Defying Destiny (3/8)
Feb. 23rd, 2012 11:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
angelshillTITLE: Defying Destiny
CHARACTERS: Ninomiya Kazunari, Nagasawa Masami, Nishikido Ryo, Matsumoto Jun, Aiba Masaki, Ohkura Tadayoshi, Uchi Hiroki, Sakurai Sho, Yasuda Shota, Yokoyama Yuu, Ohno Satoshi, Murakami Shingo, Shibutani Subaru, Maruyama Ryuhei
GENRE: AU
RATINGS: PG
DISCLAIMER: The only thing i own in this story is the plot...
AUTHOR'S NOTE: written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kitsune_hikaru for her fic request for winning the Lightning round of the fic auction activity of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
help_pilipinas as part of their fundraising activity to help the victims of typhoon that recently hit Mindanao.
Chapter1, Chapter2
“I saw Nino earlier today,” Jun started conversationally as he stood up from the table, his dinner plate already in hand as he and Masami cleaned up.
Dinner had just ended, rather late actually since Jun had to work late, well, later between the two siblings. Masami would do that, wait for Jun before she eats her meals just to make sure that her older brother would eat too. Ryo had stayed with Masami while she waited for her brother but he left just as soon as Jun arrived. It wasn’t that Jun and Ryo don’t get along on the table, it was just that Ryo had received a phone call just as Jun arrived for an emergency in one of their sites.
For a few seconds, Masami froze. Sure, she hadn’t been entirely successful in pushing the name, and the man connected to it, to the back of her head but she wasn’t expecting the name to surface from Jun’s lips.
“Their photo shoot,” Jun continued in explanation when Masami hadn’t said a thing after full second. “Did you know he’s back in the country?”
“Uhm... Y-Yeah,” Masami found herself stuttering, finding it really difficult to make her tongue work. “I, I saw him yesterday.”
“Yesterday,” Jun exclaimed, turning to her in mild surprise. “Ryo knows?”
“Yeah, he does,” Masami replied, slowly but surely getting her voice back.
“Really,” Jun said, his shoulders shrugging uninterestedly but the small smile on his lips says entirely otherwise, something that Masami didn’t fail to notice as she hit her brother’s arm.
“Yeah,” Masami rolled her eyes as she remembered something. “Which reminds me, what were you doing going around and telling Ryo about Nino?!” she reprimanded her brother.
Jun turned to her and she saw that he looked like he was going to deny everything. And then he chuckled and shook his head lightly. “He should know. I owe it to the guy to tell him about your past.”
Masami snorted. “Really?!” she said in disbelief. “And you’re sure it isn’t just your convoluted way of torturing him?”
“Me torture Ryo?!” Jun asked with an air of great surprise. “I would never dream of it! Besides, all I did was tell your boyfriend about an ex you really loved. What’s so tormenting about that?”
“Oh, I know you,” Masami said, her eyes narrowing at her brother although a small smile is on her lips. “You’ll find a way.”
Jun chuckled and didn’t bother to deny it any further. Instead, he pulled her close and hugged her sideways as he said “Don’t worry about it. It’s healthy for Ryo. Besides, Nino is just a man from your past, right?”
Masami didn’t respond. She couldn’t. All she did was hug her brother back.
-----
There was nothing really alarming about it when Masami approached her classroom and saw her co-teacher and friend, Yoko, standing outside. Yoko does that sometimes, wait for her outside her room before he starts his class next door. The guy, being a guy, was unexpectedly a huge chat-body. The two of them became friendly since they started working at the school about the same time.
But then Yoko turned around and she saw his facial expression. He looked like Christmas had just come early. And then she heard the foreign sounds mixed with the familiar noise of her students coming from the inside, and she thought ‘Impossible!’ Nino would never come to her school.
Except that he did, he is there along with a group of men who looked like a member of his band.
-----
“What are you doing here?!” Masami asked Nino the first private moment the two of them got.
Most of the morning had passed by actually, what with her being very busy with meeting the kids and being regaled with their usual greetings and then being introduced to their ‘inspirational visitors’ by the school principal, and then interacting with everybody. It was rather fun actually, but confusing. And even with Nino almost always next to her during those times, the two of them hadn’t actually had a time to talk.
Until then.
“Well, the photo shoot with your brother yesterday worked out so nicely that we had a free day today,” Nino winked. “We thought we’d do something fun.”
