What's this? Another chapter? And not like five months later? I'm in shock! *laughs* Well, actually, I was very pleasantly surprised to receive notifications of reviews, story alerts, and favorites in my inbox not long after I put out chapter 6, so I had some motivation to write in a timely manner again. Thank you very much! Like I'd said before, a lot of interest in this fandom has started to die out, so it's really incredibly encouraging to see that there are people still interested! I hope you'll continue to enjoy the rest of the story.

It was eleven when Kahoko finally managed to get around to the topic of Fujimoto-san. She would have preferred they have the conversation earlier, but Yuji had not wanted to go to bed at all. So here they were: frazzled, at least mildly irritated, and completely and utterly worn out. Not the best conditions for this conversation, but she had wanted to get to the bottom of things right then, so she'd insisted he stay for some tea.

She sighed and snuck a glance at her companion who sipped his drink while seemingly lost in his own thoughts. Her lips thinned slightly. Hmph, jealous—why would she be jealous? It was just weird to know that Hihara-senpai had been close to another girl before, that's all. If she could get through this talk unscathed, it'd prove once and for all that she was imagining things. The corners of her lips turned up in a very unconvincing smile. It would be fun to catch up on old gossip, right? Right.

"So…you have an ex?" she asked suddenly, managing to infuse a cheerful chirp in her voice that sounded fake even to her.

"Huh?" Kazuki answered with a distracted air about him.

Smile plastered on her face, she prodded, "The woman…your ex-girlfriend."

Snapping out of it, he blushed uncomfortably, "Ah…uh, yeah…we, umm…we met at a café. She was working there."

"Oh?"

He flinched a bit; how was it possible for a smiling face to be so reminiscent of a glaring scowl? "Yeah…it, umm…it was years ago."

"For how long?"

"Huh?"

"How long were you two seeing each other, Hihara-senpai?"

The words came out slowly and overly enunciated with a sharpness to them he wondered if he was imagining. After all, she was still smiling brightly. "A couple of years."

"Two years," she echoed. "That's a decent amount of time." Her grin became significantly more toothy. "No wedding bells for you two?"

He was starting to get really weirded out. He had never seen her like this. "She broke things off." He looked away, feeling a bit sad.

"Oh…." She felt bad. "Did she say why?"

Now he firmly kept his eyes away from hers. "She said it seemed like my heart wasn't really in it."

"Why would she say that?" Kahoko frowned. Hihara-senpai had always been the type to feel deeply. He was rarely ever of two minds about something. Well, that wasn't totally true; if he was ever of two minds about something, he was extremely in two minds about it until he muddled his way into whole-heartedly following whatever he had decided.

"Dunno exactly," he mumbled. A lie could only be mumbled.

There was a pregnant pause before Kahoko viciously teased, "So she must have been your first kiss, huh?"

His face felt hot. He suspected it resembled a cooked lobster about now. "Y-yes."

"Of course," despite the smile she wore, she seemed to be leering at him. "So what's the story?"

"Why are you asking me about this?" he whined uncomfortably.

"Because I'm a girl, and girls like these kinds of details. Come on, Hihara-senpai." There was that inexplicably frightening grin again. "I want to know."

Maybe it was the combination of being tired and her weird behavior throwing him totally off-balance. Maybe it was because he actually believed a little bit that talking about this meant that they were becoming closer. Whatever the reason was exactly, he caved. And nothing was ever the same again.

"Well…like I told you…we, umm, met at a café where she worked."

"Mmmhmm…." Exactly how she managed to keep her tone light was unknown.

"So…uh, one day, she, umm, lost an earring."

Kahoko raised her eyebrows.

"The earrings had been a gift from her mother who'd passed away the previous year, so she was really freaking out."

"Oh…" her eyes softened in sympathy.

"Everyone was hunting around for it after closing, and after a while, it looked like we weren't going to find it. But then I thought to search the trash out back, and there it was." He blushed furiously at the memory. "She was so relieved, she threw her arms around me and kissed me really hard on the mouth." He looked away as he twiddled his thumbs. "And, uh, well, after that, I asked her out." It had been because of the hair. He wasn't proud of that.

"So you were her hero," Kahoko stated sourly.

He scratched his head in embarrassment. "Yeah, I guess I was."

"So how come I'm hearing all this juiciness only now?"

"Umm…well…we weren't exactly…talking…when I dated her."

"Oh, of course." She jerked a nod, her back ramrod straight. "Silly me," she hissed icily.

Now he was starting to get a little defensive. "What?"

