*Hikari is sitting sideways on a couch while playing a game on a smartphone*

"Hiya readers. New chapter here for you. Don't have much else to say besides enjoy the read while I play my game."

Chapter 20

Riku and Yata walked across the arcade until they approached the area that had the dance machines. There they saw Sora and Saruhiko already there, with Sora standing on one of the dance platforms. Saruhiko was seated on the floor with his arms crossed, pouting slightly while Sora was 'dancing' to the demo.

Soon Sora turned his head and smiled at the two that approached. "Hey there you guys are! About time you made it."

Riku tilted his head to the side, feeling a bit confused. "It only took us less than a minute to walk over here."

"I know, but I'm just really excited! I love DDR more than anything else here," Sora explained.

Yata didn't listen in the conversation and instead walked over to Saruhiko. He looked down at him and snickered. "Why do you look like a sad little child that had their toys taken away?"

"Why do you act like a jackass who bullies others to compensate for something?" Saru retorted back while standing up so that he was practically in Yata's personal space.

Yata's eyes wided. "What? What the hell?! How about, what's with your rudeass attitude?" His shock slowly turned into glare as he kept his eyes locked on Saruhiko.

"How the f**k would you feel if your every move was restricted to the point that you can't even leave home without supervision from an elder sibling," Saru growled out.

Yata's glare softened. Any anger or annoyance he had felt in the moment before was gone and replaced with his own feelings of confusion. "Wait what? You… can't actually leave home without being supervised?"

"Why do you think I've made a jibe at my elder brother about being my caretaker. He's practically my babysitter. I'm not allowed out alone for multiple reasons."

"Uh… well then…" Yata said, trying to think of something to say back. But every thing that he thought of ended up being only fragments. Nothing was a full thought as he tried processing. Finally something started to come to his mind to ask. "Are these reasons… like for something bad?" Yata's eyes narrowed slightly. "You don't… uh have a record or something?"

"I grew up hidden away from society until I met my eldest brother, and since then, I've only ever left home with a supervisor, so no I don't have any record, be it criminal or just existential."

Yata blinked, listening carefully to Saruhiko's words. It was nothing he had expected. He thought that Saruhiko was just going to give a snarky reply to him… but this was something else. He started to feel more confused than he had before, and had even less clear thoughts to ask. There was something that had to be said though. He knew that much. It was only trying to get those words out through the wall of many questions in his head.

"I… I'm sorry to hear that…" Yata muttered quietly.

"I don't need your pity." Saru turned away to face Riku and Sora up on the machine platform flipping through songs, debating on which one to play.

Sora was excitedly telling Riku about which songs he liked to dance to the most. A lot of them he said he enjoyed playing on Expert Mode due to the fact he had played so many times. Riku listened intently, not even noticing that Saru was staring right at them. Eventually Sora slowed down and finally caught his breath.

"Okay! Are we all ready to play? Riku and I will go first, then Saruhiko and Yata. After that the ones who win each game will move on to the final round," Sora explained.

"I already told you that I don't want to play this." Saru spoke up so that Sora could hear him.

"No you gotta play!" Sora replied. "It's more fun if we all play together."

"Saru, just play a few rounds," Riku added as he leaned on the railing on the platform he stood on. "It's not going to kill you."

"No thanks." Saruhiko just sat back down against the wall.

Riku sighed heavily. Saru was still going to proceed to be stubborn about it. It was obvious from the start that it would go that way. With not wanting to repeat the exact same conversation as before, Riku stepped off the dance platform and grabbed Saru by the collar of his shirt one more. With a simple pull, Saru was up on his feet and Riku shoved him up onto the dance platform.

"You're going to play," Riku responded while he heard faint snickers from Yata and Sora.

Saru gave an annoyed huff, chucking a few of his plastic tokens at Riku's head while stepping off the platform. "I refuse to go first in a game I have never played."

Sora gasped at Saruhiko momentary. But then grinned. "It's easy! You just dance to the arrows on the screen. Hey Riku, wanna show him how it goes?"

Riku sneered at Saruhiko before he looked back to Sora. He stepped back up on the platform. "Sure. Might as well finally get this started."

Sora pumped a fist into the air. "Yes! Let's do it!"

Sora picked the song they would start with, one that had a fairly good easy mode. Though when picking the difficulty. Sora when right to medium. He chuckled softly. "This song isn't too bad, but I don't wanna go full out hard mode yet. But I wanna start with a little bit of a challenge."

Riku decided to go with easy mode, having never really played the game before. The song started the two of them began to hit the arrows on the platform coordinating with what was being shown on screen.

Sora's side of what he had to too was a bit more challenging, but he managed easily with it. Sora kept a happy, goofy smile on his face as he danced to the arrows on the screen. And Riku couldn't help but glance every so often to see the smile. He didn't mean to keep doing it. But he found himself wanting to look. There was something about the young boy's smile that created a warmth in him. He still didn't want to assume anything yet, but there were more and more thoughts forming in his mind as to why he felt the way he was. He kept reminding himself that he would just have to ask Zack after all of this was over.

Sora and Riku finished the dance and stepped off the platform to relax. Sora ended with an A rank score and Riku was scored at a B. Sora walked over to Riku and held up his hand. "Hey good job!"

"But I didn't rank as high as you," Riku replied.

"So? You still did as best as you could do, and that's what matters," Sora replied. A huge, happy grin coming across his face.

Riku returned a smile to Sora and completed the high five. "All right, thanks."

