I do not own Shugo Chara. Please leave a review! I did pick a hobby of sorts for Amu, because everybody is semi-good at something, and it seemed unrealistic for her to just do homework all day.

OooOooO

"Amu!" Ami rushed into my room like a tornado and began to frantically shove aside my things. She looked eerily like Gollum desperately searching for his lost precious. Except she had hair.

"Ami, what on earth are you doing?" I asked/ yelled as I pulled her back away from my things. Ami stopped and shot me a pointed glare filled with wrath, and stood up, arms folded across her chest.

"Give it back. I know you took it." Her mouth was pressed in a firm line. I suppose she was trying to scare me into submission, but she merely served to amuse me.

"I have no idea what you're talking about. And for a girl who prizes her privacy so highly, you sure trespassed on mine easily."

"The flats. With the flowers on them that were missing this morning. You took them to annoy me didn't you?"

I felt the urge to burst out into peels of hysterical laughter but refrained. Ami, in her young thirteen year old head, would see it as confirmation of the alleged crimes and then take her case to the higher court, my parents. I wasn't feeling up to a family argument at the moment.

"You found one of them under the bed, didn't you? You think I put it there to throw you off the case of something?"

"You are so insufferable!" Ami shrieked as she stamped out of my room. I cringed. I was starting to buy into the theory that her vocal chords became sharper with each year. I didn't remember her being quite so loud as a baby. Even then it would have been more acceptable because babies didn't have wild and uncontrollable mood swings over meaningless objects.

She was of that age where everything was a big deal. Middle School was rough, I remembered, but it seemed especially difficult on Ami. I guess because I was more introverted I didn't worry about people as much. Ami did.

I shrugged and started towards the living room. I could hear Ami complaining to Mom about her so called shoe theft.

"I'm going over to Rima's," I called as I headed out the door. Mom yelled something positive back, which I took to mean "continue on."

I guess I could have driven to Rima's house, but I liked to walk. It cleared my head, and while three miles wasn't very far to drive it was quite a trek walking. I liked to say that it kept me in shape.

Besides, the sidewalk ran practically all the way to her house. There was nothing complicated about following the white, concrete squares to house number three eighteen.

Of course, in my absentminded limbo that I lived in I ran straight into the person in front of me. I looked up to face my fellow pedestrian, who I had previously not noticed. Tall and slim, with longish blue hair and violet eyes.

Tsukiyomi Ikuto. I didn't know him well, as he didn't say much. He had few friends, but not because he was an outcast. He was just sort of a loner, going through the routine at school with boredom. I did know that he was first chair violin, but other than that he was a blue blur in the back of my mind.

"Sorry," I told him, awkwardly inching away.

"No problem," He had a husky voice, and maybe it's just me, but it was rather attractive. His eyes were the sort of things that made you feel particularly uncomfortable or misplaced to his advantage.

As I glanced back I wondered if blue was his favorite color. His notebook he was carrying was blue along with his hair.

OooOooO

The next morning was the same routine between Ami and me. Some yelling, lateness, general frustration turned to giggles. She then joined her witless wonder of a friend in the middle school parking, and I drove off to high school where I found, to my inexpressible joy, that I was not late for class.

Fifth hour I found my blue notebook that I had left behind in class. As I had suspected, nobody had wanted it enough to actually take it. Which I appreciated, since it had some artwork and my personal thoughts scribbled inside.

Art was my only real claim to fame. While I was no special child prodigy, I had had a few of my paintings and drawings displayed for the school to see. I wasn't awesome, but I had enough talent and hard work combined to make it fairly impressive.

I had to admit, I was pretty happy at the way things had turned out. I was taking three art classes as electives, and while it was difficult to juggle, the challenge of it all was thrilling in a way that I liked.

As I flipped open my notebook I found a sheet of paper that hadn't previously been there. I picked it up and unfolded it, staring at the words.

Dear Toasterless Person,

Perhaps it was completely rude, and perhaps it wasn't exactly the socially acceptable thing to do, but I read your vent on paper.

Now lets just skip the part where you start nagging at me for "reading your private thoughts," and call me a creeper and start accusing me of heinous crimes that I haven't committed. I picked up your journal by mistake, believing it to be mine. I realized the mistake when I got home, read your entry, and replaced it where I found it before the bell.

I had to admit, I was somewhat impressed with your ability to find the negative in everything. You must be a cynic.

You sort of left off your tale of woe as a cliffhanger, and I'm somewhat curious as to what exactly happened to your friend, your hour of detention, and if you ever found your toaster. Mostly the toaster. Actually, you can forget all that other dramatic stuff. I'm more concerned with your missing bread machine, because my toaster is missing also. I have this theory that someone has been going around stealing them, but that, as you said, seems utterly absurd.

Sincerely,

Your companion in a toasterless land.

