Disclaimer: I do not own KKM in any shape or form.
Hello there! Thanks for checking this story out. This is my first time doing AUs. I usually don't like AUs, but hey, it works for this story. I came up with this plot at 2 AM in the morning today, so lol if any part of this seems weird, please forgive me. This story was written in an attempt to get a break from a writer's block I have on my other Bleach story, so yeah.
In this story, Wolfram & his brothers are living in America. Yuuri was in Japan before he moved here. I think that's all you need to know beforehand. I hope you enjoy the first chapter of Present of the Past!
"Come on, stop crying…" One boy looked on worriedly as he watched his friend sobbing next to him.
"But… but… you're going to…"
The boy only smiled sadly. "Yeah, I know. I'm sorry." He tried to think of what he should do next when an idea hit him. "Ah, I know! Here." Extending his hand out to the other boy, he slowly opened his palm to reveal…
"Eh?"
"This is a promise. We'll meet again someday, I swear on it! So… hold onto this until then, ok?"
"…Yeah. Ok. It's a promise!" Drying his tears away, the other boy smiled brightly for the first time that day.
Until we meet again, I'll wait for you. I promise…
:-:-:-:-:-:
Blinking hazily, fifteen-years-old Wolfram Bielefeld slowly opened his eyes to the sound of his alarm beeping. It's been awhile since I have that dream… he mused quietly before getting up and get ready for yet another day. Once he was done dressing, the blond head walked downstairs towards the dining room. "Good morning, Gwendal-niisan, Conrad-niisan!"
"Good morning to you, too." The middle brother said, a smile on his face. The oldest one grunted softly in response.
Sitting himself on one of the chairs, Wolfram looked at the window that showed a bright city morning.
"It's a nice day today, isn't it?" Conrad asked, snapping him out of his thoughts.
"Ah, yes. It is." He replied, smiling slightly.
"Oh, yes, before I forgot, Wolfram."
"Yes, brother?" He answered, blinking.
Putting his utensils down on the table gently, Conrad knitted his two hands together and rested his chin on there. "There will be someone coming to live with us tomorrow."
"Eh?"
"I'm sorry that I haven't told you sooner. Gwendal and I weren't really even sure ourselves until last night. The family used to be very close to us. They have a son and they want to give him a chance to study abroad. You know how people from foreign countries like to study here in America and all, don't you?"
"Well, yes." Wolfram knew that. In fact, he had seen one or two foreign exchange students in his school before. He just didn't expect that his family would be housing one, that's all.
"He will be sharing a room with you." The oldest of the three brothers spoke for the first time that morning.
"Ehhh?"
Chuckling slightly to his younger brother's reaction, Conrad explained. "Sorry Wolfram, it's just… we only have 3 rooms, and the boy that'll be coming is the same age as you. We just thought it'd be the most appropriate." Pausing slightly at a sudden realization, he continued. "You don't mind, do you?"
Pursing his lips together for a moment to think, The blond head replied, "Well, no. I suppose not." Surely it will be something different than he was used to, since he had a room to himself ever since little, but surely it could not be too bad, could it?
Conrad smiled. "Thank you, Wolfram."
The youngest brother just shrugged. He didn't think it was that big of a deal. "So, what's his name?"
"Yuuri. Yuuri Akiho."
:-:-:-:-:-:
Standing inside an airport with his two brothers, Wolfram watched a bit impatiently at the passengers coming out steadily from the other side of the automatic doors. Unbeknownst to him, almost everyone around the three were whispering and marveling at the sight they were beholding. The blond and his brothers were oblivious to the spectacle they were creating simply by standing together like that.
"Isn't the flight supposed to be here already? We've waited for almost half an hour." Wolfram said, annoyed.
"Patient, patient, Wolfram. You never know for sure with airplanes, sometimes they—Ah! Yuuri, over here!" Conrad exclaimed mid-sentence.
Wolfram looked to the direction that his big brothers were heading towards, and analyzed the new boy a few meters away. Black hair, black eyes. Guess he is the very definition of your typical Japanese boy, huh, he mused to himself. Glancing briefly at the interactions that transpired between this 'Yuuri' boy and his brothers, he added, A bit awkward if you ask me. Or maybe he's just shy? Wolfram cocked his head to one side, totally lost in his own thoughts.
