Disclaimer: Let's make it all clear, ok? I don't own Gakuen Alice. How could I? I couldn't possibly come up with something that good. ^^

~This chapter is dedicated to my first reviewer ;D

Thank you so much for the motivation.~

2.) C H A P T E R 2- IMAGINATION OR REALIZATION?

"Hey, don't do that..."

I was awoken by something that hit me hard in the head. Luckily, I was too sleepy to feel much pain.

"Are you ever going to get out of bed or do I have to throw a bucket of water in?"

"Go away, Hotaru," I mumbled, tossing to the other side of the bed.

"It's ice cold," Hotaru said even louder.

Urgh- Ice cold water.

I knew that Hotaru sometimes made her own threats into action. I wasn't going to risk shivering in the cold because I didn't wake up.

I sat upright in bed quickly. It was a speed she couldn't complain about.

"I'm awake now... No need for that," I told her warily. I yawned.

Good thing I thought of waking up. Hotaru, true to her word, readily had a plastic bucket carried with both her hands, the ice cubes still in sight.

I swallowed nervously when I thought about what could have happened if I did not listen. I was just so glad I did.

Her eyebrows raised, doubtful.

"Hurry and get out of bed then. We're going to be late," Hotaru said, taking the bucket away.

"With the ice cubes still in, huh?" I said, stretching my arms, ready to get out of bed.

"Just in case. You wouldn't wake up with the normal alarms," Hotaru said, shrugging.

Alice Academy was beautiful of course, there was no denying that. It was big, too big, in fact, that I wondered if I would get lost anytime soon. My hunch was a definite yes. I'd never been good with geography to begin with. How long would it take for me to get familiar with my surroundings?

I didn't know what to expect with Alice Academy. I didn't know if my alice was good enough to be accepted here. Maybe the whole 3-star thing was a big mistake.

Even worse, the school's map was way confusing. I couldn't figure out where the rooms were. Hotaru had a different class to go to today. My first class was History. It was room 403.

After 5 minutes of hopeless searching, I gave up. It felt like I was going in circles. I had to ask someone where room 403 was. Soon.

I immediately asked for directions from the first person I found.

"Excuse me, where is room-"

Before I even finished my sentence, he cut across me:

"Oh, just go straight. First door in the right. It's hidden because it's a special room. I'm going there too."

"Right. Thanks. Don't know how you knew the room, but my name's Mikan Sakura by the way," I said, offering my hand to shake.

"Kokoro Yome," he said, taking it.

"Nice to meet you."

"You new?"

"Yeah… This school is just so big, it's too easy to get lost," I replied.

"Ah..."

Then after a pause, he added:

"I got lost too on my first day here."

"Really?" I asked, a little hopeful. Maybe getting lost was justing natural in here- something new students usually experience.

"Yup. The coincidence is, it's the same room we're heading for," he said, grinning.

"Oh. It must be a room people usually get lost finding. Is that how you knew what room I was looking for?"

"Uh… No. Not exactly."

"Then how-"

"We're here," he said, opening the door, interrupting me.

I was expecting a classroom that was full of students, but I was wrong. Behind that door was an empty room with a huge curtained window, that I thought he must have made a mistake. However, he slid the curtain, and I realized that it wasn't actually a curtained window, but a door. He knocked twice, then opened it.

"You're late," came the booming voice of an adult right after we came in.

"I was showing the new student directions to this room, sir," Koko replied in defense.
His eyes narrowed before he uttered a sharp "Take your seats now". He didn't even bother to let me introduce myself in class, to my relief. I didn't seat next to Koko, because apparently, I was already assigned to sit next to someone. I wasn't sitting next to anyone today though. The seat next to me was empty. There was a blonde-haired guy seated next to the person supposed to be next to me. It was a three-seater seat. He was carrying a bunny, so maybe his alice had something to do with animals, or maybe rabbits in particular.
"He's not here today," the blonde-haired guy said all of a sudden.

"Who?" I asked in bewilderment.

"The person sitting next to us."

He must've caught me looking at the empty seat next to me.

"Oh. Some sort of fever?" I asked in interest.

