Natsu no E ~ Picture of Summer

~Prologue. A phone call~

"Guess what"

"Hey, Hitomi, good to hear ya!! How's going, what's up?" Serena's voice crackled through the telephone line.

"Couldn't be worse" the other girl moaned dramatically.

"So, what happened? Did you see a ghost or something, you sound horrible" the ash blond girl commented, while getting a grip on her glass full of lemon ice tea and fanning herself with a piece of paper. She was carelessly sitting on the sofa, blushing because of the horrible heat which seemed to flood the whole town.

"Worse than that!! Mum got me a job!!" Hitomi declared, dropping on her bed with a loud 'thud'; she frowned when she heard her friend laughing at the other end of the line. "It's not funny!!!!"

Serena tried to calm herself. "Yeah, you're right, it's not funny but you speak of it as if it was the end of the world! You're not gonna die, you know? Anyway, why did your mum get you one? I thought you'd told me you got great marks in your final exams, didn't you?"

Hitomi sighed. "That's it, but mum thinks that I've got to work anyway. She says I should start earning some money, to learn how these things work. Can you believe it?? And I can't say 'no' because she already arranged it all for me!" she groaned.

Serena sighed, preparing herself for a long afternoon of complains and angry remarks from her friend. "Okay, okay, so tell me what's it about? What does your horrible job involve?" she asked.

The girl with huge sparkling green eyes snorted, as her eyes wandered over the ceiling of her room; she could hear the chatter of the busy people walking down the street of the city she lived in, Astria. She hated it there, but as she was locked up in boarding school from Monday to Friday in one of the most prestigious schools of the country, on the outskirts of the massive metropolis, she didn't mind that much.

She ran her hands through her long sandy blond hair, blessing the air conditioning in her room and the whole flat.

"Remember last year my granny brought up the idea of hiring our house in Fanelia?" she murmured in a nostalgic tone. Serena opened her mouth in disbelief.

"What??!! Don't tell me they're gonna hire it this summer!!!?? But Tomi, you were supposed to be coming here with your family, just like last summer!!!" she cried, sitting straight and stiff in the sofa. The girl at the other side of the phone line sighed, resignedly.

"Well… it's not like I'm not going to come to The Sparrow this year… but not with my family" she explained. The sandy blond girl closed her eyes for a second, letting the memories of the old house drift slowly in her mind.

The Sparrow, the piece of land's name, was in the outskirts of her mum's village, Fanelia, near the northern coast of the country, and she loved the place dearly. She had lived there for the first fourteen years of her life, but when she turned fifteen her parents had decided to move to Astria, the capital of the province, so as to get Hitomi into Meifia Boarding School, and because her dad had been given a better job in the city, so the whole family had had to change residence. Since that moment, they had gone back to Fanelia for summer holidays, to their old house, and with Hitomi's old friends, who all lived in the village or in the small bunch of houses next to where hers was, only ten minutes away from the beach.

But last winter the house had been broken into, and Hitomi's grandma suggested them to hire the house, if they didn't want to sell it, in order to have someone there to keep an eye on things in case burglars thought of coming again. The girl had been against the idea immediately: she hated having some intruders in the place where she had so many happy childhood memories, but that summer things hadn't turned out to be the way she expected them to…

Serena frowned, sipping some ice tea and  waving her hand to get rid of some annoying flies that kept buzzing around her head. "So, what's exactly happening here? You're coming, but you're going to hire your old house?"

Hitomi sighed. "That's just what's going to happen" she clarified. "Look, my dad got an important offer for the whole summer, and he'll have to stay in Astria with my mum. So, she got a family to move into The Sparrow. And, as she knew I was dying to come here for the summer, she offered me as some kind of guide and babysitter for them" she muttered, her brows knitted into a frown. "It seems that these people have a girl, and I get to take care of her, do the house chores and guide them around Fanelia, 'cause they appear to be from Irini, you know…" she mocked, and Serena rolled her eyes. Irini was a terribly posh district of the capital of the country, Escaflowne, and usually only rich people could afford a house there.

