Okay, it's been fucking five months since the last update on this one… Holy shit, time passes quickly… I'm so sorry…

SAKAMAKI RAITO X HARUMI YUKA!

RATING WILL BE KEPT SECRET CAUSE I TEND TO FORGET THEM ANYWAY.

Two days had passed since that night with that guy whose name I didn't even know. After all that, he had calmly taken me home as if nothing had just happened, and I hadn't seen him since. Why? Because I hadn't gone outside for three days in a row.

Going out was a no-no, so I decided that home = safe. Ever since that really weird day, I didn't dare go out in case I'd meet him again – which I knew obviously couldn't be just a coincidence. There was no way we'd just randomly run into each other.

Having to lie to my mum and pretend that I was "not feeling well today either" wasn't easy. I could almost feel her growing suspicion, but in the end, she just told me to be happy about my good grades and pray to the Lord to get well soon.

My freaked-out mind kept me standing by the window and looking for men with black fedoras nearly all day. In the end, I didn't see a single one before a knock on the door was heard, and Mimi immediately ran straight toward it to bark on whoever was going to intrude.

I was home by myself – mum hadn't come home from work yet – so I hurried down the stairs to at least pat Mimi's head and silence her. But I hesitated for a long time to open the door. I stood frozen in front of it, finding it harder to answer to the knock than I thought I would have. It was even in the middle of the bright day too.

The voice sounded muffled from the other side of the door. "Oiiiii! Yukaaaaa, ya theeeere~!?"

There was no mistake that the cheerful, abnormally loud tone belonged to Minori. Thinking about it, I really should've seen it coming. I hadn't been to school in three days now, so it wasn't strange for her to come and visit. Actually, a whole tree days before visiting was abnormally late for her. She'd normally visit the very same day I became sick.

"Aaa~ah, I thought ya were dead for a second there. I was preparing myself to burst the door open, ya know," Minori sighed as I opened the lock. Letting herself in to take off her shoes, she patted the white ball off fluff in front of her with small baby-talk – "hayyy, lil mini Mimiiii~" - and a silly smile.

It wasn't really unusual for her to just "intrude" like that though. This was basically her second home since the age of two.

"Sorry for taking so long…."

She sighed once more, putting her shoes against the wall. Then she let out a laughing snort, facing me with an amused grin.

"Don't tell me ya were scared, thinking that I was some serial killer coming to collect your head or somethin'?" She laughed.

Well, something like that. I definitely couldn't tell Minori about meeting up with that guy again. She'd get furious for sure, and involve the church and my parents if not even the police. And if mum found out about it, she'd –without no doubt – forbid me from ever going outside again.

"No, nothing like that."

Minori smiled. "Liar."

She began walking through the first hall of the house, Mimi happily following after to lie down in her dog basket. I walked after Minori to the kitchen, struggling to keep an equal pace to hers as usual. In everything she does, Minori uses up three times more energy and enthusiasm than needed. Walking was no exception.

"Anyway," I tried hard to hide my heavy breathing after the short walk.

Pouring milk into a glass, Minori's head turned up to face me. "What?"

"Isn't it kind of strange for you to, you know, only pay me a visit after three days? You usually come right away, barging into my house while yelling stuff like "OI YUKA U OKAY" or something."

"Oh, that?" She bottoms-upped her milk, wiping off the white moustache it gave her. "Four days ago, I was sick, remember?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm still sick."

Oh. That explained the way she'd dressed more sloppily than usual. And the fact that her face was all red and sweaty.

She laughed at the way I scanned her appearance, reading my thoughts and grinning widely while ruffling up my brown hair. "I look much better than you though! Look at this mane! You haven't braided any of it in the front like you usually do, huh – much less combed it! And these bangs standing up, they don't even look pixie cut anymore! Hey, have you even bothered to put on your contact lenses today?"

"Stop it!" I couldn't contain the laugh as I force her hand away, trying to push down all the hair that had gotten in every way and direction because of Minori's actions.

"Once I become a hairdresser, I won't let you walk around with bed hair like this!"

"Yeah, yeah… I get it…" I sighed, going into the kitchen to get a glass of milk myself too. "But hey. If you're sick, shouldn't you be in bed right now instead of walking all this way here?"

"Oh, by the way! I've brought your mail!"

"You're not listening…"

"There's even some fan mail to you here from some of the boys at school – bet Natsumi will try to bully you again if she'd found out about that. Don't worry, though, this Minori-sama in shining school uniform protect you!"

"Uhm, Minori, I'm trying to tell you-"

"Most of the letters are the same as always. "YUKA/HARUMI-CHAN/SENPAI/SAN –or whatever – PLEASE GO OUT WITH ME I'VE LIKED YOU FOR A VERY LONG TIME AND IT WOULD MAKE ME VERY HAPPY IF YOU WOULD ACCEPT MY FEELINGS" and stuff-"

"You really shouldn't mock people's feeling like that…"

"-but this one if kind of weird. Look here."