"I thought we were friends again," Kahoko replied stiffly. "It seems odd that you would have kept something like an ex-girlfriend a secret."

"Like I said, that was years ago. It doesn't have anything to do with now."

"Minus that we just ran into her."

"So? She's married, pregnant, and in love with her husband. It's not like we're going to get back together."

The words flew out before she could stop them. "And if she had been free, would you have tried to get back together?"

He frowned at her with eyes that were part irritated and part confused. "No, I wouldn't have, but why the sudden interest in my love life or lack thereof?"

She looked away, but her voice shook a little with the ridiculous, overwhelming sense of relief she tried to viciously stamp out and deny. "I just want to know if there are any secrets I should know about."

"Oh, like you never kept secrets from me," he scoffed.

Her eyes flashed momentarily with fear before indignation overwhelmed it. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

"You know exactly what I meant, Kaho-chan."

"Oh, so now I'm a mind-reader and a bad friend too, is that it?"

"I didn't say you were a bad friend."

"Yes, you did."

"When?"

"You implied it just now."

"I would have thought the secret you kept was obvious! I mean, seriously! You dated Takeshi-san for two years, and the first I hear of him is when I come across you two just as you've gotten engaged!"

"I-I told you." She did her best to hide her panic. "I must have."

"You didn't," he flatly refuted. "And you know it too. You were never a good liar."

"Well…I'm sorry then. It must've slipped my mind," she lied.

"More lies, Kaho-chan?" He looked at her angrily. At some point they had both stood. "What part of 'You were never a good liar' made you think you were good at it?"

"Alright," she admitted, sitting and looking away so she could hide her discomfort. "So I didn't tell you about him. Is it such a big deal?"

"Not to you," he replied bitterly.

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Her temper flared again.

"It means that you obviously didn't trust me enough to tell me that you were in a relationship with someone!" he shouted.

"Who made you my keeper?!" she accused, flying again to her feet. "I wasn't aware I had to give you a list of every person I had ever been on a date with!"

"Well who made you mine?" he snapped back. "Rina-san is in the past, the fairly long ago past, I might add. It didn't stop you from prying just now."

"That's different!"

"How so?"

"You…." How was it different indeed? "You were fawning all over her and ignoring Yuji!"

His mouth dropped open. "What?! No, I wasn't!"

"Are you going to tell me you weren't distracted after talking to her?" she challenged.

No, he couldn't deny that, but it wasn't like he'd been distracted because he'd been thinking about Rina-san. "That's not fair."

"Well, there are lots of things in life that aren't fair," she quipped, perhaps more harshly than she should have because she wanted to make him mad. If they could focus on being mad, then she wouldn't go back to feeling jealous or relieved or any of those ridiculous things she shouldn't be feeling.

Looking away, she muttered, "And why do you care anyway? You were on another continent. It's not like you would have ever had a chance to meet him."

"Maybe so, but at least I wouldn't have gotten my heart ripped out and stomped on."

"What are you talking about?" she asked sharply.

He had said too much. "Nothing," he muttered as he turned to leave. She wasn't supposed to hear that.

"No, it's not nothing, Hihara-senpai," she grabbed his wrist and turned a determined gaze on him.

He blew out a breath. Screw it. Just screw it all. He could kick himself tomorrow when he realized he had utterly blown any chance he could have ever had with her.

"I was in love with you."

Her fingers fell nerveless to her sides. "What?" she asked dumbly. His words were like a slap to the face.

"I. Loved. You," he repeated, pinning her with an angry gaze. Throwing all caution to the wind, he plowed on, "You know what? I'm still in love with you! I've been in love with you since we were in high school! And just when I was going to finally tell you how I felt, I walked in to see you getting engaged!"

Her face became deathly pale. Since high school. He had been in love with her since high school. All that time, and he had never said anything. He had loved her all that time? She felt sick. Suddenly everything was starting to make horrible sense. His strange behavior for the rest of the trip, his odd actions and words at the wedding, the way he dropped off the face of the Earth after Yuji was born…. Even things from back in college were coming to light. She needed to sit down. She just needed to sit down. There was too much to process. She was hyperventilating. The room was spinning. Her vision was clouding. Oh no, oh no. She was going to throw up; she just knew it!

As if reading her mind, he quickly sat her down on the couch and handed her a trashcan, rubbing calming circles on her back and mumbling soothing nonsense as she retched the contents of her stomach.

