one;

No matter what I do, I can't seem to stop thinking about her. I just can't get that cool smile of hers out of my head. Thinking of her, I always feel fired up on the inside.

That's right – Takishima Keiko is my rival!

Okay, I should back up and explain everything first. I'm not really used to keeping a journal (I refuse to call this thing a diary) although I did win second prize in a poetry competition once. Anyway, here goes:

My name is Hanazono Hikaru and I am the proud son of a carpenter. I also attend Hakusenkan and I have to work hard to keep up my grades. This is all for the sake of defeating my destined eternal rival. I bet I could beat her if I try. I think. I don't know, Takishima just pisses me off.

Some people might say it's pathetic for a guy to be so hung up on beating a girl, but those people obviously haven't met Takishima. I've just never seen her lose at anything in my life, and I should know, since I'm always the one coming second place. Damn her. She transcends gender.

(Actually, I think she's an alien. But when I said that to her face, she just smirked at me. What kind of answer is that? Seriously, you'd think Her Highness would grace me with a response.)

Looks like this turned into a rant. Sorry. I did have a purpose for writing all of that. See, something happened the other day that involved Takishima. Normally, I'd talk to my friends if there's something bothering me, but this really isn't something I can mention aloud. So pen, meet paper. Paper, meet pen.

Takishima and I are both in the Special A class, reserved for the top seven students in the school, so we come into contact with each other on a day-to-day basis. Not to mention we've known each other since we were kids. I was asked by one of the teachers to deliver some papers to Takishima so I went looking for her in our building. Our classroom was empty except for Takishima who was, um, how should I put this…?

She was kind of half-naked.

She was changing her clothes. I swear I didn't see anything! Well, I knew enough to realise she was undressed. So I promptly scrunched my eyes shut and hid my face behind my hands. Then the papers I was holding fell to the floor and made a shuffling noise.

I cursed my clumsiness. When Takishima looked up at me and made a coughing noise I knew I'd screwed up majorly. Sure, I've known Takishima for ages, but we're not that close.

The thing about Takishima, though, is that nothing ever seems to rattle her.

"Are you done freaking out yet?" she asked, or something to that effect.

Geez, how can a semi-naked girl succeed in looking so smarmy? She was totally laughing at my embarrassment! Stupid Takishima. I said I wasn't freaking out or anything. I totally yelled at her to make sure she got that point. But then she didn't move and it didn't look like she was about to put on her shirt (at least she was wearing a bra…) and at that point, I just felt like fleeing the room as fast as I could. Life sucks. But for some reason, my feet were frozen to the spot.

"It's just a bit of flesh, Number Two," said Takishima.

Okay, that pissed me off. "Don't call me Number Two!" Then I said, "Put on a shirt, you dumbass!"

"That's no way to talk to a lady."

"Argh! Shut up! Why are we having this conversation? Someone's gonna come in!"

Takishima chuckled as she finally put on her shirt. It appeared she was changing into her gym clothes. "This is why you'll always be Number Two, Hikaru."

I never get it when she says stuff like that. It's like she knows something that I don't.

"What are you saying, Takishima?"

"See those papers you dropped?" She inclined her head towards my feet and then flicked her long, brown hair behind her ear. She was so utterly cool and blasé. "Take a look at them."

I did; I smoothed out the fallen leaves of papers and squinted at the text on them. It was last month's midterm results.

As usual, Takishima had gotten perfect marks across the board. I had made one slight misspelling of a name on my history test, so I had dropped one mark in total. I was in second place in the entire school.

Normally, a person would be happy about scoring so well, but I wasn't entirely satisfied. The girl who had beaten me just smiled at me, as if amused by my efforts. Something told me she enjoyed seeing me squirm.

The weirdest part is how all the boys in school think she's so pretty and perfect. I'm not going to bother arguing with all of that, but I am going to say this: perfection is the benchmark just waiting to be surpassed.

That's how I feel about Takishima Keiko.

