Diary of A Fangirl... a liahime production
Disclaimer: If I owned Digimon, I wouldn't be writing these fanfics- you'd be watching them. But I don't, and so television is spared from my crazy ideas...
. the beginning .
A girl bent over a piece of paper in the afternoon sunlight, laughing. Honey brown hair quivering with laughter; her eyes sparkled with an untold secret.
"Jeri, just tell me." Another girl stood by her, not quite as happy. She scowled down at the row of neat figures and numbers. "What does this stuff," she stabbed at it with her pencil, "all mean, anyways? It looks like a bunch of scribbles to me." Pushing back a strand of dark hair, she frowned at the gel penned numbers.
"It's a test." More giggling came from the girl sitting with her lunch in her lap. "You get the first two syllables of a person's name, and add them together, and add the other person's name with it. You keep adding the numbers, and carrying the digits until eventually,"Jeri circled the bottom number, "you find the love compatability- or the love points!"
"Love points?" The scowling girl cast a skeptical glance at the paper. "I'm paying this much for a game?"
"I tried you and Ryo together, and you two have the highest percentage I found so far! 42 percent!"
The dark haired girl smiled. "I knew it!" Her eyes grew soft, almost misty as she looked with new respect at the papers in her hand. "That's great! Thanks, Jeri!"
More laughter spilled forth.
"Why is it so funny?"
No answer.
Impatient, the girl grabbed the paper and scanned it, looking at the bottom two numbers.
Ninety nine percent.
She looked at the two names on top of the pyramid of calculations. "No way."
Jeri laughed harder. "It's true. It works!"
"There's no way that I- that he-"
"It does! Look!" Another diagram grew on the paper, numbers flowing from the small pen. "Five and four here, three and six over here- it makes ninety nine percent!" The small pen pointed out the two top names. "Mari plus Kazu equals ninety nine."
"No." She was horror-struck, leaning away from the paper. Genuinely shaken, she stood up.
"Mari." Jeri said, laughter fading. "It's just a game.It's fine- it's just a bunch of numbers. Your name and his name just happen to match up like that-""
"I'm the one percent."
Mari crumbled the paper into a ball, pressing it tighter and tighter, as if it got small enough,it would dissapear."It's impossible." She stared down at the crushed pink papers. "I'm not paying for something that's impossibly fake. There's no way that this could work, Jeri. " The horror spread across her face. "You must have written it outwrong."
"Try it for yourself. Write your name there," Jeri, annoyed with her customer,pointed to the top of the paper. "andhis namethere. It ends up as ninety nine. Every time."
The lunch bell rang, shrill and loud. Students became to stream indoors, rushing and talking around them. Out of patience, Jeri snapped open her panda wallet, coming back to business. "Payment please, Mari!"
Grumbling, Mari pulled out her money. "Honestly, it's a bit much."
"You decided to pay for it." Jeri happily took the yen and dropped it into the panda's mouth. She stood up, brushing dust off her school uniform. The honey-brown haired girl grinned triumphantly. "Nice doing business with you, Mari!"
-
Grumbling, Mari smoothed out the papers. Ninety nine percent couldn't be right. As she walked into the classroom, she crumbled the popular game in her hand. They had been selling quickly at her school, the girls running to Jeri to find their chance with their secret crushes. She had finally paid for one, despite the high prices, only for this?
At her desk, she scribbled down her name, and then Kazu's. It couldn't be. Not that loud, obnoxious guy who used too much gel in his hair, and not enough toothpaste on his teeth. The one who coughed in her ear and didn't know when to shut his mouth and stop talking. The one that didn't know that he was not funny, no matter how many times he was reminded.
Not that Kazu.
Surely Jeri had mixed something up. There had to be an error. Had to be. Calculating the points once more, she checked each answer slowly. The pink and blue intertwined, numbers mixing and twisting with each other, adding and carrying, rolling by. Three, seven, six, nine, two.
And the numbers lined up to ninety nine. Again.
She slumped, and sighed as a chorus of high pitched squeals came from the schoolroom door. Her back bounced back to a rigid straightness, shoulders back, an easy smile plastering itself onto her face. Frozen beauty at rest. Her head turned quickly to the silhouette coming into the buzzing classroom. The shadowed figure in the doorway headed towards her slowly. His sun-browned hair blew back dramatically as he walked around a desk corner, through a crowd of gossiping girls. "Ladies."
More squeals erupted. Mari quickly slipped the papers into her bag, notepaper folding under the weight of her textbooks and pens.
"Mari." He walked to her, and tripped, falling forward.
She sighed, pushing him away. "Kazu."
