Kagamine Len groaned as his phone started buzzing on the bedside table, the muffled vibrations deafening loud in the silence of the room. Glancing across at the sleeping girl beside him, he reached over and grabbed his phone, thinking that he really should have switched it off before he actually came up to this girl's room.

Peering at his screen, squinting against the bright backlight, he saw a very familiar number, urgent and demanding. The phone buzzed again, almost angrily, and with a sigh of resignation, he swiped across the screen, accepting the call. Almost immediately, the voice of an angry female hissed into his ear. "Where are you right now, Kagamine Len? And who are you with?" the woman snapped, sounding jealous. He couldn't help but grin. "I can't believe you cancelled on me last night – you better have a good reason for it! I've been trying to reach you for hours!"

Sakine Meiko was quite the fiery woman. Her rage and her passion were the main reasons why he still stuck with her, despite her controlling ways. He knew, for all her rigidity and possessiveness, that as long as he whispered a few sweet nothings in her ear, she would grow calm and docile once more. She was very easy to anger but just as easy to please. "Why, I'm at home of course. Sleeping. It's three in the morning, love," he yawned, something he didn't have to fake. "I really had some urgent business to attend to last night. I'll spend more time with you next time, promise," unless he found someone else willing to entertain him. Honestly, Meiko got on his nerves sometimes, but not enough for him to sever ties with her completely.

Meiko's voice had lowered into a deep, husky purr. "All right then, whatever you say," she giggled, sounding nothing like the twenty-five-year-old woman she actually was. "How about tomorrow night? I'm taking leave from work for a few days, I need to clear my leave, so we have plenty of time. You can even stay all night if you'd like," she offered suggestively.

He laughed quietly, careful not to awaken the slumbering woman beside him. "Tomorrow is fine. As for staying the night...we'll see about that," he said vaguely, reluctant to make any promises. After a few more insincere whispers and declarations of "I love you", he managed to hang up, setting his phone back down with a sigh of relief. Well, now he knew whose bed he would be gracing tomorrow night, but for today he was free. It would be nice to take some time out of his busy schedule for himself – he had an ever-accumulating stack of homework anyway, so he might as well make use of the free time to clear some of it.

Looking once more at the sleeping woman, he slipped off the bed with its rumpled covers and the dirty sheets which smelled like musk and sex. Gathering his clothes, he pulled his shirt over his head and put on his pants with a practised ease born of countless one night stands. He could let himself out of the small apartment, he had come here several times before, and he would prefer to leave before the woman woke up. It was always awkward leaving when they were awake.

He didn't live too far away from here, maybe just two or three streets down from this block. It would be morning in a few hours, and he'd like to get a few hours of sleep in his own familiar bed. Besides, if he got home too late his parents would wake up – they always woke up early to go to work – and then he would have a hard time explaining where he had been all night. Plus, today was still a school day, and he was completely out of excuses for missing lessons.

Actually, Len wondered at times why he was doing this to himself. Sure, he liked the sex, he liked physical pleasure, but sometimes these women he slept with grew too...attached to him, and that was when most problems arose. All he wanted was one night of pleasure – he never wanted anything more than a simple fling with no strings attached. But some women thought that he must love them, given how often he returned to their arms and their bed. He couldn't bring himself to explain that actually, he was irrevocably in love with someone else – someone he knew he could never have, and the knowledge of that left a painful, gaping hole in his chest where his heart was supposed to beat.

It didn't take long for him to reach his own house. The three-storied building was in a suburb just a little way outside town, and he was thankful when he saw that the windows were all dark – it would be awkward if anyone was awake now to catch him sneaking home in the dead of the night. Letting himself in through the back door, he quietly locked the door behind him and poured himself a glass of water in the kitchen – he was a little thirsty after his midnight antics.

Leaving the empty glass in the sink, he snuck out of the kitchen and up the stairs towards his room, taking care to avoid the creaky fourth step on the staircase. He was used to creeping his way around at night, this hardly was the first time he left the house at ungodly hours. Reaching the next floor landing, he looked around carefully to ensure that no one was leaving their room just as he entered his own, and it was only when he was completely sure it was safe that he headed towards his room, glad that he had come home undetected once again.

As he reached out, long slender fingers curling around his doorknob, he paused and looked behind him at the door right opposite his – it was his twin sister's room, and for the longest moment, he just stared at the door as though it held the key to some unfathomable secret. Then, with a quick shake of his head, he snapped out of his trance and slid into his room, opening and closing the door slowly so that it wouldn't creak too loudly. Suddenly overwhelmed by tiredness, he headed straight to his welcoming bed, not even bothering to change out of his clothes. He would change in the morning, but right now all he wanted to do was to fall into the lulling embrace of sleep.


