For just a moment, everything was right with the world. She had her face snuggled in her cool pillow; her blankets were wrapped around her like she had been sleeping in a cocoon. Yui woke up to a sharp snap of a pillow bouncing off her skull.
"Wake up, sleeping beauty. Time for school." Mao changed for the worse. "You know it takes longer for you to get ready because you have to put on the stupid wig."
They were identical twins. But Mao had been blessed with long dark tresses while her sister had hair white as snow. Seven bottles of dye wasn't enough to keep it dark. Not only was it expensive, it was also ineffective. It was cheaper and easier to wear a wig whenever Yui went out in public, which was pretty much all the time.
"Sorry," she mumbled pensively, crawling herself out of bed.
Mao rolled her eyes. She grabbed their magenta uniforms and tossed one over to her sister. The fabric hit Yui square in the face. The apology was more or less out of habit rather than with any actual compunction. Yui took the uniform, folded it neatly in her arms, and began walking towards the bathroom where she usually changed. She dreaded looking at the mirror like she did every morning. Compared to her sister, who was tall, tan, and beautiful, Yui looked like nothing more than a snow queen. Her long white hair reached her hips, although her eyebrows were black not unlike her sister's. She was thin while Mao was certainly more curvy. Her arms were twigs dangling off her shoulders and her legs were nothing but pocky sticks. Her skin was looked and felt as ice, pale, cold, and clammy. She tore her eyes away from the mirror, shedding her night clothes one by one. They landed in a pile on the bathroom floor to be picked up when she was finished getting dressed. Black tights always suited her best. They covered the fact that her legs were so very pale. Pulling her hair out from the uniform's blouse, Yui picked up her brush and a hair tie. Yui ran the brush through her hair until it became smooth. Tying it up in a messy bun almost at the top of her head, she reached for the black wig hanging by a pair of clothes pins and some string on the wall. The wig cap was nestled neatly inside. It was stretched over her head, being careful not to let the brim of it fall too far down her forehead. With the wig cap safely snug around her scalp, Yui put on her wig.
Mao knocked on the bathroom door, "Are you almost done in there?"
"Almost." She could hear her sister sigh impatiently.
She quickly straightened out her wig so that the strands fell evenly over her shoulders and the bangs were correctly positioned.
The door opened without any further prompting, and Yui found herself being gently pushed out. Mrs. Kagami, their mother, could only smile. Yui brushed past her.
"She's not a morning person." It was the oldest and lamest excuse in the book and neither one of them believed it. It just felt more comfortable to say than the truth.
"I know, mom." She went to wait outside the front door while Mao made herself look pretty.
Yui forced her hands inside the special black leather gloves to keep, but the weather was hot. It wasn't something she liked to do. Her palms and fingers would get sticky with sweat very fast, not to mention the odd looks she would receive. Every day she would have to lie about her gloves. It wasn't a matter of germs or a skin condition. She was afraid of her own power, and Mao didn't help matters either.
"Alright, let's go." Mao barked as she marched out of the door.
Mrs. Kagami stood in the doorway, smiling her bittersweet smile as they left.
"Be safe! Watch out for each other!"
"We know, mom!" Mao shouted back.
When they were well out of sight, Mao sped up ahead of Yui. Her twin lagged behind on purpose. This was how it was and how it would always be, or at least that's how Yui thought it would be.
They entered the school from two different doors. They walked to their lockers which were kept separated at Mao's request. Yui watched from a far distance how her sister mingled with her classmates. There was twinge of jealousy in her heart. Mao would never know how much her sister wanted to be like her. But then, Yui's eyes would be drawn to that faint scar on the side of Mao's throat, and everything would fall apart again. At the sight of it, like it held some kind of control over her, Yui would shrink away from others and mentally retreat into the interior cell she had made for herself.
Yui shuffled her way to her advanced mathematics class. Mr. Kimura smiled gently at her, though she could barely tell from hunching her shoulders and kept her head down even as she walked. Mr. Kimura was the only teacher, the only person in the school that seemed genuinely concerned about her emotional welfare. After the bell rang, they dived right into the math problems the teacher quickly drew up on the board.
She was hardly paying attention as soon as the click-clack of chalk danced across the blackboard. Yui stared blankly at the open textbook before her.
"Yui, would you mind solving the problem on the board?"
"Yes, sir." Disturbed, she stood up and marched up to the chalk board. She could feel the judging eyes staring at the back of her head.
Yui ignored that familiar sensation and focused on solving the math problem Mr. Yukimura drew up on the board. Her hands had difficulty holding onto the piece of chalk; the pieces of leather restrained some of the most basic movements in her fingers.
"You could take those off," Mr. Yukimura suggested as kindly as possible.
"I'd rather not," she snapped, unusually out of character, before turning back to the board.
She stared at the numbers for the longest time. Her brows scrunched as she silently calculated the answer. In a short while, the room was filled with nothing but the sound of her scratching the chalk onto the board in a hurried fashion. When done, she brushed off the white dust and quickly went back to her desk. There were whispers behind, but she couldn't tell if she was just hearing things or if it was just the usual gossip.
"X is equal ninety-eight. Good job." The teacher congratulated her.
"Thank you, sir."
The bell rang, signaling the end of that period. How long had she been day-dreaming? Or, correctly termed staring at her book?
