Chapter 1

Spring 2

I used to know this girl. We played together when we were younger. Every summer I would come and stay with my grandfather in the blacksmith's, and she would come and stay with her grandfather on the farm in Mineral Town. We would play, go fishing, and occasionally, mine (at least when my grandpa would let us. We were only kids then).

This went on for four years. When I was nine, she stopped coming. I never knew why, but one summer she just didn't come back. I had asked my grandpa where she was and he had told me that it wasn't any of our business. I always thought that, maybe, it was because of me…

Now, I was twenty, and I was permanently living in Mineral Town. It hadn't been my choice, of course. Who would want to live in a small-ass town like this one? No, I was forced to come here. My parents decided to ship me here a few months after I turned eight-teen. I wasn't completely innocent though. They had sent me here for a reason. Despite my quietness and cool demeanor, I was quite the party boy back in the city. Give me a few beers and I would be doing karaoke. After I had thrown a TV out of a hotel room window, my parents decided that I had caused enough trouble for them and had sent me here.

So here I was, sitting in the library at four o'clock in the afternoon. It was a Monday and the library was closed, but Mary had let him come in anyway. She was nice like that.

"Bye Mary, it was good seeing you today." I said in my usual, uninterested tone.

Mary looked at me and blushed (wow, she really was shy). "It was good seeing you too Gray…" she said but then trailed off.

I walked out of the library and took a left to head back to the inn. As I was walking back, I saw Cliff heading towards the inn to (we shared a room). I didn't say anything since I wasn't the type to. I turned right and walked in front of him until we got back to our room.

"Hey Cliff!" Anne said happily.

"…hi Anne…" Cliff responded in that shy voice of his.

"Hi to you too, Anne…" I said in a quiet voice.

"I heard that." Anne said.

"Doesn't matter." I said back to her.

Cliff and I walked up to our room and sat on our separate beds, across from each other.

"So…did you hear that there's a new girl in town?" Cliff asked.

"Yep. Not sure why anybody would want to move here though."

"Yeah." Cliff laughed. He was a little more confident around me than he was around other people. It was because we had become good friends while sharing a room together, ever since he got to Mineral Town a year ago.

"Now you won't be the newbie here in town, huh, Cliff?" He smiled.

"Yeah. Good night Gray."

"Night Cliff" And off to bed we went.