Glossary:

Ohayoo – good morning

Ikujinashi outfit – the one with the red jacket and gray striped trousers Yabu and Hikaru wore for the first time when they performed Ikujinashi.

Baka – idiot

Chigau – That’s not true / That’s not so.

Itai ! – Ouch! / That hurts/hurt!

Nani yo? – What?

A Matter of Choice

“I wouldn’t go out with either of you. Not even if I got paid for it!,” Taiyô squeaked in mock disgust before breaking into a bout of laughter that sent half of his popcorn flying.

Arms crossed over his chest, Hikaru gave the tall boy the evil eye while Yabu stared at him equally annoyed, his hands on his hips.

“I wouldn’t want to go out with you either, baka,” Hikaru muttered. “The question was who would you choose if you were a girl.”

With the popcorn bag in one hand, Taiyô stood up from the swiveling chair on which he was sitting, squatted to pick up the scattered popcorn and threw them into the dustbin on the corner of the dressing room.

“Well, I’m not a girl, am I? I can’t think as one, so I don’t know whom of you I’d choose,” he told Yabu and Hikaru as he turned. “...if I were a girl, which I’m not,” he stressed. “Go ask Yabu’s sister,” he added with a dismissive wave of the hand.

“There’s no way I’d ask my sister’s opinion on that,” Yabu retorted. “She’d laugh in my face.”

The dressing room’s door opened in that moment and Shoon entered and greeted them with a lazy “ohayoo”.

“Or you could ask Shoon,” Taiyô suggested wickedly with a toothy smile.

Yabu and Hikaru both looked at Taiyô with an arched eyebrow, then at Shoon, who had just taken his backpack off his shoulder and was calmly shrugging off his coat.

He had the headphones of his mp3 player on and probably hadn’t heard Taiyô, because when he turned around and found the three of them looking at him, he turned off the player, pulled the headphones down his neck and asked with a frown:

“What?”

Hikaru looked at Taiyô, and then both looked at Yabu, as if it were him who had to explain it to Shoon. Yabu threw them a dirty look, turned his head to the oldest member of the group, and cleared his throat before mumbling:

“Um... nothing.”

He turned away to grab the red jacket of his Ikujinashi outfit from the clothes rack when he heard Taiyô say:

“Yabu and Hikaru wanted to know if you’d go out with one of them.”

Yabu froze and his eyes went wide.

“They what?,” he heard Shoon ask in utter puzzlement before he managed to make his brain order his body to turn on his heels.

“Chigau!,” Yabu protested in unison with Hikaru, who was quicker in whacking Taiyô on the head.

“Itai,” said Taiyô rubbing his head. “Okay, it’s not exactly like that,” he told Shoon. “They like the same girl and were arguing about who had better chances of going out with her.”

“Well, you’d better ask her first,” Shoon pointed out. “Perhaps she’s already going out with somebody.”

“She isn’t,” said Hikaru with a smug smile. “Yesterday during a class break me and her were talking with other people about Saint Valentine’s day coming up, so... I seized the opportunity and said in a casual tone that she probably had already bought chocolates for her boyfriend,” he added wagging his eyebrows, “and she giggled and said “oh, no, I don’t have a boyfriend!”.”

That made Shoon laugh.

“You and your antics...,” he murmured amusedly, shaking his head and sitting on the table’s edge, by Taiyô’s side. “So she’s in your class?”

“Yup. Yet another reason why I was telling Yabu he’s got no chance,” Hikaru answered, giving the group leader a cheeky smile.

“She’s in your class; big deal. There are like a dozen other guys in your class,” Yabu retorted. “She is a member of the students’ counsel like me, and we’ll be preparing the Christmas events together. Plus girls like guys who are older than them.”

“Pfft. You’re just one year older than her,” Hikaru reminded him. “’Sides you’re so shy you won’t even dare ask her out, so I don’t even know why we started arguing in the first place.”

“I’m not shy,” Yabu complained. He was fed up of having everybody say he was shy.

