Indigo's Corner:
Ack, I'm becoming more and more lazy these days. The thing is, I'm not in my writing mode. This is just from an idea that sprung up randomly in my head. It's always either Natsume or Mikan. Why not view things from the bystander's perspective?

To Janica if you ever read this: I just got an idea for a PxM today, so I'll be writing that soon, =).
To Pamela: I'll try to resume your Three Wishes, seeing that you lost inspiration for that fic. I don't have any ideas in mind right now, but they come to me in the weirdest time and places!
To the rest of ya'll: I'm not dead, just getting there...

Disclaimer:
Soon, my peeps... soon...

Warning:
Hotaru OOCness. I'm sorry if I raped her personality...

Dedication:
To xAvenging Angelx, because you love Hotaru so much.

Promises

When I first met Mikan Sakura, it was never my intention to become lifelong friends with her. I didn't like to get intimate with people out of the fear that they might be influenced by my behavior and way of living. Don't get me wrong, I don't despise myself, but by the time I found out about my flaws it was already too late to change. However, in this case I had little to no say in the matter. It just more or less happened.

I did all the calculations beforehand and found that the chance of winning was higher if I entered with a group. When I asked her to take part with me in the beauty contest, I was already well aware of the fact that she disliked me. It was the precise reason that I chose her of all people. I was then shocked when she took an instant obsession of me. After that one contest that we participated in together, Mikan started sticking to me like a parasite.

If you asked me to list and rank all the faults that Mikan had, her clinginess would top number one. Every time we walked to school, she would always take my arm and lock it tightly in hers. And then she would lean her head on my shoulder and shift a substantial amount of weight onto me. It was cute for the first week or so, but when fellow classmates started giving us dirty looks, it started to get on my nerves.

I noticed one certain group of people that were always sneering when we passed by. They were from our class, two boys and one girl. The boys had a notorious reputation in our school. One was short for his age, had bleached hair and a permanent sneer on his face. The other had bright red highlights and was freckled. The girl was the quieter one of the three, the one that kept them from going too far. She mostly observed, occasionally nodding in agreement or giving a shrug here and there.

"Lesbians!" The short one called out to us. One look at him and I could tell from his tone and facial expression that he wasn't even teasing. I could see contempt and prejudice all over his face.

The girl with curly brown locks nudged him hard in the thigh. "Shut up, Dai. What if they hear? You already got suspended four times. Didn't your dad say he was going to send you to a boarding school if they kick you out of school again?"

Dai flicked back his long side bangs covering his right eye, rolled his eyes and shot back, "What makes you think I care?! You should shut up, Kari. It should be a crime, displaying public affection like that. I'm homophobic and proud of it."

After that, the boys started throwing rocks at us. They only threw pebbles at first, which I didn't mind because they didn't really do anything except annoy me. Mikan however, was quite upset by their actions.

"Stop!" she hissed, and despite that her voice was trembling. "Violence is never the answer! We didn't even do anything to you! Stop…" her voice trailed off as she was harassed with bigger, sharper rocks.

At this point, the girl known as Kari was trembling. I could tell that she was trying to contemplate between stopping the boys from throwing rocks, ditching the scene and feigning innocence, and do nothing. She nervously bit her fingernails and took a few steps back.

Mikan gave a shriek as one almost missed her eye. She was frantically trying to dodge the stones, but Dai and his friend were whipping them at her. Flailing her arms, trying to knock the airborne stones off course, she ran wailing to me and held on to my shirt as if she would die the moment she lets go.

"Dai, Chiaki, we should go," Kari squeaked nervously, tugging onto Chiaki (the friendlier one of the two)'s sleeve. He glanced at her and saw her pleading expression, then with a "this is all such a drag" sigh, he managed to restrain Dai from harassing Mikan with rocks.

Dai rolled his eyes again and left in fury, angry that Chiaki and Kari spoilt his fun. Chiaki sped after his companion loyally. When they were leaving, though, Kari hesitated, turned back, and shot an apologetic glance our way. Then she trailed after he two guy friends.

"Hotaru…" Mikan said in a flat voice. She wasn't really crying, but her eyes were tearing up. I stared at her, waiting for her to carry on. She took a deep breath in and let it all out at once, "Hotaru, I'll never like guys. Never. Guys are jerks! Violent, knuckleheaded jerks!! Who needs them anyways?! I swear as long as I live, I'll never marry!"

"Then what are you going to do when you grow up?" I asked in a monotone voice.

