"Hey! Tsukiyomi! You owe me the money from last Tuesdays fight!" A raspy voice shouted from behind me. I turned around to see the Old Man yelling at me from his store window.

"Alright, Old Man! I'll get you your money! Don't have a heart attack over it!" I shouted back with a glare. He crept back into his store with a sour look on his face muttering about how 'incompetent youngsters are now a days."

I shrugged it off and continued down the path that I'd walked so many times before. As I got further and further away from town, more trees sprouted everywhere and my path was disappearing.

I neared the cliff of the mountain where a single, lone tree stood with a rope tied to one branch

that hung just above the cliff. It was placed this way for one reason.

If the rope doesn't kill you then the fall definitely will.

I grabbed the rope and felt its texture through my palms. I watched as it rolled across the calluses and cuts.

I kept my grip on the rope as I looked over the cliff. If you kept looking long enough, you'd see the bottom.

At least that's what my brother kept saying. He said that it went so deep that cavemen probably lived there.

I shook my head to clear the memory of the better days away. Glancing back at the rope in my hands, I walked a little further away from the edge of the cliff and put it around my neck.

I stood there for a time with it still around my neck. Taking tiny steps, I walked towards the edge and stuck one foot over it. Almost immediately I felt a rush of such fear that I'll never be able to explain to anyone. It flew through the tips of my fingers and straight up from my feet. It traveled through the nerves in my neck straight to my head.

It was exhilarating. The feeling was nothing I've ever experienced in my life. But sadly, like everything, the feeling faded away and my feeling of bliss was gone away and replaced with fear all too soon.

I jerked back away from the edge and placed myself near the trunk of the tree. Giving one more look towards the rope still I my hands, I ran off.

"What the heck am I doing?" I yelled as I sat down in one of the many meadows that nobody from town goes visits.

"Uhm…Excuse me, sir? I need a little bit of help…?" I turned around, trying to find the source of the voice.

"Well where are you?" I answered rather roughly.

"Right above you!" She yelled back at me. "If you don't want to help me, then don't. I don't need a rude stranger to help me out!"

I looked up and saw a pink-haired girl caught in the vines of the tree.

"You do know that those vines will wrap around anything right? How long have you been up there?" I asked as I climbed up the tree, completely ignoring her previous statement.

"Uhm…since last night I think." She said with a tint of red on her pale cheeks. I looked up at her in alarm.

"Last night? These vines would've killed you a few hours more!" I exclaimed as I began ripping the vines off of her. As I approached the second vine, I stopped. "I get a date in return for saving your life."

Her face became the colors of flames. "What? You're really making that bargain right now? I'm about to die!" She shouted at me. I shrugged and started making my way to the floor once more.

"That's your problem, Miss." I answered her.

"FINE! Fine! I'll go on a date with you! Just get me out of here!" She shouted just as I reached the floor. I gave her a smirk and jumped back up to the branch and snapped all the vines off all at once.

"You're a mad man! A jerk! A…a…I've run out of insults. Whatever. I'm going home now." I watched her stumble off the branch. Just as she slipped off the trunk I grabbed her wrist.

"Jesus! Can't you be a little less clumsier? You won't be able to walk right for a bit. I'll carry you." I threw her up a bit and caught her in my arms. "Now I won't be a good cabbie if I don't know your name, Miss."

"W-what?" She exclaimed, struggling to get out of my grip.

"Your name. Don't tell me your forgot? Did the vines make you lose your memory?" I chuckled.

"Hmph! As a matter of fact, it didn't! My memory is perfectly fine! My name is Amu, so hah!" She said as she blew a raspberry.

I felt my eye twitch. "Ikuto." I said as I began walking down the path that was suddenly appearing again. She stopped struggling.

"That's…a nice name." She answered.

We were silent for a few moments before she decided to speak up. "What were you yelling about anyways over there in the meadow?" She said softly, like she was afraid she would step on a mouse trap.

I looked over at her and studied her face. Pale skin, golden eyes, pink hair. All those features seems to scream weird. I tried to turn away but it proved to be very much impossible. I found myself again looking at her, noticing her small lips that gave just the tiniest pout, how light she was in my arms, the way her hair smelled of strawberries and coconuts. She sure was something else. Something else entirely. And I felt drawn to her for that exact reason. Maybe in her I could find some rest.

"Are you going to answer my question or not?" She said with a shrill voice, arms crossed, and pouting. I sighed and loosened my grip on her.

