Disclaimer: If Shaman King were mine, I wouldn't need to write fanfics.

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Not another school story, you say! Please, spare us! I would love to, but my invisible writing stalker won't let me! I promise I will skip over the dramatic shonen-ai shojo version, since I know probably no guys would actually do that, but there will shonen-ai! Pairings are still up in the air, but please know the love square before flaming me. The pairings I suggest may or may not be there in the end. And yes, there will be an end!

Chapter 1 – Enter Ren Tao!

"Ren, it's time to get up!"

Ren groaned. Why couldn't he just have a normal alarm clock? Why couldn't his father let him buy a normal digital clock; instead that man forced him to buy a 'traditional' clock, with the hour and minute hands and even that didn't have any special features to it. It was a wall clock, with a red rim and the symbol 'Tao' in the middle. Normal kids had bedside alarm clocks. Normal kids didn't have parents obsessed with the family name.

Then again, normal kids didn't live in goddamn mansions.

So since he wasn't normal, he didn't have a bedside alarm clock. He slept in fucking silk sheets that were freezing cold in the winter, sticky when it was summer, and if he slid on his bed too quick, slippery so that one would fall on his or her ass if jumped on.

Ren had many a sore ass in his own room.

That aside, the annoyingly loud voice suddenly appeared in his room. In a flurry of what looked like a mass of elaborate Chinese fabric, skin, ivory hair clips, and green hair, his older sister, Jun, was right next to his bed, smirking like the happy-go-lucky girl she was.

"It's time to embrace the day, Ren! Come on, get up!"

"Go away." Ren pulled the annoying warm silk sheets over his head. For once, he'd give just to have a normal comforter. But no – he had layers of fucking SILK! He almost wished the westerners would just have stolen all the silk worms back in the day. Then maybe he wouldn't be forced to sleep in such an annoying atrocity.

People who envied him were stupid.

"Schooling is so very important," Jun chirped. She started away at some speech which Ren rarely listened to. Ag, Jun could be so preppy sometimes. She was so different from him, who kept his mouth shut. Raised in the same strict, high strung family…but so different. God, times like this made Ren so glad he wasn't a girl.

And wasn't even the slightest interested in them.

"Alright, I'm getting up."

"Good. Come on, Ren, it's just Monday."

Jumping off the bed, Jun turned to the door. "Daddy's in a good mood this morning. Apparently, some business deal went through smoothly and he's acting like the world's on his plate. So ask for anything. I think I was able to make him get me a car."

Jun, the only seventeen year old girl who still called her father 'daddy'.

Jun skipped out of the room, allowing Ren to pull off his pajamas and slip into his uniform.

He hated that Mankin High had uniforms, but at least he looked pretty good in it. The school (which offered from preschool to 12 grade) issued two white dress shirts and a dark aqua colored tie for the boy's uniform; the bottom part of the uniform was up to the fashion sense of the boy in question, as long as it wasn't navy jeans or pajama pants.

Or a speedo. Apparently, the swimwear was NOT included in 'appropriate dress', as all the boys found out after some kid wore it to school on a dare.

Not giving any names, but you can be sure that if you even mention the word 'speedo' in front of a certain Manta Oyamada, the said person would probably scurry away.

Not giving any names, of course.

Pulling on some dark denim, Ren buttoned his shirt and tied the tie loosely around his neck. Looking at himself at the mirror in the hall, Ren had to admit, he looked pretty damn smart.

And good-looking. God, if he had to go through the first day of high school and nearly getting jumped on by a lot of girls and a few guys again…

Pausing at the top of the stairs, Ren looked behind him into his room, which was pretty messed up: there were a few peeling posters on the walls and there were clothes scattered all on the ground. There was a glare where the sun hit the drum set he had in a corner of his room. He had taken up drums a few years back, when he had moved to America in the first place. That was…three years ago?

