This author's note was written way before the actual chapter was. Undoubtedly, I would have forgotten everything I wanted to say if I had waited.

Guest review responses:

To anime lover no.1: I'm really glad you stopped avoiding my story! Honestly, I would avoid this story if it weren't mine. The summary doesn't really do it justice and the first few chapters are a bit shaky, but I'm glad you were willing to risk wasting time on a bad story XD. I've always pictured Miku as a very sweet girl, as well. It's only in stories with Len as her love interest that I set her as more of a tough girl. I don't quite understand it but I feel her personality works well that way in this story. It's very flattering that you "fell in love" with my story. I know that feeling; it happens to me with fanfiction a lot. Did I really make you cry? Gah, sorry! I was insanely depressed when I came up with that new form of torturing poor Miku. I have a solid plan for what's going to happen from here on out. Miku will end up happy! Although I won't reveal whether she leaves or not. Thank you, anime lover no. 1, for being an awesome reader and reviewer.

A question; is this good progress? I think it may have gone too fast, but I tried to make a longer chapter than normal, so there was a lot of stuff to fill it with...

I was thinking of making a short sequel based on Rin and Piko's relationship. All of our other characters would be included, but instead of Miku and Len being the focus, Piko and Rin would rise to overtake the story. Yes? No? Would anyone read it? I know not everyone out there is a RinxPiko fan, but sometimes straying from your primary pairings is alright. I admittedly have read some RinxLen stories and found them enjoyable. Yes, I betrayed MikuxLen TT_TT I'm sorrrrrrrry! Forgive me!

I have nothing else to say, really. Thank you all for your support and reviews. I'll update as often as possible. I can sense the end here, people!

/

Miku found ignoring her other friends to be much easier. After her fight with Len, Rin ceased to contact her. Probably the result of a pushy younger brother and not that fault of the blond girl in question. Either way, Rin didn't call or text or show up mysteriously for any reason. Piko had begun to devote more time to Rin and impressing Rin, an accomplishment manifested in the sudden urge to study. He was most absent, though he did text Miku consistently. All were left unanswered. Gumi, Teto, and Neru were far easier to displease. Miku felt no guilt in telling the three girls to bug off, though Teto shot her a pitiful look once or twice.

Rei, however, was not easy to shake. He didn't talk much; his actions spoke louder than his words. Rei would sit silently beside her at lunch, despite her harsh tongue. Rei quietly followed her a few blocks from school before turning in the direction of his own home. The effort he made to simply be there with her was astonishing, honestly. Miku simply ignored him as he went about following her. Neither mentioned it, though.

Even with Rei, whose presence certainly was comforting, though Miku disliked admitting this, she earnestly missed the others. Mainly Len. Definitely Len. She could only imagine how he must feel, though she would rather not. She had gone too far. Nothing would mend that and she wasn't even going to try.

Her mother became a constant shadow in their house, taping boxes and dusting shelves. They had far more things than they needed and many artifacts of the Hatsune household were being given away. Half their books were piled in boxes and driven to a nearby charity. Clothes that no longer fit piled up on the stairs. And while her mother eagerly tore down all evidence that their family had ever been there, their father remained absent. Quite honestly, Miku was completely sure that he now lived with another family; she had heard talk of it late at night while her mother was on the phone. Bitter words about another woman were spat into the air with fierceness Miku hadn't witnessed from her mother in years. It was both reassuring and saddening that she would not see her father again; surely abandonment was better than any other form of present neglect her mother had shown. Though who was to say her father would have even been cruel to her in the first place, let alone neglectful. She remembered the way he has been after her incident in middle school. Unlike her mother, he made Miku feel wanted; a reassuring pat on the head, a tiny smile, an air of fatherly appreciation. Maybe if he hadn't had an affair and wasn't such a workaholic, he might have continued to be a good father.

No use dwelling on what-ifs and maybes. Miku was growing up quickly and understood the reality of things.