“Since when was going to school fun?” Masami asked doubtfully, lowering her voice so as not to attract the attention of both the kids and Nino’s group mates who were all busy playing by then.
“Since you were in it,” Nino drawled out smoothly and with a very sweet smile and Masami felt her cheeks flush.
Before she could even come up with something, one of her students spoke up. It was the kid from the previous day, Erika.
“Teacher Masami, why are you and Mr. Ninomiya making cute eyes at each other?” Erika asked innocently.
Masami almost choked at her own saliva as she turned around and saw that everyone’s eyes, the kids and Nino’s group mates, were on them. And even before she could utter a word, Tomo spoke up.
“Hey, what about grumpy old Ryo?” he asked with a confused look.
-----
“That was quite a surprise,” Masami couldn’t help but exclaim just as she and Nino walked.
If truth be told, she was supposed to go home with Yoko, that was what she texted Ryo anyway when the latter called and worried that he might not be able to pick her up. Masami understood, after all she learned from Uchi, his best friend, that the guy hadn’t headed home yet.
Apparently, there was an accident on the site and two of their workers got hurt, one of which having to undergo surgery. There was a bit of a scramble among them engineers to fix things and make sure of the safety of the site before everything could go back to normal. Ryo had said during that phone call that the worker in surgery had already been wheeled into recovery.
Ryo actually wanted to still go and pick her up and his real worry that he was just going to be late. But Masami insisted that he needed to rest and that she could take care of herself. Ryo didn’t really like the idea of her going home on her own which is why she name dropped Yoko’s. And Ryo, after much deliberation, finally agreed. He, of course, knew Yoko, and to a certain extent, trusted the guy.
Except that when Masami finally stepped out of her classroom after seeing all the students out, it was another guy who was standing by the door. Nino and he insisted to walking her home.
“I’m sure my kids had fun, even if it wasn’t as momentous for you guys if they had been a few years older,” she continued.
“It was what actually made it fun for us,” Nino smiled. “Since the kids would smile and wave at us because we were nice, not just because we’re famous. It’s a, hmmm, rather humbling experience.”
“Humbling?” Masami repeated in amusement as she turned to Nino, her bag of books swinging by his side.
“We are not as egotistic as I made us sound like!” Nino backtracked with a laugh and Masami found herself laughing.
“Yeah, you guys didn’t seem like stuck up musicians,” she told him when her laughter died down. “You found yourself a really nice group. They were really good in reading the kids.”
“Yeah,” Nino chuckled as he shook his head lightly. And then he sighed. “Wish they were better in reading adults too.”
When Masami simply looked at him questioningly, he continued “I practically had to beg Ohkura and Hina to drag them back to the van and drive away. One would think musicians would have better sensors than theirs. I really, really wanted this talk with you.”
Masami felt a small smile just about to creep to her lips and then she remembered Ryo and she shook her head. “Nino…” she started but Nino cut through her words.
“When did you transfer?” he asked, and by the looks of it, he’s very much aware of what Masami was about to say and was just diverting the conversation. “I thought you enjoyed working at the high school?”
“Four and a half years ago,” Masami replied. “I needed a change of scenery.”
“Oh,” Nino exclaimed, his shoulders falling. “I thought you said it was your dream to become a high school teacher?”
“It was,” Masami shrugged. “But a year into the job and I realized that it wasn’t at all what I thought it’d be. Besides, while I liked working with the teens, I love it more working with kids.”
“Oh!” was all Nino said at first before he added a little while later “A year huh? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Masami stopped short, realizing what she just said and what it meant. A year into her job as a high school teacher meant that Nino was still in Japan, the two of them were still together.
“Nino…” she sighed. It was an issue far too late to be resolved or talked about but she knew Nino wouldn’t let go of it. “You were already preparing to leave, I wasn’t going to bug you about those kinds of things.”
“We were still together then,” Nino said in a controlled voice. “And I never considered anything about you to be bugging me. I wouldn’t have left if I knew that something was troubling you at the time.”
“Which is exactly why I didn’t tell you!” Masami sighed. “I would never let you push your dreams away because of me.”
Nino was silent for a while. And then he sighed. “Yeah, you loved me that much. You loved me, I love you, makes me really wonder why we split up huh?” he continued his voice doused in irony.
“Nino…” Masami sighed herself. “Ryo’s my boyfriend.”
“Yeah,” Nino smiled, the twinkle not reaching his eyes. “It should still be me if you hadn’t broken up with me before I left.” When Masami remained silent, he continued “I still do not understand it to be honest. All these years and I still don’t really know why you broke it off.”
