Tastes of Sea Salt
Disclaimer: As much as I would love to, I do not own Kingdom Hearts. Disney and Square Enix and all of those guys do, though. I hear they're pretty decent people. :)
Chapter 1-The New Girl
The blonde boy took a good, long look at the fragile-looking form sitting one row in front of him. Curious, he leaned his elbow on the wood of the desk and rested his chin in his hand. As the sky slowly turned from the rainy grey of the early morning to a soft azure blue, the words in the background all started to flow together and became just another noise to ignore. He watched the girl with focused eyes, as the newborn sunlight peeked from the clouds through the window and caught her platinum blonde hair. The sight was nothing short of mesmerizing.
I wonder what she's drawing...
He recognized the cute way she huddled over the desk, as was her custom, when she was sketching. He'd seen her drawings before, but only on occasion, when the wind hit just right and they blew off of her desk to the floor. As she would bend to pick them up, the boy could often get an over-the-desk glimpse of them, each time his eyebrows rising in amazement with what talent for art she had.
Not that the fact surprised him all that much, of course. He'd known she was special ever since she had unknowingly walked straight into his life a month ago when she had first moved to his hometown, Twilight Town, sketchbook in hand and mystery trailing behind her, enticing his curiosity to follow after her like a puppy. He didn't know what, but there was just something about her...
He wondered if the wind would do him a favor today; if he'd get to see what the girl had been so feverishly scribbling at since earlier that morning. He never got to see her face anymore, so he figured that her drawings were obviously the next best thing.
The boy turned his head to the window quickly, to see whether it was open or not. The teacher usually left it open to air the stuffy room out, but as he had recently come to find out, nothing was set in stone. To his reassurance, however, through his electric blue eyes of concentration he noticed a crack between the window frame and the glass so small he would've missed it if he hadn't been looking hard enough. He grinned to himself in amusement.
Now if a breeze could just blast through or something...
He sighed and crossed his arms over the desk, turning his attention back to the blonde girl. He noted the way she sat, her blue plaid uniform skirt tucked smoothly and neatly under her and her posture perfect; the way she kept pushing the left half of her hair back over her shoulder to hang down her back while the right half swept loosely over her other shoulder to the front; the way she changed her mind so often on how most comfortably to position her legs-first crossed, then together, then with her feet hiding under her chair, then crossed again. Over the weeks, he had begun to find her small habits to be pretty amusing and sometimes fascinating. Maybe even a little bit cute.
Would he ever admit that to anyone? Not even if his life depended on it.
The school bell suddenly rang in his ears, bringing back the soft dullness of the teacher's sweet-voiced lecture coming to an abrupt end as it did most days.
"Now, class, please don't forget we're changing seats tomorrow!"
The boy let the words flow through one ear and right out the other as he quickly shoved his unorganized mess of notebooks into his schoolbag, got up and rushed out the door. Today, he decided, was the day he was finally going to catch her and tell her just how amazing he thought that her drawings were. Although it looked like she tried to hide it from people, he thought she still deserved to know that someone noticed her talent,, even if it came from some nobody guy that just sat behind her. Her art was an inspiration to him, and though she didn't know it yet he just knew that he had to tell her.
He stepped out into the hall, numerous teens his age walking out of various classrooms and beginning to flood the narrow hallway. His vision swept around for the blonde girl, her once visible form now lost in the vast sea of bodies moving carelessly in their respective directions. Once Roxas had lost her in this, he knew there was nothing he could do about it. He would know, he'd tried. Multiple times. He sighed in disappointment and slung his bag over his shoulder, moving dazedly toward the class five rooms back and leaning casually against the wall beside it to wait.
A few minutes passed and the hallway began to clear out as kids started to head home. Some left in groups, and others completely alone. He heard the click of a doorknob and turned as a guy with fiery red spiky hair wandered out of the classroom.
"Miss me, Roxxy?"
"I told you not to call me that, Axel." Roxas replied, rolling his blue eyes to the back of his head.
Axel chuckled lightly, elbowing his friend in the side and starting for the end of the hallway. Roxas followed at his side, forced to listen as his best friend launched into a story about how, earlier that day, his weird Chemistry teacher, Vexen, started creepily hitting on his lab partner-a pretty girl with short black hair.
"...and you shoulda seen the way he was staring at her. It was naaaaasty. You could tell he was trying to, like, undress her with his mind or something. He kept making these super gross awkward noises when she..."
