Mitsuhide nodded, standing and grabbing his jacket. "But we'll talk sooner or later..."

"Depending on what the future holds for us..."

"Trust me, Mitsunari-kun." Mitsuhide smiled warmly at the boy. "I'll make sure we have a future together..."

What did he mean by that? Mitsunari bit his thumb, walking to school for the first time in three days, just thinking. The confrontation he had with Mitsuhide was very friendly, helping Mitsunari work up the nerve to tell the boy how he felt. He expected the raven-haired boy to run, insult him, anything other than smile and answer calmly. His answer had left Mitsunari with sleepless nights, preoccupied with thinking about what he meant.

"Maybe," Mitsunari thought aloud, "Maybe he likes me back?" He shook his head. "No, no, that can't be it… Mitsuhide is straight, he has to be. I have never seen him with a boy before, just girls…" He sighed and thought, I always fall for the straight ones…

"Ishida!" Before Mitsunari could react, Masanori caught him in a headlock. "You have finally returned! Now I can pick on someone else other than Hanbei!"

Mitsunari rolled his eyes as Nene and Hideyoshi walked over. "What is this I hear about you wanting to bully freshman, Masanori?" Nene smiled at Mitsunari before glaring at the jock holding him.

Masanori let go of Mitsunari quickly and stuttered, "I-I said no such thing, L-Lady Nene!"

The brunette folded her arms. "I heard you say you were bullying Hanbei while Mitsunari was gone. I told you, bullying is bad!"

"Forgive me, Lady Nene!" Masanori fell to his knees in front of his friend and hugged her legs, wailing for forgiveness.

Mitsunari shook his head. "Masanori is still the same brute puppy he was as I left."

"You say it as if you left for a lifetime." Kiyomasa came over behind Mitsunari, putting an arm over his shoulder. "Frankly, it would be better if one cocky boy in this group had left for an eternity."

"Oh, but you know you'd miss me." Mitsunari tilted his head up, his eyes meeting with Kiyomasa's. The grey-haired boy's eyes squinted as he smirked.

"Hmph, in your dreams…"

"You're never in them. Mitsuhide is."

"I'm way better looking than that flower boy."

"Well, look who's the cocky boy now." Both boys stared into each other's eyes, not with malice, but something different. Mitsunari read it as a playful glint. On one hand, he truly wanted to end this flirting conversation, but on the other, he wanted it to continue.

"I never knew it was a crime to speak the truth…" Kiyomasa moved his face closer to the brunette's. "And here's another truth: I know you wish you had me."

Mitsunari chuckled. "Funny, Kiyomasa-kun." He poked him in the chest as he said, "In. Your. Dreams." He pulled himself from his friend, turning his attention to Hideyoshi.

"Hideyoshi-sama, what did I miss?"

Hideyoshi shrugged. "Just a few exam reviews, nothing major. I'd would give you the notes, but Nene has them-"

"Oh, sorry, babe." Nene turned her head to her boyfriend with a laugh. "I let Mitsuhide borrow them yesterday."

"You let that punk borrow my notes?!" Hideyoshi wore a scowl until Nene turned to him with the same expression, yet more enhanced. Hideyoshi immediately lost the sour look and ducked his head, whimpering.

Nene stuck her nose in the air with a "hmph". "Yep. The same way you let Oichi borrow your notes in Math last week. I saw the way you were looking at her when you gave them to her!"

"Ahh! No, I didn't look at her any type of way, believe me, Nene-chan! You are the only girl for me!"

Mitsunari chuckled once more. "My friends…" He turned from all of them and began walking towards the Oda Private Academy building. "Gotta love them…"

~Raibaru to kōhībureiku~

"Could Kuroda sensei make that pop quiz any harder?" Masanori scratched his head. "Gah, I fell like I burned out some brain cells."