"I want to have your homework completed by tomorrow. All fifty questions done and on my desk. I don't take make-up work."
Students, who barely heard his instructions, were already heading out the door, voices streaming needless and unimportant conversations. Mr. Yukimura noticed that the last student gathering her things was once again Yui Kagami. First to arrive and the last to leave. Mao may have been popular among their peers, but Yui had something her sister didn't, a brilliant mind. Though she ranked only third, her abilities were well above average. He had a theory that she was much smarter than she let others believe. Looking over test scores and then at her homework, which she never got a question wrong, something didn't add up right.
"Yui, can I talk to you for minute?"
Startled, Yui looked around the room. It looked like she was trying to find an excuse to leave, but when she couldn't come up with one; she walked over to her teacher anyway.
"Yes sir?" Her fingers twitched and tensed around the handle on her school bag.
"I have been meaning to talk to you about something," he walked behind his desk and opened one of the drawers. He pulled out a couple of sheets of paper. "I've noticed that you're doing very well on your homework, but when it comes to tests, you seem to miss some pretty easy questions."
He aligned the papers on his desk. One was a sheet of homework questions with a perfect score; the sheet sitting next to it was a test they took last week with a ninety-seven out of a hundred.
"Do you miss questions on purpose, Yui? Because when I look at your homework, I don't see any mistakes, but then you take a test, and you veer off in another direction. Your test scores are good; however I can't help but think that you dumb yourself down. Is this true?"
Yui shook her head vigorously. "Why would I? I have no reason to miss questions. I get test anxiety. That's all."
"Are you sure?" He looked at the sheets on his desk and then back at her.
She nodded her head.
He sighed, however he knew he wasn't going to get anywhere with her. Yui Kagami was so reserved she hardly ever talked to her own twin sister at school. It did beg the question why the girl was so reserved and anti-social. It was rather unsettling actually.
"May I go now?" She asked.
"Sure." Mr. Yukimura waved her off and she scurried off without further ado.
Yui tended to keep her head down when she walked. There was no particular reason except to keep others away and ignore the wondering eyes as she passed. She would be forever known as Mao's weird sister. She would pretend that their words didn't hurt her. They did.
"Look, look, here she comes." One of Mao's friends, Ruka, whispered to the other friend, Miyumi.
"She's so pale. She looks like a Snow Maiden."
"It's kind of creepy." Ruka chuckled. "Is she trying to scare people?"
"Probably doesn't even go outside. Like a vampire."
"Does she think she's a vampire?"
"Who knows? Probably!" The two girls laughed thinking that Yui couldn't hear them.
A lot of people liked to assume that she couldn't hear them. But she did hear them. Every word they said, ever. She knew what they thought of her, and even though it didn't really matter that much to her, her goal in high school wasn't to be popular, it still hurt. It hurt a lot. She wanted to vanish into thin air most days.
Yui shuffled her feet, staring at the floor. Her peers made way for her like she was passing through the Dead Sea. She didn't have to look up in order to see the blank faces and eyes staring at her. Most of them chose not to say anything, some gossiped. The school freak show usually was the only source of entertainment. Meiou High School didn't have too many problems. It was a rather elite school. It did have a couple of bad apples, maybe one or two, but the school housed mostly students who were generally considered well-bred, studious, and helpful to the community, however she never felt threatened.
She was so busy minding her own business and trying to shut out the voices whispering behind her back, Yui failed to notice the gentleman right in front of her. Only to realize it when it was too late, she rammed face person to the student's chest before landing backwards on her behind. She groaned and blinked, blushing when the whispering voices became a chorus of laughter.
"Are you alright?"
Surprised, Yui found a hand held out to her. Raising her eyes upwards, her blush deepened in color. Warmth rose in her cheeks.
Shuichi Minamino.
Shuichi Minamino was offering her his hand.
"I-I'm fine. Thank you." Yui looked away, but took his hand any way. "I-I'm sorry about running into you. I-I wasn't watching where was going."
"You should be more careful."
Their hands were lingering for longer than what Yui deemed appropriate. The leather that separated her skin from his wasn't thick enough. She wanted to rip it away from him, but found she couldn't. His fingers gently squeezed around her hand. There was some kind of spark. Not a romantic spark. Something else. Eventually, she found the courage to take her hand from Shuichi, glaring coldly into his eyes.
She turned to glance over her shoulder, feeling a heated glare boring down on her. Mao's friends were jealous and angry; they didn't bother to hide it. Yui picked up her bag from the floor, kneeling rather than bending over to get it.
"I-I need to get to m-my next class. Excuse me." She ran past him, shoulders brushing.
Yui ran, though she could still hear the laughter and feel Ruka's and Miyumi's glares in the back of her skull. She took her seat at the back of the class. Her hands and legs wouldn't stop shaking. Mao entered the room, her friends walking behind her like her troop. Mao glared at her sister who could only look down at her desk and clamp her hands together.
"So I heard you just bumped into Shuichi Minamino." Mao's hand slammed on top of Yui's desk. "Did you know that I liked him?"
"No," Yui shook her head, "of course I didn't. I just bumped into him that's all."
"Good," but Mao still seemed less than pleased with her answer. She spun on her heel quickly followed by her pack. Yui felt like crawling into a hole. This day kept getting better and better, sarcasm.