I've written the first chapter to a new fanfic! This is an Alternate Universe fanfic, taking place in. . . You'll see! It'll probably focus on mainly Mao, Rai, and Kiki. Possibly a few additions to that. . .

So, yeah, this'll probably have some plot-resembling stuff later, I've got some plans. . . Um. . . Yeah. . .

I have a Chinese English Dictionary. I love telling people that, especially since I've been studying Japanese for seven years and I'm ahead of my class - but have no knowledge of so much as pronouncing the Chinese words!

There are multiple meanings, but I chose the ones I liked best.

If you have a word you wanna know, tell me in a review and I'll look it up and put it in here! I just love looking up words!

Pineapple is fenglishu.

I thought it was important. . .

. . : : NAMES : : . .

Mao ___ Kitten (sharing the Japanese kanji for cat. Ironically, this was on last weeks kanji test.)

Rei ____ tired, fatigued

Rai ____ rely, depend on

Gaou ____ His name means assorted foods. Pastries, cakes, O_o (Fitting, no?)

Kiki _____ Honestly, my dictionary didn't have this. O_______O (Not even Ki. and on the English to Chinese side I even tried looking up Monkey!)

Kai ______ indignant [Or: Open! lol! Or: wipe I tell you this because the sentence example was "To wipe away one's tears." Or: deeply touched. Or: suit of armour. Or: TRIUMPHANT!! ]

Shuilan _____ Aqua Marine. (She's my OC for this...)

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Byakko Cafe'

"Prologue : ::: : . . . Glimpse of this life"

"So, just a small plate of egg rolls?" Mao asked, looking over her notebook. The woman in front of her nodded and she smiled. "Coming right up. Shouldn't take long since it's a small order, but-" She sighed dramatically, "If you can't be convinced to order anything more . . . "

She turned to give the order to the chef but was stopped by a familiar voice calling our her name. "Mao!" She spun on her high-heeled heel and redirected herself to table #4's direction.

"Hey, Rei." She said, raising a hand in greeting. Rei smiled and nodded for her to sit down. "Can't, gotta go deliver this to the chef. Unless . . . " She paused. "Kiki!"

A sea-green haired boy crawled out from under the table at the call of his name, though whether he had gotten there from elsewhere or if he had been there the entire time was unknown. "I didn't break it! It was Shuilan this time!"

Mao raised an eyebrow. "Break what?"

"The vase."

"It's not broken, not since I checked last night."

Kiki was standing in front of the table by this point and looked around shiftily - though you could only see one eye, the other was covered by his hair. He shifted his weight from foot to foot before grinning as innocently as possible. "You're right, not broken. But if it just so happened to have broken early this morning, it was Shuilan's fault."

Mao let out a drawn out and slightly disbelieving"Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight . . . " Before handing him a small notebook. "Give this to the cook, would you Kiki?"

"Not without motivation, I wouldn't."

"If you don't I'll punish you whether your story of how it managed to be Shuilan's fault is convincing or not."

"That'll do. Hi Rei, bye Rei." Kiki gave a wave and hurried off towards the kitchen, leaving Mao and her friend. Mao sat down and grinned.

"So, how are you, Rei?" She asked, propping her head on her hands.

"Pretty good. Papa has un'-book-borrowing-grounded' me because I've been helping out with the bookshop so much extra. All I did was take a book they were holding for someone and forget to give it back until after the person came to pick it up! Yeesh!" Rei pouted. "So unfair. And you're doing good as well, I presume."

"Pretty good. Kiki's a pest, Gaou is . . . " She brightened. "Gaou is on a trip somewhere right now; With his parents."

"Wow, so you can actually leave the kitchen door unlocked." Rei said, amazed. Mao nodded, and Rei looked up in thought. "You mean... Just because Gaou's gone, you're leaving it open?" Mao nodded again, looking doubtful.

"Yeah, why?"

"Kiki."

"Yeah, well, the cooks have basically figured out how to get him to go away. . . Give him some candy and he's gone, and it's no problem if they don't give him much." Mao shrugged.

A girl Kiki's age with aqua hair covering her eyes in a random way popped up from no where. "Actually, even just a little makes Kiki hyper and prone to breaking things." She flipped one of the thick strands of hair covering her ears back over her shoulder - though it went rather strangely because the rest of her hair past those two strands wasn't even to her shoulders, and said two strands were to her waist.

Mao shrugged. "That's why I let him play at your house, Shuilan." Shuilan just shrugged, and after a pause asked:

"Where's Kiki?"

Mao pointed to the kitchen and Shuilan put on a calculating look, moving her finger in the air as though tracing movement on an invisible map. She stopped and glanced around a bit before pointing. The reason for doing so was explained by the distressed exclamation of "He's probably all the way to table #13 by now!"