Minori's hand goes down into her baggy pants' gigantic left pocket, digging around in it for a bit before finally founding what they searched for. Out of it, she pulls a small, beige note along with a tiny purple and yellow object. She handed it to me, and I missed a heartbeat as I saw a card and a flower in my hand.

"I think that flower's name is Heart's Ease or something. And sure, the name is pretty and so is the flower, but who usually gives their crush such a small, fragile thing?" Minori creased her eyes in confusion, looking down at my hands with suspicious eyes. "And the card is freaking weird too."

"Words are not a matter. The meaning behind them is," I read out loud from the sharply handwritten letters on the card. The exact same sentence that I'd gotten the last time, when the flower was Geranium Nutmeg. Although, dad still hadn't come home since.

"See? I don't wanna call it creepy or anything, but it's really weird…"

I read the card again.

"Yeah…"

The next day, we were off from school. Mum still worked, and even though my stepdad was a teacher and there was no school, he had a lot of paperwork to do. So I was left home alone again, sulking in my bed with Mimi chilling on my stomach. Just like yesterday, I'd been too lazy to both comb and braid my hair, dress, or even put on any lenses. Since when had I gotten that lazy?

What's with me? I'll worsen my eyesight if I continue like this.

"Sorry, Mimi, but could you get off?" I began moving, which obviously made my fluffy dog understand what I was trying to tell her. I got up and walked over to the bathroom, looking at my pitiful state in the mirror.

The clock wasn't even 6 PM, and yet I was so tired and somewhat… irritated with myself. Lying around in my room and only ever going outside when taking a walk with the dog these past days had left me bored to death, and I couldn't stand another second of it. Doing the same thing over and over again in the same place with the same people and things, I hated it a lot more than I ever knew I would.

"That's it," I hissed into the mirror's reflection of me trying to comb through my thick hair (it wasn't even that long, so why was it so hard to comb it?). "I'm going out."

I began combing my hair. And as I always did, I braided a small part of it into two separate, loose braids beside my face, leaving the big amount of remaining hair alone. I put on a turquoise top with a cardigan and white shorts together with black thigh stockings since it was in the middle of summer and still very warm outside. In the end, I was too lazy to begin putting in my lenses, so I took my old pair of red glasses instead.

I closed the door to the house, locked it and skipped down the two stairs and out of the yard. Mum would come home from work at about 9 PM, so I had about three hours to do whatever I wanted to.

The library was only a twenty-minute walk from my house so I decided to leave the bike at home and get some healthy exercise once in a while. But I had to run if I wanted to get to the library in time before closing time at 6, and I barely got there in time.

"Can I help you with something?" an old late in her fifties called out as she caught me stressed out and hesitating in front of the bookshelves. She looked very tired and maybe even annoyed to have me there so close to 6, as I was the only one there really, and I quickly felt even more stressed.

"Y-Yes!" I replied a lot louder than I had intended, and my voice echoed in the big room. Without really knowing what I wanted her to help me with, I was forced to answer quick before she shoved me out. The answer was, "I was wondering if you had Wuthering Heights here?"

To tell the truth, I had read that book more than once before, but it couldn't be helped. It's my fault for coming so late to the library without even knowing what I wanted to read.

The lady nodded slowly and waved her hand in a gesture that told me to follow her. Walking quickly to a bookshelf very close to the exit, she picked up the very same ochre brown book with the same pretty brown haired woman on it that I had help in my hand about two months ago.

She scanned it and wrote something on her computer and got a bag out of nowhere and put the book in it and fixed a receipt and gave it to me. All so quickly that I barely saw it and before I knew it, I was out on the street again with a plastic, blue bag in my hands. The clock was now five minutes over 6 PM and I was a little ashamed to have gotten out of there after closing time. The lady really looked like she needed some sleep too…

Living in a neighbourhood close to the city was a good thing because that meant that everything was just a twenty-minutes walk away from you. The park was very close to the library, and there were still a lot of children with their parents, adults and teenagers, and people walking with their dogs there so it felt like a very safe place to sit down and read. If that guy were to pop up and try to drag me away to some weird place again, people would see that and come to my rescue.

The park was nice too. Lots of all kinds of flowers in all kinds of colors in all kinds of places. The park benches were clean and had been repainted in the beginning of summer, now looking brand new. I took a seat in one of the benches in front of the fountain as that's where most people in the park were.

Time passed and the street lights were to soon do their purpose. Before I knew it, I was already reading chapter 15.

'Don't torture me till I'm as mad as yourself,' cried he, wrenching his head free, and grinding his teeth.

The two, to a cool spectator, made a strange and fearful picture. Well might Catherine deem that heaven would be a land of exile to her, unless with her mortal body she cast away her moral character also. Her present countenance had a wild vindictiveness in its white cheek, and a bloodless lip and scintillating eye; and she retained in her closed fingers a portion of the locks she had been grasping. As to her companion, while raising himself with one hand, he had taken her arm with the other; and so inadequate was his stock of gentleness to the requirements of her condition, that on his letting go I saw four distinct impressions left blue in the colourless skin.