"I'm not gonna lose to you forever," I said to her. Every time I utter a sentence like that aloud, my resolve deepens. In fact, just writing it makes me pumped! I train and study hard every day just or the sake of keeping up with my rival.

And as for Takishima, well, she just laughed again.

As I write about this, it makes me think: sometimes, I really don't know what this girl thinks of me. Whenever I'm done getting mad over her beating me, I just can't help but wonder about a few things.

What does that smile of hers mean exactly?

I've been hanging out with Toudou Akira lately. Of course, everyone in S.A. has always been my friend, but these days, Toudou's been approaching me more. I bet this means we're better friends than ever.

The thing about Toudou is that even though she says she likes cute girls, she doesn't like Takishima very much either. (Then again, I wouldn't exactly call Takishima the epitome of moe.) Toudou especially doesn't like it when Takishima talks to me. I think she wants her to lose just as much as I want to win and for that reason, she's always on my side. We're partners in crime in a way.

I told her about Takishima beating me at midterms and she said, "You know how she's like. She's got a photographic memory."

That was true. Sometimes I wonder why Takishima bothers to come to school at all when she's clearly not learning anything new here. It's a little depressing for me to watch, actually.

"Listen," Toudou said to me. "Why are you so fixated on Takishima, anyway? It's good to have a goal and everything, but it's like your feelings for her are, you know…"

"What?"

"Oh, never mind." She waved her hand dismissively. "For someone so smart, you can be so dumb, Hikaru-kun."

There's only one thing to say to that.

"I'll just study even harder then!"

"It's not studying you need to do! Geez!" She huffed and looked at me exasperatedly. Uh oh. "I bet you didn't notice the ribbon I'm wearing today, huh?"

"Uh, what about it?"

"Ugh. What does it take for you to notice a girl?"

"I notice people whenever they talk to me or wave or something…"

For some reason, Toudou hit me after I said that and called me an idiot. We didn't speak of that confusing conversation afterwards and after that, I guess we were back to being friends.

Thinking back, though, it made me a little worried. Was this stupidity that Toudou was talking about related to the reason why I was always second to Takishima? I didn't know what to think of it. I know I have my flaws as a human being and so does Takishima, but it's never been a contest of personality between us. As far as I'm concerned, only skill and determination is what matters in the end.

If only I'd known what Toudou was talking about, though, it could have spared me a lot of grief. And not just me, Takishima too. I don't know if there's any real way I can make it up to her.

It all started when I decided to go off on a trip to the moments in order to train myself for the next battle. Me and Takishima have been having wrestling matches since we were six and as usual, I was very psyched up to beat her.

Actually, there's a funny story about how we met involving wrestling. When I was a kid, I got into pro-wrestling because my old man was really into it. I thought I was pretty hot stuff since I could beat any kid who challenged me. Anyway, it turns out Takishima's dad was a pro-wrestling fan too, so he introduced me to his kid Keiko. I was all like "Come at me, bro!" and then she just whooped my ass. It's funny when I recount it, but I really wasn't very amused at being beaten by a little girl at the time. Even though I'm bigger and heavier than Takishima, she still beats me every time through her sheer agility and skill.

Hence, the training trip to the mountains. I'd even picked out a waterfall to meditate under, and I was planning to teach myself to levitate through willpower alone, just like the Buddhist monks in movies. I reckoned it was the perfect plan. Since I wanted to catch Takishima off-guard with my strategy, I decided not to tell anyone but my dad, who said he was okay with keeping the secret.

Mind you, it's not like I don't trust my friends or anything. But when you have an eternal rival, you just can't involve anyone else. It's has to be man-to-man – er, man-to-woman, as the case may be. Anyway, this was just a fight between me and Takishima and no one else.

