Title: Between the Lines (Chapter Two)
Main Characters: Sho, Mia, fangirl
Rating: PG (subject to change in continuing chapters)
Note:.
The speaker is Sho this time… I had this finished the day before yesterday, but couldn’t post it then. I had fun writing this… I did my best ^^ Hopefully, it is good enough.
 Chapter Three! CLICK!

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Sho had woken up early that morning so the he could visit Keio University. He was no longer a student there, but he liked the calm atmosphere of the college campus and went there often to study further. Arriving early on a summer morning usually meant that there weren’t many students on campus, but other times, he wasn’t so lucky.

            He had been sitting at one of the desks in the library reading through a Japanese history book when he felt a pair of eyes on him. He was used to the feel of this look. He got it every time he walked the streets of Japan. He knew that he wasn’t the only Arashi member that did, but he also knew that he was the one who got most annoyed by it. All he had wanted to do that day was get in some relaxing study time, but no. Something, or rather someone, always had to disturb him.

            Sho sighed, trying to keep his temper. He didn’t much feel like losing it at the moment. Closing the book, he stood slowly, looking around warily for the pair of eyes he felt staring at him. He ebbed his way over to the bookcase where he had gotten the book from and bent to put it back in its place.

            He felt the calm air around him shift as the person who had been staring at him closed in behind him. He stood up and turned, masking his face into one of a calm person, not annoyed. He really wanted to keep his cool today. The next few days, he knew, would be immensely busy and stressful. He didn’t really want anyone or anything else to add to that stress.

            “Sho-kun,” the girl looked at him with those eyes. The eyes that he hated so much to be looked at with. “Sho-kun, I love your work so much…” Sho stood there as she babbled on, talking like they were such good friends. He hated it, hated it so much. He clenched his teeth as he felt his façade of calm falling from his face. The crazed fangirl still babbled on.

            “Sho-kun, I was wondering…” He couldn’t take it anymore, but this was the library he was standing in and couldn’t very well shout at this fan like he had others. So, instead, he decided to run for it.

            He heard the girl gasp “Sho-kun!” as he streaked through the many bookcases. He knew that there would be no luck going into the street, even with Johnny’s rule. Thinking carefully, he remembered a courtyard in the back of the campus that was hardly used, and full of shrubs. Hopefully they’re big enough to hide me, he thought.

            Sho upped his pace; making sure that once he turned the corner into the courtyard the girl wouldn’t be too close behind him. He knew that she had followed him, but not how soon after.

            He pushed through the door that led to the outside of the University and ran towards the courtyard. As he reached it, he zeroed in on a bush that looked big enough to conceal his shape and pushed harder towards it. Once he was close enough to it, he jumped behind it without even making much of a noise, like e was an expert at it. He sat quietly, waiting for the sound of footsteps to pass by.

            But instead of footsteps, he heard voices nearby. He hadn’t noticed anyone else in the courtyard, but then again he hadn’t really been looking. As the voices diminished, he heard slow paced footsteps coming towards the bus that he hid in and braced himself for the voice of the fangirl. But the voice that reached him was a soft, worried one, not one of a crazed fangirl. “Ano, that girl, was she looking for you?” A slender hand reached down towards him and he grabbed it without a second thought, surprising himself. He pulled himself up with ease and came face to face with the face of a foreigner. He felt a wary look pass over his face as he looked her over. She was looking back at him with big, bright green eyes. In those eyes was something much different than the ones that had looked at him before. There was nothing demanding or love-sick about them.

            “I suppose she was,” he replied, looking over at the bench near the bush he was standing in. There was a pad and pen lying on it and a bag lying next to it. He turned back to the foreigner and said, “I’m sorry, did I disturb you?”

           “Iie, I was just finished writing as you passed by and… jumped into the bush.” The girl looked at him fully in the eyes, hers holding a questioning look.

            “Ah, yeah, about that…” he reached back his free hand to scratch the back of his head and ruffled his hair. He didn’t know what to say to this girl.