"Man, they'll surely be some insufferable snobs… poor you" she sympathetically said, sighing and fanning her face faster. "But hey, won't you like taking care of the little girl? It'll be some kind of training for your later studies!" she tried to cheer her up, remembering that she wanted to study psychopedagogy.

"Nice try, Serena" the other girl said gloomily. "Sad to tell you it didn't work. Do you get what all this is going to be like? I'll have to stick around this family the whole summer, *two months*!!!! I won't be able to go out with you because these stupid snobs will want me to clean the house again and again, or will want me to show them around, and I'll have to be glued to the kid all the time!" she groaned.

"There, Hitomi, try being positive. Are there any good looking guys in the family?" she said mischievously. "Just think about it! It could be even fun…" but when she heard the snort of her friend, she decided for a quick change of subject. "Anyway, now you guess what… it's nearly July and you know what that means??" she frantically shouted. Hitomi arched her eyebrows.

"Eh… what?"

"Diet!!!! I've gotta start a diet, Tomi!!!" Serena desperately cried. Every summer the same story; after the end of classes you opened the forgotten drawer where you kept the swimming costumes and tops for holidays, and discovered in horror that you couldn't put on a lovely blue skirt that *had* fitted you perfectly last summer. "I should've started it last week, but I completely forgot and now I'll have no time!!" she panicked.

Hitomi's lips curved into a small smile, shaking her head. Back in Fanelia, she'd always shared those diets with her friend, eating carrots instead of chocolate donuts for a week or two until in the end Serena got tired of it all and decided to quit.

"So, what's this year? The watermelon diet, the cabbage soup diet?" she ventured, as her fingers stumbled upon the remote control of her tv set; she switched it on and channel-hopped until she got tired and left a documentary about some crazy scientist speaking about his theories of Atlantis.

"No!" Serena said triumphantly. "The Onion Diet! I saw it on tv, they said you get instant results in three days!!"

Hitomi sighed. "You're never going to change, huh?" she grinned. How she missed Fanelia and her friends… "Is… is Allen there?" she said quietly, and Serena adopted a concerned expression.

"Er… yes, he's upstairs, playing some new computer game with Amano kun, you know them… they're like small kids" she joked. "Do… do you want me to get him?"

The green eyed girl remained silent for a few seconds, and then shook her head. "No… better if you don't, I guess. How is he?"

"Well, doing really well… he got the best marks in his class, and… oh, wow…"

"What is it?" Hitomi asked, sensing the astonishment in her friend's voice.

Serena's smile echoed in her words. "It's Dryden… he's walking up my street… with an umbrella! Can you believe it??"

Hitomi burst out laughing. "Yeah, that kinda sounds a lot like Dryden" she chuckled. In that same moment she heard the door bell ringing; her parents were back from work, and then she remembered in horror that she was supposed to collect her little brother Mamoru at basketball practice that afternoon.

"Oh my gosh, Serena I gotta go right now, I'll see you around next week I'm coming to clean up the house with mum if they haven't killed me for leaving Mamochan at basket!!" she hastily muttered, hugging up the phone speaker without giving the other girl time to say goodbye.

Serena listened at the intermittent peep of the cut line for a second, and then put down the phone as well. It was going to be a really interesting summer…

Tbc~

A/N: So, what do you think of it?? Should I go on with it?? I guess I don't need to say whose family is going to stay at Hitomi's, right? ^_~ I was complaining about summer jobs as well, but I wouldn't mind doing the girl's one for once!!! I would build a monument to my mum if she got me such a good job sigh but these things never happen to me… Ah, in case anyone knows a diet that works, pleez tell me :p I'll be grateful forever more [just as well as if you review ^^]

Okay, on with the begging… PLEASE REVIEEEEW and tell me if you want me to write on!!!

Ryuu ^_^