Author's Notes: Hey, guys, I'm actually starting a story that's going to have more than one chapter! :D I really hope I can continue this until the end, I have some good ideas (in my opinion!) for this fic. I hope you enjoy the way I portray fem!Germany, it's my first time working with her.

Anyway, please enjoy the first chapter of my new fanfiction, Vollständigkeit!

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"Here you are, have a pleasant afternoon," the blonde-haired woman repeated for what she thought must've been the hundredth time today, despite being a very slow day. After handing over a handful of bills and watching the young lady exit the small building, she proceeded to wait for another customer, and leaned her chin into a gloved hand, letting her thoughts wander a bit.

"Nobody really cares about those of us who work so hard to do something with such little significance. Well, what we do does have some sort of significance, in the real world, but not directly in people's personal lives. Being a banker doesn't dramatically improve lives or impact each individual person in the long run. All it really seems to do is get people the cash they need or to scratch them the wrong way by refusing to do what they want you to do. This job is a difficult one to have, and an even more difficult one to understand."

And that brings us back to our blond-haired banker, Monika Beilschmidt. For all anyone knew, she was just a normal banker, nothing special or noteworthy. In all actuality, that is a lie. She isn't a normal banker, but she tends not to share anything about her personal life to anyone but her older brother, Gilbert. However, he had flown back to their home country, Germany, to tend to their elderly grandfather. She didn't return back to Germany with him; she didn't think she had the strength to watch her grandfather continue to worsen, especially after both of her parents passed away while she was still in high school. Those days were tough for those two siblings, but they pulled through it together, and Monika had made it through college and ended up here, as a banker. She often thought she should be satisfied that was living on her own and not holed up with her brother and her grandfather in Germany. Though, sometimes she couldn't help but wonder if they'd be proud of her for what she does. And as she digested these thoughts, she heard a fuzzy voice somewhere in front of her as her eyes shifted into focus.

"...miss? Excuse me? Hello?"

She blinked a few times in response, and her head shot up off of the wooden surface of her workspace, prompting a quick withdrawal of the hand waving in front of her face. She hadn't even noticed that another customer had been waiting there in front of her window. She hastily apologized, her cheeks turning slightly pink as she asked him what she could do. The man standing there smiled in response, something not a lot of other customers did.

"I'd like to make a transaction," he chirped in a slightly accented voice, sliding a small envelope across the counter. He was certainly in a good mood for it being almost five in the afternoon, in a stuffy little bank on a hot summer day. The person was young looking, and young sounding, and Monika couldn't help but wonder if he was even of legal age. There was another young man standing near him, who looked less than thrilled to be here, and Monika assumed they were siblings. After a slight nod, she took the envelope and asked for a card, which he promptly handed over, as well as an ID. He had just barely turned eighteen, and his first name was Feliciano. The envelope contained 800 euros, which solidified the young banker's suspicions that this man had come from Italy. A little over a thousand dollars were returned in the envelope, and received with yet another cheery smile.

"Thank you very much, Miss Monika! Have a wonderful day, alright?" he responded with a little wave as he left the bank. Monika's heart skipped a beat. Not one customer had ever called her by her name for the entire three years she'd worked in this bank. She stared at the young man as he exited, hoping that one day, he'd return to this bank and recognize her again. She felt the corners of her lips tug into a slight smile.

Though, she soon realized that she had been overthinking this – Italian people had a tendency to wear their hearts on their sleeves and express themselves openly. The uniforms here at the bank had the tendency to emphasize the breasts on the female employees, and Monika herself boasted impressive ones. So this man must have simply noticed her chest, been impressed, and expressed himself in his ways as an Italian man. Yes, it was very simple once it had been laid out in front of her. Monika sighed, straightened her collared top, and waited for her next customer, with the image of Feliciano's smile etched into her mind.

She wondered if she had been reading too many romance novels, and then wondered if she could pull off one of her own someday, before scrapping both those thoughts and deciding that she needed to focus on her job more during slow days. She shrugged that thought aside as her next customer walked inside and approached her window.

"Hello, how may I help you today?"

o-o-o-o-o

The rest of the workday went by relatively slowly. She wasn't fired, she wasn't promoted, she wasn't told hello when she walked in and she wasn't waved goodbye as she left. And she didn't really care at this point.

