Chapter 1: Enemies
When Black and White first met, they were six years old.
Black was the most popular kid in kindergarten. Maybe it was because his family was so rich and powerful, but whatever the reason why, he didn't care. Everywhere he went, people waved and said hi, even the first and second and third graders. Black was the youngest member in the group of popular kids, and because of this, he figured he had authority over all the other kindergarteners. Most of them had grown scared of him after he had taken their cookies at lunch, but he didn't care. Why bother with kindergarteners? He had better, more popular, older friends.
Black and all his friends were all well-liked and admired by the whole school. The teachers adored them. But they weren't as sweet and innocent as the grown-ups believed.
It was lunchtime. He was taking his daily inspection of the classroom, looking out for desserts he could steal. (Of course, he did it while the teachers were taking their own lunch break). His eyes travelled across the room before settling on a delicious-looking chocolate chip cookie on a desk in the far corner of the room. The uneaten cookie was bigger than the cookies most kids usually brought, and it looked freshly baked. He could almost taste the chocolatey flavor already.
Smirking, Black made his way over, satisfied at what a score he'd made. He halted in front of the desk, making eye contact with the person sitting behind it, the owner of the cookie. His brown eyes met sky blue ones. Grinning wildly, Black looked the kid up and down.
It was that girl.
The girl who never talked, who always sat silently in the corner of the room, refusing to make eye contact with anyone. The girl who had no friends, because people thought she was a boring, dull kid and whispered nasty things about her behind her back. People always said her family was dirt poor, and that she lived in a tiny house in the woods. Looking her over briefly, Black suspected those rumors were true.
Black had never talked to her before, like the rest of his fellow classmates. Honestly, he didn't even know her name. He deemed her unworthy of his precious attention, like most other kids in his class. She looked like someone to turn his nose up on.
He thrust his hand out toward her, showing off the threatening stance that his friends had taught him yesterday. He made sure to keep his feet wide apart and put on a smirking grin.
You're a little monster. His friends' laughter echoed in his mind. Nobody's gonna dare resist you.
"What do you want?" the girl growled, clutching her cookie tightly in her hand.
Oh, what innocence. That's what everyone said the first time he took their desserts, but soon enough, they knew to hand it over. Black grinned even bigger at the thought of the girl's face when he stole her cookie. "Gimme your cookie, or else."
"Or else what? I'm not scared of you." The girl stood up, glaring up at him.
"Give it." Black was getting impatient now. He took a step forward.
"No!"
They were at the point where, in the past, everyone else had surrendered their cookies in fear of getting hurt. "Give it!" Black yelled, his temper flaring. Insults popped into his mind, and before he could think about it, he shouted them. "You don't even have any friends! You don't belong here. Go away!"
She took a step back like she'd been slapped. For the first time, Black noticed her eyes. They were clear blue—the color of the sky. But right now, they were so icy cold, he tried not to shiver.
Whatever. I don't care!
"Give it!" Black yelled one last time. Before he could stop himself, he shoved her. As hard as he could. She tumbled backward, tripped over her chair, and hit the floor hard. She went sprawling onto the hard, cold floor, face-first.
And everyone laughed. Especially Black. He grabbed the fallen cookie from the ground and sneered at her. Around him, kids were roaring with laughter.
Except for one person. (Well, technically two, but Cheren didn't count. He was too boring, always sitting in the corner of the room reading his book. He never paid attention to anyone else, and no one paid any attention to him either. It was like: seriously, get a life.)
Bianca. The girl with the blond hair and orange dress—everyone thought she was ditsy and clumsy and never took anything seriously. Black never took any interest in her. She was way too crazy and giggly. He just barely remembered her name.
She walked right up to Black and slapped him across the cheek, hard. "Oww!" Black cried. His right cheek was already beginning to sting. No doubt it was terribly red.
"How could you do that? You meanie!" Bianca cried. "I gave her that cookie, you know! She never has anything at all to eat at lunch! And you stole it!" She made tiny fists at him. "Give it back!"
Black ignored her, walking away. He heard Bianca cry out indignantly as he left, but he didn't care. His cheek was throbbing with pain, but he didn't care about that, either. He sunk his teeth into the sweet, still-warm chocolate chip cookie. The chocolate melted in his mouth. What made it even sweeter was the satisfying taste of victory—Bianca screaming behind him and the other girl still sprawled down on the floor, the kids' laughter ringing in his ears.
— - O - —
The next day, Black saw the girl walking to school. He'd decided to call her the girl from now on.
