A/N:
For a special somebody, and she knows who she is. Are you happy?! You better be! XD
All rights go to Jin (Shizen no Teki-P). JubyPhonic is also to be credited as some of her lyrics were used. Keep on singing, Juby!
Enjoy the read! Please review!


"Romance is absolutely forbidden!" Hyuga-sensei announces, "Male and female relations are strictly forbidden. Violators of this rule will be forced to leave the school immediately. This is the academy's rule." He pauses for his students to whisper among themselves in surprise.

Syo and Seiko's eye fly to the other unintentionally. They stare at each other in shock. Realizing that she is in fact staring, Seiko flushes and looks away. Why on Earth did she look his way? There was a no dating rule, so what? Why should she care? The 16 year old didn't enroll in this academy to date. Still... she can't figure out why, of all people, her eyes sought his face.

Ryuya continues, letting his class simmer down, "Now, we'll do a recording test to check your skill levels."

"Oh wow, already?!"

"This is it!"

Seiko tenses, knowing that there was a catch to this. There has to be. Saotome Academy is a highly established music school. Only the best of the best could attend here. This must be how they sift through their student body to find the famous idols and composers.

"You'll be in pairs for this assignment. The student from the idol course will write lyrics while the student from the composer course will write a song.

Seiko freezes and stops breathing for a few seconds in panic. She feels her complexion in her face pale. Her azalea eyes shrink in fear. W-write lyrics?! I... I can't do this... not within such a short period of time and notice!

Unlike her unnerved roommate, Mana's brown eyes twinkle with excitement. Here's her chance to stand out from all the other composing students! Compose a song, I can do this! The redhead glances over and sees that her friend is literally melting into a puddle. She shakes her head and sighs.

"I've selected your partner for you randomly. Check the list after class and fund your partner," Hyuga-sensei says, tapping a sheet of paper attached to the board. He frowns in annoyance as his students grumble and gasp in disappointment of not being able to pick their partners. "Luck is a skill in show business. The assignment is due the beginning a week from now." With all that said and done, Ryuya begins his lesson for his homeroom.

After class, everyone lines up to figure out who's partnered with whom. Mana has managed to squeeze herself and Seiko up to the front.

Reluctantly, Seiko stares at her shoes, afraid to look for her name. She's terrified of being paired with another composer student. The only one she knows is Mana. Odds were not in her favor. She looks up her name and takes a deep breath once she spots it on the list in the middle of the page. The light copper-haired girl holds her breath as she checks out her name underneath it, her assigned partner. Here we go...

As her eyes read Mana's name, she's overwhelmed with relief. Happily, she turns to her roommate and friend, beaming, "MANA-CHAN! WE'RE PARTNERS!" She hugs the freckled girl tightly in joy. Seiko encourages in her usual cheerful manner, "Let's do our best!"

Mana grins back, kind of relieved that she got paired with Seiko as well. "Right!" she replies, chuckling. The brown-eyed, redhead pauses as she notices her friend staring off to the right with a weird expression on her face. Calmly, Mana asks, "Is something wrong, Seiko?"

Seiko ignores her roommate completely, focusing on her childhood best friend joking and laughing with his assigned partner, a pretty girl by the name of Akemi Nakashima. Seeing Syo laugh like that with another girl suddenly makes Seiko feel inferior to the point where she feels almost an animosity for the two. Seeing enough, the 16-year-old childishly sticks her nose in the air and puffs her cheeks out with a "hmph" before storming out of the classroom.

Mana follows after her, calling out down the hall, "H-hey! S-Seiko, wait for me!" She catches up as Seiko slows down her stomping enough for Mana to walk beside her.

"Can't believe him!" Seiko huffs, "Fooling around when he should be working on his assessment! See if I care if he fails!"

"We just got it assigned; he's got plenty of time. Chill, girly! You almost sound jealous," Mana tries consoling.

Seiko stops and whirls around in a slight rage. She shouts, "I am not jealous!" Her face is completely flustered.

Mana holds up her hands in submission. Probably wasn't the best option to accuse her like that. Gently, she says, "No need to bite my head off... Ok, you're not jealous..." Though, Mana doesn't believe her one bit.

