Author's Note: I've decided to re-write the first chapter. To my faithful readers who have been with me from the beginning, I think this is a drastic improvement to the previous first chapter which had me cringing in horror when I tried to reread this fanfiction from the beginning. At last, I could barely stand to look at it anymore and have finally given into my desire to fix it. Hopefully Hikari is now a bit more respectable. To the new readers who have come wandering into the midst of this fanfiction, just remain thankful that I have rewritten this. Trust me. However, beware of the second chapter where the quality of writing drops to zero once again, but don't worry. It improves again at around chapter 15? But watch out, I know lots of people allergic to bad writing. Ha ha just kidding. Well, not really about the chapter quality part…
Disclaimer: I know I should be putting this at the top of every chapter and such, but it's just such a bore; just keep in mind that Pokemon is never and will never be mine. Not even on Valentine's Day. Oh, ha ha. That was a good one, I crack myself up… eh hem… Sorry, read on…
When you see my face hope it gives you hell –Gives You Hell, All-American Rejects
Chapter One
I'd faced my share of bad predicaments in the past, but this must beat them all.
No matter how many times I looked at this situation from all sides possible, I could not find a single positive thing about it. Well, maybe if I were just like any other regular girl in my class, year, school, take you pick; but I was not. A regular girl, I mean.
Regular seventeen year old girls don't suddenly decide that they'll live on their own for one year when they find out that their mother is being sent to Europe for five years. Regular teenage girls, don't just stand in front of the room rented by said mother staring at the bright green door of said room because they've been kicked out of the same room. Regular seniors like myself, just don't get kicked out of their room by the hottest guy in said class, year, school; once again, take your pick.
I clenched my teeth and stomped the ground just for the sake of it. Of course, I don't know what I expected, but it definitely did not help my mood.
'It's perfectly safe, Hikari!' My mother had said. 'You're going to love it there.' She'd reassured. Why I would ever believe my mother, I don't know. It's not like I'd been taking care of her when dad had died (I'm being sarcastic here). Of course, on the other hand, I had had full faith in the Grandma that we'd visited when we were arranging the room agreements.
"What are you talking about?" I asked him after he had told me it was his room, "My mom rented this place just for me." "Not my problem." He said, "I've already moved in, you might as well find a new place." "That can't be right." I said, "Did the Grandma tell you that someone would be living with you?" "No," He answered, "and I have no intention to do so."
He tried to close the door, but I stuck my foot in just in time. "Wait." I said, "Don't you think we should talk to her about this?" I was beginning to get desperate. After hours of looking for this place on foot under a blazing sun, I was ready to rest my poor, tired legs.
"Listen…Annoying Girl –whatever your name is," He called me, making my face turn red, and not in the good way, "I moved in all by myself and I'm ready to rest. Do you know how tired you can get after moving eighteen boxes? I'm sure you don't, so if you're going to go anywhere you can go without me."
I had never gotten a good look at him at school what with all the girls and their jealousy and whatnot, but aside from that Shinji Ikari just wasn't a social person; but now, I could see what was so handsome about him. His cool aloof face was just full of romantic mystery and his violet hair hung around his face in a rather sexy way, I must admit. Okay, there were a whole bunch of stuff that made him look hot, his pointed chin, his set jaw, the dark eyes, but I was still frustrated to the point of no return!
I crossed my arms, my foot still preventing the door to close. "Listen," I said in a menacing tone, "I'm tired and sweaty and I just want to move in and be done with it. Now if I don't find out what's going on right now, I'm going to scream." "Right." He said.
I gave him an 'I- warned- you' look and screamed as loud as I can. All the way down the hall, doors opened and heads peeped out trying to find out what was going on. Shinji's hand clamped over my mouth and he took my wrist and dragged me inside.
"Good." I said, patting myself as if I had just come out of a dirty, dust-filled closet, "Now that we have that settled." "We have nothing settled." He said, immediately letting me go, "You're just an embarrassment to society and I dragged you in to save the general public" "Then now what are we supposed to do?" I whined, "I need to complain to somebody." "Then call the Old Lady." He suggested, "Anything to get you out of my room."
"Maybe if we go to her house she'll tell us. It can't be that far from here." I said thoughtfully. "Whatever." He said, "Don't let me stop you." "Don't you want to know what's going on too?" I asked him. "Right now, my only priority is to make you go away." He said.
Just as I was about to say something, there was a pound on the door. I gave Shinji a pointed stare, my eyes asking if he was going to answer it. "Oh, I get it." He said, "Since it's my room, I should open the door for my guest." I rolled my eyes (he was surprisingly immature) and went to go open the door.
