A/N: I don't own knk! If any of you recognize that last chunk of the chapter at the bottom, it's because I used another fic I wrote and added it in since it's exactly the same kind of scene I wanted anyway haha. Just a heads up!
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Chapter 5
Weight
Akihito arrives at the little cafe early, partly because he liked to spend as much time out of the Nase manor as he can manage, and partly because even though he can tentatively call Sakura a friend, he still wants to make a good impression on her. He's a little uneasy - it'd been a week since he'd left his apartment and Sakura had been expecting a call from him. The Inami girl is entirely too unpredictable for him to gauge what she wants to talk about, though he has an inkling.
After all, the only thing they have in common is Kuriyama-san.
He taps his foot absently against the floor while he waits, debating whether or not to order something to eat or wait until Sakura arrives. Fortunately, his decision is made when a violet-eyed girl walks through the door of the restaurant and zeros her gaze in on him. He grins easily at her despite her straight face, and waves her over.
"You're here early, Kanbara," she says as slips her bag from her shoulder and rests it against the table.
"You try living with the sadistic Nase princess and her perverted brother, and then you will understand," he tells her cheekily. He tries not to sound eager or interested, but fails miserably. "How is Kuriyama-san today?"
Sakura takes her chair and turns her sharp gaze on him. "I haven't seen her; she's been out hunting youmu all morning, and then she has a shift to work with Ayaka-san's shop."
He nods and keeps his smile to himself. Such a hard-working girl and yet she still struggles to afford living every month. Without even realizing it, he's very proud of her for the way she persists. If there's one thing in the world that Kuriyama Mirai is perpetually guilty of, it's her stubbornness.
Sakura shifts in her chair. "I know you said you didn't want her to find out about you paying rent on her apartment," she says, a little awkwardly, still completely straightforward about it, though. "I'm sorry I let it slip."
Akihito waves the apology away. "It's alright. Not that big of a deal, after all, since she doesn't insist as though she owes me anything. What did you want to talk about, anyway?" He knew that the subject would be Mirai - with Sakura, it always was. Even when the bespectacled beauty had been lost to all of them, Akihito would pay visits to her apartment to check on Sakura. He'd bring a meal; they'd eat together in silence, and then he'd stay with her for a few hours.
They never said much when he visited - he'd read a book and Sakura would watch TV on the small television set she managed to find at a rummage sale of sorts shortly before Mirai disappeared the first time. The silence between Akihito and Sakura was never thick or heavy with awkwardness, but a sense of understanding and often times, sorrow. She didn't quite get his situation in life the way Mirai did, but Sakura had lost everything that had meant anything to her, much as Akihito had. Their mutual perception of each other was the only thing that kept him sane half the time - Sakura was a blatant reminder that Mirai had existed, for however short a time.
While others would go on with life as though it was all the same, Sakura was stuck in the same rut as him. Missing Mirai. The peach-haired Spirit World Warrior had brought a semblance of meaning to both their lives, had impacted both of them more than either of them realized until she was gone for good. Being with Sakura on those empty nights made everything seem real, even if it had been painful.
After spending those few hours with her, he would go back home to his apartment and toss back a dose of drowsy cough medicine so that he would be sure to get sleep before school in the morning. It was often on those nights that he had the dreams of Mirai in a white sundress, a flower in her hair. Her warmth was almost real when he was asleep. Probably because - he now knew - that they weren't just dreams, and that it had truly been Mirai that laid there in the grass under a blue, blue sky.
"I want to talk about your relationship with Mirai," Sakura says bluntly, bringing Akihito back into the present.
The tips of his ears feel hot. "Eh? What about it?"
Her gaze burns into him. "What is she to you?"
He breaks eye contact and turns his stare to the table top. His heart turns over in his chest, and he feels so warm, thinking about Kuriyama-san. A good kind of warm. Tentatively, he runs his tongue of his bottom lip. "She's everything." It feels good to say it out loud to someone who isn't Mirai. It's as if it holds more merit, that what he feels is real.