It wasn't until Conrad yelled out his name to get his attention that he snapped out of his thoughts and walked over.
"Yuuri, this is our youngest brother, and the one whom you'll be sharing a room with – Wolfram Bielefeld."
The black-haired boy seemed to stare a bit at Wolfram before extending out his hand, smiling. "Nice to meet you, Wolfram. I'm Yuuri."
Shaking his hand in return, Wolfram muttered a soft "You, too."
:-:-:-:-:-:
"Well, this is my room – and yours, too, now." Wolfram opened the door, signaling for Yuuri to come inside. They had went out and bought a bunk bed yesterday evening. "You can choose if you want to be on the top bunk or the bottom one."
The other boy seemed to debate internally for a second before answering. "I'll take the bottom one, is that okay?"
"Yeah." In truth, the blond had wanted to be on the top bunk anyway, so this works out just fine. "You can put your stuff over there for now." He signaled vaguely towards the closet. "Since today is Sunday, there'll be school tomorrow. Conrad told me he already took care of all the paperwork, so you can already come to school tomorrow."
"Ah, ok, thanks. Did he also, uh, ordered a uniform for me?"
Wolfram blinked before he realized what the other boy meant. "Oh, ahaha, we don't usually have uniforms in America. You can usually just wear whatever to school."
"Wear 'whatever'?" Wolfram noticed that Yuuri seemed to be confused.
"Urm, well, you know, street-clothes. Jeans and T-shirts, or something like that." he explained.
"Oh, I see. That's really different from my old school, then. We all had to wear uniforms." The black-haired boy laughed awkwardly.
"Uniforms…" Wolfram said, pausing slightly. "I've never worn one before. How is it?"
"How… is it? Well, each school has a different design, but they're all basically the same thing. Kind of." Yuuri explained, trying to find the right words to describe it. "My school's uniform for the guys is this type of uniform that they call 'gakuran'."
"Gakuran?"
"Yeah. All black."
Stifling back a laugh, Wolfram repeated, "All black…?"
"Uh, yeah. What's so funny?"
"Well, it's just… you have totally black hair and black eyes. If you were to wear an all-black outfit, too, that'd be… interesting." Wolfram answered, chuckling slightly.
Scratching his head, Yuuri was kind of confused. "Well, maybe to Americans…? Most Japanese people have black hair and black eyes, so I don't think there's anything too strange about it."
Blinking his eyes in surprised, the blond said quickly, "No, no, sorry. I didn't mean anything bad by it. Just… yeah, you're right. It's kind of rare here in America to see people with your facial features, that's all."
"Yeah, I guess I can see what you mean—" The sentence was never finished for Yuuri had let out a yawn right in the middle.
"Hee. You're tired, aren't you? Why don't we turn the lights off for now. You can always organize your stuff tomorrow. We should sleep early for school, anyway."
"Agree." Nodding, Yuuri headed right straight to the bed, not bothering to think much about his first day here in America.
:-:-:-:-:-:
School, Wolfram had to admit, was not that much different came the next day. It turned out that they were in the same class. As expected, his classmates gathered around the new student for the first half of the morning, but other than that, not much else had changed. Once they got bored with questioning Yuuri about this and that, everything was back to what it was like before. Though the teacher did put him right next to Wolfram, probably because she knew that they knew each other already and she wanted her new student to feel more at ease.
"Alright guys. Today we will be conducting an experiment using this equation right here." The teacher tapped her pen lightly on the board. "You and your partner will be filling out this worksheet as you go through the procedures."
Wolfram and Yuuri looked at each other before the taller boy broke out, "Guess we'll be working together, then, huh?"
Not caring either way, Wolfram shrugged before heading towards the back to get the materials.
"Let's see… the first step… light the Bunsen Burner up and put-- LIGHT IT??" Stopping mid-sentence of reading out-loud the instructions, Yuuri chuckled nervously, confusing his partner.
"Is something wrong?" Wolfram asked, eyes narrowed. He didn't like Science too much and wanted to get this experiment over with as soon as possible.
"Ah, well… uh, hahaha, neh, Wolfram. Do you mind lighting it instead?"
"Umn… okay?" Blinking his eyes in confusion, the blond suddenly realized what his partner was implying. "Are you afraid of fire, Yuuri?"
