Hi :)

I said i'd update in the weekend and it's like Wednesday now so i'm sorry...I got caught up with lots of work and couldn't think of what to write next!

I'm really upset that the chapters that disappeared havent come back yet...i dont have their back up anywhere :( :S

But here's the next chapter, which i've made less serious than the one before :)

And it seems like it's randomly getting rated here...~~present day, i.e., 27th of Aug, input: the last chapter just got rated when there's no mature content in it whatsoever :S~~

A New Friendship Born From Coincidence

[Night time at the hotel]

The JUMPs didn’t speak much following the events of the day. All of them felt partly guilty. Most of them were, however, pretty sure that Yuto should have kept quiet.

Yuto, on the other hand, was convinced that he did the right thing. He thought that Anu never would have found out about Ashok’s true feelings had he not prompted him.

Chii was clearly upset with Yuto. “You hurt her feelings, Yuto,” he told him.

Yuto chuckled, “I’m not the one who broke up with her in spite of still being in love with her. I am not the one at fault.”

“Why didn’t you just keep your mouth shut? Did you have to go meddle with their relationship like that?” Chii inquired.

“I wasn’t the one to start the talk about their relationship,” he looked towards Keito, “I am not the least interested.”

Chii looked rather disgusted, “just because your relationship didn’t work out doesn’t mean that nobody else’s should.”

“Their relationship was already dead,” Yuto calmly said.

“That is not true! They looked like decent friends, didn’t they?” Keito joined Chii, “Yuto, you’re just being unreasonable.”

“I beg to differ, boys,” Ryosuke made a smooth entry into their conversation, “I think that Yuto’s absolutely right. He didn’t do anything wrong, he simply helped Ashok-san tell Anu-chan that he still loves here. And Anu-chan refused to get back together. That’s all.”

“I get your point,” Chii said, “but didn’t you see Anu-chan after we left the restaurant? She looked...broken.”

“Yeah, man,” Keito nodded, “Yuto, you’re becoming a sadist. And Ryo, you’re just being weird.”

Ryosuke narrowed his eyes at Keito (=__=)

“Stop bickering around like a bunch of unfed baby birds, you four!” Yabu finally stopped their little conflict.

“Yuto, you ought to apologise to Anu-chan,” Takaki advised.

Yuto frowned, “Why?”

“Because what you did today was not right, accept the fact. I’m sure she’ll feel a lot better once you say sorry.”

Yuto gave up, “Alright. I’ll apologise. Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? No, go today! Go right now!” Chii shouted.

Yuto gave him a look, “like I have any clue where she is right now.”

“We have her number. You should call her!” Hikaru suggested.

Yuto groaned as Hikaru began to type in Anu’s number into the phone. He handed it over to Yuto once he heard the dial tone.

‘What the hell am I supposed to say to her,’ Yuto wondered, obviously frustrated by this whole thing.

“Hello?” Anu’s voice came from the other side.

“Um...Anu-chan, it’s me, Yuto.”

“Ah, Nakajima-san...is anything wrong?”

“No, no, everything’s fine,” Yuto mumbled.

“Okay...” she sounded confused.

“I’m sorry for what I did today,” he said, almost coldly.

“You didn’t do anything today, Nakajima-san. You don’t need to apologise.”

Yuto didn’t know what to say just then, he felt indifferent.

“Give that phone to me!” Ryosuke snatched it from Yuto’s hands.

“Hello?” Anu said again, after hearing a few muffled noises.

“Anu-chan! It’s me, Ryo!”

“Ah, Yamada-san...”

“Not Yamada-san! Call me Ryo!”

Anu sighed, “Ryo-kun.”

“Ne, I know that you’re upset right now and I feel really bad. So how about I make it up for you?”

The boys were now glaring at Ryosuke because he had been referring only to himself, which made them feel completely rejected.

“So...?” Ryosuke asked.

“I swear I would have said yes on any other day but I feel that it’s best if we all just lie low tonight, seeing as it’s gonna be a long day tomorrow! So honestly, I think that we should just meet again in the morning. Sorry...”

Ryosuke covered the phone with his hands, turned to the others and shook his head. They nodded with resignation in reply.

Then they hung up.

“Looks like it is better to let her sleep on it tonight...” Takaki said.

“Exactly what I was saying,” Yuto scoffed.

They rolled their eyes at him.

“You really need to change your attitude to people, Yuto,” Daiki said, “it’s getting outta hand now.”

Yuto didn’t say anything back.

“You should get over her already! She never did you any good, you know,” Ryosuke almost scolded him.

“Believe it or not, Yuto, but most people at JE were thinking of...getting rid of you,” Keito said.

Yuto looked startled, “What?”

