Mercurial Dreams – Chapter Seventeen

Hello, hello, hello! Yup, I’m back from hiatus, and as promised, I bring you the next chapter of Mercurial Dreams! With all my heart, I apologise for taking ALMOST TWO ‘EFFING YEARS to update this story. I have no excuses. But, as I’ve said in my hiatus post, I don’t plan on letting Sho and Hiroki’s story die before its time. If I can give Lord Ohno and Aki their happy ending, then I can give it to Sho and Hiroki. And what more to revive this story than on Sho’s 29th birthday? <3

So, I hope you enjoy this long-awaited chapter! As always, comments and constructive criticism are more than welcome.

Author: tashiichaan
Rating: T
Genre: Romance, angst, humour
Featuring: Sakurai Sho
Banner designed by: tashiichaan
Story Summary: Hiroki never holds expectations for anything. She never expected to be promoted just 6 months into her job; she never expected her housemate to be a little more sane; but of all those damned unexpectations, she didn’t expect to find herself drawn into the life of Sakurai Sho. She didn’t expect to fall in love with him. And it all starts with a can of Coke.

- – - – - -

Mercurial Dreams
Chapter Seventeen

“Care to explain?”

Hiroki shut her eyes in exasperation, her hand pausing on the doorknob of her bedroom door. She had hoped to avoid a confrontation; at least, she hoped it wouldn‘t be tonight, but inevitably Mayu wasn‘t going to let her down easy.

“Mayu, I have a headache. Just let me rest,” she replied wearily, stumbling into her room. Just as she flipped the light on, Mayu came charging in and armed with her face red with fury.

“I’m not letting you off until you explain to me why, for two months, you hadn’t bothered to mention a single damn word about this new job of yours? PR agent? For Arashi?!” Mayu growled.

“I have my reasons,” Hiroki mumbled. She shrugged off her rumpled work clothes and searched the drawers for a pair of pyjamas, purposefully turning her back to Mayu. She didn’t think she could handle Mayu’s flaming eyes bearing down on her.

“And what reasons would that be?”

Hiroki hesitated briefly. “I have reasons,” she repeated, “none of which you will understand.”

Mayu snorted. “I wasn’t born yesterday, Hiroki. It’s plain obvious you just want Sakurai Sho all to yourself,” she spat.

Gasping in shock, Hiroki spun around and stared at her housemate with unexpected shock evident in her widened eyes. “What? This has nothing to do with him!” she retorted angrily.

“Then why was he escorting you home?!”

“Why exactly can’t he escort me home, huh? I don’t think you’d even bat an eyelid if it were Aiba or Ohno. My relationship with Sakurai-san is strictly professional, with the exception that he cares for his PR agent when she’s near-fainting with a migraine!”

“Near-fainting with a migraine because you got yourself drunk?” Mayu countered, her face darkened and her eyes cold. “So, this so-called working colleagues’ dinner turned out to be some sort of party with Arashi? Was it that much fun that you somehow forgot to come home? Whose bed did you sleep in, Sho’s? Did you so happen to sleep with him, too?”

Hiroki was rendered absolutely speechless. Here Mayu was, uninvited in her room, bringing in war and throwing stupid accusations at her which Hiroki knew fully well that they were baseless and rooted with jealousy. It was so ridiculous — bordering on childish — that she didn’t even know if she should argue further or simply laugh in her face. But further more, it was the accusatory tone in Mayu’s voice that stung her the most.

“What is with you?” she hissed, glaring at the other woman. “Being angry with me is one thing, insinuating and patronising me is another. What, can’t stand watching me hang out with your lover boy?

In an instant, Mayu crossed the room in blinded rage, so swift that Hiroki staggered away in alarm and knocked against the desk. Mayu’s expression was unreadable, but her eyes gleamed with such cold menace that momentarily made Hiroki extremely fearful.

“Stay away from him,” Mayu warned, her threatening voice inviting no argument.

Hiroki shook her head in disbelief. “I don’t get it. Why is it such a big deal to you?”

“Because my lover boy, as you already implied, is mine.”

The words were spoken with such contempt that Hiroki felt a cold chill run down her neck. Mayu threw her one last look before she stormed out of the room, making sure to swing the door shut with a loud, sharp bang.

Breathing heavily, Hiroki stood rooted to the spot, unable to tear her eyes away from the closed door, her expression in a mixture of anger and confusion. The way Mayu lashed out at her in no way she had ever seen before… the way she treacherously breathed the word ‘mine’… the way her eyes held no sympathy for a friend… all of this because of Sho. A strong sense of déjà vu came to her, and like a vivid image replayed in automation, she immediately recalled that memory:

Hiroki hated how her cheeks reddened at the mere mention of his name. “Why would I ever fall in love with that idi—”

“He’s mine.”

Hiroki was prepared for Mayu’s incessant whining in that annoying high-pitched girly tone of hers that always drove her insane, but she wasn’t prepared for a deathly threat. Every single word Mayu uttered in fury brought Hiroki to the conclusion that Mayu was obsessed with Sho.

And maybe, because of that, she could be dangerous.

~

Trying to shake off that disturbing thought from her head, Hiroki quickly dressed in her pyjamas and got into bed, but before she crawled under the sheets, she stopped short and eyed her bed critically. There were no crisp linen sheets, no expensive cotton comforter, no polished bedside table, no ugly vintage lamps (just because it was expensive didn’t mean it had to be pretty). Good. At least this time she was well aware of where she was sleeping at.

