that he just don't like you . . . like that. Just deal with it and move on."

She found no words to say after that.

He continued, but a litter quieter and shy, "He liked her too much for too long. He's lucky she gave him a chance. They deserve each other. But then, you're not happy it wasn't you. That's selfish, but I can't judge you by that."

When she didn't interrupt him like she usually do, he continued, "Yuuki-san isn't the only guy in the world you know."

When he looked at her, she was on the verge of sobbing. He came down from the balcony and embraced her as she was about to have her first mewl. He rubbed her back as she tried to cry as quietly as she allowed herself to.

When she calmed down, he went back to the room and looked for his bag pack, and when he came back, he was already burning a stick of green. "Somebody was handing this at the party like candies. You want?"

Apparently everyone thought they are dating. They're not.

Yumi asked her several times, and Yoshino trained herself not to be bogged down by Yumi's endless prodding. That says enough of her growing string of her patience. Rei-chan once commented that it was a good character development for Yoshino; she was already considered a saint for gaining patience for Yumi, of all people.

Kobayashi said that it's not the end of that.

They never thought about it. They were asked, together and individually, several times, it's just that they just couldn't imagine it. Yeah, Yumi once saw Kobayashi sleeping in her bed once or twice after she dropped by unannounced, and Yuuki twice saw Yoshino dragged him out of the dorm room not ashamed that Kobayashi was in boxers, but still, there was no room for love in it. Not even sex.

Surprisingly, Rei-chan tried not to get too hysterical after hearing about it from Sachiko-sama, who heard about it from Yumi-san, who forced Yuuki-san to spill everything about his best friend. Yoshino was already expecting a visit from that woman Eriko-sama, just to have a good hour of acerbic conversation. It was expected that Eriko-sama would always be attentive of every event of Yoshino's life.

"We're just friends."

"Understatement of the year." Noriko, who happened to be in the girls' night out, dropped it like some discarded shirt.

"Look, not everyone you see in my bed I had sex with."

Sachiko-san grimaced at the word and admonished not Yoshino but "Rei, Yoshino—"

"Oh, Sachiko, please not now."

Yumi, uninterrupted by her seniors, kept on sticking her nose to the business, "But Yoshino-san, did you, um . . . have that with every guy I've seen in your bed, right?"

Yoshino gave no resistance in stating what she told everyone over and over anyway, "Yeah, some boyfriends ago, but not Kobayashi, for God's sake."

"So Kobayashi-san is the exception?"

"Yeah. He's the 'zero' that my numerator won't consider as a denominator." She deadpanned, not minding that her notion of a joke is actually nauseating for everyone.

Except Shimako, who chuckled, clearly got the whole joke. If Sei-sama was around, she would be stabbing herself thinking of the reason why Shimako was even her sister when they don't even share the same humor. Well, who knows.

"You mean you just won't—"

"Oh my God, no. Just no." Yoshino gagged.

Noriko pointed, "Did you ever ask Kobayashi-san if he saw you as a woman?"

"Haven't talked about it."

"Why not?"

"We just didn't."

"Why didn't we talk about it?"

"Does it matter?"

She was slicing the onions when she stopped and pointed her knife at Kobayashi, who was sitting in front of her table, drinking her orange juice. "Look, Kobayashi," she waved her knife like a wand, "It's not like I am interested, it's just that I want to know if at some point in this friend—if we call this 'friendship'—that you got interested in dating me?"

His eyes bulged, then looked at her suspiciously. "This doesn't sound like you're not interested."

She put the knife down and a sharp crunch was heard from the tore onions. "Just answer the stupid question."

Kobayashi rolled her eyes. "You mean, fucking you?"

Yoshino grabbed a lettuce and cut it into half in a predicted slice. "Yes—no, yes. That' it. Like if you're attracted to me enough to think about having sex with me."

He swallowed his belch. "I don't know. No."