With a hop, she stood up straight and still. Then, with one arm up in the air, she declared in my face, "I'm going to be a doctor! I'm going to heal people's wounds and encourage them! I'll never do anyone harm. And then, and then I'm going to become rich and buy a big, big house and live with Hotaru forever and ever and we'll raise four cats, seven dogs and twelve parrots!"

Apparently, at age nine, Mikan Sakura already had her ideal future planned out. And although it included me, I never witnessed another more amusing moment in my life.

"What if I don't want to live with you in your big house with your bothersome pets?" I asked.

"You have to!" she insisted, "You're just going to be a ditcher and make me live alone all by myself?! What if I get lost? What if I can't wake up in the mornings?"

"You have an alarm clock, don't you?"

"Yea, but I like it more when Hotaru wakes me up!"

"Alright," I sighed and quickly thought up of another argument, "So you're saying that if I was a guy, you wouldn't be my friend?"

Her lips trembled and her eyes grew wide for a moment. "T-that's not fair!" she stammered then huffed, "Hotaru, you're not playing fair," and crossed her arms. Mikan closed her eyes, tilted her head, feigned anger and pretended to turn away from me.

"I see how it is," I responded and walked away.

After half a minute, she opened one eye and noticed that I wasn't turning back. She hurriedly caught up with me and locked my arms in hers again.

"Hotaru, Hotaru!" she cried, "I was joking! You didn't take it seriously, did you? C'mon, I was only kidding, please…"

Right then and there, I probably felt something that I shouldn't have. I liked it when she said those comments. I wanted her to pester me, to desperately try to get my attention. Her words made me feel all fuzzy inside, like I was wanted, loved by someone.

"Hotaru please! You're my best friend."

I was fairly taken back by that. The words struck me slowly. She thought I was her best friend. Mikan Sakura acknowledged me as her best friend! Every time my brain took that comment in, I got more and more excited. There was nothing really to be happy about. It wasn't even an honour to be her friend; Mikan was friends with practically everyone.

Inevitably, almost immediately after that, I got shipped off to Alice Academy leaving her to fend for herself. Although she had many other friends to rely on, the way she reacted that day worried me sick. What if they managed to single her out from the others? She was easily fooled. After all, the second to top Mikan's lists of faults was gullibility.

But then there was another feeling, an empty feeling in my chest. It hurt me that she might as well replace me with another girl. It felt so unfair – that I was missing her while she was probably hanging with her new best friend right now.

She still wrote to me, but the letters all contained the same content. They were all of how I never returned her letters, of complaints about my heartlessness. She didn't even know how much I wanted to reply, but can't because of the tight security that acted as a barrier between she and I.

So I wrote a letter to her, one I was sure could pass the filtering. I was unsure how to start off, but I knew that sometimes when people were stuck, they started talking about the weather.

So I wrote, It's very hot this summer.

After attempting to continue the letter several times and failing, I sighed. My brain felt like it was swimming.

With my chin lying on the table, I lazily erased the period and replaced it with a comma, then wrote, and it makes me very tired, which wasn't entirely true because what really made me tired was trying to write a decent letter to Mikan, but I wasn't about to tell her that. After all, the heat did have a small part in it – a very small part. What's the harm in stretching the truth a bit?

And while we're at it, I'm sure that I wouldn't do much harm if I was a bit blunt – just a bit, because after all, it was all true right?

So I'm not coming back.

I threw aside the pencil and gave a sigh. As an inventor, my mind was usually brimming with ideas. Why is it that now, when I'm writing a letter back to Mikan that I can't think of a single word that was good enough?

I looked out the windows and past the tall gates to the rest of Tokyo, bustling with people. I felt bitter and unfair, like I was stuck in this cage of a school. I recalled getting the feeling when I first came to Alice Academy, when I was frustrated that it was me of all people that had to take the initiative to enroll in Alice Academy to save our old school, when all I ever wanted was to get out of this hellhole.

I took another breather and decided that I needed to clear my head, and that the heat definitely wasn't helping. So I turned on the AC, and mentally scolded myself for forgetting that I had AC while I was at it.

When the room was cool enough, I resumed writing. I knew it wasn't going to do Mikan any good if I was so negative and unfeeling in my letter, so I decided to write about the positive things, to show her that I was happy and there was nothing for her to worry about – if she was worried that is.

There's air conditioning here, I wrote, and after a moment of consideration, added, It's very nice.

