Chapter 1

'Beepbeepbeepbeep!' I woke up to the sound of my alarm clock going off telling me to get my ass up and do something with my life. The alarm was so annoying that I couldn't get myself to sleep for another five more minutes. I lazily got up while ranting quietly and turned the alarm clock off on my nightstand. I tried to see what time it was, but I couldn't even see the dials and numbers of hours on the clock as my eyes were teary and my eyelids were full with rheum.

This is because I cried silently last night as my ex-boyfriend; Yamaha Kou-Senpai broke up with me because he thought I was cheating on him with my best friend; Naoki, which is absolutely not true! He saw me give Naoki a 'see you later' kiss yesterday in front of my school gate and suddenly went bezerk on me and broke up with me on the spot. I didn't even get a chance to explain and he just left without even looking back. Unreasonable if I must say. It was only a kiss on the cheek! Jezz…Overreacting much? Naoki just stood there grinning and did nothing to defend me. That jerk. I was so upset yesterday that my baby sister Ema took me out for ice-cream to cheer me up and I forced Naoki to pay for it, which he willingly did.

Naoki and I are strictly in a platonic relationship since we were fifteen. I love him as just a friend. Nothing more and nothing less. We've known each other since we were ten, since our fathers' were best friends. We would always celebrate Christmas together with our families joint together to strengthen the bonds of friends and families.

We started dating when we were thirteen but it didn't work out as he kept cheating on me with every single girl we've met, including my best girl-friend; Yukio, who is now a lesbian because she was traumatized to be with men. It was Naoki's fault, of course. After he cheated on me with Yukio when we were fifteen, I broke up with him but still remained friends with Yukio since I knew Naoki was at fault, not her. That flirting dick. But he didn't want to let go or jeopardize our long built relationship and neither did I as I still loved him and we had to see each other every day because we were in the same class. So in the end, we thought it would be best to be strictly in a platonic relationship. We remained friends and not lovers.

I grabbed some baby wipes on my nightstand and wiped my eyes with it to clear the rheum on my eyelashes. Once I could see clearly again, I looked at my alarm clock and saw that it was now six o'clock in the morning.

"Two more hours left, huh?" I sighed.

Today was a very special day for Ema and me, as we are being kicked out of our own home. Hahaha…No, I'm just joking. But today is our last day to live in this household though because as off today we will be moving out to live in THE SUNSHINE RESIDENCE. 'Dun dun dunnnn…' Yup, we were going to live in a place that we have never been to before with people we've never met for the sake of giving my Papa and her soon to be wife, Miss Miwa-san some privacy.

I put my clock back on my nightstand and turned to my left to see my darling baby sister, Ema still sound asleep in her bed. I got out of bed and fixed it so it would look neat and tidy. After I was satisfied with how my bed looked like, I combed my messy bed hair with my fingers as it kept annoyingly poking my cheeks. After that was done with, I went to Ema's bed and touched the tips of my long black-purplish hair on her face. I moved my hair back and forth; left to right, to see is she would wake up or not. She wriggled her nose and turned to lie on her side. I grinned at how cute she was and closely put my mouth to her ears.

"Ema. Ema, wake up. The house is on fire! Do something!" I whispered, holding my laughter in. Ema started to wriggle her eyebrows and squeezing her eyelids tightly. She moved to lying on her back again and went back to sleep. I went on top of her and started kissing her forehead and cheeks over and over again to annoyingly wake her up. Eventually, Ema opened her eyes to see me trying to kiss her forehead and just smiled. She wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me into a deep hug and then she slowly went back to sleep. I smiled at how adorable she was and whispered to her again.

