Chapter One
I Will Forever Stay Faithfully by Her Side

Kagamine Rin is a girl who is lucky in love.

Let's review the facts, shall we? First of all, she had a boyfriend: a senior named Piko, who I could barely bring myself to resent. Secondly, she had a best friend, a girl, who was hopelessly devoted to her beyond simple friendship: Gumi, a girl I quite liked and got on well with. Third was a boy who I'll get to later, and then there were a few others who aren't of as much consequence. Fourth, there was me: Gakupo, her childhood friend, next door neighbour, and the one whose feelings she never noticed. Then, on top of that all, add him. Kiyoteru, the love of her life, her soul mate, the man she'd been in love with ever since she met him for the first and last time three years ago. Obviously, my chances with her were lower than low, but, at the same time, I knew that I was the closest to her. I had the most opportunities to make my move, even if I never did, so I liked to think that the ball was in my court.

It wasn't. It never was.

We were fourteen years old, barely old enough to recognize feelings of love. Everything we felt could be blamed on hormones, I supposed, which is why our relationships were rarely taken seriously by adults. I'd been in love with Kagamine Rin since our days in diapers. Even during that time when we hadn't spoken for three months, I'd still clung to my love for her, and it has remained to this day.

Why am I telling you this, you wonder? It could be my feelings for Rin, I suppose, or reliving my youth. In any case, your Aunt Rin was quite the mature girl at age fourteen, and she experience more romance on those middle school years than most experience in their lives, so it shouldn't be too dull a story.

Anyway, before you lead me to digress, allow me to continue. Rin and I had known each other our entire lives, of course, and she had known Gumi since the first year of middle school, the year when they'd first been placed in the same class. She'd met her boyfriend, Piko, through a mutual friend of ours. I think the best place to start would be a week before he came into the picture as her boyfriend, a few days after she first showed an interest in him.

It was the summer semester of our third year of middle school. We were lounging around the classroom at lunchtime like any other day, and, like any other day, Rin wondered, "Why don't you go get us some bread from the cafeteria, Gakkun?"

"Sorry, but that doesn't interest me in the least," I replied, resting my head against Gumi's desk. We were sat in a row, starting with Gumi in the back left corner of the class, me in front of her, and Rin in front of me.

"Really?" Rin wondered absently, folding her arms on top of my desk and placing her chin on top. "I thought you were a masochist, though."

"Gumi classifies everyone as one or the other," I replied. "It doesn't mean I really am one."

"Rin's a definite sadist," Gumi analyzed, nodding proudly. How she could find the energy for that much movement in this suffocating heat was beyond me. Rin had already unbuttoned her shirt, seeing as the teacher and most of our classmates had vanished. My eyes admittedly lingered, but they swept off elsewhere once I noticed what I was doing. I'd gazed for long enough to see that a thin line of sweat had saturated the fabric of her undershirt, however. I never wore an undershirt in the summer days like this one, even if wearing one was part of school regulations. I hadn't been caught yet, and I also hadn't died from the heat.

"It's too hot to be a sadist," Rin mumbled, closing her eyes. Were I another boy, I might have assumed that she was showing off how perfectly she'd applied her eye shadow today, but I knew that I was the last person Rin tried to impress with her looks. I was her childhood friend, after all, and childhood friends only ever fell in love in fiction, or so she thought. "I'll be a masochist for today."

"It doesn't work that way, Rin," Gumi pouted, but even her energy was too low to argue for long. Instead, her forehead pressed into the long ponytail I'd splayed across her desk. "Gakkun, get off my desk."

"Rin's on mine," I mumbled, closing my eyes like Rin had. This school was too cheap to invest in air-conditioning, it seemed, despite how much we had to pay to come here. I wondered if it was hotter or cooler on the other side of the classroom. We were directly in the sun, after all, but we also had constant airflow from the open windows. And a license to daydream when classes got boring, though that was another topic all together. "Get your own."

"This is my own, you idiot," she whined, poking at my head as I moaned in displeasure. "Get off, dummy."

"Gumi, stop being mean to Gakupo," scolded my arriving saviour, the loveliest girl I'd ever met, our class president, Yuzuki Yukari, as she pulled up a chair next to my desk. I loved that girl; I really did. She was an oasis in the middle of the desert, a breath of fresh, cool air after an afternoon in a stagnant basement. I wasn't in love with her or anything, though many of my classmates would say they were. It was simply that, between Gumi and Rin, it was nice to have a girl who behaved like a lady. "He's just tired from that test."

"Right, the test," Gumi remarked, caught up in different thoughts now. She giggled and said, "I completely flunked that. How about you guys?"

"Well, some of us actually studied," I informed her, opening my eyes just enough to peer at Rin, whose breathing had slowed into a deep, constant pace as she fell asleep on my desk. I closed my eyes once more with a hint of a smile on my lips. Rin had been up late studying, so she could use some extra sleep. She'd texted me at four in the morning to let me know that she was finally going to sleep, unlike Gumi, who had texted me at four in the morning to say that she'd gotten completely sidetracked reading a book and was going to fail the test. "You really ought to try it."