Sakura folds her hands on her lap and takes a breath. "Good. You're really important to her, Kanbara, and I'm glad that she has you. You're really good for her."
Why does he feel embarrassed all of a sudden? He can't hide the blush on his face. "Ahh."
"However, you are both still just high school students," she continues unexpectedly and Akihito's stomach clenches as the blush spreads down the column of his neck, getting a feeling about what she's talking about. "And I know that you as a boy have raging hormones at this point in your life. Mirai is a fifteen year old girl - she's got urges too. But I don't think either one of you is quite ready for sex yet."
"S-Sakura-san," Akihito stutters, staring at her with wide eyes.
"You're definitely not ready to be parents." She nods her head and it amazes him that she seems completely unperturbed by this conversation, even though he's sure he resembles the complexion of a tomato. "If you absolutely cannot help yourselves, remember to use a condom. That's the most important thing you can take away from this conversation."
"Inami-san," he says again, clearing his throat, struggling to swallow his embarrassment. "Your concern for us is appreciated and I will take it to heart."
She blinks and then cracks an unexpected smile before laughing into her hand. He stares - he didn't know that Sakura could laugh.
"You're a weird one, Kanbara." She bows her head, hiding the amusement on her usually stoic face. "Please continue to take care of Mirai."
"To the very best of my abilities," he promises, grinning as he scratches at the back of his neck, willing his blush to disappear.
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It's another Monday morning. Akihito wakes up in a bed that does not belong to him and looks out a window that gives him a clear view of the lake that sits on the Nases' property. He feels unsettled - for the past week, he's been waking up with a lead weight in his stomach and a strange itch under his skin. He chalks it all up to the knowledge that the Society is probably calculating a way to get to him, but deep down, he's not so sure that's the case. He doesn't honestly know what to make of the feeling.
Reaching for his phone, he shoots Mirai a quick, anxious text - he suspects even a year from now, he'll need reassurance that she didn't just disappear overnight - and allows his face to relax into a smile when she responds with a simple "I'll see you at school." Dropping the phone back onto the pillow next to him he slowly takes in his surroundings.
He doesn't know if he'll get used to waking up in a guest room at the Nase manor. The entire room itself is larger than his whole apartment - the window with a view, a desk in the corner where his book bag sits, a queen-sized bed that is soft and agreeable under him. The walls are a gentle cream color, and as suspected with its size, the room feels cold and holds nothing of personal taste or value. It's a reoccurring theme in the Nase mansion. He sighs and rolls out of the bed to get dressed for school.
There's a knock on his door as he is pulling on his button up shirt, his tie hanging loose and untied around his neck. "Yeah?" he responds.
The door swings open, Mitsuki standing there with her hand on the knob. She stares and then blinks before scowling. "Put on a shirt, pervert."
"Hey, what's it look like I'm doing?" he insists with furrowed eyebrows, feeling the unsettled weight inside of him turn hot, making him suddenly irritable. "Besides, you're the one who just burst in here without so much as a warning. You're the pervert here."
"Don't associate me with your kind," she sniffs before closing the door behind her and crossing the room to sit on the desk chair by the window. "Pervert."
He swallows the urge to fight back and turns around to face a wall, finishing the last few buttons of his shirt. "What do you want, anyway?"
She doesn't respond right away, instead staring out at the placid lake, still frozen around the edges, the gray clouds rolling in from the distance. "I just have a bad feeling." Yakiimo emerges from her shirt to sit on the window sill, and she runs her fingers through the youmu's fur absently.
"So you came to see me?" Akihito turns back around, no longer feeling annoyed, his fingers deftly working on his tie.
She continues to stare hard out the window and Akihito suddenly wishes that he hadn't sounded so blunt or harsh - Mitsuki may drive him crazy, but. . .until he started living here, he had no idea just how lonely such a big house could be. Especially since Hiroomi makes himself scarce a majority of the time, busy with Spirit World things that he refuses to enlighten his sister with. Mitsuki came to see Akihito because she didn't have anyone else to turn to.
