Chapter 1
"…So you're homework tonight will be pages 320 to 323 in your book, problems 12 though 60. You'll have a test on the material we've covered this week tomorrow," said Mr. Nikaidou, writing the assignment on the corner of the board.
Amu Hinamori sighed. "That's six assignments due tomorrow, as well as two tests and a quiz!" she muttered to herself. She glanced over on the other side of the room. As usual, Tadase was frantically scribbling notes down, even though it was the end of class. After a minute, he noticed Amu watching him and flashed an encouraging smile before getting back to his notes.
Finally, the bell rang, signifying the official end of school. Nearly all the students rose at once, ready to go home for the day.
"Just a reminder before you go," continued Mr. Nikaidou, "the school will be hosting a bake sale on Saturday, right after school. Anybody who helps will receive discounts on the next school trip."
"Are you going, Amu?" a small voice from beside Amu's desk said.
Amu looked up to see her good friend, Rima, standing beside her. Since elementary school, Rima hadn't gotten much taller, and now stood at the height of a 6th grader in 11th grade. Still, she was so cute that every boy in the school wanted her.
"I might, if I can finish all my homework. Still, I'm not sure if I want to give up my free time," said Amu. "Is Nagi coming?"
"I'm not sure, he's still pretty sick," said Rima. In middle school, Nagihiko became more sickly and a lot weaker. Eventually, Rhythm had gone back into his egg, Tenmari following soon after. When he reached high school, he hardly attended school because he was so sick, but still managed to get decent grades while working from home.
"I see…" sighed Amu, "Well, if you visit him on your way home, tell him I said hi."
"Nagi's still sick?" said Tadase, approaching Amu's desk.
"Yeah, but he'll be fine. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go," said Rima, making her way out the door.
"We should probably get going too," said Tadase to Amu, gesturing toward the nearly empty classroom.
Amu and Tadase walked together out of the classroom, making sure to say bye to Mr. Nikaidou before they left. He didn't seem to really care whether or not they said good bye; he had seemed to stop caring in their freshman year. It was as if the more mature the students he taught became, the less cheerful he became. Even the students joked about him hanging himself at their graduation, though they were becoming more and more fearful that that may actually happen.
As the two walked side by side down the sidewalk leading to Amu's house, things were awfully silent. The elementary students were still in school, so there was none of their chatter to break the silence. All the other high school students took the bus or walked another way, so their were no others on the road.
"…So," said Tadase, breaking the silence, "I don't suppose your new heart's egg has hatched yet, has it?"
"No…" Amu sighed. "I can't believe it… I've had this thing since middle school, when Ran, Miki Su and Dia all disappeared, and it still hasn't hatched! At the rate things are going, I'll have this thing until I'm 40!" she laughed sort of half-jokingly.
"Ah, that's too bad. Kiseki really wants somebody to hang out with, since he has to stay at home alone with KusuKusu and Pepe while we go to school! Of course, Il and El do come along at times, but I'm sure they're no comfort to him, and with Utau on tour, they hardly ever have any time to come over nowadays."
"Speaking of Utau, how's she doing? Has she found any signs of Ikuto?"
"No, nothing yet; she's been to 40 different countries and hasn't seen any sign of him. Nobody's seen him since he disappeared 3 years ago…"
"I see…" Amu sighed again. She hadn't seen Ikuto since 6th grade, since he had confessed to her and left her on her own. She was still unsure of her own feelings, though Tadase was out of the picture at this point. Actually, it was the day that Ikuto was confirmed to be missing that Tadase told her from out of the blue that he was going to study to get into a prestigious college and wouldn't have any time for girls. After that, the confessions of love he'd made to her every day, which had lost nearly all passion at that point, stopped altogether, as Tadase stayed home nearly everyday to study for hours and hardly ever spoke to her except during school and their daily walks home.
"Well, here's your stop," said Tadase. "I'll see you tomorrow, then," he said, turning down the road to his house.
"See you," said Amu, waving as Tadase left. Once he was gone, she walked in her house, flopped down on the couch and sighed.
"Today was awful!" she said aloud to herself, knowing that nobody was home. "Hours of nothing but boring lectures and quizzes, and now I have hours more of homework to go with it! And to top it all off…" she pulled a white egg out of her pocket, "you still haven't hatched." She examined the egg closely, wondering if there was something wrong with it. It was warm, indicating that there was something alive in it, but it never moved, not once, since it had appeared in the place of her other four eggs on the first day of middle school. It was plain white, with a smooth surface and everything. "Maybe you're just a normal egg and I've been carrying you around for years for nothing," said Amu.
"I wouldn't be surprised, especially since the past few years have been nothing but disappointing. I thought that since middle school was so terrible, what with Nagi getting sick and Ikuto disappearing, that maybe high school would be better, but if anything it's just been worse! Ikuto is still no where to be found, Tadase has replaced all his friends with school, Nagehiko is constantly sick, and Rima has no time to hang out ever since she started dating. Even Yaya and Kukai moved, so they're gone, and now I've got an egg that won't hatch instead of the four I had before! And still… I have no idea who I want to be. I've even started looking at colleges, and still I don't have a clue what I want to do in life…"
Suddenly, the despair of it all overcame Amu. "Enough!" she cried, "I don't know what I want to do! In elementary school, that was all fine and good, but now that I'm at one of the biggest turning points in my life, why does everything have to go wrong now?! It's… useless…"
Amu paused. "Useless…" she muttered the word again. Something about that word sounded right. "It's all useless… nothing's going right…" she continued. Eventually, Amu couldn't even remember what she was thinking about. All she knew was that everything was worthless, useless. Through all this, she didn't even notice her pure white egg had become black, and a small person was peering from a newly formed crack.
"Useless…" Amu muttered one more time, "useless…"