Yabu leaned over to him and spoke in a calm voice, “You weren’t showing up in any rehearsals, and whenever you did, you didn’t seem interested in being there. They really thought that your time in HSJ was up.”

He was speechless. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what he would have had to go through had he been thrown out.

“You haven’t the slightest idea about just how relieved we were when we found out that she left,” Inoo said, “we thought that we could finally get our good old Yuto back...but you’ve been acting near-dead these days.”

“You gotta toughen up a little bit if you wanna keep your spot in the world!” Ryosuke said loudly.

“Yeah. Everyone goes through every once in a while, and we should always aim to recover from them and fly higher!” Hikaru joined Ryosuke.

Yabu laughed, “Hikaru, why so philosophical?”

Hikaru narrowed his eyes and said, “I have a brain too.”

Yabu laughed some more.

Takaki cleared his throat to bring everyone back to the point, which was Yuto.

Yuto looked at everyone and finally said, “I know that everything that you’re saying is right. I know that. And even I’m surprised at myself for being this way...”

“Then there’s no problem?” Chii asked.

Yuto nodded, “just some more time.”

“Okkkkay!” the boys said joyfully.

---------------------------------------------------------

Now, I wouldn’t go as far as saying that Anu was in a terrible heart-broken condition because she was not. She was just plain shocked, and also a little bit pleased about the fact that she still reigned his heart (you know, how everyone has that egoistic thing about them :P). She found herself looking up at the sky again tonight, but instead of thinking about how amazing her life had suddenly become after the arrival of the JUMPs, she was wondering how things would have been like is she didn’t break up with Ashok, not that she regretted it. She did fall out of love with him as the long-term distance between the two completely outweighed her feelings for him and nobody could be blamed for that, but there was still an undying spark within her for him.

“Ahhhh,” she wailed out loud, “I should just get over him and maybe fall in love with one of the JUMPs!”

Then she laughed at herself for saying something so impossible.

“Anyway,” she ruffled her long curly-ish hair as she looked to her desk, “The plan for tomorrow!”

[Day 3]

“Hi guys!” Anu said with a big smile on her face as she entered their suite at 8 AM.

“Anu-chan!” Chii smiled back, “you look cracking today!”

She gave him a questioning look, and then examined herself, “really? I think I look normal...”

Chii laughed, “Not like that! You look like your happy!”

“Ohhhhhhhhhh,” she realised.

“Not that I mean to say that you’re not looking good too, cuz you look great!” he said, taking into consideration that what he just said might have sounded a little bit mean.

She blushed and shook her hands widely.

“You want some breakfast?” Hikaru handed a bowl of food towards her.

“No, thanks! I’ve already eaten,” she replied.

Hikaru nodded and stuffed the contents of the bowl into his already-stuffed mouth.

“So where are you taking us today?” Takaki asked.

Anu told them all the details of the day and then after they were all ready, they headed towards their little coach. Their coach was their lifeline in this city, cuz without it they wouldn’t really have any other convenient way of moving around. The guys wanted to travel in the three-wheeled auto rickshaws desperately cuz that was the kinda thing you won’t find in many other places, but Anu promised them that she would let them ride those when they go to another city.

When they were all seated in the coach, Chii and Hikaru, who were sitting right behind Anu were constantly asking her questions about whatever they were seeing outside. Daiki and Yabu asked if they could see Anu’s phone and so she handed it over to them.

They just wanted to look at the photos in her phone. She mostly had pictures of her family and her friends from University. They found out that she has an elder sister who lives in another city in South India and that she has a crazy thing for animals cuz she had MANY photos of the most random animals. And like any other girl of her age, she had those crazy pictures of her own.

Anu looked a little bit embarrassed by the fact that they were looking through those but she was cool with it cuz she didn’t mind. They would find out all this stuff about her at some time or another!

As they all reached a parking area near the Lotus Temple, which was their first visit of the day, all of them got down except for Ryosuke who had a sudden curiosity about all the buttons and gears and things that were on the driver’s seat area. Any normal vehicle wouldn’t have so many buttons so naturally, he was taken aback. The truth is, this bus was special in the sense that it was made for a handicapped driver, so it had to have all of those things on it for the driver’s convenience. So he went and sat on the seat while the others got down and began playing around with them.

The traffic wasn’t so bad on this day but when it came to the city of Delhi, you just never know when you get run over by someone. Anushka made it very clear that all of them ought to be very careful when they were near the roads. When they had to cross the main road, which did not seem to be too crowded, Hikaru went on a bout of weirdness and starting rotating while crossing the road and just when he was halfway through, this super fast bike was heading right at him. Anu threw her hand out and yelled, “Watch the bike!!!”

