Springtime of Youth

No, NO, NO! NOOO!

This was NOT happening. Why was he here? Had he heard? He had to—he was right there—but if he had, why so nonchalant? Where was the embarrassment—the shame? He should've been crushed, red-faced, in the grip of despair, betrayed, and horrified that his secret was exposed. Instead, he was grinning like usual, unfazed by the revelations, unaffected by the obnoxious giggling between those two harpies. Their cackles echoed, melting away into a deep bass—a rush of vertigo, sudden dizziness, tunnel vision, and consciousness… almost… fading away.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KAIRI!"

…what? Happy birthday? Whose birthday? Her birthday? Why were they uttering gibberish? Faces coming into view… her friends… Riku, Xion, and Yuffie… Roxas, Olette, and Hayner… Where had they come from? Did they know? Did they hear? Why were they chanting so happily? A non sequitur—like a physics professor quoting Shakespeare in the middle of lecture—a page of profanity in the bible—it didn't add up—none of it did!

Hold it.

Wait just a goddamned second.

It was her birthday.

A tiny crack in the dam turned spider web and BOOM: a flood of relief. Sora, you magnificent bastard. He got her, he got her damn good. She had totally forgotten that today was her birthday. A prank—that was all it was. Everything was finally coming together.

"We asked Sora if he could come up with something to distract you. I think it worked out spectacularly," Selphie explained smugly. "Knowing you, there was no way we could surprise you. You're always on top of things, but Sora promised a way to take your mind off it completely. And you know what? He was right!"

Oh, how Kairi wanted to slap her silly, but it was alright, because everything turned out okay. Her best friend was not in love with her—it was just a joke, a twisted, heart-attack inducing joke. She started laughing maniacally. Let it all out, Kairi. Relieve yourself of the tension. Never mind the slightly worried glances of your friends, and forget about those folk in the coffee shop who think you're totally off your rocker, because let's face it, girl, you were on the brink of insanity. But it's fine now, because Sora wasn't in love with you at all. He was just playing around with your fragile heart strings, plucking them with reckless abandon, with nary a single thought as to how it would make you feel, as to how fucking crazy it drove you. It wasn't out of malicious intent. It was just the way he was: an ignorant, smiling, little pissant without a care in the world.

"You totally forgot about it, didn't you?"

"You should've seen the look on your face!"

"You're getting more mature everyday."

"Congratulations on your seventeenth birthday!"

Words, just words, empty expressions of congratulations. Okay, they meant it, but it felt hollow after realizing that her central obsession, the one thing that kept her up for sleepless nights, that forced her into a fetal ball of anguish and agony, was simply a fabrication. And the architect behind it all, Sora, sat there quietly with his douchey little smile. She paid no heed to her friends. He was the one she needed to talk to. His mouth finally made a movement and opened, words pouring out in slow motion. "You didn't really buy it, did you?"

"N-no, of course not." Everybody laughed at her unconvincing answer. She churned out a crooked smile. Take it in stride. Don't blow up, not yet. Save it for later. She grit her teeth behind the grin. She was seething inside—boiling. Make a fool out of her, would they? Balled fists trembled, tightly clenched fingers dug in, and sharp nails drew blood. The rage was bubbling, the rage was frothing, threatening to spill over—the rage—THE RAGE— "I have to admit, you totally got me." A weak chuckle, a hesitant one, a thin veil for the atomic explosion her quivering body housed. "Can I… can I talk you for one moment, Sora?"

"Not now, Kairi. Can't you see? The cake's coming!" Ah yes, the cake was coming. Surely, a more important matter than what she had to say.

"Then after you've had your cake."

As she smiled for the cameras, huddled with her friends, offering her gracious thanks for the great surprise party, the details of the master plan spilled out in a disjointed group confession. Selphie had asked Sora to set up the whole thing and was given free license to drive her bonkers. In true Sora fashion, he shrugged it off like a layer of frosting on the cake. It was to be expected. He never took anything seriously, and the one time you thought he did, he turns around and laughs, yelling out, "Fooled you!"

But forget about that for now. Just enjoy the moment, Kairi. Your friends put this together for you. Bask in the moment. Take a few more pictures with them. Open up those gifts. Thank everybody for their generosity. Finished? Good. Because Sora was standing right there. Go talk to him. Take him outside. And tell him how you really feel.

She descended upon him like a hawk, a dark shadow looming on his unsuspecting figure. He looked up curiously, lips caked in crumb and frosting. "Wipe your mouth. You and I are gonna have a private chat together." She grabbed his arm and wrenched him from the booth. They stumbled towards the exit, and as he was dragged along mercilessly, he drifted into coffee tables, jolting mugs and making tiny ripples in them, leaving a trail of clattering in their wake. They left through the back into a dirty alley, away from the busy street front. Sora shook his arm loose.

"Whoa, what's the rush? You got me." He rubbed his arm tenderly. Kairi had one helluva grip. She looked down both sides of the alleyway and was satisfied to see no one around, which scared him a little. "Kairi?"

"Okay, Sora. Tell it to me straight. Everything you wrote was just a joke, right?" Even though everybody assured her it was a hoax, she needed to hear it from the man himself. What if he was subconsciously pouring his feelings into his writing? What if he liked her and didn't even realize it? She had to be 100% sure.

"Of course it is. You know me." Did she really? She was beginning to doubt it.

"Then we're still friends—best friends, since the beginning of time, from the past to the future, forever and ever, never to be ruined by feelings of romance?" Her face was desperate, as if the fate of world hinged on his answer. He was taken back by the intensity.