"It was too late by the time I remembered!" Gumi complained, pouting pitifully. "I could have tried studying, but then I wouldn't have gotten any sleep!" With a sigh, she commented, "Well, at least Gakkun won't be at the absolute bottom of the class anymore."

"I never was, stupid, so shut up," I remarked, shutting up with a jolt of shock when something cold pressed against my tongue. I chewed the substance, which turned out to be rice, and swallowed before opening one eye to gaze at Yukari, who smiled sweetly at me with her chopsticks in hand.

"Close your eyes again, Gakupo," she ordered. "I'm sure you did well on the test, and this is your reward, okay?"

That was what I meant. She was the perfect lady, unlike the other two girls who surrounded me. Depressingly enough, however, Yukari had a boyfriend, a junior named Lui, who she'd been dating for a couple months. It had come as a shock to the boys in our class when he had first come around, followed by a deep depression when they saw that she was currently off the market. I could have fallen for her, I supposed, but I'd never been able to look at her that way, not when I had Rin sitting in front of me, sleeping so peacefully.

"You're lucky Lui's not the jealous type, Gakkun, or you'd be dead meat," Gumi informed me as I accepted another serving of rice from Yukari. "That reminds me. I heard that Rin and Piko exchanged numbers a few nights ago."

Rin had told me about that already, and I'd dismissed it, acting like it didn't bother me. She'd asked me if she should send him a text first, and so I'd asked her if she liked him, and her cheeks had flushed pink as she nodded. So, I'd told her that guys love it when girls text first since it means she was thinking about him. She said that they'd been texting non-stop since then, excluding last night. She'd complained about it, not being able to text him due to studying, which is why I knew about that.

"Rin's into older men, after all," I mumbled after swallowing the next mouthful. It was true, though I wasn't sure how much Rin had told the other two about it, so I didn't say anything more. I could feel Rin listening right now, anyway, so I had to be more careful about what I said. She was always roused by her name, but it seemed she was pretending to still be asleep. I knew her presence well enough, though, so I knew she was awake.

"Or women," Gumi haughtily added, defending her own right to Rin's heart. Rin was interested in both, she'd told me many times when we'd be watching a television show and she'd start talking about which characters were her favourites and why. She'd been romantically interested in earnest to quite a few female actresses.

"I can't believe Piko's preying on younger girls," Yukari giggled. She knew Piko personally, having been the object of his affections for three confessions before he'd moved on to Rin. On top of that, he was a newer friend of a childhood friend of hers, she said. "He must be getting desperate."

"So says the cougar," Rin piped up.

"And it speaks," I remarked, opening one eye to peer at Rin, who kept her eyes shut even after saying that. Her cheeks were a little pink, and I knew that she was offended by Yukari's words. She was too proud to admit to that, though, and she kept her eyes closed in order to seem cool and collected.

"I'm just teasing, Rin," Yukari insisted, laughing lightly to try to brush it off. "Piko's a great guy, and you're a great girl. I can easily see you two as a couple. You're both pretty quiet."

"That's the main personality trait you link to me?" questioned Rin, releasing a sigh. She repositioned herself to lean her cheek on her arm and shield her eyes from the window, consequentially causing her uniform shirt to fall a little more off her shoulders. I averted my gaze, as did Gumi. Yukari was the only one who didn't feel the need to gaze with caution. "Thanks, Yuu."

"That's not what I meant, Rin," Yukari laughed. "I'm glad that you've found a guy you like. You deserve it." Then, she spread a few papers she'd had on her lap onto my desk. I lifted my head off Gumi's desk and turned the sheets toward me to examine them. Music paper covered in notes and lyrics. "I came up with our next project. It's for Gumi."

Gumi had been pouting about Rin's new love interest a moment ago, but she perked up immediately at the sound of her name and reached over me to grab the sheets. However, before she could grab them, I shifted into her arm to knock her hand away. With a cry of outrage, she reached again, and again I knocked her away. This continued until Yukari took pity on Gumi and grabbed the sheets, knowing I wouldn't argue with her. She then handed them to Gumi. "It's called Runaway Boy and Lost Girl," Yukari told us all. "It'll be a series."

"You're giving the entire thing to Gumi?" Rin wondered absently, too exhausted by the heat to put any more emotion in her voice. "I don't think that's a good idea. Not an entire series, at least."

"No, not the entire series," Yukari corrected herself. "I thought maybe we could have Miku do the next part, then maybe Gakupo." Miku was our upperclassman, and, along with Rin's cousin Len, was a fellow member of the Vocaloid club. What that club name was meant to mean, I'll never be sure. It was Rin who named it.

"What about us?" Rin wondered, not even bothering to lift her head in order to seem just a little more polite. "I'm the club president; I can't just laze around and do nothing."

"You and I will do the editing," Yukari explained.

With that cleared up, Rin thought about it for less than a second before agreeing. "Yeah, that's fine. This can be our cultural festival submission." She locked eyes on me then and said, "You'd better do well, Gakkun, or I'll be mad. And go get me some bread."

Rin had me wrapped around her finger. Anyone could tell. The thing was, I didn't mind. I'd loved her all my life, even if there was someone else she loved, someone only she and I knew about.