Okay, guys! Here's part two. Er... Not really much to say aside from I hope you enjoy, right? Oh, and Fruits Basket is NOT mine, nor is Evelyn; they both belong to their respective owners.
Oh, and one more thing - as Koneko wrote this piece of sheer epicness all on her own... I just wanted to give her the credit where it was due~
She never meant to be rude, not really. Evelyn just always had a problem with concealing her emotions. That was why, when she was truly angry or upset, she'd never open her mouth. If her eyes didn't give away what she was feeling, her mouth certainly would. The words themselves weren't even the problem; Evelyn rarely cursed, nor did she like calling people names. Her vice was her tone of voice. She could quickly become cold and snippy or heated and loud without even realizing it. Things tended to spill out of her mouth before she could stop them. That's why she was grateful for the people in her life. Ever since she'd told Shishou that she'd felt like she had self-control problems, he helped her target her martial arts to reflect that control she wanted. He didn't ask what sort of problem she had, what she thought caused it, or even why she suddenly wanted to change. He just helped her. Of course, because of her new target, her practices got longer and more grueling. She went straight after school and stayed until half-way through Kyo and Hatsuharu's normal hour practice. It was no surprise to her or to Shishou if one or both didn't show up; it was becoming a sort of bad habit that Kyo would miss at least once a week. He'd come in the next day, apologize, and work twice as hard, but he still seemed to miss on a regular basis. The lighter side of Evelyn thought it was nothing to worry about if Shishou wasn't worrying; after all, Kyo deserved a day off once a week. The darker, less rational side of her demanded that it was Tohru's fault. Her darker side was louder, which made it all the more difficult to keep from saying anything.
"You've grown," Shishou commented, bringing Evelyn out of her musing. She pulled her knees up to her chest and sat up, gingerly coming out of the plank position to properly address him. Her pants were rolled several times to keep from dragging on the ground, but they still sagged to expose her hip bones. She wore a simple black tank top that ended just above her hips, a red belt securely around her waist. She looked down at her feet, which hadn't grown for three years; her hips, which had always been wide but flat; her stomach, which showed serious improvement but in the opposite way he was referring to; her chest, which had shrunk due to lost weight if anything; all the way to her arms, which showed muscle definition but no actual size change.
"I've shrunk," she corrected, giggling as a sign of her good nature. She put her hands on the ground as far away as she could reach; she then straightened her knees until she was in an upside down "v" shape, then walked her hands slowly back towards her until she was touching her feet. She then slowly straightened up until she was standing upright, and smiled at Shishou.
"I don't mean physically," he commented. "I mean on the inside. Your self-control has significantly improved. I'm very impressed."
She smiled widely, her cheeks flushing to a delicate pink, then bowed. "Thank you, Shishou. That means a lot." She interlocked her fingers behind her head, taking slow, deep breaths as she tried to ease the aching in her lungs. "I've really seen an improvement in my everyday life. So, I should thank you for that, as well. My self-control really has gotten better." She smiled sadly, her eyes glazing over as she spaced out for a minute. She shook her head as she returned to the present. "Not to say that I'm less angry or less upset, but I'm better about not taking it out on others." She smiled the same melancholy smile she had on only moments before. She took the hair-band out of her hair, allowing her hair to fall from its high ponytail down to her waist, and began to loosely twirl her hair into a loose bun at the nape of her neck. She held the hair-band in her mouth, so she was unable to properly greet Kyo when he entered the dojo.
"Hey, Shishou," he greeted, slightly out-of-breath. "Sorry I'm late. I got caught up trying to help Tohru with grocery shopping and lost track of time."
Before she could stop herself, she made a small noise in the back of her throat. Her darker side growled, Of course he was with Tohru. When is he ever without her? Even the dojo and Shishou are becoming second to her. As soon as the noise was out, though, she realized what she had done; she screwed her eyes shut and swallowed back the intense feeling of regret. She didn't want to start another fight with Kyo, especially when Shishou had just complimented her on her self-control. She prayed that Kyo hadn't heard her.
"What?" Kyo asked. Evelyn opened her eyes, realizing with a start that he was looking straight at her. She shook her head; she was not going to start another fight with Kyo. "What?" he repeated, a bit more insistent. She shook her head again, trying to mumble the word "nothing" with the hair-tie still in her mouth. "Just spit it out!" he demanded.
"It's nothing!" she growled, wrapping the hair-tie around the small ball of hair she'd carefully formed. "Just drop it."
"I will not drop it!" he snapped back, his voice escalating in volume. "Tell me! You obvious didn't like what I said. So say it to me straight!"