Morning came quickly, too quickly for Len. His window streamed sunshine into his room, and it fell upon his face – he turned away but it was too late, he was already awake. He had always been a light sleeper. Muttering a curse, he shifted into a sitting position, rubbing a hand over his weary eyes – glancing at the clock on his bedside table, he saw that it was half-past seven.

Well, that meant he had roughly four hours of sleep last night. It would be enough to last him for the day, and he would just come home after school to catch up on his lost rest. Furiously rubbing the last vestiges of tiredness from his eyes, he yawned and stretched, his arms and hips throbbing in remembrance of his activities last night. The muscle aches would be gone soon enough, and until then he just had to put up with it. It was a pleasant sort of pain, one that was mildly uncomfortable but still familiar. It reminded him that last night, he had satisfied both himself and the nameless girl he met at Gumo's party. She would probably remember him for a long while. He found it odd, that this actually wasn't the first time he slept with this familiar stranger yet he still didn't know her name. Or did she tell him before, and did he simply forget?

"Len!" a familiar voice that sounded like a high-pitched version of his own rang out through the wood of his door. "I know you're awake! You better get your ass ready for school, you're going to get in trouble if you show up late again!" his dear sister scolded sharply. She was only a few minutes older than him, but she acted like she was years his senior. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, knowing it was pointless when she couldn't see him through the door anyway.

"You nag like you're Mum!" he yelled back. "You keep this up and you'll get wrinkles young!" There was a loud knock on the door, and he could practically feel his sister's impatience in the knock. He also heard the thump of footsteps and knew that she was probably heading downstairs to grab some toast for breakfast. He was glad that today was Wednesday and so they started school late. If it was any other day and he had to wake up at six, he'd probably be late again...

It didn't take long for him to get ready. Quickly, he grabbed a fresh set of clothes and darted to the bathroom for a quick shower. Five minutes later, he was downstairs with his bag slung over his shoulder, attempting to steal some of his sister's freshly buttered toast – at first, she tried to defend her breakfast, but eventually begrudgingly gave up one piece of toasty goodness. He mumbled a "thanks" through a mouth full of bread, and she simply rolled her blue eyes at him.

Kagamine Rin looked just like him, with her baby blue eyes and feathery golden blonde hair. She was a good head shorter than him, puberty clearly having granted him an edge in terms of height, and she had the cutesy good looks of a girl-next-door. Both of them were, granted, rather blessed in the genetics department. Smirking, he reached out to ruffle her hair, something she hated because it reminded her of how he was taller than her now when they were the same height five years ago – she batted his hand away like an angry cat, and with their morning ritual complete they left the house, thankfully catching the bus just as it pulled up at the nearby bus stop.

His school wasn't too far from his house either. It was one of those preppy high schools meant for smarter and wealthier students, meaning that there wasn't much variety in terms of the student population. Every day he saw the same few faces and spoke to the same few people who all had the same few types of personalities. There were the usual jocks and cheerleaders, there were the geeks, there were the nice innocent do-gooders, and there were the weirdos as always. His school didn't really have room for any other kind of student, to be honest.

Rin's first class was different from his – in fact, they didn't really share many classes together. His school had an unspoken policy to separate twins, especially if they were identical since they found it easier to differentiate them and especially because they believed twins in the same classroom would only lead to trouble. He couldn't fault the administration for thinking that way, though. He and Rin had played their fair share of pranks in class during their younger days. "Remember to come home early today," his sister reminded him tersely as their bus pulled up outside the school building. "Mum and Dad are home early for once and they want to have a family meal."

Len sighed and rolled his eyes in exaggerated exasperation. "I know. You've told me this like, five times already at least. I'll remember," his tone softened slightly as he saw his sister grin at him. Whenever she smiled, he couldn't help but notice how pretty she was. Then again, it was easy to forget her attractiveness when she was shouting at him, kicking his ass or basically behaving like she was forty. "Get a move on, you'll be late," he shoved her off the seat since she was blocking his way out. She hissed at him, then tossed a casual "bye loser" over her shoulder before she dashed down the bus steps towards the school gate.

He took his time leaving the bus, dawdling over to the gate since he knew he still had around fifteen minutes before lessons started. Not for the first time, he silently blessed the soul who decided that on Wednesday, their class would start one and a half hours later than usual. It was only 8.45am now, and he would take only five minutes to get to class, so he wouldn't have to worry about yet another blemish on his otherwise flawless record. Honestly, the only reason why he even had a record in school was due to of how often he showed up late to class.

