Illusions, dreams & happiness

'Don't forget that when the sadness is too strong, there'll be happiness to save you out.'

He stared into the flames of the alone standing tree. The tree was standing far away from the forest, so the rest of the trees weren't on fire. It was a lonely tree, standing all alone, with only a peaceful river as its companion. The bright flames of the fire were so strong, he noticed, as they were mirrored in his eyes. It was an accident. He saw how the cat nearly caught that innocent bird, so he decided to warn the bird using a small flame. "Agh." The teachers would probably get pissed again. Though that wasn't really something he could actually care about.

The black cat looked at him with a sharp look, as if it tried to tell him "What the hell did you do that for?" He glared back at the cat and it ran away.

See? Even black cats were afraid of him, just like how all his classmates were, except for that stupid Shouda girl and Ruka. But then again Ruka was in a different class, so he wasn't a classmate.

"Watch out!"

He unconsciously found himself catching a tennis ball. It was an old ball, probably used a lot of times and probably could hardly bounce anymore, as squeezing it was easy.

He threw it back to a girl who was waving with her right arm, signing to him that she wanted the ball. She yelled: "Thanks!" when she caught it and then ran away, as her brown hair tied up in a ponytail went up and down every step she took. He felt the feeling of envy burning deep inside him, recalling the bright smile she had before she turned around to go back to her friend and resume their tennis match, while he was wearing this tired and probably depressed look on his handsome face.

Yes, it was his handsome face. He knew it was handsome and not particularly because he was so arrogant to admit so. He was just told so a so many times that the idea had already become a fact that he memorized for himself, just as how he had to memorize formulas and quotes. It was also this face that made him hated by nearly all the male students and loved by the female ones. At first. After all, afterwards they found out how scary he really was when they saw him 'beating up an innocent student'.

All of a sudden that girl turned back again, with a terrified look on her face and stared at the tree that I had turned into a sea of flames. "What are you doing?" She ran in his direction, still with her focus on the tree. "Do something about it!"

He just looked at her, surprised by her slow reaction, as well as the fact that she actually cared to talk to him, or even commanding him to do something. Didn't she know who he was? Then he recollected his scattered self-consciousness again and said: "Can't be bothered to."

She looked at him with a not understanding look that also tried to pierce through his mind. But knowing himself, he was probably wearing that arrogant look on his face once again, causing her to still run away eventually. He sighed.

Obviously he'd gotten his hopes up again, thinking someone would actually not get scared of him for once. A simple girl like her, as normal as she was, probably wouldn't want to bother knowing him or 'helping' him out with stopping the fire. Since after all, he was-

Suddenly he heard the sound of water around him, as drops are glittering in the strong light of the sun, like little, precious diamonds would do. He felt the cold water creeping on his back, from up to down. His clothes felt heavy and his head cooled down. He was wrong. She'd run away to get a bucket and filled it with water, in order to stop the fire.

"What the hell are you doing? Do you want to get burnt that badly? Help me!"

He turned back to face her, as he snapped his finger and he knew the flames had disappeared abruptly. After all, he had the Fire Alice. He could control the flames. He could make a flame and put it out anytime he wanted to. He looked into her eyes, while her face had the surprised look all written on it.

Yes, he was Hyuuga Natsume, a so-called delinquent of the school. Beat up a total of eight students. Five of them had gotten a broken leg from the beating up, the other just got away with a broken toe and some others were punched until their cheeks got swollen, but it didn't change the fact that all of them had to go to the hospital department of the academy after their meeting with him.

'Oh. Here we go,' he thought. 'Bet she'll run away for real now. Especially that she knows that I have the Fire Alice and therefore that I'm Hyuuga Natsume.'

Because fear was like the paint he would paint with. He was able to create masterpieces of horror because of the great amount of fear he'd collected for the past ten years. And no one would like his paintings, because they couldn't understand why he'd use a horrible tool such as fear to paint with. The thing was, however, that like the rest, Natsume couldn't understand why he used fear either.

He had tried hard to not be so fearsome. He tried to be gentle to everyone around him and to be polite and patient. He tried not to say anything bad and to answer as friendly as he could when someone would ask him a question he didn't want to be asked.