She glanced to Shishou for help, but he seemed to have snuck out. That means he thinks we have to get this out, she thought. After a beat, she realized he was completely right. This had been hanging between them for too long. She took a deep breath, then crossed her arms. It was the wrong body language, she registered subconsciously, but it was all she could do to protect her heart. "I didn't like your excuse, okay?" she mumbled, feeling like a bratty child.
Kyo blinked. "My excuse? You didn't like my excuse, or you didn't like who I was with as part of my excuse? It wasn't even an excuse! It was a legitimate reason!" She winced. Leave it to him to hit the nail on the head. He caught her reaction, fists clenching. "What's your problem? Huh?"
Finally, she couldn't help it. "I don't like how much time you're spending with Tohru, okay?" she shouted. She closed her eyes, turning her head to the side. God, she hissed in her head. I am such an ass.
"I can't see how that's any of your business!" he immediately fired back.
She opened her eyes, then turned a heavy glare on him; he was glaring right back at her. Neither of them noticed as Hatsuharu and Haruka entered the dojo and froze in their tracks as they found the fight.
"You are so full of it!" she yelled at him. "You think that it's none of my business that you're pulling away? We used to be friends, Kyo. We grew up together. Hell, I was your friend before you knew what the word meant! Look me in the eye and tell me that it's none of my business that you're pulling away."
He locked eyes with her. "I'm not pulling away." He sighed, suddenly exasperated. "I can't believe that you don't get this. Aren't girls supposed to be, I don't know… What do you call it? Empathetic?"
She scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Suddenly, this is about emotions, then? Tell me how you feel, Kyo. Because I can tell you exactly how I feel. You've never been one to vocalize it, but guess what? I'm not afraid to say it: I love you, Kyo!" She pulled the neck of her tank top up to her face, wiping under her eyes as she began to silently cry from underneath all the emotions. "God," she groaned to herself, chuckling as she began to crack further. "That is not at all how I wanted that to happen." She cupped her hands over her mouth as she struggled to compose herself. She was either about to burst out crying or bust out laughing; it was the downfall to when she was emotionally overwhelmed.
He winced, like it was paining him to do something. "I love Tohru," he mumbled. Her eyes widened, a small noise crawling its way up her throat. "I love Tohru!" he repeated, his voice louder but lighter. It seemed he had just stumbled upon a revelation. "I can never love anyone except her!" A sob ripped out of her chest before she could stop it. She wrapped an arm around her head, burying her mouth into the crook of her arm. Without another word, she turned and stumbled through the dojo to the back room; the slamming of the door was the only indication that she wanted to be left alone. As he came down from the euphoria of his epiphany, his jaw grew slack as he followed after her with his eyes.
"What did you say?" a voice shrieked. Panicked, he jerked to face the door. There stood Haruka, absolutely livid, and Hatsuharu, who seemed to be wrestling to stay white. Haruka must have been the one that shouted at him; masculine as she was, only her voice could've reached that pitch. "You damn dumbass punk," she hissed, stalking towards him. "Do you have any idea what you just did?" Kyo backed up a step, realizing the moment after he did so that it was a stupid thing to do; retreating showed weakness. If Haruka was going to charge at him, angry, then he needed to stand his ground. They'd had their scuffles and fistfights before, and he'd certainly learned a few tricks to save him a few bruises. Abruptly, she turned to face Hatsuharu. "Are you okay, Haru?" she asked, fighting to lower her voice to an acceptable level. He took a deep breath before nodding, his vacant expression losing the tension in it. "Go check on Evelyn, please. I'll deal with this piece of shit." She nodded towards Kyo, indicating that she meant him when she said "piece of shit." Hatsuharu nodded in acknowledgement, took a moment to slip off his boots and set down his bag, and then walked into the back of the house.
Evelyn was sitting, curled into a ball with her lips touching her knees, on the ledge, looking out the window. She wasn't fazed by the opening of the door as Hatsuharu let himself in. Her tears flowed silently, but he realized a beat later that she wasn't breathing. He stood in the doorway, watching her with his head tilted. She slowly let out a breath through her mouth. He then understood why she was holding her breath; she hiccuped shortly after she began breathing normally. She seemed to be dutifully ignoring the argument that was steadily increasing in volume, or she was completely lost to another world. She sniffed, then continued to hiccup as she spaced out. He stepped into the room, gently closing the door behind him. That soft noise, barely audible above the shouting, caused her to jump out of her skin and whirl around to face him.
"God, Haru," she sighed. She began to wipe at her cheeks; her tears seemed to have been stilled by his entrance. She swung her legs off the ledge, pivoting to face him. "You scared me a little," she commented with a small laugh.
He continued to look at her with his head tilted. After a gentle lull of silence, he spoke. "Are you okay?" he asked gently.
