Hanabi 24/?? - ReitaXRuki
Title: Hanabi
Chapter: 24/??
Author: chuu ( akichuu)
Fandom: JRock, Gazette
Pairings: ReitaXRuki. Some other pairings in the background that you might find later on...
Overall Rating: PG
Genre: Drop dead fluffy.
Warnings: n/a. Un-beta-ed mistakes.
Summary: Reita just had to accept it, sometimes his sister was much wiser than how she appeared to be...
Comments: Yaaaay~ Update! Gawd I'm so sorry for the long delay. Here, I'll cut the crap and lead you straight to chapter 24!
Hanabi : 24
Funny as it was, but Reita was already half expecting to see his sister to be greeting him on the front entrance. It wouldn't be a friendly greeting, apparently, judging by her looks as she was standing on the genkan with her fuming head, glaring at Reita. Reita took off his sandals lazily, deep inside he was counting seconds until the blow hit him. She would be yelling at him, any minute now...
"AKIRA, YOU IDIOT!!!"
The~re you go. And she had made sure it sounded loud enough to make Reita feel very, very sick.
Reita stepped up the wooden floor, coming to stand face to face with his sister. Honestly, after what had happened what how it had made him feel, he just wanted to flee, to dash away to his room, lock the door and drown himself in misery under his blanket. But he didn't think his sister was going to let him off that easily. She would LOVE to give him hell before Reita was free to kill himself.
"Where have you been?" she gritted her teeth, her fists held tight by her sides, shaky. Reita was convinced that she was holding back not to punch him right then and there.
"I gave my friend a ride home..." Reita answered meekly. He could be in trouble and he could've just broken his heart, but Reita was not going to be a jerk to forget a girl he had picked up and not driving her back home. He supposed he was just being lucky when he figured Matsushima was not angry at him for leaving her behind at the festival, or if she was, she hadn't shown it. Reita just hoped she'd understand. The trip from Matsushima's place to Reita's had taken longer than it used to be, or maybe it had been because of the silence that was more tense than ever, stretching between them. It was good that way, because honestly, Reita hadn't been in the mood for talking...
"You," Nee-chan gripped Reita's arm, "Have some explaining to do, Brother!"
She gripped Reita's sleeve and dragged him to the kitchen, Reita knew there was no way he was going to avoid hell as it was coming right his way. Nee-chan wouldn't care much about how it still hurt for Reita, this heart-break, and she was going to make Reita spill out everything. Bit by bit, every single detail of it. God, how he could just hate her for being his sister.
The kitchen greeted them both with its darkness before Nee-chan flicked the light on, gestured Reita not-so-friendly to sit wherever he would choose to sit. Reita chose the dining table, picked a chair, pulled it and sat on it. Nee-chan was glaring at him, but Reita wasn't sure if he wanted to start talking before being questioned.
"Ruki's in my room," she said, unexpectedly.
Reita's heart throbbed a bit painfully. "He is?"
"Yeah, well," Nee-chan shrugged her shoulder, "It's not like he'd come home to his own house at this time of the night, wearing that costume, don't you think?"
Reita lowered his head, nodding slowly. He was a bit relieved at the fact that Ruki would still choose his home to run to. Well, to think about it more carefully, there wasn't any other place Ruki could go to... Not Aoi-Jii-chan's place, for sure, not after what Ruki had seen. And definitely not his own place, not with an abusive father waiting to land a fist on his face just because he came home late.
"Aki... I'll make it short and simple: Ruki came home drenched in tears and so very much troubled he wouldn't talk to anyone. Haha is the only one he'd let come nearing him, so she's there now, trying her best to calm him down," Nee-chan took a seat in front of Reita, the light in her eyes seemed inextinguishable, "The poor little thing wouldn't say what was wrong to me, so spare me the time-wasting, Aki, and explain what had happened."
---
"You... WHAT?!" Nee-chan's eyes rounded almost to the size of a golf ball - hyperbolically - when Reita came closer to the end of his story. Looking at her reaction made Reita blush as deep as he could, and to hide it, he immediately lowered his head and let his hair down.
"Aki, seriously, you... You..." Nee-chan stuttered.
"Yes, I kissed him," Reita admitted one more time. The word 'kiss' had somehow come out soft and breathy. It's not exactly the most common word in the world Reita would use in his everyday conversation, especially not when it was himself as the main topic of the discussion. "But... But it's not... I didn't mean to..." he lifted his head and gazed his sister nervously, "I swear I had no intention to..."