(For some reason, he had become strangely curious about her. It was a weird feeling, something he wasn't used to—paying attention to a lowly girl like her.)
For the first time, he allowed himself to actually look her over. She had long, dark, chocolatey brown hair like the chocolate chips in her cookie the day before. She wore the same outfit every day—the dirt-streaked white tank top, the ragged black small black jacket, the torn, faded jean shorts. The large black combat boots on her feet certainly didn't fit the rest of her outfit, and neither did her worn, tattered pink cap. Black noticed a big black-and-blue bruise on her forehead and grinned smugly at the knowledge that it came from her fall face-first yesterday.
"Dude. Black, did you hear what I said?"
"What?" Black looked over at his friend. He and some other of his popular friends were crossing the school courtyard, heading for the entrance.
"I said—" His friend paused, glancing toward where Black was looking at. "Who's that?" He pointed to the girl, walking alone, but with her head held high and confident.
"She's in my class." Black tried to sound scornful, like he was higher than any kindergartener. "I stole her cookie yesterday." He knew his friends would be proud. At the inevitable grins and laughs of his friends, he held his head a little higher, satisfied at what he'd done.
"Hey." One of Black's fourth-grade friends spoke up with a sneer. "I think we just found someone new to pick on."
It was the sixth graders' job to find new people to pick on every day. Black knew this well. His friends had complained before that they couldn't find anyone new to bully, but now...
"You sure?" A snobby sixth-grade girl looked over, her eyelashes dark with mascara. "She looks kinda boring."
"Yeah, but who doesn't like picking on little defenseless kindergarteners? Right, Black?" Another kid grinned at Black, and he grinned back. Oh, man. He couldn't wait to see this. The girl would definitely be scared of his friends. It was always a kindergartener's nightmare when a sixth-grader noticed them, because that meant they were about to be bullied.
Of course, except for Black. He'd never gotten bullied by sixth graders before.
"C'mon. Let's go."
The entire group changed their direction, making a beeline for the girl. She noticed them and her steps quickened, trying to get to the safety of the school building before they caught her. As Black and his friends walked faster to catch up to her, she broke into a run, nearing the entrance.
Too late. A fifth-grader had caught her backpack. He wrenched her back while the others laughed at the look in her eyes, the look of hunted prey. She glared at them, her eyes shining with anger and fear, and looked around wildly, trying to find someone, anyone, to help her. Her eyes landed on Black, and the despair and terror in her eyes made him flinch. For a second, he hesitated, wanting to help her, to rescue her from his friends, who had no sense of kindness or compassion. They wouldn't care that she was only a kindergartener; they would hurt her bad.
But Black ripped the thought out of his mind instantly. If he helped the girl, his friends would never forgive him. Besides, she was too poor and lowly to be his friend. Seriously. He was a member of the richest family in Unova.
His friends, meanwhile, were taunting the girl relentlessly.
"What's the matter? Scared?"
"Why aren't you talking? Purrloin got your tongue? Or are you mute as well as poor?"
"Yeah, seriously. Wear some clean clothes, for once."
The girl didn't respond to any of these jeers, just clenched and unclenched her fists over and over, like she wanted to hit them but afraid she didn't have the strength.
"You gotta have something that's not dirt-poor like the rest of your stuff." A sixth-grader tore her backpack away from her, and she launched herself after it, screaming, "Give it back!" But he ripped the zipper open and dug into her stuff, throwing away books and folders and a pencil box. During the few minutes that he spent looking through her things, everyone else continued to taunt her, pulling her hair and taking her pink cap and throwing it around out of her reach, like keep-away. Black, however, had no idea what to do. His feet refused to budge, so instead he just stood there, staring like a complete idiot.
Finally, the sixth-grader lifted something from among the pile of her stuff. A one-dollar bill. It was crumpled and dirty, but it was still a dollar bill.
"Is this your lunch money?" the older kid smirked. "Guess I'll be taking it, the—" He was cut off as the girl tackled him, screaming, "No!" at the top of her lungs. But the bigger boy easily pushed her away, flinging her to the ground roughly, and sauntered off. The rest of the gang followed, laughing and hooting and hollering, but the girl looked up angrily from on the ground and met Black's eyes. Her eyes were a startling sky-blue, like he'd noticed the day before, but today, they shone brighter with anger and fury and the desire to get revenge. Her eyes weren't sparkling or anything, but one word came to Black's mind: beautiful.
What's happening to me?
Black forced himself to snicker at her, but it sounded half-hearted. Uncomfortable and scared at this weird new feeling inside him, he turned away and hurried after the rest of his friends, never looking back.
