Underneath the Red Trees

CHAPTER 29: THE PAST AND THE PRESENT

The reason they were all at Hayate's house was because after a smouldering summer day, Touma had remembered Hayate's house had a pool. After a few phone calls they all ended up here, by the pool.

Touma was now in the kitchen with Hayate nursing his bloody nose. Kaguya paced around the living room. She scratched at her bottom lip.

"Hey," Harin called to her. "Don't look so lonely. Come join us here." She and Shinya were poolside. Kaguya glanced at them. Her heart was racing. At this rate, she would scratch her lip open.

She sat down by the pool, dropping her feet into the water. Shinya and Harin had changed before coming to sit by the pool. Shinya was wearing a pair of green swim trunks and Harin was dressed in a white bikini.

"So, who be you?" Harin asked.

"Kaguya Ito," she tried to keep her voice upbeat to hide the truth of her heart. "I'm Hayate's BFF."

"I can't believe I've never heard of you," Harin chimed.

Kaguya smirked. "It is all by my design."

"My name is Shinya, this is Harin," he said. He gave her a once over. "I like your tattoos."

"Thanks," Kaguya said. Her arms and hands were covered with different tattoos. Her back was tattooed with a phoenix. Across the rest of her body, not including her arms and back, she had sixteen other tattoos. Since she was sixteen she had used tattoos to express herself.

Harin glared at Shinya. "Fine, then."

She got up and plopped down beside Kaguya. When they sat beside each other they looked the same height, but Kaguya's legs were longer than Harin's.

The conversation was easy-going. Kaguya found herself laughing. Her heart calmed.

"Are you okay now?" Shinya asked when Touma and Hayate came out. They were still dressed in their ordinary day clothes.

Hayate smirked. "I'm fine."

"Obviously. Angel Face took care if you. Who wouldn't be okay?" Harin commented.

Kaguya laughed again.

"Oh, be quiet," Touma snapped, "Have you seen Aki?"

Harin shook her head. "I think he is still cooling down." She turned to Hayate. "What did you do to piss him off. Satoru never gets violent."

"Never?" Kaguya asked.

"I'm sure he is a pacifist. At least that's what I thought until tonight."

Kaguya, Harin, and Shinya were sat at the shallow end of the pool. Touma was about to join them but just as he got close to the poolside Hayate came up behind him.

"No, don't you dare," he warned. And then Hayate pushed him in. He yelled, but the splash was bigger than it should have been. Hayate had been pulled in with him.

"Ah, fuck," Hayate cursed.

Touma laughed as he brushed his hair out of his face. "That's what you get." Touma splashed him with water. Their joined laughter among teasing and arguing echoed over the yard. Kaguya regarded them with a small smile. It was different. During Ryogetsu and Yuuki's years together there had been a tenseness. Not that they didn't love each other with everything they had. They did. It might have been the war, or something else... but they had never been like this.

Harin nudged Kaguya. "Cute, aren't they?"

"They'll make beautiful babies," Kaguya joked.

"Oh, if only," Harin said, "Shinya, don't you think I would make a great aunt?"