Roxas began tuning Axel out just as he had done with his teacher in class. His mind wandered to the blonde girl, creating an image in his head of one of her drawings once again floating to the floor because of the wind. He imagined her slowly reaching down to get it, her hair swinging down gently as her small hands grabbed the corners of the paper to bring it back, and he smiled slightly to himself.
Part of him wished he'd had a clearer view of her face. He'd seen it once before and instantly thought it was the most beautiful thing he thought he'd ever seen. And, living in a place like Twilight Town, there were a LOT of beautiful things to see-from the stunning sunsets to the gorgeous sandy beaches lined with sparkling oceans. But the memory had recently started to fade away, the quickly passing days beginning to erase her features from his mind.
On the other hand, the other side was perfectly satisfied with things the way they were, and perfectly happy just being able to see her at all. He shouldn't complain-not when he got to see her just about every day. Sure, he wanted to see her face, but he also knew he was lucky enough already just to get to sit behind her.
Roxas' daydream was abruptly interrupted by a sharp twisting feeling in his forehead that turned out to only be his friend poking him. He snapped out of his daze and looked into Axel's suspicious face.
"You alright, man? You haven't been paying attention almost this whole time. You almost got hit just now, bro," he pointed out, indicating the passing car that had sped by behind them less than a second ago.
"Oh, uh...yeah, yeah I'm fine," the blonde distractedly answered.
The semi-annoyed stare and lone raised eyebrow that Axel gave him told Roxas that he didn't believe it for a second. They crossed another road and entered a small park, as they always did on their way home from school.
"You've been really spacey lately, man. You sure everything's alright?"
"Yup."
"Hmmm...," Axel continued, "I bet I know what your issue is."
The blonde raised his eyebrows and pulled out his wallet as they walked up to their favorite place, the large red ice cream shop that was nestled in the center of the park amidst huge and tall trees as far as the eye could see. "Yeah? What're you thinking, then? Two sea salt ones, please."
The silvery-haired teen at the counter pretended not to hear their conversation and handed the creamy blue ice cream sticks to Roxas, who handed one to Axel. Roxas payed up the five munny they owed, thanked the guy and walked away again.
"It's HER again, isn't it? That girl from your still haven't talked to her yet?"
The short-ish blonde boy sighed. Of course Axel would be able to guess what was bothering him. He had gotten really good at it over the years, especially when it came to Roxas. His best friend may have been nosy and pushy, but he knew that Axel would always give him good advice no matter what the situation was or how difficult said advice would be to follow through with. After all, Axel had helped him through a truly dark time of his life when he thought there was absolutely nobody else. If he couldn't rely on Axel, who else did he have?
When Roxas had first told him about the blonde girl, he had simply said:
You should talk to her.
Well, yeah. Obviously that was the solution. Roxas could see that plain as day. The only problem was, it was about as easy for him to talk to someone like her as it was for someone to staple water to a tree. He would love to be able to take his friend's advice and talk to her, but he just couldn't. He wanted to, more than anything. He wanted to be able to see her face, to say hello to her in the mornings, to tell her that her drawings were as beautiful as she was, maybe even to someday be able to hold her hand and smile at her, if he could take it. But Roxas was terrified.
Besides, he was perfectly happy just watching her from afar, able to see the sunlight catch her hair and pretend that she could notice him someday without fear of being hurt or rejected by her. From far away, he could smell her sweet Paopu Fruit perfume and grin when she was concentrating on sketching without a care in the world and without worrying about anything else, even though he didn't even know her name.
Roxas sighed again. "Not yet. I want to, believe me, but I just...I don't know. How would I even...? What would I say?"
Axel hit his friend on the arm. "You'd say 'hello,' idiot. Duh, what ELSE would you say?"
Roxas shrugged and licked his light blue ice cream, then bit a somewhat large piece off of the corner.
"Then you'd have to go with, 'your drawings are amazing. I know you try really hard to hide them and everything but since I sit behind you I creepily stalk you while you draw sometimes and you're really good." Axel continued.
The piece of sea salt ice cream suddenly became jammed in Roxas' throat, causing him to choke quite unceremoniously on it. Axel clapped his best friend in the back, laughing.
"Dude, I'm joking! No need to die on me! If you do I'll kill you, got it memorized?"
After regaining a bit of composure and the ability to swallow properly despite the splitting headache of the brain freeze that now plagued him, Roxas nodded.
Hi everyone! This is Chapter 1 of my very first story, Tastes of Sea Salt! I hope you all like it! Reviews and advice and stuff of the like are greatly appreciated! ;w;
~WaywardWayfinder
