Feverish Love

Just a bit of New Year love for Yakusuke and Kyōko (Okitegami Kyōko no Biboroku)… Oh, and belated Happy New Year! May we blossom gently in 2018...

I want more of this kiss, hence this fan-fiction... (Ep 10)

Kakushidate Yakusuke stirred in his sleep before he opened his eyes, yet a very sharp headache pierced his senses that he immediately closed his eyes again. He gasped and automatically touched his own forehead. It was burning. His throat was aching and his gasp – now that he realised it – sounded so weird. Then he suddenly shivered despite the burning sensation on his skin.

Damn, he had a fever! Which means that he couldn’t go to his office… and worse, he couldn’t go to Sandglass to have breakfast with Kyōko-san.

Anyway, first thing first. He had to call his boss at the Hinoko Real Estate. He’d been working there for more than three months now and his kind boss was very happy with his performance. Although he had passed the probation time, he should never take his luck for granted. Yakusuke managed to ring his boss and, with a very croaky voice told his regret that he had to stay in bed today. After barely thanked his boss for the day-off, Yakusuke hung up and tried to get up. Then he fell off his bed. The piercing headache and the high fever made his balance way off and his strength almost non-existent; he couldn’t even pick himself up from the cold floor. With his last strength, he reached for his mobile phone that fell almost a meter away and rang Sandglass. He whispered his request to Hōrō-san who picked up the phone before collapsing, succumbing to his headache.




-xxx-

Yakusuke couldn’t register time. He felt like he had been bobbing up and down a boiling river for a while, trying desperately to escape, yet the hot and strong undercurrent kept dragging him down. However, a while later, he felt some people lifting him up from the river and moving him back to the dry ground. Well, more like lifting him from the floor and back onto his bed. Then he heard some familiar male noise. He opened his eyes and saw a sprout of long black hair swirling around and a sliver of white hair peering so close to him. He gasped when he realised who the last person was.

“Kyōko-san… don’t…” he didn’t have strength to tell her to stay away from him. His fever would be contagious, he might infect her.

“He’s delirious. We should get a doctor right away,” he heard the white-haired girl saying. Another person said something, then the white-haired girl replied, “That’s fine. His company should have insurance. Otherwise, I can pay upfront and worry about it later.”

Yakusuke slipped into his burning fever again. He barely woke up to register that a doctor had come to his neat but very small apartment. He didn’t register what the doctor did, for he slipped back into his fever again, which somewhat felt slightly cooler this time.


-xxx-


It was night time. That much he knew from the moon’s silver rays that peeked through his half-closed curtains. Yakusuke opened his eyes wider and stared at his own ceilings. He then turned to the floor and gasped when he saw the white-haired girl sleeping there on an extra futon.

“Kyōko-san…”

His croaky whisper woke her up. The girl sat straight, her eyes wide in confusion for she found herself in a strange environment. Yet, after swiftly checking her arms and upper thighs, she regained control of herself. She approached and shushed Yakusuke who tried to wake up.

“Shhh… don’t try to speak. I’m glad you’re awake. You need to drink now.”

He felt her arms, stronger than he thought they’d be, circling him and helped him to recline onto her. He opened his mouth to protest, but Kyōko defeated him by dousing him with one full glass of water.

“Kyōko-san…”

“Here, take this.”

Yakusuke felt like a baby when Kyōko fed him two tablets of medicine. But that was all the strength he had. Against his will, his eyes closed again. He returned to slumberland, this time without the weird dream of another drowning in that boiling river.


-xxx-


The rhythm was repeated several times. Yakusuke woke up from his delirium, getting cooler and cooler each time, to find Kyōko staring at him or sleeping on a futon next to him. Yet, all those times, Yakusuke was too weak to do anything than accepting the water, medicine and the meagre portion of porridge that Kyōko practically had to shove down his throat.

Then came the day he fully awoke and found most of his headache and fever were gone. Expecting to find Kyōko again, he turned and was disappointed when he saw Nuru sitting in the corner of his room, listening to his iPod.

