Disclaimer: I do not own Gakuen Alice! The song Mikan sings in this chapter is Lonely Day by Phantom Planet.
Author's Notes: Magic, bickering, EXTREMELY ALTERNATE UNIVERSE. Just so you know. Oh, and maybe this could be seen as a Rapunzel parody, but meh. That wasn't my intention. This is a rewrite & repost of a fic I almost abandoned. (And then I switched accounts, so.)

Prologue
"Music could ache and hurt, that beautiful music was a place a suffering man could hide." ― Pat Conroy

Long-lashed, hazel eyes slowly blinked open as pale sunlight streamed through a window with thick bars. It was early morning. The owner of the doe-like eyes sat up and yawned, stretching her pale, slender arms.

She stood up gingerly on the cold, concrete floor, looking around the empty room with the sleepily uninterested air of one who knew exactly what they would see. Her bare feet were used to the coolness of the floor, and she moved around like it wasn't emitting a crippling cold.

In the middle of the floor was a tray that held a pile of freshly-baked bread lathered in butter. Sitting next to it was a glass filled with water, which tasted vaguely of mint. She bit into a piece of warm bread hungrily, closing her eyes and taking in the light aroma of yeast.

Hot bread and cool water were always there when she woke up. It was natural for her to go to sleep when she felt hungry; by the time she opened her eyes, food would be there, whether she had been hungry or not. She didn't question it. She didn't know things should have been different. It had been like that for as long as she could remember, and so far, her memory had not told her otherwise.

She finished two more pieces of bread, and sipped at her water. She softly hummed an oddly familiar tune as she held the glass, misty fingerprints condensing on where she held it. Maybe she had only dreamed the tune, maybe she had just made it up, but she could, at times, drudge up a memory with a rocking sensation, and woman's voice humming it to her. She liked to think that it was her mother's voice, and so clung to the tune like a child would cling to a security blanket.

Why she clung to it was a mystery to her, except that the tune gave her a warm feeling, a feeling of love and security. It made her feel safe, which was odd, since she knew that nothing could hurt her inside the room. Even though she thought of the empty room she currently occupied as her home, there were always lingering feelings of doubt, of loneliness.

She didn't know why.

Her gaze flickered over to an ancient guitar in the corner of her room, sitting next to a small, piano-colored xylophone. The guitar was old, yes, but it functioned well. She grabbed it and plucked gently at the strings. After a few seconds, she started singing softly, her eyes on the single barred window in the room.

Singing was her morning ritual, a way of filling the silence that shrouded her. Music was her life, her escape, her ideal to fight off all those confusing emotions welling inside of her.

I could tell from the minute I woke up
It was going to be a lonely lonely
lonely lonely day.

She paused, mouth twisting. She started to strum harder, the tune turning into something jagged and sharp.

Rise and shine rub the sleep out of my eyes
And try to tell myself I can't
go back to bed

It's gonna be a lonely lonely lonely lonely—

She broke off. Her throat closed up. She shook her head, as if trying to shake something off. It's not healthy, Mikan, stop making yourself sad, she scolded herself in her mind grimly.

She stood up, still holding the guitar, and walked towards another side of the room. She put the guitar gently down on the freezing concrete.

She reached for a wooden box, fingering it as she stepped closer to the looming gray, concrete wall in front of her. She pulled out a cashmere pastel, the soft color of a sunset. She knew this because she spent many hours of her time staring out of the window, her legs crossed and her chin propped up with her hand, watching the sky turn from crimson and gold to endless blue to dark black and back again.

I should be happy.

The thought came to her out of nowhere, but she knew it was true. So why wasn't she?

She sat down on her legs, pressing her lips together for an instant. She put the wooden box down and pressed the pastel on the wall. She wrote gently, taking care not break the old crayon. She stopped, briefly strummed some notes, and wrote on the wall again.

After an hour, she had written about ten measures of a song, this time with no words.

A smile played on her lips. She was in complete bliss, lost in thoughts about chords and notes. Music made her completely happy. It made her forget so many unexplainable sorrows— until she wrote the lyrics. All the lyrics she wrote... Well, they sure didn't sound happy.

She stared at the walls around the room. She had started writing on them only a few years ago. The pastels were always there, but she didn't want to use them all. She was afraid they'd all be gone long before she died.

She assumed that she would stay in there for the rest of her life, and nothing happened that showed that the outcome would change anytime soon.

Dull. Everything was so dull. And she didn't know what was more to be lived.

A pair of teenage boys jumped through the trees, deep inside a forest they had never dared to step foot in before. They were panting heavily and sweat beaded their foreheads, which, on one of them, was scrunched up in frustration. Shouts rang clearly as they sprinted deeper into the trees, not caring at all if they got lost. In truth, they were keen to the thought.

"Spoiled brats! Get back here!"

"Don't call them brats! Idiot!"

"Come back, you three!"

At the last remark, the boys widened their eyes in alarm. Three? Nobody else had come with them, had there? Their eyes met, having a silent exchange. Had there? They looked back and their eyes darted around as they ran, but there was no sign that anyone else was running with them.

Half-hearted smirks flitted quickly across both of their handsome faces. Did these people really think they would fall for that? They increased their speed, ducking their heads down. They weren't going to be caught just yet.

The trees changed, their branches dipped low, and seemed to be grabbing out to them, leaves hissing as they bolted past. The ground thumped from the impact of their steps, which were getting slower every second.

One of them stumbled on a large tree root, making the other to grab and roughly pull him along. "Just a little while.. longer.." the boy muttered to his companion. His companion nodded in fierce determination and started running again.

The shouts of their pursuers were slowly fading away. This part of the forest, with its low-branched trees and gnarled roots, seemed to be too dense for their liking. One of the runaways started to smile, while the other set his jaw and ran faster.

"When're we.. going to.. stop?" the smiling one asked, keeping up. The other one glared at him, as if to say, Don't you dare grin at a time like this.

The goofy smile was wiped off his face, his expression slightly hurt.