Chapter Two
Surprise, Surprise
It was the perfect day. The sky was blue, the grass was green, and there was a slight breeze. Shinku was walking up a hill with her big cello. She had to half drag, half carry it up. With her 4'8" frame, she had a difficult time carrying it.
"Eh? Miyaharu-san! Miyaharu-san!" a voice called out to her.
Shinku sighed and then tried her best to ignore the annoying voice (it as annoying because it belonged to a person). She hurried up the hill as fast as she could so she could avoid whoever was calling her. The hard case that her cello was in dragged against the sidewalk as Shinku tried to run up the hill while carrying it. She cursed at herself mentally for letting her cello case drag like that. She stopped and knelt down, looking at the damage. There were only a few scratches on it. She sighed a sigh of relief and stood up again. She almost jumped out of her skin as she saw Kirihara Akaya right in front of her.
"Miyaharu-san, didn't you hear me call you?" he asked with a sad(ish) expression on his face.
"Oh, I heard you," Shinku replied with a blank expression.
"Then why didn't you answer?"
"I didn't want to."
"That's not nice to say!" Kirihara shouted. "Don't forget that I was one of your choices." He winked at her and smiled.
Shinku turned away and tried to rush up the hill faster.
"Hey! Where are you going?" Kirihara shouted as he caught up to her.
"School," she replied. The obvious answer.
"Why are you like that? Obviously you must have some emotion since you chose Sanada-fukubuchou as your fia—!"
Shinku had stood on her tiptoes to cover Kirihara's mouth with her hand. She glared at Kirihara through her bangs, and this time it was a real glare. "Shh! Don't you ever mention that at school! Don't mention that anywhere else either. Just . . . never mention it! Do you want me to die? If any of his fan girls find out about it then I'll be dead."
"How do you know about the fan girls?"
Shinku gave him another glare. "I'm not stupid. I know that girls are all over the tennis regulars."
"But you don't even know who the regulars are!" Kirihara shouted.
"Does it matter if I know them or not?"
"Well, it's just that yesterday I was so surprised to learn that you didn't know who any of the tennis regulars were."
"I don't get involved in things that has nothing to do with me."
Kirihara gave Shinku a look. Shinku just wished that Kirihara would go away because he was annoying her. She didn't even know him that well and he was still talking to her. She turned her head away from him and tried to pretend he wasn't there, but he kept talking and talking and TALKING!
"Will you just be quiet?" Shinku yelled at him.
Kirihara looked at her for a few seconds as if he didn't hear her. "What?"
"Be quiet!"
"Um . . . okay . . ." Kirihara looked away from Shinku and walked with her to the school.
Shinku didn't think of the consequences of walking with a regular to school until she arrived. Everyone was just staring at her and Kirihara as if they were a couple. There were a whole bunch of people with shocked expressions on their faces, and then there were some of the girls that were glaring at the two. Shinku just knew this would happen. She sighed, covered her face with her bangs and quickly started to walk away from Kirihara. She knew she should have just walked faster and ignored him for the whole way there. She shouldn't even have talked to him. She hated talking to people! She didn't know what had gotten into her.
"Wait!" Kirihara called out as he ran to catch up to her.
'Idiot!' Shinku thought. He was just causing more trouble for her, and chances were, she would be confronted by a whole bunch of people today. She shook her head at the bad thought and felt sick. People. She would have to hide out in the library all day.
"Are you listening?" Kirihara asked.
"Hm?" Apparently Kirihara was talking and Shinku wasn't listening.
"Miyaharu-san, you're quite rude you know."
"I wouldn't be talking," Shinku muttered under her breath.
"Hey! I heard that! Anyways, I said that you should come watch us practice everyday for morning practice and afternoon practice."
"Why?" Shinku asked the question with vehement disgust.
"Well . . ." Kirihara seemed reluctant to answer. "It's just that Yukimura-buchou said that you should come everyday now. He thought that it would be a good thing. We discussed it all when we were leaving."