Nee-chan's mouth now rounded and it was almost a funny sight to look at her face like that, if only the situation had been different. But in the next second, the expression vanished to thin air, she sighed a long sigh, her forehead dropped down to her palms. "Oh God, Akira..." she breathed, her eyes came gazing at Reita when she lifted her head back up, "I'm happy that you've finally realized that you're in love with the boy, but it should take at least a proper warning before you go, jump at him and kiss him! Did... Did you kiss him on the lips...?"
Reita nodded, knowing his face was so red he needed something else more effective than his hair to cover it - maybe a tray or a frying pan...
"No wonder Ruki came home looking like that..." Nee-chan's eyes flickered upward - gesturing towards her room upstairs, "Especially after he just shared you his broken-heart story, Aki. I mean... He was vulnerable, and that was the last thing you should've done in such a situation."
Reita didn't know that. And his sister hadn't been there to inform him that. So how was he supposed to know that it wasn't allowed?
Well, to think again, he hadn't even known he would be kissing the little fox. Not at all.
Everything was coming back into his memories like a retro-colored movie. Reita could see hanabi exploding above his head, he could see Ruki's face when he was staring at the skies, he could see just how bright it seemed. He could see those sparkling little eyes and that pretty smile. It seemed like a movie that was so realistic, he could feel every bit of Ruki's fur-clothed body against him when he pulled him so close, so tight, and he could smell his sweet-scented hair. He could feel Ruki's cheek as he touched it. He could feel Ruki's soft lips against his as he kissed him...
To have all these running through his mind, it was as if he was looking at someone else, looking at a silly, romantic movie that he would normally avoid - because it simply wasn't his favorite genre. Reita could only hope that it was all just his imagination, that none of it was real. But sadly, it was real, and he didn't need this pain inside his chest to be telling him so.
Reita lifted his arms from propping him against the seat to lean against the wooden table, that was when he realized he had something inside his sleeve. He took the squishy thing out and suddenly, looking at the object in his hand, the pain just went so much worse. It was the stupid looking cat he had intended to give to Ruki...
Reita looked at it, gazed at its deplorable little face and wondered: was that how he looked like at the moment?
"Nee-chan..." Reita murmured, eyes still focusing on the stupid-looking cat, "It hurts."
"Hm? What is?" Nee-chan was gazing at Reita, both hands propping her chin as Reita lifted his sight to meet hers.
"Falling in..." Reita took a deep breath, "... Love..."
Reita lowered his gaze again because he didn't think he could stare at his sister's inquiring pair of eyes, and he could hear her sigh.
"It's not falling in love that hurts, Aki-chan," she said. Reita heard something moving against the wooden surface of the table, and soon he felt his sister's warm hand over his, grasping it gently. "It's falling out of love that hurts the most."
"Falling out of love?" Reita repeated.
"Yes. Falling in love is never painful, it's actually wonderful... Tell me, how did you feel when you... Held Ruki?"
Reita closed his eyes and his head hung even lower. The memory was still too fresh and too raw that he remembered every bit of the event even without much effort. "I felt... Good," he answered sheepishly, but completely honest, "I felt happy. Very happy..."
"And... How did you feel when you..." she halted a moment, and then continuing, "Kiss him?"
Reita choked in a breath at that. How did he feel when he kissed Ruki? Funny but it was actually fuzzy, the fuzziest part from the collections of memories he had this night. All he could notice at that moment had been his beating heart, how it was almost painful, throbbing against his chest. He could remember something warm flowing up to his head and it was dizzying, but he couldn't name it. The feeling was like... Back then when Reita was brought to the doctor for a wound on his head and he got anesthetized. It felt almost like that. He felt like he was going to faint, right at the point when he was having nauseas that were going to make him lose consiousness. The difference was that these nauseas - or whatever kind of feeling it had been when he was kissing Ruki - didn't feel so bad. They actually felt... Very, very nice...
"I'm confused," Reita replied, finally, not being able to conjure a decent conclusion from his thoughts. He knitted his brows together as he looked at his sister, questioning without words. He was hoping that maybe his sister had a word for this feeling; what it was exactly.
