This chapter will be the last in this series.

I probably will write Maid Sama! Again sometime down the track, so if you want to keep up with that, author alert is recommended.

Thanks for all the support and love: so, let us not say goodbye, but as the French have it; adieu! – Mr. Wickham (there's something so devilishly alluring about quoting someone like him)

- - -This last chapter is dedicated to you.

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"I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me." – Jane Eyre

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He finds her in his closet.

It's not a daily occurrence – he cannot boast of often finding young women crouched meekly under his thick, winter coats and between his (slightly odorous) tennis shoes. It's an odd sight. Takumi blinks liberally, but Misaki persists to exist in the very same spot. She is crouched, knees to her chest, face turned down resolutely to the space beneath her feet. He's never assumed the position himself, but still, he can't imagine it would be too comfortable. He makes an internal note to try it for himself for further investigation in his own time.

A mite confused, a mite dazed, he slides the closet door back into place, encasing the girl once again in the musty darkness. He remains standing in front of it, though. Guarding it, perhaps. The incredulous frown seems to be permanently etched into his face.

He tries to speak, but for some unknown reason he assumes there is a closet-etiquette he must follow. There must be some sort of hidden cult, he reasons, that specialises in these sorts of practices. Maths, Economics, Japanese, English, Literature, Science, Psychology; and yet high school couldn't prepare him for this? He tries to calculate an equation that will indicate the answer he is desperately searching for.

E = Closet/M x 4.5 x 6.87/embarrassment – etiquette + awkwardness = solution

Not surprisingly, this only confuses him more.

Of course, reassessing the equation he realises (somewhat ecstatically) that embarrassment could be substituted for ambiguity, thereby lessening the overall value (and thereby lessening the awkwardness), but he dismisses this hypothesis as irrelevant, because he's still standing and she's still crouching somewhere dangerously close to his (busty lady) magazines.

"Usui?" The name comes from beyond the off-white closet door, dragging an overbearingly potent question mark along with it, weighing it down. It's been a while since her voice has been that mellow and quiet.

Then again, it may have been muffled by the layers of cork-board.

"Hm?" It's a rather omnipotent remark on his part, yet its grandeur is lost as the voice from the closet travels over it, trampling it in its semi-meekness.

"I'm ready to come out now."

One eyebrow balances on its tippy-toes and manages to lightly graze the very top of his brow. The action bears no real meaning besides his own pointless gratification; it makes him feel sagacious.

A distinct muffled shuffling from beyond the closet door. Tentatively, the door slides across and Misaki Ayuzawa crouches and bends to negotiate her way out. A stray sock is persistent, though, and follows her, flopping unceremoniously to her heels like a beggar. She straightens in front of him, face a mask contorted to cool indifference. Surreptitiously, she attempts to shake the sock from her foot, only to have it fly and cower in the ominous pit known worldwide as Under the Bed.

"You're done?" Usui hazards, though he has no idea whether there was any employment of activity going on in that small, stuffy closet. It's just an assumption – he can't, for some reason, imagine her idle or frivolous. With Misaki, he knows, there must always be justification, reason.

Her eyes do the talking. They shift slightly and gaze stubbornly into the space just above his shoulder.

A moment passes.

"The door was unlocked," she says eventually.

"I see."

He didn't see.

A sigh, snappish and short on her part.

"You weren't home," she adds, as if the words qualify as an explanation. She looks up at him expectantly.

"Huh," he muses.

She is not deceived. Another sigh. "Then I heard you were coming up."

Something clicks underneath the mass of blonde hair.

"You hid in the closet?"

Misaki frowns, but doesn't object to the surmounted.

"You hid in the closet." It is no longer a question.

He is, to be concise, undoubtedly and undeniably flabbergasted.

Misaki waits, a little impatiently, for the inevitable.

She gives him two seconds before-

"But why?"

It arrives, as expected, right on cue.

Misaki shrugs, though nonchalance has never been her forte. She suspects she is picking up small idiosyncrasies from her blonde companion.

"Your jackets are," she pauses, looking for some kind of exit sign on this road to hell.

"Excellent company?" Takumi throws in with no particular emotion. From the dazed look in his eye, Misaki needs to wonder at his wellbeing. "They learn that from me."

She grimaces only slightly, pointing to a sad looking grocery bag slumped on the kitchen counter.

"I brought you dinner."

A beat passes.

"Edible?" He hazards.

She holds out her hands, palms up. "Who knows?"

"Well then," he grins with flourish, seemingly forgetting the whole fiasco. "Bon appetite!"

"It's instant noodles," she intones dully, trailing after him into the kitchen. He's either incredibly hungry, or incredibly easily impressed. Misaki suspects a combination of both. Despite it all, she smiles at his back.

They eat at the kitchen bench. He's purchased some seats, the kind that elevate higher and higher until you need to squint to find your breakfast below you. They swivel, too, which Misaki delights in, but for the sake of appearances, fights the urge to pretend she's in a spaceship. Usui half-turns one way and another, humming to a slow song and attacking his food on every second beat.

It's quiet, and the sun had only turned a half-hearted kind of orange. Perhaps they are eating too early, if such a thing mattered. His apartment is still bare, but not in a stylish, minimalist way. More like in an Usui kind of way. Every now and again, she hears a purring. But it could just be the wind.

Her noodles are tasteless, but even so, she's comfortable.

And while she's chewing on a rubbery slice of carrot, and Usui is negotiating the balance of soy sauce and water in his bowl, she realises that she loves him. As if it's the most natural thing in the world.

Considering it's Usui, she had always suspecting falling in love with him might be a far more flamboyant experience. It should have been on the beach, where fireworks divided the sky like gossamer threads, moonlight reflecting off every surface.

Or in the city, where birds flew overhead and lovers strolled by hand-in-hand and he tousled her hair affectionately under the warm sunshine. Street musicians played love songs.

Or at school, where a heart-warming, awkward, loving confession was seen by the entire school after a squabble and chase down the halls. They would be swarmed, congratulated, laughed with and accepted. And their hearts would have overflowed with happiness surrounded by the walls of Seika High, which they had grown to love.

But it was in his apartment, silent, chewing on noodles and wondering about the stain on the table near her elbow, with a 5:30pm mugginess hanging over her eyes that she realises she loves him.

And there is relief in it.

She looks up and smiles at him briefly, he who is still trying to find the right amount of salt, staring into his noodles. He doesn't see it, and flicks through a newspaper instead.

It's okay, though, Misaki thinks, returning to her poor, dilapidated noodles.

One day he'll see her as Juliet.

But right now, all she really wants is one of his omelettes.

-x-x-x-

Short and easy, like a Sunday morning.

Keep reading and writing, and the heart will grow.

It's been an honour and a joy,

xo Schnook