"And how did you-know-who take it?" Shinku asked with curiosity now.
"Well, he just sort of stood there in shock, but then he pulled himself together and didn't say anything. Just had this really scary expression on his face, but that's okay. He always has a scary expression on his face. So I don't know what to say . . . he's really hard to read. He's only always serious or angry."
"Well . . . that's good."
"Good?" Kirihara almost jumped back in surprise. He couldn't imagine anyone in the world who would think that that was good.
"It's good because you said that he didn't say anything yesterday. That means he won't talk, and that also means that when I have to live with him, I won't have to talk to him! That makes me so happy! He won't talk to me! And I won't talk to him!"
Kirihara sweat-dropped as he listened to Shinku's speech on being left alone and how great it would be if she could be left alone forever since she didn't like people. She kept going on like that until Kirihara grabbed her cello.
"Hey! Give it back!" Kirihara got a glare.
"Only if you come every day or Yukimura-buchou will kill me if I'm not able to convince you to."
"I have clubs after school," Shinku stated with a tart look.
"Oh yeah, that's why I saw you go home late yesterday . . . but that's not the case! Come in the mornings at least."
"No." Shinku tried to grab her cello, but Kirihara dodged her.
"I'll destroy this."
"No."
"If you don't come I'll die."
"I don't care if you die or not."
"Hey, that actually hurt!" Kirihara had a hurt expression on his face.
Shinku shrugged her dainty shoulders. "I'm just telling the truth. I don't like to lie."
"Well . . ." Kirihara was thinking. "I'll go to your grandfather and tell him that you refuse to get married."
"Will you say that quieter?" Shinku asked. "Don't do that! He'll think I'm going to give up the business."
"Well do as I told you to."
"No."
"I'll tell."
"No."
"I'll go right after school."
"No."
"I'm going to go tell Yukimura-buchou this too and he'll be angry."
"No."
Kirihara stopped to think. "He's sadistic, he'll force you to be in a crowd constantly! He'll force you to be around . . . people!"
"No!" Shinku was saying no to the whole being around people thing. "I don't want to be around people. I don't like people."
"Well then, do what I just asked you to do."
"I don't want to though, and I'll still be around people." Shinku puffed her cheeks out and glared at Kirihara with her arms crossed over her chest.
"Yeah," Kirihara admitted, but then an idea came to him, "but . . . if you go to practice in the morning, you would have to only be around eight people, while if you didn't, Yukimura-buchou would force you to be in a crowd with . . . with hundreds!"
"What?" Shinku had backed away from Kirihara and was thinking about what would happen if she was forced to be in a crowd with so many people. She would surely get sick, or angry, or both, or something in between. She couldn't stand to be around people that she didn't know or like. She couldn't stand people over all. She had a panicked expression on her face as she bit her lip and was thinking with her eyebrows knitted.
'This is so working!' Kirihara thought. 'Now I won't be killed by Yukimura-buchou for failing.'
Shinku gave a sigh of defeat and said, "I'll go with you now to practice and watch."
Kirihara had a Chesire cat smile on his face as he walked to the tennis courts still holding Shinku's cello. He wouldn't get killed after all. "That's wonderful then!" Kirihara admitted. "We should put away your cello first."
Shinku nodded her head sadly as she showed Kirihara to the music room that was always kept locked so that the instruments wouldn't be stolen. He put her cello into the corner and then grabbed her hand to pull her along with him to the tennis courts.
"This is going to be awesome!" Kirihara said excitedly. "You'll love watching us play, I mean all of the fan girls that come all of the time love watching us play."
"Fan girls?" Shinku asked surprised. Her voice became shrill as she said it.
Kirihara caught his mistake and said, "Um well . . . the fan girls only come after school because they're too busy in the mornings doing their hair and make up and whatever else they do. So come on!"