Sora kept smiling. "You're welcome." Sora then turned to Yata and Saruhiko who were standing next to the game. "Okay guys! Now it's your turn!"

"Fine," Yata replied as he stepped up to the platform. "Is the monkey actually going to play or am I facing one of you two?"

Sora stepped back up onto the platform. "I'll go again, so we can show Saruhiko how much fun this game can be."

"But aren't you tired from the last round?" Riku asked, surprised at Sora's continued eithismism.

"Just a little bit, but I am use to it. I'm really good at this game so I can play it for a while before I get too tired. Right Yata?"

"It's true," Yata agreed. "I am sure this is how he gets all his exercise."

"Hey! Not true! I get exercise in other ways!"

"Yeah like from other video games," Yata replied.

Sora puffed out his cheeks before sighing. "Let's just play. You pick the song Yata."

Yata nodded and scrolled through the selection. He soon came across a song called Wild Crow with a heavy beat and a lot of guitar riffs. Both of the boys picked medium for the difficulty and began the song. This song was far more challenging than the last and required more effort than Sora had done in the last round. But he seemed to manage just fine as he hit many of the arrows on perfect. Yata as just as good. He managed to not once get any bads or misses throughout the entire song.

By the end Yata and Sora breathed deeply. They only looked slightly out of breath as they awaited for their scores to be tallied. Eventually they came up with the final results; with both boys scoring a solid A. The two of them grinned before looking at one another and giving each other a high five.

"All right!" Sora cheered. "That's how it's done!"

Riku gave a small round of applause. "Wow that was really good. Have you done expert mode yet for that song?"

"Twice," Sora answered. "But it's super suuuuuper hard."

"We barely get halfway through the song before we get booted for failing," Yata added.

"How difficult can it be?" Saru finally spoke up, standing up from where he was sitting.

"Oh so now you're going to play?" Yata asked as he stepped off of the platform.

"You've presented me with a challenge." Saru answered "And I'm being forced to play one way or another, so might as well get this over with."

"You're going to have fun though!" Sora exclaimed. "But first, I think I'm going to go buy a water bottle from the vending machine. You want one too, Yata?"

"Yeah," Yata said before pulling out a dollar from his pocket and handed it to Sora.

"I'll be back! You guys can start without me!" Sora shouted before he took off running to where the vending machines were.

Saru stepped up onto the platform and turned to face Riku. "Am I playing against you then dear brother?" He taunted.

Riku narrowed his eyes for a moment. For a moment he was trying to see if Saru was trying to deceive him. But he ended up seeing that it was just another annoying taunt from his brother. "I suppose so, since you asked so nicely, little brother." Riku decided to taunt back for no real reason before stepping up onto the platform.

Saruhiko gave no retort, instead, he started quickly flipping though songs before stopping on one that he liked the title of. It was called I beg your hate, although that appeared to be a Japanese song as what lyrics they could hear from the demo were in Japanese.

"That's your choice?" Yata asked with genuine curiosity as he sat down on the floor.

"Hmph" Saru didn't say anything more as he chose medium for the difficulty settings.

"Doesn't look too hard," Riku replied as he decided what difficulty he would pick. Eventually he ended up picking medium as well. He wanted to try and make a fair competition against Saru, knowing he would be taunted otherwise for picking easy.

The song began and the two of them kept their eyes locked on the screen, following the movements instrustred to them. At first, Saru was stumbling with some of the steps, but after a few measures, he started getting greats or perfects for every one. Riku didn't stumble as much at the start, but a few surprise quick moves did through him off guard for the moment.

But then, since both of the boys were on the same level of difficulty they stayed pretty much in sync during the entire dance once they both got the hang of things. Neither of them took their eyes off the screen the entire time, not even noticing that Sora had returned with water bottles.

When the song ended the boys stopped to breath. They waited for the game to tally up their scores, still neither of them focusing on anything else. THough for a moment they did glance at one another, giving each other a competitive glare.

The scores totalled up. While Saru had far more perfects and a better combo, he had a few more misses than Riku did. But with that it ended up with both of them having an A rank for the song.

"Wow!" Sora exclaimed. "You guys picked up how to play this really quick! That was amazing!"

Riku rubbed the back of his neck slightly as he looked to Sora's beaming face. He smiled. "It wasn't that hard once I got the hang of it. Just some of those quick double taps were surprising."

"I'll admit, I am impressed," Yata said before he took a drink of his water. "I thought at least one of you could completely screw it up."

Saruhiko remained quiet, but did not step down from the platform. Riku on the other hand did and walked over to Sora. "So now what are we going to do?"

"Another round of course!" Sora said. "You guys tied though, so I don't know who will go against who next."

"Rock, paper, scissors?" Yata suggested in a joking tone.

"How about I just don't play again?" Saruhiko half asked, half stated while stepping down from the platform.

"You're going to start up again?" Yata asked.

"I've already played it once already, short stack. Don't push your luck." Saru retorted, moving to stand against the wall.

Yata scowled at him, but chose to stay quiet. He went back to drinking more of his water in the meantime. Sora on the other hand looked between all of them. Finally he looked back and forth between Riku and Yata. "You guys haven't gone against each other yet, so how about a round for that?"

"I guess we could do that, if you aren't too tired yet," Yata said before placing his water bottle on the floor next to the game.

"I'm good," Riku replied. "That last song wasn't the most tiring."

The two of them then set up, ready to go another round.

"I'm pretty sure that you all know what I'd usually say at this point, if not... How about you go back to the beginning and read it all over again."

"Please follow, favorite, and or review if you haven't already. Night everyone."