As he walked through the front courtyard towards the main building, he could feel people looking at him, and a sudden grin danced across his lips – he was fairly notorious in school for what he did at night, and that gained him plenty of attention from other, mostly female, students on campus. He did have a reputation for being a bit of a player, but he didn't really see himself as a playboy. He didn't toy with a girl's affections and then dump her, after all. He liked to make it clear that he was only in it for the sex before he started anything with anyone, and most people were okay with that though some others hoped for more. He was vaguely aware that there was a secret challenge among the girls in school – a challenge to make Kagamine Len fall in love with one of them.

But none of these girls knew that his heart already belonged to another, an unattainable other. He sometimes wondered if he slept around really just because of the pleasure, or if it was to fill the gaping hole in his heart that his love left behind. The latter thought was terrifying – it was the kind of thought that came to him during the half-awake, half-asleep hour of two in the morning. It was the kind of thought which haunted his nightmares and made him toss and turn in his sleep.

As his thoughts wandered, so did his gaze, and as he casually looked around, hands shoved in his pockets, he saw a flash of teal. The colour was such a strange colour to see on this minimalistic grey campus that he looked around quickly, wondering if he had imagined the vibrant flash of colour. When he looked in the direction of the teal streak though, all he saw was the school's administration office, with no bright bluish-green in sight. Shrugging, he continued on his way, deciding that he must have imagined the flash of bright colour. He had dawdled in the courtyard for long enough, and the fifteen minutes he had before had already dropped to five. It would be best if he hurried for his first class now since he didn't want to be late even when for once, he actually managed to show up early.


He spun his pen lazily, watching the minutes tick past on the class clock. The second hand seemed to crawl, and he felt like the clock was almost mocking him. He sat in the middle of the classroom, towards the back, but he fancied he could hear the ticking of the clock. Tick tock, tick tock it went, with a sort of malicious glee as it counted down the seconds towards the next lesson. Surely he couldn't be the only one in class feeling such animosity towards the clock.

He glanced around discreetly, not wanting to draw the teacher's attention as he droned on about Philip Larkin's self-deprecating style of poetry. It was all stuff he already knew, anyway. He did Larkin last year already, being in the advanced Literature module, so he wasn't really paying attention. Len was good at most subjects, the one subject he was terrible at being Biology since he hated memorising things. Thankfully he had dropped that module last year.

His gaze flitted towards the clock once more. The minute hand had only moved twice since the last time he looked at it and, with a quiet groan, he flopped back into his seat, drumming his fingers idly against the table. He glanced down at the notepad he had on the table and the little doodles he had drawn on the page. They were mostly stick figures and games of Tic-Tac-Toe he was playing with himself. He wasn't the artistic one in their family, Rin was. Speaking of Rin, he wondered what she was up to now. She was having her advanced Art class, and since she liked Art so much he was sure she was having a lot more fun than he was. He only took advanced classes because the school system allowed you to attend fewer lessons the more advanced classes you took. But this semester the only advanced class he had left to clear was Chemistry, so his timetable wasn't significantly different from the rest of the cohort this year.

Maybe he should have waited until this year to clear his advanced modules. It was hellish sitting in lessons and listening to things he had already done last year, or the year before. Impatience was never a good thing in sex, and he supposed that applied to other things in life as well. He was thinking about whether he should take a nap on the table and whether the teacher would notice if he did when he heard a faint knock on the door. The teacher evidently heard the sound as well since he stopped speaking halfway, looking curiously at the closed door.

"Come in," their teacher called. Len knew it couldn't be any tardy student, since everyone was present in class today, even him. The door opened and again, he caught a glimpse of teal – in walked a girl, dressed in a plain white dress and carrying a bright blue backpack. Her hair, which was the same shade of bright teal he had seen on campus earlier this morning, was tied into two simple braids which hung all the way to her waist. He couldn't really see her face, but she was slim and fair and she had very nice legs, from what he could see. The teacher stared at her as the mysterious girl walked over to him, saying something. He couldn't hear her from where he was seated.

Their teacher nodded as she spoke, comprehension dawning on his face. He cleared his throat and looked up, adjusting his tie nervously. He was a fairly young man, clearly only a few years older than them – Len guessed that he was in his mid-twenties. "Class," their teacher started, "we have a new student with us today. She just transferred from another school, and her name is..." he turned towards the girl apologetically, and she spun slowly to face the rest of them, looking at each and every student in turn. Len took advantage of this opportunity to ogle her face.

