A/N: I adopted the story from ShatteredLyre. You should go read her own story in this theme, about Yoh and Anna. :D By the way the story is dedicated to ShatteredLyre, because she's been such a great inspiration to me when it comes to fanfiction, and to sOrbetes, because she's so nice and she has adopted the RenPiri story of the same subject. Here's to breaking the law of Canon!

1. Crossing paths.

She probably didn't remember that, Horohoro thought some years later, but when Yoh introduced her to him, it wasn't the first time he saw her.

The first time he saw her was some days before their actual meeting. She was walking down the street, her hands clutching bags full of groceries. The way she was looking on the pavement in front of her, instead of looking around her, with that mass of pink hair falling on her face, he wouldn't have really noticed her. It was the spirits that made him notice.

Seriously, what was going on with those spirits? He was pretty sure he had never seen such obnoxious, loud-mouthed spirits before. Did they hold some kind of swear word competition? Then he realized that they must have been following the pink-haired girl, because if it weren't for them, she didn't have any reason to blush like she did. So the girl was a shaman. She certainly didn't look like one, but what you see isn't always what is real.

The girl suddenly averted her eyes, looking around her, as if worrying about someone seeing – or worse, hearing – her spirits, and trying unsuccessfully to make them shut it, without looking like a lunatic. Still looking around, she shifted the bags in her hands, and he thought that, for a moment, her gaze fell on him. Nice, now she'd think he was some random stranger staring at her. However, she didn't seem to notice that. She continued walking, and then she took the next turn. He shrugged and yawned, putting his hands on his pockets and kicking a pebble before getting up from the bench he was sitting on.

"And this is Tamao. She's, uh, my dad's apprentice. And she cooks well. Extremely well!"

He was surprised to meet that girl again, now her hair better combed, and wearing a white kimono. Her spirits were there, too, as weird and loud-mouthed as he remembered them. The girl, uh, Tamao, blushed at Yoh's compliment.

"Nice to meet you, Horohoro-san." She bowed politely. "I-I… thank y-you, Yoh-sama."

"Nice to meet you, too", he said being polite for the first time in his life. There was something genuine in the girl's politeness that made him want to be polite in reverse, too. "No need for '-san'. No-one ever says that anyway." He shrugged, not really caring for anything except for the fact that there was food mentioned. "It's lunch time, isn't it?" He told Yoh, forgetting his momentary manners.

"Yes, sure! Come on."

He smiled at the girl cheerfully before following Yoh. She smiled (not bowed) back.

In fact, he was wrong. Tamao did remember him. She was a prophetess after all. As she walked down that street, she could feel that there was a person there whose path would cross hers soon. Not only would it cross it, but for a long time, the two would go on together. For a time so long, that she couldn't even see when or if it would end. When she looked around, trying to locate the source of the premonition, she saw far too many people for her to be sure which was the one the feeling referred to. The one that looked the most unusual of all the people around her, was a blue-haired boy on the other side of the road. She gazed at him for a moment, but afraid that she would be caught staring, she lowered her eyes again and left.

When Yoh-sama introduced his friend to her, she was immediately reminded of the boy she had seen. Even though she didn't know if he was the one who she was supposed to cross paths with, she knew that he, premonition or not, would have an impact on her life, just because was nice to her.

She never told him all this. It would turn his head even more.

A/N: At last, I did this! Now I just have to finish the second chapter of Montage, Decoupage, and Organic Coffee. Which, by the way, you should read.(yees, shameless plug.) And, uh, study. Cool.