"Ema, wake up. We have to be at the Sunshine Residence by eight o'clock. We promised Papa to be on time remember? We can't break our promise now, Papa would kill us! Well, not literally kill us, but he will be disappointed. We don't want that would we?" I took her arms around me off gently and kissed her on her forehead. She immediately opened her eyes and woke up to lean on her wooden bed frame. I got off her and walked towards the dressing table and I picked up my hairbrush and started to brush my hair in front of the mirror. While I was doing so, Ema tilted her head aside and started at me as I brushed my hair. She yawned and stretched her arms in the air and stretched her legs toward the foot of her bed frame.

I finished brushing my hair and looked myself in the mirror to the satisfaction of how tamed my hair was. I went to sit on Ema's bed and she turned around as she let me brush her long soft, brown hair.

"Né-Chan, what time is it now?" I turned my head towards my alarm clock and saw that the time was now 6.10 a.m.

"It's now 6.10 a.m. We need to be at the Sunshine Residence by eight o'clock."

"Oh really…? Two more hours, huh?" she sighed.

"Yeah, we better get ready soon so we could have breakfast before we get there." I said.

"Okay. Give me twenty minutes and I'll be ready soon."

"Okay." I said, still brushing her hair.

"I just can't believe today is our last day here." She said sadly.

"Yeah, I know. It kind of sucks, huh?"

"Yeah, it kind of does." We both stayed quiet for a while until I broke the sad silence.

"Ema, y'know, today's my turn to make breakfast so what would you like to have?" I said to cheer up the mood. I got of her bed and put my hair brush back on the dressing table as I was finished with brushing her hair.

"Thanks." She smiled.

"You're welcome baby girl. So, what would it be?" I walked to sit back next to her on her bed.

"Hmmm…I think I'll have your famous waffles with a strawberry on top. Oh! And don't forget to put a cube of butter on it too." She smiled.

"Okay! My famous but not recognizably around the world, Waffles it is." I said sarcastically. Ema laughed so cutely that I pinched both of her soft cheeks.

"Okay, okay. Come on, let's get ourselves ready and eat some of my so called famous waffles." I kissed her forehead and she smiled.

"Okay?" I said.

"Hahaha…Okay." She smiled.

We both got off her bed and I took her right arm and put it on my left shoulder and I leaded us to the bathroom. Ema and I were done washing and cleaning ourselves up in fifteen minutes which was five minutes earlier than Ema's estimated time. It was faster cleaning up together than one by one. We got out of the bathroom and dried our hair and bodies. We put on some decent clothes and did each other's hair. I tied Ema's hair into a pony tail and let a strand of hair on both side of her head to dangle to compliment her bangs. I curled the strands and it made her look cute as a button. After I was finished doing her hair, she did mine. She combed my hair and curled my long hair with an iron curler to make it look wavy and that was it. She knew that I liked my hair untied, unpinned and have a wavy effect. We both put some light make-up on each other to make us look a little prettier. We didn't like to put on too much make-up because we like a more natural look. We weren't that hideous to cover our faces with many layers of chemical beauty products. We looked just fine.

We then wore accessories like bracelets and our beloved necklace. Mine was a platinum one with a crescent-shaped pendent and Ema's was a gold one with a star-shaped pendant. We love it dearly.

We both got it for our 13th birthday. It was given by Papa to symbolize our journey to adulthood. Papa told us that mother had it made for us before she died and said that it would be given to us on our 13th birthday for that said reason. We love and cherish it more than our lives. We never go anywhere without it, except to take a bath or a shower.

Why? You may ask. Well, these necklaces have a secret of their own. We discovered this secret when I was just fifteen, just a month after my break-up with Naoki and Ema, fourteen. It happened two years ago.

It was a rainy night on that magical day, and Ema and I were in our rooms hiding under the covers of my bed. We'd always do that on a rainy night, to tell stories and secrets to each other. It was like a girls' night out but we were indoors.

