Disclaimer: Don't own Shaman King..... *sighs pitifully*

Untitled - Why did Anna pick Yoh, of all people, to be her fiance? Yoh sneaks a peek into her diary to find out.

"And don't forget to do the dishes after you run those five miles!" Anna's ringing voice echoed in his head. He groaned. Why couldn't she just leave him alone?!

Asakura Yoh. Shaman. And a damn good one, if he said so himself.

Easily controlled by a girl.

Who can kick your ass, a nagging voice reminded him. He rolled his eyes. God...

Letting a resigned sigh escape from him, he began to jog slowly out of the small house when he noticed that the door to Anna's room was slightly ajar..

He stopped.

And peeked.

Thankfully, Anna wasn't around. Judging from the sounds he heard, she was in the other room, laying down on the floor, watching one of her shows, a bowl of potato chips in front of her. She said he never worked out enough...She never worked out at all!!

But that was really, really beside the point here.

Anna's room was pretty neat, for the most part. The futon was rolled up to a corner of the room, and the floor was spotless. He shook his head. How typical of her.

But there was something that caught his eye.

A detail so miniscule nobody else would have ever noticed it...

The top drawer of Anna's dresser was slightly open...

And something was sticking out...

Yoh immediately stepped out of her room. No. No, no, no, that was just...no, no, no. He couldn't just barge into her room uninvited and go through her stuff. He shuddered at the consequences if she was to find out. Many different images of torture went through his mind: the endless push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, running, studying...

But she's all the way in the other side of the house, his mind reasoned. There's no way she'll ever find out...

No, Yoh told himself firmly. No. It isn't right. It's--It's an--invasion of her privacy--

Like she's ever cared about YOUR privacy...

That's true, but-- Yoh stopped. He was really losing it this time. Talking to himself...ergh.

Go on...just a quick little peek...

No!

Come on, you know you want to...

Yoh was torn. He knew he shouldn't, but he really, really, really, REALLY wanted to...and the other part of him was right, for once: Anna would never find out..

But still, he told himself, I shouldn't. I really shouldn't.

GO IN!!

Oh, to hell with it. Yoh crossed the threshold. There was no turning back. Knowing that his time was limited, Yoh strode straight over to the slightly open drawer. The thing that was sticking out of it...

...was the corner...

...of a book...

It was a black, leather-bound book, and judging from the condition it was in, it had seen better days. The corners were bent, and the cover was faded. The pages were slightly wrinkled.

That's not like Anna at all, to keep something like this in such a condition...

He opened it, and flipped through the pages. Almost the entire book was filled up in her neat writing. There were dates written at the top of every corner, and long, lengthy accounts of...

Her life?!

This...This is her diary!!

Astonished by what he had found, Yoh froze. Oh, this was bad. Bad, bad, bad. It had been bad enough to even go into her room, but now here he was, reading her diary?! He would be dead meat if she ever found out...

I'd be worse than dead meat! I'd be...I'd be...

An involuntary shiver ran down his back. Oh, he did not want to think about it at all, at all...

He whirled around, looking into the crack in the door. She wasn't there...

..so...maybe he could stay...

....and just read....a couple of pages...?

He opened it up, and skimmed through the different pages. Different details about her life...how she trained under his grandmother, Kino...how her skills were improving....how she first met him, Yoh...how and why she chose him to be her future husband...

Wait a minute...

Yoh froze, reading the first sentence again: "....I chose him to be my fiance, for lack of anyone else better, but also because he had such a pure and honest soul..."

Huh? Yoh was dumbfounded. Was this really him she was talking about? Him? Asakura Yoh? Pure and honest? But sure enough, it was his name she had written in the book.

He had wondered, though, on one of his more productive days, why she had chosen him to be her husband? There were so many other shamans in the world, way more powerful than him...but she chose him...Why?

He was no longer afraid of the consequences. He was overcome by curiousity, and he began to read:

"I saw Yoh again today, and he was being picked on by some bullies. He was crying and helpless, but I know he could have done something about it. He intrigues me."

Yoh arched his eyebrows. He intrigued her?

Interesting....

"I rescued him. One glare from me is all it takes to send those losers away. Yoh looked up at me, his eyes red. And then, he just smiled. All of a sudden. He smiled."

Yoh paused, trying to remember that day. Yeah, that was about right..she had rescued him from those nasty bullies nearly ten years ago.

"His smile surprised me. I didn't think anybody who had just been beaten up on could smile so brilliantly like that. It was like he wasn't afraid of me. I think he's the only boy I've ever met who wasn't afraid of me."

