A/N:
This is a gift Fic that was originally supposed to be a one-shot for I My Me Mine. I had several ideas on where to go with this (and two others), that it seemed a little bit abrupt when I ended them. Instead, I decided to mash all three ideas into this and it ended up being a multi-chapter fic, give or take about twenty chapters. Hnnnnng, but this was supposed to be uploaded roughly about a week ago. Stupid schedule. . .
Oh, and Mr. Kagamine is referring to Rinto, not Len.
As Gumi Megpoid sloshed along home from school, her eyes were drawn to a boy with hot pink hair and glasses, making a snowball. Cute, she thought, but definitely not magic. Her boots plowed through the slush as she moved farther down the street. There, another boy!—but he looked a bit like a cat. She'd need someone more civilized, someone who could appreciate her simple, ordinary existence. She yanked her load of books higher on her hip and turned into Minno Avenue—in the home stretch at last. It was getting dark so early.
The coldest December she could remember, and it seemed every house had a snowman staring at her. She watched the wind-pushed snow dust over their cold bodies—carrots, pieces of coal, absolutely absurd specks to portray eyes, noses and mouths. Just one more lineup of subzero males who didn't even know she was alive.
A clod, that's what I am, a bouncing clod—fifty pounds of science books. The cheap artificial fur coat, a shapeless cardigan peeking out, and my stupid jumper. If there was a boy looking down from an attic window, he was probably horrified. If a boy came out of a door somewhere or was driving by in a car, how silly she must look, how insignificant! How eccentric! she moaned to herself. A penguin, that's what I am, she thought, going up the steps of the small wood-framed house with the postage stamp front yard. I am a penguin.
Gumi went straight to her room. Off came the phony fur, the unforgivable cardigan. She put her books on her desk, kicked her boots toward the radiator, and plopped smack across the bed, pen in hand. she had so much to tell as she yanked her diary out of the bed stand drawer.
"Oh, my dear diary, here it is almost Christmas and I still haven't found a boy. . . and whats even worse, I'm tired of complaining about it."
She decided to pad the page with a description of an experiment they did that afternoon in Chemistry class, during which Mr. Kagamine got his eyebrows blown off. He looked hilarious with that instant sunburn, which made him look like his face had spent two weeks in Mexico but that he forgot to take his whole neck with him.
Her eyes drifted along her bookshelf and stopped on her sister Sonika's yearbook—the only book her sister had bequeathed her besides a very work copy of How to Get Guys. Lucky Sonika, gorgeous, terrific—everything I'm not—and out of school to boot. She got down the yearbook. There were so many boys who had signed it.
To Sonika,
You're a real insane chick! Never change because that's just he way I love you.
Sora.
There was another graduation photo of a boy who looked like a very interesting person except for his pointed chin.
Dear Sonika,
You've always been a real close friend, and I will never forget all the good times we had together. You'll make a hell of a comptometer operator.
With love,
Tonio.
A whole yearbook full of boys saying how much they loved her sister!
Gumi sighed again. I'll be lucky if I can get my Physics teacher to sign my yearbook.
Dear Gumi,
You excelled in pulley systems. I'll never forget all the fun you were with Newton's Laws.
Yours truly,
Mr. Hiirone
Or my Chemistry teacher:
Dear Gumi,
What a wonderful test tube you've been.
With great respect,
Mr. Kagamine
Not one sensational boy would sign her book. Gumi got up from the bed and moved to the workshop section of her room. The hammers, pliers, screwdrivers, tape measure, incline plane, saws, cements—everything nest as a pin. She retrieved her bankbooks from behind the huge Mont Blanc's auto repair manual. She had $2,678.90 in Internet and $1,208.23 in Crypton. She'd only opened the account at Crypton because they had offered a nifty set of wrenches. Well, at lease she was getting richer, she comforted herself. In the loot department, she really wasn't doing too bad for a high school Sophomore. In another month there would be more interest to add on and there were always a lot of jobs waiting for her.
Mr. Akiyama at the drugstore had asked her to lay some tiles by a sliding door. Mrs. Hatsun across the street wanted her to make a built-in bookcase. Amane's TV Store begged her to do more freelancing on stereo and TV repairs. In fact during the last year, word of mouth that she could do automotive, carpentry, electronic, and mechanical repair had spread like wild fire. All right, so maybe it was a little unusual. Maybe she was the only girl she knew whose ambition was to grow up to own and operate a Danko gas station, but it was paying off.