I was just a little bit surprised at the image that stood before me, but mostly wary, there stood a pink- haired woman at around twenty, panting. Great, just what we need, another person to make this even more tiring that this should be.
"Sh- Shinji," She managed to pant out, "I n- need Shi- Shinji, will you call him for me?" All I really wanted to do was slam the door closed actually. Shinji looked over his shoulder from where he was sitting and said in a somewhat surprised tone, "Sumomo?"
The woman named Sumomo looked from me to him.
"Oh geez." She said, slapping her forehead, "This wasn't supposed to happen." "I'll say." Shinji said, "Tell this girl she's in my room." "Your room," I scoffed, "right..."
"I'm really very sorry!" Sumomo cried. I could tell that all this arguing between Shinji and me was getting her flustered, but excuse me for not using proper etiquette at this particular point, but I felt bad, so I tried loosening up a bit.
"I'm the one who told Shinji he could take this room." She told me, "I had no idea that my Grandmother's intentions were to give this room to a family friend." "Oh, that's fine." I said, waving my hands, though it was anything but, "I'll just rent another room and everything will be fine." "Well." She said nervously, "I'm afraid this was the last room. If there were any other available rooms, I would've let you take that one already."
Shinji sighed. "Well now what do we do?" He asked, "I've already moved in, and I'm not packing up and doing it all over again." "And if I tell my mom that there was a problem when I moved, I'd have to move to Europe." I said. "Well, if you two are so desperate not to move, just live together." Sumomo said as if it were obvious.
I blinked my eyes in confusion and looked at her in a very confused manner.
"Live with him?" I asked in complete disbelief, "You expect me to live with him? Do you want me to get defiled in the middle of the night?" He gave me a disgusted look and said, "What's so good about you that I would want to do anything to you?" Then he turned to Sumomo, "And I can't live with this noise everyday, I'd probably go insane." "Calm down." She said nervously, "I was just kidding, and you wouldn't have to sleep in the same room as him, there are two bedrooms."
She was just kidding she said.
I just had to roll my eyes at that one.
"That doesn't change the fact that I'm a girl and he's a boy." I said, "You could wave a million bucks under my nose, but nothing beats my sense of pride and morality." "What about two million?" she asked. "I'd consider…" I said, "But that's beside the point." "See?" She said, "You just have to look at the bright side, at least you'd do it for some kind of reason." "But he… I… Living…" I stuttered. "Why don't you two think about it?" She asked, "If both of you lived here, you could both split the rent, and stay out of each other's way."
Yeah, because living together is the best way to avoid certain people.
"Oh, that's a great idea." I said as sarcastically as possible, "Let's live together even though he's a jerk and rude and takes grumpy to a whole new level just so we can save a couple of bucks." "And you know that how?" He asked. I narrowed my eyes as I twisted my neck to look at him. "Oh, the few minutes I've spent with you is enough for me to judge you." Sumomo sighed.
"You two will have to decide soon." She told both of us, "Once it gets dark, one of you will have to stay with me for the night." "Why can't one of us just go live with you?" I asked. "Because some of my cousins are coming to live with us soon," She said in an irritated voice I was sure was not directed towards me, "and we won't have any rooms available."
"Why can't you just stop being so stubborn and go back to live with Reiji?" She asked Shinji, "She's only going to be staying at his house for a little while, surely you can deal with her for a few months." "Hmph." Shinji grunted, turning his head to focus on the television, "I refuse to even be in the same room as her for even one moment." "Oh, it won't be that awkward." Sumomo said, walking over to him and shoving him lightly, "That happened years ago." Shinji grunted again.
"Well," Sumomo said, walking towards the door and stopping next to me, "When you're ready to get off your great, might, high horse of pride… Reiji's really worried about you. And if you're going to stay here, you might as well hurry and make the decision." Then she turned to me. "If you decide you're going to rent a room somewhere else, Shinji knows my address." And she gave us one wave and walked out the door.
I turned to face him. "So now what?" I asked. "Don't ask me." He scoffed, "I'm not going to help you do anything." "But I have nowhere to go?" I said softly, sympathy worked best, I should know, "My dad's dead, I have no other relatives, and this is the only place I can afford." "Wait." Shinji said turning around, "You aren't going to cry are you?"
I didn't say anything as small droplets of water rolled down my cheek and a dry sob threatened to come up my throat.
Man, was I good.
"I promise I won't be a burden." I said just as soft as before, "But if I can't stay here, I don't know what I'll do."
By the way his jaw set, I could tell he was starting to panic, well, overreact. Obviously, he didn't know what to do when a girl cried just like any other guy in the world.