She thought for a moment, staring intensely at her knees as she folded her hands together and rested them there. She then began to shake her head, clapping her hands over her mouth and nose as she started to cry again. Her breathing was deep and shaky, but she made no noise otherwise. She bent over at the waist, touching her forehead to her knees as she wept. "I'm not okay," she whispered. "I can't even tell which I feel worse about: my behavior or his."
He came and knelt in front of her, hands in fists on his thighs. "It's not your fault," he commented after a moment. He was suppressing the urge to try and comfort her, lest he transform. He didn't want to go black and hurt Kyo even worse than Haruka was right now, either; he knew that would only upset her further.
Evelyn scoffed, propping herself up on her forearms to better look Hatsuharu in the eyes. "You don't know that. Hell, I know that's wrong. I was an insensitive ass, so he was one right back. I deserved that."
"No one deserves to have their heart broken." His calm gray eyes were unnerving to those who noticed him from afar, but they were just how she wished she felt. She knew that her gray-blue eyes were just as chaotic and whirling as her insides felt at the moment. The fact that he was so calm made her green with envy.
"Maybe I do," she muttered, more to herself than anything. She tore at her hair, pulling strands out from the hair-band. As she got more and more worked up, she realized that her body was swiftly responding: she started hiccupping again. She growled in frustration, starting to hold her breath to rid herself of them. She jumped, releasing her breath in a large gust, when he placed a glove-covered hand on her knee. She continued to hiccup as she locked eyes with him.
"I like them," he said a beat later, like he was offering an explanation. Her stomach jerked inward with each hiccup, her chest seizing up and her mouth opening slightly. She tilted her head at him. "Your hiccups. I like them. You shouldn't get rid of them." She smiled and closed her eyes, shaking her head a bit; he seemed to be up to his usual quirky antics again. Her tears were nearly forgotten. "They're cute." Now her tears were certainly forgotten. She blushed a delicate pink. Though he was merely talking about her hiccups, she couldn't help but feel he was complimenting her in some way. She continued to hiccup, the noise high-pitched and overtly feminine. "Just like you," he continued a few moments later, a small smile blossoming on his face. Her cheeks darkened to a brilliant red, her eyes dropping his gaze to settle on her knees. Now he was just messing with her. She'd been called cute before, sure, but there was something in the way that he said it that made her believe him.
"Shut up," she mumbled, suddenly hyper aware of how much she was blushing. Not only did she blush easily, but she was also very pale, so everyone knew when she was blushing. She was always teased for it; one of her teachers actually made it a mission to embarrass her to see how red she could actually get. He probably accomplished that the first day she had his class, when he loudly accused her of texting when she was trying to fix a pen in her lap.
"It's true," Hatsuharu argued, though Evelyn hadn't directly refuted his statement. "You're really cute."
"Tohru is cuter," she fought, feeling childish for comparing herself to the girl who beat her in Kyo's affection. She couldn't help it; Tohru got the one thing she wanted, so Tohru was the better girl overall. The more she forced herself to dwell on that idea, the truer it became. Tohru's rich brown hair was more beautiful than Evelyn's dirty blonde hair. Tohru's brown eyes were warmer than Evelyn's sharp blue-gray. Tohru was taller, skinnier, kinder, more helpful, more popular, and more attractive in every meaning of the word Evelyn could conjure. Evelyn was suddenly disgusted with her five foot three frame, weighing in at one hundred twenty pounds.
"Stop that," Hatsuharu gently insisted, bringing Evelyn out of her thoughts. "You can't do that to yourself. Just because he didn't choose you doesn't make you any less valuable. Or cute." That same gentle smile found its way to his face again. It was the smile that, no matter how hard she try, she was never able to not return. Sure, her own smile was shaky and tainted with sadness, but it was still a smile. Something she would have thought she was incapable of at the moment.
The smile slowly slid from her face, though, as Hatsuharu used her knee to elevate himself onto his. No longer in a seated position, his height advantage over her was almost obvious again. His hand, no longer needing her knee, slid around to rest on her hip. Confused, but not worried or intimidated, she locked eyes with him. Both their eyes closed, though, as the unexpected happened. He kissed her, and she kissed him right back. They could no longer hear the shouts of rage or sound of skin on skin outside; they were in their own little world. The only sounds they could hear were their own pounding hearts. The curse was prominent in both their minds as they fought against the carnal instinct to pull the other close. Unable to simply sit there, though, she tentatively brought a hand up and cradled his cheek. They pulled apart after a moment, and stayed nose-to-nose with each other.
They were almost entranced with one another, but she was brought out of it by a particularly pained shout from outside. "Can you go stop Haruka before she kills him?" she quietly requested. He nodded once, pressed another kiss to her lips, and left. She stayed were she was, a small smile blooming as she pressed her fingertips to her lips.