Today was tiring. Very, very tiring.
And Sho! Oh God, Sho...I don't know what I'm going to do with him.
Well, actually I do...sort of...you're not going to find out for a while though :P
Short chapter and probably going to be unfunny as well. I can't bring myself to write something funny just after a funeral.
And yes, you do eat Tea! It's the main afternoon meal. You drink tea, but you eat Tea...
Ok...now I can see why someone not from Great Britain would get confused at that...but look! It has a capital letter! That means that it's a meal. And hey, you learn something new every day. Think of it as some random trivial from GB.
Warning: slight OOC-ness – though I try to keep it as IC as possible.
Disclaimer: The characters in this chapter are not mine – the plot is though, as well as the skiing events which I put the characters through. They're all mine.
Beta'd by Aerisiera
Advent 09
December 16th – 9 days to go
It hurt to walk.
It hurt to walk so much, but Kyoko filed away the pain, repeating to herself the lessons that Sho's mother taught her when she was younger.
Don't let anyone see the pain, the first priority is the customer.
True, Kanae wasn't a customer, but she was a friend and as such Kyoko didn't want her worrying over a little pain.
She had worried enough over the past few days because of her. Kyoko still felt guilt at the thought.
It was she who put that shadow in Kanae's eyes. It was she who had made Maria even clingier than she ever had been before.
And she felt absolutely terrible about it, which made it easier to hide the guilt and the pain she was in.
She sighed in relief as she sank into the deep tub, the warm water easing some of the aches and pains from her joints, especially in her hands and feet. Sometime she would need to speak with Kanae as thinking about everything just made her worry.
But she couldn't right now as Kanae and Lory had taken Maria back up to the mansion to get some more supplies and arranging the staff that were currently there and they wouldn't be coming back until later tonight.
She needed to know how Sho was doing.
He may have been an ass to her, but she couldn't deny the bonds they had made growing up. As much as it rankled her to admit, they had been childhood friends. Rivals. Sho had been her first love for God's sake. And yes, he had used her and broken her heart...but he had also taken the brunt of the storm for her, sheltering her.
She knew without a doubt that she owed him her life.
She just didn't know how she should feel about that.
A part of her still wanted to see his blood for the pain he had put her through...
But another part was arguing with her. It was small but steadily gaining in volume.
Sho had saved her life.
But Sho destroyed the life she had had, that's why she had followed the path of revenge in the first place.
But she wasn't really after revenge now, was she? The path she had taken had diverged and now she was doing this for herself, to make herself a better person. She was someone she liked now, someone that could stand on their own two feet without depending solely on anyone else. Sho had given her that.
Sho didn't deserve forgiveness.
Sho had asked for forgiveness and she had granted it.
The poisonous voice in the back of her mind fell silent. And that's all there was too it, Kyoko supposed.
Sho had asked, and she had given.
She refused to believe it was because she was falling back into her old ways – doing everything he asked of her. That wasn't it at all.
She had had the choice, she could have refused him.
But when it came right down to it, she didn't want to. And she wanted to believe that it was a mark on how much she had grown and developed as a person that, when faced with all she had ever wanted – namely Sho begging for her forgiveness – she had cast aside her petty thoughts of revenge and done something that would give another person a sense of peace, even if she wasn't entirely certain that he deserved complete forgiveness straight away.
Kyoko wondered if Sho realised just what exactly she had given him.
She smiled to herself when she then realised that it didn't matter to her if he did.
---/---
Yashiro was tired.
He had spent the past week or so being on the receiving end of Ren's continuous bad temper.
Sure, that might not sound so bad...especially when told that it was the silent treatment. But Ren had a way of making you feel so small when he looked at you and even smaller when he didn't.
It was in the way he held himself, the tenseness that appeared when someone he didn't like got close to him. The way that tenseness melted into something liquid – the way Yashiro had only ever seen trained fighters do – like he is preparing to lash out at any provocation.
It was in the way he smiled politely at you, instead of glaring or yelling.
