(-- --)
To Feel Love's Keen Sting
It was covered by the local news stations and gossip shows that Klavier Gavin, (Klavier Gavin!) lead singer of the popular band the Gavinners, was heading back to high school.
He and a bunch of his friends created the Gavinners when they were in the seventh grade. They were an instant hit. They weren't like the standard "boy bands." They were actually a band. They went on tour for a couple of years, but now Klavier wanted to take a break so they could go to high school and start on their next album.
Klavier arrived in front Gyakuten Saiban High School by limo. (His older brother Kristoph refused point blank to drive his brother to school because he didn't want his car to be mobbed by fan girls.) There were mobs of girls gathered in front of the school. They were screaming and cheering, begging for Klavier to look their way. A glance and a smile was enough to make them swoon. As he stepped out of his limo, flashes of cameras went off. Luckily he had his sunglasses on.
"Gavin!" called out a voice. Klavier turned his head to see his best friend and fellow member of the Gavinners, Daryan Crescend.
Klavier grinned and slapped hands with him. "What's up Crescend?"
Daryan snickered. "First day of high school."
"As freshman," he added. "Achtung! Let's go please the fans!"
The girls became rowdier as Klavier and Daryan would wink and shoot smiles at their fans. Every once in a while they would sign an autograph. But as Klavier turned towards the entrance, he got a good look of the hallway inside the school. Many of the guys were looking on jealously, but there was a group of four girls looking at the whole spectacle. They weren't outside cheering and screaming at his presence. The girl with long brown hair and pink sunglasses on her head said something to the other three before they began walking down the dense hallway.
Needless to say, his interest was piqued.
(-- --)
The next time he saw those girls, they were in PE. He and Daryan were sitting on the bleachers, ditching class. A group of girls from the PE class were seated around, chatting animatedly. Klavier tuned them out, trying to focus on the four girls who paid the Gavinners no mind.
One girl had short light blue hair and blue eyes. She carried on an air for superiority. Klavier couldn't help but notice that her hand was tightly coiled around a leather whip. One of the girls had long black hair and brown hair. She had a weird necklace around her neck. She was chatting cheerfully as she was eating a hamburger. The other girl also had long black hair, but it was tied up with a pink band and a key through it. She had green eyes and was wearing an odd pin on her uniform. The final girl was the one that interested Klavier the most. She had long brown hair, half up and half down, and green eyes. She had pink sunglasses on her head again.
"Hey, Ema!" called the girl with the odd pin. "Let's do our little contest!"
Ema groaned, but she began laughing. "Again, Kay?"
"Yeah! Come on!"
Ema laughed again and followed Kay to one end of the gym. At the count of three, they broke out into a run before doing a series of flips and step outs and ending at the other side of the gym.
"Franziska!" yelled Ema from across the gym floor. "Who won?"
The girl with the blue hair scoffed. "I don't know. I'm no judge of gymnastics." She turned to the girl with the weird necklace next to her. "Maya, why do you smell like a hamburger?"
Kay and Ema rejoined the other two and sat on the gym floor.
"Haha, silly!" said Kay. "She's eating a hamburger right now!"
Ema took a whiff of Maya. "No, Franziska's right. Maya, you smell like a hamburger."
"You foolishly eat them everyday, but you never reek of them like this," remarked Franziska.
Maya flushed. "Well, this morning I was hungry and I had to take a shower…so I decided to kill two birds with one stone--"
"Oh, that's gross!" laughed Ema. "You realize that your pores open up when you take a shower, right?"
"I do now! I mean, it was pretty nasty. I mean, the burger just totally disintegrated in my hands."
Kay roared with laughter. "Gross!"
"Ugh," mumbled Franziska.
Klavier's interest continued to heighten as he watched those four girls. He had to know more about them. He tapped the shoulder of one of the girls sitting near him. He pointed at the isolated four and asked, "Hey, who are they?"
The girl turned to see who he meant. "Um…They're a bunch of sophomores. The girl with the blue hair is Franziska von Karma. She's the daughter of the famous prosecutor Manfred von Karma. The girl with the key is Kay Faraday. Her dad's also a prosecutor. The girl with the magatama necklace is Maya Fey, the younger sister of Mia Fey, the school's student body vice-president. The girl with the brown hair is Ema Skye (oh, so her name was Ema), younger sister of Lana Skye, the school's student body president."
Daryan smirked. "How come they aren't over here fawning over us?"
The girl shrugged. "Beats me. They're the kind of people you just don't notice that much. They just stick to their friends."
He noticed them. Especially Ema.
(-- --)
That girl was not wrong when she said that Ema and her friends mostly kept to themselves. From his own observations, he noticed that Ema had a lot of friends, but not so much to be super popular. They usually weren't noticed much. He noticed that during school assemblies, they would sit in the corner of the bleachers and keep to themselves, not even bothering to participate in school activities. If they weren't sitting with their class, they were sitting with the upper classmen, but they were still seated in the corner.
