Panting and wheezing, Rin finally navigated his way through the crowd and found the raven-haired Haruka happily dreaming into the distance. After hollering Haruka's name several times — each time significantly louder than the previous, despite his breathless voice — and getting no response in return, a vexed Rin caught hold of Haruka's ear, steeled his arm muscles and twisted. Haruka took two whole seconds to respond — which was as slow as a snail's crawl, in Haruka's lightning-fast standards — and he yelped his displeasure, scrunching his face up into the most un-Haruka faces Rin had ever seen in one shot. The cherry-haired boy grinned, letting go of Haruka's ear ("That hurt, you ass!") and amusedly watching Haruka as he frantically rubbed his ear, grumbling non-stop under his breath. Haruka finally straightened up after a while, choosing to shoot a nasty glare at Rin for his stupid antics rather than welcome him for actually obliging to come.

Rin chuckled, looking quite proudly at Haruka's impressively red ear and mentally praising himself for accomplishing such a feat. Haruka looked at Rin's grin, his face distorted into a very displeased look. Seeing Haruka react so hugely to him simply made Rin smile all the wider.

"..You're quick." Haruka finally said, his hand unrelenting on his sore ear. He rubbed the cartilage of it a few times while looking at Rin straight in the eye, hoping the other would feel guilty and apologize, though he knew it was unlikely. Rin saw his movements — however slight Haruka was, Rin wouldn't be able to overlook it—and understood what Haruka meant to initiate, but merely smirked as he continued to juggle their conversation coolly without a single scrap of guilt. Haruka's eyebrow twitched just a fraction out of exasperation.

"Yeah. I just put on a shirt and came out," Rin said, not even trying to sound embarrassed. Haruka flittingly scanned the other's attire once, then, without realizing, twice. It was true that Rin hadn't put any effort into dressing up at all. All he wore was a black shirt, khaki Bermuda pants that had frayed slightly at the ends and flip-flops that could easily be mistaken as beach sandals. Haruka didn't deny that he still looked very attractive, though. The raven-haired boy sighed, the tiniest bit of jealousy swirling in his chest, threatening to start another whirlwind. Secretly, he wished he could pull off a casual look and still appear surprisingly good rather than spending too much time digging through his closet, unsure of what he was looking for.

Haruka looked down at himself self-consciously. He had on an ombré blue and white collared shirt, black skinny jeans and his only pair of black sneakers. Haruka hadn't made an effort to style his hair — though he wished he had, now — and neither did Rin, but it was obvious who could pull off the droopy hairstyle without the bunches of follicles looking like dead sea anemone atop one's scalp. Surprisingly, Haruka won in this section of 'Au Naturale Hair', for his luscious ink-black hair looked perfect although he had zero hair product on. Rin, on the other hand, had strands of hair sticking out all over the place; looking like he had just woken up from a long nap. (Which may or may not have been possible, but I suppose we shall never know.)

"So." Haruka said, after a long pause. Rin switched his stare from the crowd to Haruka's face again.

"When..when is Makoto coming?" Haruka said, looking away from Rin's grin.

"Hmm. I don't know, Haru," Rin said, in something close to a sing-song voice, but barely, "Maybe you should give him a call?"

Haruka looked over at Rin, glaring harshly with his cobalt eyes. He knew that by 'give him a call', Rin meant 'do you want his number' — and although Haruka would have loved to know Makoto's number, he wasn't going to strip his pride down a few levels just for it.

Although talking to Makoto was definitely worth a few crumbs of his pride. Yeah. It was.

Haruka opened his mouth a fraction as if he had something to say, then closed it, sucking his lips in for extra effect — keeping his words trapped in his mouth stubbornly. He looked at Rin, eyes narrowed, before turning away into the crowd again.

"No thanks."

Rin began to laugh.

"You asswipe, Rin."

xxx

The sun was searing into their necks, branding their skin and forcing sweat to pour out. Haruka fanned at himself helplessly, hoping to God he wouldn't start reeking. Rin was simply chilling under the sun, seemingly enjoying himself as his skin absorbed all the Vitamin A it needed (and more). Thoughts of oh my God Makoto's coming were floating ceaselessly in Haruka's airy mind; filling in the spaces in his brain, and yet he wasn't stopping it. He prayed to God that nobody around him could read minds, otherwise they would be absolutely startled at what he was thinking of.