Masami stopped on her tracks and Nino didn’t actually notice it immediately until the guy turned around and saw that she wasn’t walking side by side with him.
“You really want the truth?” Masami asked when Nino looked at her questioningly.
“Of course,” Nino shrugged. “I wouldn’t keep on asking just to be lied to, right?”
Masami smiled blandly.
“I didn’t want to wait,” she said after a while. “Because I knew that if I didn’t break it off with you, I’d end up being like a boring, old housewife who waits around at home for her husband to arrive. You had your dreams and I also had mine. I knew that if I didn’t break it off, I would be putting off my dreams for you. I loved you but I wasn’t ready to put away my dreams for you the same way that I didn’t want you to do that to your dreams for me.”
Nino looked like he was about to say something, probably something along the lines of him willing to not leave for her, something he had already told her before, but Masami cut her off.
“I didn’t want to have any regrets for both you and me. I knew that if you didn’t leave, the thought of the possibilities would be bugging you anyway, and you and I both deserved better than that,” she cried. “Besides, I thought that if we’re really destined for each other, we would end up together.”
“Were?” Nino noted, a hopeful look suddenly surfacing in his face. “Destiny doesn’t change that much. What if the two of us are still destined for each other?”
Masami could only stare at Nino for a while before she ended up sighing. “Nino, Ryo is my boyfriend.”
“Yeah,” Nino replied. “But I don’t hear you saying anything about not loving me anymore.”
-----
It was rather difficult, not to mention awkward, to steer the conversation away from it, not when Nino is fiercely determined to continue on the topic. But Masami didn’t really want to pursue that specific line of conversation, especially with her place coming so near. Besides, if steering away from it was already awkward, pursuing it any further would have been worse.
The atmosphere between the two of them had already mellowed down considerably by the time they reached her and Jun’s apartment though, only for it to tense up again when they saw who was in it.
Jun, who was uncharacteristically early home, and Ryo, both guys looking at them in confusion, and, in Ryo’s case, hurt.
-----TBC-----
i'm seriously sorry this is taking so long for me to write and post the whole of this story... a lot has been happening...
but i am seriously trying my best to write and post as fast as i can... :)
on the other hand, how is the story going?
like it or not?
comments are loved! :)
CHARACTERS: Ninomiya Kazunari, Nagasawa Masami, Nishikido Ryo, Matsumoto Jun, Aiba Masaki, Ohkura Tadayoshi, Uchi Hiroki, Sakurai Sho, Yasuda Shota, Yokoyama Yuu, Ohno Satoshi, Murakami Shingo, Shibutani Subaru, Maruyama Ryuhei
GENRE: AU
RATINGS: PG
DISCLAIMER: The only thing i own in this story is the plot...
AUTHOR'S NOTE: written for
kitsune_hikaru for her fic request for winning the Lightning round of the fic auction activity of help_pilipinas as part of their fundraising activity to help the victims of typhoon that recently hit Mindanao.Chapter1, Chapter2
“I saw Nino earlier today,” Jun started conversationally as he stood up from the table, his dinner plate already in hand as he and Masami cleaned up.
Dinner had just ended, rather late actually since Jun had to work late, well, later between the two siblings. Masami would do that, wait for Jun before she eats her meals just to make sure that her older brother would eat too. Ryo had stayed with Masami while she waited for her brother but he left just as soon as Jun arrived. It wasn’t that Jun and Ryo don’t get along on the table, it was just that Ryo had received a phone call just as Jun arrived for an emergency in one of their sites.
For a few seconds, Masami froze. Sure, she hadn’t been entirely successful in pushing the name, and the man connected to it, to the back of her head but she wasn’t expecting the name to surface from Jun’s lips.
“Their photo shoot,” Jun continued in explanation when Masami hadn’t said a thing after full second. “Did you know he’s back in the country?”
“Uhm... Y-Yeah,” Masami found herself stuttering, finding it really difficult to make her tongue work. “I, I saw him yesterday.”
“Yesterday,” Jun exclaimed, turning to her in mild surprise. “Ryo knows?”
“Yeah, he does,” Masami replied, slowly but surely getting her voice back.
“Really,” Jun said, his shoulders shrugging uninterestedly but the small smile on his lips says entirely otherwise, something that Masami didn’t fail to notice as she hit her brother’s arm.
“Yeah,” Masami rolled her eyes as she remembered something. “Which reminds me, what were you doing going around and telling Ryo about Nino?!” she reprimanded her brother.