            “I’m guessing you didn’t want to see her? I heard her call you Sho-kun…. I’m Mia. Pleasure to meet you, Yabu-san.” Sho’s eyes widened at the use of Yabu-san, which meant bush. He saw a twinkle that disappeared in the girls eyes as soon as he widened his and a smile broke out on his face along with a lofty laugh. Even though she was a foreigner, it was rare to find a girl that knew so little about who he was.

            The girl, who had said that her name was Mia, broke out into a smile in response to his laughter. He was so relieved to be away from the fangirl that the laughter just wouldn’t stop, until his stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten since early that morning. His face pulled into a grimace and he started when he heard the girl laugh at him. It sounded like bells.

            “Your stomach seems to be annoyed with you, Yabu-san. I was just about to eat when you pulled your little jumping-into-a-bush stunt. Would you like to join me? I think that Ms. Iitaka packed enough for two…” For a foreigner, the girl’s accent was perfect and it awed Sho. He wished he could learn English as perfectly as she had seemed to learn Japanese.

            “That’d be great, thanks.” Mia led Sho to the bench and shoved the pad and pen into the bag, pulling out a huge bento-box in return. “Woah,” was all he could say to the size of that box. It was the biggest he had ever seen.

            “Sit, please, Yabu-san. You standing is making me uncomfortable.” Mia looked up with him, her discontent spread widely across her face. This girl expressed her feelings with such purity that it startled him. She wasn’t hiding a thing from him, with a face like hers.

            Sho took the spot next to the girl, which was really close; closer to a girl than he had been in a while. Work had been piling up lately, what with finishing the filming of Yatterman and all of Arashi’s new songs and TV shows. He remembered his manners and said “Thanks,” taking a part of the bento that Mia offered him.

            “Ah!” the girl exclaimed, breaking Sho out of his thoughts.

            “Is something wrong?” he asked. He was being way more polite with a stranger than he usually was. Maybe some of his parent’s upbringing had rubbed off on him after all.

            “Ahh… hai, just a bit,” she giggled slightly. “I realized I only have one pair of chopsticks,” she said, holding the chopsticks up almost apologetically.

 

            Walking back to his car after his meal with Mia, Sho wondered why he hadn’t thought about running out to his car beforehand, when he had been running from the fangirl. He didn’t mind meeting Mia, but the obvious way he hadn’t thought straight annoyed him. But as he remembered the conversation that had followed the chopstick confusion, he felt better.

            Mia had just up and left to get him a pair of chopsticks from the cafeteria. It had surprised him but had also given him time to reflect on the foreigner. She talked with exaggerated politeness, or it seemed that she did in his eyes. Although the politeness didn’t mess with her speech, it seemed like she was holding back when she talked that way. He wondered if that was how she spoke in English, slightly curious. She was also really pretty. Prettier than any girl he had seen in a while, one that wasn’t famous, at least. She had those big green eyes which hid nothing, along with her expressions. Her golden curls were tied up into a tight bun on the back of her head and her bangs blew on her forehead when the wind did. Her figure was slim, but it seemed like she did a sport because her muscle tone was a bit more than some other girls, which wasn’t a bad thing.

            Sho had shivered then. He didn’t want to be thinking about girls. It would keep his mind from his work. At that moment he had decided that he would try not to further his relationship with Mia past that of friendship. But almost took it back as she came running to the bench, waving the chopsticks with a big smile on her face.

            Sho turned the car on and sighed, resting his head against the steering wheel, hands gripping the edges. The rest of the lunch time had been too much fun for him. He had gotten her to loosen up in her speech some, and they had talked about many things. She talked a little about America and laughed when Sho tried to speak English with her, though not in a mean way. He had let her in on a little about himself, but not as much as he could have. He hadn’t felt like telling her about how he was in a famous band, a newscaster, and in hit Doramas. He didn’t know how she would react, and hadn’t wanted anything to change. He liked feeling free with her… feeling like she didn’t want anything from him except him, himself.

            She had asked him if they would meet again, and he had not known what to answer. “Probably,” he had said and bid her goodbye, thanking her for the food, returning to being too polite again. But her asking him if she would see him again had just been too much.

            Sho put the car into reverse and backed out of the parking lot, heading towards the studio where he and the rest of the Arashi members would be shooting their most recent episode of VS Arashi.