After another good ten minutes, Haruka shifted from his position, feeling the sweat under his pits as he rested his arms down. Haruka cringed in disgust.

Oh, what he would do to be in a pool right now. Kill? Probably not, but he would do batshit crazy things for it.

Rin watched as Haruka sighed, clearly noticing that the raven-haired boy was getting annoyed. He took his phone out of his pocket and glanced at it; 11.03 pm. He had told Makoto to meet them (well, Haruka) at 10.30 am sharp, and yet he was running late by exactly 33 minutes. And several seconds. And milliseconds. And whatever came after that, but yes; it was a fact that Makoto was tardy for a date with Haruka, and Rin was beginning to doubt if he deserved to date his best friend or not.

Rin clenched his phone in his fist, clicking his tongue loudly in impatience. He took another confused glance at Haruka — who was taking Makoto's lateness quite well, until Rin impulsively thought of the quote 'love changes a person', and a smile started to grow on his face. Haruka didn't realize, though. He was too busy scanning the sea of multi-colored heads for an olive one, but sighed exasperatedly when he failed. Part of him stubbornly believed that he wanted Makoto to hurry up and arrive just so he could go and find shade from the terrible heat, but the more honest part of him knew that, secretly, he was aching to see Makoto again. Smell that irresistible musky smell on Makoto that Haruka had been dying to catch a whiff of again. Hear his deep, smooth-as-butter voice saying his name in the most attractive way possible. See that incredibly bright smile light up the room again. Just- mmm, Makoto. Haruka chewed on his lips, ashamed of his thoughts. He tried to distract himself by immersing his thoughts about the things around him, so he proceeded to scan the areas around him, taking in every tiny detail.

I wonder when the sakura trees are going to be in full blossom.. Also, I haven't taken a trip to Shibuya in a long time; maybe I could get Rin to go with me. And that gargoyle statue — broken hand, legs, chipped ears; gee, it sure sucks to be a statue. Oh, and I should stop by the convenience store on the way back. I need to restock on natto, and maybe I could just settle dinner with some onigiri. Or will we be having dinner together, too? Dinner with Makoto...

Without realizing it, Haruka had gotten lost in his thoughts (of Makoto) again, staring into space. Rin tapped his foot impatiently against the rough cement of the road, his irritance level upping by the second as he swept his eyes around the crowd before him for the thousandth time. Where in the world was Makoto?

There was the abrupt sound of a tinkling crash and crunching of plastic bags that quieted the endless thudding of shoes for a split second. Rin and Haruka simultaneously turned to find the source of the noise. Haruka, with his sharp eyes, was the first to catch sight of the incident.

A young girl — probably less than a decade old — was lying on the sidewalk, her eyes gleaming with tears as she looked at a fallen bicycle in front of her and, next to it, several plastic bags that had ripped open, strewing various kinds of groceries all over the road. It was easy to decipher what had happened, and Haruka was quick to act on things like this; especially if it involved little children, crying and the like. He hurriedly pushed his way through the murmuring crowd and kneeled down next to the little girl, who looked into his eyes with a melancholy, shiny stare. Haruka's heart melted like hot butter, and he swiftly looked at her bleeding knees with eyes as soft as a doe's.

"Can you stand?" Haruka asked, his voice gentle and soothing. The girl seemed transfixed for a moment; clinging to the almost menthol effect his voice had on her, but nodded anyway, moving her sore legs a bit just to prove it. He held her arm firmly as she tried to stand up, looking over her like a mother would her child. The little girl managed to stand — though she was wobbly and stumbled a few times — and after doing so, she looked at Haruka again, almost as if she was expecting another command from him. It was adorable, and Haruka couldn't help grinning despite his worry for her wounds. He helped her limp to a safer place, away from the bustling and somewhat dangerous crowds, and sat her down in a nearby store. The shopkeeper had seen the whole incident happen, and without Haruka asking she immediately went to the back of her store to find her first-aid kit.