'Are you possessed with a devil,' he pursued, savagely, 'to talk in that manner to me when you are dying? Do you reflect that all those words will be branded in my memory, and eating deeper eternally after you have left me? You know you lie to say I have killed you: and, Catherine, you know that I could as soon forget you as my existenc-

"Wuthering Heights, huh~?"

The voice appearing out of nowhere and murmuring in my ear sent me jumping out of the bench in chock, shrieking so loud that I immediately began looking at how the people there reacted. But as I did, I noticed something. There were no people left there anymore. They had all gone home during the time I had read and I hadn't noticed it.

I wanted to slap myself for that. I didn't need to turn around to know who had startled me – his voice had already been carved into my memory. And there was no one that could help me now, all because of my own stupidity.

"It's a good book. Long time no see," he hummed with his angel-voice, and I could see the smiling face of his in my mind.

Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe the problem had a simple solution. He was silent behind me now, waiting for me to say or do something – or at least turn around to meet his devilish eyes. I wouldn't do that. Once again, he had found me. There was no way this was just another coincidence. He had searched for me, or maybe just followed me around this whole time.

Telling him to leave me alone hadn't worked last time, so I was going to try something different. I started walking away, ignoring him and hoping that he would eventually grow tired.

"Ah? Where are you going?"

To my absolute terror and dismay, my a part of me crumbled to pieces as I felt a hand grasp my wrist from behind and preventing me from taking any other step further. The streetlights were already on now, brightening up everything except the eerie atmosphere in the empty park. I did my best to try and breathe regularly.

"Even though it was such a long time since I've seen you, you're already planning to go?" His voice sounded exaggeratingly hurt and dramatic, as if he didn't know of my currently absolutely terrified state and tried to be funny.

I swallowed words that tried to get out, focusing my best on trying to pretend that I was alone. I clutched the book in my hand and tried to force the sweat back into my skin.

I heard a low giggle behind me, and the hand around my wrist started to gently pull me backwards. "Hey, why aren't you saying anything? You're trembling so much~."

I just had to endure it a little bit more. Soon, he would sigh and say "hmm, you're no fun…" and walk away and everything would be alright again. I would walk home in peace, come home before my mum did, and I would never see him again.

That's what I truly believed for a minute.

"Well, that doesn't matter," he shrugged, and with a sudden tug, he started pulling me along with him. When I got the look of his back, it was indeed, non-surprisingly, his reddish brown hair and his black fedora.

"I'll take you somewhere fun," he added, making it fell like he did it to make me stop resisting.

I panicked, understanding that the silent treatment didn't work on him and that he was once more going to "take me somewhere fun".

"Stop! Let me go!" I yelled, roughly trying to pull my wrist out of his grip in a hysteric behavior. "I don't want to! Go away from me!"

He lets go of my wrist and I almost plopped down onto the ground at the sudden freedom. I intended to quickly get up and run, but when his captivating eyes met mine as he slowly turned around, I ended up frozen in place. Only movement my body allowed me to do was tremble like a newly born baby.

"Why are you trying to run away?" he asks quietly, suddenly a lot more intimidating than ever before as he crouches down over me. "Do I frighten you?"

The way he's placed before me blocks the view of the moon, casting a dark shadow over him. And yet, somehow, his eyes manage to glow threateningly as they stare into mine.

"No," I reply in a brittle tremble, knowing it's a lie far too well. His eyes narrow slightly, and I understand with uneasiness that he's not satisfied with the answer. "I... W-We don't know each other and… Y-You just… s-suddenly popped into my life and… took me to all these… places…."

When I don't continue, he tilts his head to the side and ads, "and?" without a change in his hard expression.

I flinch. "It's weird!" I automatically burst out without thinking, troubled and frustrated that he still isn't satisfied with my answer, and that he doesn't seem to understand what I'm trying to tell him. His penetrating eyes make it hard to talk, and I swallow down an imaginary lump of fear.

"What we did last time wasn't to your delight?" he asks.

I look away from his eyes, feeling cowardly again. "No…"

Suddenly he stands up. Now he doesn't just have a shadow over him, but the moon behind him makes him into a dark silhouette with lighted contours. He almost looks like he has a glowing halo, like he's divine.

Somehow in his dark face, I can see his lips roll into a soft smile. "Then, let me take you somewhere else."

"N-No! I don't even know your name-"

At first, I thought his hand reached out to hurt me, but when I opened my eyes, it was like an angel stood before me, wanting me to grab his hand so that he could help me up.

"My name is Raito," he said. "And I'll take you wherever you want."

I took his hand, letting it go as soon as my legs stood steadily on the ground. Biting my lip, I did one last effort to make him go away. "I want to go home…"

His eyelids sunk a little as I said that, but the smile is still there. The expression he now has reminds me of the soft smile you have while looking at a poor, weak little newborn kitten.

But when you look like that at a person, the soft smile looks more intimidating and creepy than warm.

"Then, I'll take you home."

Starting to finally get some action, am I right? I promise that I won't let five months pass ever again before updating this story, okay?

Absolutely promise….