DIAMOND GIRL

Chapter 1

손바닥으로 하늘을 가리려한다
Don't try to cover the whole sky with the palm of your hand. -- Korean proverb

==

AO3 LINK: http://archiveofourown.org/works/2487854/chapters/5641511

==

It takes her the better part of all these years to tell him, but still. At the very least. She tells him.

"Nozaki-senpai," the girl says, her eyes scrunched shut, her heart thumping madly in her chest, "I like you!"

Words finally (finally!) off her chest, Chiyo Sakura opens her eyes.

The man - Nozaki - looks at her. Just looks at her, with those eyes and that face and that air of nonchalance she fell for, even if it was a complete one-eighty from the awkward kid he was when she first met him. He looks at her, her heart gets stuck somewhere in her throat, and then - then he shakes his head, and says -

"Sakura...I'm sorry."

===

The foul mood still persists a week later, when she's crossing her arms at a first-class five-course airplane meal, shaking her head and frowning.

"Chiyo. Something wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," Chiyo says, far too quickly for someone telling the truth. "I just don't feel too hungry today."

Masayuki Hori folds his newspaper down into tidy little halves, sets it down on his lap, and sighs. "What happened, Chiyo. Tell me."

"It's really nothing important, oniichan," Chiyo says, putting on an artificial smile and hoping it'll get him off her case. (It wouldn't, but it'll at the very least buy her some time.) "Don't mind me, really."

"Chiyo," Masayuki sighs, and there it is again, his almighty big-brothering voice. (Which, as a matter of fact, also works spectacularly on annoying rival executives.) "How many little sisters do I have? Only one, and that's you. So as far as I'm concerned, everything concerning you is important to me. Now spill."

"It's really nothing," she insists, but what she's really thinking is that Nozaki is Masayuki's kouhai from elementary and it's best he not know she had been holding a candle for him for the better part of...too many years to count. "I'll be fine, oniichan. Just need some rest and sleep, and it'll be all right."

Masayuki favors her with one long, withering look, and deadpans, "This is about Nozaki, isn't it?"
Wait, what?

"Wait, what?" Oh wow she actually did just say that. Out loud.

"Sakura-chan," Masayuki drawls, slipping into the childhood nickname with easy familiarity. There's a reason why that's the name she took as her own under American soil - because, at the very least, she was already used to answering to it. "You're not exactly the subtle type. Just thought you should know."

"I know that, okay," Chiyo groans, burying her red face in her hands. She knows she's the most obvious person in the history of obvious people. She was just hoping that her brother had been too busy with important businessman stuff to notice. "I'm embarrassing."

"Nah, just too cute for your own good," Masayuki says, ruffling her hair with a fond smile that makes him look way younger than his thirty years. It makes Chiyo smile. "What happened?"

Her shoulders deflate, and at her show of such sheer sadness Masayuki can't help himself, he wraps an arm around her. There's a chuckle rising out of her, dull and lifeless and not at all sincere, and he hates it. If only he could take her away from all this - and he can't, which is kind of the point here. "Oh, oniichan. Obviously, he turned me down."