Author's note: I do not own Prince of Tennis. I like POT because there's so many different male characters it's easy to just insert them into my aspiring stories, like for example, if you want someone to be smart, you can put Tezuka in and tweak the stories just a little bit to put him in, and etc. The romance will be very slow. This will be long and lengthy, and this chapter isn't finished, but I just had to post it. I'll finish it in the next week if enough people think it's ok so far. I'm just taking about 30 minutes to type up random thoughts on things and incorporate them, so any ways, read and review so far!


Hiruka hated this. She was a freshman, for God's sake! She should be out there making friends and acquaintances and widening her social circle (because you know, in freshman year, if you're not in a high social position, you never will be...) but she was stuck here. In the school cafeteria, working, handing out food, carrying trays, convinced that everyone was looking down on her because she was a worker. While everyone else was having fun, hanging out, doing nothing. She was here just because of her mom, who wanted her to have something productive to do during lunch and brunch. She felt slightly guilty at this thought. If she had had free time at brunch and lunch, she would've just sat in the library and read all day. She wouldn't be "widening her social circle" or making friends.. because, somehow, high school changed people. Hiruka's old friends, or acquaintances, were slowly becoming "popular" people, people who would ignore you in the hallways now, because they thought they were "too cool" for her now, or that they were just embarrassed to have a friend that was such a wallflower.

Hiruka sighed and let her eyes wander over the cafeteria. The line wasn't so long today, only about 20-30 people, and there were two other cafeteria staff on the counter. She carried away the empty tray to the washing room, where cooking trays and containers and metal stuff and spatulas piled into neat piles, waiting for the staff to finish the brunch work, to get washed. She felt like her eyes were so sad now. It was like a natural state, that you had to make an effort just to smile, and a really big effort to stop your eyes from looking sad and gloomy. "Hiruka!" the Boss lady called, " Where are you?There's someone here!" "Yeah, sorry!" Hiruka called out, and hurried back to behind the counter, where she did her best to hide her face behind one of the heat lamps heating the food in front of her on the long, wide counter- she didn't want that kid- she knew him from middle school to see her. He didn't, just treated her as another "lunch lady". "Can you pass me that pizza stick?" Hiruka silently passed it over.

There were three types, no, four types of people you usually served. The first was- you didn't know them, you passed them food, they maybe said thank you, maybe not. The second was people that had no idea you were working in the cafeteria, had no idea why someone like you or someone even remotely interesting would work in the cafeteria, and they just treated you like a robot. The third was "acquaintances" who would see you, say hi, and try to find out why the heck you were working in the cafeteria like a loser, how much money you made (below minimum wage, actually. But you wouldn't tell them that). They weren't real friends. Hiruka hated them. The fourth type were friends, who smiled at you, maybe talked with you for a few seconds before moving off to pay for their food. They were the kind of people that were a bright light in your dark, gloomy day. But Hiruka's friends rarely bought food from the lunch line. She barely ever saw them, except Tuesday- she didn't work because of a school club.

The cafeteria had been noisy, loud and crowded about a minute before, but now there was almost no one. Hiruka looked at the clock with a start and realized that the bell had already rang. She tore off her gloves, ran to the staff room, and grabbed her backpack and a cookie from the basket( a perk, the only one actually, of working in the cafeteria- free food) and ran around the corner just as a guy- Takamura something or other was going in. He saw her, smiled, and kept the door open for her. "Thanks," she said, as she walked in.

Lit class was her favorite class, next to art, because her teacher was a really good teacher. She was strict, but nice, and cool, and everyone loved her. She had wavy, medium length hair that she sometimes dyed a brilliant red, or a golden yellow- pure sunshine, her hair was. She looked like a cool, hip, teenage girl, except with authority, and intelligence. Her clothes choice was good- jeans, dresses- actually Hiruka'd thought she was one of the students flaunting the dress code the first time she'd seen her- she wasn't in her classroom then. When the teacher was in class, she seemed to carry along this nameless authority- she was sort of like a perfect teacher.

In her class, everyone was a tight-knit group, almost everyone sort of became Hiruka's friend and Hiruka almost everybody's friend. It was only out of Lit class that social distinctions mattered- in Lit class, they were still there, but didn't matter as much.