Jun turned to her and she saw that he looked like he was going to deny everything. And then he chuckled and shook his head lightly. “He should know. I owe it to the guy to tell him about your past.”
Masami snorted. “Really?!” she said in disbelief. “And you’re sure it isn’t just your convoluted way of torturing him?”
“Me torture Ryo?!” Jun asked with an air of great surprise. “I would never dream of it! Besides, all I did was tell your boyfriend about an ex you really loved. What’s so tormenting about that?”
“Oh, I know you,” Masami said, her eyes narrowing at her brother although a small smile is on her lips. “You’ll find a way.”
Jun chuckled and didn’t bother to deny it any further. Instead, he pulled her close and hugged her sideways as he said “Don’t worry about it. It’s healthy for Ryo. Besides, Nino is just a man from your past, right?”
Masami didn’t respond. She couldn’t. All she did was hug her brother back.
-----
There was nothing really alarming about it when Masami approached her classroom and saw her co-teacher and friend, Yoko, standing outside. Yoko does that sometimes, wait for her outside her room before he starts his class next door. The guy, being a guy, was unexpectedly a huge chat-body. The two of them became friendly since they started working at the school about the same time.
But then Yoko turned around and she saw his facial expression. He looked like Christmas had just come early. And then she heard the foreign sounds mixed with the familiar noise of her students coming from the inside, and she thought ‘Impossible!’ Nino would never come to her school.
Except that he did, he is there along with a group of men who looked like a member of his band.
-----
“What are you doing here?!” Masami asked Nino the first private moment the two of them got.
Most of the morning had passed by actually, what with her being very busy with meeting the kids and being regaled with their usual greetings and then being introduced to their ‘inspirational visitors’ by the school principal, and then interacting with everybody. It was rather fun actually, but confusing. And even with Nino almost always next to her during those times, the two of them hadn’t actually had a time to talk.
Until then.
“Well, the photo shoot with your brother yesterday worked out so nicely that we had a free day today,” Nino winked. “We thought we’d do something fun.”
“Since when was going to school fun?” Masami asked doubtfully, lowering her voice so as not to attract the attention of both the kids and Nino’s group mates who were all busy playing by then.
“Since you were in it,” Nino drawled out smoothly and with a very sweet smile and Masami felt her cheeks flush.
Before she could even come up with something, one of her students spoke up. It was the kid from the previous day, Erika.
“Teacher Masami, why are you and Mr. Ninomiya making cute eyes at each other?” Erika asked innocently.
Masami almost choked at her own saliva as she turned around and saw that everyone’s eyes, the kids and Nino’s group mates, were on them. And even before she could utter a word, Tomo spoke up.
“Hey, what about grumpy old Ryo?” he asked with a confused look.
-----
“That was quite a surprise,” Masami couldn’t help but exclaim just as she and Nino walked.
If truth be told, she was supposed to go home with Yoko, that was what she texted Ryo anyway when the latter called and worried that he might not be able to pick her up. Masami understood, after all she learned from Uchi, his best friend, that the guy hadn’t headed home yet.
Apparently, there was an accident on the site and two of their workers got hurt, one of which having to undergo surgery. There was a bit of a scramble among them engineers to fix things and make sure of the safety of the site before everything could go back to normal. Ryo had said during that phone call that the worker in surgery had already been wheeled into recovery.
Ryo actually wanted to still go and pick her up and his real worry that he was just going to be late. But Masami insisted that he needed to rest and that she could take care of herself. Ryo didn’t really like the idea of her going home on her own which is why she name dropped Yoko’s. And Ryo, after much deliberation, finally agreed. He, of course, knew Yoko, and to a certain extent, trusted the guy.
Except that when Masami finally stepped out of her classroom after seeing all the students out, it was another guy who was standing by the door. Nino and he insisted to walking her home.
“I’m sure my kids had fun, even if it wasn’t as momentous for you guys if they had been a few years older,” she continued.
“It was what actually made it fun for us,” Nino smiled. “Since the kids would smile and wave at us because we were nice, not just because we’re famous. It’s a, hmmm, rather humbling experience.”
“Humbling?” Masami repeated in amusement as she turned to Nino, her bag of books swinging by his side.
“We are not as egotistic as I made us sound like!” Nino backtracked with a laugh and Masami found herself laughing.