She laughed. It was sort of disconcerting because the last thing Reita would want was to have her laughing at him while he was deeply confused. But then she patted Reita's hand apologetically, her eyes twinkling when she said, "It is confusing, Brother, I understand how you feel exactly. I don't know how to put it down correctly, but I'd say that... What you felt when you kissed Ruki: it's happiness in its most glorious level, and if you don't get it, then just think of it as... The best feeling in the world. When you're making contact with the one you love, either physical or emotional contact or both, you'd feel extraordinarily happy you can never get the hang of it," she paused, seemed to be thinking for a moment, and then she continued, "You'd feel like you're in a roller coaster ride. And it was a more violent roller coaster than any Disneyland in the world had."
Oh yes! That's it!
His sister had actually put it down just perfectly. That had been how Reita felt: it was as if he had been in a roller coaster ride and he hadn't had his body strapped in safely. He had only the plate in front of him to hang on to, and he had to clutch it tightly with his hands. If he let go, he'd be thrown off from the ride to oblivion. The feeling was terribly scary, but on the other side, it was addictively exciting. He felt like he wanted to scream unrestrainedly, let it all out from his lungs and rip his vocal chords apart with the excitement bursting out from his chest.
"It's always so much fun to be in love... Because when you're in love, Aki-chan, you'd meet so many new things you've never even thought existed," Nee-chan continued, "You'd find new things every single day, like... You might find how the curl of his hair was different today than how it was the other day. You might find the color of his eyes differ slightly today than how it had been yesterday. Or maybe... How his cheeks were pale-red today, when they had been pink yesterday... All the small changes that you didn't find in anybody else, you'd discover in him. All the new things would make you feel like you wanted time to slow down, so you could observe more carefully, who knows you had missed some small details..."
Ruki's hair... The color was paler lately, as much as Reita could remember. He had been a bright blonde a few days ago, but now it was pale blonde. Ruki's eyes... They were dark brown, but when he was laughing, they would seem to shine in bright-hazel color. Ruki's cheeks had always been rosy-pink shaded skin, but when he was sleeping, they would be pale peachy-pink.
Oh yes. Reita noticed even to the smallest difference and he had only realized it now, he had never done that - paying so much attention - to anybody else but Ruki.
"It's almost like a game to play, finding all these new things. It's exciting, and inevitably, you'd fall deeper and deeper in love by each and every new thing you found. Even if you might find flaws or defects, you wouldn't even think of them as anything wrong... You'd even fall for the way he's so careless, spoiled and ignorant, you'd just think that he was adorable that way. The way he wouldn't leave you alone, bugging you with his non-stop babbling. You wouldn't mind because you simply loved the feeling of having him close..." Nee-chan smiled, "Don't you feel like that?"
Reita gulped nervously before he nodded. His sister seemed to be peeling his skin layer by layer, extracting Reita's feelings and laid them down right here above the kitchen table. It wasn't exactly the most comfortable experience ever, he felt like he was being stripped down to nothing in front of public's eyes, but Reita knew he needed this. He needed this because he couldn't sort it out, all by himself.
"That's just how love is, Brother," Nee-chan said, "I hope you get all that, I've tried as best as I could but it's too hard to explain. Love is only to be felt and sensed. There's no theory that can describe it."
Reita pondered, trying to understand every single thing she had been explaining to him. God. It was actually harder to comprehend than math!! And before this night he had been so sure he would never find a harder subject than math...
"The point is, love itself and falling into it, that doesn't hurt," she sighed, giving one more pat on Reita's hand, "It's falling out of love that hurts, because you know you'd loose all the fun you got when you're in love."
Reita nodded again, telling his sister wordlessly that he understood - in some degree. This matter should take a long study and a few years of good experience, a 'hard-bump on the head' and a bruising punch on the face. Those were all it might take, if not more, for a person to understand what 'love' was like. But Nee-chan, despite her outer appearances that might give her the looks of an ignorant person, had been amazing in putting it down in words for Reita to comprehend. As far as Reita could see, she had made a good preamble on the book 'What You Should Do when You Know You're in Love'.
The preamble itself was already discouraging. Reita had hardly the nerves to open the first chapter of the book...
But he needed to find out what was in chapter 'How to Heal a Broken Heart - A Good Way to Save a Relationship'.
"Nee-chan... I don't know what to do..." Reita murmured. Just for this once, Reita would freely admit that he was weak - in front of his sister. He'd admit that he needed guidance, because honestly, this time Reita was completely LOST and he knew he had no one else who he could count on to come and aid him. No one else but Nee-chan.
What should he do to fix everything now? What should it take for him to get along with Ruki again?