"Relax. You're overthinking it. I would never risk our relationship like that. I love you, Kairi, but only as my best friend." She imperceptibly frowned. A sudden thought struck him. "Wait, you don't—don't tell me you—"

"No, I don't have any feelings for you," she declared firmly. "Sure, you made me confused for a week, but now that I know the truth, I can confidently say that I am not in love with you." He let out a sigh of relief. He never meant to take the joke that far. It would be too cruel—even for him. "But you messed me up real good. For a moment there, I thought I'd really fallen for you. I was losing my damned mind. I was starting to have these weird dreams, with you and me, doing things that only two people in love with each other should doing together. I almost thought, maybe, just maybe, this beating in my heart was for you. Now, I know better, because the only beating here is the one you're gonna get from me." She kicked him in the shins.

"OW!" He drew his leg up instantly and began massaging the spot.

"You're a little bastard, you know that? While you were all laughing at me, I was living in hell. Ever stop to think about how I felt?"

"It was kind of fun watching you squirm." Another kick to the shin. "OW—can you stop that? Pretty please? Look, I know I deserve it, but come on! I bet one week from now, you'll find this hilarious." She glared at him with the fury of a thousand angry suns. "Now you're making me feel bad."

"You should."

"I'm sorry, alright? I didn't mean to… mess you up like that. Rest assured, we're just friends. Nothing more. Are we good now?" Good? It was anything BUT good. He destroyed the delicate balance of their relationship by planting these stupid, strange, and utterly thrilling ideas in her head only for her to find out that it meant absolutely nothing because SURPRISE! It was a just a goddamned joke. She got played like an accordion, being squeezed and forced to make strange sounds as she deflated emotionally, physically, and spiritually. This was not over, not by a long shot.

"Fuck you." And with that, she grabbed his face, fingers laced behind his head, and drew him close, their lips crashing into each other like stormy waves. She leaned into him, forcing him back until his head collided with the brick wall behind him. His lips parted for an inaudible gasp and Kairi took the opportunity to plunge her tongue deep into his mouth. She violated him, tongue wrestling with his, probing his moist cavern, feeling every inch of his oral cavity. He lost all feeling in his head, in his legs, and his body, held up only by the wall and Kairi's precious grip. She pulled back, a thin line of saliva dissolving between them. His mouth ajar and his eyes wide as saucers. She wiped the dribble from the corner of his mouth with a thumb and sucked on it with a devilish smirk. "I love you, Sora." Then she slapped him—HARD. The rich painful sound of skin-against-skin reverberated through the alleyway and his face twisted 90 degrees to the right from impact. By the time the pain dulled, Kairi had disappeared into the café.

He stood there in a dumb stupor, cheek throbbing, unable to comprehend what just happened. Didn't she just—but then she—WHAT DID IT ALL MEAN? What she said and what she did were diametrically opposed. Was it positive, negative, or a galactic implosion of magnetic impulses? Was this a form of payback? That had to be it. She couldn't have meant—she told him quite clearly that she had no feelings for him. Trust in the friendship. She was just fooling around… But that was the first time he had ever been kissed, and what a kiss it was! No, he couldn't be fooled. But he couldn't put it out of his mind either. The moist sensation of her mouth, that intimate proximity, the way she held him—he never felt it before. Girls had never interested him because he never knew... He was ignorant, blind, but now he had seen the light. He was missing out. He had concentrated on other things, like school and his writing, but now that he had a taste of what it meant to be with someone, to be physically intimate, to be… in love? It couldn't be. It was a delusion brought on by her unexpected action. She was deliberately planting these mischievous ideas into his head. But was it really just an idea? This couldn't be dissected logically. This was emotion, a gut feeling, a synaptic firing of the soul, not of the mind. It was as he discovered god within himself. Even on the surface, on the visceral level, he felt the rush of adrenaline, that euphoria, the excitement—there was nothing like it. It was too intoxicating, too invigorating, and too addicting. He needed more—he wanted more. His brain was lighting up with all the possibilities, the pleasure centers stimulated by the arousal, his imagination submerged in fantasies he wrought formerly for amusement, not because of a pursuit for happiness in the company of a lifelong partner to care for, cherish, and treasure for the rest of his life, an ideal so many of his peers pined for. It was always the ultimate mystery to him... until now.

Maybe all she did was wake up the beast hidden inside, summoning forth a creature more deviant and sexual than he had imagined. He didn't want to lose himself in this newfound sensation, but it was too late, because Kairi had ignited a tiny spark that would soon grow into a flame that would threaten to consume him. It was a little thing called curiosity, and already, he was beginning to feel the heat, the scorching side effects of his intense burning curiosity. Was this how Kairi felt? The unease and anxiety of not knowing, unable to separate fact from fiction, that heart-stopping uncertainty?! It was madness. Pure and utter madness! What gates of chaos had he unleashed? His whole world was flipped upside down. What happened? He didn't know. One moment, he was celebrating his best friend's birthday, and the next, he was stuck in his head contemplating the impossibilities. His faith had been shaken, his outlook irrevocably altered, and in his head was one central question that begged for answer: Was he in love with his best friend?

Fuck.

He was SO screwed.

THE END

AN: Finally! That's another one I can cross out from my list. It's rather short, but I think I hit all the notes I wanted to. I'd almost forgotten how it felt to finish a story. I've missed the feeling. With this, I wanted to write something a little crass, salacious, and almost...forbidden. It was a great success and garnered immeasurable response. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did writing it. Until next time. Thanks for reading!