Angelic Layer Fan Fiction ❯ Kara Valentine's Day ni White Day ❯ Do You Like...? ( Chapter 3 )

Disclaimer: Well, I'm pretty sure CLAMP is anything but broke, so...

 

AN: O_O No reviews. Not that it surprises me that much, since I never get that many reviews on this site, but still... T_T No reviews. Is it really that bad? (sniffle) I'll give you plushies!

 

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Chapter Three: Do You Like...?

 

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Two weeks post Valentine's Day...

 

Misaki stared at him for the span of several breaths - each one of which, incidentally, felt like an eternity - and then smiled shakily.

 

“I see,” she said. “I... think I understand. I...” One tear crept down her face, unnoticed until it reached her lips and caused her to falter.

 

“Misaki-”

 

“No.” She scrubbed her face, and grinned. “I'm just surprised, really. I like you a lot, but for a while now I haven't been... comfortable.”

 

Oujiro grinned, too, and ruffled her hair, making her giggle. And then they went to an ice-cream parlor - Oujiro's treat - and talked about boys.

 

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“Oh my GAWD!” Tamayo shrieked.

 

“Tamayo,” Misaki whimpered pitifully, as the entire classroom stared at them (and, after a few moments, a few curious students from the hall, too). Tamayo grinned apologetically, and Kotaro twitched.

 

“What? He broke up with you, and... what?” Darn it, he hated it when girls whispered...

 

Tamayo looked at him thoughtfully. Misaki whispered something else to her, and she nodded. “I'm gonna need to talk to you, Kotaro,” she said with authority.

 

“What? What did I do? What?” The girls merely exchanged deeply knowing and totally untranslatable looks, and Kotaro bent his pen.

 

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As soon as their first break period rolled around, Tamayo seemed to materialize at Kotaro's side, grabbed his ear (because she was like that), and dragged him into an empty classroom.

 

“Ow, ow, ow, ow - you!” Kotaro seethed, rubbing his poor painful ear, but was just a little too scared to retaliate.

 

It took him a moment or two to notice how quiet Tamayo was.

 

He was just about to speak, intent on breaking this the most uncomfortable silence in history, when Tamayo finally looked up and beat him to it. “Kotaro... Do... Do you like...”

 

Misaki.

 

NO. That - that - if Oujiro told Misaki that he liked her, so help him -

 

“-boys?”

 

B-B-B...

 

Waitaminute. Do I WHAT?

 

Kotaro sputtered and choked, but Tamayo merely shot him a withering look and kicked him in the shin. “Oh, suck it up. Specifically, do you like Oujiro?”

 

Kotaro stumbled backwards at the sheer evil force of the accusation. Why, it was - it was blasphemy! “Are you trying to kill me?-!” he managed to gag.

 

She shrugged. “Not really. Just trying to get some answers,” she said dryly. Something about the forlorn little pout that she was trying to hide made Kotaro take her suggestion, and force himself to try to think rationally.

 

“What the heck gave you that idea?” he asked shakily.

 

“I knew it!” she screeched, poking his chest. “You're not denying it!” Poke, poke!

 

“Please, Tamayo,” he begged. “I hate that guy! I can't stand him, honest!”

 

She stared at him, then grudgingly withdrew her finger back into her own personal space and crossed her arms with a small `hmph'. “Well, if you say so. You're always going on about him...”

 

“Because I hate him!” he insisted.

 

She pinned him with a scathing glare. “You don't like him, but you like talking about him?” she said, and waved her hand dismissively. “The point is...” She looked at him thoughtfully, and then said, “Well... maybe you better hear it from him. You probably ought to talk to him sometime soon.”

 

Kotaro imploded.

 

“You - you - YOU!” he screamed eloquently, but Tamayo had already left the room.

 

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And that was way, just a few minutes after the Junior High let out, Kotaro was standing (barely) outside Oujiro's High School.

 

Pant, wheeze. Bleh.

 

Oujiro was used to people coming up to him at seemingly unlikely moments and screaming his name in his ear. Usually, though, these people were of the female gender. And usually these people did not then grab his shoulder with a surprisingly strong grip, whirl him around, and glare daggers at him.

 

“I need talk to you,” Kotaro said dangerously.

 

Oujiro held up his hands in surrender. “What did I - erk.”

 

About a minute later, Kotaro finally released his hold on Oujiro's collar, after him behind some conveniently placed shrubbery. “You,” he hissed angrily, poking his chest, “broke up with Misaki.”

 

Oujiro blinked. “...Yes?”

 

He flushed, fuming. “She loved you!”

 

“No she didn't,” the taller boy said calmly. “She told me so herself. You could say we broke up with each other, almost. But more importantly, you love her. Why aren't you with her?”

 

Kotaro took his turn at blinking. “Wha...?”

 

Oujiro leaned against the school wall, and for once he allowed himself to give something that almost looked like a smirk. Kotaro found it disturbing on many levels, and was almost certain that he wished he wouldn't. “Well, if you really loved her, the first thing on your mind ought to be finding out whether she's hurting.”

 

Kotaro scowled, and wished Oujiro wasn't so damn tall. “That's not-”

 

“The first thing, Kobayashi,” he emphasized, and Kotaro was so busy wondering dazedly when `may-I-call-you-Kotaro-kun' became `Kobayashi' that he actually shut up. Oujiro, looking satisfied, continued. “Not to mention the fact that as she might be feeling emotionally unstable right now, this might be the very best time to, ah, get a foot in the door.”

 

Kotaro gawked. Finally he sputtered: “B-B-But... I though you liked me!”

 

Oujiro started. Then he totally disarmed Kotaro, by laughing. “And where did you get that idea?”

 

“Tamayo told me,” he said, confidence fleeing rapidly for higher ground. Well, at least she... sort of implied it... maybe...?

 

Oujiro stared at him for a few more moments, and then sighed, and turned his gaze to the sections the tree branches and their tiny baby leaves carved out of the sky, smiling chimerically. “Well... so what if I did, though? Because you love Misaki.” His eyes alone betrayed the question in the last sentence.

 

Oh.

 

Oh...

 

Could this be?

 

A confes-

 

Kotaro ran for the hills. It only occurred to him much, much later to wonder why he'd been so scared.

 

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AN: (crazed look) Revieeeeews...