Was he dreaming that Kyōko-san was here?

“O! You’re awake!”

“Nuru-chan…”

“Yeah, it’s me.” Nuru got up and checked Yakusuke’s forehead. “Feels okay. Just to be sure though…” He suddenly shoved a thermometer into Yakusuke’s mouth. “Hai! Stay still for three minutes!”

Yakusuke didn’t have a choice other than letting Nuru taking his temperature. Meanwhile, Nuru shuffled around the small kitchen and emerged back with a bowl of porridge.

“Ah!” Nuru sighed in relief when he checked Yakusuke’s reading. “She did tell me that you’d be much better this afternoon.”

“This afternoon…?” Yakusuke asked. His voice wasn’t so throaty anymore.

“Yeah. You’ve had fever for three days, you know! We were getting worried yesterday, but Kyōko-san was confident that you’d fight back and be better today or tomorrow.”

“Kyōko-san… was she here?” Yakusuke hesitated before asking again, “…where is she?”

Nuru gave him a look before shoving him a spoon of porridge. He was obviously not a nurse-type of a boy. “She was here the day you had fever, and never left your apartment except for taking a walk to the nearby grocery store for a few minutes. She had to go home after lunch because she was running out of changing clothes. She said she’d be back by dinner time with meals from Sandglass.”

“She has been taking care of me all these times?”

“Well, technically, we have. Hōrō-san or Makuru cooked the porridge, I took it here, Kyōko-san fed you the porridge, water and meds. Oh, and she stayed here for three nights to look after you.” The last bit was added as an afterthought.

The notion that Okitegami Kyōko had stayed in his meagre apartment for three days to take care of him was too much for Kakushidate Yakusuke. With a new type of swirling ‘headache’, he laid back down and stared at his ceiling for a while before Nuru force-fed him again with the remaining porridge. Afterwards, sleep took Yakusuke again; he didn’t even notice when Nuru left.


-xxx-


“Kyōko-san… truly… I lost for words…”

Okitegami Kyōko looked at the blushing Kakushidate Yakusuke, who leaned against the wall, his head lolling aside in such a weird yet cute way that she couldn’t resist to smile. This Yakusuke-san… his hair was even messier than normal when he was sick!

Yakusuke was clearly uncomfortable that she’d been taking care of him; yet he wasn’t strong enough yet to get up and treat his guest as a guest should be treated.

“Why do you have to be so uncomfortable?” She shoved a spoonful of porridge into her patient’s mouth.

“You stayed here for three nights…” said patient said after swallowing the porridge.

“Well, I plan to stay for the fourth night today – ” Kyōko flaunted the sleeves of her pink pyjamas. “ – since I didn’t think you’d be strong enough to be left alone.” She didn’t realise that her cute and innocent display stirred something inside Yakusuke. Had it not been for what remained of the fever, Yakusuke would find it hard to restrain himself.

Yakusuke looked at her animated eyes before shaking his head. “Aren’t you afraid that you’d be infected?”

“I had a flu shot a week ago, so I should be fine.”

“So, I had a flu?”

“A really bad strain. It’s in season. I must have read about the flu season last week, for then I took the shot. Hōrō-san informed me about it; that I told him that he must remind me that I had taken the shot.”

“Ah… how kind of Hōrō-san to do that then…”

“I was going to stay guarding you anyway three days ago, going back to Sandglass at night and coming back here in the morning. However, when Hōrō-san told me that I had vaccinated myself, I decided to stay overnight.”

“Ah… and how did you – ah, remind yourself that you’re taking care of me??”

She smiled and produced her right upper arm. ‘I’m taking care of the sick Kakushidate Yakusuke’ was written there. Yakusuke looked stunned and touched at the same time.

“And I also wrote myself a whole page of notes about your condition – ” she gestured to a note plastered on the wall, about eye-level from where she would wake up before feeding Yakusuke another spoon of porridge.

