Title: Validation

Author: Rokutagrl

Warnings: Some sexual mentions :)

A/N: Wrote this in parts during work. SShhhhhh XD

I'mwritingapagebreakguys!

She only wanted someone to validate all the hard work she'd put in until now. Someone who knew her, without need, to say "Hey, you're looking cute today!" No one. Just strangers with glue on their fingers getting caught under her skirts, and just that once when senpai—an upperclassmen—scary, but cool Sagara had acknowledged her!

Her boyfriend was too busy at his own festival, but how Yukarin wished she could be on his arm enjoying the day rather than working for peanuts and perverts.

Tamiya, her closest male friend at this school, had run off during their mid-day rush. He hadn't said a thing about her outfit, and he'd been so depressing lately! She couldn't stand it! He could have said: "I agree with Sagara-senpai!" when she'd been bragging earlier. Nope. He just threw his apron over her head and stamped out leaving Class Three with even more work.

His outbursts were a bit more surprising than Toono's apathy, whom she'd always known as a downer. Cute, sweet downer Toono! She could forgive him this one sin—even though she'd given him a bazillion chances thus far…

Huh? Hadn't Tamiya just run out when she mentioned Toono's name? He looked so… regretful, and sad. Bordering on crazy jealous.

Well, she had told him that Toono was with Sagara-senpai, and hadn't even acknowledged her work, either (again)! Which didn't make sense since both of them should have been praising her. But they hadn't even been near one another since she first started showing off!

When she thought about it that way, it all made sense! Tamiya and Toono were friends, who at some point had been ripped apart by her bubbly charm. If both of them acknowledged their attraction, and if Yukarin were to brag to the other, wouldn't their friendship be dampened again? So instead they tiptoped like elephants around the issue—moody and calloused—without being able to put in a word for their own behalf… pained and sad that Yukarin would even think they didn't care!

Her existence was making two friends cross with each other!

"Hey cutie!" A classmate's sudden appearance beneath her dress brought the preoccupied waitress and her musings to a screeching halt. How dare he violate her! How dare he touch—

CRASH!

"OW!"

"Machida-san! Are you okay?" Her fellow maid grabbed onto her wrist and scoured the newly blotched skin. She'd been working so hard—on her skin since her mother okay'd her use of Big Girl Products, on her outfit, on the whole damn thing! Now it was crashing down on her like shattered pieces of china glass spilling bitter coffee on her dress, in her hair, on her sensitive and now burning skin.

Yukarin could cry—in fact she planned to do just that after she'd beaten the deviant to death with the heel of her $75.50 boots—

But he was gone.

Her classmate—one that didn't suck so much—was rushing Yukarin from the premises. "I'll take you to see the nurse!" She told the blonde.

"We can't lose both of you!" A waiter cried, a bit hysterically, his arms a mess of bagel platters and juice pitchers.

"I can find the nurse!" Yukarin told her, trying her best to sound cheery. She would find the nurse, of course, but afterward she would find a nice location to take out her frustrations.

She jumped through and over obstacles on the school grounds—said, "Hello!" and explained her new injuries to all her friends on the Culture Festival Committee. They cooed over her battle wounds and soothed them with honey words of her brave demeanor and pretty visage. She enjoyed the attention, mostly of the male variety so long as they weren't physical, but kissed her own skin when she found a moment alone. The nurse's office, she felt, was far too far for her own good!

She stopped in a bathroom on the way over, messing with the stains on her dress and the sticky mess in her hair, kicking the stalls and walls when she surveyed that nobody else was around. She couldn't lose it too much in public—what would they think of sweet Yukarin, then!

"You'll have to put Neosporin on it tonight and re-bandage your hands or else they'll scar. Honey isn't bad either," The nurse instructed, all the while putting the finishing touches on Mummy Maid. Yukarin figured she might as well switch positions with the staff in the back, though it also meant no more admirers. No more dirtbags, either. Bittersweet, like the coffee that splattered everywhere.

"And wear a plastic bag in the shower!" He continued as Yukarin said her thanks and left the room. Her eyes looked tearily at the fabric smothering her delicate hands. Oh, poo! Fujiwara was so going to get kick out of this- she could just smack him in advanced!

But instead, she decided, she would take her aggravations out on a wall. Or better yet some Styrofoam looked better as she came upon the committee's storage room. It was even more brilliant, her plan that was, when she noticed Sagara-senpai exiting the room and nodding in her direction full of compliments. She beamed back at him, making as though she would be following him only to hold back at the corner. He wouldn't be back too fast, and who would think to blame the broken foam on Yukarin—who had obliviously left behind the Secretary of the Student Council. And she so wouldn't leave her friends behind to do all the café work. Right, right, right?

With the good ideas twirled around her ribbons, Yukarin surveyed the room through the door's window. Perfect, she thought. No one was around, and no one watching her in the hallway. Sure, it should have seemed odd to her with all the shuffling of other members in the council, what they had been through all month with planning. Surely someone should have been there, or around, buzzing with activity.

None of this occurred to the emotional girl, who just needed a single outlet for her month's worth of frustrations! But if she had been thinking: Oh geez, this is too good to be true, then she would have been correct. Even that wouldn't have prepared her for the sensory overload before her pointed toes.

"Fu…nnnn….Nnnnhh!"

"Not good," said the baseball ace as he threaded his fingers through sunlit hair once he came up to his senses. His previous actions, the one that Yukarin graciously witnessed, being his assault on Toono Satoru's mouth. "People might come in, right?"

Bingo.

"…Sorry," Tamiya was saying, "What should I do about this…?

Yukarin pulled one foot out the door and was on her second when, "Uhm… I know where there's an unused room around here… since I'm on the committee!"

"Really? Would that be okay?"

"Yes!" Toono cried, despite himself. "Be-Because I've been lonely all this time!"

She was in the bathroom across the hall—the male's bathroom—by the time they left.

"They're… They're…" Her mind wouldn't work, wouldn't form the right words to describe the boys tangled on the floor into one another. Suddenly her burns—possible scars—didn't cause her any pain. Perhaps she was hurt by this betrayal, or shocked. Or maybe all the blood had rushed to somewhere under her skirts, and through her cheeks, too.

Had she known they were gay, Yukarin wouldn't have tossed a wedge in their relationship too much.

Hadn't they loved her first, though? The signs were all there—wanting her by their side, forcing her into their clubs. And when she'd brought Fujiwara over to explain the complications they hadn't denied their feelings. They'd only stared, straight-faced and concerned over her rationalizing.

She'd broken them, and their hearts, right?

No, she realized dauntingly. She had done them right, favorably! Her heart thudded loudly in her chest—over the erotic images, over her conclusion…

"They became gay over their love for me!"

Her chest swelled, her cheeks heated and it was all she needed to get through the long festival hours- they really did care!