He grinned. "Beautiful, wonderful, princess Mari- would you-."
She turned around, lip-glossed lips scowling. "Go away, Kazu. I'm busy. I don't feel like doing any favors."
"I need help, Mari!"
"Idon't help people like you, Kazu."
He pouted, frowning. His head loomed large in her vision, blocking the latest arrival to the classroom that was being swarmed by blushing, swooning, smiling. "Move your head, idiot. You're blocking the view."
Kazu turned. "What view?"
"That view, baka." She pointed at the doorway. "The really good one."
"The door's not that prett-"
She rolled her eyes, getting out of her seat. Sweeping school books into her bag, she stood up.
"Mari- please!" He sidestepped awkwardly in front of her. "I need only one lesson, really! Just one!"
"For what?" She edged away from him.
He turned to see if anyone was listening- as if he had any reputation left to protect, she thought, annoyed- and whispered. "I need a lesson on getting a date."
"Ask Kenta." She eyed Ryo through the corner of her eye. His fan club's president had gotten there first, and was fluttering around him, fawning. The president tossed a glance over her shoulder at Mari, smirking. Missiles flew towards her reputation's fragile fishing boat, spiraling in closer and closer.
"But he's never had one either!"
"No." Cheeks burning angrily, she turned away from the giggling girl pointing her out to the rest of the world. I hate you, Kazu, I hate you. "Never."
"I just need one lesson! Only one!"
"Personal space, Kazu!" She backed away from him. Her reputation was gone. The bombs from her opposition had completely capsized her shaking social status had sunk to the bottom of the school's popularity sea. She scrambled, trying to save what was left of it.
He leaned in closer, whispering. "What if I told you I had something for you?"
"Your breath smells like old fish, Kazu! Go away and stay away," she said, voice crescendoing, to stop the giggles erupting from the other corner of the room. Struggling to keep her face calm, she edged backwards.
"What if," he continued, unperturbed, "that thing was your super-secret, no-entry-allowed, junior high diary?" Kazu held a small pink book out of her grasp. "You will help me, right?"
She glanced over his shoulder, catching a look at her friends. "Um..."
"Dear Diary," Kazu recited, waving the pink book in front of her. "Today I went-" More giggles exploded from the corner.
Her face, completely red, she held out her hand. "Give it."
The bell rang.
"I hate you." She hissed.
He grinned. "After school today. The pirate ship, Mari."
She groaned, trying to ignore him. Breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. You look like a tomato. You feel like an overripe cherry tomato. Breathe. "Fine. Leave."
"It's a date then!" He waved cheerfully, walking off.
She slumped onto her desk.
Diary in the hand of a crazy lunatic, being forced to go on a "date" with the crazy lunatic to get it back, and having her social status plummet to the very bottom of the pit she had clawed her way up out of.
Could it get worse?
-
It could.
As Kazu left, and class begun, a flurry of notes and whispered glances were thrown in Mari's direction.
Violet scented note paper balls, gel penned looped letters; all found their way to her feet. Her desk began to become a flower garden of scented inks and papers, rose-pinks and hydrangea blue gossip flying towards her. Gossip and stares of disbelief fluttered around her view, dancing just out of sight.
Was it true?
Was Mari- the perfectly respectable, mildly pretty Mari- going on a date with that disgusting thing known as Kazu?
Giggles erupted in between radiuses and geometric planes. Her ears burned red as she tried to laugh with them, to brush it off as nothing.
They weren't buying it.
Escaping the giggling fan club- her so called friends- she ran out of the building as the last bell shrilled, eager to get her journal back and get this crazy, half-baked idea of Kazu's done with. To get her normal life back once more.
She was supposed to head to a pirate ship, wherever that was. He's so juvenile, really, she thought to herself, eyeing the gray clouds growing overhead. Pirate ships and space cowboys are probably what he thinks about all day long. How am I supposed to find some boat anyways, in the middle of a city?
Mari's feet directed her, silently, through streets and crosswalks. She frowned, feet walking to an unknown destination. They carried her forward, silently ignoring her protests as they stepped over mud and asphalt.
I have no idea where I'm going, Mari thought to her feet. I have no idea how you two are getting the ideas to go somewhere without telling me.
Her steady feet walked on, not listening.
I'm going to be lost! You will lose my expensive Rumiko heels and yourselves with me!
Regardless of Rumiko signature heels, incredibly expensive or not, the feet kept moving forward.
She sighed, giving in. There was no use lying to her mind, she knew, when she knew the place, how to get there, and every single stitch in the blanket of memories that came with it. Here, when no one was watching, she didn't really need the convenient amnesia that she had placed upon herself.