Shinku let Kirihara drag her to the tennis courts while she was thinking of the consequences of accepting the whole deal. Would she rather be with the tennis regulars and some fan girls, or would she rather be with a hundred other people? Then again, if she was with the regulars and the (technically) the fan girls at the same time, she would get killed! Oh well. Shinku shook her head and got the image out of her mind. She would just deal with it. The less people. The better.
Moments later, she was at the tennis courts. Kirihara dragged her to the inside where the regulars were. "Look who came!" Kirihara shouted. He swung Shinku and she fell on a bench. He looked at Yukimura to see what he would say.
"Well, hello, Miyaharu-san," Yukimura had said.
"Hello, Yukimura-sempai," Shinku replied. She tried to put on her most polite face, but she ended up glaring at Yukimura on accident.
He laughed at her glare and said, "We are all so glad that you came. I know that we're going to all be good friends, right?"
Shinku didn't reply just muttered something unintelligible and looked away from Yukimura. She looked past the school to the trees where birds nested. She concentrated on those birds. Maybe if she didn't look at any people, she would be able to ignore the fact that she had to sit at a tennis court where other people were practicing. She noticed that Sanada didn't say anything to her, but she pushed that to the back of her mind.
'Protect me?' Shinku thought. 'Yeah right. He's not going to protect me or be kind to me . . . but that's why I chose him!' She was a bit upset that he didn't say hi to her, but she thought about why she chose him and she felt a little bit better. If she had to get married, then she would rather get married to a person that didn't talk to her so that she wouldn't have to talk to him back.
"Hey what are you thinking about?" a redhead boy popped up right in front of Shinku, causing her to jump back. He had a big green bubble coming out of his mouth. It popped and he chewed it again.
Shinku put her hand to her heart and tried to breath deeply. The boy almost gave her a heart attack! She glared at him and counted to ten in her head to calm herself down. She had jumped a foot down the bench so that she was closer to the edge now. She glared at the boy again and looked down. She was so surprised by his sudden appearance. She wasn't good with surprises, especially when it dealt with other people.
"Why are you glaring at me like that?" he asked.
"You surprised me," Shinku muttered.
"Eh? Really? Well I'm sorry. Do you remember who I am?"
"No."
"Well, that's not nice. Every girl here knows all of us on the tennis team. Every girl except you. I can't believe you don't know anyone of us! You even admitted it last night!"
"I know Kirihara-sempai," Shinku stated. She really wished she didn't know him though.
"Oh yeah," the redhead scratched his head. "I forgot. You're a first year aren't you? Well what are you going to do when Sanada-fukubuchou graduates?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." Shinku narrowed her eyes at the redhead.
"You know with the engag—!"
The redhead, who was Marui Bunta, had stopped talking because a tennis ball was wedged into his mouth. Shinku had found it on the bench next to her, so she used it to make Marui stop talking.
"Don't ever mention that anywhere! Got it?" she asked him.
He nodded his head and spit out the tennis ball. "I . . . I won't talk about it again!" Then he ran off to practice.
Shinku wanted to leave then, so she got up. She walked over to Sanada first to say goodbye to him because it as the polite thing to do. "Sanada-sempai," she said with no expression, "goodbye. I'm going to head to the library now." She turned away and left with the others staring at her. As soon as she got out of the gates for the tennis courts, she sprinted away as fast as she could.
"What's going on?" Jackal asked.
The others explained what had happened last night to him in whispers since Kirihara and Marui had remembered what Shinku had told them not to do. The explaining took a little bit over five minutes because Kirihara kept adding things in about Shinku since he seemed to be the closest to her.
"I see," Jackal replied. "I was wondering why everyone here except me was talking in whispers about this girl."
"How come you weren't one of the choices?" Bunta asked while blowing a bubble.
"It's because I'm from Brazil, remember? I wasn't here and neither were my grandparents when she was born. My grandparents don't even know her grandfather!"
"Oh . . . that explains why you weren't there. I thought it was strange that all of us were and you weren't."