“Will you two stop it already? You’re worse than kids,” Taiyô said wearily, popping popcorn into his mouth. “They were asking me who of them I’d go out with if I were a girl,” he explained to Shoon as he munched, “and I was telling them that I can’t think as a girl, so when you came in I suggested they ask you.”

Shoon arched an eyebrow.

“Because I can think as a girl?”

Hikaru snorted. Taiyô realized he’d put his foot in his mouth and stopped munching immediately. Shoon had been such a pretty child that people had more than once taken him for a girl and that had always annoyed him to no end. As a matter of fact Taiyô had the feeling he sometimes acted tough and silent to play up his masculinity.

“Um, well, no, that’s not what I meant; it’s just that... Aw, come on, Shoon, don’t be touchy. You’re the sensitive one in the group, you’re mature and experienced and you understand women. That’s why I said they should ask you.”

“I guess Taiyô’s right,” Hikaru said. “After all asking him about girls is like asking a shepherd about equations.”

“Hey!,” Taiyô protested, glaring at Yabu when he heard him laughing.

“So what do you think, Shoon?,” Hikaru asked him, blatantly ignoring Taiyô. “If you were a girl would you go out with Yabu or with me?”

“Drop it, Hikaru, this is silly,” Yabu stepped in.

“Are you worried he’d choose me?,” Hikaru teased him.

Taiyô rolled his eyes and sat back on the swiveling chair with his bag of popcorn. To his surprise, Yabu looked away, as if uncomfortable.

“Yes, that’s it,” he murmured dryly. He turned around, snagged the jacket from the rack and pulled it on before he started to button it up.

What was that all about?, Taiyô wondered curiously as he munched. Could it be that little Yabucchi had a crush on Shoon? He had even looked somewhat... flustered a moment ago.

Now that would be funny... because Shoon had a huge crush on him. Huge? No, “monumental” was more like it. Not that Shoon would ever admit it, of course, but Taiyô had not missed the longing looks he gave him when Yabu was not looking, the eager smiles that lit up his face when Yabu paid him a little attention.

“You should have a little more confidence in yourself, Yabu” said Shoon.

“Yeah, are you going to walk away from the battle before fighting it?,” Hikaru teased him.

He went to were he was and dragged him by the arm to the other end of the room, where Shoon stood.

“I didn’t say I agree to this,” Shoon said frowning when he saw what Hikaru’s intentions were.

Hikaru just ignored him as he had done with Taiyô before.

“Now pretend Shoon is a girl and ask him out,” he told Yabu. “We’ll see who does best.”

Just as Taiyô had expected Yabu blushed cherry red before he yanked his arm away from Hikaru’s grasp.

“And why don’t you go first since you’re so intent on knowing his opinion?,” he retorted.

Hikaru heaved a very theatrical sigh.

“Okay, Chicken Little, I’ll go first,” he said.

Taiyô and Yabu watched him step forward, put his hands on Shoon’s shoulders, and look at him intently.

He hadn’t even opened his mouth when Shoon pressed his lips together, obviously fighting back an urge to smile, but after a second or two he could no longer repress it and the smile spread across his lips before he broke out laughing.

“Shoon, don’t laugh!,” Hikaru chided him, but he was laughing as well.

“What did you expect me to do? This is ridiculous,” Shoon stated in his defense, still laughing.

Hikaru cleared his throat.

“Okay, let’s try again.”

He put his hands on the older boy’s shoulders once more.

“You know,” he started, looking into his eyes, “I’ve liked you for so long... Everytime I see you at school I...”

They both cracked up laughing again, and so did Yabu and Taiyô. When they all finally sobered, Hikaru seemed to decide it would be better to be straightforward and said:

“I like you a lot and I was wondering if you’d go out with me.”

“That was blunt,” said Taiyô.

“Yeah, it was,” Yabu agreed.

“Who asked your opinion?,” Hikaru retorted turning his head towards them before looking back at Shoon.

The older boy rubbed his neck.

“Well, it was a bit blunt,” he admitted. “You should ask her on a date, not if she’d go out with you. You know, if things go well on that first date then you’ll have other dates.”

“Hm, right, good point,” Hikaru conceded. “So would you go out on a date with me?”

