Time to reply to reviews . . . I used to do this on the review board, but FF.net has made that a ‘suspendable’ offence.

* Japanese suffixes are complex, and I should have explained myself better. To a certain degree, yes, ‘-chan’ and ‘-kun’ are comparable. Young girls and very young boys will be called ‘-chan’ as matter of course. Older boys and young men are generally addressed as ‘-kun’, although feminism in Japan has meant some girls are called ‘-kun’ too. Even these usages aren’t neutral, of course. It does imply a certain degree of closeness and\or an absence of respect.

However, as with all Japanese suffixes, the issue does get complicated: ‘-chan’ can also be used as an intimate endearment, usually with a shortened version of the name. Think of Nuriko’s infamous ‘Tamaaa-chan’, if you’ve seen Fushigi Yuugi. It would be that way in the case of Takeru, which is why I noted what I did.

* Cowboy Bebop is originally Japanese. I’ve actually only watched it in Japanese, but I would imagine it’s one of the few shows that works better in translation, because of its very Wild Western meets film noir atmosphere. Although no Takehito Koyasu-sama in the dub and that’s a major loss IMO . . . ^.~

* Why were they at Hikari’s house? She has the best grape popsicles. Trust me, I’ve lived on grape popiscles all the last week. Anyway, all the details about Takeru’s crush and the dance will be revealed as this story progresses. Promise. ^.^

* All I can say is “let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!” ^.~

* And, for no particular reason, a big ‘otanjyoubi omedetou’ to Yamamoto-sama for 7 February! He’ll never, ever read this, but . . . hey, no point having a one-girl fanclub if they don’t remember these little details. ^.^;

DANCING LESSONS

PART ONE: BREAKFAST AT THE YAGAMI’S

“No prizes for guessing who is on your mind,” Taichi commented as he walked behind Hikari to fetch his toast from the oven.

She looked down at her bowl of cereal and felt her cheeks grow warm. Somehow, without even thinking about it, she had managed to arrange the multicoloured letters to spell ‘Takeru’. Annoyed with herself, she pushed the bowl away from her and sat back in her chair. It was bad enough that she had barely slept the previous night for thinking about him without her own subconscious turning against her too.

“You know, we do live in a new millennium,” Taichi continued, sitting opposite her and spreading butter thickly on his toast. He took a bite and swallowed before he continued, “It is perfectly okay for a girl to tell a guy she likes him. Odds are that he feels the same way, but has been too afraid to speak and will be glad she did.”

“I know how he feels about me,” she replied quietly, “I’m his best friend.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t be more,” he shrugged, “Things change, Hikari. They change the whole time.”

“Even if he’s in love with someone else?” she asked, while her brother took another bite of his toast.

“No way!” Taichi exclaimed, spraying crumbs all over the place. A disgusted expression on her face, Hikari delicately picked one off her blazer and reached over to drop it on his plate. He grinned in embarrassment, “Sorry about that. Still, there’s absolutely no way Takaishi Takeru-kun is in love with anyone else.”

“Why?”

“He’s only been half in love with you since he was eight years old,” he made a face at her, “Come on, even I can see it, and it usually takes a sledgehammer across the back of the head for me to get the point.”

“We’re not eight anymore,” she said bleakly, “And he’s in love with someone else. He told me so yesterday.”

Taichi was silent for a long time, chewing on his toast and taking a long swallow of his orange juice. Hikari pulled her bowl back towards her and swirled her spoon in the milk to jumble up the letters.

She felt tears begin to prick at her eyes again. Everything had been so simple when they were eight. He had been her best friend - the one who had smiled out of pure happiness whenever he saw her; the one who had watched over when she had been helpless; the one who had held her hand tight when she had been scared. She would have never even thought to question her relationship with Takeru; to be afraid that he might like someone more than her, apart from perhaps Patamon and his brother. She would have given anything to go back to that time, to see everything so simply and clearly again, but that was impossible. Time only ever moved in one direction, and that was away from the past with all its memories and regrets.

At last, her brother said, “I’ve seen how his expression changes when he looks at you. He gets this really amazed look in his eyes, like he can’t quite believe what he is seeing, like there’s this incredible person in front of him and she’s somehow in his life. He still might not realise it, he still might think he likes another girl, but it’s really you he loves.”

Hikari opened her mouth to answer him, but the sound of someone knocking on the front door cut off whatever she might have said. It had to be Takeru - he came by her apartment every morning to walk her to school. She felt her stomach sink.

“That’ll be him now. Want me to get it?”

“No, nii-san, I will,” she pushed out her chair and dumped her half-eaten cereal into the sink, before walking through to the hallway. She took a deep breath to steady herself, then undid the latches and pulled the door open. Her heart hopped painfully in her chest. As she had expected, Takeru was standing there, his schoolbag slung over his shoulders and a smile on his face. Unlike his brother who found a way to make even his school’s uniform look casual, he was smartly dressed. She suspected Ms Takaishi wouldn’t let him out the house any other way. His white shirt was tucked neatly into his grey pants, while his green blazer was pressed and his shoes shone. Only his tie was crooked - he had never mastered the art of doing it properly.

Without thinking, she stepped forward and began to fix it for him. Takeru was one of the few people who was even better-looking up close, as she had discovered in the many times that they had landed up in a heap after coming back from the Digital World. Up close, his eyes were the pure, intense blue of the sky after a storm, and a little, white scar was visible on his cheek like a god’s kiss. It was the result of his long-ago fight against the Digimon Kaizer. He smelt nice too - clean soap and lemony shampoo. She never understood why some boys thought it was sexy to smell of chemical warfare. Standing like this, she could almost forget that he didn’t love her. (1)

He cleared his throat, “Uh, thanks, Hikari. Mom keeps telling me some stupid story about a rabbit and a tree, but it doesn’t help me remember how to do it at all.”