"Probably worse," he paused, and then, added, "Oh, sorry. You must be wondering who I am. My name's Ruka Nogi, by the way," he said, slightly abashed.

"I'm Mikan Sakura."

"You're new, right?" he asked in interest.

"Yeah. I just transferred yesterday night."

The conversation died off when the teacher wrote notes for us to copy, which left us no time to do much talking.

The rest of the lessons followed the same pattern, except the difference was, I had to introduce myself in my last class, English.

"My name's Mikan Sakura and I have the Nullification Alice. It's nice to meet you all."

"I heard that's a rare alice. You're in the special abilities class, right?" said one guy.

"Yeah."

"What's your star rank?" said a girl, with hair that looked close to seaweed.

"I'm a three star," I replied. It really felt like an interrogation, where everybody shot questions at you and you feel like you have to think of an answer fast, or they'd all grumble until you have no choice but to answer.

"Cool, can you test out your alice?"

"I... I guess so," I said, startled. I didn't exactly expect someone to ask me to use my alice straight out in front of everybody. It felt really uncomfortable.

"You can nullify my alice," suggested Koko.

"What? But… Yome-"

"Just call me Koko. It's fine, you can Nullify my alice," he said, smiling broadly.

"Uh… OK."

I didn't know what Koko would do, and neither of us moved, but I prepared myself and used my alice.

"Koko, is it working?" someone asked.

Koko frowned and slowly answered, "My alice sure isn't working."

'Isn't working'? What did he do? He didn't even move a muscle.

"Wow, Sakura-san is amazing!" said one girl.

"It's a first," said Koko. "Every single time I use my alice, it always works with everyone," he shrugged.

"My name's Sumire Shouda," introduced the girl who asked my star rank earlier, with hands on her hips.

I was too caught up staring at her weird hairstyle, that I wasn't able to think before the word came out of my mouth: "Perm."

I blushed quickly, embarrassed. I figured out she didn't mind that much, but I figured it must have sounded weird to hear somebody being called Perm, because I saw her look at everybody's reaction, with an expression that looked like worry. I could instantly tell that she cared about reputation.

Luckily, nobody heard my embarrassing remark.

"What kind of nickname is that?"

I looked at everyone else. Mostly, people were staring with awe, some were busy fiddling with their hair or nails, and the rest were talking to their friends. The staring part, though, was the problem.

Way before I joined the class, I had told myself to blend in, become part of the crowd. Too bad I hadn't been part of it. As always, I was the odd one out. The one who sticks out, the one who always gets noticed... I didn't really like attention. It made me feel discomfort.

Students in the academy seemed so bright and care-free.

There were a group of students that played volleyball, others went swimming, while others were busy studying. (Exams were said to be a fortnight away).

I wanted a tour in the school, but that was all cancelled, and I blamed it on the absence of my partner. I, supposedly, had a partner in class who was supposed to show me around the school. He was away today, so I decided to go on a tour myself. I was itching to learn and discover as many thing as I can. Why should it be delayed because of a some partner who wasn't fit enough to attend class?

I decided that my first destination for today was the library. I wasn't a bookworm (in fact, long books bored me) but books in the academy were very interesting to read. The library was fairly close and easy to find, so it did not take me long to locate it. This was really the first time I was involved in something… magical, so naturally, the books captured my interest.

On the way to the library, I found posters for some sort of election that read:

"Vote for me, don't be slow like a snail…

And you'll be on top of the popularity scale.

LUNA KOIZUMI"

I nearly laughed out loud, but I was already near the library, so I kept quiet.

The poster looked like some joke. It sounded really silly, too.

The moment I entered the library, I was instantly able to recognize Sumire seated in the library seats, writing something. The library was full, and everyone had a seat.

"Hi Permy," I greeted her with a bright smile.

"Perm...my?" she said, looking at me, distracted from her writing.

"Yeah. I figured maybe you didn't like Perm, so I slightly changed it and added a 'y', so it sounds more like a nickname," I said cheerfully.

"I still don't like it," she muttered under her breath.

As if she saw something unpleasant behind me, her expression changed and turned into annoyance.

