I'm a Believer - chapter 2
"Sho..." Kyoko said warningly.
Sho ignored her and continued to walk alongside her, whistling merrily.
"Sho, seriously. Stop that."
He flashed her a grin that would have had one half of the schools female population melting in their shoes. Kyoko just narrowed her eyes.
"What are you doing?"
At this, Sho turned towards her. "What? I can't walk my baby sister to school?"
"You never have before. You usually just ride your bike."
Sho shrugged. "I didn't feel like taking her out today."
"You always feel like taking her out."
Sho paused, just looking at her, his expression unreadable for a moment before he smiled. "Not today."
This time it was Kyoko's turn to pause, thinking furiously. "Why?" she asked, as they turned onto the street that housed the entrance to their school.
"Why what?" Sho replied, feigning innocence.
"Why now? Why are you walking me to school now?"
Sho grinned and slung his arm around her shoulders. "It's because I love you."
Kyoko blushed heavily as a few heads turned in their direction, eyes wide.
"Fool! What are you doing?"
She twisted sharply to get out of his grip but he tightened his hold and clamped her to his side. He didn't look it, being so thin, but he was extremely strong. He nuzzled into her cheek and he forced her to walk through the entrance.
"Awww...I know you love me too."
She winced and then hissed at him. "Will you stop speaking so loud? People are going to get the wrong idea!"
"Baby," he said, pulling away but not releasing her "they already have the wrong idea."
Kyoko glared at him before smiling pleasantly. Sho's grin dropped and he twitched.
"Kyoko?" he asked hesitantly, "You're smiling evilly again."
"Oh?" her voice was light and airy, "I didn't notice."
His eyes widened.
"It's just," she started again, "I'm thinking about how much I'm going to hurt you when you finally let go of me."
Sho swallowed audibly and tightened his grip even further. "N-now Kyoko, you know you wouldn't hurt me..."
Kyoko just raised her eyebrow.
"I mean, you love me. That should count for something right?"
"Sho, have you ever heard the expression 'You only hurt the ones you love'?"
"I don't think it means in that connotation!" his voice rose shrilly and a cold sweat broke out across his forehead.
Kyoko grinned at him and cracked her knuckles.
"Kyoko!"
Kyoko swivelled her head round at the sound of Kanae calling out to her, taken by surprise for a moment.
"Oh look, there's your friend!"
Before Kyoko knew what had happened Sho had let go of her and darted round behind Kanae, making sure to keep her body between his and Kyoko's at all time. He wasn't completely certain but he did think that Kyoko wouldn't do anything too violent in front of a witness.
"Sho," Kanae sneered, "what the hell are you doing?"
Sho took one look at her face and realised that he may have just made a tactical error as it now looked like he was going to get ganged up on.
He paled before he snapped back to his old self. If he was going to go down he was going to go down flaming.
Flashing her his trademark grin he stared at her cleavage. "Heeeeey..."
The crack of skin on skin almost seemed to echo about them when Kanae slapped him, her face like thunder.
"You slimy piece of -" she started forward to slap him again when Kyoko grabbed her wrist and held her back.
Sho clutched the side of his face in shock, an angry red handprint stood out visibly against his pale skin. After a few moments his face dropped back into a sneer. "PMS much?" he asked snidely before spinning around on the spot and marching into the building, safe in the knowledge that Kyoko would keep her friend under control.
He didn't notice the intense gaze focused on his back.
Kyoko watched her brother storm off and sighed silently. Sometimes she just didn't know why he did things to infuriate people.
She guessed it was just part of his nature.
When she saw the doors swing closed behind him she finally let go of Kanae's wrist. Kanae stared darkly at the building for a moment, rubbing her wrist, before she turned to face Kyoko.
"You know," she started, "I don't know why you hang around with him. The guy's a jerk."
Kyoko just shrugged. "What can I say? He won't leave me alone."
"You should talk to somebody about that - maybe take out a restraining order against him. He keeps following you around, it's kind of pathetic. And his groupies cause you trouble."
Kyoko shifted uncomfortably. She didn't like to hear her best friend bad-mouth her brother, the only family she had left, even if she didn't know that he was her brother.
"It's not that bad..."
Kanae just looked at her in disbelief.
"Well it's not!" Kyoko said defensively. "I can deal with the groupies easily enough."
Kanae raised an eyebrow and then shook her head, sighing. "If you say so."
"I do." Kyoko said, determinedly. "Now come on, before we're late."
The man sat back on his bike in the schools car park and thought back over what he had just witnessed, burning the three faces into his memory.
Leaning forward he twisted the key in the ignition and revved the throttle. His bike roared to life beneath him drawing the gaze of several of the late-comers.
He smirked. Things were going to get a lot more interesting. And with that thought he released the brake and sped out of the grounds.
It was lunchtime before Kyoko managed to catch up with her wayward brother. She found him sulking on the roof munching his way through a ham sandwich.
"Hey," she said, coming over to sit down next to him.
"Hey."
She winced at his morose tone. He was seriously depressed over something.
"What's wrong?"
He turned to face her and she flinched when she saw the hand-print shaped bruise.
"Jesus..." she whispered. "I didn't realise Moko hit you that hard. No wonder you snapped back at her."
"Yeah, if she wasn't a girl..."
Kyoko shifted closer to him and stared in morbid curiosity at his face. Sho frowned at her.
"What are you doing?"
Kyoko kept staring. "I can actually see it changing colour." Without thinking she reached forward to poke at it.
"Kyoko. If you're going to do what I think you're going to do I will introduce you to exactly how much pain I am in right now."
She started, brought back into the present and then grinned sheepishly at him, moving back to her original place.
"Sorry, but damn. That is one hell of a bruise."
"I know. And it's also causing me a hell of a lot of trouble."
Kyoko looked at him sharply. "What do you mean?"
In response he waved his sandwich at her. "It hurts to eat! It hurts to talk! It hurts to do anything with my mouth!" he wailed.
Kyoko chuckled at him.
"Plus, I've already been accosted by over thirty different girls today, asking what happened! Thirty! I mean, sheesh, you would have thought that something this pretty gets marked up and news would travel along the grapevine faster than fire but noooo...everyone has to come and ask for themselves.
"And it's not even as if I can say that I got hit in the face with a football or doing something manly at least! It's quite obviously a handprint. Quite obviously a female handprint!
"It's enough to make a man sick! I mean, don't get me wrong, I love my fans. Hell, I deserve them. But they don't half get annoying at times!"
"Did you tell them -" Kyoko started but Sho cut her off with a flap of his hand, still in rant-mode.
Apparently his face didn't hurt enough to stop him from doing that.
"No. No, of course I didn't tell them who slapped me. Are you crazy? She may have marked my beautiful skin but she's still your friend."
Kyoko breathed a sigh of relief, her eyes narrowing when something flashed across Sho's face at the end of his speech.
For the life of her Kyoko couldn't think what it was.
"You know," she started instead "you kind of deserved it."
Sho looked at her, horrified. "I did not! No one this pretty deserves to be marked in such a disfiguring way!"
"Yeah, you did. What I don't get is why you do things like that to her. You know she never reacts well."
Sho grinned at her and cupped his hands in front of his chest. "It's because she has the biggest ti-"
Kyoko scowled and threw her juice carton at him, cutting him off when he had to duck to avoid it.
"Not the face!"