"I suppose her grandfather really wanted the best for her," Yagyuu said. "He had promised it to our grandparents, and now we're all tennis regulars. He really knows how to choose."
Everyone muttered something like an agreement on that. Everyone except Sanada. He just ignored the conversation and tried to get back to practice.
"Tarundoru!" Sanada shouted as loudly as he could at his teammates.
Everyone quickly scattered and started to practice. They knew that they would get slapped if they didn't work hard because Sanada didn't like slacking off.
"You're scary, Sanada-san," Yukimura said, walking up to Sanada with a smile on his face.
"Yukimura-buchou," Sanada acknowledged.
"Why don't you talk to her more?"
Sanada didn't answer, he just continued to yell instructions to the tennis members.
"I knew you would be like this," Yukimura sighed. "Even though she's your fiance, you're just going to ignore her and act as if she doesn't exist. What about when you're married? Oh well, since I knew you would be like this, I asked Kirihara-san to somehow convince her to come to watch our practices. That's why she was here this morning."
A vein popped out on Sanada's neck as he heard about what Yukimura did. He didn't reply though. He tried to keep calm as he watched the regulars practice. He needed to burn off some stress and anger himself, so he went to practice tennis. He tried not to think of the inevitable fate that would happen to him once school got out. . .
Shinku was putting her cello into its case when a head popped into the room. It was Kirihara . . . Again. Shinku sighed at the thought of him. He kept annoying her. He was always there when she didn't want him to be (which in translation he was practically there all of the time because she never wanted him there).
"The whole team is waiting for you!" Kirihara shouted.
Shinku didn't say a thing to him. She just sighed as she hefted her cello and walked out the door with an animated Kirihara talking to her about who knew what.
The first person Shinku saw when she got outside was Sanada. They were suppose to walk home together that day because Grandfather Hikaru had just gotten them the penthouse last night. During the school day, their stuff would be moved into the penthouse. As soon as Shinku and Sanada were standing next to each other, all of the regulars made excuses about going to appointments and other things. Which left only Sanada and Shinku together. Alone.
The truth was that neither of the two knew where the penthouse where they would be living was. They hadn't asked last night, so now they both had to go to Grandfather Hikaru to ask him where it was.
The two walked silently by each other. Shinku was fine by it, but Sanada was annoyed at the fact that he had to walk home with a girl none other than his fiance. He wouldn't say no to the engagement that his own grandfather had set up with Shinku's. He was too good of a son/grandson to do that. He would not dishonor his family by refusing Shinku. He could tell that she didn't want to marry him, so why didn't she say anything about it to her grandfather? Obviously it would be canceled if she would just say something. He decided that he would have to somehow convince Shinku to tell her grandfather to cancel it.
They soon reached the house. Shinku's mom was surprised to see the two walking home together already. Her eyes brimmed with tears and she kept muttering something about her daughter growing up already. Soon, Grandfather Hikaru came out.
"Shinku! Genichirou-san! Welcome to my house. What are you two doing here?" he asked with a smile on his face. He was glad to see Shinku and Sanada getting along so well.
"We don't know where we live," Shinku stated.
"Oh! I'm sorry about that then, to the two of you."
"Please do not trouble yourself over us . . . Miyaharu-san," Sanada said to the grandfather.
Grandfather Hikaru laughed and said, "We're all going to be related very soon! So there is no need for you to call me that. Just call me Grandfather Hikaru like everyone else does."
"Yes . . ." Sanada trailed off because he didn't want to seem angry over the fact that a little thing like "we're going to be related very soon" bother him.
"You both live at the Apple Tree Cottage (which wasn't a cottage but a very expensive place)."
"The place across the store that sells great bubble tea?" Shinku asked.
"That's exactly the one," Grandfather Hikaru admitted.
"Should I get some of my stuff?" Shinku was concerned that they didn't ship all of her stuff yet.