Mikuo did his best to help Miku handle their mother. While he wasn't exactly doted upon, their mother certainly held him in higher esteem than she did Miku. No praise was offered, but the siblings saw how their mother's eyes softened when they found Mikuo. She was proud of him, though she never said anything. And why shouldn't she be? He was a near-genius with straight-As and a positive attitude. People seemed naturally drawn to him anyway. Miku appreciated his concern and aid, but the best thing for her would to be to bury her fist in something solid. Preferably her mother.

Her room was packed in record time. She was right about the time; one week. While they wouldn't leave for Germany until Sunday, everything had to be ready beforehand. Who knew what might happen? Their mother's logic reasoned that having everything prepared ahead of time would lower the risk of misplacing something.

On Wednesday, four days before travel to Germany, Miku allowed herself a bit of time to relax. In the kitchen, she fixed herself a sandwich and a cup of warm tea and sat in the living room. The couch was far more comfortable than the chairs in the dining room, anyway. But before she even took her first bite, Mikuo flopped his large, lazy self onto the seat next to her. A glare was aimed at the boy but he ignored it.

"Are you seriously just going to sit there and eat a sandwich?" he asked. "Don't you have friends you want to spend time with? You know, gather memories before the big move?"

Miku snorted. "I don't have many friends at the moment?"

"Lin? Piko?" Mikuo suggested. "Even those three other girls at your school would probably like to offer a proper goodbye."

"Dude, we aren't leaving for a few days. It doesn't matter," Miku told him, swallowing a mouthful of bread, ham, and cheese.

"Avoiding issues is your greatest skill," Mikuo told her sarcastically.

"No one asked you," Miku stated.

"I know something's wrong. You haven't gone a day lately without being dragged out of the house by a friend of yours. Now they've all suddenly stopped coming over. So what's up?" Mikuo continued, ignoring her jab.

"Ever the observant one," Miku rolled her eyes.

"Miku," Mikuo sighed.

"What? It's not like you to be so interested in what I do," Miku said, continuing to take miniscule bites out of her sandwich as she spoke.

"Not verbally interested. I'm always curious as to what my little sister might be up to," Mikuo replied.

"Sure ," Miku agreed unwillingly.

"I'm serious."

"When aren't you?"

"That'd be a better question for you," Mikuo pointed out.

Both Hatsune children were silent for a moment.

"Look, Miku," Mikuo began again, "we both know you have issues with trust. You also have issues with abandonment. Can we just move past both those things and accept the fact that you were just starting to become truly happy again?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Miku stated evasively.

"Oh, come on. You have to admit that moving to Germany is scary as hell for any kid, but with you, it's a whole different story," Mikuo replied. "So what if you're the one leaving? I bet it feels like everyone else is leaving you."

Miku set her jaw on edge, resisting the urge to throw a cold remark back at her brother. Instead, she sat silently, pretending that she couldn't hear him.

"So maybe you're just avoiding everyone in the hopes that you can get over that pain more quickly," Miku suggested, eyes searching her for a reaction.

"That's idiocy," Miku told him coldly.

"Well, now I know I'm right," Mikuo replied. "Calling it idiocy isn't the same a denying it."

Miku stood quickly, gripping her plate in both hands and hurling it to the floor. It shattered on the shiny wood below, shards scattered like rain against a leaf. With her jaw set, Miku turned to the stairs and stomped away. Her mother rushed past to investigate the source of the noise and she heard a gasp.

"Hatsune Miku! Get the hell back in here and clean up this mess!" her mother's voice called.

Just before slamming her bedroom door closed, Miku yelled her own response; "Screw you!" After that, the house remained in eerie silence. Mikuo did not try to talk to her again. But someone else did.

The next day, Thursday, Miku encountered a situation with Gumi. More specifically, a situation where the two were left alone for a little while. The teacher had asked them to collect the papers he had printed off and Miku couldn't exactly say no. He wasn't the sort of teacher to accept that response.