"Come on... we've got to work on the song..." Seiko sighs, turning back around to continue heading back for the dorms.

After a few hours, the two partners have made enough progress to have made the melody for the assignment. However, they've hit a road block. Piles of crumples up sheets of paper are scattered across the floor of their dorm room as Seiko continues to be displeased with whatever lyrics she begins to write. Disappointed, she hangs upside off her bed, trying to get the blood to rush to her head and maybe give her a good idea or two.

Mana plays back the melody for the umpteenth time, hoping to spark Seiko's imagination. She looks over to her roommate who has her eyes squeezed shut, obviously to block out all other sounds than the keyboard in their room.

"The music score sounds great... but I still can't find any inspiration for lyrics..." Seiko mutters once Mana stops, sitting up straight on her bed. She tears out the sheet of paper in her notebook filled with scribbled out notes and adds it to the collection of crumpled balls on decorating their floor. Seiko hates having writer's block like this. What's worse is the fact that she isn't hurting just herself, but Mana as well. The 16-year-old, shy girl dreaming to be a famous idol flops over onto her stomach and buries her face in her pillow with an annoyed grumble.

"Don't worry," Mana advises, leaning back in her chair, "we have 'til the end of next week!"

"I'm just glad they aren't holding any other classes other than homeroom until the recording test is over..." Seiko mumbles, picking her head up from the pillow slightly.

The freckled girl sighs and shuts off her keyboard. She stands up and stretches her stiff muscles. Mana suggests, "Why don't we take a break and get something to eat? You'll have a better time thinking if you have a full stomach."

"Good idea," Seiko replies with a smile. It is a good idea to get away from this. She isn't going to get anywhere if she keeps stressing over it right now. She leaves with Mana to head to the cafeteria.

Once there and the girls have settled down at a table with their meals, Seiko notices Syo approaching them with a tray. "Syo-ku-!" she begins to wave at him but stop as her arms extends when he turns to the right to sit with Akemi. The azalea eyed girl clenches a fist and bites on her cheek.

"You okay?" Mana questions from the seat across from her.

"W-wha?! Wh-what do you mean?!" Seiko stutters at the fact that she's been caught.

"You just tensed up when you saw Kurusu-san take a seat with his partner. Are you... jealous?" Mana suggests, leaning her elbows.

Seiko blushes and averts her eyes from her nosy roommate. Scoffing in denial, with her face prominently red, "I-I don't care who h-he chooses to sit with! Y-you're being ridiculous, Mana-chan!"

Mana frowns, not believing her one bit, "O-okay..."

After they finish their lunches, the two girls return to their room to work on their assessment. Mana fiddles around with the score while Seiko continues to struggle with writing lyrics that she's proud of. Soon, Mana goes to bed while Seiko works tirelessly at her desk, scrapping around her brain for anything she could use for lyrics. Unfortunately for her, not only did she fall asleep, she wrote no lyrics she could use.

"I can't believe I fell asleep... without writing at least one good verse!" Seiko grumbles, laying her head down on her desk. Some idol student she's turning out to be...

"You talking about the recording test?" Syo's voice sounds above her. She feels him rub the top of her head. Seiko lifts her head and brightly smiles at him.

Mana nods, "Yup, we have the melody... it's just the lyrics we're really missing..."

"I know what you guys mean," Syo sighs, folding his arms, "Natsuki has been annoying me, so I haven't completed my portion yet..."

Seiko giggles, "I'm sure Na-chan doesn't mean any harm by it, Syo-kun."

"He didn't put you in the frog hat," Syo replies quickly.

"I'm sure you like cute in it," Seiko chuckles, jokingly.

Syo sharply yowls, "I am not cute!" He bites his tongue as soon as the words left his mouth. He takes in his childhood friend's hurt face as her expression soon turns to anger.

"Well, sorry for trying to be nice!" Seiko snaps in retaliation, "Next time, I won't give you a compliment, you jerk!"

"Sei-Seiko-chan... I... I didn't mean it..." Syo tries to recover.

Seiko turns her blushing face away from him. "It doesn't matter if you meant it or not, it still hurt! Just leave me alone so Mana and I can work on the lyrics that I obviously don't have!" she hisses.

