title: how do you do?
fandom: VOCALOID
based on: SPICE!

prologue

The funny thing about life is that you can easily lose it and never come back. That's the same with death—once you achieve it, you can never come back to life again. It's a permanent change, and Rin Kagamine leafed through her notes for her Japanese Literature exam hastily as she only had that thought in mind mainly because it was one of the main themes of a very old poem that was included in the syllabus.

She needed to at least pass this exam, or she'll gut herself.

But she only had two hands; one hand was holding her notebook, which had the telltale stains of miso soup, and the other hand was holding a ladle while stirring that said soup for breakfast. Rin conjugated nonsensical verbs as she cooked—the clock read 6:40 AM, and Len; oh dear God, Len—

"Len! Wake up! Third day of exams!"

Silence was her only answer.

For some apparent reason, Len always came back incredibly late, slept in and only woke up when Rin would physically march up to his dilapidated room and shake him awake. Sometimes, Rin felt like his mother; well, she was his twin half-sister by conjugative conception, but it was the same anyways, right? One has to look after the other. And Len certainly wasn't looking out for her, so she had to do the job for the both of them.

"LEN!" she shrieked for the second time, and then she squinted at her hastily written notes again—"When the flowers wilt…"

What flowers? This poem didn't make any sense.

With the grace of a platypus—if she could even know how graceful platypuses were—Rin served up the soup in two bowls, tossed two pieces of fried tempura (to which the smell possibly filled the whole house, and Rin had to slide open the sliding doors to allow the smell to leave the house) beside the saucers and after a few seconds of standing, she slumped down on her usual seat at the dining table, then ate her shrimp with one sickening, satisfying crunch.

Leftovers never tasted so good.

"Len! If you don't come down after I count to three…!"

Rin sounded like a nagging mother.

And sometimes, she felt like a nagging mother. A nagging mother at fifteen, having to look after a fifteen year old child. Oh, such is life. Her back ached. Oh, she could feel her arthritis coming—the rain makes it so much more painful.

The blonde-haired girl laughed at her own silent joke.

But the time was 7:01 AM, and there was no time for jokes. Rin finished her food, took her vitamins, then walked slowly up the steps (two steps at a time—what a hero!) straight up to the wooden door that had the sign 'Len' on it. Len's room.

At one point, when they were 11, Rin remembered that Len was the type who would whiningly say: 'You need a password to come in!' and Rin would indulge in the joke. She also remembered growing very irritated about it, and she ultimately threatened to break the door down until Len gave way. Doors were expensive.

Knock, knock, came Rin's balled fist against the door.

No response. Maybe she heard a slight sleepy groan from behind the door.

And this was where Rin enjoyed the most.

Rin sucked in a breath, and then knocked a little more. They were slow, tentative knocks at first, as if she didn't want to disturb him and as if she was genuinely sorry for imposing on his beauty sleep, but the knocks grew louder, and faster, as if she was beating a taiko drum on a very odd matsuri. She wouldn't trouble herself in waking him up by shaking him today, oh no, she was going to burst his eardrums on this beautiful Wednesday morning.

"—in! Rin, okay, okay, I'm up, I'm up!"

"Good boy! Go get your breakfast, okay, Len-chan?~ You're a growing boy, so you need to eat your breakfast! I see that you've been getting skinny~! Ahahahaha!"

Alright, now she sounded like a single, middle-aged mother.

At any rate, it did make the great Len Kagamine open his door, clad only in his school trousers and his incredibly disheveled hair. It still marveled Rin; the fact that her brother was all grown up, and so was she, as she noticed that he hadn't even put on his shirt in his haste to get himself out of bed for another day through the wringer. Nevertheless, she was never too old to poke his chest, grin up at him and laugh as she always did before.

"Skinny," she drawled.

"Rin," he groaned, irritated for a while until he smelled the soup. "What's for breakfast?"

"Miso soup and leftover tempura. The hotel specialty, good sir. No room service for you, since we're terribly understaffed at the Kagamine Hotel," Rin laughed. "I do hope you understand, and we're very sorry for the inconvenience."

Unbeknownst to Rin, the twin brother smiled at her fondly, as he always viewed her. While she had always thought that her jokes would jab at his ego and eat it away as much as it could as time passed by, they actually didn't, and much to her surprise, Len laughed at her joke and patted her shoulder, walking past her to get to the stairs.

"Thanks for making breakfast, Rin."

"…"

She hated that.

Rin Kagamine wasn't a child.

There were many proofs that she could show that would back up the fact that she wasn't a child; she was patient when it came to slow Internet, she could cook for her brother, she could ride public transport without getting lost, she could pay the bills with every single payment method that ever existed, and she could do a lot of grownup things that involved monetary services.

If anything, if that doesn't back it up, at least it showed that she was independent.

That was why, after breakfast, the independent Rin Kagamine decided to grab her bike and ride on to school without Len, in contrast to the usual routine of walking to school with him every morning. It greatly surprised Len—of course it would surprise him; boys were dense. Brothers were dense.

He basically patronized her that morning.

Thanks for making breakfast, Rin.

Pat, pat. Pat on the shoulder.

And her morning soured. That morning was incredibly soured by none other than the great wonder that was Len Kagamine, and this was just the start of her day. The start of her days in which she would start noticing people.

What a morning.

A/N: I can't promise that this work will be finished, and this is another multichaptered fanfiction with a prologue that's a little more than 1000 words!

I've started to think about how Rin's characterization would be, and it would be very different from the Spice! PVs that all of us normally watch on YouTube. Please stay tuned for more chapters and support Rin! she needs all the help!

-Densetsu-no-Maguro