Or was it?
Money, money, money, oh what good was it all without a person at your side to help you spend it? She heard her mother's door open at the end of the hall, but those weren't her mother's footsteps coming out. The noises went down the stairs to the kitchen. Gumi decided to check it out. From the bottom of the stairs ash could see straight through to the back of the house. A strange man dressed in a shiny shirt and shimmering pants was digging though the refrigerator. He looked like a fired Fred Astaire dance instructor. Forty years old, she decided, and a big forehead. The man turned, suddenly spying Gumi standing in the kitchen doorway.
"Hi," he said. She saw his eyes lingering on her hair. She just knew he was thinking that it looked like crab grass. Or perhaps he was wondering how her blonde mother produced a (two) green haired daughter when her former husband had lavender hair.
But she had no patience for him. "Who are you?"
"Al." He smiled. "And you must be Gumi."
"I see Mom's already told you about me."
"She said you were a good daughter."
"Are you her friend?"
"I'd like to be your friend, too." Al took a container of skim milk from the refrigerator, shut the door, and walked to the sink. "Your mother's a very wonderful woman," Al started.
Gumi decided not to listen to another word and quickly turned and zipped back down the hall and up the stairs that led to her room. She'd have to let this one know where he stood. Nobody was going to play Poppa to her. Her father was still alive and well and working at a chemical firm in Manhattan—and living with Mew, that nice young secretary who used to smoke cigarettes and let the fumes curl up into her nose and then back out of her mouth before she gave up smoking all together.
No, she couldn't be listening to any worn-out dance instructor or used car salesman or any of the other boyfriends her mother brought home.
Back in her room she looked at the photo of her father on the dresser. He was standing in front of a huge oil refinery, smiling and waving in a lab smock. She went over and looked at her second favorite photo lying next to it. Her father, smiling, waving as usual with her, two years old, sitting in a go-cart her father had just built.
"Take a little girl through your window," she began to sing to herself. "Take a little girl through your window." That was her favorite song her father used to sing to her.
She'd get out now, that's what she'd do. Just go and have a good time. Today at school was hard enough. Back on went the sweater, on went the phony fur, gloves, scarf. Anything to avoid the cocktail hour with her mother and latest heart throb.
She grabbed one of her physics books. She'd go read it in the library if she got bored. Her tool kit, she'd take that just in case. Actually, if she worked fast, she could make forty dollars before dinner doing odd jobs, so the day wouldn't be a total let down.
With a spring in her step, she sailed down the stairs and out of the house before she knew it. The sky was dark blue with little snow clouds hovering far off into the next town. Her tool kit banged at her side as she plodded back down the street. Plop! Squish! Splash!
She decided she needed a hot chocolate, so she went straight to NekoShake!, the soda shop where everybody who was anybody went after school. The best-looking boys and girls sat in booths closest to the jukebox. There were only eight booths and about twenty tables. If you had a booth, everyone looked at you. Of course, if you were a social cripple, you sat at the counter. That was okay only if you were a freshman, and then if you were really untouchable, you simply walked in and bought a chocolate lollipop at the cash register.
Gumi sat at the counter and ordered a hot chocolate. While she sipped she made believe she was checking her screw inventory in the toolbox. After she had counted almost every screw, she decided to open her physics book and read about the filaments in cathode tubes. She really felt she was somewhat limited in physics, and the only chance she had of understanding electron flow was to constantly think of electricity as being a stream of water. It would work for high school physics, but electrons were not really drops of water, and unless her mind made some tremendous break-through, she knew that running a Danko gas station was a more realistic goal than heading up something like the laboratory at the Mount Sky Observatory.
Miss Nekomura, the rose haired owner, came over. "How're ya doin', Gumi?"
"Ok," Gumi said nervously. What she liked about Miss Nekomura was that she always seemed to understand her. What's more, she felt that she really appreciated her. And she was incredibly nice. A small young woman and looked as if though she wasn't a day over twelve, despite being twenty-three and had a love of cats. That and she had a cute way of a talking; one of her canines looked slightly longer and got in her way of talking so some of her words were sometimes clipped. But all it did was up her cuteness appeal, or that's what Gumi thought. Shame that a woman like that wasn't noticed. . .
