Another story of mine, this time not about Tales of Symphonia.
I wrote this story a bit as a storyline page for me, since I'm playing with
the thought of turning this into a manga. And this helps me to weed out
ideas not to put in the manga form. Quick data the heroine is named Haruka Sekai
with her birthday dated as August 1st and with bloodtype AB.
"Once upon a time a travelling prince crossed a kingdom in which a beautiful princess lived.
As soon as his eyes had set on her he had fallen in love with her. His feelings were reciprocated.
The princess' father - the king -, though, did not wish for his daughter to marry the prince.
So, in anger, he threw the prince out of his kingdom.
The prince and princess, however, met at the gate one night. They pledged their eternal love
to another. 'Wait for me and I promise I will return to you, no matter what' , he told his love
and kissed her hand through the gate bars. 'I will wait forever, if I have to. However, I will
pray for your swift and safe return to me ..'
The princess spent every day and night at the chapel, praying for her love's return to her
and for his health." the young boy's voiced echoed through the halls of the church.
His arm lifted and he pointed to something straight ahead. "Look. Over there. That stained glass
window. It was modelled after the legend." She looked at the boy, but couldn't quite lift her head
high enough to see his face, but merely his lips moving. "I wonder if the prince managed to return
to the princess .. I'm sure he did. Say, let's meet here again, yes? Every day. A promise, okay?"
Haruka sat up with a start in her bed and screwed up her face in confusion. What a strange dream ..
Yet it had felt familiar somehow, like it had really happened. But that was nonsense. Dreams are dreams
and nothing more. She swung her legs out of bed and started to get dressed, proudly fondling the navy
blue uniform of her new school.
"Sis, you up?" a boy with short auburn hair entered the room without knocking and grinned at his sister,
so fond of her uniform. "Yes, finally the day you go to Habataki High, I know .. Man, I hope you will come
off your happy-cloud about it soon."
Haruka ignored that comment - yes, she had been rather restless about the prospect about changing from
middle to high school. And Habataki High was one of the best schools, after all. Her excitement should've
been understandable from her little brother. With a short word of goodbye she put her favorite brown
ankle boots on and left for school.
Habataki High was a newly built construction and shaped like an L. Already several students were miling
about the outside, eager to go inside and into their new classes or to stroll around the lot. Realizing
that she was rather early, Haruka decided to walk around the lot and see the volleyball and basketball
courts and the other buildings spread out.
It only took her a few minutes to see, a little tucked away behind some large trees, the chapel. It was
small and the bell tower was placed right at the front, whitewashed and yet it looked rather old. The amount
of trees around it gave it a pretty scenery, making it appear like one found themselves suddenly in a forest.
Interested, Haruka stepped closer feeling a bit intimidated. Or rather awestruck. The chapel was, despite
it's size, an impressive building. She took a step back, about to go back to the main building, but lost her
balance and fell rather hard on the ground.
"Here." a deep, soft voice said and a hand extended towards her. The hand belonged to a guy her age
with ashblond hair that circled his face but was styled to outwards bending spikes. His bright blue eyes
looked down at her and she couldn't stop staring at him. "What's wrong? Come on."
She took the hand and he helped her up, she patted some dust off her skirt nervously. "I'm sorry, Senpai."
"I'm also a first-year." he said. "You should hurry up and go back."
"Ah, yes." Haruka said nervously, wondering why she felt that she was caught misbehaving. "Um, thanks for helping me up .."
"Hazuki. Hazuki Kei." the guy answered. "Now go."
Haruka nodded again, "See you later, Hazuki-kun." and hurried back to the main building.
Haruka sighed in relief. That scene just now left her feeling embarrassed - not the fact that the first guy she met in her new
school was so good-looking, but just the way he had talked to her, had helped her up close to the chapel. His voice seemed
to indicate that students weren't allowed there. Then again, what was he doing there?
"Hey there!" and a slight bang on her back made Haruka start. "Sorry, did that hurt?"
The girl who had spoken had brown hair that looked almost orange turned up to a spikey ponytail. There seemed to be a permanent
grin in her eyes, even if her lips would be turned down to a frown. Haruka stared in a daze, but caught herself fast enough.
"No. No, just .. you know, surprised me." she said with a handwave. "Say, are you a first-year?"
"Yup. Fujii Natsumi. You can call me Natsumi."
"Ah, Sekai Haruka. Nice to meet you." Haruka hesitated for a moment, but thought that asking couldn't hurt. "Do you perhaps know
anything about Hazuki-kun?"
" .. 'Hazuki-kun?' Ah, Hazuki Kei, sure I know him. Well, not personally, but I've heard about him. First-year but he's already one of
the most known students in the entire school, his grades from middle school were perfect, he looks good and his pretty much
a perfect guy. He even models part-time! Between us, he's quite the catch, Haruka. I can call you Haruka, right?"
"Sure. Wow .. he models .." she mumbled and started when the bell rang. "Got to go. See you, Fujii-san-"
"Call me Natsumi." Natsumi grinned and waved before rushing off to her own class.
In the classroom, Haruka sighed and waited for the teacher to arrive. She had already seen some of her classmates and Hazuki
was among them. Also a girl with short red hair and glasses, who looked rather stern straight ahead at the blackboard,
as if there was an extremely interesting message written on it, and a girl with short green hair and bright eyes that were a brown
color that looked almost red. The door slid open and a tall man with pale skin and even paler lavender hair entered, pushing his
oval glasses up before facing the class.
"Welcome to Habataki High School, I'm your homeroom, math and physics teacher, Himuro Reiichi. Over the next three years I'll
teach you everything I know. Any questions?" he said in a cool, yet stern voice.