Training by myself was really exhausting but really fun and kind of fulfilling in a way. I've trained all my life and it always feels good when you feel yourself reaching out to a new level. Personally, I get really into it and lose track of my surroundings. That's what happened during my training camp. I don't know how much time elapsed since I wasn't keeping track of dates or anything. I got up, ate, trained, ate, trained some more and went to sleep. I liked that routine. The days went by in a blur – when I think of it now, it's nothing but a hazy memory. I think that's because everything blended together because I was only half-conscious most of the time.

You see, the problem was that in my eagerness I was only sleeping about maybe three hours a night. That was something I only realised on retrospect. The adrenaline was what kept me going throughout the day. I get what was wrong now, but if anyone had tried to explain that to me at the time, I don't think I would have heard them.

Just like I mentioned before, I meditated regularly under a waterfall. You'd think the water pressure would work better than any alarm clock, but before I knew it, I was feeling myself getting nodding off. Since I couldn't maintain sitting posture while asleep, as soon as I closed my eyes I crashed headfirst into the water. Even then I didn't wake up. The water came into my mouth and infiltrated my lungs. When I became unconscious I fell headfirst into a sea of black.

I really should have died.

When I came to, I was lying on my back on the rocks, and out of all people Takishima was the one sitting next to me. She was wearing nothing but her bra and panties. She was sitting on her knees squeezing the water out of her sodden dress. I couldn't help but stare – this was the second time in maybe a week since I had seen her in such a severe deficit in clothing.

I might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I knew straight away what Takishima had done for me.

"You… rescued me…" As I spoke, I found myself coughing and spluttering. Since there had been water in my lungs earlier, it was painful to breathe.

I expected Takishima to handle this situation as coolly as ever, but when she turned to look me… How can I put this…?

She was absolutely livid.

Her thin eyebrows had creased together and the alarm just leaped out of her eyes. It hit me like a slap in the face.

"You idiot!" she hissed at me.

"It… It's fine, isn't it? I mean, I'm okay!" I didn't want Takishima to be mad at me. I had never realised she was so concerned for me.

And wait, just where the heck did she come from anyway?

Seeing the look of confusion on my face, Takishima explained haughtily: "I know how you think, Hikaru. I can read you like a book. When you were gone for a week, I knew you'd gone to the mountains to train."

I looked up and around at my surroundings. The waterfall I was training under was located at the bottom of a sheer cliff. Takishima must have scaled down a mountain just to save me.

I blinked, feeling numb. I had absolutely no idea what to think of that. Meanwhile, Takishima just kept frowning thunderously at me, looking less like a perfect, stoic beauty and more like…

… a girl.

I tried very hard to only look at her face from this point on.

"Hey, aren't you cold?" I asked her. Her nudity had a way of getting to me, just like last time. I was still wearing my clothes, and now that I had regained feeling, I could feel the cold water seeping through my shirt and into the pores of my skin. I shivered involuntarily, bringing my arms up to hug myself. "I'll get us a change of clothes, hang on."

I turned and walked away, not just to delve into the contents of my hiking backpack but to cover the spreading blush across my face. I just couldn't control it. I definitely didn't know how to handle Takishima at that moment.

For her part, she said nothing, and by the time I came back with the change of clothes, she looked like she was back to her usual calm self. At least she wasn't frowning anymore. "Here," I said, holding out one of my shirts for her. "It's a bit big for you, but it's better than nothing, at least."

She looked at it and snorted. "A Digimon T-shirt? I'd rather be naked, thanks."

"Shut up, you. Agumon will keep you warm!" I really didn't want to see more naked Takishima. I didn't think my fragile nerves could handle any more of it. I'd never really noticed before, but she has really long legs.

Smooth ones, too.

Ah, crap.

Seeing my pleading look, Takishima eventually obliged and was swallowed by the T-shirt. "You really are an idiot," she said.

Then she explained to me the consequences of me working so hard. Up till that point, I'd never realised she'd taken notice of what I did to train myself, but she seemed to have an idea about everything I did. It was morbidly fascinating listening to her. I could still feel the brush of death against my heart and when I gulped, the feeling still clung to my throat.

