Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Suicide ❯ Chapter Twelve ( Chapter 12 )

Chapter Twelve
Yuusuke ignored his breakfast in favor of glaring at Atsuko. She wasn't telling him something and it was driving him insane. Normally she was easy to figure out. Normally she was drunk. And apparently normal wasn't anymore.

Hiei, for his part, was ignoring both of them and actually eating voluntarily. Yuusuke figured it was because they were in public. The fire demon probably didn't trust Atsuko not to make a scene. Smart demon.

Atsuko finally noticed his glower as she lifted her bowl of rice to get the remnants out of the bottom. "Yuu-chan, if you aren't going to eat, give your breakfast to Hiei-chan. He needs some meat on his bones." Hiei pretended not to hear her.

Yuusuke scowled and started on his tamagoyaki [1]. She knew what was going on and she was ignoring it. He was evidently going to have to wait until she was good and ready to stop beating around the bush. He glanced at Hiei in time to see his charge curl his lip slightly after trying the tamagoyaki.

"Don't like it?"

Hiei didn't look up. "Too sweet."

That startled Yuusuke. Tamagoyaki was only barely sweet, and he'd always assumed that Hiei had a sweet tooth. Though, looking back, he didn't really have any justification for thinking that. He'd only ever seen Hiei drink coffee, and he'd never seen the fire demon eat. If he went off that knowledge, he'd have to assume that Hiei was a anorexic caffeine-addict. Of course, with the way Hiei ate--or didn't eat--the first part could very possibly be true, he realized. The teen glanced at Hiei. "Trade you my rice for your tamagoyaki."

The fire demon blinked at him, then nodded, and they traded dishes. Atsuko watched them, leaning back in her seat and taking a drag on her cigarette. After a few moments she stubbed it out in the ashtray and flagged down a waiter. "Sake."

Yuusuke stared at her. "You're going to drink already? It's only nine!"

Atsuko shrugged. "I missed out on boozing last night. Gotta make up for it."

Yuusuke rolled his eyes. He should have known better than to think she'd changed that much. But, he reminded himself, she had changed a little bit. He glanced at Hiei, who had finished eating, and finished up his tamagoyaki. "If you're going to get drunk, we're gonna go to school."

Atsuko snorted. "Since when are you so concerned about studies, Yuu-chan?"

"Well, one of us has to be mature about things," Yuusuke muttered. Atsuko didn't react, which was fine with him. He stood. "Thanks for breakfast, Mom. C'mon, Hiei."

Yuusuke frowned as Botan bounced up beside him and Hiei as they walked home from school, which had been blessedly uneventful. "What's up?"

Botan bit her lip, glancing at Hiei, who ignored her. "Mission."

Yuusuke groaned. "You gotta be kidding me. Can't the Reikai Special Defense Team take care of it?"

"They've been taking care of missions lately. We've been having some big problems with demons trying to get to the Ningenkai lately." She met Yuusuke's eyes, then glanced at Hiei meaningfully. "We have another problem, and they're already occupied."

"Dammit . . ." Yuusuke sighed. There was a problem relating to Hiei. Again. Just what he needed. "Have you talked to Kurama and Kuwabara yet?"

Botan shook her head. "I found you first."

For obvious reasons. Yuusuke kicked himself mentally for asking such a stupid question. "Well, where should we meet?" He shook his head. "Never mind. We'll meet at Kuwabara's house. You can find Kurama. We'll find Kuwabara and meet you there."

"Right." Botan summoned her oar and hopped on, then soared into the sky.

Yuusuke watched her disappear, then turned to Hiei, who looked more than a little annoyed. "We'll check the pachinko parlor first."

Hiei rolled his eyes. "The Fool said he was going home today, remember? Something about his sister." The fire demon sighed. "I take it someone's decided to take advantage of my death wish?"

"I don't know," Yuusuke replied softly, glancing up at the sky again. "I guess we'll find out when we get to the Reikai."

"Hn."

[1] Tamagoyaki is rolled omelet, usually slightly sweet.

Yes, I know this was short and a cliffhanger. Please bear with me.

Sorry for the huge time lag, everyone. Things have been insane on my end of things. I've had huge workloads for school, first off. I was also trying to write originals, and I still am trying. In addition, for a while I had an absolutely awful job as a telemarketer. I'm also helping Chrissy Sky with Enma's Torment Theatre, which is a MST series that you can find on mediaminer.org (it contains lemons, the first I've ever written). Basically, every other MST is one of my fics, so it was really a lot of fun to do and very therapeutic.

This Spring I had some very depressing events occur, like my younger brother being sent to Kuwait by the Army and a long-time friend finding religion and rejecting our friendship because of her newfound neo-Puritan beliefs. That was the first time I've gotten the "turn straight or we can't be friends" talk, and I've been out for about four years. In fact, around that time I lost three different friends because of religion. Not fun.

Then, more recently, I went on Study Abroad in Cuba (I turned 21 there; yay!), and it's hard to write when you're trying to process a huge onslaught of information that's been thrown at you. I actually just got back on June 9th, and I started summer classes on the 14th. So I'm rather swamped and have been for a long time. My only break from schoolwork in the past year was around Christmas, and even then I had no time to do anything.

I don't know if I'm going to keep this up. This is really the only fic I want to finish. The others don't really appeal to me, and I'm not really all that into YYH anymore. I am to a certain extent, but not as much as I used to be. Plus, in my opinion, the fandom has really gone downhill. If I don't have good fanfiction to read to inspire me to write, I don't write and I lose interest. That's just the way it is.

On a similar topic, this is probably the last year that Green Grapes and Lemonade will be run. It's a yaoi/shounen ai fanfiction contest for YYH, and it hasn't gotten many submissions, even though I know there are people out there with fics to submit. The URL is angelfire.com/anime4/grapesnlemons/ and the last day for submission is July 1st, which I know is coming up very fast. Send some good fics in to inspire me! :P

Anyway, this is an extremely short chapter because I don't have time to write right now and I want to reassure you guys that I will be trying to get more of this out in the coming weeks. Right now I have 4 textbook chapters to read and a 2-3 page paper to write by 11am tomorrow morning, so be happy with this for now. I'll try to sit down and write some this weekend, but no promises.

Wow. I think the author's note is longer than the actual chapter. ^^; Whoops.