“Yeah, you guys didn’t seem like stuck up musicians,” she told him when her laughter died down. “You found yourself a really nice group. They were really good in reading the kids.”
“Yeah,” Nino chuckled as he shook his head lightly. And then he sighed. “Wish they were better in reading adults too.”
When Masami simply looked at him questioningly, he continued “I practically had to beg Ohkura and Hina to drag them back to the van and drive away. One would think musicians would have better sensors than theirs. I really, really wanted this talk with you.”
Masami felt a small smile just about to creep to her lips and then she remembered Ryo and she shook her head. “Nino…” she started but Nino cut through her words.
“When did you transfer?” he asked, and by the looks of it, he’s very much aware of what Masami was about to say and was just diverting the conversation. “I thought you enjoyed working at the high school?”
“Four and a half years ago,” Masami replied. “I needed a change of scenery.”
“Oh,” Nino exclaimed, his shoulders falling. “I thought you said it was your dream to become a high school teacher?”
“It was,” Masami shrugged. “But a year into the job and I realized that it wasn’t at all what I thought it’d be. Besides, while I liked working with the teens, I love it more working with kids.”
“Oh!” was all Nino said at first before he added a little while later “A year huh? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Masami stopped short, realizing what she just said and what it meant. A year into her job as a high school teacher meant that Nino was still in Japan, the two of them were still together.
“Nino…” she sighed. It was an issue far too late to be resolved or talked about but she knew Nino wouldn’t let go of it. “You were already preparing to leave, I wasn’t going to bug you about those kinds of things.”
“We were still together then,” Nino said in a controlled voice. “And I never considered anything about you to be bugging me. I wouldn’t have left if I knew that something was troubling you at the time.”
“Which is exactly why I didn’t tell you!” Masami sighed. “I would never let you push your dreams away because of me.”
Nino was silent for a while. And then he sighed. “Yeah, you loved me that much. You loved me, I love you, makes me really wonder why we split up huh?” he continued his voice doused in irony.
“Nino…” Masami sighed herself. “Ryo’s my boyfriend.”
“Yeah,” Nino smiled, the twinkle not reaching his eyes. “It should still be me if you hadn’t broken up with me before I left.” When Masami remained silent, he continued “I still do not understand it to be honest. All these years and I still don’t really know why you broke it off.”
Masami stopped on her tracks and Nino didn’t actually notice it immediately until the guy turned around and saw that she wasn’t walking side by side with him.
“You really want the truth?” Masami asked when Nino looked at her questioningly.
“Of course,” Nino shrugged. “I wouldn’t keep on asking just to be lied to, right?”
Masami smiled blandly.
“I didn’t want to wait,” she said after a while. “Because I knew that if I didn’t break it off with you, I’d end up being like a boring, old housewife who waits around at home for her husband to arrive. You had your dreams and I also had mine. I knew that if I didn’t break it off, I would be putting off my dreams for you. I loved you but I wasn’t ready to put away my dreams for you the same way that I didn’t want you to do that to your dreams for me.”
Nino looked like he was about to say something, probably something along the lines of him willing to not leave for her, something he had already told her before, but Masami cut her off.
“I didn’t want to have any regrets for both you and me. I knew that if you didn’t leave, the thought of the possibilities would be bugging you anyway, and you and I both deserved better than that,” she cried. “Besides, I thought that if we’re really destined for each other, we would end up together.”
“Were?” Nino noted, a hopeful look suddenly surfacing in his face. “Destiny doesn’t change that much. What if the two of us are still destined for each other?”
Masami could only stare at Nino for a while before she ended up sighing. “Nino, Ryo is my boyfriend.”
“Yeah,” Nino replied. “But I don’t hear you saying anything about not loving me anymore.”
-----
It was rather difficult, not to mention awkward, to steer the conversation away from it, not when Nino is fiercely determined to continue on the topic. But Masami didn’t really want to pursue that specific line of conversation, especially with her place coming so near. Besides, if steering away from it was already awkward, pursuing it any further would have been worse.
The atmosphere between the two of them had already mellowed down considerably by the time they reached her and Jun’s apartment though, only for it to tense up again when they saw who was in it.
Jun, who was uncharacteristically early home, and Ryo, both guys looking at them in confusion, and, in Ryo’s case, hurt.
-----TBC-----
i'm seriously sorry this is taking so long for me to write and post the whole of this story... a lot has been happening...
but i am seriously trying my best to write and post as fast as i can... :)
on the other hand, how is the story going?
like it or not?
comments are loved! :)