". . . Sooooooo," Mao started, turning back to Rei once Shuilan had ran off. "What book had you taken again?" She tried to ignore that she didn't care, nor did she want one of the infamous "Rei responses" to a question about a book as she asked, but managed to prepare herself to stop paying attention on a subconscious level.

"I've forgotten the title. . . It was really cool though, it was about this princess, see, but she didn't like being a princess, so she ran away and became friends with a dragon, then, " Mao tuned herself out as Rei rambled about the book and various notes about it.

She loved Rei, - as a friend - really she did, but sometimes he needed to ramble. The problem was, Mao had decided, Rei was able to uphold a one-sided conversation for hours, but he did need someone else there. Unfortunately, no one Mao - or Rei- knew would be one to enjoy simply listening, they all liked talking as well.

Luckily though, Rei wasn't the type to ignore their conversation expectations.

"And she doesn't want to be rescued, so she puts up a sign specifically to tell princes not to rescue her,"

On purpose. . .

"Sounds entertaining. Maybe I'll read it sometime." Maybe. Mao paused and stood up. "If you don't order soon, we won't have time to prepare your order before closing time." Which was a slight exaggeration, but still. . ."What do you want?"

Rei laughed, almost nervously. "Heh, sorry." He looked up and pondered what to get before looking back to Mao sharply. "You mean you haven't memorized my order yet?"

"I have, just double checking. Oh, and we're out of green tea, we were running low as it is, but Kiki's friend Shuilan got sick a while ago and Kiki insisted I gave it to her. But we have honey lemon and raspberry, new flavors."

"Shuilan got sick? And I want raspberry."

Mao nodded and didn't bother writing it in or confirming Shuilan's health disabilities before wandering off to the kitchen - on the way there, snatching a donut from Kiki's hands munching on that - ignoring by the yelling behind her. (Though amused by the beginning that she had heard.)

"That was my donut!!"

"Kiki, you liar! You stole it from me!"

And so went the average moment.

Mao returned from giving the order, or at least, tried to, anyway. She was interrupted by the following noise:

Crash!

Now, this is not a noise, it is just a piece of writing, but it is an example of what the sound is assumed to look like, when turned into a word. There's a word for that process alone, but I've forgotten it. Now, by this point you have probably forgotten about the above "Crash!" and as such, I will remind you.

Crash!

Mao turned on her heel. "Kiki!!!" Kiki and Shuilan were standing next to each other in front of one of the open tables, trying to look innocent. Mao sighed. "What did you break?" The both immediately opened their mouths in protest and pointed at the other.

Mao stood and waited, tapping her foot impatiently. A a glaring contest ensued, which was quite amusing because not only did Kiki only have one eye showing, but Shuilan had no eyes showing. Some how, one of them managed to win, apparently Shuilan.

Which only made the above eye-statement even more blunt and as such, more confusing. Anyway. . .

"Kiki broke one of the glasses on the table." Shuilan said, moving aside and pointing to said broken glass on said table. "I told you. The sugar." Shuilan leaned forward and whispered, loud enough for Kiki to hear too. "It messes with him."

Mao sighed, yet again. Which - she reminded herself to punish him more as she realized it - happened a lot when Kiki was there. Or when Shuilan was there. And an especially large amount of sighing tended to happen when they were together.

Sighing again, Mao pointed, giving cleaning instructions, and watched as the two idly wandered off to ignore her instructions on how to clean up what they broke.

The end of the day came quickly once she had ushered Rei to his own home with a to-go box, Sent Shuilan home, and locked Kiki in the back room with a few snacks. Of course, Mao had known that he would pick the lock, but once she locked him in the first three times, he tended to stop being so annoying, and that had been the third of the day.

Mao turned over the 'open, closed' sign on the door and glanced down at Kiki who was squinting as though keeping his eyes open was terribly difficult. He let out a long yawn and stretched his arms. Before he could lower them, Mao grasped one of his hands in her own, motherly instinct taking over as she led him across the street and home.

Kiki, of course, protested to being babied as such, but only vocally, doing nothing to change it.

Mao opened the door for Kiki, grabbing the mail from a box on the way in the door. As she looked through them she spared a glance at Kiki, who was padding his way towards the couch in front of the TV.

"Bed, Kiki. Get some sleep." She ordered, then looked back to the mail. Her eyes lingered on the name of who it was from before she checked to make sure Kiki was going upstairs to his room. As he closed his bedroom door, Mao began heading up the stairs herself, bringing with her the letter. "About time Rai writes to me, stupid brother."

When Mao finally got to her room - having been walking very slow, trying to open the stupid letter - she decided the letter could wait, and her need of sleep could not, planning to read it over the next day.

Before falling asleep she was idly aware of the fact that there was no work the next day.

Well, that's all for chapter one! See you next time!