“But why did you decide to guard me?” Yakusuke swallowed the porridge. “When I called Sandglass a few days ago, I think you hadn’t written anything about me on your…” he blushed, “- well, body.”

Okitegami Kyōko did write about trusting Kakushidate Yakusuke a few weeks before Christmas last year, but the note was cruelly wiped out, along with her notes about her own identity, by her old enemy. Since then, despite having recovered her detective identity, Kyōko hadn’t left herself any notes yet about Yakusuke.

Kyōko frowned. “I’m not sure why. I just knew when Hōrō-san received your call and announced your name, and repeated that you had a fever, I somehow knew you were someone I knew… and you needed my help again.”

Yakusuke blushed a crimson red this time. “I’m sorry for being such a trouble.”

“Oh, no need to worry about it! As far as I know, you’ve at least taken care of me once for five nights… and you also helped me remembering who I indeed was.” When Yakusuke lifted his eyebrows, Kyōko put the porridge bowl away. She then got up and slowly produced a thick document from the computer table. “I’m refering to ‘K’s Memorandum’ that you have been faithfully writing so far.”

“Ah… that…” Yakusuke nodded and slightly smiled. “Yeah… that…”

Kyōko studied Yakusuke’s blushing face and red ears for a while. Sitting down agan, she sighed. “It must have been very hard for you… when I woke up that morning in that shack… and I didn’t remember you at all… after all the things you did to rescue me…” She looked away for a few seconds before returning her gaze, steadily this time, at Yakusuke. “Gomen-ne… for forgetting what you’ve done to me…”

“Ah, but Kyōko-san, you told me to court you again from the start…” If it was even possible that Yakusuke’s ears got redder, it happened right then. “That’s…that’s what I’ve been doing…”

She smiled. Ii ne, kono otoko no hito… This guy is a really nice guy… How come he sticks around with a forgetful person like me, I may never know, or remember, if he ever tells me… Kyōko cleared a lump in her throat. “Having said that, you could’ve produced the Memorandum and let me read it.”

Yakusuke’s ears got even redder as he stammered. “… I – I… I felt it’s better if you trust me for what I am… and not for what I wrote…”

Kyōko smiled. “That’s fine. At any rate, I’ve printed a new set of Memorandum and kept it in my room at Sandglass this morning. So that I remember again.”

“Kyōko-san…”

Kyōko smiled. “You wrote that I kissed you that night, and then you kissed me back.” She stopped, hesitating for a while, then decided to throw caution into the air. She lived only for today, after all. She smiled again, rather wickedly this time.

“You also wrote how you felt about that kiss. I wish I could kiss you now… but you’re sick, so we have to wait.”

Yakusuke frowned, then he gasped when he realised what she meant. “Ooohhh!!! That’s so mean, Kyōko-san!”

“I can’t risk getting sick! There may be a case the day after tomorrow when I need to be healthy, so I’d rather wait till then!”

“But there’s this article saying that kissing when you’re having a cold actually increases the chance of you getting better, because blood pumps to your heart faster!”

“Yeah, you, the one who are sick, will be better, but not me! I can get infected!”

“But you’ve been vaccinated!” The patient wasn’t giving up. “And the article actually said that the person who isn’t sick will not be affected!”

“Nope!” She definitely enjoyed this banter. “How do I know that you’re not lying to me right now?!

His face and ears were now purple. “You know if I lie to you! Fine, you don’t believe me –” he reached for his mobile phone, “– I’ll Google it and show you the article!”

“No way!” She jerked his mobile phone away from him. “You’re sick, you need to sleep immediately!”

“But I cannot sleep if you think I’m a liar!” He reached for his phone to no avail; she was stronger than him when he was sick.

The arguments would go on even longer, had Kyōko not decided to end it by kissing the sick Yakusuke square in the mouth. With her mouth open as well. Yakusuke stammered before kissing her back with such a passion that was surprising for a timid and virus-infected person.

And for once, Okitegami Kyōko couldn't care less if she would get a cold tomorrow.


-FIN-