Super old story I found cleaning out my hard drive. It does have more chapters, yes! Figured I'd upload it and keep it and share it, you know, spread the love I suppose.

Girl Hikaru!

"Alright…" Hikaru Shindou kneeled down in front of the oven with wary eyes.

Next to her, Akari Fujisaki, her best friend, turned away from the eggs she was beating to notice her friend's sullen change in attitude.

"What's wrong, Hikaru-chan?" She asked, as the face began to contort into anxiety.

"I don't think its looking good." The girl began slowly, peering into the dark depths of the oven. "Actually, I think it's going to explode."

Akari rolled her eyes and put down the bowl she had been mixing, scooting the other girl aside and pried open the oven door.

"I don't know why I'm here, anyway," Said the girl with an embarrassed, averted gaze. "I'm no good at cooking, Akari-chan. I'm not all that good at being a girl, either." As if to prove her point, she pointed to her hair with bleached bangs. All the other girls dyed their whole head, but she had only dyed the front. Completely on accident, because she hadn't realized that her dye had been half empty and she ended up only with the front done. "I'm a failure." She moped to her distracted best friend, collapsing dramatically onto the counter of their home-ec class.

Akari huffed, dragging out the cake, which was, anticlimactically, unscathed. "It's fine. In fact, it smells delicious. You did great, Hikaru-chan!"

The girl looked up the, green eyes wide. "Wait… really?"

"Really!" Giggled Akari with a bit of a flounce. "Also, I think you should join the drama club, you certainly have enough skill at overreacting."

Hikaru made a strangled noise in the back of her throat, before hopping onto the side of the counter. She swung her legs out to examine her bruised shins from gymnastics. Her socks were scrunched down to her ankles—they were much too itchy—and she made a face at them. Hardly acceptable for a girl.

"I don't want to join some stupid drama club." Hikaru insisted with a wrinkle of her pert nose. "What club are you in, Akari-chan?"

The girl pulled her auburn hair back into a ponytail to keep it out of her face. "A lot of them! I'm on the track team, and I'm in the cooking club." She motioned to the class around them, where many of the participants were part of said club. "And well, Mitani-kun asked me to join the Go Club…"

"Go?" Hikaru echoed, before bursting into laughter. "Why would you join that?"

The brunette quickly brushed and hid her face as she turned away to the cupboards, bowl in hand as she mixed the ingredients.

"Oh…oh." Hikaru narrowed her eyes with more then a bit of amusement. "It's cause you like him, isn't it?"

Akari, flustered, closed her eyes as her cheeks lit up. "Don't talk like that, Hikaru-chan! I don't like him." She bit out. "Anyway, he's too…aloof. He hardly goes to any of the meetings himself! TsuiTsui-kun certainly puts a lot of effort into that club…"

As Akari began anew with a rant about the go club and how much she didn't like Yuuki Mitani, Hikaru unceremoniously wedged a finger into her ear. How boring.

"Oh, class is almost over!" Akari turned to the clock, near dropping the bowl she was mixing. "I suppose I'll put this in the fridge." She turned to Hikaru. "Clean up this place! I don't want Sensei making us stay after!"

Hikaru mock saluted as she hopped off of the counter, grabbing the package of flour and the sugar at the same time and stuffing them back into the cupboard. She doubled back for the carton of eggs, carrying them off to the class fridge along with the milk.

"Hikaru-chan!" Said Sakura with a grin, one of her classmates. "How'd your cake turn out?"

Hikaru smiled. "Really good actually!"

Tomoyo, another one of the girls in the class, giggled. "Maybe Hikaru-chan is destined to be a baker?"

"I don't think so." Hikaru scoffed, as she handed Sakura the eggs to put away, the girl took them along with her own, putting them back. "Akari did most of the work, right?"

Akari, who was wrapping the rest of their cake mix next to the large fridge, nodded absently. "Hikaru's really not that bad though." And she paused. "Accept for adding eggs. She always gets the shell in."

"I do not!" Hikaru protested hotly, but it was in vain.

The two of them cleaned up quick enough to be dismissed without having to stay behind. Those who did groaned in exasperation. Akari pulled Hikaru through the crowded hallways of Haze junior high, the two first years near trampled over by the many kids that bustled about.

"It's almost fall." Hikaru watched the trees lining the school, who's leaves had begun to speckle oranges and yellows.

Akari nodded. "Ojii-chan says fall always makes his bones hurt. I don't really get how that works, but I hope we don't have to take him to the hospital again—

"Hospital!" Hikaru repeated with a sudden yelp.

Akari turned questioningly to her friend, who looked like she'd swallowed a gold fish. "What's wrong?"