They stood silently by the printer for several seconds after climbing a flight of stairs in the same awkwardly quiet atmosphere. Gumi broke that silence before too long, though her eyes never strayed from the papers being pushed onto the rack, where they lay in the remaining heat from the printer.

"Hatsune-san," she began, causing Miku to jump a bit, "I don't mind that you've decided to ignore us. Quite frankly, it seems long overdue." A sigh Miku hadn't expected to hear released itself from Gumi, her shoulders drooping a bit as if a weight had just been lifted off of her.

"When you move, I hope you can look back on your time with us with some fondness, no matter how little that may be," Gumi shifted her weight, allowing her fingers to mess with her own green hair. Miku watched her with fascination. The two girls didn't speak much, not even around Teto and Neru. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement between the two, though; if Teto and Neru stick together to irritate us, maybe we should watch each other's back. You be the judge of how well that worked out.

"I'll miss you, Hatsune-san. I'll stay in contact and I sincerely hope you return again one day," Gumi told her earnestly. She seemed so wholeheartedly truthful that Miku could not muster up any sort of response, snappy retort or otherwise.

Gumi collected the large stack of papers the printer had fed them, handing half to Miku to carry. Before they left the printing room, Gumi turned to face her, clutching the papers to her chest lightly.

"I've never blamed you for the events in middle school and I've never been scared of you," she told Miku directly, eyes meeting her own green pair with an intensity Miku had never seen from the girl. It left Miku speechless as Gumi turned to leave. Quickly, she did her best to snap out of her own trance and follow the green-haired girl.

It wasn't until after school that day that Miku would really start to think about the state of things more deeply. Far more deeply than before, actually.

/

Miku felt her own body grow steadily more sluggish as the day dragged on. By the final bell, the one dismissing them for the day, Miku could barely move without aching. She didn't understand but hoped a nap would cure this random, strange ailment.

Before she could even leave school grounds, however, she was ambushed by the same gaggle of reporter girls that had bugged her on the day with Rei. They hadn't yet given up, to her surprise. She wasn't exactly in the mood to deal with them and honestly just wanted to sleep. To everyone's surprise, an odd person chose to come to her rescue.

Miku watched as Teto, of all people, waved the group away dismissively. She hadn't paid much attention to the actual exchange, though the group of girls didn't look happy at all.

"You're just a whole hell ton of trouble, Hatsune-san," Teto sighed, rubbing her forehead absentmindedly. She seemed exasperated, an emotion one did not often see from the cheery, hyperactive youth.

"I was aware," Miku snapped. Teto laughed lightheartedly, a reaction Miku could expect.

"As long as you knew," Teto grinned. "Hey, care to join me for a moment?"

"Why?"

Teto shrugged. "No reason, really. My club mates are all sick, so I guess I was just a bit lonely." After saying something like that, Miku couldn't really say no in good conscience. Besides, it was teto. They had never really been friends, anyway.

The two girls walked across the school grounds and back up to the school. Teto led the teal-haired girl to her club room, an unused music room on the top floor. Afternoon sunlight flooded through open windows, cold seeping in through the screen. There were three groups of two desks pushed together at the center of the room. Apart from that and a large musical instrument Miku guess was a bass (too big to be a cello), the room was empty. A chess board had been set up between one set of desks, the pieces lined up in their correct spots.

"You play chess?" Miku asked in a shocked tone.

Teto laughed. "This is chess club, silly." Miku's jaw dropped, though Teto didn't notice. That sounded surprisingly intelligent for Teto, honestly.

"I already made some tea. We have our own water boiler," Teto gestured to the pair of desks closest to the wall, where a water boiler sat. Six cups sat steaming on the surface, the scent of jasmine circulating through the air from the calming drink within.