"Do you feel it too?" she asks emotionlessly as Yakiimo nudges her hand.
He thinks for a moment as he pulls his sweater on over his head and adjusts the sleeves, feeling the weight in his stomach and the strange, thickness under the surface of his skin. "I suppose I do."
"It makes me uneasy," she admits, finally turning to face him. "I wish Aniki wouldn't keep so much to himself."
Akihito understands where she's coming from. Mirai had kept many secrets that ended up being the catalyst to separating them for several months. "I could try to talk to him," he says in a voice that's abnormally soft for a conversation with Mitsuki.
Her eyes appraise him skeptically before she rises and allows Yakiimo to crawl to her shoulder. "It couldn't hurt. Though, I won't place my hopes on you."
He rolls his eyes as he grabs his bag and follows her out the door. "You're faith in me is reassuring."
"And your sarcasm is a failed attempt at masking your insecurities and despair that you shall never be able to measure up to my status," she replies in a snarky manner that he's come to expect. The annoyance vibrates under his skin again, thought it feels so much stronger than he thinks it should. "Let's eat breakfast, pervert."
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"Mirai, there's an upperclassman looking at you," a girl named Nanami whispers, nudging Mirai with her elbow. The classmate had always been friendly with Mirai, even picking up conversation again with her despite Kuriyama mysteriously reappearing two weeks ago after several weeks' of unexplained absence. Hiroomi had pulled some strings on that one; she was back in school and no one asked any questions.
Mirai glances up from where her hands are shoving books into her bag to see a boy with a head full of blonde cowlicks and a smile that rivals the sun. He leans against the wall just outside her classroom with his hands in his pockets, eyes zeroed in on her bespectacled face. Something about his temperament has been weird the past few days, but right now he looks the same as ever.
"I suppose there is," she says, smiling at him from across the room, fighting back a blush. He makes everything so obvious, she thinks, and if it wasn't so endearing, the embarrassment would be overwhelming.
Sakura sits on her desk and crosses her ankles, looking disinterested. "Kanbara is Mirai's boyfriend."
"Sakura!" Mirai exclaims, giving into the heat on her face. Nanami's mouth pops open in surprise and one of the other girls cleaning up her supplies for the day migrates towards them curiously.
"Unofficially," Sakura reiterates in a completely blasé tone.
"Unofficially?!" Nanami leans towards Mirai with an awed expression. "What does that mean?!"
Mirai closes her bag and reaches for the glasses on her nose, wiping the lenses furiously. Through her blurry vision, she can make out the subject of their conversation peering on expectantly as if to say yes, Kuriyama-san, what does that mean? She puckers her lips in a fit of brief outrage (he has no right to look so amused!) and then slips the lenses back onto her face.
"It means he hasn't asked me to be his girlfriend," Mirai informs them with a flutter of satisfaction and hopefulness.
Unaware that the conversation was reaching so many ears, nearly half of the students still in the classroom look toward the doorway where Akihito leans, stock still, absolutely surprised. He's quick under pressure though, and shameless enough to recover quickly. His smile is back in full force and he raises a hand to beckon to her.
Sakura slides from the desk and pushes pink-cheeked Mirai toward the door.
"Sakura!"
"I want to go home," Sakura replies, though after their meeting on Sunday, Mirai is certain that the Inami girl and Senpai have some sort of conspiracy theory to embarrass her as much as possible. If only she knew exactly what it was that they talked about.
Akihito smirks as he takes her hand once she's in reaching distance and pulls her into his chest. Sakura salutes him and tightens her grip on her school bag. "I leave her in your care, Kanbara."
He grins at her over the tangle of Mirai's strawberry hair, who cringes against him, her face burning, still feeling the eyes of the lingering students on her. "I'll see to it she gets home safe and sound, Inami-san."
The violet-eyed girl pulls a bag of pretzels from a pocket in her sack. "Your home or the Nases'?"
