Author's Note:

Well, this is my second serious try at fanfiction (my other FY fanfic here on fanfiction.net, Fushigi Ryuu, being the first). This one is a kind of cross between a "new miko" and a reincarnation fic. It takes place about 400 or so book years after the series, with a new miko and a bunch of reincarnated shichiseishi.

This is the first appearance of our new miko for the story... She is a high school student, and I pretty much based her school on my own high school, because that's the only high school I have had experience with.

Disclaimer:

I don't own Fushigi Yuugi...though sometimes I wish I did. All of the characters in this chapter are my own creation...especially Leigh.

Warning:

No warnings for this chapter, but there will be shounen ai (guys who like guys) in the future, as well as Tasuki language.

Atarashii Inochi
chapter 2: boring classes

-a few days earlier, some random US high school-

"God, I hate this class," Leigh(7) Parker muttered to herself for about the eight time since the class had started. She was sitting in the American Literature part of this class, trying desperately not to fall asleep as the teacher droned on about Realism.

It was nearing the last quarter of the two hour class, which was a mixture of American Literature and American History. It wasn't a bad class…it was just that she didn't particularly care for either subject, and she'd been sitting there for over an hour already. It was long past time when she had stopped caring about paying attention and started trying to keep from yawning, and she was losing the battle more and more with every second.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of babble from the teacher, the bell rang, and Leigh sprang out of her seat, glad it was time for lunch. Her best friend cried out as she ran by her in her eagerness to get out of the room, not wanting to be left behind by her overly hyper friend. Of course, once in the hall, Leigh stopped and turned to wait for her friend so they could go to lunch together.

"What, though I'd leave you alone Terry?" Leigh asked, her eyes, almost pure blue at the time, sparkling with something that Terry couldn't quite identify.

"It wouldn't be the first time," Teresa, commonly known as Terry, replied. "After all, no one can stop you when you're in full hyper mode."

"But I'm not right now!" Leigh exclaimed. "That class drains too much of my energy. I swear, I'm going to die of boredom if I have to listen to one more thing about this or that literary period!"

"You'll survive," Terry said dryly as the two girl headed toward the commons. There they headed to Terry's car, a present from her parents for her sixteenth birthday. Then the two of them headed to Subway, as they did everyday, to get something for lunch.

The person behind the counter who took their order was a new employee, and the only one in the place who didn't know them. For some reason, he felt the need to stare at the two girls, whose features were, oddly enough, almost identical, but were completely different in almost every other way. One wouldn't think it was odd the way the two friends looked together, but for some reason it was.

Where Leigh was fairly tall, Terry stood just at five feet tall, though both were of fairly average weight. Leigh's hair was long and light brown, with the occasional streak of lighter blonde or red, and braided, where Terry's was cut short and dyed black. Her blonde roots were just starting to show. Leigh had blue eyes, a sign that she was exited and/or happy at the time, while Terry's were dark brown, and hidden behind thick glasses.

"Welcome to Subway, what can I get for you?" the young man asked. Leigh and Terry ordered their usual meals, and Leigh thought to herself that the young man would quickly learn that he didn't need to ask them what they wanted. She figured it would take him two weeks at the most.

Once they both had their meals and had paid the two girls headed back to school. They would have preferred to eat at Subway, not wanting to return to the school quite so soon, but neither one wanted to tempt fate. They had to be back in time for their next classes, and traffic was heavy just before lunch hour ended. It was easier to take their food back to school and not have to worry about the time.

"You know, life would just be a lot cooler if it was like a good book," Leigh commented as the two girls ate their lunches in the cafeteria. Terry knew that the kind of book she was referring to was a fantasy, about the only kind of book besides romance that Leigh ever read. "You have to admit, all of this is boring."

"I know," Terry said. "But I don't think it's going to be happening any time soon."

"Yeah, that sucks," Leigh commented, and they continued to converse, eventually finishing their food and waiting for the bell to ring, even though they didn't really want to go back to class. It did happen though, and the two separated, having different classes at that time.

Leigh had science that period. It was physics, but their teacher had decided to be different, and she was having them do research projects for the class. So, they were spending some class periods in the library to research. Leigh, however, was already done with her research and was working on the paper itself at home, so she had nothing to do in the library.

It was then that she remembered that she was going to have a paper coming up in her history/literature class. She figured that while she was in the library she could start thinking about what to do for it. So, she headed for the shelves to look through books, hoping one of the books would give her some sort of inspiration for a paper topic.

While she was looking through the shelves she noticed a book that looked out of place. It looked old, and was bound oddly, which was quite strange for her school's library. The school itself was fairly new, and thus almost all of the books in the library were also fairly new. This book was definitely not fairly new.

Curiously, she took it off of the shelf and examined it. After a few moments of puzzling over it, she realized that it was either bound backwards, or she was holding it upside down. She couldn't quite tell, because the title was written in what she thought were Chinese characters and she wasn't quite sure which way was up for them.

She opened the book, only to find it to be more Chinese (or whatever they were) characters. She looked at the picture that was on the opposite page from the characters, which looked like some sort of bird. She shook her head, completely unable to understand the writing, and closed the book. She was about to put it back on the shelf, when the writing on the cover started to swirl, and reformed into English letters.

Leigh dropped the book suddenly, startled and sure she was seeing things. Then she blinked, rubbing her eyes and peering at the book again, only to still see English letters on its cover instead of the characters that were there before. It read "The Universe of the Four Gods(8)."

"Okay…" she said, thinking that something weird was definitely going on. But, her sense of curiosity, plus the excitement she felt at something not normal happening, prompted her to open the book. She did so, and it opened to a page near the beginning. The first line she saw read, "…the moment the page is turned, the story will become reality."

"Weird," she said, turning the page.

And then everything went red.

notes

7. This is not a self insert (I feel I must make this clear because the first half of my name is Leigh). I don't care if her name is quite similar to mine, she's not me. I just like this spelling of Leigh. I save my self inserts for omake, and the doll stories.

8. How the Shi Jin Ten Chi Sho found its way into a US high school's library, I don't know. My thoughts on it are that since Suzaku chose Leigh as his next miko (oh, yeah, Leigh's the miko...), the book just kinda made its way to her.