The little girl watched Haruka's every move like a kitten. Haruka had kneeled down in front of her to get better access to her bruised knees, but he swore that if she continued staring at him so intensely, it would burn a hole in his skull. He glanced up occasionally to smile at her, and she would simply smile back in her innocent child-like manner.

The shopkeeper was taking a long time to get the first-aid kit. Haruka, tired of looking at the girl's blue-black knees, looked up instead — into the girl's pretty sakura-hued eyes.

"So, what's your name?" Haruka asked, trying to start small talk with her. The little girl, who was fiddling with her fingers, looked at him and started talking in such a sweet voice that it took a while for Haruka to properly assess if she was singing or talking.

"Hanako." She said — almost chirped, Haruka noted with an internal sigh. "Mizayaki Hanako."

"I see." Haruka said, pleasantly; though at this point, he had no idea how to continue the conversation. He cursed his abhorrent social skills and remained silent; his mind inconveniently reminding him of how stupid he looked in front of a grade-schooler.

"What's onii-chan's name?" The soft whisper in which Hanako had used to voice her question almost missed Haruka's ears; and most of it did, but he had managed to catch the gist of it just in time.

"Haruka." He said, stopping too quickly. 'Though you can call me Haru' had almost slipped out, but he caught himself before he could say it.

"Then can I call you.. Haru?"

Haruka opened his mouth to protest — to say blatantly no you may not, like he did to everyone, but his weakness for children took over and he nodded, somewhat disheartened at his lack of authority against little kids. Hanako seemed delighted, though, and even started humming a song as she waited for her knees to be treated.

It took a while, but eventually the shopkeeper came back with a white box in her hand, huffing and looking like she had been rummaging through dusty objects to find what she was searching for.

After treating Hanako's knees gently with antiseptic, Haruka carefully bandaged her wounds. In the midst of doing so, a deep voice spoke from behind Haruka, followed by the rustling of plastic bags. Haruka didn't turn around from being too absorbed in treating the Hanako's wounds, and his mind comprehended the sound as a meaningless addition to the non-stop noise from the busy crowd.

"Here, I brought the groceries, Hanako." The voice was unexpectedly sultry and ridiculously smooth, but Haruka barely heard it. The owner of the voice set a few plastic bags next to Haruka and Hanako, then stepped away. Hanako smiled and thanked him sweetly.

"Thank you, Mako-nii-chan."

Haruka, who had been rolling up the clean bandages to be replaced into the first-aid kit, stopped as if shot.

Did she just say..Mako-nii-chan..?

He hadn't heard wrong, had he? How he wished he could replay his life to a few seconds back, just to hear Hanako's words again. Haruka swallowed, but his throat still felt dry. All he needed to do to confirm it was to turn around..

"What the- Haruka? Is that you?"

Yeap. That was Makoto alright.

xxx

No, don't tell me, I know.

Homework, no holidays, being sick, school activities, life, homework; did I mention that already? Oops. Well there's a darn huge load of stuff keeping me from writing this story, which sucks since I always have so many good ideas but I never have the time to properly type them into something even similar to a story. Simply completing this chapter was a task, holy crap.

I would have posted this earlier by like five freaking days, but when I tried to, ff net got all glitchy on me, and it was 2 am on a school night and I was hungry, sleepy and physically exhausted from sports and I had to be awake in 3 more hours so I was not going to put up with that shit. I tried once, twice, thrice, and when nothing happened; BAM. NOPENOPENOPE. I literally just killed my laptop (read: force-shut it down), slammed the screen onto the keyboard, curled up next to it and fell asleep. And I was late for school the next day any fucking way, so.

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

I'm really trying really, really hard to keep writing and at the same time, keep up the quality of the chapters. (pfft. Quality.) So be patient :(

ILY guys though :) thank you for the constructive advice. Some of you reminded me of how I was going slightly OOC with the characters, and so I'll try to change it in the future.

Until the next chapter!

~LeiiYou