She was very pretty, easily one of the more attractive girls in school. That wasn't surprising – he had already guessed she was pretty since she had a nice body and nice skin and nice hair and well, nice everything. Her eyes were green and impossibly big, drooping a little at the edges to give her a sleepy, but adorable puppy-dog kind of appearance. She had cute, pouty tiny mouth with rosy pink lips and a slightly upturned nose. After taking note of her face, his gaze dropped to her figure again – the dress she wore wasn't so loose that it left everything to his imagination, but it wasn't form-fitting either. His eyes darted from curve to curve of her slender, willowy body, imagining the things he could do with someone as slim and petite as her.

"My name is Hatsune Miku," her voice was clear and sweet, and extremely high-pitched – like the bright, sharp tinkling of glasses clinking. He actually flinched, unprepared for such a voice. "My parents move around a lot due to work but I lived here when I was little. My parents decided to settle here again so I'll be finishing the rest of my senior year here," she smiled nervously then, clasping her hands together before her chest. "I hope you all can guide me along!" she continued, still looking from student to student – then her gaze landed on him, and he stared directly back at her.

He thought that her gaze lingered on him for just a few seconds longer than it did for the other students, but he couldn't be sure. The next thing he knew she was looking away from him, back at the teacher, the neutral expression on her face leaving him uncertain as to whether he had imagined their brief connection. The teacher murmured something to her and she nodded, making her way to one of the two empty seats in the classroom. One was next to him since the student who sat there before was currently hospitalised due to leukaemia, and was unlikely to be released before the end of senior year. The other empty table was next to the window, two seats away from his. The girl hesitated momentarily when she drew near, obviously trying to decide which seat to choose – to his mild surprise, she turned away from him and moved towards the window seat. He was quite used to people clamouring for his attention since he was smart, good-looking and fairly well-off, so her lack of interest in him was rather jarring.

The class was still following her every movement. The girl pulled out the chair and sat gracefully, tucking the hem of her dress in and placing a single pen with a blank notebook on the table. She sat at attention when she was done arranging her stationery, and for a while, you could have heard a pin drop, the classroom was that quiet. Then their teacher cleared his throat again and went back to his lecture, and everything returned to normal save for the presence of the new girl. He found that his attention, already wandering before, was completely fixed upon this Hatsune Miku instead of Larkin now. He found himself glancing at her every so often, though she was focused on the lesson and her gaze never wandered away from the teacher.

Change was something he rarely saw in his life. His parents were dealing with problems in their companies now – both of them were holding high ranking positions in the company hierarchy – so they were often in the office and, even when at home, they were usually working in the study or talking to staff and colleagues on their phones. He came to school late most of the time, hardly paid attention since he preferred to catch up by himself at home, and fooled around at night with whoever caught his fancy. And his sister would come home in the late afternoon or evening, nag at him aggressively with her flashing bright blue eyes – he liked to goad her just to see the sparks of anger flying from her gaze – and either busy herself with schoolwork or just laze around at home in her scanty pyjamas, her sketchbook in one hand and an ink pen in another.

His sister was entirely too comfortable around him for his comfort. It was as though she sometimes forgot that, despite him being her twin, he was actually male, and she liked to walk around at home with nothing on but a translucent, oversized shirt and lacy panties. It made him fidget when he saw her like that but even when he asked her to change, she hardly ever listened to him. It was during those days when he stayed out the longest and was the most active in seeking out girls to satisfy him.

Anyway, his life was routine. Even the students and teachers in school were a constant in his life, something that grounded him when he couldn't sleep at night and he had to think about his reason for existing. But this girl was new, she was something different and he found himself thinking over what that could mean for him. Of course, it could be as simple as him finding a new sexual conquest – even for someone as steady and constant as him, it was nice to change things up once in a while, and to lie in the arms of a new girl, her gaze still innocent and unsullied by the cruelties of love and the world. But on the other hand...discreetly, he glanced across at her again. She was still looking straight ahead, but he felt like perhaps she knew he was looking at her. It was the way she sat ramrod straight in her chair, her shoulders tense. She looked like she could sense, somehow, that she was being watched, although she hadn't even glanced at him once.

He thought that it would be interesting to become acquainted with this new person. It would be a nice change...suddenly, the memory of Meiko and her demanding words came to mind, and he shuddered. Yes, it would be nice to have yet another alternative when he was lonely at night. Nowadays he was going to Meiko too often, and that seemed to give her the impression that she held some kind of sway over him. Truthfully, she didn't, but since they just had mid-term examinations a while ago, most students were still recovering from their last-minute studying and he was kind enough to keep away until the girls were less stressed. So he went to the few working-age acquaintances he had, and Meiko just happened to be one of them.