Shoon shrugged.

“Where were you planning on taking me?”

His hands on his hips, Hikaru threw his head back and stared at the ceiling, as if he were thinking about it.

“To the cinema?,” he offered, looking down at Shoon again.

“What movie do you want to see?”

“Er... um... a chick flick?”

“Wrong,” said Shoon. “No girl would believe a guy wants to see a romantic movie.”

“Okay, let’s forget about the cinema then. I’d take her to... a museum?”

“Do you want to bore her to death?,” Taiyô stepped in.

“Well, girls like intellectual guys,” Hikaru retorted.

“She’d know you want to impress her,” was Shoon’s opinion. “And you could end up making a fool of yourself if she knows more about art than you.”

“And that wouldn’t be hard,” Taiyô pointed out laughing.

Hikaru threw him an annoyed look.

“Fine. The amusement park then,” he said. “That way even if the date goes wrong we’ll have fun,” he added smartly.

Shoon pursed his lips.

“The amusement park?,” he repeated.

Hikaru shrugged.

“Yeah, the amusement park.”

“That’s your final choice?”

Hikaru shrugged again and nodded.

“Yeah. Would you go out with me or not?”

“I still have to hear Yabu out before making a decision,” Shoon said, looking at the group leader.

Yabu jolted nervously and Taiyô gave him a little push on the back.

“Way to go, Yabu!”

Hikaru smiled wickedly and pushed Yabu the rest of the way till he stood right in front of Shoon.

Yabu turned his head to complain, but Hikaru was already retreating to where Taiyô was. He stared at him irritatedly as Hikaru grabbed a handful of popcorn and started popping them into his mouth, as if waiting for a show to start.

Some show it was going to be, Yabu thought grimacing before he turned his head back and found Shoon looking at him expectantly.

Shoon was half-sitting on the edge of the desk, his legs open, and Hikaru had pushed him so close he was standing between them, his face a scarce few inches apart from Shoon’s.

He would have stepped back, but he feared his knees would buckle if he tried to move, and he had the weirdest feeling in the stomach, as if somebody was stirring a bubbling liquid inside it.

He wondered what Shoon was thinking.

As if he would ever know. Shoon was too...

“Yabu, we don’t have all day,” Hikaru nagged him.

Yabu cleared his throat, but his mind had gone blank. Shoon was to be blamed for that, he thought. He was turning his brain into mush with that intense gaze of his.

“I don’t know where to start,” he mumbled, feeling like an idiot.

“You already have,” Shoon pointed out with an easy smile.

Yabu let out a nervous laugh and tried to block out the sound of munching behind him.

“True,” he murmured, “but I still don’t know what to say.”

“Why don’t you tell me about the girl?,” Shoon suggested.

Yabu nodded, glad to have something to focus on.

“Well, she has really beautiful eyes,” he began. Yeah, almost as beautiful as Shoon’s. No, not really. Nobody had eyes as beautiful as Shoon’s, he decided on second thought. “And her hair is so long and it looks so... soft,” he added swallowing. Shoon’s was not half as long, but it looked just as soft. How could a guy have such soft-looking hair? “It falls over her shoulders... like a cloak of black silk.”

Hikaru snorted.

“That’s the cheesiest thing I ever heard!,” he cried.

“Let him be cheesy if he wants; women love romance novels and they’re really cheesy,” Taiyô retorted. “I know because my mother reads them. The other day I read a bit of one when she was shopping and it cracked me up so badly! There was one part that went like “When she went outside, she found him cutting wood in the backyard, his open shirt revealing his muscular neck and the thick mat of black hair on his chest”,” he said laughing.

“Ew...,” said Hikaru, laughing as well.

Yabu had turned his head towards them, and was glaring at them with a half pissed-off, half mortified expression.

Noticing it, Shoon took his hand in his and turned his face back to him with the other.

“Take no notice of them,” he told Yabu, squeezing his hand lightly. “Imagine I’m her and tell me why you like her.”

Yabu felt the blood rush to his cheeks at the unexpected warmth of Shoon’s hand and the way he was looking into his eyes.

