Duran-kun and Kiyo-chan's Omake Theater

(featuring the Okuzaki family pet)

"I'm perfectly fine. Honestly, Akira, you didn't need to come check on me," Takumi Tokiha told his former roommate and current girlfriend, Akira Okuzaki.

"Miss Sagisawa told me that you had to leave phys. ed. early today and go to her office. That doesn't sound like 'perfectly fine' to me."

"Geez, you're as bad as Mai sometimes." He cupped his hands behind his head as he leaned back on the bed. "I just got a little winded, that's all, because I'm still out of shape since the operation. And this is lots better than I used to be. In the old days I couldn't take part at all."

She sat down on the corner of the bed by his feet without the slightest trace of self-consciousness about being in a boy's room, or on a boy's bed, after dark. Part of Takumi kind of wished she would be a little more aware of those kinds of implications. After all, when he'd been sickly most of his life, it was easy to confuse physical weakness with a lack of masculinity. So it did make him wonder, just a little, if the reason she was so at ease with him was because she didn't give the slightest thought about him being a potential threat to her virtue.

On the other hand, part of what he liked about Akira was the easy camaraderie they shared, friendship as well as romance. He'd hate to lose that to be replaced by the kind of girlish fluttering he saw in manga and on TV, and increasingly around him as his friends from class started finding relationships of their own. Especially just to satisfy his own stupid insecurities.

"And you want to be able to keep taking part in the future, remember, so don't go pushing your limits too hard. You know what the doctor said; you've got to steadily build up your cardiovascular fitness without slacking off and without going too hard, too fast."

She was, in a word, relentless.

"Look, it's not that I don't get it," she went on. "You've spent your whole life having to constantly watch your health, take your meds, sit around while everyone else gets to do things. And you're sick and tired of feeling like a burden. I know what it's like to be weighed down by the pressures and expectations of family, even if for me it was 'do a good job as a HiME' instead of 'take care of yourself and get well.' So you want to get healthy as fast as possible both for your own sake and for everyone else's. But you've got to take it the right way or you're just going to overdo it and end up on your butt in bed."

Akira reached out and gave him a forehead flick.

"You are getting more like Mai every day."

"Isn't that a good thing, siscon-boy?" she teased.

He shot her a look, then to get some of his own back he dropped his gaze to her chest.

"At least in some ways you are."

Akira flushed beet-red.

Gotcha.

"Takumi!"

He grinned at her.

"Just remember that you're not the only one who can be sneaky."

"Oh, is that so?"

She leaned forward towards him.

"And I suppose you'd prefer it if I was built like some big-boobed AV star?"

Forget "towards"; she was now leaning over him, one hand on either side of his chest. And while he'd been lamenting her apparent lack of notice of his masculinity, Takumi was certainly not having any problem noticing that a girl was less than a foot away from him!

"No, that's not what I meant!" he babbled, then sighed as she shot a grin back at him. "Which you already knew."

"Of course. But if you're going to make me squirm, then turnabout is fair play, right?"

He noted that, although she was smiling, her body hadn't moved. In fact, her lips were actually drawing closer to his.

Then the lights went out.

"Huh? What's going on?"

The presence disappeared from the bed. Takumi would never have realized that Akira had gone were it not for that sudden loss of that aura, for lack of a better word. There had been no apparent shifting of weight to feel, no whisper of sound to hear.

"I think it's just a power failure. The clock radio is out, too."

From the window, there was a rustle as the curtain was drawn back.

"Yeah, that's it; all the lights are off outside as well."

"I hope it doesn't last too long. I did need to get some homework done tonight." The fact that he was alone with his girlfriend in a pitch-dark room hadn't really impacted his mind; the sudden blackout had been a mood-killer and quite frankly neither one of them was actually ready for fumblings in darkened rooms. Maybe in a few years, but not now.

"Oh, I can help with that. Gennai!"

Takumi heard a soft croak in response. He hadn't even known the frog was in the room (were there such things as ninja stealth skills for amphibians?), but sure enough two powerful beams of light like a pair of flashlights stabbed out of the dark.

"Thanks! But, you know, I understand that it's a set-up for the shadow trick and all," he mused, "but the more I think about it, spotlights don't really seem very ninja-like."

Gennai let out a mildly offended ribbit.

"I guess I shouldn't look a gift frog in the mouth, though."

"Especially not given his tongue."

~X X X~

A/N: Admittedly, more TakuAki romance going on in this one than CHILD humor, but hey, I don't take the secondary couples out for a spin anywhere near as often as I probably ought to.