Falling into Your World

Chapter 1

In a small country middle school, class for the day was over. Around her, Sakura Mikan's classmate rushed to get ready for the day's club activity or to return home. Since she had cleaning duty today, she took her time.

"Oi Sakura! You and Nakajima go and take these things back to the storage room," the class president, Mimura Kenji directed.

Mikan replied with a quick "Hai" and headed to the front of the room to help her friend Nakajima Sara gather all the materials that needed to be stored away.

"Ne, Mikan-chan," Sara began as they strolled down the hallway with arms filled with various maps and booklets. "Are you going to join the softball team? I heard that they've been trying to recruit you?"

Mikan let out an uncomfortable laugh. "I don't think so."

"Eh! Why not? You're so good at sports. I wish I was so athletic."

Mikan gave a sheepish grin. "Well, sports may be my strength, but I don't think I can join a sports club. It's very time consuming."

"Is it because of your part-time job?" Sara question as she began stacking the materials in the storage closet in the supply room.

"Yeah. I don't really have time to do anything else after school."

"Mikan watched as Sara responded with a sigh while she picked up the stack of handouts they needed to deliver to the teachers' room. "You're so great Mikan-chan. Good at sports, good at cooking, hardworking, and the school even gave you special permission to work. I can't compare." She finished her statement by woefully closing the closet door and leaned against it sulking.

"That's not so," Mikan said. "You're good at studying. You ranked higher than me on the last set of examinations."

"But not by much," Sara said sorrowfully. "Only by a few places."

"Don't say things like that," a male voiced behind the two girls. They turned around to find one Nishido Hiroyuki, who promptly relieved Sara of her stack of handouts.

"Here, give them to me," Nishido offered Mikan. "I'll take care of it. You go back and finish up." Mikan complied with a murmur of thanks and stacked her printouts on top of his.

"And stop comparing yourself to Sakura," he told Sara. "You are you, and Sakura is Sakura. Besides," he said as a blush crept up his neck, "you're fine the way you are." The end of his sentence trailed off into a mumble, which he covered up by quickly making his way to the teacher's room to deliver the printouts.

Mikan stole a quick glance at Sara to see the blush on her face, before starting off towards the classroom. She felt Sara fall into step next to her.

"Looks like your relationship with Nishido-kun is going very well," Mikan teased. In their small countryside school, secrets were hard to keep and rumors spread like wildfire. Nobody had been successful in hiding a new relationship for longer than two weeks. The student body was close and tight-knit since almost everyone attended elementary school together and grew up together. In their small rural community, outsiders were rare so a face that one saw every day soon became the face of a good friend. Their town was by no means tiny. It wasn't a village, but it was large enough where you didn't know everyone's name, but still knew that "Oh, he works at the market," or "She's lives in XX apartment with her 3 cats."

Because it was impossible to hide anything, it became a common game on campus, which soon spread to the community, to try and hide a relationship for as long as possible. The ones who had set the two-week record were two young elementary school teachers who used the fact that someone had to stay late and lock up the school as an opportunity to sneak in dates. Of course it became quite the scandal when a group of nine year olds were the ones to discover the relationship when they were sneaking onto campus after hours to tell ghost stories.

Sara and Nishido had lasted three days. After all, it's hard to keep your relationship a secret when your classmate's family owns the restaurant of where you had your first date.

Mikan listened absent mindedly as Sara quickly filled her on the details of her latest date while they finished cleaning. She was in a particular hurry because she needed to get to work. The people in the small legal office where she worked as a file clerk knew that she would be late due to her school duties, but she hated letting work pile up. Since that office was one of two offices that handled all the legal proceedings within town, there could be quite a bit of paper work to deal with on any given day, depending on whether any disputes came up.

She gave a spare glance at the clock and panicked when she saw the time. "Ah! It's so late. Sorry Sara," Mikan said as she handed Sara her broom. "Can you finish up today? I'll make it up to you, promise!"

"Oh. Do you need to get to work?"

Mikan nodded.

"Well hurry up and go! There's not much left to do. I'll finish things here."

"Thanks," Mikan said as she ran to the door and straight into class president Mimura.

Mikan gave a yelp as Mimura caught her arm to keep her from falling.

"Sorry!" Mikan responded quickly.

"Its okay," Mimura replied, a blush appearing when he realized who ran into him, "Just be careful next time."

Amused, Sara watched the short interaction between Mikan and Mimura before Mikan darted out the door. Mikan could be so dense. It was obvious that a good portion of the male student body at school (Sara personally thought it was something like 30) had (or once had) a crush on Mikan. Sara was suspicious that Nishido once had a crush on Mikan in elementary school, but he seemed to have grown out of that. A blush appeared on her cheeks as she thought of their most recent date.