Syo reluctantly takes his seat next to her. Syo knows why she's reacting in such a way. He didn't treat her like the friend she is to him. But he doesn't want her to see him as "little" or "cute" anymore. Why can't she see that's what he meant by that? Of course, it doesn't help that being made fun of over his stature shortened his temper. Still, he had no right to yell at her like that since she wasn't even making fun of his height to begin with. He should have realized that Seiko isn't the type of person to make fun of anyone else after the years of harassment she went through before they were friends. He'll have to make it up to her later when she's not so angry with him.

The squabble she just had with Syo doesn't help Seiko with writing lyrics as all she could think of was how upset he made her feel. She was only trying to be nice to him after not seeing him for 6 years. The least he could have done was thank her, not yell at her for no reason. Seiko puffs out her cheeks as she thinks of his stupid face he made when she yelled back. And once class is over, the 16-year-old girl rockets back to her dorm room, not even waiting for her roommate and partner to catch up.

"Stupid Syo-kun! Yelling at me for giving him a compliment!" Seiko mutters, punching her pillow.

Mana sighs as she witnesses her roomie take out her frustrations on the defenseless pillow. "Tell it to me straight, Seiko," Mana says.

Her friend pauses, looking at her in confusion. "What on Earth are you talking about?"

"Do you like Kurusu-san or something?" The redheaded, freckled girl interrogates.

"W-what?! N-no!" the light copper-haired girl violently stammers, "Wh-where'd you get that stupid idea?!" A huge blush becomes evident on her fair cheeks as she tries to avert her eyes from her roommate.

Mana doesn't give in and stares her down. "Seikooooo..."

"Alright! Alright! Just stop!" Seiko cries, throwing a smaller pillow at her friend. She looks at her hands, twiddling her thumbs in embarrassment. She didn't want to admit it herself. "Ever since I was little... I liked Syo-kun. He was the first person to show me real kindness. I... I wouldn't be at this school if it wasn't for him. But now... I feel so different when I look at him... He can make me so mad and yet... my heart won't stop beating..." Her azalea eyes soften as she speaks, a light smile on her lips.

Mana herself finds herself grinning at the idea that just popped into her head.

"W-what's that look for?" her roommate asks cautiously.

"I know what the lyrics to the song can be about!"

"What do you mean?"

"Write your feelings for Kurusu-san as your lyrics!"

Seiko strongly objects, "No way! I-if they suspect anything, they'll kick me out for sure!" She hugs her pillow to her chest. There's no way she can write about how she feels. She doesn't even know herself how she truly feels about him...

"It's a song, no one will know unless you tell them," Mana replies. Even if they were to suspect her, they have no tangible proof to expel her.

"Fine," Seiko reluctantly agrees, "I'll try it..." She begins writing and is surprised when the lyrics begin flowing out of her so naturally. In a few hours, she finds her lyrics are complete and so the two partners begin practicing over and over and over for the recording test.

On the day of the assessment, S Class ends up going up last for recording. Seiko is the last person to go. She's heard all of her classmates' songs and is astonished by their talents. She realizes the mistake she made by not offering to go first. Everyone else has gone and Hyuga-sensei will be judging her song based off of everybody else. She fidgets uncomfortably as Tokiya Ichinose begins to wrap up his recording session. Nervously, the 16-year-old tightens her grasp around the hemline of her uniform skirt.

"M-M-Mana-chan... I can't sing... n-not in front of everyone like this... What if I forget my lyrics?!" Seiko whispers frantically.

Mana puts her hands on her hips and scolds, "You're going to be an idol! You'll never become one if you back out now!"

Syo, on the other hand, takes one of Seiko's hands and squeezes it for encouragement. Grinning, he murmurs in her ear quietly, "Don't worry, Seiko-chan. You'll do great." He watches as her face flushes and lightly chuckles, "Just pretend that it's just you in the studio."

"Seiko Morishige! You're our last one!" Ryuya announces as Tokiya leaves the booth.

Seiko shakily puts on a brave face and walks inside. She places the headphones on her head and nods to start the music. She takes a deep breath to calm her nerves as the music pours into her ears. She ignores the fact that there are a dozen people watching her right now. All she cares about is the music. She's doing what she loves to do and that's singing...