Fortunately, Hikaru heard and sped off towards a safer side, but unfortunately, the same biker had now taken advantage of the situation by snatching away Anu’s hand bag which she had in the hand that she was warning Hikaru with. She couldn’t do anything about it cuz the guy was going so fast! All of them were like (:O).

Now, curious Ryosuke was still on the driver’s seat and had now come across this big, lever that had faded letters on it. Obviously he pulled on it, and immediately, his door opened with a jerk. And just a few microseconds after that very door opened, BOOM! The biker had driven into it and while his bike got smashed against the door, he went flying into the air and landed 6 meters ahead with a loud THUD.

“What the f—?!” he shouted, as his brain processed what just happened. According to him, he just killed an innocent man! “OH MY GOD!” he yelled, “SOMEBODY HELP!!”

“Ryosuke-kun!” Anu called out as she ran towards him in the coach and gave him a big fat hug, “you just saved my bag from getting stolen! Thank you so, so much!”

Ryosuke was speechless. ‘Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat the hell is going on?’ he thought to himself.

“Bro! That was so cool, what you just did!” the guys crowded at the entrance of the coach, where Anu was still hugging him.

Then he shook himself away from her, fixing the pieces of the puzzle in his mind, and ruffled his hair, “Uhhh...yeah, cool, right? I couldn’t just let the bastard go!”

“I do not know how to thank you!” she said again.

“Wait a minute,” Chii interrupted, “is that man alright?”

“Who cares, man? If anything happens to him, he deserves it,” Ryosuke rubbed it in some more.

“Oh, no,” Anu said as she left the coach and walked towards the injured man, “we can’t just leave him like this.”

“We should call an ambulance,” Yabu said.

They called an ambulance and explained what happened to the medics. They took the man away and said that it was fine, what they did.

Inoo turned towards Hikaru. “Dude, don’t go spinning away like that in the middle of the road! Do you not have anything up here?” he said as he pointed towards his head.

Hikaru pouted and said, “I’m sorry, i won’t do it again.”

“Awww,” Anu said, “you look so cute like that! Don’t worry, Hikaru-san, it’s cool. But please do remember not to do stuff like that again!”

Keito walked towards Ryosuke and patted him on his back. “So, Mr Hero-of-the-day!” he said.

Ryosuke beamed as he got to bask in this sudden glory. “It was nothing, really...” he pretended to be modest.

“Don’t be so modest, Ryosuke-kun!” Anu said, “You know what? I have to find a way to repay you for your good deed today...is there anything that I can do for you?”

All the boys looked jealously at him while he thought for a bit about what to tell her.

“I can’t think of anything that I want just now...so is it okay if I can ask you later? Like, whenever I feel like it? Even in another city?”

Anu looked surprised that he came up with such a sensible answer. To be honest, she never fancied Ryosuke much, outta all the JUMPs. But just at that moment she thought that he must be a guy of substance and interest. She grinned and said, “Most definitely!”

“And so it shall be!” he shot her a thumbs up and after the other guys left the area he asked Anu, “so we’re gonna be good friends now ne?”

“I sure do hope so!” she said, happily.

Finally, they went to the Lotus Temple where they all felt the presence of something spiritual that binds them all together. Anu said that she loved coming to the place just because of that feeling. The Lotus Temple is a Baha’i place of worship but people from all faiths are allowed inside and can pray to their own God in their own language. So a sense of oneness is created among all those who go there. It’s pretty amazing, really, even architecture-wise.

Yuto was smiling a lot more today. He felt a little bit more cheerful after the talk that he had last night with the guys cuz he realised that Jeanine really was not good for her and that it is better that she left. He now began feeling a tiny sense of guilt for what he did the previous day at lunch. He felt the need to apologise to Anu now.

Whilst in the temple, Yuto approached her quietly and said, “I’m sorry.”

She looked confused, “what for?”

“You know...yesterday, at lunch,” he replied in almost a whisper.

She faced him and put her hands on his shoulders, “It is OKAY. There’s nothing you need to apologise for.”

He felt intimidated again, ‘why does she look at me like that?!’

Luckily for him, his thoughts never translated into his facial expressions. He just nodded his head slightly.

“So you’re good?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“We’re good?”

He hesitated, “...yes.”

“Perfect!” she smiled and let go of him, “now come on, it’s time to leave!”

-x-

To all of those who are reading, and maybe following, I would really love to know what you think of this so far so PLEEEEEASE do comment! Right now, i'm very much in the dark as i know absolutely nothing about fanfiction when it comes to writing...so i would love if you could help me out...*sob sob*

Cya later then :)

Oh, and since i probably won't update this story anytime before this friday, i would like to wish Yuto a very very happy birthday :D