"Eh!! Well…" Scratching his head uncomfortably, Yuuri fidgeted in his seat. "…Yeah."
Scoffing, Wolfram let out a "Wimp." teasingly.
Groaning, the other boy wanted to bang his head on the table out of embarrassment. "Oh, come on, Wolfram! I don't know why I'm afraid of fire! I just am – ever since I was little. I mean, don't you have some irrational fear, too?"
"Hmn… well, I suppose." Pausing slightly to think about the question, he finally responded, "I guess it's like how some people are afraid of snakes or clowns or something like that?"
"Y-Yeah!" Yuuri exclaimed, suddenly looking a lot more relieved than before at his partner's rationalization.
"Hee. You're so funny, Yuuri." The blond said, letting out a little laugh. "Alright, I'll light the thing up. Why don't you measure how much that piece of lead weight, then?"
"Okay!"
:-:-:-:-:-:
As it turned out, the experiment wasn't as much of a pain as Wolfram had initially thought. Yuuri sure can be smart when he needed to. In fact, he was better than Wolfram when it came to Science-related things.
"Alright, class. Be sure to wrap everything up in about five minutes. Oh, and before I forget, you guys will have a project regarding natural observations for this unit. I suggest you think about who you will want to partner up as we'll be starting it next week." The teacher announced as everyone was getting ready to put everything away.
"Hey Wolfram," The blond looked up to see that one of his friend, Harl, was talking to him, "want to work on that project together?"
"Su—" He was about to reply positively when he saw Yuuri on the other side of the room, handing in the papers, and thought about how he's new here and hasn't managed to make many friends yet. "Ah, sorry, not this time."
"Hmn. Alright! Next time, then." As his friend walked away, Wolfram finished putting the materials inside the cabinet before walking towards Yuuri.
"Hey, Yuuri."
"Yeah?"
"Want to work together with that project the teacher just told us about?"
As Wolfram saw the bright smile on the other boy's face, he was glad he made this decision.
:-:-:-:-:-:
"So it seems like we have to choose some sort of animal and write reports about it." Wolfram said as they walked home together, looking over the sheet of paper the teacher handed out.
"An animal, hmn? I wonder what— OY WOLFRAM WATCH OUT!!!" Quickly grabbing the other boy's arm, Yuuri pulled him back just as a car passed them just barely a few meters away.
Gasping heavily, the blond boy shakily stood up straight, crutching the piece of paper in his hand. "S-Sorry, I was reading, and…"
"It's okay, I'm just glad you're safe." Breathing a sigh of relief, Yuuri noticed that there's something that fell on the ground just as Wolfram did, too.
Bending down, Yuuri was about to pick it up. "Hey, Wolfram, I think this fell—"
"DON'T TOUCH IT!!!"
Stunned at the sudden shout from the other boy, Yuuri's fingers froze just mere centimeters away from the object on the ground.
Realizing what he had just done, Wolfram quickly bent down to snatch it before saying quickly, his heavy breathing coming back. "I-I'm sorry. Yeah, this is mine. Thanks for saving me earlier. I just realized that I left something at school, do you mind walking back home alone? You remember the road, don't you? Or should I call my brother to pick you up?" The words all came out in a rush, jumbled together and barely loud enough to hear.
Managing to make out the other boy's words in his shock, Yuuri stuttered out a "N-no, that's fine. I remember."
It almost looked like a forced smile on his face as Wolfram said, "That's good. I'll see you later then."
And before Yuuri can say anything back, his new-found friend had already turned back, sprinting full speed to the direction where they had came from.
Yuuri vaguely noticed that the object that Wolfram was holding so tightly to his chest - that had made Wolfram reacted to violently just seconds before - was a little silver locket.
I have the ending planned out already. This story will probably be about 3-4 chapters. Just a short story. I had initially wanted to do just a light, fluffy story but ahaha angst always seep into my muse whether I want them to or not.
Anything, regarding this chapter - yes, I realize that Yuuri's last name is Akiho in here. There's a reason for that that'll be explained later on. No, he's still supposed to be the same Yuuri Shibuya that we know in canon. And then there's that locket thing, which will play a (kind-of) big part later on. Please keep watch on this story if you'd like to know what happened next! :D
With that, please review & tell me your thoughts/predictions. Critism is welcomed if it's well-based. That's all. Until next time!