“I don’t know her that well actually,” he admitted.

“It’s just a physical attraction,” said Taiyô in a teasing tone.

“Yeah, if you asked Eiki-kun he’d say she has nice oppai,” added Hikaru, and that set them off again.

“Guys...,” Shoon chided.

“Sorry,” said Taiyô sobering. “Come on, Yabu, it’s not that difficult. Pretend Shoon is a girl and think of the things you like about him,” he suggested.

Shoon didn’t complain, and Taiyô found that fact very interesting indeed.

That wouldn’t be hard, really, thought Yabu, there were like a hundred things he liked about Shoon.

He breathed deeply and heaved a sigh.

“Okay. I’ll give that a try,” he said. He looked into Shoon’s eyes. “I like... I like how at ease I feel with you,” he started. Well, he did feel at ease with him... when he was not getting butterflies in the stomach like he was right then, that was. “I like that you don’t bother to smile for the cameras when you’re in a foul mood; that you are always so careful not to hurt anyone’s feelings...”

He could go on forever.

“And where would you take me on a date?,” Shoon asked him.

Yabu thought of the things Shoon liked. Surfing was one of them and seafood and fish was another.

“We could go to the beach,” he said. “We could spend the day there, eat at one of those small seafood restaurants on the harbour, and then we could watch the sunset before going back.”

He knew Shoon liked stargazing as well, but he didn’t want Hikaru and Taiyô to accuse him again of being cheesy. However that did not stop him from picturing Shoon and himself in his imagination, sitting on the sand side by side, his head leaning on Shoon’s shoulder, Shoon’s arm around his waist, gazing at the stars above and talking; just talking. The mere idea made him want to sigh.

“Okay, time up,” Hikaru said walking up to them and taking him out of his reverie. “Shoon, you have to decide.”

Much to Yabu’s dissapointment, Shoon released his hand, but he didn’t let it show and moved to a side. Then Shoon looked at them both.

“Well,” he told Hikaru uncertainly, rubbing his neck, “you were very straightforward, and I think that’s good ‘cause girls like guys who are confident, and going to the amusement park for a date is quite... um... original, but being fair any girl would have melted listening to Yabu; he’s just too shy and adorable,” he said looking at Yabu with a smile, “... so if I were a girl... I’d go out with him.”

Yabu could feel himself blushing, but he didn’t care. His heart was doing a jig in his breast and to his satisfaction Hikaru looked totally pissed-off.

“Not fair,” he complained to Shoon. “You helped him out a lot.”

“I did not help him; I just gave him a couple of pointers, as I did before with you,” Shoon said in his defense.

“Yeah, right,” Hikaru said sulkily. “Too shy and adorable...,” he muttered in annoyance as he marched off to the door and went out to the corridor.

Taiyô, who had stood up, threw the empty bag of popcorn in the dustbin and shook his head.

“He’s such a bad loser...,” he said before leaving the room too.

Yabu watched the door close with a smug, victorious smirk on his lips, but when he turned he found Shoon standing next to him, arms behind his back. The unexpected proximity and the fact that they’d been left alone made his heart stutter.

“So... where are you taking me for our date then?,” he asked very calmly.

Yabu blushed and fumbled with the words, totally flustered.

“Our... date? But I thought we were just... that this was only... well, you know, pretense,” he mumbled. Why did his throat feel so dry suddenly? “You didn’t think...?”

A soft smile appeared on Shoon’s lips.

“I was just teasing you,” he said pinching Yabu’s nose between his knuckles.

He let his hand fall and turned to take his outfit from the rack before laying it over the back of a chair. Then he started unbuttoning his denim shirt.

Shoon’s voice had sounded casual, but Yabu was sure he had seen a slight flicker of disappointment in his eyes, and the smile he’d given him had been almost sad and weary.

It had been so bizarre to stand in front of him, Shoon’s warm hand enveloping his, his eyes holding his own with that serious look in them as he told him the things he liked about him...

Shoon was such a mystery, he thought. They’d known each other for years yet he knew very little about his feelings, his fears, his ambitions.