"Hopefully they weren't the last brain cells you had." Mitsunari barely looked at his friend, his eyes fixed on a dark blue motorcycle across the street. "That would be a shame…"

Masanori's eyes bulged out of his head as he screamed, "That could really happen?! Damn you, Kuroda sensei!"

Mitsunari tuned out his friend. All he could think about was the dream he had last night; going on a motorcycle ride with Mitsuhide, both of them ending up in a love hotel and…

To him, it was a corny dream, really. It was probably from watching that marathon with a dozen of American movies last night. Their forbidden romances, from West Side Story to Titanic, had always intrigued him. The way the two main characters always had to go to a place where nobody else knew just to make love was oddly romantic to him, but still corny. It surprised Mitsunari how vivid his dream was; how he could still remember the red flamed candles around them, the heart shaped bed, even the small orange "Do Not Disturb" sign that Mitsuhide hung in front of their door.

Maybe the dream was an imminent scenario, Mitsunari considered, biting his thumb again. If it is…

"Mitsunari?"

Mitsunari flinched and looked up, said boy in his dream staring down at him, bewildered. "W-What?"

"What is this, the 1500s? Why are you biting your thumb at me?"

The brunette looked down at the tip of his thumb between his teeth. He removed it and shoved his hands into his coat pockets, slowly turning his head.

"I'm not biting my thumb at you," he answered, "That's just the way I think."

Mitsuhide slightly raised an eyebrow. "Well, that's a weird way of thinking-"

"Did you scare off Masanori?" Mitsunari cut him off, noticing that his unintelligent friend was not present..

Mitsuhide rolled his eyes. "No. He saw a cheerleader and started chasing her down the street." He turned the boy's face to him. "What, you think I'm that cruel?"

Mitsunari looked into Mitsuhide's violet eyes and retorted, "You did try to kill Headmaster Oda."

For a moment, Mitsuhide's eyes flashed, striking small fear into Mitsunari. The fire subsided, though, and he groaned. "Everybody keeps bringing that up around this time…"

"Don't you remember?" Mitsuhide tilted his head a bit. "It did happen a few weeks before Winter Recess. Headmaster Oda punished you for melting Imagawa sensei's ice sculpture of him by making you clean all the frost off of the school's windows. For some reason, you lost it on him, and tried to kill him with a rusty ice pick."

"Oh, that's right," Mitsuhide recalled nonchalantly, shrugging afterwards. "I had no reason to try to kill him, really. I tried to just to see if I could."

Mitsunari raised an eyebrow. "Hold on, you just tried to kill him for nothing?" He stared at him for a long while. "What were you, bored?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

The brunette was still puzzled. How could someone try to kill somebody who had been helping them ever since they had a death in their family, then try to murder them without a motive? Mitsunari tried not to think on it too hard and just shook his head. "I gotta go…"

"Wait, why?"

"I have places to go, people to see. Later."

Mitsuhide stepped in front of Mitsunari before he could walk off. "What's your problem, Mitsunari-kun?"

"Just trying to figure out why I like you in the first place."

Now it was Mitsuhide's turn to be puzzled. "Why, because I tried to kill someone?" How calmly he said it frightened the brunette a bit.

"No." Mitsunari walked around him, already knowing he was to be followed. "It's the fact that you felt you could kill him for no reason. How do I know you wouldn't do that to me, if we ever even became close to a friendly status?"

"I've come close to killing you in the past but I have never done it, have I?"

"No, but still."

Mitsuhide gripped Mitsunari's shoulder lightly, turning him to face him. "So are you saying you don't like me anymore?" His expression and tone were more cheerless than usual, sorta scaring Mitsunari.

"Why do you care that I like you in the first place?"

"I have my reasons."

Mitsunari shrugged. "I still like you, okay?" He pulled his shoulder away. "I'm just... questioning it right now."

"Why are you questioning it?" Still that same, depressing tone.

"I have my reasons…" Mitsunari then snarled, "Seriously, why do you care? I mean, are you even gay?"

"You should ask yourself that. Don't gay guys have 'gaydar' or something like that?"

