"Love is blind, but friendship closes its eyes." - Anonymous

-August 24, 2000-

The children of the Wammy's House, just like all the other children of the world, were prone to chaotic behaviors whenever an opportunity to behave as such presented itself. Undoubtedly, the most chaotic of all events in the Wammy's House were birthdays. While the institution did not formally recognize the birthdays of children, every time one of the fifty-two residents of the House announced that his or her birthday was coming up, the kids began huddling in groups, making plans to celebrate their companion's birthday. On the day of the party, every single child would be drawn to the field outside the House, where the festivities would begin. Dreaded were these parties by the adults of the House, because, being the ones responsible for the children, they were the ones responsible for cleaning up after the party. However, birthday parties were never prohibited, and birthdays were therefore always celebrated.

It was on the day of a birthday party that our three main characters had their first important run-in with one another.

Linda was eight years old. It was not her party, but she could very well imagine it was, and she in fact thought at first that it might be. Her birthday was the next day, and she saw nothing wrong with celebrating early. She, being a new child in the Wammy's House, did not know that the other children wouldn't dare do something as "pointless" and "ridiculous" as throwing a party for someone on a day that had no significance to the person being celebrated, no matter how close it was to any day that did have reason for celebration to said person.

No, it was not Linda's party. It was the party of a boy called Near. He had now been on the earth for nine years (give or take a few hours, minutes, and seconds). To celebrate such a remarkable feat, an enormous nine-tiered cake was baked for the party. The cake had nine candles on it, which, when compared to the sized of the cake, seemed rather puny. The candles were all stuck into the cake on the lowest tier; Near was a short boy and it would be hard for him to blow them out had they been any higher. He did not care much for blowing out the candles on the cake, though, nor did he care much for the cake. He didn't really like the party, or any party, for that matter, but, trying to be polite, he did as much as one has to at one's birthday party, which consists mainly of simply blowing out candles and pretending to be ecstatic after opening yet another uncreative present.

Matt did not care much for the party, either. This was not because he didn't like parties in general, though. He was not enjoying the party because it was a party for Near. He did not quite like Near, but for reasons he could not find. He never tried to find the reasons he didn't like the other child, either. He simply did not like him, and that was that.

Linda was looking up at the giant cake, its candles melting in the hot sun and from the still-burning flames. She couldn't wait to dig into it, but with those candles just sitting there she couldn't do so without angering somebody. So, she patiently waited. For about thirty seconds. Then her patience ran out, and she decided to just blow the candles out herself because it seemed apparent that nobody else planned on doing so any time soon.

Linda crept up to the table the enormous cake was sitting on and locked her gaze on the candles. She was going to blow them out or die trying. She looked around to make sure nobody was watching her, but then she realized that with so many people around it was unlikely that no one would see her, so she decided instead to hope that nobody cared.

She took a large intake of breath, and then... somebody tripped her. "Ow!" she cried when she roughly hit the ground. "Oh, great, now I've got grass stains on my jeans." She sat up and began dusting herself off.

"No, you don't," a voice said from above her. Linda looked up, shading her eyes to see better. Standing above her was a boy with remarkably white hair.

"Huh?" Linda looked down at her jeans. Upon seeing that she did, in fact, not have any grass stains on her jeans, she felt her cheeks turn red with embarrassment. "Oh, uh, right." She paused, thinking about what had just happened, when something occurred to her. "Hey! Did you trip me and make me fall?" she demanded from the white-haired boy above her.

"It was an accident, but, yes, I did trip you," the boy replied.

"Hmm." Linda was a little angry, but she figured it was no big deal. She stood up, once again dusting herself off. "Hey, d'you know whose birthday it is? They'd better get movin' on blowing out those candles."

"It is my birthday," the boy said, and he blew out the candles on the cake, "Does that satisfy you?"

Linda was ecstatic that she could finally get to the cake without the barrier of the candles standing in the way. She jumped for joy, but only on the inside. On the outside she kept a very calm expression. "Yep, that's good now." Her gaze darted to and from the cake. Eventually, she just took her hand and scooped out a chunk of cake.

The boy looked at her quizzically. "What?" she said. "There aren't any plates or anything." It was true, the table seemed devoid of any flatware.

"I know," was all he replied, then eyed the cake himself and gently scooped off a frosting flower and licked it.

When her handful of cake was gone, Linda looked at the boy, half wondering why he hadn't walked away yet, and half wondering how he could resist taking more of that splendid cake than just some wimpy little flower. "Hey..." she said, "um, what's your name?"

"Near," responded Near. "I assume it would be most polite for me to ask for your name in return."

Linda was perplexed by his usage of words. "I assume it would be most polite for me to ask for your name in return"? Oh, he must be one of the intellectual geniuses. "Sure," she said. "Uh, they call me 'Linda' now."

"I see, Linda," Near said.

"Yeah... so if it's your birthday today, how old are you?"

"Nine years."

"Hey, that's how old I'm gonna be! Tomorrow's my birthday," Linda excitedly said.

"Ah, congratulations."

"You too, 'cause, you know, it's your birthday today and all."