"Thanks, Takishima," I said.

Involuntarily, she jerked and made a funny, raspy noise, which she covered up with a cough.

"Um, you okay?" I asked. "You didn't get a cold because of me, did you?" My heart sank at the thought. Quickly, I leaned forward and touched our foreheads together. She blinked, for once not saying anything. Despite her strange behaviour, she seemed to be fine. But still… "You should get rest."

"So should you," she said quietly, casting her gaze towards the rocks.

"Well, okay," I said. "Let's sleep together."

Wryly, Takishima raised an eyebrow.

"What?" I asked.

Then it hit me.

"Argh! Sorry! I meant… sleeping together but not together together, just like, you know…!" I gesticulated wildly.

Takishima chuckled.

"Whaaaaaaat?" I demanded loudly.

"Oh, nothing," said Takishima airily. "Seeing your plebian simplicity never fails to entertain me."

"Argh! That's it! I challenge you! Whoever sleeps better wins!"

"And how do you propose we quantify that?"

Stupid Takishima and her logic. Logic sucks.

We did eventually get to sleep, though. I think it said a lot about just how tired I was that even though we had to share my tent, I barely felt her presence next to me at all. As soon as my head hit my sleeping bag, I fell asleep.

Funny, that. Talking with Takishima had kept me so fired up but at the same time, I had never been so relaxed.

Until I woke up of course.

Takishima was lying propped up on her elbow on her side, her hand leaning against her cheek. She was peering down at me, her gaze uncompromisingly straight. I groaned, still feeling the grogginess of sleep in my system. "What do you want, Takishima?"

"You," she said.

Then I fell asleep again and passed another couple of hours that way.

I don't know if that conversation was a dream or not. It felt very vivid when I woke up properly, feeling enormously sated but also a little fragile. Takishima wasn't inside the tent with me. It looked like she had gone out. My first impulse was to think I had slept better than she did and therefore I won the challenge, but Takishima was right. I think she's too proud to admit whenever she's wrong, anyway.

Slowly, I crawled out of my sleeping bag, inwardly cursing myself. I hadn't offered my sleeping bag to Takishima! She deserved it after all she had done for me yesterday.

Or maybe I had offered. Actually, as I searched through my somewhat foggy memories of the night before, I think I had. Takishima had refused. "You're the one who fell, fool," she had told me, and by then I was too tired to argue with her.

Now that more time had elapsed after being rescued I could still hardly believe that she had bothered looking for me. I hadn't known she had cared. Of course, we were childhood friends, but…

I felt warm, I guess.

I found Takishima outside the tent, cleaning up the campsite. As soon as she spotted me, she stood up. "We're leaving," she announced.

She didn't even ask me before saying that, but I guess it was okay. I wasn't against it. I'd let it slide for now.

I made my way over to her and tapped her lightly on the shoulder. "What?" she asked.

"Next time, I'll protect you."

She covered her mouth and didn't look at me.

I said to her, "Then we'll be even, okay?"

She turned around, removed her hand and, out of all the things she could have done, she smirked at me. I couldn't say I didn't see it coming, though. "If that's what makes you happy, Number Two."

That dreaded nickname!

"Sometimes, I hate you so much," I said.

"Love you too."

"I will crush you mercilessly, my eternal foe!"

I shook my fist in her general direction, but unfortunately, that didn't scare her at all…

Even later, another thought occurred to me.

"Wait," I said to her. "Did you do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on me?"

She didn't answer to that directly.

She just smiled.

end part 1 of 3

Next update: Christmas day.

(A/N: Squeezing 99 chapters of relationship development into three chapters. Hikaru will seem less dense than his female counterpart, but trust me, if this went on for about half as long as the original serialisation, he would most definitely be a total dumbass. And yeah, Akira and Megumi like him. As more than just a friend. Yeah, Tadashi was cockblocked. Maybe Yahiro too, not that he appears in this. Next chapter will be harem shenanigans! My body is ready.)