Reita was expecting his sister to get straight down to the point, write the problems one by one and then splay out the methods on how to solve each and every one of those problems. She had been so good in explaining to Reita everything she had explained, judging by that, she would know what Reita should do now. But no, it was not what Reita had wanted her to do as she only sighed. She looked at him with some sort of pity in her eyes.
"I don't know either, Aki-chan," she mumbled, breaking Reita's hopes to small pieces, "I don't know either."
He might've been gazing up at her, listening to her answer with such a pathetic face because then she rushedly continued, "But I'll go and... Try to talk to Ruki-chan. I'll try to explain what's happened... I mean, if that's what you want me to do."
Reita thought for one moment. "I.. I'd be grateful. But--but don't... Don't tell him... That I--" he coughed nervously, "That I... L--love him..."
She nodded, smiling. "Of course I won't do that. That's..." she gripped Reita's hand tight, "... Your job, Akira. Yours only."
Reita nodded, understandingly. After what had happened, he knew better than to jeopardize more than what he had screwed up. But for once he'd like to be wise and NOT let anyone else telling Ruki what he really felt. Yes, it was his job. He felt indebted by the task and he knew, no one else should do it. He would tell Ruki. But not now... He couldn't do that, not tonight...
Nee-chan shifted from her seat with the last, gentle pat on Reita's hand. "I better go and check our precious Chibi-chan, see if he's asleep yet," she said, but Reita pulled her before she walked away. She looked at Reita questioningly.
Reita lifted the stupid-looking cat he had been holding and handed it to Nee-chan. "I... I got it from a booth in the festival..." he explained, "I meant to give it to him, but..."
Nee-chan took the stuffed doll from Reita's hand, observing it for a short moment, and she nodded. "I'll give it to him, don't worry." And then she walked off, giving one last smile to Reita when Reita mumbled a meek 'Thank you' to her. With her departure, soon Reita was left in the kitchen, all alone.
He worried briefly about the possibility that Ruki would reject that doll - or worse, throwing it away to the rubbish bin, before he sighed. Like that matters. Ruki will hate me for the rest of my life anyways... And with the terrible, nerve-wrecking feeling inside his chest, Reita shifted from his seat, heading for his room.
===
fanfic list, for previous chapters and other titles.
Chapter: 24/??
Author: chuu ( akichuu)
Fandom: JRock, Gazette
Pairings: ReitaXRuki. Some other pairings in the background that you might find later on...
Overall Rating: PG
Genre: Drop dead fluffy.
Warnings: n/a. Un-beta-ed mistakes.
Summary: Reita just had to accept it, sometimes his sister was much wiser than how she appeared to be...
Comments: Yaaaay~ Update! Gawd I'm so sorry for the long delay. Here, I'll cut the crap and lead you straight to chapter 24!
Hanabi : 24
Funny as it was, but Reita was already half expecting to see his sister to be greeting him on the front entrance. It wouldn't be a friendly greeting, apparently, judging by her looks as she was standing on the genkan with her fuming head, glaring at Reita. Reita took off his sandals lazily, deep inside he was counting seconds until the blow hit him. She would be yelling at him, any minute now...
"AKIRA, YOU IDIOT!!!"
The~re you go. And she had made sure it sounded loud enough to make Reita feel very, very sick.
Reita stepped up the wooden floor, coming to stand face to face with his sister. Honestly, after what had happened what how it had made him feel, he just wanted to flee, to dash away to his room, lock the door and drown himself in misery under his blanket. But he didn't think his sister was going to let him off that easily. She would LOVE to give him hell before Reita was free to kill himself.
"Where have you been?" she gritted her teeth, her fists held tight by her sides, shaky. Reita was convinced that she was holding back not to punch him right then and there.
"I gave my friend a ride home..." Reita answered meekly. He could be in trouble and he could've just broken his heart, but Reita was not going to be a jerk to forget a girl he had picked up and not driving her back home. He supposed he was just being lucky when he figured Matsushima was not angry at him for leaving her behind at the festival, or if she was, she hadn't shown it. Reita just hoped she'd understand. The trip from Matsushima's place to Reita's had taken longer than it used to be, or maybe it had been because of the silence that was more tense than ever, stretching between them. It was good that way, because honestly, Reita hadn't been in the mood for talking...
"You," Nee-chan gripped Reita's arm, "Have some explaining to do, Brother!"
