Touch, a La Corda D'Oro fanfic.

Disclaimer : NOT MINE, though I wouldn't mind having one of the lovely, lovely boys for a Christmas present.

It wasn't as if she had never been touched in any way by a boy before, mused Kahoko. Tsuchiura-kun had used a tight grip on her waist to prevent her from breaking her neck the day they had first met, Hihara-senpai had landed right on top of her with his face mere inches away from hers that day at Fuyuumi-chan's vacation home (and oh goodness, that had been embarrassing), and Len had held her so close she had nearly suffocated the day he was trying to escape from Amou-san's 'interview' with his fever, but none of those encounters had quite led her to be permanently thrown out of her depth when she faced the boys in question again.

The difference probably lay in the fact that none of them intended to make her feel uncomfortable, and it wasn't deliberate, and when they were conscious of it they (Hihara-senpai most of all- how were he and Yunoki-senpai friends, anyway?) were nearly as discomfited as she was. And each time it happened, it had been in the nature of an accident, or absolute necessity, or someone not being quite themselves. Also, none of them was hiding the brain of a devil under their respective mops of blue and green hair. Yunoki-senpai, on the other hand, was rarely more himself than when he set out to tease and bully her and make her feel as idiotic as possible- a mission he succeeded in far too often for her liking.

None of the others had done, or were ever in a million years going to do, things like deliberately trap her on secluded parts of the roof and mock her, draft her into the role of a fake fiancée, or use her name without her permission (and call them, in turn, by their first name- she still hadn't gotten over how strange it felt to say Yunoki-senpai's name, she couldn't even think it without blushing). They would ever have dreamed (or so she thought, and she was right in that they would never have used force against her) of taking the wildly inappropriate liberties he always did with her when they were alone. Not one of them would have purposefully violated her privacy and personal space the way he did at every given opportunity.

And they would certainly never have kissed her….it might have been a perfectly chaste-looking touch of his lips to her hair, but given that it was Yunoki-senpai it felt anything but chaste, and it galled her that the first time she had ever been kissed it was by a conniving megalomaniac who'd made it clear beforehand that it was nothing but an act, and she wasn't even sure just why he was so bothered by her, anyway, unless it was the natural pull of one duplicitous, deceitful soul to another. He'd implied it that day in the infirmary, hadn't he?

It was hard to resist the urge to summon and strangle Lili sometimes for all of this- no Concours would have meant she would never have crossed paths with either Yunoki or his dark side, and never had any secrets of her own to hide. But as she remembered the day she had spent posing as his fiancée, or even her own initial disbelief that someone as beautiful as him was a boy, she couldn't bring herself to feel the anger she supposed someone in her position should have felt towards him. Instead, all his touch seemed to do to her was reduce her to helpless jelly until he stopped. The realization stopped her short in her tracks, and she looked around the roof to make sure he wasn't anywhere within earshot…

"Arrrgh…damn you, Yunoki-senpai!"

And just as the last syllable of her curse slid away on the wind, it was joined by the faux-concerned voice of Yunoki Azuma...coming from the one place she hadn't thought to check.

Behind the door. Of course.

"I'm sorry you feel the need to condemn me to hell, Hino." One elegant finger flicked a speck of dust off his sleeve as he closed the distance between them.

"Erm…"

The expression on his face darkened as he reached her. "Hino, if you're going to be so rude as to curse me when I'm not around to defend myself, I'm going to have to teach you manners, you know. Among other things."

Not again, thought Kahoko, frozen against the wall.

"And since the sight of me seems to have rendered you incapable of even an appropriate greeting, maybe that should be the lesson for today, hmm?" He planted one hand on the wall beside her head, effectively cutting off her escape route.

Kahoko looked at him, torn between the urge to kick herself and the oddly masochistic desire to discover just how he was going to bother her today: he would have found a way to do it even if she'd been quiet as a mouse before he came in.

.

"What, no response, Hino?" He rested one long finger- typical musician's fingers, she noted distractedly- on her upper lip. "That was bad language, just now. Very bad indeed."

"We'll begin with the proper way to address people, shall we?" His finger was now pressing against her lower lip, and Kahoko's heartbeat was going at twice its normal speed. With great reluctance, she finally spoke, fighting the urge to blush.

"Yunoki-senpai….please stop."

"Now that was rude, you silly girl. No apology for what you said earlier…and have we forgotten the lesson on what to call each other in private?" His eyes glinted maliciously.

"My outburst just now was rude, Yunoki-senpai. Please forgive me." she murmured. He took a step closer to her, his other hand drifting to the back of her neck.

"Wrong name, Kahoko. You know I punish stupid rude girls, don't you?" He traced the outline of her lips. "And do you want me to shut you up for not even being able to say my name correctly?" The look in his eyes and the rapidly shrinking distance between their mouths left her in absolutely no doubt about just how the Prince of Seisou could choose to silence her if she didn't do what he wanted, at once- and it would involve more inappropriate touching than she was already being subjected to. She took a long, shaky breath.

"I'm sorry for what I said earlier…Azuma." Her voice dropped an octave and her cheeks flushed brilliantly red at the thought of the omitted honorific, but it seemed to satisfy him as he straightened and stepped away from her.

"Good girl." He smiled, and one long strand of purple hair fluttered against her cheek in the sudden breeze before he turned and walked through the door. Kahoko slumped against the wall, her knees now having turned to water- even jelly was stronger than her just now, she thought absently .

He really needed to stop touching her.

Author's Note: I'm aware that this little scrap is less than perfect, so please forgive me for any flaws you find in characterisation or manga/anime canon, or other aspects of the story. But my true love and fangirlism for La Corda d'Oro only began at Volume 4, when Dark Yunoki emerged, and this fic is sort of in homage to that, so I needed to write this.

I'm not very good at writing romance fics, though, so if you think this was corny or just plain wrong, or if you liked it, or didn't like it, do leave me a review- I'd really appreciate hearing everyone's thoughts! I'm aware the spacing might look weird, but I still haven't figured out FF spacing- taking the plunge from fangirl to full-on fanfic-writing fangirl is not easy..

And a big THANK YOU! to everyone who left reviews on my last story- midorihimesama, Neon-Fantasy, chocolateicecream301, C_V, Malindorie, hua and ayame and Crimson Valentine– I'll try to update Through The Eyes Of A Sister within the next couple of weeks. In the meantime - happy holidays!