"How's life treatin' ya?" she wanted to know, snapping Gumi out of her thoughts.
"Pretty good," she replied before taking another sip.
"Good!" The young woman smiled. "Say, if it's not too much to ask, do y'think y'can add some fluoreshent lights in over the front counter?"
"Sure. I'll come in and look it over. Maybe I can do the work next Sunday, if you let me in."
Miss Nekomura visibly perked up and flattened out a crease on her apron. "Thanks, Gumi!" She chirped.
"Thank you," Gumi clutched her tool kit and surveyed the area where the lights would go. Now that she had something to really think about, she was able to do what she had really come in there to do in the fist place. Slowly, she let her eyes drift towards the jukebox area. Some record was playing with a girl moaning about love gone wrong. There was one boy, his hand raised, clutching a Rompon. His face looked a little rubber, trying so hard to entertain.
Too much of a fool, but nice hair.
And another boy literally jumping up and down in the aisle. He had a nice laugh, but what a goofball. Then she focused on Ron Keine—from her physics class—with long, dark bluish-black hair that was tied in a short braid, his ears peeking out from under his bangs. He was nice-looking, a little like a feudal Lord in the Imperial times of Japan. But his soft angled face and body made him appear almost like a young woman, a bit older than Miss Nekomura, that you wouldn't have known him to be male if you didn't hear him talk. Or even if that.
And then there were the awful girls. One dressed in overalls pretending to be an innocent farmer's daughter. And another one with short bangs and straight hair, and a chin like a wrestler. And the awful Pan Kanino, with her short pink, pixie-cut hair framing her small, oval face and large emerald green eyes giving her a childish appearance. She was doing gurgling things with a straw after downing a Kanipan.
And the real horrors, the gorgeous cheerleaders—their terrific gray-and-white trimmed jackets with little pins and letters on them. A pack of really pretty, healthy girls who looked like they were weaned on vegetables, hanging, literally, hanging on the football players. But her mother had always told her not to worry about beautiful cheerleaders. All beautiful cheerleaders grow up to be very ugly old maids who push supermarket baskets around, and their legs get as wide as elephants'. Gumi knew it wasn't true, but it was a great hypothesis that her mother had come up.
She looked back at the ceiling as though checking the electrical accesses for the forthcoming installation, and then she let her eyes switch back to the specific focus on the boys. There was Jaran Coppola, a boy from her lunch period who played in the band, very interesting lips and nice posture.
And there they were—seven football guys lined up in a double booth, big numbers on their chests. Physically, they did look delicious. And they all had shoulders, big strong shoulders. But while there was nothing excitingly masculine about them, she never once got the impression any of them could be tender. She felt they'd much prefer a good medium-rare steak to a kiss.
But there were some other girls with boys who looked just nice. They looked like nice happy couples, sipping their sodas and talking normally. That's what she wanted, to just be able to sit with a boy and talk. But it would have to be a boy she felt something for. Someone who when she looked at him would make her think only how much she loved him. Love would be waiting for her somewhere, and she knew when she saw that boy, she would know it. When she saw the boy meant for her, there would be a circus in her heart—no, in her mind. It would be a mind circus.
Somewhere there was a boy who would give her a mind circus.
A/N:
Ugh, darn you schedule. . . Well, I hope to be able to update this every Tuesday/Wednesday ever week. The chapters will be relatively short and, again, I'm trying to make some parts of this to be a bit. . . funny. Not sure if I'm getting it, though. . . OTL|||
Now, the wording may sound strange, but the time period isn't exactly present time. Any takers on who can guess in what time period this is? By the way, the setting is in some town in America, hence why I'm not using honorifics (or it could be that I'm just lazy and shizz). /*shot
And sorry about Al, I love him, I really do, but like with Miki, I like to poke fun at the ones I like. X3 And I kind of wanted to see what it'd be like to give Gumi a different personality, some on here make her a secret Genius because apparently nobody can take her seriously because of her ditzy demeanor, a shrinking violet, or an outspoken, pesky little sister, or even a kick-ass-insane-psycho-chick-of-epic-doom (my favorite! XD ). So yeah, just experimenting. Oh, and Rompon is a brand of soda, like Pepsi.