"I was just stressed." I said smoothly. "Too many things to worry about I guess." I looked over at her to see if she bought the lie- well it wasn't really a lie. I was stressed- and by the looks of it, she did.

Her eyes were once again wide, her arms were looser, but…her lips were in a tight line as if they were still debating whether to believe me.

"You aren't telling the truth. I can tell. You keep looking as if you've done something wrong and the whole time you were lying, you were blinking." She said in a matter-of-factly tone.

"I don't think it's your place to ask about what goes on in my personal life." I croaked out and looked the other way. I heard a tiny sigh and then there was silence.

It wasn't the unnerving silence that made you feel as if you should feel paranoid, but the kind of silence that you accepted with all your heart in might. The kind that calms your nerves.

"You might as well tell me. If everyone in this damn town knows, there's no point in not telling me."

She was right. No point in having her ask the baker or someone else and have them giver her the wrong story. Instead of going the usual straight path, I made an abrupt right and walked into one of the many meadows my brother and I discovered.

I set her down on the soft grass, and myself on one of the boulders.

"I was reliving an experience you could say." I spoke up after we'd settled down into comfortable positions.

"Go on." She urged me. I played with one of the weeds in the spot next to my boulder.

"My brother…" I looked up at her and gave a sharp sigh. "You know what? I'm really sorry. I've never had to explain to someone, they all explained it to themselves." I explained.

"It's alright. Just start where you want." She said with a reassuring smile.

"Alright…straight to the point then." She nodded. "Well my brother committed suicide at a cliff not too far from here. He tied a rope to the branch overlooking the edge of it. Said' if the rope didn't kill you, the fall definitely will." I looked over at her and saw no emotion on her face.

No pity. No anger. No sense of nonchalance.

She was really listening.

"Sometimes, I go over to where he died." I pointed to the direction of the cliff. "And just stand there, the rope around my neck, just looking at the bottom of the cliff. I figure, if it's my time to die now then I'll just slip and die." I finished with a nervous chuckle, waiting for her to judge me.

Instead the complete opposite happened.

She leaped onto me and started pounding her balled up fists onto my chest. "No! No! Don't you ever do something like that! If you had slipped today then…then I'd have never met you! I'd have died as well! You're so stupid! Thinking that you should end your life like that! You can't!"

I was in too much shock to even dare to move. I just watched as she kept hitting me with her fists as tears poured down her cheeks.

Out of instinct I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her into a tight hug. "Shh…I won't alright? I won't." I soothed her with whispers. She wrapped her arms around me as well.

A little while later she had calmed down. We sat side by side, just staring at the grass in front of us, with dismal looks on our faces.

"Alright! So we can't be sad anymore! You already promised so there's nothing to worry about!" She said as she sprang up from where she was sitting. "C'mon! We need to get back to town already!" She put out one of her hands and I took it.

"We hardly know each other you know." I said as I stood up.

She gave me a nod. "I know."

"Well then why are you doing this? I'm a total stranger. You aren't supposed to cry over someone that you hardly know. It's not logical."

She twirled around to face where we'd come from. "I know. But I think you're different. I think that you need a someone. I need someone too. We need to care about each other." She twirled back around to face me. "So how do we get out of here, Ikuto?" She giggled.

I felt everything I'd built up falling. The fights, my reputation, my image. The wall that I'd built up to keep people out. And this girl had found a way in without much effort.

To be honest, none of these things bothered me at all.

"This way." I grumbled as I led the way home. She let out a laugh and skipped right behind me.

"So when's our date?" She asked me. I stared at her in shock, shrugged my shoulders and continued to lead the way.

What bothered me the most is that I knew nothing about her, other than her name. It irked me that I didn't even know how she got in. Now I hated myself even more for letting her in.

The day that I met her might not seem so strange to anyone of you, but to me it sure as hell was. She was unlike any other girl I'd ever met. A force to be reckoned with. She was a hurricane of emotions.

She was in it to the long haul it seemed. She wanted to be there with me and I wanted to be there with her.

What happens next isn't all that special. It wasn't funny. It wasn't sad. It was something along the lines of stupid and reckless. It made our relationship bud, for sure. No matter how stupid it was, we both felt something that not everyone feels nowadays.

Love? Maybe.

Fear? A little.

Confused? Most definitely.

Review guys! Tell me how sucky this chapter was. You don't have to lie and be nice.

GIVE IT TO ME STRAIGHT! xD

Tell me what you like, or hate about the story. Stuff I could improve and blah blah blah blah!

Byeee! -3