They're all so happy and smiling, sunny skies above

Like they're wanting to get in my way

I'm glaring holes through the sea, parting waves in this heat

A morning after an all-nighter

Shooting daggers from my eyes as they step to the side

If you hate it, you don't have to stare

"Good morning!" he shouts to me, stretches side to side

And he's just standing there like his bedhead is a style

As if suddenly we find our eyes meet

Is it a sweet romance? Nope, no interest at all

But I wonder why

I can't look you in the eye

"That's not it, I swear…just shut up and go away!"

I know that pa-pa-para-part of me is glaring down the sunrays

Other pa-pa-para-part of me fears you might see my heart race

Can't hold this feeling in, it feels gross

What is up with this voice inside my head?

Wow wow wow

Ta-ta-tara-talking to you, scowl that I'm making

I don't know why but I'm breaking, voice is stuttering and shaking

"For the love of-NEVER MIND! Just tell me if I'm going crazy!"

Yeah I know, I'm acting like a moron...

I can't stop yawning; this classroom's the same everyday

Next to the window, only the two of us

It won't leave my mind, even when I act bored

And let the radio play...

Rising from my desk, a careless and simple mistake

And I knew right away I'd been caught

The headphones

I was pretending to listen to

Were never connected to anywhere

"As time goes on, he'll forget something like that"

I insisted to myself

But I'm still wondering why

Why my tongue always fights

I can't even say a word on how much he annoys me!

Showing a pa-pa-para-part of me so you might get the message

But the words I wanna shout to you get swallowed back up again

"It's not so bad to keep going like this, is it?"

I'm just too shy to tell...

Wow wow wow

"La-la-lara-looks like you've been having quite a good day!"

"Can't you tell that I'm annoyed by you?" I pinched your cheeks

That thick-headed attitude, I can't stomach it!

What to do? Today is about to end...

One more time!

Pa-pa-para-part of me is squinting through the sunrays

"Don't you dare go down yet!"

I sucked in my breath

And the pa-pa-para-part of me that's beating takes a beating

Yet the thrill is amazing even still

"I wanna ta-ta-tara-tell you!" I keep thinking as I'm sprinting

And I just don't understand! My heart's a bombshell and it's ticking!

'Fore the ba-ba-bara-breath inside is gone and sun is setting

If I could I would tell you what I thought

Can you help? I'll do anything, oh God!

As there is an instrumental break nearing the end of the song, Seiko finds herself confident enough to take a peek over to where everyone is watching. She smiles as Syo and Mana shoot her thumbs up. Even Hyuga-sensei, her idol, is nodding. She steps close to the mic again and takes a breath before finishing out the song...

La lala la, la lala la la

La lala la, la lala la la

La lala la, la lala la la

La lala la, la lala la

La lala la, la lala la la

La lala la, la lala la la

La lala la, la lala la la

La lala la, la lala la la

Seiko removes her headphones and looks expectantly over at her teacher. She watches as he presses a button and his voice comes in from the studio.

"Well done, Morishige. You still need a bit more confidence in yourself. You seemed much more comfortable nearing the end," he instructs.

"Thank you, Sensei!" Seiko beams, taking his advice to heart. She wouldn't be able to sing to her best ability or become a successful idol if she wasn't 100% confident in herself. She returns to the group to be awarded by hugs from Mana and Syo.

Mana squeals, "Great job!"

"See, I knew you could do it," Syo adds, patting her on the head.

"Your scores will be posted at the end of the week. They'll be out in the main lobby," Hyuga-sensei addresses his students before dismissing them.

Seiko, Syo, and Mana leave together feeling closer to accomplishing their goals at this academy. Seiko never imagined that she'd be able to sing in front of her classmates like she just did. She should've believed in herself like everyone else did.


A/N:
By the way, I'd just like to let everyone know Midterm exams start next week so I may not be posting for a while. Wish me luck!
Oh, and check out JubyPhonic on Youtube. She's a great singer. (And I'm not just saying that on the off-chance she reads this...)
You probably won't know a lot of the songs she does... still, check her out!