1Disclaimers: Hana Yori Dango is the property of Kamio Yoko, etc. Borrowing for entertainment purposes.

This is where I'll be stashing my random Hana Yori Dango drabbles and one-shots, mostly written for the Livejournal community 31days daily themes / writing prompts. Most of these pieces will be centered around Domyouji, Makino, and their roller coaster relationship. Thus, the title:

Jesting with Fate

Wrenching Issues

November 1 / Things you've never seen

15:34 103105

She was a pretty good student. How else would she have managed to enter Eitoku Gauken two years ago? Unfortunately, the past was good for nothing but reminiscing. Plain fact: she was unsalvageably distracted from school work.

Plop.

There it was again. She wrenched her grainy blood-shot eyes from her notes to glare at the kitchen sink. Fixing the faulty faucet had been in her to-do list for days, but the exams for the first term of her last year in high school were coming up. She was determined to excel this time, just because she could actually do so this term, without all the troublesome thrills threatening to erupt in her life unexpectedly. Enough said about that.

Of course, the leaky faucet insisted on intruding on her concentration. She had already gotten up to tighten it as far as she could with a rusty old wrench. The steady trickle was gone, replaced by a continual plop-plop that was intermittent but maddeningly unpredictable.

Ironically, she actually had to strain to hear each drop land on the cheap battened metal of the sink. Ah, but it was anticipating when the next drop hit that distracted her. She'd stare at the little bleb of water as it shyly peeped from the rim of the faucet... only to hang there suspended for i minutes /I before plopping down, defeated by gravity.

It was like talking with Domyoji on the phone.

After the excited flurry of greetings, the initial recap of significant happenings on their respective lives, there came the pockets of silences. Just breathing on the other side of the line—weren't they wasting their precious minutes? Ah, but it didn't feel like that really. Though of course, being her thrifty self, those pauses had made her anxious the first few calls. She used to try to fill up those silences, but now she let them be, quietly breathing with him till one of them thought of something to say.

But what was wrong with that anyway? When they walked together before, weren't there long moments when neither of them spoke? When she just walked and moved among the routine motions of the rest of the world, feeling his presence, his light grip on her hand, the subtle brush of his arm against hers. And the light bantering was not lost over the ocean and the continent separating them. She still got red-faced, yammering a mile a minute as she tried to dispute this silly thing or that.

What she missed most were his eyes and the contentment that came when she could almost read the depths of those brown orbs----almost. In actuality, she thought, maybe its more like they're synchronizing when they stare at each other. She was merely feeling the same emotions as he was at the exact moment their eyes met, and it was their resonance that warmed her cheeks.

"Gah!"

Peckish, Makino staggered to her feet. The folding table overturned, spilling her books and notes on the floor. She ignored it for the time being and headed outside the apartment to rummage among the odds and ends the neighbors stashed in the empty backlot. She came back, disheveled, carrying the old tools and a tiny package from the hardware store she dropped by yesterday.

"I'm changing it, all right?" she announced to the room in general. "I fixing the idiot washer that wore out!"

True to itself, her luck deterred her from finishing her chore once again. At that moment, the phone rang, and the rusty old wrench was left forgotten by the leaky faucet.

1900something