Disclaimer: None of the characters mentioned are mine. This is a complete work of fiction and any resemblance seen in characters, the story plot, settings, and such (unless otherwise stated) is purely coincidental.

Based on the songs "Kokoro" and "Kokoro/Kiseki".

"Thank you for the food[1]…"

Putting his chopsticks down onto the table, he stared at the empty seat in front of him across the wooden table. It was a sight he usually saw twice a day. Once during breakfast, and a second time during dinner time.

He sat in front of a large wooden table surrounded by four wooden chairs, two on each of the longer ends of the table. Clearly it was something normally intended for a family of four. They were a family of three, but two of them had probably never sat at the table for more than five minutes at a time.

Getting up from the table, Len took his dirty dishes over to the sink and turned the water on. He was now tall enough to do the dishes on his own without a footstool.

Once, just once when he still had difficulty reaching the sink on his own, he tired leaving his dishes out on the table without putting them away. He had wondered if his parents would get mad at him. He had imagined them scolding him about how he should at least put them away in the sink, perhaps even take away his privileges to watch TV and set an earlier curfew for him. The idea had excited him. He had been just a little frightened of being yelled at, but somehow there was a slight feeling of anticipation as well. He remembered having trouble sleeping that night, hoping to stay away long enough to hear his parents' footsteps enter the hallway.

He had, unfortunately, fallen asleep and could not stay up long enough. The house had been silent that morning, just as it always was. However, he still held a little hope that something was different, that perhaps something would happen soon. Only, nothing ever happened. The dishes he had left on the table had been cleared away, and the only message left for him was the usually one he saw:

[There is lunch for you in the fridge. Have fun at school. - Love, Mom]

"Ah…" Len shook his head as he realized that he had been completely lost in the single memory. Surprisingly enough, he had finished washing the dishes and was actually in the middle of putting them back in their respective shelves. The simple chore was apparently so simple that he didn't even need to be consciously aware of his actions to complete.

-Line Break-

Sighing aloud, he retired back into his room and turned his computer on. It was a beautiful afternoon during summer vacation, but he hadn't made any plans to go anywhere and he wasn't particularly interested in making any plans either. 'Oh…' He thought to himself, 'I guess at some point… I became used to solitude.'

He didn't want to be alone, yet being with others made him feel slightly awkward. And so he wanted to be with others. And so he wanted to avoid people and stay alone. The two contradictory wishes always fought for dominance in his heart, and usually the latter wish won out. Because it was easier to accomplish.

"…" After double-clicking the web browser icon on his desk-top, he loaded up the popular search engine Googol[2]. He tried typing out: How to invite friends out. In 0.24 seconds (according to the search engine), he had gotten around 154,000,000 results. He tried clicking on a few links, avoiding the ones that seemed to be instructions focused less on friends and more on inviting people of the opposite gender out.

In the end it was all the same kind of information. All it amounted to was that if anyone wanted to invite a friend out they should pick a place to go and call to ask if anyone wanted to hang out. The steps were simple enough, and he had already invited people out quite a few times in the past. Yet… For some reason the process never seemed to get easier for him.

Thinking about it logically, it was no big deal. His friends had other friends, and they had a life that he was not entirely aware of. Even if they said 'no' one, they would say 'yes' to a different invitation at a different time. Yet every time he decided to ask his friends to go somewhere, he could feel cold sweat beginning to drip down his neck. His mind asked him meaningless questions, the same questions in fact, over and over in the same repeating circle of thought.

To put it simply, he was afraid of rejection. Len knew that he actually had no reason to worry, yet his emotions simply could not keep up with his mind.

"Ugh… Just what am I doing, anyway?" He shouted out into an empty room and hit his own forehead a few times with his fist. "I don't even want to go out right now, it's too hot for anything."

He sighed a second time, and put his head down on his desk. 'Am I being too spoiled?' He wondered.

His fridge was always full of food. His parents, although they were rarely around, did care for him. He had good grades. His family had quite a bit of money too. And he had plenty of friends to hang out with. "… Yup, I'm completely spoiled." He sighed a third time and hit his head against the hard surface of the desk as he answered his own question.

'Everything I want and could want is in my reach… I just need to stretch my arm out and grab it. Whatever it is. Everything…'

Notes:

[1] – The Japanese have a certain phrase they after every meal that is said to show a small sign of gratitude.

[2] – This is not a typo, and I'm sure everyone actually knows what I'm referring to. I honestly don't think there would be any problems with writing out the real name of the search engine, but I always found it fun to see well-known labels typed out with a single letter difference and such on anime and manga so I decided to use the same kind of system here.

Author's Notes: This is my first time writing a fanfic, and I haven't read many either so I'm not quite sure how other people generally structure their stories so I am simply writing as I please in my own way. I'm also quite sure there must be other stories based on these two lovely songs, but I have firmly decided not to read any of them until I finish writing this first (to make sure that I don't get influenced by them and/or accidentally copy any ideas without consciously meaning to). Anyway, thank you for reading the first chapter and I hope that I will be able to entertain people with this story.