"Yes, here!" a girl smirked boldly. "Sensei, do you have a lover?"
"Aside from questions in that direction!" Himuro replied with slight annoyance. "None? Very well. I'll take attendance before I go
over your test schedule for this trimester."
He read off name after name until he finally got to the lower bottom of the list. "Sekai." and his eyes, the same cold lavender
color as his hair, searched hers. "Your tie is crooked. Fix it."
With a slightly embarrassed gasp Haruka quickly pulled the ends of her tie and got them straight while the rest of attendance was made.
The rest of the schoolday went by in a slight blur, the typical first-schoolday shuffle went on with slight groans of the amount of
homework already given to them. Back at home Haruka took her shoes off and felt exhausted even before her brother approached her.
"Sis, welcome back!" he said with his typically loud voice.
".. I'm back." she replied with no enthusiasm and walked towards her room to change.
"So, did you meet any cute guys you want to date?"
The question made Haruka stop dead and turn in slight amazement towards her brother. "Tsukushi .." she struggled for the right
words. "What's with that question?"
"Well, Sis never had a date before or a boyfriend. I mean you're in high school now. It's time you get a guy!" he told her, following
her with fast steps into her room. "I would feel terrible if I got a girlfriend before my Sis did."
Furiously, Haruka fumbled with her corrected tie and flung it onto her desk. "Why does it matter that much to you? And the chance
of you getting a girlfriend soon is pretty slim, I believe. I don't need to worry about it so soon-"
"So you met a guy!" Tsukushi grinned when his sister blushed. "It's okay you can tell your little brother. Just tell me their name and I'll
get you any information you might need. You can trust your little bro's spy-skills."
Haruka sighed, defeated. "Sure. If I need any information I'll come to you .." she said it more to get rid of him rather than actually
taking him up on his offer. It seemed to have worked, because Tsukushi left her room to go into his own, and she finished changing.
A few hours later, while she was busy trying to make sense of a math assignment, the phone rang and she picked it up instictively.
"Hello?"
"Ah .." the other one said and seemed to hesitate. ".. who's there?"
"Sekai. Haruka." she added fast.
"Ah .. It's Hazuki-"
"Hazuki-kun?" Haruka couldn't help but be surprised. Why was he calling her? Was he calling her? What for? And how did he get her number?
"Ah, I must've misdialled. .. Bye." and he hung up.
Confused, Haruka looked at the display and still saw Hazuki's number printed on it. And she wrote it down, in case she ever felt like
calling him.
A week went by without much happening. Trying to get into the rhythm of things, Haruka spent most of her time learning the layout
of school, doing homework and reading the Habataki Watcher. Usually she read it online, but she saw the magazine in it's paper form at
a stand close by school once and quickly made it a habit of buying and reading it. It had a lot of information on Habataki and it's
surroundings. Haruka's favorite column, though, was about what the most fashionable accessory or color was during that month.
She always did have a weakness for fashion.
But she usually spent lunch break reading it alone. Arisawa Shiho, the red-haired girl with glasses, was rather a no-nonsense kind of
person and didn't seem that interested in fashion, but more into studying. And Konno Tamami, the green-haired girl, was usually the
longer half of the lunch break in the gym, managing the girl's basketball team. Sometimes Natsumi joined Haruka, but not always.
Finished with lunch one day, Haruka sat in the hall in front of her classroom and flipped through the Habataki Watcher, looking for
her horoscope.
"Haruka-chan? Is you, eh?"
Surprised she looked up and saw a guy with tanned skin, wild and slightly long purple hair looking back at her. His hazel eyes had a funny
glint in them and she noticed that around his neck, keeping the focus from his shirt which had the first button undone, a thin leather choker.
"Ah, yeah." Haruka said and got up, feeling like she should do that.
"Yah, I heard about ya." he said and grinned friendly. "Also saw ya reading the Watcher a lot."
Haruka kept looking in his eyes - or at least trying to not look at the slight amount of skin showing below his collar bone - and felt amazed
at hearing his kansai accent. She hadn't heard it before. It fascinated her.
"Say, when school's over, wanna go on a date?" he asked.
"Hah?" she couldn't help but feel rather dumb about her stunned reaction, but being asked out suddenly during lunch break in the hallway
from a guy she just met freaked her out a bit. "Wh .. I .. Who are you?"
"Ah, sorry. I'm Kijyou Madoka." he introduced himself with an apologetic smirk. "So, how 'bout it? We could check the park-Ah .. damn .."
Haruka wondered why his attitude changed suddenly and saw him sigh and scratch the back of his head.
"I forgot. I start work today .." he sighed again, seeming to take the sudden date-decline - to which Haruka had no chance to react yet -
rather hard. He snipped his fingers the next second, though. "How 'bout we do it during Golden Week?"
"Huh? Um .." she replied smartly. She really wished she could handle this situation better and think of something else to say.
Kijyou looked at her. "If ya don't want to, is okay." and shrugged his shoulders a bit.
"Uh, no, no. I mean, sure. Sure let's uh .. let's go." she stammered suddenly.
Kijyou smiled and waved when the bell rang for the end of lunch break. "Meet at 1, okay?"
Haruka nodded and entered her classroom after watching Kijyou disppear into the room of her parallel-class.
I'm leaving some japanese terms in, but Tsukushi is referring to Haruka as Sis because ..
well his voice is the same as Genius' japanese voice and with my ToS stories I'm sort of used to using Sis now.
I wasn't quite sure how to make Madoka's speech - I didn't want to do it like Gaki's from Zettai Kareshii, who is also
from kansai, cause that would've been a bit hard to understand. So I went for this.
By the way, the better the relationship between Haruka and Madoka gets he will be referred to as Madoka in later
chapters.