"Why? Am I not that womanly enough?" Slice.

He put the glass of orange juice down. "Look, you are attractive. If this is about your self-esteem again—"

"Then if I'm attractive, then why didn't you even—" Slice.

"By gods, Yoshino, have you ever considered the men you dated before? You got laid with them, at some point right?"

Mid-crunch—"Yeah."

She finished that slice slower than she first intended.

Kobayashi got up and opened the refrigerator to get the jug of orange juice for another refill. "And through the course of one of those relationships, they wanted to do it with you, several times, right?"

"Yeah." Slower slice.

Kobayashi tore the lid open and pour down his second helping. "So, there's no way you're not attractive. They considered fucking you, for one thing."

"Good point." She threw some of the unwanted leaves in the trash bin.

He gulped another fill all the way down. "You are stupid when it comes to yourself that I want to throw up. This conversation with you is the worst ever."

Then it was back to her cooking lunch. Then she said:

"It's not like I wanted to sleep with you, I just want to know if you did. Have you ever asked that, if I ever wanted to sleep with you?"

Kobayashi once more, rolled his eyes. "Oh, gods."

"Really, 'coz this conversation isn't over until you answer my question." She just finished pouring mixing steamed rice into the pan.

"Fine, fine." He conceded, as he sat down again to watch her mix the rice with the vegetables and ground meat. "I asked myself that once."

"Then what happened?"

"Then I just thought our relationship is so much better if sex is not involved, so I left it alone. Never to be asked again."

"Well, that is sensible." She said.

She mixed and mixed and mixed. Then she saw Kobayashi handing her a big bowl from his seat.

He agreed, "It is. So, let's just be bro's and get this out of our system, okay?" He moved the bowl with his hand to make his suggestion get into her head, emphasizing it.

Then she poured the contents of the pan into the bowl he's holding. "Okay. Awkwardly enough, glad we went out of this."

He set the bowl on the middle of the table and moved to get two smaller bowls and two large spoons. He raised his fist above their food.

She raised hers too.

Then they bumped them to each other. "Glad we saw this through."

"She's not my girlfriend."

"So you haven't fucked her. That's good."

He narrowed his eyes to a fellow university student who lived in the same dormitory as Kobayashi. But the guy, who he observed to be in some sort of a varsity club, dismissed Kobayashi's discomfort over the topic. "Good? Meaning?"

"Nothing. Nothing, dude."

One can expect that this topic is so typical inside the common bath house—Kobayashi was about to finish scrubbing himself when this jock nudge his shoulder for his attention. Without his glasses, he couldn't see the details of his face.

Oh, another of Yoshino's admirers. To get to the girl, be friendly to the guy nearest to her.

He was fairly intimidated; to his disadvantage, he wasn't wearing his glasses. Even so, he knew that he would humor this one. He's friendly and for the months that Kobayashi knew him, he wasn't that bad. But that didn't give him the avenue of saying that his relationship with Yoshino is not his fucking business.

One good thing though, at least he asked. He wasn't that bad to Kobayashi. Not yet.

"She's like a twin, you know. A sister." A subtle warning that Kobayashi cared for Yoshino greatly. But then, what can Kobayashi expect when the guy literally was into himself and not minding a single fuck and just kept on talking.

"Coz I think she's really hot." He said. "You won't be beat the shit out of me if I ask her out?"

Then the bastard laugh and nudged him again, only this time it was more forceful, pointing something so obvious. Kobayashi sniggered his way just keep himself from rolling his eyes. Yeah, keep thinking that I can't beat the shit out of you. You might be stronger and could maul a bear but I can poison your beer you fucker.

Snickering still, Kobayashi just said, "Only if she asked me to."

The jock was not even listening. "Okay. Wait, does she have a boyfriend? Naah, I don't think she does. Am I right, four-eyes? Am I right?"

