Miscellaneous Anime/Manga One-Shots!

vino veritas (Toradora!)

The girl, the wreckage of desks and chairs piled up to her ankles, stands in the half-darkness of the classroom, fingers trembling as she grips the  pink envelope. Right there, right in front of her, his backpack sits on the desk, its front zipper opened and a pencil poking out.

She swears it's mocking her.

Why can't she do it? Why is she such a coward?

"Goddammit," she swears under her breath."Goddammit!"

Squeezing her eyes shut, she lets out a growl, stuffing the envelope back into her pocket and angrily slinging her own bag over her shoulder. She storms towards the door, but just as she's about to fling it open, she finds herself face to face with none other than Ryuuji Takasu.

He blinks owlishly at the sight of the red-faced girl and his trashed classroom. Something about the surprise on his stupid, stupid face pisses her off to no end.

Why can't they just leave her alone?

"This never happened," she hisses, lifting up a clenched fist. "You hear me?"

That had marked one of her only encounters with Ryuuji Takasu, the boy who lived next door and liked to stand on his deck and hang his freshly washed shirts on a worn clothes line, right where she could see him if she just sat up a little in bed, smiling that idiotic little smile and humming softly under his breath and-

Taiga Aisaka wants to smack herself.

It's not like he was important to her or anything. Just some boy who happened to be in her class in her second year, the best friend of her crush-turned-fiance. Now that she thinks about it, she barely knows anything about him.

But...goddammit, why does it frustrate her so much?

Okay, screw knowing useless shit about the guy. How many times has she actually spoken to him again?

One: punching him in the face on the first day of second year. She recalls the satisfying thwack of her fist connecting with his face; one of her better punches, she muses.

Two: eating lunch together during sometime in the middle of the first semester, albeit with Minorin and Kitamura chattering excitedly besides them and without exchanging a single word. So…no go.

Was that it? No wait, they had been partners in gym class for a week! But... that only culminated with him getting smacked by a well-punted soccer ball, dragged to the nurse's office, and an ice pack to his crotch.

Ouch. Older Taiga is much more empathetic than dumb seventeen-year-old Taiga, she reasons.

It's here; she knows it, alright. Right within her reach, if she'd just leave this stupid town. A chance to be different, to prove everyone (namely her parents) wrong, to stop relying on anyone else and promise to make it all work. It's all she's ever wanted, really.

But what happened when all you ever wanted is, well...not?

She's to marry Yusaku Kitamura in a month, the day she had fantasized about embarrassingly often as a seventeen-year-old girl. But somehow, it requires so much effort to be excited with him, to possibly care about the cake or flower arrangements or that achingly beautiful dress hanging her closet. Her apartment, the last link to her parents, is going to be sold, tossed away and never returned to, that final gift that she had resented her entire life.

Her home.

Yes, somewhere over the timeline of five years, it's become her home, like something so silly could possibly exist.