I reread the letter again. And again. And though I hated it, a small smile appeared on my face.

OooOooO

Dear (disputably) invasive person,

While you said that I shouldn't nag at you for reading my journal because you got it mixed up with your own, I can't help but feel somewhat invaded considering you could (and should) have stopped reading once you saw that the words were clearly not your own. You kept on.

However, lets just skip the part where you deny all wrongdoing and cut to the chase.

Your toaster is gone too? This baffles me. It's one thing for the toaster in my family go missing, but to have your toaster missing as well seems rather bizarre. Of course, I don't know you family. For all I know you could have had a kleptomaniac aunt stay at your house and make off with the toaster. Perhaps this occurrence is a mere coincidence, and they aren't even relatively connected with each other.

I have my doubts, however.

And what exactly did you mean when you said I was a negative person? I'm not a negative person. I'm very positive. In fact, I'm downright optimistic. It's the lady at the desk in the office whose negative. With her firm line for a mouth, permanently furrowed brow…you get my point.

Speaking of which, I write to you from my seat in detention. The teacher had asked what I was doing when she saw that I was writing. I told her that I was writing a letter, and she left it alone after that. I took it as permission to continue.

Detention isn't really all that bad, or at least, in my experience it isn't. The teacher just has you sit for an hour in their room and asks if you have any homework to do or a book to read. Since I would have done this at home anyway, it's all fairly moot.

But anyway, the reason my rant (is rant the right word? Vent doesn't seem appropriate either. What about frustration on paper?) ended so abruptly was because the bell rang. As for why my friend was depressed is none of your business.

I never did, by the way, find my toaster.

With sincerity,

The extremely invaded girl who wrote back because she was too well mannered to leave you hanging.

When I was done and I had checked it over, I slipped into my fifth hour class. The teacher wasn't in. I quietly sidled over to her desk, borrowed a piece of tape, and taped my letter under my desk. Hopefully my peer would find it there.

Whoever my fellow letter writer was, was fairly interesting. Perhaps this was ridiculous as well as childish, but I could already feel that it would be fun.

OooOooO

Soccer star Kukai Souma was not what I would call intelligent. He was not, on the other hand, as dumb as people first thought him to be. Considering the fact that he had come up to the ranks of a sports champion in our school, he also had to be hardworking. This left me hopeful for our project together.

Yesterday when my Psychology teacher had paired us up, I wasn't especially thrilled. But I had to admit, his grin was contagious as was his attitude. He had given me a giant smile and said in an excited voice "So what are we going to do the project on?"

"I was thinking maybe twin telepathy. You know, the debate of whether twins have special bonds that other people don't have with their siblings."

"I know what it is," Kukai said back. I felt sort of bad - I hadn't meant to offend him by making him feel stupid. He was a nice guy, and I would have done it to anyone I had worked with. It had become a habit of mine to over explain things because of my tendency to come across as completely inarticulate.

"Right. So what do you think?"

Kukai considered it a moment before finally nodding. I wondered if maybe he had something particular he had wanted, but decided against asking. If he wanted to do something different he should mention it. I didn't want to get stuck in the land of morbidly polite, a place where nobody put their idea out in the open for fear of coming across overbearing.

To be honest, I was counting the minutes until school was over. Since I had literature class before my letter writer I would have to wait until the end of the day until I could see if they responded. It was killing me. There wasn't any guarantees that the person would even find my response letter, and even if they did, it didn't mean they would write back.

"Amu?"

"Hm?"

"I asked if you wanted to meet over at my place this weekend to do the project together."

"Yeah, sorry. That sounds great Kukai." So he was willing to do work on the project. That was an extremely good sign. I couldn't count how many times I ended up doing all the work on my own.

"What time?"

"Like 12:30? That sound okay?"

"Yeah," Kukai paused a moment, as if debating something in his head. Finally he added "You know what's weird? Our toaster gone missing."

I stared at him a moment, unable to form an answer. First of all, I couldn't fathom what had behooved him to mention his toaster dilemma in the first place. Secondly, I was feeling rather weirded out by everyone having their toaster stolen. It was no coincidence, and yet, I couldn't imagine how anyone could come into our house and steal something without us knowing it.

I was starting to think that it was all just a huge practical joke put together by someone who was attempting to drive me to insanity, but that too seemed unlikely.

"That's weird, so is mine." It was the only reply I could think up for the moment.

"Seems we have a toaster thief on our hands," Kukai joked, oblivious to the fact that that was exactly what was running through my head right now. I gave him a weak smile, and we got back to work.

OooOooO

Perhaps not a strong ending, but it was getting about time to get in the shower. So I gave you an abrupt ending. Sorry about that, I'll do better next time. Please leave a review. I may not update for a little while, as I will be on vacation for a couple days.