It lulled you into a false sense of security. Made you think he had forgiven you when really the bad feelings were festering and growing.
It was when he was more Ren than anyone else that you really had to watch your back.
Because Ren only acted completely Ren when he was struggling to hide who he really was.
The darkness inside him that he struggled to contain.
Yashiro swallowed at the thought. It had taken Ren this long to finally get himself under control. To enforce Ren so much that the man was practically walking on ice.
It scared Yashiro how long Ren had taken to do this. Either Ren was slipping or Yashiro had betrayed Ren so badly that the man had struggled for days to bring a modicum of sanity and reason back to himself.
If that was the case then Yashiro didn't even want to think about how close he had come to death.
And Yashiro had no problem in thinking that the man Ren was trying to hide beneath that mask of his could do something like that if provoked enough.
But that was neither here nor there. The problem at hand was that Yashiro was tired.
Tired of the charade he had made himself put on, tired of being treated like something on the bottom of a shoe.
Yashiro was going to explain himself – tell Ren everything.
And if Ren still wanted him to go after that...then he would go knowing that he had done everything in his power, short of begging, to right the situation he found himself in.
He would not beg. Begging would imply that he thought what he did was wrong, that he thought Ren was right in acting the way he was and ignoring his feelings. And that wasn't correct at all.
Traversing the hallway of the corridor, Yashiro used the spare key card Lory had given him to get into Ren's room.
Ren was standing by the window, looking out into the light snowfall. He looked pensive, but Yashiro didn't linger on it – he wanted to start to explain before Ren realised and tried to throw him out.
"I'm not trying to steal Kyoko-chan." Yashiro said quietly. Noting how Ren startled and turned around to face him, his face falling into the polite, blank mask of Ren once again.
"It's just..." Yashiro started again, taking an abortive step forward, "I got fed up!"
Ren raised an eyebrow coolly and Yashiro gritted his teeth as he was made to feel like a fool again.
"You wouldn't just accept your feelings. Wouldn't accept that there could be feelings!"
"That's because there isn't."
"But there are!" Yashiro practically yelled. "You don't want to admit them because you're unsure on how you're supposed to act!"
Ren narrowed his eyes. "Are you saying that I'm scared?"
"Yes." Yashiro lifted his chin, refusing to back down on this. "Yes, I think you are. You know you have feelings – others know you have feelings, yet you refuse to act on them. There can be no other conclusion."
Ren hissed and took a step forward.
Yashiro really wanted to run, but to get out the door he'd have to turn his back on Ren...and that was not an option right now.
"I'll have you know, that I am not a coward."
"Yet you won't look at what's right in front of you." Yashiro said in a whisper. "I was only trying to show you that."
Ren froze.
Yashiro, knowing he was pressing his luck, continued. "The only reason I acted like that, was because it was the only way I could come up with that would make you look at the situation properly.
"I just wanted you to realise that if you keep hesitating then you're going to lose. And you'll regret that for the rest of your life."
"There's no way – " Ren tried to deny.
"I know you Ren."
Ren took a step back. Yashiro watched as the watery light coming through the window highlighted his silhouette, throwing his face into shadow.
"You had to see for yourself that it was so easy to lose." Yashiro sighed when Ren didn't reply. "I knew this would happen." He made a vague gesture between them. "I knew that there was a possibility that I was going to ruin everything that we had. And I did, I know that.
"But I'm not completely sorry for it Ren, because there's a small part of me that knows that it'll get through to you."
Yashiro waited again, watching for any movement that would signal that Ren had understood. There was none. After a few moments Yashiro turned and opened the door, feeling it was safe to do so.
"I've handed in my resignation. As soon as we touchdown in Japan I will no longer be your manager."
The silence was only broken by the soft click as the door closed behind him.
Sometimes, you have to forgive someone, even if you haven't fully worked out if they deserve it or not.Because one day you'll realise that it's not their supposed transgressions that are holding you back – it's your own pride.
Sometimes it feels damn good to take the moral high ground.
I wanted Kyoko to grow. Ren on the other hand...
DS