She gripped Reita's sleeve and dragged him to the kitchen, Reita knew there was no way he was going to avoid hell as it was coming right his way. Nee-chan wouldn't care much about how it still hurt for Reita, this heart-break, and she was going to make Reita spill out everything. Bit by bit, every single detail of it. God, how he could just hate her for being his sister.
The kitchen greeted them both with its darkness before Nee-chan flicked the light on, gestured Reita not-so-friendly to sit wherever he would choose to sit. Reita chose the dining table, picked a chair, pulled it and sat on it. Nee-chan was glaring at him, but Reita wasn't sure if he wanted to start talking before being questioned.
"Ruki's in my room," she said, unexpectedly.
Reita's heart throbbed a bit painfully. "He is?"
"Yeah, well," Nee-chan shrugged her shoulder, "It's not like he'd come home to his own house at this time of the night, wearing that costume, don't you think?"
Reita lowered his head, nodding slowly. He was a bit relieved at the fact that Ruki would still choose his home to run to. Well, to think about it more carefully, there wasn't any other place Ruki could go to... Not Aoi-Jii-chan's place, for sure, not after what Ruki had seen. And definitely not his own place, not with an abusive father waiting to land a fist on his face just because he came home late.
"Aki... I'll make it short and simple: Ruki came home drenched in tears and so very much troubled he wouldn't talk to anyone. Haha is the only one he'd let come nearing him, so she's there now, trying her best to calm him down," Nee-chan took a seat in front of Reita, the light in her eyes seemed inextinguishable, "The poor little thing wouldn't say what was wrong to me, so spare me the time-wasting, Aki, and explain what had happened."
---
"You... WHAT?!" Nee-chan's eyes rounded almost to the size of a golf ball - hyperbolically - when Reita came closer to the end of his story. Looking at her reaction made Reita blush as deep as he could, and to hide it, he immediately lowered his head and let his hair down.
"Aki, seriously, you... You..." Nee-chan stuttered.
"Yes, I kissed him," Reita admitted one more time. The word 'kiss' had somehow come out soft and breathy. It's not exactly the most common word in the world Reita would use in his everyday conversation, especially not when it was himself as the main topic of the discussion. "But... But it's not... I didn't mean to..." he lifted his head and gazed his sister nervously, "I swear I had no intention to..."
Nee-chan's mouth now rounded and it was almost a funny sight to look at her face like that, if only the situation had been different. But in the next second, the expression vanished to thin air, she sighed a long sigh, her forehead dropped down to her palms. "Oh God, Akira..." she breathed, her eyes came gazing at Reita when she lifted her head back up, "I'm happy that you've finally realized that you're in love with the boy, but it should take at least a proper warning before you go, jump at him and kiss him! Did... Did you kiss him on the lips...?"
Reita nodded, knowing his face was so red he needed something else more effective than his hair to cover it - maybe a tray or a frying pan...
"No wonder Ruki came home looking like that..." Nee-chan's eyes flickered upward - gesturing towards her room upstairs, "Especially after he just shared you his broken-heart story, Aki. I mean... He was vulnerable, and that was the last thing you should've done in such a situation."
Reita didn't know that. And his sister hadn't been there to inform him that. So how was he supposed to know that it wasn't allowed?
Well, to think again, he hadn't even known he would be kissing the little fox. Not at all.
Everything was coming back into his memories like a retro-colored movie. Reita could see hanabi exploding above his head, he could see Ruki's face when he was staring at the skies, he could see just how bright it seemed. He could see those sparkling little eyes and that pretty smile. It seemed like a movie that was so realistic, he could feel every bit of Ruki's fur-clothed body against him when he pulled him so close, so tight, and he could smell his sweet-scented hair. He could feel Ruki's cheek as he touched it. He could feel Ruki's soft lips against his as he kissed him...
To have all these running through his mind, it was as if he was looking at someone else, looking at a silly, romantic movie that he would normally avoid - because it simply wasn't his favorite genre. Reita could only hope that it was all just his imagination, that none of it was real. But sadly, it was real, and he didn't need this pain inside his chest to be telling him so.
Reita lifted his arms from propping him against the seat to lean against the wooden table, that was when he realized he had something inside his sleeve. He took the squishy thing out and suddenly, looking at the object in his hand, the pain just went so much worse. It was the stupid looking cat he had intended to give to Ruki...
Reita looked at it, gazed at its deplorable little face and wondered: was that how he looked like at the moment?