But after all, the problem was lying in the smiling part. Because without that smile, anyone would think that he was a fearsome guy, especially after having so many bad rumours put on his name, with that cold look on his face every time.

So he didn't expect this girl to react any more different from anyone else than those.

"Are you Hyuuga Natsume…?"

The bell rang. He looked up and saw the movements of students going back to their classroom through the windows. The cherry blossom petals from the trees deep inside the forest were falling, slowly, tracing the path of the wind, until they'd one by one reach the ground, far from where they originally had been. He picked up one as he stretched himself out.

"Yeah."

He observed her actions. He saw how she was playing around with her fingers, probably trying to figure out what to do: Just run away or say something awkward and wait until he'd walk away by himself? As he'd thought, she was indeed not different from all the other people who had been in the same position as she was before.

She smiled. He widened his eyes.

"It's nice meeting you for once! I'm a classmate of Ruka-pyon's. He's always talking about you, so I was wondering how you were in reality."

He was silent. The sounds of the wind going through the trees and picking up some leaves along on an infinite road entered his ears, but created a kind of music in his brain. He was starting to hear things, that was for sure. He closed his eyes for a bit and decided that once he'd open his eyes again, he'd discover this girl didn't exist, that he wasn't wet and the tree was still burning as it was.

One, two, three.

He opened his eyes again and looked once again into the curious eyes of the brown-haired girl. "You all right?"

Water drops traced down the path of his wet hair and fell somewhere in the grass. His right eyebrow started to twitch, just like how he couldn't manage to keep his knees still. It felt like they would give up on him any minute and he'd fall flat with his face on the grass.

He ran away.

He dashed into the school building, to his classroom. The second he opened the door of it, curious faces from all sides, including the teacher's, were turned to look at him. A few girls started laughing, but directly stopped when they realized it was Hyuuga Natsume who was soaking wet. And Hyuuga Natsume wasn't just a guy you could laugh at without getting beaten up afterwards.

"Natsume-kun, I think it's better if you go to the infirmary and ask for a towel." Suddenly Narumi said. So it was homeroom, huh? It was surprisingly quiet in the classroom for homeroom though. But then again he couldn't judge, as he never really joined homeroom even once ever since this school year had started. "You're soaking wet, from top to toe."

He nodded unconsciously, still with his mind full of panic and thoughts about the nameless girl who had been so nice to him. It was odd. He walked to the infirmary without knowing what exactly was doing, except for asking himself what the heck had just happened.

He got a towel from the nurse, who'd looked at him with the same surprised look as everyone in the corridors had done. She said that she was going out for a bit to get something to drink, because it was so warm. He didn't really hear it and couldn't tell afterwards if he nodded or didn't do anything at all. He just sat down on a chair, with the towel on his head. He unbuttoned his shirt, still thinking about it over and over. The incident with that girl.

"Natsume?" A familiar voice sounded from the other side of the infirmary. "What happened to you? You're soaking wet." The other person laughed. Natsume looked into the face of his best friend, who he knew for a long time. His bright blue eyes were glittering a little bit, like the water drops had as well. He had to answer Natsume's question.

"Ruka," he whispered. He saw how his friend looked startled, but continued: "This girl in your class. She's a tangerine with deep, hazel eyes. Kinda short." He saw how Ruka's startled expression changed to a questioning look, not understanding what he was trying to ask. Natsume hastily added: "She plays tennis."

"Oh!" Ruka softly hit the palm of his own hand with his right hand, which he would always do when he'd remember something all of a sudden or know an answer for a question. "I guess you mean Sakura Mikan?"

Sakura Mikan.

The name sounded like a song, not because Ruka could sing so well. It was just like the illusion that the trees before had cast on him before. Something that wasn't true in reality. But it was true in his mind. And that feeling was not something he hated.

And he really had to admit, the second he heard her name, it felt like a huge burden was finally lifted from his shoulder. A burden that he had been carrying around for ten years already, starting from the car accident that lonely, cold Christmas Eve. The pictures of the bright, scarlet liquid on the white snow at that moment would often pop up at the idea of that terrifying evening. Maybe this was the first time that he could actually smile while thinking of the cold breezes that had made him shiver that sad day.

'Even if happiness is hidden around a corner, with cupid's burning tree, innocent bird and old tennisball helping it out, everything will be all right.'