There were more to Ema's friends than just Franziska, Kay, and Maya. There were several upperclassmen as well. There were the juniors Phoenix Wright and Miles Edgeworth, the freshmen Apollo Justice and Vera Misham, the sophomore Neil Marshall, and then the seniors Lana Skye, Mia Fey, Jake Marshall, and Diego Armando. Of course, the four seniors were probably the most well known among the student population because they were rather popular. (To a degree, that made Ema famous for being the younger sister of the student council's president.) And even though they kept to themselves, it looked like they were often having fun.
One time during lunch, he saw Vera draw a face on a cracker with a sharpie before Kay took it to provide a voice and dialogue for it. Everyone was laughing until Franziska finally picked up a water bottle and smashed the cracker on the table. There was silence for a moment before everyone started laughing again. Then there was the time when the two Marshall brothers decided to take pieces of everyone's lunch and put them into Phoenix's grape juice. Afterwards, the two brothers decided to drink it to see who could get sicker faster. And then there was that moment when everyone was engaged in a heated debate between the difference of a ladder and a step ladder. There were a lot of "Objection!" and "Hold it!" and "Take that!" and "Gotcha!" and "Eureka!" phrases being yelled around.
They were worlds apart. He was popular and she was hiding in the shadows. They had their own groups of friends, but he so desperately wanted to intrude just so he could be closer to her.
(-- --)
The gods had to have been shining down on him if he was granted an opportunity to speak with that pretty Ema Skye.
Even if it was for a short moment.
It was when second period had just ended. Klavier was heading towards his Geometry class, and Ema was just leaving her Chemistry class when she ran into him. One of the books she was carrying slipped out of her hand and onto the floor. As Ema was looking around for it, Klavier picked it up and held it out for her.
"Oh, thank you!" she replied with a smile. She was really pretty when she smiled. Her eyes were dark green, and he felt at ease looking into them.
"No problem, Fräulein," he answered smoothly.
She took the book and turned to hurry down the hallway.
"Wait!" he called. She turned around to face him. "Don't you want my autograph?"
She half scoffed and half laughed. "No. Why would I want that?"
Klavier struck his best pose. "Don't you know who I am?"
Ema laughed sardonically. "Nope! I don't really care either." She turned around again, shoving through the crowd.
Klavier grinned. His interest reached an all time new high.
(-- --)
She was one of those who went against the flow of the traffic. That was made very clear during their first encounter. But perhaps that was a reason why he felt drawn to her. She was not afraid to "rebel," and neither were her friends.
In the mornings before school started, Ema and a majority of her friends were found in the lunchroom, the table closest to the main doors. The only reason why Klavier went through the lunchroom with Daryan was just so he could catch a glimpse of Ema. It had become a habit (maybe his crush was teetering on an obsession now) for him to look for her. If she was in the same room and in view, everything became irrelevant for him.
"Aaaaaah! Look, it's Klavier Gavin!" screamed one of the girls in the lunchroom as Klavier and Daryan entered from the west entrance.
"Aaaaaah! And Daryan Crescend!" added another girl.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" A bunch of girls swarmed the two members of the Gavinners.
Klavier grinned and smiled, trying to please his fans while trying to keep an eye on Ema. He saw her and friends glance at each other with amusement.
"Oh my god, look, I have elbows!" exclaimed Kay.
She and her friends (including the guys) let out a fake, shrill scream of excitement.
"Look, a bottle of grape juice!" yelled Phoenix, raising up his drink.
Another sarcastic scream from the group.
Neil took off his hat and held it up. "Look, it's a hat!"
Another scream.
Maya pointed up. "Look, there's a ceiling over our heads!"
And another scream from the group.
Ema pointed at the fan girls and Klavier and Daryan. "Look, it's a bunch of fops!"
Their mocking screams made several of the girls turn around to glare at her. Ema laughed with the rest of her friends. Ema's eyes locked onto Klavier's. There was a cool glare of mischief in her eyes and a smirk of superiority playing at her lips.
He felt as if their roles had just reversed. He was the popular one, the one destined to sit on top of a throne, while she was supposed to be the one to kneel at his feet, hoping he would look her way. But no. It was the other way around. She was the one sitting on the throne, her hands firmly on the wheel of his heart. He was the one wishing, hoping, pining for her attention. And just with that one glance from her was enough proof that she didn't have to care about him just because he was famous.
But the fact that she didn't want him made him only want her more.
(-- --)
At the Winter Assembly, the school was divided by grades. However, that did not stop underclassmen sitting with their upperclassmen friends and vice versa. So when Klavier saw Ema, Kay, and Neil run up the bleacher's steps to sit with the freshmen, he got excited.
Neil slapped Apollo's shoulder, sitting next to him. "Howdy, Polly."
"What's up, Apollo?" asked Ema as she took a seat next to Neil.
"Hey!" greeted Kay.
She was so close. So close that he just had to say a word to her. "You're not freshmen," he teased the three sophomores.
Ema glanced at him before shoving her hand in his face. "Quiet, please," she commanded.
Kay shrieked with laughter. "For a minute, I though you were going to say," and with her best impression of Ema, she said, ""Quiet, please. It's snack time.""