"Nee-chan..." Reita murmured, eyes still focusing on the stupid-looking cat, "It hurts."
"Hm? What is?" Nee-chan was gazing at Reita, both hands propping her chin as Reita lifted his sight to meet hers.
"Falling in..." Reita took a deep breath, "... Love..."
Reita lowered his gaze again because he didn't think he could stare at his sister's inquiring pair of eyes, and he could hear her sigh.
"It's not falling in love that hurts, Aki-chan," she said. Reita heard something moving against the wooden surface of the table, and soon he felt his sister's warm hand over his, grasping it gently. "It's falling out of love that hurts the most."
"Falling out of love?" Reita repeated.
"Yes. Falling in love is never painful, it's actually wonderful... Tell me, how did you feel when you... Held Ruki?"
Reita closed his eyes and his head hung even lower. The memory was still too fresh and too raw that he remembered every bit of the event even without much effort. "I felt... Good," he answered sheepishly, but completely honest, "I felt happy. Very happy..."
"And... How did you feel when you..." she halted a moment, and then continuing, "Kiss him?"
Reita choked in a breath at that. How did he feel when he kissed Ruki? Funny but it was actually fuzzy, the fuzziest part from the collections of memories he had this night. All he could notice at that moment had been his beating heart, how it was almost painful, throbbing against his chest. He could remember something warm flowing up to his head and it was dizzying, but he couldn't name it. The feeling was like... Back then when Reita was brought to the doctor for a wound on his head and he got anesthetized. It felt almost like that. He felt like he was going to faint, right at the point when he was having nauseas that were going to make him lose consiousness. The difference was that these nauseas - or whatever kind of feeling it had been when he was kissing Ruki - didn't feel so bad. They actually felt... Very, very nice...
"I'm confused," Reita replied, finally, not being able to conjure a decent conclusion from his thoughts. He knitted his brows together as he looked at his sister, questioning without words. He was hoping that maybe his sister had a word for this feeling; what it was exactly.
She laughed. It was sort of disconcerting because the last thing Reita would want was to have her laughing at him while he was deeply confused. But then she patted Reita's hand apologetically, her eyes twinkling when she said, "It is confusing, Brother, I understand how you feel exactly. I don't know how to put it down correctly, but I'd say that... What you felt when you kissed Ruki: it's happiness in its most glorious level, and if you don't get it, then just think of it as... The best feeling in the world. When you're making contact with the one you love, either physical or emotional contact or both, you'd feel extraordinarily happy you can never get the hang of it," she paused, seemed to be thinking for a moment, and then she continued, "You'd feel like you're in a roller coaster ride. And it was a more violent roller coaster than any Disneyland in the world had."
Oh yes! That's it!
His sister had actually put it down just perfectly. That had been how Reita felt: it was as if he had been in a roller coaster ride and he hadn't had his body strapped in safely. He had only the plate in front of him to hang on to, and he had to clutch it tightly with his hands. If he let go, he'd be thrown off from the ride to oblivion. The feeling was terribly scary, but on the other side, it was addictively exciting. He felt like he wanted to scream unrestrainedly, let it all out from his lungs and rip his vocal chords apart with the excitement bursting out from his chest.
"It's always so much fun to be in love... Because when you're in love, Aki-chan, you'd meet so many new things you've never even thought existed," Nee-chan continued, "You'd find new things every single day, like... You might find how the curl of his hair was different today than how it was the other day. You might find the color of his eyes differ slightly today than how it had been yesterday. Or maybe... How his cheeks were pale-red today, when they had been pink yesterday... All the small changes that you didn't find in anybody else, you'd discover in him. All the new things would make you feel like you wanted time to slow down, so you could observe more carefully, who knows you had missed some small details..."
Ruki's hair... The color was paler lately, as much as Reita could remember. He had been a bright blonde a few days ago, but now it was pale blonde. Ruki's eyes... They were dark brown, but when he was laughing, they would seem to shine in bright-hazel color. Ruki's cheeks had always been rosy-pink shaded skin, but when he was sleeping, they would be pale peachy-pink.
Oh yes. Reita noticed even to the smallest difference and he had only realized it now, he had never done that - paying so much attention - to anybody else but Ruki.