Switching off the bedside lamp, she pulled the comforter up to her chin and sank her face into her pillow with a restful sigh. Barely five seconds passed before she heard a muffled sound coming from her handbag. Her head perked up. Grumbling under her breath, she turned the lamp back on. Her handbag was left on the floor next to the table, so she easily reached over to the side pocket of the handbag and fished out her mobile phone. She raised her eyebrows at the mail icon flashing on the external screen.

Flipping the lid open, she read the message:

Hey, it’s Sho. How are you feeling? I just needed to know if you’re okay.

Hiroki stared at the screen blankly. Her heart skipped a beat, and she couldn’t resist smiling lightly at his relentless concern for her. Then a thought occurred to her: she didn’t remember giving her number to him. Without wasting a breath, she typed out a reply:

How did you get my number?!?!?!?!

She clicked ‘send’, closed the lid, and left the phone on the table. A text message was received even before she could switch off the light.

Aiba. Why does he have your number, and Matsumoto-kun too?!

Hiroki snorted. “You’re kidding me,” she muttered incredulously, her fingers deftly typing out a text message in reply:

You’re being unfair. Ohno-san and Ninomiya-san don’t have my number, too.

Send, close, phone on the table. She waited twenty seconds for a reply, sitting still with her arms crossed, staring at her phone, but when thirty seconds passed and still no text message came in, she groaned.

“This is stupid…” she muttered. With a sigh, she switched off the lights and snuggled into her pillow, willing for sleep to quickly befall her. With her eyes closed, her mind drifted to the earlier events – not of Mayu, but of Sho and her in that parking lot, and she smiled in the dark as her mind replayed it like a high-definition movie.

Sweet silence was broken when her phone rang. Loud.

“What the hell!” she fumed, sitting up.

She grabbed her phone and in one swift, angry motion, she whipped it open and put it to her ear. “Hello?”

“Hiroki? You lied! I checked Ohno’s and Nino’s phones, and they both got your number too!”

Hiroki rolled my eyes. “Sho-san, you’re being dramatic. And why were you snooping into their phones?”

“I wasn’t snooping,” he retorted. “It only took 5 seconds, so… so it doesn’t count.”

“Hey, Mr Keio, Mr I-read-three-newpapers-each-morning, do I have to explain to you what ‘snooping’ means?”

Silence. “No.”

She bit back a smile. He could be so ridiculous sometimes, and yet she guessed it was his charm. “So is that why you called me? To complain to me about feeling left out?”

“Err… yeah. I guess,” he answered sheepishly. Then he sighed, and his voice softened. “How’re you feeling?”

“Better,” she replied. To be honest, she felt like her head was going to explode like a split watermelon, but she couldn’t tell him that. Not when his voice soothed her so much more than even the strongest possible dosage of painkillers.

“Maybe you should take the day off tomorrow.”

“My client is advising me to slack off?” She laughed at the irony.

“If that’s what it takes for you to get better,” he replied fiercely.

Hearing the protectiveness in Sho’s voice made Hiroki’s heartbeat race. “Thanks,” she said.

“So… erm… I should go. You need to sleep.”

Inwardly, Hiroki knew she needed sleep badly, but she didn’t want him to go. “Hey, wait.”

“Yeah?”

“Please don’t hang up. Can we talk? Just… talk, until I fall asleep?”

Sho chuckled deeply. “Okay. What do you want me to say?”

“Anything.”

“Shall I sing for you?”

“Please, no. I don’t think I want to fall asleep to Sakurap.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Well, then, I’m out of ideas then.”

She could practically hear him grinning in his voice. “A lullaby will do,” she suggested.

“In rap?”

“No! God.”

Sho laughed aloud. “I was just kidding. I’m not good at lullabies. Can I sing you something else?”

“Okay.”

Hiroki laid back and snuggled into the pillow, the phone clutched to her ear and her eyes closed as she listened to Sho’s voice singing an unfamiliar English song. It didn’t matter that she didn’t understand the lyrics, but it was his gentle voice that really mattered to her, because it made her heart so whole and full it was overflowing beyond its capacity of emotions.

Unbeknownst to Hiroki, as she drifted off to sleep, Sho sang to her that ‘everything means nothing… if I ain’t got you’.

~

Much later into the night, Mayu crept into Hiroki’s room.

In the darkness, she tiptoed over to Hiroki’s bed, and stood on the spot as she listened to Hiroki’s slow, even breaths. Then, she eyed the phone that was held slackly to her ear. It seemed to be on a call, as shown by the call duration of four hours and seventeen minutes on the screen. If Mayu listened more closely, she would pick up the obnoxious snoring coming from the earpiece of the phone.

Slowly and carefully, she pried the phone out of Hiroki’s hand and pressed it to her ear. This was when she took notice of the snoring, to which surprised her, but left her unaffected as she was here for something else…

She ended the call, and instead, she began searching through the photo galleries. As she flipped through the more recent photos, her eyes widened, first with shock, then with disgust, and with anger. And anger turned into blinded rage.

Suddenly Hiroki stirred. Mayu froze as Hiroki’s half-open eyes studied her groggily in the dark.

“Mayu…?” she moaned. “What…?”

Mayu mustered up a nervous smile. “Shhh, go back to sleep,” she cooed.

Hiroki was too sleepy and dazed. Yawning and muttering incoherent words, she closed her eyes and easily fell back to sleep.

Mayu watched the sleeping figure. “You wait,” she whispered menacingly. “You… just… wait.”

She slipped the phone into her pocket, and left the room.

~