After that, I started to write I miss you so much! but decided against it because I did something similar in one of the previous letters I attempted to send and it got rejected. I just hoped that she could decipher my real emotions behind the cold façade of the letter.

Please send me watermelons, was what I wrote next. Mikan was well aware of the fact that I was a pig and I thought that it would relieve her to see that my traits haven't changed.

I signed it, love, Hotaru.

I couldn't help myself at the time, but the next day, the day when I was going to send the letter, I erased it. After that, I prayed every night for the letter to pass the filter. I waited two weeks just to be sure, but no letter was returned to me.

I was so happy when I realized that it passed and was probably on its way to Mikan's that I created a new robot, a penguin with an identical personality to Mikan's. After that, I felt a bit less lonely.

A month later, I got the best surprise of my life when Mikan showed up at Alice Academy. When I saw her, I could hardly believe my eyes. She hadn't changed much, she was still the bright, sunshiny girl I knew before I left, but she now had a confident air to her, like she didn't need me to protect her anymore. I smiled vaguely at her independence. I wanted to ask her about Dai, Chiaki and Kari, about what happened to them, but I to rejoice now and save that for later.

She was still clingy, a trait of hers that I didn't miss. When we met and she instantly assaulted me with hugs, I dodged them skillfully.

"Hotaru" she wailed and used both of her hands to drag up her lips in something of a smile, "I wanted to see you so badly Hotaru, so I traveled all the way here. Hotaru, can I please hug you?"

After hearing that, I finally let her hug me. It relieved me somewhat that she still cared for me as much as she did before I left.

"Mikan, what happened to those three?" I asked in a feigned monotone voice when we were alone later.

"What three?" she replied, eyes full of excitement and anticipation about starting her first day at Alice Academy.

"Dai, Chiaki and Kari," I clarified.

She lifted her index finger to her chin and appeared to be in deep thought for a moment, then clapped her hands and exclaimed, "Oh! Those three! Well Dai got suspended again and his family sent him to boarding school. And then," she gave a squeal and started jumping up and down, "Kari and Chiaki started going out. They look really good together you know. It turns out that Dai was the main schemer behind all their wrongdoings so they stopped causing mischief."

I nodded in satisfaction. It was good that they all moved on, and I could only hope the best for them because now, Mikan and I had our own issues to worry about. I didn't know what made me more anxious, her being away from me in a safe place, or her being with me somewhere where we could all be doomed any moment.

Mikan was assigned to my room until they could find a vacant room for her. I didn't have much of a problem with that, but it was annoying how she clung onto me when she slept. Was I some kind of a pillow or something? I never believed that a queen-sized bed wasn't big enough for two people until now.

And things took a turn for the worst when she made enemies with the most dangerous person of all, the child prodigy Natsume Hyuuga. Instantly, the way he looked and acted immediately reminded me of Dai. I took a firm stand by her, ready to assist when needed. But she handled the situations perfectly. Mikan couldn't tame Dai back then, but slowly, she got Natsume to open up to the rest of us.

I wondered if she was aware of it, the fact that she subconsciously showed affection for him. It was only a few weeks after that I saw her whine and pester him, the way she did when she wanted attention from someone. Instantly, I noticed something different about the way she whined around him than me. She was more persistent, whinier, as if she absolutely needed him to notice her. Sometimes, it even made me feel jealous watching them.

Mikan whining was one thing, but Natsume giving in was a whole other matter. I knew that she had this way of making you submit to her will, but I never thought that it would work on him. As time passed and the routine continued, I noticed that his one worded replies were not out of mere heartlessness, but because he didn't know what to say. It gave off the impression that he was staying neutral because he was afraid of being discovered by her but at the same time he didn't want to reject her either.

And the signs just kept on becoming more and more apparent, to the point where I wouldn't even call it whining anymore. Only now, I recognized what she was doing. Mikan wasn't whining around Natsume, she was flirting. And what alarmed me was that in his own way, Natsume was flirting back. But what horrified me the most was that they looked perfect, absolutely perfect for each other.

What happened to the declaration? To the big house? To the three cats, seven dogs and twelve parrots? What happened to me?

At the Christmas party, when they accidentally had that kiss, it was the last straw.

"Mikan," I confronted her afterwards, "Do you by some chance like Natsume?"

"Of course I like him!" Her reply gave me the impression that she was oblivious to my intended meaning.