"I forgot my parents signed me up for community service!" Hikaru groaned. It was payment for her rioting attitude. And grades (or lack thereof). They thought that perhaps enrolling their daughter into some volunteer work would subdue her raging teenage empowerment. Fat chance of that happening.

Akari gave her an apathetic smile. "I'm sure it won't be too bad."

"Too bad?" Hikaru muttered tempestuously, as she finished her small depressing party thrown for herself. "It's gonna suck!"

Akari flinched at the force. "Well, at least it won't take too long."

Another growl.

"And anyway," She began helpfully. "I'll give you tonight's math homework first period! That way, you don't have to worry about it. "

"Really?" Hikaru brightened almost immediately. A free homework grade, not to mention a grade that was near certified to be an A. Certainly would appease her parents…right? And if she kept her grades up—or in other words, got Akari to do her homework—then she wouldn't have to keep doing community service.

A perfect world.

"Only this once though." Akari warned seriously.

And her perfect world popped.

They came to crossroad, one leading into the city and the other to the suburban housing district.

"I'll call you!" Hikaru waved to her friend, as she headed into the city.

Akari waved back. "Alright!"

She skidded to a halt in front of Tokyo Memorial, a large and towering almost nondescript building. It seemed to fit right in with the rest of the spiraling towers that surrounded it. She entered hastily, the air conditioning refreshing against the late summer heat.

She plodded along placidly until she reached the front desk, tugging at her haze junior high uniform. The lady looked quite busy, with an array of phones beeping in want of attention and two monitors in front of her, a pad of paper in her hand and a phone cradled to her ear as she wrote down a string of characters with an, "Uh-huh, I understand, what was that last letter?" and an exasperated look on her face. After a following five minutes of the same course of action, Hikaru shared her exasperation.

Finally, she put down the last phone. "Hello there, how can I help you?" She leaned over, a friendly smile on her face.

"Err—I'm Shindou Hikaru." The young girl gasped out, flustered. "I'm…signed up for community service."

"Oh! Well then, just sign in here, and put this name card on," She began anew in her enthusiasm, apparently delighted at the thought of a new volunteer to help with the load.

Hikaru did as she was told with some hesitation, unsure of how these thing worked, exactly. And nurse came and the receptionist ushered her over with a quick flurry of hands, pressing Hikaru over to the tired looking woman with a handful of clipboards in her arms. Hikaru hadn't even been inside for more then a couple minutes, yet she was already under the impression that hospitals were very hectic.

"Volunteer, eh?" The nurse read the nametag, as the two made their way through winding hallways.

Hikaru nodded wordlessly, unsure of what to say.

"Well, here we are." She stopped suddenly, and Hikaru looked up to read the sign. Terminally ill patients. "As a volunteer, you can't help with any actual paperwork and things like that, but you can keep company to these guys!"

Hikaru wanted to groan aloud—but sadly, she knew enough about respect to refrain.

They entered one of the side corridors, and the nurse stopped in front of one, "Fujiwara Sai". Hikaru grumbled low enough for the older woman not to hear her. Great, some old man who probably is really boring and drools. She pouted. The nurse was distracted by another woman who had stopped to add another clipboard or two onto the woman's pile, to which her leader yelped with an indignant squawk of, "I don't need anymore patient files to fill out!" To which the other grumbled, "Well neither do I!"

In the end, the woman she had been following had forked off a fair share of the load onto the other nurse, and had wasted a good fifteen minutes of the two hours and thirty minutes Hikaru was signed up for. She thought of how her two hours and thirty minutes could be better spent—playing her playstation, beating final fantasy VII, chatting with Akari, getting some more sun before summer fully closed.

"Alright be nice and smile a lot," Were the nurse's words of wisdom. And, with great help, added, "Try not to ask about their condition."

"Thanks." Hikaru sarcastically replied, the nurse heading off without noticing the tart.

She opened the door with a deep breath, prepared for the worst two hours (and now fifteen minutes) of her life.

"Hello," Said the voice, surprised. "I'm Fujiwara Sai. And you are…?"

Hikaru gaped.

Instead of the wrinkly, near-blind old man with drool going down his shirt and an array of tubes coming out of his nose and other strange places like she had expected, there was a young boy who looked about her age, with a soft smile and the kind of features she'd imagine to be in one of Akari's Seventeen magazines. He was all sorts of attractive, and could have been a movie star if he wanted (or, if he wasn't stuck in the terminally ill section of the Tokyo Memorial hospital).

But what really struck her as odd, was how much he looked like her.

I'm not proud of this writing. X3 its from a bajillion and ten years ago.