Hey everyone!

Thank you so much for all your favourites and follows - they made my day! I was intending to update this story every Wednesday but I'm going on holiday this Saturday and won't be back for two weeks so the next update will be on Wednesday the 19th April. Sorry! The next chapter will be a lot longer though!

Rated T: language.

Constructive criticism is welcome!

Enjoy!

Chapter Two

Amelia Carter's friendship with Murasakibara Atsushi was a strange one.

For one thing, Mia was in her second year at Yōsen High, while Murasakibara was only in his first, his time there amounting to a grand total of seven months. Mia had never been to Japan before coming to school there and, as far as anyone knew, Murasakibara had never visited the US. There was simply no way the two could have met before the start of the school year. Additionally, they shared no extracurricular activities and their timetables couldn't possibly overlap.

It was an intriguing puzzle for Murasakibara's classmates, who speculated wildly about why their, for all intents and purposes, uncaring and lazy acquaintance was friends with the energetic and slightly eccentric upperclassman. Stories of their forbidden, sordid affair flew through the halls of Yōsen, some more outrageous than others. One boy was convinced that Murasakibara was blackmailing her into a relationship with him because there was just simply no way that that tall freak could ever get a girl that pretty to even look at him, let alone wave at him in the cafeteria. Others were sure it was the other way around and that the weird, no good upperclassman must have gotten pregnant and is using it to make poor, poor, innocent Murasakibara go out with her.

The truth was far simpler and almost tragically boring.

Yōsen was an elite boarding school in the cold, almost arctic conditions of Akita and, as such, required top of the range accommodation for its mostly rich student body. Wishing to avoid all the drama, complications and inappropriate behaviour mixed dorms would bring, there was one girl's dorm and one boy's dorm, sat innocently side by side. Simple but effective.

Through luck of the draw, Mia had managed to snag a corner room on the top floor this year. The room was slightly bigger than the rest and had not one but two windows, making it a palace in comparison to her neighbour's closet of a room. Murasakibara, at six foot ten, needed more space than the average high school boy and had acquired a corner room out of pure necessity. The two rooms, each at the end of their respective dorms, looked into one another, separated by slim but steep drop.

At first, Murasakibara had loathed Mia. She played loud music, stayed up late and often had a stream of people going in and out of her room, causing mayhem and havoc and disrupting his sleep (one, she had one regular visitor). Every time she sat at that stupid desk by that stupid window, playing that stupid music he would slam his own window shut, making sure to glare furiously as he did.

This carried on much the same way for the first few weeks of their acquaintance and Murasakibara had long since decided that he didn't like his irritating neighbour but it was too much of an effort to actually do anything about it until one day, at sunset, he had come back from practice to find her staring absentmindedly out of the window.

She had appeared to be watching the sunset avidly, with her chin propped up on one hand as she watched the sun descend from the horizon, the array of yellows, blues, oranges and pinks reflecting in her eyes.

Now, Murasakibara really did not care about other people or their problems and he barely spared a second thought for the other students at their school. The only reason he even knew his neighbour's name was because he hated her so much. He did not care about her life, her problems, her goals, he did not care about why she was looking out the window like that or about how picturesque the scene was. What Murasakibara did care about, however, was the bag American candies she had resting on her desk.

She had jolted in surprise when she had caught him staring at her bag of gummies like a starving man on the brink of death but then she had smiled warmly, offering him some of her sugary American snack. Soft jazz music had been floating through the air, different from her usual crap, drifting from her window through to his, enticing him to drowsily settle himself at his own window and extend his frighteningly long arm across space between the two buildings and help himself to her candy. They had sat in a companionable silence until the brilliant glow of the sun had been replaced by the delicate twinkle of the stars, eating their way through a deeply concerning amount of sugar.

It became something of a routine, once a week they would sit down at their desks, prop a window open and share an American snack as they did their homework (Mia studied, Murasakibara did whatever it was that Murasakibara does). After a while, Murasakibara figured that seeing as Mia regularly offered him her candy with no problem anyway, she wouldn't object if he took a bag here or there while she was out. It was laughably easy for him to reach across the drop between their rooms anytime he wanted, flick the latch on her window and slide his hand inside, helping himself to the food on her desk.

Mia had reacted angrily (he hadn't goddamned asked if he could eat my snacks, dammit), but had eventually sighed, rolling her eyes and telling him which food he was allowed and which was strictly off limits (anything her brother had sent her). Murasakibara was pleased to find that he now had daily access to a number of rare treats that were difficult to get a hold of in Akita and had promptly dubbed her "Mi-chin."

They didn't talk much at first. Murasakibara had no socialisation skills whatsoever and neither did Mia, if they were being perfectly honest. It seemed to work for them, somehow, as Murasakibara's apathetic indifference meshed well with Mia's prickly temper. Their conversations had been pretty one-sided on Mia's part for a long time before Murasakibara gradually began to open up to her. Whether it was out of obligation for the regular access to food she provided or a genuine desire to connect with the girl, no one will know. He would never be considered chatty but sometimes he said more than five lines in one conversation, and sometimes he would complete actual paragraphs, which was positively friendly for Murasakibara.

Their relationship steadily progressed until one summer day, Muraskaibara had woken up, greeted Mia with a sleepy, "oi, Mi-chin, pass me some Goldfish," perfectly casual, and had grudgingly noted that, against his will, Mia might actually be considered something of a friend. How annoying.

Mia was irritatingly perceptive and, probably using her evil witch powers or something, had sensed his change in attitude towards her. She took his acceptance of their friendship as some sort of mistaken permission to harass him at all hours of the day. Atsushi-kun, you should go to practice. Atsushi-kun do your damn homework. Atsushi-kun don't nap in class, you dumbass. It was awful. He should never have spoken to that annoying devil-woman. Yet, somehow, he could never quite muster up the appropriate feelings of irritation and anger that would make her go away.