Monika hurried outside into the parking lot and found her bike, which she took everywhere she went. She got carsick amazingly easily, and she found that she enjoyed the satisfaction of knowing she was working out while still getting where she needed in an efficient method. Biking was her outlet, her stress relief when times got rough – she would take the long way home, as she did tonight, and she would pedal her way down the borders of the back roads and drown herself in her pointless thoughts. Sometimes, Monika would sing. Sometimes, she'd brush up on her German and hold a conversation with herself. And sometimes, on rare occasions, she'd cry as she pedaled furiously down the edges of the streets. Tonight was a thinking night; time to reflect on what had happened today that affected her more than she'd like to admit out loud.

Feliciano had happened. His smile had happened. His words had happened. They were so different than anything Monika had experienced in her life, however clichéd that thought was to think. Her face lit up with a little smile as she reheard his speech and reexamined his smile and relived that entirely too short visit from that wonderful man. Monika hoped so badly that she would run into this young man again. Sure, he was eighteen and she was twenty-two, he was still a child while she was an adult, and he was bouncy and happy while she was quiet and reserved, but still, she felt butterflies in her stomach at the thought of seeing him again.

Monika had never dated anybody else in her life. Her parents were against it, and after they passed away, her brother would not allow any boys near her. Monika had experimented around a bit in high school anyway, though, being in a sort of rebellious stage, but she had never actually kissed someone and felt any sort of happiness or emotion behind it. Yes, she had kissed another person before, but she did not feel what she expected to feel afterwards. That relationship faded fast, and before she knew it, she was alone again. Monika disliked making friends at school, for she knew that after a few years, it would end, and they would end up leaving her forever, and she did not want to shed any tears over pain caused by people who would only abandon her. It wasn't their fault, though. She simply preferred being alone, where she could stay to herself and wouldn't risk being betrayed or broken or brushed aside by someone else.

But Feliciano was different. Smiles were a rare thing nowadays – and Monika missed them. Her parents had smiled at her and her brother very often, while their grandfather did not. Gilbert smiled only around certain people. Monika hardly ever smiled at all, and most of the time it was faked for a photograph. She let a sigh escape her lips as she rode on into the night. She missed smiling people, and she didn't realize it until someone showed her how much one little act of happiness and optimism can make in someone's life.

Monika wondered if Feliciano knew what he had done. She guessed that he did not, since he offered her that kindness and that gratitude so openly. She brought back her desire to write a romance novel, decided she'd try and start one tonight before she went to bed, and continued heading back to her house.

She flicked on the lights in her little one-story flat, removed one glove with her teeth, and proceeded to stick two fingers in her mouth and whistle quite loudly. No more than a few seconds later did a great, brown dog come bounding through the hallway towards Monika. Monika felt one of her rare smiles stretch across her face as she knelt down and tended to her dearest canine friend, Klaus. She hugged the enormous Rottweiler close and scratched behind his ears for a little while before standing back up and walking into her bedroom to change. The dog happily trotted behind her and waited for Monika to feed him, as she always did when she got home from work.

Monika lazily threw on a tank top-shorts combo, fed Klaus, and wound up sitting in front of her computer, staring at a blank word document. She so often felt she had these brilliant ideas in her head while she was busy, and now that she was free, she had no idea how to put these thoughts into words. After almost an hour of just staring at the white screen, she smashed her fingertips across the keys frustratedly, ran her fingers through her hair, and sighed. She erased the garbled nonsense, and began to type whatever popped into her mind, in all its nonsensical fashion, in both English and German.

My name is Monika. Ich heiße Monika.

I am 22 years old. Ich bin 22 Jahre alt.

And I am lonely. Und ich bin einsam.

But today, I met Feliciano. Aber heute traf ich Feliciano.

And now, I am a little bit happier. Und jetzt bin ich ein bisschen glücklicher.

Monika felt herself smiling again at these simple words she had written on the computer screen. She told herself she would continue writing, even if it was just to reflect on her own emotions that she did not want to express. She saved the file, got up, dragged her feet into her bedroom, and promptly fell asleep, dreaming of Feliciano. At some point, her sleep-induced brain wondered if she was in love. And, even in her sleeping state, she said that was impossible, but continued dreaming of this man, regardless. It was the best she'd slept since she moved to America.

o-o-o-o-o

AN: Thank you for reading! Please leave critiques/review on how I can improve or with ideas for what's to come or anything, really! I'd really appreciate it, and I'm still trying to improve my writing style to make it more interesting. XD

Also, if someone speaks German out there who's reading this, could you check and make sure my German is correct? I'm in German 101 this year and I'm really new to the language, if that doesn't show already. XD; Achtung!

And for those of you who don't know, the word "Vollständigkeit" means "completeness." At least, that's what the dictionary says. XD;

I'll have the next chapter worked on shortly! :)

-Maya