Title: To the You Who Passes Me By

By: akinosora01

Category: Hana Yori Dango

Status: Complete

Chapters: 1

Author's Note:

I wrote this while taking a break from the final chapter of "Hikari no Hashi." (BTW, I've reaffirmed to myself that I am not for multi-chaptered, plot-filled fics.) It's from an unexpected point of view, not one we'd see in a HYD fic, but this one came from a "What if" scenario.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Hana Yori Dango franchise.

To the You Who Passes Me By

When asked about any regrets, Shizuka would only smile wistfully and change the subject. Everyone who was around would automatically assume that her answer would be her modeling career and her inheritance, which she threw away in order to be a lawyer for human rights in France. But what woman wouldn't? It seems like Shizuka has everything, despite what she discarded—a successful career, a beautiful home, a loving husband, a successful marriage.

Sometimes, just sometimes, her heart wavers. It shows in the way her thin fingers grip the newspaper or the computer mouse when she sees that person in the newspaper, on the news online, or spread out in glossy finish, the darling of the business world. It shows when she instantly thinks of that person.

Oh, she knows that it's wrong, to compare her husband to that person. And while it doesn't happen often, there are enough instances for her to notice, for her subconscious to whisper suggestive wisps of "What if…"

And at the same time, she shakes her head at herself and laughs a little. Even if she chose differently, the ending would've been the same. They were worlds apart—she was career driven, work driven, desperate to make a difference in the world other than being rich and famous and appreciated for her looks. He would never been able to understand her need to do so, to bury herself in her work until it was hard to tell her or her work apart, and so she studiously ignores him, preferring to stay in the office until the wee hours in the morning, knowing that he would be waiting for her.

She drives him to return to Japan, disillusioned and hard-hearted. She made him that way, she knows, the violinist who doesn't understand emotions and doesn't know how to address them. And subsequently she impulsively marries her husband, a fellow colleague who had none-too-subtly showed more than a professional interest in her. He is a good man, from a respectable family, and she feels that if he is a lawyer, it would be much easier for their marriage.

But that doesn't stop her from regretting, from dreaming of a different future when she sees his wedding announcement to a successful lawyer in Tokyo.

)))))))))))

Something I thought about for some time.