When she was done, she couldn't even look at him. She was so embarrassed she wanted to die. When she felt him leave the couch, she closed her eyes in shame. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She'd been so stupid. How could she not have known? And even better, when he did get around to telling her, how did she respond? She was ashamed of herself. She was supposed to be a mature adult now. Calm, strong, collected—that was the kind of adult, the kind of mother, she needed to be for Yuji. Where had she gone in her moment of need?

"Are you alright…?"

She straightened a bit in surprise and cautiously looked at him. There wasn't a trace of anger on his face, as if all the anger in him had flown right out the window. All that remained now was tenderness and concern. She absently noted that he had brought a cup of water and a basin with a small washcloth as he knelt beside her. Taking the washcloth he began to wipe off her cheeks while mumbling something about her face being dirty. She felt a bit like a sick child with her mother, but contrary to feeling insulted, she closed her eyes and relaxed under his ministrations.

"I'm sorry," she heard him whisper. When she opened her eyes again, she could see how saddened he was as he wiped off some strands of hair. "It shouldn't have been like that. It should have been sweet and romantic, not an angry, spiteful declaration." He set down the washcloth. "It wasn't supposed to hurt you."

Looking into her eyes, he asked, "Does your stomach still feel queasy?" When she shook her head, he wordlessly handed her the cup and she rinsed her mouth out. As he took the dishes back to the kitchen, she slowly followed him, though for the life of her she didn't know why. What was she going to say to him? He had just confessed, and now he was apologizing, but was he apologizing for the confession, or just how he'd done it? Should she respond? Brush it off? No, that wouldn't be right. It sounded more like he was apologizing for the way he had confessed than for the confession itself, so it wasn't like she could ignore it. Did she even want to ignore it?

She sighed quietly as he did the dishes. She had given up trying to insist that he was a guest and shouldn't do them ages ago. As he placed the dishes in the dish rack, she looked up.

For a long moment, they simply stood there regarding each other, he leaning back against the sink and she against the opposite wall. "Have you really loved me since high school, Hihara-senpai?" she whispered.

He looked away, his eyes downcast. "Since before the third round of the competition."

"That long…and you never said anything?" Her eyes filled a bit. "Why?"

"I don't know," he confessed. "I must have had a reason before, but it's gotten lost along the way." He sighed. "It just got harder and harder to tell you as time went by." He shrugged. "Didn't want to rock the boat."

"But…" she looked so confused, "at the airport? Why didn't you say anything then?" She frowned. "It was the perfect chance for you to try and stop me, to confess your feelings for me."

He flushed. "I wanted to. You have no idea how hard I had to bite my tongue to keep from telling you how I felt."

"Then…why didn't you?"

The pain of that moment was fully reflected in his eyes. "How could I? You looked so happy when you were talking to me that morning about you and Takeshi-san. I couldn't take advantage of your pre-wedding jitters. You were happy with him, and I refused to do anything that could jeopardize your happiness." He sighed. "I lost to him. I accepted that, even if it was hard to swallow. I was too slow, and he had won your heart while I dragged my feet." He smiled ruefully as he caught her eye. "So, I told you that if you loved him, then it couldn't be wrong to marry him. You loved him; I wasn't going to stand in the way of that."

A heavy silence fell as she digested everything. He was much more selfless than she had ever given him credit for. How much must it have hurt to tell the woman you loved to marry another man if it made her happy? It suddenly occurred to her that really the only selfish thing he had done in his life where she was concerned was when he dropped off the map when Yuji was born. "I don't deserve him," she acknowledged to herself. But he deserved the truth.

"Actually, I…" she hesitated before confessing, "I wasn't in love with him."

Okay, so the ex-girlfriend wasn't as big of a deal as I probably made her out to be at first. XD As I said, I want to keep this thing fairly short. But she did generate some needed conflict, so it's not like there's no drama.

And hey, we got a confession scene out of it, though it's certainly not what one would probably consider a typical Kazuki Hihara confession. (-_-;) *sigh* Why did I not manage to make it romantic? (_ _") Though I suppose the taking care of her afterward was sweet…. Bah, no point in lamenting what's already done.

I'm almost afraid all this fighting is making my characters not so in character, but I guess that can't be super helped. I needed things to come to a head quickly, and this seemed the most believable(?) way to do it. I figured if they were tired and emotionally unstable enough, something would probably have to give. Haha, this was my one real time to make Yuji a bit of a brat (off-screen) since, quite frankly, there's no child in the world who can always be good. What did you guys think? Somewhat plausible? Totally out there? I don't know how to write a fight? *laughs*

'Til next time! (^_^)v