You could say his room was a bit emo. There were dark shades of black in various places, and there were an abundance of quite emo-like patterns. Then again, you could say he was a bookworm. There were more than one shelf of organized books. Or you could say he was sporty, if you saw the hung up soccer jersey hanging in his closet or the soccer ball resting quite unsteadily on top of a pile of papers on his desk.

He was a bit of all these.

Coming to the bottom of the grand staircase, Ren had his attention distracted as Jun appeared in a flowery dress from the doorway to the kitchen. Jun had been smart enough to be admitted to a pretty elite high school somewhere two hours away. The school had a policy of casual dress and Jun flaunted her 'unique' sense of style everyday with strange new combinations of colors and clothes.

"Mom, he's down."

"Ren? Come in here."

Ren rolled his eyes as he passed Jun, who was starting to leave for school. Her green hair was hanging loosely in a ponytail as she grabbed her carrier bag and followed a driver to the car. Ren's driver, Maki, nodded as Ren passed him in the kitchen.

Sometimes Ren wished he wasn't the only one getting driven to school by a paid driver in a bullet proof car.

His mother was sitting at the elaborate dining table, which happened to be right next to a huge window overlooking the little town they lived in. The Taos had managed to buy the huge mansion the moment they arrived in this place. The mansion itself had three floors with many windows, which all had good views since the mansion was on top of a hill. There were no problems of bothersome neighbors; everyone around the neighborhood had already labeled the Taos as a bunch of arrogant rich expletives, along with other unmentionable adjectives.

At first, the welcoming was friendly, until his father got it in his head to throw a welcoming party…for himself…and invited everyone in the neighborhood. The conversation was nice and cordial at first…until it started to melt into what everyone did for a living.

"I run a supermarket."

"I'm a librarian."

"I'm a stock broker."

"Oh, that's all nice, but I bet I make more than you combined. I'm sure my head is worth more than all your sorry saps put together." His father, En, decided to take it upon himself to spell out a complete history of the Tao Corporation, which started early in China and progressed to a nicely funded company that sold everything from toys to computers to underwear.

Chances were, if something read 'Made in China', it's probably from the Tao Corporation.

After the party, no one came to visit, no matter what his mother said.

Not to say he or any of his family members hadn't made any friends. At that party, Ren was sitting in a corner, knowing that every single kid there was on a one way track to pure hatred. Then as he was wallowing in self pity, one boy had come out of the crowd who was engrossed in En's speech to come talk to him.

"Hey, you bored out of your mind too?"

Ren looked up. This boy looked Japanese, but his English was pretty good. Feeling a little flustered (Ren was always shy around people he didn't even know…and this was his second day in America, mind you!), Ren nodded. "Yeah…sorry about my father."

"Sorry about mine too. I don't even know where he is." The boy shrugged, the orange headphones on his head shifted slightly. "Just up and left when I was two. So…why did you move here?"

Ren wondered what he should do. He was sitting alone, hugging his knees and looking positively pitiful. Would this new kid think he was strange or something? Quickly coming to a standing position, Ren tried to redeem himself. "Um, well, my father though he already pulled around his weight a lot in China, so he thought he might as well see what it was like in America, which is the country which buys most of the Tao Corp's products. A new view on life, or whatever."

Yoh laughed. "That's a funny reason to come. And here I thought that maybe he was getting tired of telling the same story to random people on the streets and decided to come and torture us here."

"That could be a reason." Yoh laughed more since Ren had said this with a completely straight face.

Was it normal to laugh like that? Ren had no idea. His father had instructed him not to laugh uncontrollably to avoid looking like a complete idiot. This boy, however, did so and didn't seem like a total doushe. Then again, Jun also laughed most of the day, and she was pretty smart as it comes.

"So tell me about yourself, Ren."

"How do you know my name?"

"Well, your father's been talking about how you're about to be the heir of his company in a few years, and since your other sibling is a girl, I kinda figured."

Ren groaned. "Great. Now everyone's going to hate me."

