A/N: I updated. Sorry to all and if you're still reading this then I applaud your commitment. A big thanks to: Rumia! She reviewed each chapter. Oh the love! This story will get finished. I am determined.
"This is stupid." I should just go over to him punch his face in and go home.
"Yes this is Kyoyama Anna. I'll be accompanying her in the interview, is that alright?"
"Sure, say, are you really the same blond in those pictures. You know, in all of those provocative pictures with Hao-sama?"
Anna leered coolly as Hao nodded in her stead. "I'm afraid, Anna-chan's a bit on the shy side. Why don't we get this started, ne?" The reporter held out his hand to Anna and she gingerly placed her hand on his, "You look more radiant in person."
Die,Die! Stupid shit-head, if I wish it hard enough it'll happen; slow, sweet death.
Anna, you're thinking too loud I can hear you. It's not nice to call people shit-heads, especially when the guy is just trying to do his job.
-CRACK-
"Ahhhah."
A hand grasped her wrist, "Anna-chan, let go of his hand."
In one swift move she let go of the reporter's hand and lurched away from Hao's grasp.
I was referring to you. Now stop listening in!
Hao grinned deliciously, enjoying the telepathic tirade the sweet looking blond was giving him. Anna really did look her best angry, the male reporter reddened from the sparks flying.
"She's feisty," Hao's smile was all white teeth, handsome and charming.
"You can put that in her bio."
Chapter 5: Today's the day; Out of the emoness, out of the drama! I'm coming to gettcha.
She didn't want the profile up nor the picture taken of her and Hao. Yet somehow her life had taken a turn that even she, Kyoyama Anna, could not stop even if she ran up to fate and smacked it straight in the face.
Anna Kyoyama
16
Such a brilliant face, like a porcelain doll, this is the future face of the modeling industry. In a few short weeks her figure has adorned magazines all over the world. Up until now her face was always hidden and her pictures always in tandem with the illustrious Asakura Hao, but now Au Courant gets to be the first to interview the enigmatic blond. Who is she, why did she keep her face hidden for so long, and just what is her connection with Asakura Hao?
Unfortunately for her Hao had coaxed her back to take the interview. When he had said that Anna wasn't a real blond and that she was his lover she had almost broke a thumb from strangling him so hard. The interviewer only looked more convinced to Anna's dismay.
She skimmed the glossy pages, through the miscellaneous pages of pictures of her and her and Hao and some nicer profile pictures.
Last question: Reporter: Tell me, as a teenager do you believe in true love? Or rather have you ever been in love?
Another absurd question only meant for media purposes of finding some dirt on her and Hao's relationship.
Anna: No.
Hao: But-
Anna: Never
To dismiss it before it even started. That was the best method.
Anna crumpled the magazine in her hands. Utter trash, nonsensical dribble. She plopped in her bed and suffocated herself in her pillow. She was never in love. It was just an arranged marriage, set up when they were children. When they were children. . .
She never loved that scrawny boy who saved her from the Oni that haunted her. She never cried those times she thought he had died in the Shaman fights.
Never
Anna had allowed them to paint her porcelain until she didn't recognize her face in front of the mirror; sunflower blond hair, that skinny frame, those wet eyes.
Anna punched the glass, shards of herself sparkling to the floor.
When did I get so weak? And her knuckles started to bleed.
----
Yoh had been moping around languidly after he had found out Anna ran away, but when he realized his brother had also left him, Yoh became lonely and painfully quiet. He seemed to be more lost in thought lately, staring out the window, forgetting things, and in his own world.
But the worse part is everyone noticed and they asked him questions like he would know. The one's about his brother (Yoh-kun where's Hao-sama? Did he transfer? Is he pimping?), he would say: Don't know, don't know, and. . . possibly. Then there were the questions about Anna, ( Is Anna still sick? Is she dead? Did she drop out?) those questions he would not answer and just faded off in the distance.
One time there was a question of whether Anna dumped Yoh and ran off with Hao, Yoh refused to answer such a direct (but probably true) question and in his silence the school rumbled.
Did you hear, Anna's pregnant.
Did you hear, that Kyoyama girl dropped out.
Did you hear? Did you hear? Did you hear?
"Anna's gone." Yoh muttered in his unconscious state, drooling oceans on his desk. Ren prodded his friend every once in a while with an exceptionally sharp pencil but later gave up, deciding Yoh was better off sleeping than hearing all the nonsense the student body had to say.
When class was over the teacher shook Yoh awake and talked to him about his declining performance, his brother, and how relationships are a part of life. Yoh scoffed saying he really should be going.
"Yoh." Ren grabbed the brunet's attention and his wrist; he had been waiting outside the door. Ren doesn't tell Yoh he heard the whole conversation, but leers softly and waits.
And waits.
And waits.
