Summary: AU. Anna Kyouyama's life is hell. At work or at home, everyone hates her. That is, everyone except a certain dark haired Shaman who everyone took for dead… Anna x Hao. Rated for sexual content and bad language.

Hello all! Well, this is my first SK story. If you could leave a review at the end, I'd be more than grateful. Just a little warning: this story is rated R. This means that there is explicit sexual content and some bad language. Not in this chapter, but in forthcoming chapters. Don't like, don't read!

Heated Ice, Chapter 1

My name is Anna Kyouyama.

I hate my name. Just the sound of it makes most people back off. Like at work: "Look out, Anna Kyouyama's coming!" Then everyone runs off down the corridor leaving it free for me to walk down it myself. I pretend to like that. Or, sometimes with Yoh and his friends: "Oh no, Anna Kyouyama's here!" And you know what they get for that? You're right, a slap and possibly some training. What they don't know is that I only punish them because they resent me. If they accepted me, then I would accept them, too. But because they expect me to do something bad, I give them their request. Of course, they don't see it that way. But when has anyone ever seen things my way?

Even Yoh, my fiancée hates me. I've seen the way he shoots glares at me when he's training. I laugh and pretend to be proud of it, claiming that it's for his own good, but deep down inside it hurts so much. I only came to 'help him train' because I hoped that he would accept me instead of judging me straight away. Which, of course, he did. Everyone does. Well, I suppose there was one person who accepted me and that was Hao. But I still had my hopes set on Yoh at the time he asked me to join him and besides, there were other people there to tell on me if I'd done anything they considered 'wrong'. If we were alone, I would have accepted his offer straight away and then done everything in my power to destroy Yoh and the other people who judged me.

Is it just because they don't know what it's like? Is that why they are able to so easily tell me I'm heartless, but then go and have a fight with their own friends? Oh, that must be the reason. It's because I don't have any friends that they think I can't get in a temper. Ren and Horo are sometimes the same as me: arguing and fighting each other physically, but no one shuns them because they're friends and they always make up in the end, even if they hate each other's guts for a few days afterwards. Why can't it be like that with me? If I had the chance, I'd say sorry to Yoh for making his train, sorry to Manta for making him my personal slave, sorry to everyone who I slapped, even Hao. But no one gives me that chance, and besides, they'd probably think I was mocking them.

Life's not fair, is it?

You could say that all I want is for life to accept me. That's not hard for most people. They can just be themselves and everyone loves them. I have to try hard to be accepted, but then no one likes me anyway. I don't see what I'm doing wrong. Sure, sometimes I lose control of my temper and slap people, but if they just stopped aggravating me by being stupid and lazy all the time, then maybe I wouldn't slap them and we'd get along fine! But no. Everyone I meet seems to either be evil or stupid. Mostly stupid. Actually, only one person I met was evil and that was Hao. But now he's dead because a certain fiancée of mine killed him. Good going, Yoh.

Okay, let's review the facts: I'm twenty-two years old. It has been eight years since Hao was killed. I work in an office. I am engaged to Yoh Asakura, a completely lazy bastard who hates the sight of me. No one can bear to be in my company for longer than they have to. Everyone hates me. I hate everyone. You know, sometimes I get the feeling that my life isn't complete. That maybe there's something out there that's better than this thing I'm living that calls itself life. I know that there can be something better. I've seen Ren and Pirika kissing each other in an alleyway in town and can't imagine me and Yoh in that position. You know something else? I don't want to get married. Especially not to Yoh. You know one more thing? I want to be where Pirika was, but not with Ren, not with Yoh, and not with anyone else I know. I want someone to tell me they love me and prove it to me. But I guess that's never going to happen, is it? Nothing ever goes the way I want it to.

TBC…

I know that chapter was really short, but I'll make the rest much longer. If you could leave a review to tell me what you think so far I'd be really grateful. It'll make me update sooner!

Aoi Kasumi