"That's not true. I don't hate you. You don't seem annoying or at least, not at first glance."

"Gee, thanks," Ren said sarcastically. "Well, my name's Ren Tao, I was born on January first, and I'm blood type A."

"God, does everyone in China introduce themselves in the same way?" Yoh looked shocked. "God, what happened to the friendly, 'oh, my favorite color is red, and I liked llamas' and things like that?"

"My favorite color is red, and I don't like sarcasm."

"Whoa, whoa, alright!" Yoh put his hands out in mock fear. "All bow to the almighty Ren! Besides, why would I want to know your blood type? Do you need a blood transfusion?"

"It just seems like the type of information Americans might want to know."

"Alright. My name's Asakura. Asakura Yoh. Yeah, and in kanji, it's written as 'leaf'. Alright…I was born on May twelfth in a set of twins, my blood type is O, I like the color orange, music, and I guess I like you."

He had been friends with Yoh ever since. Jun had made a few fast friends, and along with them, she and her little merry band had snuck out the backdoor and came back later that night, when everyone had left. Ren knew he smelled a bit of alcohol, but he wasn't going to complain. His mother had a harder time, but now she was routinely chatting up the nearby housewives. His father didn't have any neighborhood friends, settling with hanging out with the big dogs.

His mother sipped some sweet smelling tea. "Have a good day, okay?"

"Yeah, I know." Ren turned as a maid shuffled past him and pressed some food in his hands. She shuffled out a door. Ren sighed as he bit into some dim sum. Only an army of maids could keep the house so sparkly clean in the shadows – floors were swept, meals made, laundry done, appliances fixed: all by a large group of maids ordered not to be noticed or seen unless absolutely necessary. There was no worry of an uprising – what En paid them was enough for them to suck up the abuse and let angry feelings just sit.

"Go and make the Tao name proud," his father said, not looking up from the paper. "Do what you always do, Ren."

"Hmm."

The ride to school was always uneventful. Ren didn't mind sitting in silence as he watched normal people go around their normal lives, stewing in normality dreaming their normal dreams…he wished he could be normal.

"Good day, botchama."

Ren rolled his eyes. The head of security of the Tao family, Bason, was always calling him 'botchama' and it was starting to become an annoying nickname. "Don't call me that. And come around three thirty."

"Will do, botchama."

Ignoring Maki, Ren walked into Mankin High, also ignoring the calls of those annoying girls in the hallways. Coming to a stop in front of his classroom, Ren took a deep breath and started the day with a positive mindset: he's going to like me more than he does now.

Walking into the classroom cluttered with desks and chairs, Ren immediately noticed the object of his affections.

"Morning, Yoh."

"Hey, Ren. You're late."

Trying to stifle a smile and failing, Ren decided what the hell and leaned on Yoh's desk. "How was your weekend?"

Ren wasn't sure when he started liking Yoh…probably a few weeks after school started three years ago. Yoh had been the friendliest face he'd met so far in this foreign land, and he was helpful to boot. Not to mention the Asakura was friendly and likeable. He was sure he wasn't alone in thinking so.

"Hmm. Normal. Oh, never mind, I can't say that. Um…boring." Yoh laughed, his gaze wavering for a moment. If Ren wasn't mistaken, Yoh was watching something, someone, but with so many students in the room, he wasn't sure whom. Yoh shrugged. "I don't know."

"Really? That's too bad." Ren looked at Yoh, but the brunnette's attention had shifted again and he was watching someone again.

If only that Asakura could have eyes for him too!

TO BE CONTINUED…

Note: how many school stories of mankin are there? Too many to count. I'm trying to make this one not fall into the cliché category, but there will be shonen-ai. And most school stories with that mixed in tend to end up in the same old 'rivalry, tension, eventual getting together with who they really like'. Hopefully, I can make my special with my style of writing. But I warn you that that storyline is the going to be along the same lines. I'm just trying my best to spice it up with something different.

Anything goes! Read and review, please! Thank you!