"I mean…love," I choked out the word. Love. That was the only word in the English language that I had trouble saying. Oh yes, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious I had no trouble saying, but love? I might as well choke on that one syllable.

"Hotaru, don't be silly!" exclaimed Mikan, "Do I even give off the impression that I like him? Natsume's just a jerk…"

But I could see her stealing glances at him at the corner of her eye as she trailed off. Mikan was never proficient at lying, that much I knew. That infuriated me. I wanted to scream and demand her to look at me when she's talking to me, or at least steal glances at Hyuuga less conspicuously.

Instead, I slapped her.

Mikan staggered and stood there, dazed for a moment, unsure what just happened. She felt the stinging of the slap and rubbed her face with her right hand. "H-Hotaru?" she croaked and I could see uneasiness in her eyes.

"Liar." That one word was all I could manage, and then I ran.

I shut myself in my lab for that day, cowered up in the corner feeling miserable. I didn't want to come out. Ever. Never had my hands felt so dirty as it did now.

I looked around the room at all my inventions, and for the first time they all seemed so useless. If I was a genius, then why couldn't I invent something to make the guilt go away? Why couldn't I come up with any ideas on how to solve this unavoidable problem?

I heard a rhythmic tap on my door followed by her voice, "Hotaru? Hotaru, come out, please! I'm sorry! Please!"

I didn't know whether I felt content or dissatisfied that she was concerned and apologizing to me. A part of me, my better judgment, told me that I should go make up with her. The other part though, bitterly felt that Mikan deserved to be ignored.

After a while, the tapping and begging stopped and I heard the tapping of her footprints become more and more distant. I gave a sign of relief.

I was so preoccupied with my conflicting feelings that I didn't notice the second penguin that I made in honour of Pengie climb into my lap. It tapped my cheek with its fin and gazed at me unwaveringly with its large, innocent eyes. Puzzled at why I was feeling this way, Pengie No.2 tilted its head to the left and raised its other fin to its chin.

That was its way of asking, "What's wrong, Hotaru?"

Unsure of what to say or act, I could only hug it seeking for what little comfort I could find. It patted my back with both of its fins.

"It's ok," it told me, "I'm here for you."

I let go and held the penguin up by my two hands. I stared it straight in the eye and admitted what I could never admit in front of Mikan. "All I ever wanted was to be her best friend."

It nodded slowly, unsure how to decipher my words. There were limits, after all, to how much a robot could understand. The puzzlement in its eyes made me understand one thing: Pengie No.1 and 2 were good friends, but they weren't what I needed. What truly made my life bright was the idiotic obsessive girl whose smile resembled the sunshine.

I set the robot penguin down on my desk. "Stay," I told it.

After that, I ran out my door to find Mikan. After rummaging the almost the whole academy without a single clue as to where, I began to have second thoughts. I began to think that she was hiding from me on purpose.

Then it suddenly struck me: if she wasn't anywhere I could think of, then she must be somewhere with Hyuuga. And there was probably only one place where Hyuuga could be.

I quickly got out my flying duck scooter and traveled to the blossoming Sakura tree in Central Town. To my dismay, they weren't there. I dropped, defeated. Where in the world could they be?

The unnatural rustling of leaves made me look up and I almost got a heart attack from what I saw.

The rhyme from when we were kids came back to me, only this time it was in a mocking tone. Natsume and Mikan sitting in a tree, K.I.S.S.I.N.G. First comes… I drastically shook my head until the voice disappeared.

Not long after, he broke the kiss and hopped down, leaving the crime scene. Mikan stared after him, two fingers to her lips, unsure whether to accept or deny what just happened. I waited a minute or so before letting her know that I was watching.

"Mikan."

She jumped, losing balance for a second before regaining it again. Mikan looked down at me and I could tell that she was wondering whether or not I saw what had just happened.

"H-Hotaru," she squeaked, then bit her trembling lip. "Hotaru, I'm sorry. Natsume, I think I like him."

I could see apprehensiveness in her eyes. She was afraid of how I could respond, afraid of losing either one of us because we both meant the world to her.

So I breathed in, calmed myself and responded, "That's fine. Thanks for telling me the truth."

Au Finis.

Oh, another thing. If I made Hotaru and Mikan seem like lesbians in this story, I apologize. She doesn't feel anything for Mikan more than a friend. Again, I'm sorry if I somewhat blurred the lines between deep friendship and love.

Drop by a few reviews. You guys totally make my day!

-IndigoGrapefruit