He’d always secretly wanted to get to know him better, but he was too much in awe of him and

It was then he realized he’d been staring at Shoon for at least five minutes as he undressed. Embarrassed, he walked silently to the door, and his hand was on the doorknob already when he turned around.

“Shoon...,” he called in a shy voice.

His friend, who had sat on a chair to untie the laces of his runners, looked up.

“Yes?”

Yabu’s heart fluttered. He swallowed.

“I was thinking... Do you remember that Potato interview in which they asked each of us to give a message to another member of the group?”

Shoon straightened and frowned slightly.

With his left hand still on the doorknob, Yabu rubbed the sweaty palm of his right down the leg of his gray striped trousers

“You had to give me a message, and you said that you often went shopping with Hikaru, or chilled out with Taiyô, but that you and I rarely did anything together.”

Shoon nodded slowly.

“Yeah, I think I remember.”

Yabu cleared his throat.

“And you said... well, you said that perhaps we could go sometime and have tea together or something.”

Yabu stopped talking, waiting for the older boy to acknowledge his words. Shoon seemed to catch on and nodded again.

“I did,” he said, then added quietly: “I thought you had forgotten.”

No, he hadn’t. Yabu had just waited for an invitation that never came and had ended up telling himself that Shoon probably hadn’t meant it, that he had just said it out of politeness. Actually he had stopped thinking about it altogether because it hurt to think that Shoon didn’t even want to have tea with him. Shoon was always joking with Hikaru and Taiyô, but with him he was mostly quiet and aloof, as if he felt uncomfortable being with him. Only then did he realize he had been wrong, that it seemed he was not the only one with a crush there.

“That was around June or July,” he continued, “and we are in October.”

Shoon looked down and smoothed an imaginary wrinkle from his trousers.

“I’ve thought of asking you a dozen times since then,” he said, “but something always seems to come up, and we’ve both been busy, so...”

That was the lamest excuse ever, Yabu thought. It was clear he’d have to be the one to take the first step. Aw, heck, to hell with nerves.

“I have no plans for Saturday,” he said. “How about you?”

Shoon made him wait what seemed like an eternity for a reply.

“Me neither,” he murmured, giving him what had to be the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen in his life.

Yabu smiled too, feeling giddy.

“We have a date then?”

Shoon smiled again, almost shyly.

“Looks like it.”

Yabu decided to push his luck a little.

“We could discuss the details over lunch today.”

Shoon’s smile was killing him.

“Suits me fine.”

“Great.”

By now they were smiling themselves silly.

“I’d better let you change,” Yabu said.

They exchanged one last look that said more than words could have conveyed, and he left.

Out in the corridor Yabu found Hikaru and Taiyô talking to Asaka and Hashi.

The J.J.Express members greeted him and he greeted them back.

“You know what?,” he told Hikaru. “I’ve been thinking and... Well, you can ask her out. I step back.”

His friend frowned at him.

“Nani yo? Back there you seemed delighted Shoon chose you and not me,” he said pointing with his thumb at the dressing room behind them. “In fact I expected you to rub it in my face for the rest of the week,” he added crossing his arms over his chest.

Asaka and Hashi were looking at them totally puzzled, but Hikaru and Yabu didn’t notice, and Taiyô was too amused with the situation to bother with an explanation.

“I had a change of heart,” Yabu said with a shrug.

He walked away, smiling and humming to himself, and while Hikaru blinked and frowned at his retreating back, Taiyô hang his head down to hide the smile that was tugging at his lips. Looked like somebody had gotten himself a real date, he thought.

26th October 2006

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Notes:

I got the idea for this fic from the message Shoon gave to Yabu in the July issue of Potato of this year: (rough translation by me) The laugh at the end seems rather suspicious to me, and also the fact that, as [Yui] noticed, Shoon uses very polite speech. Hmmm... ^^

"Of late I've gone many times for a coffee with Hikaru... and shopping too. I often chill out with Taiyô, too, but I've noticed I'm spending less time with Yabu. So perhaps we could go and have tea together or something? (laughs)"

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