Suddenly, the school bell pealed, and he jolted up in his seat – he hadn't realised that time was passing by so quickly. The girl's arrival really seemed to speed things up a little. It must be the disruption to his usual routine messing with his perception of time. "Don't forget to submit the essay by next week," their teacher called out over the noise of chatter and of books and pens being swept hastily into bags. He glanced again at the new girl and saw that she was the only one who bothered to write their homework down into that notepad of hers. He studied her, slowly getting up from his chair, and as he tucked the chair in behind the table she looked up and suddenly, abruptly, their gazes met. Green clashed with blue, and for a moment all he could do was stare at her.

He thought he saw a faint glimmer of recognition flit through her gaze, but then again he could have mixed it up with anything else. He, for all his ability to coax pleasure and murmur honey words of promise, was terrible with feelings. He couldn't tell sadness from jealousy, or simple irritation from true anger. Well, not unless the person was really obvious and not the typical passive-aggressive girls he seemed to involve himself with, his sister included. And anyway, she couldn't possibly recognise him. This was the first time he had ever seen her...unless she had seen him sneaking home from the apartment complex last night? But he quickly brushed that thought away; she couldn't have, no one in their right mind would be awake so late.

He glanced up at her again, but when he looked this time she was already gone, and he hastily searched the classroom only to see her teal braids swinging as she ducked out past the door. He wondered what her next class was and whether he would see her again – he hoped they would share a few more lessons together since she was someone so new and he was terribly intrigued by whatever was new. Life didn't seem to crawl as much when there was something new to distract him with, or at least that was what he observed from the class he just had.

Looking up at the clock, he decided he would relax a little more before he set off for the next class. There were still a few of his classmates talking in the room anyway, taking their time to leave. As he leant back against his table and shut his eyes, intending to take a quick, three-minute power nap, he heard a familiar voice and felt a firm handshake his shoulder, causing his brow to furrow in annoyance. His eyes snapped open and his gaze met blue eyes that were just a shade darker than his own. One of his good friends, Shion Kaito, was looking at him with one eyebrow raised. There was a knowing expression on his face, and Len already could guess what he was about to say.

"You're going to go after her, aren't you?" his friend asked. "That new student, Hatsune Miku. She's pretty hot," the navy haired boy mused. Shion Kaito was one of the taller guys in school. His father was the president of Shion Corps, the multinational company which dealt with oil fields in Saudi Arabia or somewhere along those lines – Len was not really sure since he didn't have any particular interest in the oil industry. Shion Corps also had a hand in defence technology, and all this meant that Kaito was very well-off – not that you could tell, since the guy seemed to wear the same few clothes over and over again in different combinations. Of course, Len didn't have many clothes himself, but he at least had enough clothes to wear a different outfit each day of the week. He thought Kaito had worn this exact same outfit just two days ago. Not that he really paid attention, since he was a guy and all, but Kaito's fashion choices were something his sister evidently paid attention to.

"I don't know. Maybe," he shrugged, thinking over Kaito's words. Did he really want to chase this girl? She didn't seem to have the slightest inkling of interest in him, from what he saw, and he knew better than to push himself upon a girl who wasn't looking for a boyfriend or a relationship. She seemed content to just study, ace her senior year and graduate from school if her behaviour during class was any indication of her personality. "She seems kind of cold, actually," he said slowly, frowning a little as he thought about her behaviour. Kaito just grinned knowingly.

"You know that the frosty ones are the best," Kaito joked. Or maybe he wasn't joking, Len couldn't really tell when it came to Kaito. All he knew was that, when it came to Kaito, he was mostly all talk and no action. He might make sexual innuendos and he might sound experienced, but Len knew that he wasn't, not really. He also knew that Rin had a bit of a crush on Kaito, for some strange reason, and it actually got on his nerves a little. To begin with, the idea that anyone could have a crush on Kaito was just downright weird. The knowledge that his twin sister was the one having said crush was, on the other hand, infuriating. But he didn't take it out on his friend since he never tried to seduce his sister or anything like that – Len just kept the annoyance and anger within, acting as though it didn't bother him one jot. He was a fairly good actor, or so he believed.

"Not my preference," Len now murmured, eyes darting to the clock and noting that he had approximately two minutes left to get to class. Luckily, it was on the same floor, and his Music teacher was always fashionably late anyway. "I'll see you later during lunch, I gotta get to class now," he pushed away from the table, grabbing his bag as he went. Kaito waved goodbye as he left the room – the navy haired boy was having a break now. Len's next break wouldn't be for another two hours. Wednesdays started late, but they were long, tedious days for him too.

However, as he pushed open the door to his Music classroom and caught a glimpse of teal in the large mirror that stretched across an entire wall of the room, he felt his lips curl up into a small smile. Perhaps his day would not be quite as tedious as he had feared it to be.