Note: This took me far too long to finish. I’m sorry it’s taken me half a year to get this final chapter out, and I could make all sorts of excuses for this, but here it is. It is very obviously going against the canon information available about Rikkai, but this is fic world, where canon doesn’t count. A sequel is highly probable, as well, but I won’t make any promises.
If nothing else, I hope you enjoy the chapter and that the ending is worth the time it took to get out.

-5; Bonne Nuit-

“I want to stay the night.”

The abrupt demand made little Yagyuu stop sipping at his juice and blink at the messy boy who was even then reaching to snatch one of the rice balls from a lunch that was not his own. “What do you mean?” he asked around his straw.

Niou did not so much as glance at Sanada as he pilfered his meal, knowing the gruff young boy was listening to whatever Serious Business his lovely best friend was informing him of, Yanagi following suit and only breaking from time to time to jot something down in his spiral. The sly look Yukimura shot the transfer student hinted that he would keep them captivated until the food was safely thieved, and Niou returned the look with a knowing smirk. Taking a large bite and mumbling through it, Niou replied, “I mean I want to stay the night. At your house, since you’ve been to mine.”

A thoughtfulness swept into Yagyuu’s hazel eyes as he resumed sucking on his straw, reaching up to adjust his still-uncomfortable glasses slightly. “I can ask my parents tonight if you can stay this weekend.”

The answer was satisfactory, and Niou spent the remainder of the school day striving for his best friend’s attention just to give him looks that forebode against forgetfulness.

---

The next day rolled around, and Yagyuu was surprised to find the seat beside his already occupied. Niou squirmed onto his knees in his chair, staring up at the other with anxious eyes and an eager smile that widened as Yagyuu explained his success.

Class went on as per usual. Niou kicked his feet and doodled on his desk; Yagyuu continually had to push his specs up the bridge of his nose while he was hunched over his work. For both, lunchtime was a relief.

This particular lunchtime started like all of the others. The little trickster and the little gentleman would gather with the little troika, and the five would dig into their lunches. Occasionally the little “tensai” would join them, and this was one such occasion, a thing Niou enjoyed because it meant someone who would willingly trade his more delicious food stuffs for any sweet thing Niou couldn't stand.

While discussing the important matters grade school children’s lives revolve around, they began to notice, one by one, a group of girls seated near them. Normally girls do not matter much to young boys and warrant no such attention, but these girls kept glancing their way and giggling, one of them blushing terribly. The boys exchanged looks, except for Sanada, who was too absorbed by his meal to feel the female eyes passing over him.

“Sanada-kun?”

They had all watched the blushing girl - Hanamura-chan - leave the safety of her group to approach theirs, and they all stared at her inquisitively as she came to stand beside their least observant member.

Unfortunate Sanada turned to look at her and had barely swallowed his mouthful of food to reply when the girl leaned down and busied his lips with her own.

For a full six seconds, all anyone could do was gawk.

On the seventh, Sanada pulled back and shrieked.

The sound of the cry seemed to break the paralysis of everyone else, and several things happened at once. Yanagi produced his trusty notebook and had almost a page of notes in a matter of seconds. Marui, Niou, and Yukimura all broke out in howling laughter. The group of girls giggled, and startled Hanamura-chan burst into tears accompanied by a loud wailing that brought the teacher over in a hurry. All of the other students were in an uproar, chattering and snickering across the room.

Yagyuu remained gaping in horror at the event until Niou nudged him. He blushed and adjusted his glasses.

“Girls are really weird, huh, Yagyuu?” the messy boy chided with a grin before falling into helpless mirth again with the redhead.

With a little effort, the teacher got her class under control. Yukimura scolded Sanada further in that playful way of his which the stern boy no doubt took to heart. “Hanamura-chan kissed you, and you made her cry,” he murmured, fighting a smile from his features. He had to turn around in his seat to hide his strained face, screwed up in intense effort to keep in his amusement, while Sanada went so far as to bow while apologizing.

Reluctantly, the children returned to their seats for the second half of the school day. The disturbance caused Niou to be restless at his desk and interrupt multiple times with questions that seemed on task until he had cleverly steered the teacher into territory that could not imaginably be related to their starting point. The dismissal chime was welcome for everyone, including the instructor.

Watching Sanada shyly apologize to Hanamura-chan on the way out of the door was most definitely the highlight of Niou’s day. That is, until he remembered he was going to pack his things and sleepover at Yagyuu’s that night.

---

A nagging nervousness had crept up on the brunet boy as they approached his place of dwelling. He shot glances at his counterpart along with shy smiles. Taking this wily friend to meet his strict, stern parents did not seem quite the novel idea now that it was put into motion. His mother might find the boy charming, but Yagyuu was sure his father would disapprove.