Mitsunari rolled his eyes. "True to an extent, yet stereotypical." He glanced at his watch and sighed. "I gotta go…"

"Look, we can converse about this over more coffee. What do you say to that?"

"I say no thanks." Mitsunari began to walk off, but Mitsuhide wouldn't let up.

"'No thanks'? You like me, yet you're turning down an offer to spend time with me and get to know me?"

Mitsunari rolled his eyes once more and groaned. "I'm very busy today, Mitsuhide… Maybe some other time, alright?" He turned again and walked in the direction of Romachi's, leaving Mitsuhide in a state of confusion.

~Raibaru to kōhībureiku~

"He's gonna think you're giving him mixed signals, Mitsunari…" Kiyomasa stuck out his tongue, a few snowflakes falling onto it.

"So? It's not like he wants to be with me, anyhow…" Mitsunari didn't notice, but he was biting his thumb once more. "Still, I don't get it. It may not seem like he likes me, but the way he was asking all of those questions… he seemed concerned about losing my affection."

Kiyomasa shrugged. "If you ask me, anyone would be lucky enough to have your affection." Mitsunari stopped in his tracks, Kiyomasa stopping a few feet ahead and turning back to him. "Uh… fool."

Mitsunari looked at his friend weirdly before slowly walking up again. He shook his head and tried to suppress the memory of what he just heard. "Anyways… I just don't know what to do." He stuck of his tongue and caught a few snowflakes himself.

"Maybe he's setting you up or something, getting you vulnerable so that he can get payback for you fracturing his nose."

"That makes perfect sense…" Mitsunari turned to Kiyomasa with a soft grin. "You're honestly smarter than you look, Kiyo…" Kiyomasa raised an eyebrow. "Well… for a fool, I mean." They both faced away from each other for a moment.

The grey-haired boy broke the silence. "Ina asked me out today… She wants to go to The Revelry."

"Really?" Mitsunari turned to Kiyomasa, a smirk playing on his lips. "Look at you, getting your first girlfriend…"

"I've had many girlfriends," Kiyomasa scoffed.

"But a lot more boyfriends than that…" Kiyomasa just rolled his eyes. "What did you say?"

"Eh, I said I'd get back to her, just to see if anyone else wanted me to go with them." Kiyomasa gave Mitsunari a side-glance, but it was disregarded.

"You should say yes." Mitsunari then teased, "I doubt anyone else will ask you."

Kiyomasa frowned a bit, but then teased back, "Oh, like you can get somebody to ask you."

Mitsunari laughed softly. "Sometimes, you have to do the asking yourself… and I may do that…"

Now Kiyomasa scowled. "What, you're gonna ask Mitsuhide…"

Mitsunari looked forward and admitted, "I'm kinda thinking about it…"

His companion shook his head as they turned the corner. "Well, whatever you want to do…"

"Why do you say it like that?" Mitsunari asked as they got to Kiyomasa's front door. "Like you don't want me to like Mitsuhide or something…?"

Kiyomasa glanced at his friend seriously. "Maybe I don't want you to. Ever thought about that?"

"But I just don't understand why-" Mitsunari's alarm went off on his phone, Utada Hikaru's "Apple and Cinnamon" playing. He pulled his phone from his pocket and looked. "Ah, dammit! I'm gonna be late for work!" He put his phone back into his pocket and punched Kiyomasa in the arm, for them, equivalent to a hug. "I'll talk to you later, Kiyomasa-kun!"

"Don't forget to get hit by a car!" Mitsunari flipped him off as he dashed down the street, Kiyomasa shaking his head with a laugh. "You're so clueless sometimes, Mitsunari." He unlocked his door. He's such a fool…

Chapter 2 done! Well, not much to say except I hope to continue this story, and hope that people like it! Like I said in the previous chapter, I've already planned 5+ chapters already, but that doesn't mean I'm not open to any suggestions that people want. R&R, and thanks for taking the time to read this story!