Ema giggled. "I was going to!" She reached into her pink bag and whipped out a bag of Snackoos. "But then I thought that we'd get in trouble for sitting here if I started eating these things!"
"I wouldn't be surprised," said Neil. "Them things are louder than Cheetos."
"Where are the others?" asked Apollo.
"They'll be here," said Kay. "Like there!" She stood up and pointed at Phoenix, Edgeworth, and Franziska just entering the gym. Her hand quickly delved into Ema's bag of Snackoos and withdrew a handful. She launched one over the heads of the seated freshmen to grab the attention of their three friends. After several failed attempts, one finally managed to collide against Edgeworth's head. His head snapped up with a dirty look on his face. It quickly disappeared when he saw Kay waving at them. He shook his head and the three of them headed up the bleachers.
Ema grabbed Kay's hand and forced her to drop the rest of the Snackoos back into the bag. "Don't throw my Snackoos!" she yelled.
"You throw them at people all the time," countered Apollo.
"So? It's only okay if I do it!"
"If you want, I'll buy you another bag, Fräulein Ema," offered Klavier. It was a way to be nice and also start to gain her trust.
Ema narrowed her eyes at him.
KA-TONK!
Klavier rubbed his forehead where one of Ema's Snackoos collided.
"Eff off, Gavin," snapped Ema. "This doesn't concern you."
Kay chuckled. "Ooh, denied."
Neil whistled. "Shot down in a flash."
"What's all the "ooh"ing for?" asked Franziska as she and the two juniors approached the top of the bleachers.
"Nothing important," answered Ema. For an extra measure, she smiled brightly directly at Klavier and added, "Just like stupid, glimmerous fops."
Was she talking about him?
(-- --)
He had to confront her. That's why he followed after Ema into the deserted hallway during lunch when she went to get a drink from one of the vending machines there.
"You don't like me that much, do you?" he asked, leaning against the vending machine.
She glanced at him briefly before feeding a dollar into the machine. "Not really."
"Why not? What have I ever done to hurt you?"
"You're just annoying," she answered. "Just because you're famous, you think you can do anything you want." When he frowned at her, she followed up with, "Oh, please. Don't delude yourself. You ditch class all the time without getting caught, and your stupid fan girls follow after you like a bunch of lost puppies. Loud, annoying puppies."
He forced a smirk. "Are you jealous?" he asked, trying to turn the situation around.
"Hardly," she remarked. She looked at him straight in the eye and said, "You and Crescend are the entropy in this school." She shrugged. "You know, I feel bad for the guys here. You're stealing the girls they like away."
"I haven't stolen your heart away, or your friends' for that matter."
Ema smiled coolly. "We have standards."
There was a thorn in his heart, and Ema was slowly pushing it in with her words.
"What if I told you that I loved you?" he asked.
Her smile almost became bitter. "I'd have to call bullshit. There's no way that you would like a girl like me. And besides, there's no such thing as love when it comes to teenage romances. We're far too immature to know what love really is."
"Cynical, aren't you?"
She shrugged again. "Maybe. But from my scientific observations, I am right about this matter 99% of the time."
"And the other 1%?"
"Someone has yet to prove me wrong."
Taking her drink, she left him alone in the hallway. It felt as though someone had sliced his heart open. It's only a crush. It's only a crush, he thought to himself. From movies and music, he knew there were ups and downs to love. (Or lust? Affection? Infatuation? Her thinking was starting to screw up his. "Love" sounded better than any of the other words.) He never knew that he would feel one of the dumbing downs to love. It had always been easy for him to get girls, but now… Even if Ema didn't want him, he still wanted her, the only girl who had the gall to refuse his attention. It seemed like a lost cause, but Klavier didn't want to give up. He wanted to be that 1% that could prove her wrong. There was love between anyone, and it didn't matter who it was between. He wanted to prove why he liked a girl like her.
And by doing all of this, he wondered if it would make the thorn in his heart disappear.
Ho hum. I had a vague idea about this story, and I decided to write about it. To tell you the truth, I'm not completely sure if this story makes much sense. This story was originally going to be based on Franz Ferdinand's song "No You Girls," but then I felt like I didn't capture the essence of the song with the story. So I changed the title to something that Dumbledore says in the sixth movie.
Another high school story AU. It's kind of similar to my "Just the Girl" story, don't you think?
Yay for adding Kay to the mix! She's pretty fun to write about. I can imagine that she could do a lot of gymnastics because she is a thief, and for some reason, I can imagine that Ema could be easily flexible as well. The part about Maya and the hamburger is based off of what my friend did. She tried eating a hamburger when in the shower, and it turned into one huge mess. It fell apart in the shower and then she smelled like hamburgers for the rest of the day. Don't try that at home, kids. Some of the little stories about what happened at lunch with Ema and her friends is based off of the adventured my friends and I have had during our time at lunch in high school (The cracker and grape juice part).
Reading over the story again, I feel like I made Ema act like a bitch. So sorry for that.
So, uh, I hope you enjoyed this even if it does seem nonsensical and confusing. And also, this is my 50th story here! :)