Yoh smiled wryly. Oh, wasn't that a laugh? Him, not afraid of her?

Riiiight...

"Then he thanked me. He looked right at me, and he thanked me. And he even went so far as to ask me if there was anything he could do in return for me. That was the first time anyone ever thanked me for anything."

Yoh couldn't help but smile. Leave it to Anna to turn something so small into something big.

"I stared at him for awhile, thinking. Then I told him, 'You can be my future husband.'"

Yoh tried hard not to laugh. He remembered his reaction to her statement vividly. He'd yelled, screamed, backed away at least ten feet...and she just remained there, staring coolly at him..

"He looked like I was the devil, and I had just sentenced him to hell. He looked frightened, and I almost felt sorry for him. He looked up at me with his eyes and asked me if there was possibly anything else I would like for him to do. I told him no. That was the only thing I would let him do. And if he refused, I had my ways to make him change my mind."

Yoh shivered. She hadn't changed. He quickly scanned the rest of the page, knowing full well that Anna would soon be suspicious that he hadn't gone out yet. He was about to put it away when three words caught his eye...

"I love him."

Yoh, in all his shock, had nearly dropped the book. Nearly, thank God. Wait... He went back to the previous pages, making sure that this was him she was talking about, not some other guy...

But it was him. The only name mentioned in the diary was his. Asakura Yoh.

He knew now that it had gone too far, way too far. It had been bad enough to even enter her room in the first place, it had gone from bad to worse when he'd found her diary, and now--it was--the worst...He was reading it, discovering all her secrets...but...

She loves me?

He knew he shouldn't read any more than he should have, he knew it, but he couldn't help it...He couldn't stop reading!

"It sounds dumb. I barely knew him then. That one time I saw him, he had just been this little defenseless kid, unable to protect himself, and I had helped him out. And love hadn't even come into the picture yet. The only reason I had given him that consequence was because I felt that he had power, enough power to maybe become the Shaman King. But I didn't know that it would turn into something more...I feel so dumb now, so stupid, so vulnerable..."

And Yoh just couldn't believe what he was reading. Was he really... Did he really mean that much to her? Knowing full well that he shouldn't, he continued to read on.

"I was brought up not knowing how to love. Love was a foreign concept where I came from. Since my childhood, the only thing I had been taught was how to be an itako, how to summon ghosts, how to grow more powerful. But then...I met him. And..he ruined everything.

Yoh sighed. That...That couldn't be true...It couldn't... Anna, love him? That was impossible!

But..I'm happy...for some reason...

"I'd had thoughts about it. Late at night, I'd wondered, what was this feeling inside me? That jumpy feeling, that damned twitch of my heart... What had it meant? And could you believe it, I'd only figured it out last week.."

Anna..

...what you're really feeling..ne?

"I love him. I hate to admit it, but I do. I really do, I really do. And when I finally did realize it, my heart broke. Because I knew he'd never love me back. He would marry me, maybe, but out of obligation, and maybe fear. But not because of love.

Yoh shook his head, partly in amusement, partly in sadness. It was true, he remembered losing control of his temper when he'd seen what the creep Faust was doing to Manta. But Anna was wrong.. dead wrong...

I'm glad it wasn't Anna on that operating table...

"I hate this. I hate feeling so vulnerable. He has total control of me, even though it doesn't seem like that. But if he were to reject me, if he were to call off the whole engagement deal.. I don't know what I would do. I could force him into it, but it wouldn't be right... I can't force him to love me. I can't, I can't. I have no control over his heart.

There was more on the page, but Yoh closed the book, knowing full well that he had disrupted her privacy more than enough. He placed it back in the drawer, and walked out.

You know what, Anna?

He strode past the living room, where Anna was casually lying on her side, watching some sort of a television program. Her hair tumbled past her shoulders; her red bandana was slung over the side of the table. He couldn't help but smile at the sight. Making sure that she didn't see or hear him, he exited the house, beginning to jog slowly.

Today, he had finally figured out the mystery called Kyoyama Anna.

NOTE: I searched high and low around the Internet, trying to find out if Takei Hiroyuki ever revealed how Anna and Yoh met. I vaguely remembered watching the dubbed anime that's being shown in the US, with Yoh telling Manta (or Morty, rather, in the dub...@_@) that Anna had saved him from some bullies a few years back, and when he asked how he could repay her, she roped him into being her fiance.. (eh...this laptop keyboard won't let me type those e's with the accent...@_@) So the entry in her diary is sorta based on that one ep. If it's incorrect..well... *shrugs* it's a fanFIC. As in fiction?