"Oh, for goodness sake…" Sumire dropped her pen noiselessly, and walked behind me. At first I thought she was going to grab a book in the shelf, but then she headed straight for the wall.

I saw her grab a poster from the wall and watched her rip it into shreds.

"Her schemes are not going to work," she muttered under her breath.

"Permy?"

"Y-yeah?" she asked, not looking at me. She threw the pieces of paper into the trash can, and rubbed her hands in keen satisfaction.

"That poster… Why did you…?"

"That's nothing. Just doing my job." I could tell from her tone that she just wanted me to forget about what I saw. Of course, it wasn't easy. It's not like you could forget things by will.

"My, my. How… repulsive. Ripping it off like some cat-like creature. That was just newly printed, too. Guess I'll just have to print some more," said one girl with a laugh as she passed by.

I felt Sumire freeze, when I realized that it must have been her, that the girl was talking about.
"You can laugh at me too. I'm pathetic."

"You are not," I protested.

"Ripping all the posters I can? How is that not stupid?" she said, sounding like she was cursing herself rather than talking to me.

"I managed to look at one of the posters. Although I didn't really understand what it's all about, Sumire," I said, saying her name straight out for the first time, "Her tactics are not fair."

"You don't think I'm… Pathetic? Saku-"

"No, no. You can just call me Mikan," I said before she even finished.

"Thank you. I think you might be the first person who believes that."

She smiled at me for the first time, and I hoped that we would be good friends.

I wasn't paying much attention to what was around me. I suddenly heard two bounces, and then something hit my head.

"Ouch."

I saw a tennis ball bounce all the way under the table.

"Careless tennis players," I uttered.

I came to reach the ball under the table, when I my mind was able to absorb a number of of details at once… The table had a complete view of the doorway and the library, with shelves on all the sides filled with all sorts of books, some, dusty from sitting, untouched, on the same shelf for years… All of a sudden, with a horror and a mix of other emotions that was unclear at that moment, I didn't know if it was a fragment of my imagination or whether I really did see him, but there I saw a figure. A figure so familiar, sorely missed, yet least wanted to be thought of. A figure that brought a flicker of the emotion I thought I've long lost. Happiness. I wanted to see him again, yet I didn't want to hope at all.

The figure walked past the door. He was gone. As if he personally just stood in front of the door to annoy the hell out of me.

I heard someone say something, but I didn't know what it meant- my mind suddenly went blank. I couldn't even remember where I was.

I was only able to gain back my bearings when Sumire shook me by the shoulders. By this time, I was sitting in the one of the library seats far away from the table, and I looked at everyone around me. Everyone had worried expressions, except Hotaru, who had just looked up, who had seemed to be working on her the finishing touches of her latest invention. She had a book open and looked up with an innocent expression.

"How did I get here so fast?" I asked straight away.

"Fast?! Mikan, it took us like, several minutes," Sumire replied indignantly.

"Well, you hit your head… Then you sort of lost balance, so Sumire and I had to go support you and everything. And to think that there were no other free seats around… Koko had to blackmail some 1 star," Ruka supplied.

"Hey, you think I liked that? Hotaru said she'd use her baka-gun on me," retorted Koko.

Ignoring the conversation that was forming around me, I shut my eyes tight, trying to

remember as much detail as I can...

"Hey… Sakura-san? Are you OK? What happened?" asked Ruka, in concern. The others were still arguing.

"Nothing. I just thought I saw someone I knew..."

I scrambled to my feet. I tried to sum everything up in my head, but I just couldn't make sense of everthing. What did I just see? Was I going crazy now? Was this a symbol of insanity? Was he really here?

I shook my head. That was next to impossible.

I tried to focus; to set my mind back to reality. Ruka seemed to believe me, because he looked more relaxed now, as he talked to Koko.

I closed my eyes, thinking. That was just it, I had to think.

I did say 'Nothing', but I knew only too well that it wasn't something that I was likely to forget anytime soon.

Finally. Second chapter is finished. Anyway, it came out sooner than expected. Again, thanks to my first reviewer (you know who you are =P),really appreciate your review. Sorry if ever this chapter came out a disappointment.

As always, everyone, don't forget to review. Ever review does matter. To me at least. Thanks! ^^