"It's almost like a game to play, finding all these new things. It's exciting, and inevitably, you'd fall deeper and deeper in love by each and every new thing you found. Even if you might find flaws or defects, you wouldn't even think of them as anything wrong... You'd even fall for the way he's so careless, spoiled and ignorant, you'd just think that he was adorable that way. The way he wouldn't leave you alone, bugging you with his non-stop babbling. You wouldn't mind because you simply loved the feeling of having him close..." Nee-chan smiled, "Don't you feel like that?"
Reita gulped nervously before he nodded. His sister seemed to be peeling his skin layer by layer, extracting Reita's feelings and laid them down right here above the kitchen table. It wasn't exactly the most comfortable experience ever, he felt like he was being stripped down to nothing in front of public's eyes, but Reita knew he needed this. He needed this because he couldn't sort it out, all by himself.
"That's just how love is, Brother," Nee-chan said, "I hope you get all that, I've tried as best as I could but it's too hard to explain. Love is only to be felt and sensed. There's no theory that can describe it."
Reita pondered, trying to understand every single thing she had been explaining to him. God. It was actually harder to comprehend than math!! And before this night he had been so sure he would never find a harder subject than math...
"The point is, love itself and falling into it, that doesn't hurt," she sighed, giving one more pat on Reita's hand, "It's falling out of love that hurts, because you know you'd loose all the fun you got when you're in love."
Reita nodded again, telling his sister wordlessly that he understood - in some degree. This matter should take a long study and a few years of good experience, a 'hard-bump on the head' and a bruising punch on the face. Those were all it might take, if not more, for a person to understand what 'love' was like. But Nee-chan, despite her outer appearances that might give her the looks of an ignorant person, had been amazing in putting it down in words for Reita to comprehend. As far as Reita could see, she had made a good preamble on the book 'What You Should Do when You Know You're in Love'.
The preamble itself was already discouraging. Reita had hardly the nerves to open the first chapter of the book...
But he needed to find out what was in chapter 'How to Heal a Broken Heart - A Good Way to Save a Relationship'.
"Nee-chan... I don't know what to do..." Reita murmured. Just for this once, Reita would freely admit that he was weak - in front of his sister. He'd admit that he needed guidance, because honestly, this time Reita was completely LOST and he knew he had no one else who he could count on to come and aid him. No one else but Nee-chan.
What should he do to fix everything now? What should it take for him to get along with Ruki again?
Reita was expecting his sister to get straight down to the point, write the problems one by one and then splay out the methods on how to solve each and every one of those problems. She had been so good in explaining to Reita everything she had explained, judging by that, she would know what Reita should do now. But no, it was not what Reita had wanted her to do as she only sighed. She looked at him with some sort of pity in her eyes.
"I don't know either, Aki-chan," she mumbled, breaking Reita's hopes to small pieces, "I don't know either."
He might've been gazing up at her, listening to her answer with such a pathetic face because then she rushedly continued, "But I'll go and... Try to talk to Ruki-chan. I'll try to explain what's happened... I mean, if that's what you want me to do."
Reita thought for one moment. "I.. I'd be grateful. But--but don't... Don't tell him... That I--" he coughed nervously, "That I... L--love him..."
She nodded, smiling. "Of course I won't do that. That's..." she gripped Reita's hand tight, "... Your job, Akira. Yours only."
Reita nodded, understandingly. After what had happened, he knew better than to jeopardize more than what he had screwed up. But for once he'd like to be wise and NOT let anyone else telling Ruki what he really felt. Yes, it was his job. He felt indebted by the task and he knew, no one else should do it. He would tell Ruki. But not now... He couldn't do that, not tonight...
Nee-chan shifted from her seat with the last, gentle pat on Reita's hand. "I better go and check our precious Chibi-chan, see if he's asleep yet," she said, but Reita pulled her before she walked away. She looked at Reita questioningly.
Reita lifted the stupid-looking cat he had been holding and handed it to Nee-chan. "I... I got it from a booth in the festival..." he explained, "I meant to give it to him, but..."
Nee-chan took the stuffed doll from Reita's hand, observing it for a short moment, and she nodded. "I'll give it to him, don't worry." And then she walked off, giving one last smile to Reita when Reita mumbled a meek 'Thank you' to her. With her departure, soon Reita was left in the kitchen, all alone.
He worried briefly about the possibility that Ruki would reject that doll - or worse, throwing it away to the rubbish bin, before he sighed. Like that matters. Ruki will hate me for the rest of my life anyways... And with the terrible, nerve-wrecking feeling inside his chest, Reita shifted from his seat, heading for his room.
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