He laughs, but is helpless to the heat that rises up his neck, unable to find his blase footing since her embarrassing conversation with him about sex and Kuriyama-san. Sakura always had a way of flustering him, but she's honest and cuts to the chase, and he's used to this sort of teasing since he is bombarded by Mitsuki day in and day out. "She'll text you," he says shyly.
"S-S-Senpai!" Mirai exclaims, drawing herself away from him, glowing brightly with embarrassment.
Sakura merely opens her pretzel bag and begins to snack as she walks away. "M'kay."
Akihito glances to the side to see that they are still being ogled and smiles nervously at the first years before taking Mirai's hand and pulling her down the hall toward their club room. She stares at the floor, her heart pounding in her chest as her curtain of hair shields her face, which matches the red of her glasses.
When he speaks, his voice is low and soft, something tender and fragile and her breath seizes because she is falling in love with him all over again when he talks like this. "I didn't think you cared about trivial titles like boyfriend and girlfriend, Mirai."
"T-t-trivial titles?" she stammers, her eyes darting up to look at him. He pulls her around a corner and then her back is pressed to the wall and he's leaning over her.
His expression is nervous, eyes warm like coffee and her hand tightens over the strap of her bag. "I was under the impression we were much more than that," he says gently, anxiously.
She swallows loudly, peering up through the lenses of her glasses. Her eyes are like sundrops, he thinks, and he is blinded as the light pours from her.
"But," he continues, struggling to find words under the intensity of her gaze, "but I'll call you my girlfriend, if you'd like."
She has to admit, there is something both strange and thrilling about referring to Akihito as her boyfriend. "O-okay," she whispers. She wants to say something snarky and teasing to focus on something other than how fast her heart is beating, but she is frozen where he corners her against the wall and his mouth looks so soft and warm. . .
"Okay?" he suddenly looks amused. "That's all you have to say?"
She breaks her gaze from his mouth and turns it to his coffee-eyes, furrowing her eyebrows. "What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know, 'Oh yes, Akihito! Take me! Call me your girlfriend! I'm the luckiest girl in the world!'" He winks at her. "That would be nice."
She raises an eyebrow to try and hide the fact her blush rivals that of a stop sign. "That would also be horrifying." She pokes at his chest. "You're a creepy senpai with a thing for glasses. Hardly a catch."
"You are the one that caught me, idiot."
She puts on a troubled mask. "What in the world was I thinking?"
He furrows his eyebrows, his expression turning unexpectedly distressed. "Having second thoughts?"
Mirai drops the mask and stares, reaching up to carefully place her hand against his cheek, feeling wary of the sudden change in his demeanor. He always knew when she was teasing him. "Akihito, I gave up everything to protect you. You're hardly someone I would have second thoughts about."
His face goes blank for a moment and then he shakes his head, running a hand through his hair before massaging the back of his neck. "Right. Sorry, I knew that."
Her stomach twists uneasily. "Are you okay? You've been acting kind of strange lately."
He stares at her and then smiles a smile that is perfectly him. "I'm fine! Honestly. Let's get to the club room, yeah? Mitsuki will accuse me of dragging you off into the shadows and doing impure things if we take too long."
"Well you are my b-boyfriend," she says, internally cursing herself for stuttering over the word. "She's right to suspect you of being indecent."
He takes her hand and pulls her down the hall. "Is that an invitation, Kuriyama?"
She hums to give him a vague response, but her stomach still feels unsettled by the strange switch in his personality moments ago. Mirai decides to do her best to shake it off, certain that nothing out of the ordinary was wrong. Perhaps he didn't sleep very well - yeah, she'd chalk it up to that.
She could tell herself whatever she wanted, but even as she smiled and swung their intertwined hands between them, the weight in her stomach did not disappear.
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A/N: Hey! Sorry it's been a while since I updated! I just get really busy and stuff, but even if there are only two of you reading this fic, I'm determined to see it through. I'd be excited to know what you're thinking so far! We're finally starting to get to the real issues of the fic and I'm pumped about this tbh.
Thank you so much for reading!