"I don't think that's—"

"I'm gonna ask her out. You gotta love a girl who drags men in boxers' outta their dorm rooms. So, dude, when you see her sometime, get her to know about me, 'kay? You know, say nice things."

Kobayashi doesn't even know anything about him to justify the "nice things" he was referring to.

"So someone in my dorm noticed you and told me you're hot."

It's was the fifth time that he was asked as a buffer for the guys in his dorm checking out Yoshino. It was a typical discussion between them, like devil-incarnate professors for Yoshino, and video games for Kobayashi.

"Where did he get that?"

"When he saw you dragging me half-naked out of my dorm room months ago."

Yoshino whistled. "That's a turn-on for him? There's a masochist in a nutshell."

He neglected her comment. "So, he's asking me if it's okay to ask you out."

"Why you and why not me?"

"He thought we are fuck-buddies. The guy is full of contradictions. One time he's nice, then he starts to be a jackass."

She let him finish. Sometimes she just have to be quiet and not interrupt him; he could talk for hours without realizing he's revealing more than he should. "Not a nice impression. I want to see his profile."

He went to her desk and opened her laptop to pop the browser and log in his "He's not in my list of friends. But for your eyes," He searched the jock's name in the social network's search tab. "Here. So, you interested?"

"Looks good enough." Then, after a beat, she jested, "Does he have a large dick?"

He grimaced not at her audacity, but the mental image itself. "Why are you asking me that?"

"Hmn. Maybe he'll just like me for my body."

"That I can tell, but check him out first. Gauge him, at least."

"Oh, I will."

Then, she went to the bathroom. As she closed the door, she heard him reminding her, "Let me know if he did something stupid."

"And what, you'll gonna poison his beer?" She opened the shower.

"That's what I thought when he was telling me to endorse him to you."

She snickered.

"How was it?"

"It didn't work out."

Girl talk. She likes it when someone else is in the hotseat—like Yumi, she's reveals and describes too much—but not when it's Yoshino's turn.

"Oh. Why?" It was also not helping that Yumi was the one asking the questions; she has a way of extracting information.

"He's boring."

"Why?" Again, the why question.

"There's so many things . . . why am I answering you anyway?"

"Because . . . I am your best friend? Come on, work with me." Again, with Yumi's puppy-eyes.

Yoshino raised an eyebrow. "It's just simple: he's boring and we have nothing in common."

"In just one date, you all figure that out?" Yumi needed to get out more, Yoshino thought.

"Yeah, in just one date, Yumi-san."

"Well I thought—"

"Well you thought what?"

Yumi's eyes bulged out then began moving away from her, as if she was hiding something. No, she was hiding something from her. An idea, an opinion—Yoshino knew, because Yumi was so predictable in cases like this.

"Oh, nothing." Yumi mumbled.

"Stop it and just be honest with me."

"You know what I was gonna say."

"No, I don't."

Yumi took a deep breath, garnering her strength. She looked straight at Yoshino's eyes while she balanced herself with her feet. She squared her shoulders—she was again acting like she's preparing for war. It was so identical with Sachiko-sama's stance that Yoshino began to get concerned of this opinion Yumi was concealing. Some habits don't die, when it was the Ice Princess who trained her.

"You told me several times that you know what I'll say just looking at me. So I stopped talking, just because I thought you know what I'll say, and that you don't want to hear it from me."

"No, really, Yumi; I don't know. Tell me."

"No."

"Tell me."

"Fine! Because I thought that guy was not as interesting, unlike Kobayashi-san."

Well, come to think of it, it's true.

"How was it?"

He was once again in her apartment. "I want you to be the last person to ask that fucking question."

She saw him holding a glass of orange juice. Ugh, what a freeloader.

She told herself so many times that resupplying the grocers at a regular weekly basis would just make Kobayashi a freeloader. She was even more surprised that even in the last week of classes, she supplied enough to last more than a week. Maybe she needed to tell him to stuff her fridge.

