In Love With Cupid
Prologue
"Daddy! Mummy!" A young Arthur Kirkland ran into his home, a look of confused fear on his face, if there is such a look.
"Arthur? What's the matter?" Erica Kirkland picked up her son as soon as he was in the room.
"I...I don't know. I was in school and all the sudden I started seeing these paths or something connecting people together! I didn't know what was going on and I know for sure I didn't see them yesterday!" Arthur said, his words rushed. Erica glanced at the boy's father who had just entered the room as well.
"You see paths connecting people together, is that what I heard?" he asked.
"Yeah," Arthur looked down and half expected his parents to tell him he'd gone mad. Instead, his father sighed and sat down.
"Arthur, can you sit with me?" The man asked, patting the spot beside him on the couch. "I think you need to know something about us."
"What do you mean?" Arthur was definitely not expecting this.
"You know all of the stories I tell you about fairies and unicorns and dragons and everything like that?" His father asked, not sure exactly how to explain this. It was kind of complicated.
"Y-yes," Arthur answered.
"Well, most of them are real. Well not the stories themselves, but the creatures in them." Arthur's dad, Thomas, said.
"Really? That's amazing!" Arthur exclaimed, bouncing around on the couch.
"Sit down, Arthur." Arthur sat. "Alright, here's the thing. We have a spot among the creatures in those stories."
"We do?"
"Yes. We're typically called matchmakers. Pretty much, our job is to make sure people with a path between them meet at some point and get them to fall on love. Now, the fact that you started seeing the paths now-"
"This sounds boring and mushy. I hate romance." Arthur flipped upside down with his head hanging over the edge of the couch.
"You're also seven." Thomas pointed out before continuing. "Once you get a little older, you're going to have to start doing your job."
"But it's weird." Arthur complained.
"How so?"
"Some of the paths were barely there and stuff. There were also paths that went from a boy to a boy and a girl to a girl. That's gross." To exaggerate his point, he stuck out his tongue. Thomas chuckled at the sight.
"Alright, first of all, some boys like boys and some girls like girls. It's something you'll get used to." All the man got in reply from his son was a crinkled nose. "There is also a reason some of the paths are barely there. Until the paths are obviously there with no holes or faded parts or anything like that, they can change. A person can have two paths in their life or they can have two hundred. The paths aren't permanent until they are practically solid."
"That makes no sense. This all sounds really boring." Even still, Arthur grew curious if not a little excited about being able to see who people's soul mates were. He sat up and looked down at his father's feet.
"Daddy," Arthur said after a minute of intense staring.
"What is it?" Thomas asked.
"You don't have a path leading to anyone." It was true, unlike everyone else he had seen, there was no path below Arthur's father's feet.
"That's one side effect of being a matchmaker. You don't have a path of your own. Whoever had the ability to see paths in your family before you decided who you'll be with."
"Why?"
"It's to, er, well, it's to make sure you have someone who you can keep the trait going in our family."
"That's stupid." Arthur muttered. "Did mummy have a path?"
"Yes."
"It lead to you, right?"
"After my dad chose her it did."
"Oh. Hey daddy, I know I don't have a path but what would happen if I fell in love with someone?" Arthur wasn't sure why he asked that. He didn't care about love. Girls have cooties, everyone knows that.
"You would have to forget about them. Every time a matchmaker falls in love with someone, they eventually feel the same way. When that happens, the paths make an unexpected change and can potentially mess with the entire system. Plenty of people that were supposed to be born never were because the father or the mother fell in love with the matchmaker in charge of getting them together with the person they should've had a baby with. Then sometimes a person falls in love with a matchmaker. The same thing happens, unexpected people are born, and things just get messed up."
"So, are we the only matchmakers in the world?" That was what Arthur really wanted to know.
"Of course not! There is a family with at least one matchmaker in it in every city, town, and neighborhood. People just don't know it." Thomas said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Daddy, what if I don't want to be a matchmaker?" In all honesty, it just sounded boring and seemed like it'd be too much work.
"Sorry Arthur, it's your job. You don't have to start now. There are three rules of being a matchmaker; you have to just suck it up and do it, you can't change the paths, and you can't love someone who already has a path leading to someone else. Those are just the simple truths of your life now."
That was 10 years ago. I'm Arthur Kirkland and up until I was 17, I've lived by my father's three rules for my job. However, when I was 17 and went into my last year of high school, I was put on the task of getting Alfred F. Jones with his friend Kiku Honda. Little had I known how much that simple task was going to change me.
AN: HI! This is my first story on FF. I already put this up on DeviantArt (I'm Akatsukigirl99 on there, if anyone reading this wants to make me happy by checking out my account and maybe giving me a watch). SO I only have the first two chapters finished and the third one is halfway done. I'll try to update this as often as possible but, considering how much stuff is going on in my life right now (school and I'm moving) and how little motivation I have for this story (reviews make me write faster), I wouldn't count on this being a daily or weekly thing.
Anyway, I hope you like this and, well, yeah. BYE!