And he starts to think, maybe he should let go of Yoh's wrist before people started thinking that he's-- well, you know.
There were yaoi fangirls around every corner.
"Sorry Ren I kinda don't feel like hanging out today. Don't feel so bad, I'm sure you can call Ryu or Horohoro or maybe eve—
Ren leaves abruptly, dissatisfied. "Fine."
Halfway down the hall Ren's footsteps stop and all he hears is Yoh at the opposite end of the hallway. Yoh's steps are too shallow, as he is too pale, and too skinny. Ren huffs again to himself before heading out the door.
"You're an idiot Yoh. A fucking moron"
Yoh nods, thinking: Yeah, I am.
--
There was no solstice in being around others and Yoh had reverted into the boy he was in his youth. Alone he sat in the graveyard listening to his headphones. He didn't feel like he could laugh it off. Anna wasn't a subject he could control. Would everything eventually work out? When concerning the blond that ideal was indefinite.
He wanted to take a nap for a while. Worrying only created more guilt and an uneasy feeling that Yoh never was use to. He never really cared enough about anything to the extent that he was troubled by it. He wanted an easy life, a simple care free life; Anna had said the same thing at one point, didn't she?
He wanted him to give it to her, that life. But perhaps he was too slow as she found it with someone else.
Hao.
Yoh grimaced but then relaxed and started to think of the time when he first saw her. Anna was the cutest girl he had ever seen and then she threatened to kill him and he nearly wept in fright. He remembered the times where she cried for him in the Shaman Tournament, times when she cooked dinner, and how they watched TV together.
When a flying object smacked Yoh in the back of the head, he fell off his perch of the tombstone and crashed into the ground with a loud bang and plenty of stars.
"Ah, crap he's gonna pass out. Nice goin'."
"Shut the hell up. Yoh, Yoh!"
Yoh smiled into oblivion.
---
"I always knew you were a fruit, baka Ainu."
"It's not mine, P-Pirika, she subscribes!—And-and Ryu damnit don't drool all over the pages!"
"Hey, I can respect a man's decision to look at such beautiful ladies."
"Hn, I don't want to hear it. Don't talk about her like that."
"How can you deny it? She looks good."
"Yeah, who's the fruit now?"
Yoh is half awake when he sees clouds and his friends' voices from the sky. He reaches out to touch the, oh so soft, blue sky and for a second Yoh thinks he has died.
"Oi, quit it!" Everything smells of fresh mountain air and the sky is like azure silk in his hands. Yoh just smiles sleepily, because damn if he did die then was going to enjoy just laying out under the blue sky.
"Yoh, wake up damn it." A voice calls annoyed and he's reminded of Anna. His eyes jolt open and he meets her male equivalent.
"Ren?"
Yoh manages a sleepy smile which is set off by Horohoro's horrified look, Ren's scowl and Ryu's grin. He sets his hands down from the Ainu's hair.
"I knew you would call them," referring to Horohoro and Ryu just before he fell asleep again.
"Ren gets lonely, don't leave him alone."
Ren cursed loudly, threatening to not even pursue the damn plan. Then he said they were already on the fucking plane and they were going to go to fucking France, because Yoh was his fucking friend.
So Ren cursed, Horohoro snickered with Ryu on how Ren should attend anger management classes, and Ren threatened to throw them both out of the plane because he was starting to get a headache.
---
Meanwhile Hao sits in his office. He polishes a picture nicely of his brother and Anna and sits, legs extended on the desk. Flipping through some proofs Hao chooses two, one where he kissed Anna on the cheek where he, oh so innocently, grazed her lips as they separated and one of her looking absolutely radiant in absolutely nothing. In actuality it was a shoulder-up shot and Anna had been clad in floral kimono with the sides falling off, but Hao liked to imagine. He traced the image with a finger, she was wearing her Itako beads; she never took them off.
The latter picture would be the feature on their MySpace page and the other would become a centerfold poster in a local celebrity magazine. Such a fun business he had the opportunity to run.
Hao's phone rang and for a few seconds Justin Timberlake's Sexy Back caught his attention, only to be adverted to the dramatic opening of his office door.
Rin one of Hao's first models rush in, "Hao-sama, Anna's locked herself in her room and Miki's complaining that she heard glass shatter."
"Coming." Hao chirped enthusiastically.
Fun, Fun, Fun.
---
Voice mail: Hello this is Asakura Hao, terribly sorry to leave you waiting but I'll have to call you back. Gomen ne.
"Uh hello? Hao-sama are you there? I've returned your phone call. Um.-- I'll come, I'll come alright? Just don't, don't hurt Yoh-sama."
---
Thank you so much for reading. Your commitment means luve to me. If you have just read all of that do review, plz. I know it was a hella lot, Heh. Reviews are eaten with a spoon.