When she opened her fridge, she found two boxes of juice that she didn't buy. Kobayashi knew she'd grill his balls if he dared consume her supplies again. Her bad mood simmered a little.

"So it didn't work out."

Yoshino poured herself a glass too. "How did you know? You talked to him?"

He drank, then said, "No, I didn't. And if it went well, you are probably gushing about it to me right now and must've told every single one of your girl friends about it. And you can't wait to tell others about it. Duh."

"I'm not that talkative." She assured.

"But you complain a lot." He asked after he finished his glass. "So it didn't work out. Why? Small dick?"

She laughed. "No. It's just . . . he's boring."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

A moment passed and he asked slowly. "Did he do anything stupid to you?"

She assured him by rolling her eyes. "No, nothing like that. He knows his place, or else my shinai's probably already landed hard his nuts. He's just . . . predictable."

He sighed loudly and indelicately.

"It's gonna be hard, taking a bath at the bathhouse for weeks. But not hard enough. " Kobayashi grumbled.

"At least you won't have the criminal burden to poison his beer."

Several days after the failed date, Yoshino asked, "So why are you not dating, Kobayashi?"

"Me? Well, no one's interesting."

She noticed that Kobayashi did not care. "That's it? But it's not like you're such a Casanova to act as if you've seen all of the spectrum of women around."

He looked at her with a stare that oftentimes rendered him to think that Yoshino really is not that quick at times. "No, not all guys are like that. It's just I'm not good at courting women, you know. And you know I give people the impression of a boring math geek."

"You are a math geek."

"That's the point. Nobody likes a math geek."

She laughed, and he laughed with her, but trying to suppress it. She said, "Well, I like you like that. A geek."

"But not to date a math geek."

Then, how come this didn't come to her before: "How about the other geeky girls in the Math department? Not even one?"

Hence, his answer: "They are still in their latency phase, solving their way to the top of the Math exams. No, penises don't interest them."

Then, her counter-argument: "What if you're wrong? This is not like high school when there's a solid line between an achiever and a slut."

"You have a point, but that is not the reason."

"Well, have you considered that someone can actually like you?"

"No, I don't."

"Here comes the low self-esteem convos we're having."

"Well, do you pity me enough to date me?"

"Well, do you pity me enough to date me?" She copied.

"Gods, we are not going to breach into that subject. We talked about this."

"Nightmare."

She took the weed, and had the first puff.

He asked a very out-of-character question. "So why are we not dating again?"

"You're a boring math geek."

"And you complain a lot."

"Okay, let's just stick with that."

"Okay."

Soon, the weed had been smoked; they had nothing else to do.

Then, they kissed.

"Nope. This is not working, isn't it?"

It was innocent enough. Too innocent that the laughed at the audacity for them to silently consider something beyond the comforting friendship that they have. But it seems like Yoshino was interested to find other reasons to disprove Kobayashi's nonchalance about them being—theoretically—together.

Maybe: "On second thought, are you gay?"

"No. It's just that this isn't working."

"As weird as this goes, yeah. Why is this not working?"

"Maybe some other time."

"Maybe it's the weed. I think I'm high."

They sat on the balcony, just quietly enduring until their balance return to them after that little smoke episode. Then, she remembered that she was actually drinking something before Kobayashi started grilling him about Yuuki.

Maybe they just have to talk properly about it. The conversation always boils down to that anyway, and she thought that this time, and two hours before dawn breaks is the best time for it.

Over a bottle of vodka, two shot glasses, and the light evening breeze, he surmised, "Maybe it's too predictable?"

They drank until the sun's rays become unbearable that they retired to Yoshino's bed after closing windows to block all the sunlight. It's the end of the finals week anyway, they have all the reason to sleep for two days and no one would complain.

But what was left was an empty liquor bottle, and the two of them on the bed, just hugged each other to sleep.

It was just a platonic friendship that everyone fail to recognize. Only they understood.

END