Niou, his own raven hair mussed from the wind, stared at the house their trek brought them to. It was larger than his own home and slightly more Western in style. A shiver of anticipation ran throughout the trickster, but he could see the small anxiety welling in his friend’s eyes. He would have to be on his best behaviour.

“I’m home,” Yagyuu called as they took off their shoes in the atrium. “And I brought Niou-kun with me.”

A woman about the same age as Niou’s mother emerged. She smiled at the two of them kindly. “Welcome home, son,” she said, her voice warm with affection. “And hello, Niou-kun. It’s nice to meet you.”

The guest stood, shoeless and grinning, and returned the greeting politely, “Nice to meet you, Yagyuu-sama. Thank you very much for letting me stay over.”

Niou’s mannerly speech managed to pause his friend for a moment, but young Yagyuu recovered quickly enough. “Yes, thank you again,” he added with his own content smile. “We’re going to my room now, if that’s okay.”

His mother agreed but called to him when they were already in the next hallway. “Oh, Hiroshi-kun! If you get a moment, please come back down. I forgot that your father and I have a surprise for you!”

They were barely inside of Yagyuu’s room before Niou was pushing him out again. “I’ll look around; you go find out what your surprise is!” He either believed surprises to be one of the wonders of life or thought them a good excuse to rifle through Yagyuu’s belongings without him in the room; Yagyuu couldn’t decide which as he obeyed and made his way back through the house.

When he returned, Niou was so far into his closet that he didn’t notice the melancholy on his classmate’s features. He pulled back immediately with an innocent look. “What was your surprise?”

Yagyuu forced his lips into a tight smile. “Oh, it wasn’t really a surprise. They just didn’t want to remind me about my chores in front of you.” He eyed the destruction Niou had already caused to his orderly closet space and held his hand out in a gesture. “You may continue.”

With a laugh, Niou busied himself only a little longer with marveling at the treasures of a perfect boy’s room. He became bored with it soon enough, and the two spent the rest of the night playing games and talking. Niou noticed how silent Yagyuu became at dinnertime, but he dismissed it as embarrassment or maybe some weird thing families more proper than his own might do.

Full stomachs and the exhaustion of the day sent them safely to bed until the morning sun peering in through Yagyuu’s window woke them the next morning. When they trudged out of his room, rubbing the sleep - “Rheum,” Yagyuu informed when Niou asked about it; being the son of a doctor was handy sometimes - from their eyes, his mother had breakfast on the table and his father was absorbed in his newspaper.

“So, boy, are you excited about the move?” Yagyuu’s father asked from behind the weekly.

Niou, his mouth full, looked at his silent friend with wide, curious eyes. When Yagyuu failed to respond, Niou manage to mumble somewhat intelligibly, “Move?”

“Yes, yes. That was our surprise, but Yagyuu didn’t seem too thrilled when we told him last night,” Yagyuu’s mother chimed in. She patted her son on the head before she noticed Niou staring up at her with his mouth slightly agape. “Did Hiroshi-kun not tell you?” she asked with a shaky smile.

Regaining a little composure, Niou turned his gaze upon the boy beside him, but Yagyuu was too busy staring gloomily at his plate to notice. Niou swallowed. “N-no, he told me. I guess I forgot.”

The moment breakfast ended, Niou announced that he had left something at home that he had to retrieve and left to do so without another word. Yagyuu went to his room to look out of the window; he caught the last few steps of Niou’s flight from the neighborhood before the boy turned the corner and was out of sight.

---

A few hours passed before Yagyuu decided that his friend had no intention of returning and that he would have to go find him. The perfect little gentleman told a perfect little lie, something about Niou needing help choosing which video games to bring over, and his mother agreed to let him go help out.

The trickster obviously had not run along home, but Yagyuu was fairly certain he knew where he could find him. His suspicion was confirmed as he approached their secret spot by the creek.

“Niou-kun,” he called gently, standing at the base of the tall tree and craning his neck to look up at his friend, wondering in the back of his mind how he had managed to get up there by himself. When he didn’t receive an answer, he tried a different, more personal plead.

“Masaharu-chan?”

The endearment coaxed a small murmur out of the boy in the branches. He wiped at his eyes and refused to look down. “Why do you have to leave?” he demanded in the sternest voice he could muster.

“My dad,” Yagyuu offered, gloom invading his tone. “His work offered him a better position somewhere else. I wasn’t really listening when he said where we will be moving.”

Niou snorted in highest disdain. “Adults.” He was silent, glaring at the scenery directly before him as though it were solely responsible for this great cataclysm. At length, he bit his lip and looked down at the big, hazel eyes staring back up at him. “I don’t want you to go!!”

Slightly startled by the outburst, Yagyuu adjusted his glasses to hide the way he averted his eyes. “It’s not up to me, Masaharu-kun…”

“You’re my best friend,” Niou argued stubbornly, selfishly, yet somehow too shy to add that Hiroshi had been the only real best friend he had had so far. “You can’t just leave.” He frowned, willing the wetness from his eyes, and heaved a sigh before beginning the climb back down to the ground.