But she didn't want to remember.
-
Standing in a deserted playground, the winds before a storm pushed invisible riders on swings, whistled through slides. Pirate ship, whatever that was. Leaves crunched underneath her shoes as she moved forwards, protesting silently, to the trees fringing the edge of the park.
There was one tree standing over the others, brushing the graying sky with black. It towered over Mari, thick, ancient bark gnarled with time and wear.
Tilting her head back, she could see the beginnings of a rope ladder tumbling down to the earth below. Unfurling from the heart of theblack maze ofwood, the white ribbon ofrope
rolled through the cracks and crevices in the tree, closer and closer, stopping a foot above her, an invitation waiting for an answer.
A voice floated down to her. "Hurry up, Mari!"
She took a deep breath, looking at the grimy, frayed rope, looking up into the endless black of wood above her. The sky was blocked out by branches and bark, moss and twigs. It can't be too bad, she told herself. You'll probably live.
Probably.
Life puts people into a lull of slight fortunes, letting things rise up further and further, letting you be happier and happier- so that when it's time to let you down, it can drop you further down than before.As Mari climbed the first few feet, leaving the ground, she easily stepped up the rungs of the white rope ladder. Without branches in her way, the vertical climb was quick and simple, effortless for a girl who had spent hours chasing after Ryo in high heeled sandals.
And then, fortune dropped her, sending her falling from her cloud in the sky to the thick branches of the tree below.
Her sandal's heel chipped, her knees began to bruise. Twigs stuck into her carefully combed hair. Hairpins littered the ground like a new type of leaf.
This isn't too bad. Think diary. Think saving your personal reputation from complete annihilation.
Biting her lip, she climbed on.
The first drops began to fall, followed by the second, and then third. The tree became slippery, bark gray and slick. Moss squished underneath her fingers, slimy and soft, a damp carpet of green. The old rope rubbed against her hands, chafing them raw. She scrambled up the last rungs of the knotted ladder, through a small hole in the tangled maze of black limbs and branches.
Mari stood up, her head hitting the ceiling.
Pain shot through her skull, sending icy white tendrils running down it. Her head buzzed unhappily, making it harder and harder to concentrate. She winced, and crawled on through the dark tunnel. Wisps of spider webs hung from the ceiling, ghosts of past time.
Eventually, she emerged into a small, boxy room, floor lined with carpet samples and old maps. Kazu sat against the wall, grinning cheerfully.
"You're slow. You must be getting fat."
Perhaps he didn't say it quite so rudely, or so harshly. He may have only been greeting her, may not have opened his mouth at all. But the words echoed in her head, ricocheting off her brain, crescendoing to a mind-piercing volume.
Slow. Fat. Slow. Fat. She was tired, she was bruised and battered, and her signature Rumiko heels needed serious medical attention. Her stomach growled and screamed for food, her head screamed in pain. There was bark in her nails, moss in her hair, bits of web and dirt on her feet.
And he called her fat.
A twig bent over in the rush of the water, twisted and pushed by the onslaught of the speed, by the pressure, until it cracked- she snapped.
Throwing her hair- soaked, dying leaf-entangled, no longer perfectly coiffed- back, she let her hoarse voice shriek and soar upwards. She wasn't quite sure of what she was screaming, but her mascara was running, her throat aching and screeching. Mari had fallen inside of herself, a silent viewer to her rage. The world was muted and spinning around her, imploding on itself.
And as she opened her eyes, out of breath, to glare at Kazu, the sound died in her throat.
Sitting next to her target was one ocean-blue eyed, perfect-haired guy, leaning against the tree house wall. Perfectly white, straight teeth. A smile to die for. Staring at her –her! - with a slightly annoyed, slightly amused, perfectly arched eyebrow raised. Perfection, with the risk of redundancy, embodied in a human form.
Ryo Akiyama.
Flavor of the Weak- Thank you! I hope I do a good job with this!
asn water- Thank you as well! Don't worry, she won't just stare at Ryo.. I have something planned. evil laugh..
starof6- thank you as well! Hope you like this update
lady-snow- Thank you very much!
authoress note:
well, this is my first OC-centric fanfic, everyone.. and it's been tough already, writing this. Please give me any suggestions, etc. to make this better. I hate writing the first chapters of these things because I can't wait to get to the actual main plot I plan out for the story.. My introductions are never very good...so.. I hope you like this attempt at a first chapter!
(but then again, if there was no introduction, the plot would be pointless. oh well.. Wish me luck everyone!)
-liahime