I'd almost dropped the whole poor girl façade when he sighed and said, "Go and unpack your things." My spirits lifted and I jumped up and started unpacking where the movers had left off before he could change his mind. "Don't think there aren't any rules though!" He called after me.
"First off, you have to wear full- body clothing. I don't want to see any part of you revealed to me. Understood?" He started as soon as I was done unpacking. "What makes you think I'd want to reveal any part of me to you?" I muttered. "Rule two." He started again, "We split the rent. That means, if you don't have your part of the money, we're not writing any IOU's." "What if you don't have your money?" I asked accusingly. He looked at me strangely. "Right." He said slowly.
"Rule three." He said, "I don't want you anywhere in my room. If you don't go through my stuff, I won't go through yours." I gave him a disgusted look he ignored. "Fourth, I don't want any of your girly friends invited over. No one can know we're living together." "Why? They know how to keep secrets." I said under my breath. "And since we go to the same school, we'll have to go at different times, so no one suspects anything." "Why?" I asked, "Don't want to be seen with someone like me?" "Partly." He said, "But if they did find out, I think they'd more of focus on the fact that you're a girl and I'm a boy. Things would not be good for us for the rest of the year."
"I got it." I said. I got up to go to my room when my stomach growled. "I'm hungry." I complained. I walked over to the refrigerator, "Do you have anything to eat?" "Hey!" He shouted at me, "I paid for them. They're my food." "You paid for all this?" I asked as I looked at the filled fridge, "You can't afford this stuff unless you have a job or something."
"Exactly." He said.
My eyes widened in interest, dancing with curiosity.
"You have a job?" I asked, unconsciously leaning in closer to him though he was perhaps 7 feet away from me. "Mind your own business." He snapped, and I recoiled with a hurt look on my face. A look, of course, he couldn't see.
"Let me eat, let me eat!" I whined, stomping my foot on the ground. Hunger made me immature.
"I'm not letting you eat food I bought with my own money." He scoffed. "You can eat the food I make with my own money." I reasoned. He let out a 'Ha' of disbelief. "Well, okay, my mom's money." I corrected, rolling my eyes, "And it's not like I'm totally useless. I can cook and clean and do laundry and other home-y things wives do."
"We're not married." He vehemently snapped. "Of course not," I said in a surprisingly cool tone, "I'm just saying, you have the food and I have the… frying… pans… and… salt and stuff…" I could see him rolling his eyes. "The point is," I continued, clearing my throat, "I can do stuff you can't and you can do stuff I can't." Though I couldn't think of any at that moment.
"If you're hungry you'd better hurry up and eat." He grunted almost inaudibly.
I grinned and thanked my own luck, taking out a small, packaged fruit salad. I sat down at a small, quaint dinner table next to the kitchen counter (also the furthest away from where he was sitting).
"Why are you watching the news?" I asked, disgust evident in my voice, "Change to channel 13." Shinji looked at me as though he was asking whether I was actually asking him to do that. "Well, go on." I urged. "I'm not going to do that." He said defiantly.
I walked over to where he was sitting and snatched the remote from his hands.
"Oh, stop being such a sissy," I said, pointing the remote at the television, "there are much more exciting things to watch than the news." But before I could punch in the numbers, he took the remote back almost as fast as I'd snatched it from him. "No." He said simply.
Oh, so that was how things were going to be.
"Don't kid me," I said, anger rising, "I paid for cable." "You mean your mom paid for cable." He corrected.
"The television isn't yours." I continued. "It isn't your either." He pointed out.
"Just give it to me." I spat, lunging for the sleek, black rectangular shaped object; but he easily avoided my hands and looked at me with amusement.
Oh, well that just went too far.
He wasn't going to defile me of my pride and dignity, just for the sake of himself. No, nobody did that to me. I was strong, and independent. I'd practically raised my mother after dad was gone. I deserved more than this! So I was just going to let him keep the terrible, oh-so-horrifying news, and handle this the mature way.
At least, that's what I would've done if I had been in my right set of mind.
But my current set of mind at that point had thrown dignity and independence and strength out the window in one big heap, and had started trying to wrestle him for the remote. Of course, him being bigger and stronger, and generally just better at this whole thing than me had managed to slide out of every grab I made at the remote.
In the end, he got his precious news, and all I had was the comfort of my bed, trying to grasp at the last bit of pride lingering in the warm night air.
All-in-all, the first day was good, and I was looking forward to living with Shinji Ikari.
Who knew? Maybe he'd turn out to be a softy trying to protect himself from his depressing past through his mask of stone. All I needed to do was coax him out of his shell and let him be who he truly wanted to be.
Oh, god, I really crack myself up.