Yagyuu watched him dismount carefully, just in case he might need a helping hand from such a height. “I don’t want to go, either.”

A long silence passed between them; a breeze stirred, blowing Yagyuu’s hair out of place while failing to do much noticeable damage to Niou’s. When their eyes locked for longer than a second without one of them glancing away, Yagyuu offered, “Come back to my house for the night.”

Pursing his lips, Niou thought about it for a moment. A frustrated “puri” escaped his lips, making Yagyuu laugh, and they headed back toward his house for the night.

---

Lying together in Yagyuu’s bed that night at the trickster’s insistence to be close, Niou kept wondering aloud how the others would react to the news of Yagyuu’s departure. “I bet Bunta-kun will pout over the loss of one more lunch to leech from,” he hypothesized with a snicker.

Yagyuu reprimanded lightly, “Niou-kun, that’s rude.” Without his glasses on and in such a dimly moonlit room, Yagyuu couldn’t clearly make out Niou’s features but knew he would be sporting that shark’s grin of his.

“You won’t even get a chance to kiss Sanada-kun goodbye,” the black-haired boy said before laughing at the memory of the main lunchtime event of yesterday.

Rolling his eyes, Yagyuu declined to reply, but he couldn’t help the small smile that crept across his lips.

After a pause, Niou questioned, “Why do girls do weird stuff like that?” Yagyuu usually had all kinds of answers that had to do with body functions this and brain signals that; surely he would know what possessed girls to want to kiss Sanada.

“I really don’t know,” Yagyuu admitted, gazing up at the brighter blur that was his window to ponder the question. “Hormones?” he suggested.

Shrugging, Niou stayed quiet. That is, until his ever-restless mouth got the best of him. “Maybe there’s a kissing initiation thing that girls have, and they know it’s a good thing, but boys don’t do it.” He made a face the other couldn’t properly see when his theory was deemed “dumb”. “Like ‘hormones’ is so much better.”

Eyes wandering back down to attempt to focus on his best friend, Yagyuu proposed, “Why don’t you kiss Sanada and find out for yourself?” He giggled after the shock of Niou’s pillow hitting in the face had faded.

Another comfortable silence settled over them, the sound of the winding down of a busy day. They said their good nights quietly and waited for sleep to take them.

Before it did, a tiny mumble crawled through the still air, and the response, the closure of the insecurity that had them both uneasy, soothed them into peace:

“I’m going to miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too.”

---

Niou woke the next morning with a cough and was given a mask to keep whatever germ he might have from spreading. He disappeared into the bathroom for a moment, returning with the medical precaution strapped across his nose and mouth.

The two boys spent the day in their trees, their creek, their place, before returning early enough to allow Yagyuu time to pack. Sitting on the sidewalk before his house, they stared at the road quietly.

“So, we’ll meet again one day, Hiroshi-kun,” Niou finally decided, earning a small smile and a nod from the other. They stood, and, in one rapid motion, Niou leaned in, pulled down his mask, and kissed Yagyuu on the cheek before just as quickly hiding his face once more.

Staring, Yagyuu blushed ferociously and adjusted his glasses, gaining more colour as Niou laughed in pure joy.

“Bye, Hiroshi-kun,” he forced out, his eyes smiling even if his hidden lips weren’t. “And don’t forget.”

Yagyuu nodded sadly. “One day, we will meet again.” He waved as the other boy started to walk home. “Goodbye, Masaharu-kun.” He watched his friend round the corner and stood alone on his front lawn for a few moments before he remember how much packing he had to do.

When he walked past his mother toward his room, she giggled, teasing, “You never told me you have a little girlfriend, Hiroshi. I hate to part you from her.”

Blinking up at her, Yagyuu’s brows knitted slightly. “What do you mean?”

“You can’t hide a kiss when the lipstick tells the tale,” his mother informed him, still laughing as she shooed him to start packing.

Instead of packing, Yagyuu hurried to the bathroom and was horrified by what the mirror revealed. Where Niou’s mouth had pressed against his skin was a pink print that perfectly captured the shape of those lips. He reached up to touch the spot, realizing the hoax behind the cough and the mask. He couldn’t help but laugh as he washed it off, even when a few salty tears mixed in with the soap and water.

---

Years later, the days of being seven and the short season he spent with his first best friend would become only a mist in his mind. While looking through one of Yanagi’s books of quotes to expand his already extensive repertoire of random information, Niou would stumble upon a saying which had no author to claim it. It would strike a chord within him. Unable to find a reason for the sympathetic reaction, Niou would brush it off, but something in him wouldn’t quite forget the words.

“Childhood is the most beautiful of all life’s seasons.”
-Anonymous