Suddenly, she realised she had finished the tie some seconds ago, and her hand was still resting on his chest. It rose and fell against her palm, and she could just feel his heartbeat through the linen of his shirt, soft and regular. She snatched her hand away from him, as if scalded.

“M-my pleasure.”

Hastily, she turned away from him and walked back into the apartment, so he did not notice how crimson her cheeks were. He followed her inside.

“Let me fetch my books and we can go.”

“Okay, I’ll say hi to Taichi-san.”

As he stepped into the kitchen, she headed for the little room that she shared with her older brother. Closing the door behind her, she sat on the bed and breathed deeply to steady herself. She had to get a grip. Takeru might have been her best friend, but he was in love with somebody else and she could never let him know how she felt about him.

She knew Takeru. If he had any suspicion that he was hurting her, he would never forgive himself. He would beat himself up about it night and day until he was convinced that he was a terrible person and that he didn’t deserve to be friends with her. She did not want that for him. She loved him; she wanted him to be happy, even if he found that happiness with another person.

Sighing, she lay back on her bed and clasped her hands over her stomach. Just another minute to center herself, then she would go and meet him . . .

“So, do you have a date lined up for the dance next week?” Taichi asked, his voice still sounding strangely deep to her ears. Her brother’s voice had been almost as high as hers until a few months ago when unexpectedly and much to his relief it had broken. Now that it had settled down, it was almost as deep as Yamato’s.

“Um, there’s this one girl I want to take, Taichi-san, but I haven’t asked her yet,” Takeru replied. His voice was soft and slightly tentative, and still had the faint traces of an accent, although he had been back in Odaiba for three years now, “Because I think it might be a good idea to know how to dance before I do.”

“Hey, Hikari’s a great dancer,” Taichi said with his usual enthusiasm, “If anyone can whip you into shape, it’s her. So, who’s the lucky girl? Is it anyone I know?”

Hikari sat bolt upright on her bed, all her attention suddenly on their conversation. She knew it shouldn’t have mattered to her whom Takeru liked. It should have been enough to know that it wasn’t her. However, unreasonably, there were certain names that she wanted to hear him say less than others. Ryuuzaki Umi topped that particular list. A tall, elegant girl with pale-blue hair and sapphire eyes, Umi was model-slim and model-pretty. There wasn’t a boy in the school that didn’t have a photograph of her somewhere in his locker or diary. She had even heard that some boys had paid up to Y3000 for a set of five of them! Boys could be so ridiculous, especially as the only way that Umi was slightly bearable was as a photograph! She was the most spoilt and self-centred person that Hikari had ever met. (2)

“Well, I guess so,” Takeru said evasively, “But I don’t want to tell anyone until after I’ve asked her.”

“That’s fine.”

Letting out the breath that she was ashamed to have been holding, Hikari fell back onto the bed. Takeru had always been too good at keeping his secrets. He was the only one in their group apart from Iori and maybe Koushirou who managed to keep his Christmas presents a secret until the time came to open them.

Her hand went beneath her blouse to finger the slender, silver chain that he had given her the previous year. A tiny crystal sparkled its rainbow on the end of it. In the card that had come with it, he’d written: ‘When you were eight and I asked you what you wanted for your birthday, you said that you wished I could get you a rainbow. I’m sorry that it’s taken me six years to work out how to do it!” Only Takeru would remember a stupid, little thing that she had said in passing when she was eight. She had been so certain on that day that he did love her, but time had passed and he had never said anything else to her to make her think that they were more than friends.

“Anyway, I better find Hikari-chan, or we’ll be late for algebra class,” Takeru laughed, “And Sakamoto-sensei always gives extra homework as a punishment for being late. He says we’ve wasted his time, so we need to make it up for him.”

“I remember that,” Taichi groaned, “Once, I had extra homework every night for a month. Sakamoto-sensei was insane.”

“Um, well, at least she doesn’t make us hold buckets of water out in the hallway like Takahashi-sensei,” Takeru replied. Hikari could hear the soft brush of his feet against the carpet as he crossed the living-room towards her bedroom.

Scrambling to her feet and grabbing the bookbag from the bedside table, she threw open the door to smile brightly at him. She knew she could not let that smile slip from her face until she got home that night, “Sorry. I couldn’t find my maths’ book, because Nii-san had piled his junk all over it. Anyway, we really need to get going, Takeru-kun. ”

“Ha ha,” Taichi said sarcastically, “Yes, you’d better get going, because Nii-san heard that.”

“Takeru-kun will protect me from you,” the teasing words were out of Hikari’s mouth before she had a chance to think about them. When she realised what she had said, heat rose in her cheeks, but Takeru just laughed.

“Uh huh,” he said, “I’m Hikari-chan’s personal champion, and you’ll have to go through me to get to her.”

“I wouldn’t want to humiliate you, Takeru-kun,” Taichi replied airily, appearing in the doorway and chewing on the core of an apple, “Besides, if you don’t leave right now, Sakamoto-sensei will be mad, and I don’t think even ‘Hikari-chan’s personal champion’ can stand up to her. Am I right or am I right?”

Takeru looked across at her, “Let’s run!”

“And fast!”

*

NOTES:

(1) Takeru doesn’t really have a scar in the show. It’s entirely my innovation, just because I think that’s one of the best scenes. ^.~

(2) From Magic Knights Rayearth. Apologies to people who like her. I adore Hikaru and Fuu, but Umi needs a swift slap upside the head. ^.^;