Sara felt a little jealous of Mikan and the beauty she had grown to be. The commotion males caused around her got even worse when Mikan's good friend Imai Hotaru returned for vacation from her elite boarding school. The two were known as the town's infamous beautiful duo, and boys seemed to appear out of no where to hold doors open for the two of them and help them carry bags when the two wandered around town during Hotaru's last visit two years ago. Quite a few girls were annoyed at the attention Mikan got from the boys but Mikan's obliviousness about her admirers and her cheerful nature made it impossible to hate her. The fact that Mikan never had a boyfriend before (and that she was probably the only girl at school who was in that situation) seemed to help.

"Is there a reason why you're staring at Mimura?"

Sara jumped and turned to find her boyfriend. He simply raised an eyebrow and looked amused as he continued, "I'll get jealous if you're checking him out."

"No! I'm not!"

He smiled, then looked around and asked, "Where's Sakura?"

"Oh she left, She had to get to work."

"Well then let's finish up and leave then. Oi Mimura, come help us. There's not much left to do."

Mikan stretched as she closed the office door behind her. She looked to the sky and saw the sun setting.

"Well, I should go and buy some things for dinner." And with that, Mikan headed off to the market. She quickly bought her groceries while making small talk with the vendors. Mikan's situation at home was well known around town and because of that, the vendors always greeted her with a smile and set aside some basic ingredients for her. Since she didn't live off much and couldn't afford to buy many things too, they didn't mind setting aside a loaf of bread or some vegetables for her to pick up when she got off of work. Since she usually finished work around the same time that they started packing up, they usually charged her a fraction of the price for her groceries as well. After a time, it became an unspoken fact that Mikan had become a pseudo-ward of the town. And no one minded, because even after all that had happened to her, she still walked down the street with a smile and greeted anyone along her path enthusiastically.

It was getting late when she finished, so she hurried to get home. There was quite a bit of homework to do and her favorite show was on tonight. Since she was in a rush, she decided to cut through the countryside instead of following the dirt path that lead to her partially isolated house. Her house was at the end of the road it was located on, and there was a small path that led up into her backyard. Mikan and her grandfather created it when she was little. It was a shortcut that Mikan used whenever she was in a rush to get home.

Mikan made her way along the hidden path, occasionally ducking under some of the lower hanging branches of the trees that lined the path and pushing aside some of the taller grasses and shrubs so she could get around them. She hummed and walked with a small skip in her step while she pondered the latest development in her favorite TV show. She trusted her body to lead her home, since it was so used to following this path, most of the time she took it out of instinct when she was walking alone.

However, unfortunately for Mikan, her trained feet did not take into account the possibility of a new obstruction on the path. Since there had never been one in the past few years, she tripped right over the new roadblock and fell on her face.

Mikan moaned in pain as she pushed herself upright. She gave a shriek when she saw her groceries had scattered about and quickly moved to gather them. When she was reaching for her last orange, which had rolled under a shrub, her hand bumped into a peculiar cat mask.

"What's this?" Mikan asked as she picked up the makes and her orange. She turned the mask around in her hands while she got up to continue on her way. Unfortunately, Mikan was so absorbed in examining the mask that she failed to notice she was headed back the way she came and tripped over the mass on the ground again. However, unlike last time, Mikan was lucky enough to find that her groceries had stayed in their bag.

Furious at tripping twice, Mikan turned to look at what she had tripped over. The last thing she expected to find was the body of a young man.

"O…oi!" Mikan exclaimed as she crawled over to the body. "Are you okay?" A thought raced through her mind. Are you alive?

Mikan shook her head and muttered, "Don't think like that." Then she quickly surveyed the boy lying there and sighed in relief when she saw his chest move up and down, indicating breathing.

"Hey," she said shaking him, "this isn't a good place to take a nap. Someone will walk on you or you'll trip someone." She seemed to forget that she had been tripped twice by him.

The boy didn't show any sign of hearing her.

"Hey," Mikan repeated as she shook him. That was when she noticed his labored breathing and a quick glance at his face showed that he in pain. Mikan placed her hand on his head and flinched when she felt his temperature.

"You have a fever!" she exclaimed. She glanced around, hoping for someone to pass by to help, for she momentarily forgot that she was on her secret path. Mikan chewed on her lip for a while before tying her grocery bag to her school bag and hitching it over her shoulder. Then she carefully pulled the boy upright and slung his arm around her shoulder so she could support him.

After a moment of adjusting the boy to a more manageable position, Mikan made her way home while dragging a guest.

AN: Yay! New fic after three year hiatus. Guess that says a lot about how fast I write. So don't expect anything new anytime soon. I won't have lame excuses to back myself up this time.

Like it? Love it? Loathe it? Leave a review please. Fan girl squealing, harsh criticism, or if you don't like me, leave a rude flame, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Or not. Who knows?

2/14/06