"Yes."

Meanwhile, from behind a group of children whom he was only with because they were taller than he was, and if he sat he could enjoy the coolness of their shadows, Matt watched the meeting between Linda and Near play out. He was familiar with Linda – she had been introduced to him by Roger on her first day there a few weeks ago– and he was more than familiar with Near.

Matt stood up and began walking towards the table with the cake on, telling himself he wanted to get a piece of the cake which was oddly untouched by the other children, but it was really because he wanted to be included in Linda and Near's conversation. He strode up to the other children and tried to work up the courage to nonchalantly wished Near a happy birthday, something he could have been content not doing at all that day. It was the only thing he could think of to be a part of the conversation, though.

"Uh, hey guys. Oh, I mean, uh, guy and girl. Yeah, sorry, Linda," Matt fumbled with his words.

Linda turned her head to look at the person who had addressed her. "Oh, hey. You're... Matt, right? Sorry, I don't really remember names well."

"Uh-huh," Matt confirmed. "So, Near," he imagined he took a large intake of breath before saying quickly, "happy birthday."

"Thank you. I didn't think you would say that to me," Near responded monotonously.

"Why's that?" Matt asked.

"You don't seem to like me," Near explained.

Hearing this made Matt nervous. He was pretty sure no one knew he disliked Near. He had, after all, been generally cordial towards the boy most of the time. Then again, Matt secretly suspected Near of being psychic. How else could he know so much at such a young age, including people's personal opinions?

"Oh. Well, I don't not like you," was the weak rebuttal given by Matt.

"I don't not like you, either," Near agreed.

"Okay, um, that's good, then. Now, uh, 'scuse me, I'd like to get some cake."

"Oh, right, yeah, sure," Linda affirmed several times and stepped backwards for Matt to get to the cake.

Matt grinned and nodded. "Thank you." Then he took a handful of cake and stared at it as if unsure of what one is supposed to do with cake. He then grinned again, and smeared the cake all over his face and started laughing.

Near said, "Why did you do that?" at the same time that Linda said, "Ha, ha, does the cake help you cool down or something?"

Matt just smiled at them and started wiping cake off his face. "It's a tradition, you know," he began, "to shove cake in the face of the birthday child."

"No, it isn't," Near argued, "and that in no explains why you put cake in your own face."

"Well, it's a new tradition. You didn't hear? It was established just yesterday. Man, I thought everybody knew about it. That's why no one's been touching the cake and why there're no plates or forks or anything; everybody's been waiting for the opportune moment to shove your face in that cake, and they wouldn't want to waste all that face-smashing goodness on a sweet tooth," Matt improvised, suddenly becoming very outgoing, "so we really shouldn't make everybody wait much longer, should we? Haven't we been patient enough?"

"Yeah!" Linda piped up. "Let's get this show on the road!"

Before Near had a chance to object, a rather large handful of cake was shoved into his face. Whoever the culprit was, however, was doing a good job of looking innocent, and neither Matt nor Linda confessed to being the one to do it. So, seeing as how neither of the suspects accepted the blame, Near applied it to both of them: "You two...! Well, now you guys can eat the cake knowing that some pesky 'tradition' is out of the way."

"Oh, no, we can't. See, the cake was shoved into your face, but the tradition is the other way around: your face goes into the cake," Matt persisted, wanting to get in a few more face-smashes before calling it quits.

"Hee-hee," Linda giggled, "maybe that's enough creaming him in the face for now. There'll be another cake for him next year. 'Sides, you don't wanna get all your face-smashing desire out now, 'cause if you do you'll have no will to do it tomorrow when it's my birthday."

Matt grinned at this. He was just having too much fun caking people. "Okay, that makes sense. Ha, see, Near? Tradition. Now we've gotta do it tomorrow on her birthday. And you can be the one to cake her first, y'know, for revenge, if you wanna."

Near almost felt himself smile at how ridiculous the situation was. "Yes," he said, his voice devoid of emotion.

The next day, a smaller, more rushed party was held for Linda,because people didn't have as much time to prepare for the birthday party that caught them all off guard, so her party was basically Near's leftovers. The top two tiers of Near's birthday cake were even used as her cake, seeing as how they had been untouched by the grubby hands of the children of the House.

The first grubby hands of a child – not that these hands were necessarily grubby – to touch Linda's cake belonged to Near. As Matt had suggested the previous day, Near took his "revenge" on Linda by putting cake in her face. He did not smash her face with cake, as one was supposed to do according to Matt's newly founded tradition, but actually smeared it on her face, as Near was not as aggressive as the person who had caked him. When he turned to Matt to wipe the remainder of the cake on his hands on the boy's face, he found Matt had already shoved a piece of cake into his face, as he had the day before.

The way the three children laughed that day would give a person the impression that they were old friends. When the three looked back on this day, however, not one of them recalled laughing with one another in such a way. All they could remember were soft, polite smiles.

Thank you for reading! I have no idea how I feel about this chapter, actually. They seemed too immediately chummy. I don't know, what do you think?

Once more, thank you very much for reading this (I know it was a bit... lengthy). Please review!