Well on that night, Ema was telling me about a boy she'd like named Yamato something, I didn't really care at that time as I was thinking about my problems with Naoki. Yamato was in the same class as her and she said he was the shy and quiet type. He doesn't like talking much to other people and his friends were very limited and one of them was his math teacher, Kurebayashi-Sensei. Kurebayashi-Sensei was a young 24 year old teacher that just got out of university at that time with a degree in Mathematical Theories (Don't know what that is and don't care). All the girls in school were all over him, including me for a while. Naoki thought he was a pedophile for flirting with girls under is age. It wasn't true, of course, but that was just Naoki being Naoki.

I thought it was cool that Yamato was close to a hot teacher. I've met Yamato before, I think. He was a good looking guy. He wasn't as hot as Kurebayashi-Sensei but he was something. I bumped into him once at school because I was busy texting my Yukio and not looking where I was going. I said sorry but he didn't even say a word. He just walked away like it didn't happen. I thought that was a good trait of him, not making a scene when someone bumps into him like some boys.

He really doesn't talk much. But when he was with Ema, he would babble away without tire. He really paid attention to what Ema had to say and vice versa. He made her feel special and that's what got her hooked on him. She said he was a smart guy and was a pro at playing video games. Ema learned everything she needed to know about video games and how to win them without a sweat from him. She's an expert in video games now and her favorite type of games, are with zombies in them. It really didn't match her criteria to me but that was what she's into now and I supported her nonetheless buy buying her those zombie video games every time a new version was out. I wonder if it the Zombie fetish Ema has, had anything to do with that Yamato guy. If he did, I'm going to strangle him in my mind for cutting holes in my pockets.

While she was talking on and on about Yamato, the batteries in the torchlight in my hand suddenly died and everything was pitch black. Ema immediately launched herself at me in fright. She hugged me tightly and started to cry in fear. I hugged her back and rubbed my hands up and down her back to make her feel okay again.

"Ssshhhh…It's alright. The batteries just died. There's nothing to be scared about. I'll go get new batteries okay?"

"Okay." She sniffled.

When I was about to break our hug, a violet ray of light suddenly appeared between our chest where our necklaces laid. When we hugged, our necklaces were intertwined and the pendants were stuck to each other and that caused a violet ray to appear. We both looked down at the necklaces and back at each other with stunned looks on our faces. We took the sheet on top of us off and the violet ray hit the wall next to my bed and it projected an image. An imaged that immediately made us burst into tears. It was an image of our mother who died when I was seven and Ema was six due to a car accident. She was holding us in her arms with the happiest look you've ever seen on a woman. She had the sweetest and the warmest smile to make you tear up with the feeling of love and sadness for great loss. In her arms, I hugged Ema who was sound asleep with a huge smile on my face that my mouth was open wide. Ema and I cried as we looked at the image projected on the wall. We both touched our mother's face on the wall and looked at each other with tears filling our eyes. We missed her deeply. The women who gave us joy for a short time and our life. We missed her so much. Her smiles, her kisses, her hugs, her warmth, her love. Her everything. We cried our eyes out that night and kept calling for our mother to come back to life and to be with us again. But only thunder responded to our plea.

Soon, the rain stopped and so did our tears. We pulled the pendants apart and the image on the wall disappeared. We both took long deep breaths and collapsed on my bed. We kept looking at the ceiling in silence for a while until Ema spoke.

"Hey. Ne-Chan?"

"Yeah?" I said still staring at the ceiling.

"Do you think Mother's happy in, y'know the next world?"

"I don't know. I hope she is. I want her to have everything there like she had here. I want her to be happy no matter where she is." I said staring blindly at the ceiling.

"Yeah, me too. I wish she got more time with us than she had. I hope she's well and happy. Do you think she's looking upon us in heavens like people always say in movies?" she asked, facing me.

"Yeah, maybe." I said facing her back. "Maybe…" I closed my eyes and slept through the night next to Ema on my bed with tears streaming down our eyes.

That night was a meaningful night of my life that I won't ever forget. Ema and I became really close since then. Closer than other people. We wanted mother to be happy, where ever she is and be happy by seeing us happy. That's all we wanted. Happiness.