"No need for that. Everything that belongs to you is already at the penthouse. The same goes for you Genichirou-san."
The two both said their thank yous and left as quickly as they could. Shinku was secretly happy about the whole penthouse thing. Sure, she didn't want to live with Sanada, but since he was so unsocial, she would be able to lock herself in her room for days without him even noticing that she never came out. Sanada might have actually done the same thing too if he wasn't busy with tennis, kendo, and school. In fact, he decided that while he was at his new "home" he would spend most of his time locked up in his room too to avoid Shinku.
The two were in their own thoughts as they reached the penthouse. The took the elevator to the top floor and arrived at their new home. They were both very surprised to see the place already furnished. It also looked like it belonged to a magazine. The place didn't seem like something that regular people would have unless they had a home makeover. Sanada was glad to see that most of the place was in neutral colors since his favorite colors were black and gray. Shinku was okay with the color scheme too since she didn't really like bright colors.
"I'm going to go to my room now Sanada-san," Shinku said to him.
"I am too," he replied.
Shinku opened the door to what she thought was her room, but it was just a coat closet. Shinku was confused. There was only one other door. Where could it lead to? A room that led to another room maybe?
Shinku went to that door too. Sanada was standing outside of it watching her.
"That's a coat closet," she said as if to straighten things out. "This is the only other door."
He nodded and turned the knob to the door. Inside was a queen sized bed in the same colors from outside in the living room. The only thing about this room was that there were a whole bunch of boxes that had things written on them like "Shinku" and "Genichirou".
"No, no, no," Shinku whispered as she hurried to the two doors that were in the room.
The first one opened to a large and spacious bathroom with a tub that could be used as a Jacuzzi. She was getting more worried as she took in her surroundings. She ran back to the room and yanked the knob to the other door open. Inside on one wall were her clothes, and on the other wall was Sanada's clothes. It was a closet.
"No. This can't be happening," Shinku whispered as she walked around the whole penthouse to look for more rooms. There were none.
Sanada stood stock still as he realized what was going on. He was going to have to share a room and a bed with Shinku. He waked stiffly back outside to the living room while Shinku was being frantic. She paced and was opening all of the doors again as if a room would magically appear. Sanada's temper was going up and he tried to calm himself down by breathing deeply. He had never agreed to that! He had never agreed to sleep with some girl in the same bed! It was bad enough just living with her!
"Calm down Miyaharu-san," Sanada said as soon as he was calm. His hands were gripping air as he pumped his fists to calm himself down some more. To sleep in the same bed with a girl was to slack off! He could not afford such a thing. It was against him to do so.
Shinku went into the room again and took out her cell phone. She called her grandfather.
"Shinku!" he replied. "How do you like the place?"
"It only has one bedroom," Shinku growled into the phone.
"I know that, I wanted there to be one bedroom."
"Well surprise, surprise! I'm not going to sleep in the same room much less the same bed with that guy!"
"Well you're going to have to. I mean, you're already engaged, so might as well get used to it. Maybe I'll have a great-grandchild by the time you're married."
"Grandfather Hikaru!" Shinku screamed.
"You have to get used to it. This is just some training for you. Some preparation. You don't have to do anything with him, but you do have to sleep in the same room and the same bed."
"I won't agree to this."
"Then where will you go?"
"Somewhere!" Shinku clicked her phone off and threw it at the bed. She buried her face into a pillow and screamed as loudly as she could. She didn't want this. She didn't want to have to be with a stranger all of the time. Just because she was engaged to him, it didn't mean she wanted to sleep in the same bed as him! She would find another place to sleep.
Sanada had heard the scream from the living room and rushed in quickly. "What's the matter?" he asked with such a serious expression on his face that Shinku doubted he came in because she screamed.
Shinku pushed past him and out the door. "I'm leaving!" she shouted back at him.
Hello everybody!^^
Thank you for reading another chapter that I wrote and I would love it if you would review!
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