"It's odd for it to so quiet and calm in here. Usually the other members talk up a storm," Teto told Miku, setting a mug of tea before her and sliding into the seat across from her, shifting the chessboard so Miku could have more elbowroom on the desk's surface. Miku didn't reply. Instead, she slowly took a sip of her own tea, allowing the flavor to seep into her tongue before swallowing with a small trace of satisfaction.

"Is it too cold?" Teto asked. "I can close the window."

Miku shook her head lightly. It was strange to see such hospitality from Teto, who pretty consistently acted like a maniac no matter what.

"Oh. Alright," Teto replied before falling into silence. The drill-haired girl tapped her fingertips lightly on her mug, eyes searching the contents as though they held the answers to life's mysteries.

"It's so calm," Teto repeated in a very absentminded way. If Miku didn't know better, she'd say the girl looked lonely.

"Calm? With us around?" Miku snorted. "Oh, the horror."

Teto snickered lightly. "That in and of itself is pretty damn weird."

Miku allowed herself the tiniest smile and sipped her tea again.

"Hatsune-san," Teto began. Miku glanced up at the girl curiously. "I know we weren't actually very good friends, but I'll miss you all the same."

I'll miss you. Three words that echoed with familiarity. Gumi had said them as well in such a tone of seriousness that Miku had never heard. Now Teto was mirroring that phrase down to every little detail.

"It's been so much fun," Teto sounded almost strained, a smile of fond bitterness on her face. "Even if you never had any fun, which I'm pretty sure you didn't, I hope we can stay in contact. And I hope we can keep some pleasant memories."

Teto's eyes dropped. The emotion in her eyes was clear, no matter how hard she fought it. Loneliness. Teto was lonely, a development no one could have ever guessed.

And once again, Miku was left speechless.

/

After both Teto and Gumi approached her to deliver their own farewells, Miku highly expected Neru to do the same. If the blond girl had done so, she didn't think she'd be able to keep from crying. The sight of the ever-happy Teto so sad and alone had done a number on here; kind words from a person such as Neru would've sent her to a place of no return.

But the blond girl did no such thing. On the contrary, she expressed the opposite of those warm and fuzzy feelings Gumi and Teto had been going for.

Miku found herself cornered by Neru on that Friday at lunch. Miku had visited the bathroom to quietly wash the stress-filled tears from her eyes before Neru had walked in and spotted her. Instead of offering a semi-friendly hello, Miku earned a punch in the face as soon as she turned around. Holding her nose, Miku shot Neru the fiercest glare she could manage.

"Thanks for breaking my cousin's heart," Neru told her with a form of blandness only ever heard in Rei's voice. "I really appreciate that."

"Fuck off," Miku snapped. "I'd rather not kill anyone today."

Neru drew closer to her until she was pushed up against the sink behind her. The blond may have been short but the murderous look in her eyes gave Miku reason to pause for a moment. Those golden eyes were inches from her own and deadly, spitting fire Miku could feel.

"I don't care how tough you think you are," Neru hissed quietly and roughly, grabbing a fistful of Miku's shirt and dragging her ever closer. "If you mess with my Len and leave him like that without fixing it, I'll bust your face in."

"I'll take that threat as seriously as any other I've ever gotten," Miku replied coldly, using her height advantage to look as intimidating as possible. It didn't work on Neru.

"Oh, you'd better take me seriously," Neru spat. "And I sincerely hope you're ready to face an over-protective Rin, because God help you if aren't."

With that, the blond spun on her heels and left the bathroom and Miku behind. The teal teen glanced down at her own shirt and did her best to smooth the wrinkles. Hopefully the teachers wouldn't notice.

/

Of course, that final confrontation was the thing that really set her off. If Len was, as Neru said, heartbroken, it was completely her fault. Maybe she had taken the wrong course of action after all. She had been wrong countless times before. It seemed her mistakes simply continued to pile up, the lessons left unlearned in the end. It was silly, really; sixteen years of her life spent making the same mistakes and raising the same problems. It made her feel like a child again, waiting to be scolded by a parent for doing something they knew to be wrong. After all that time making the mistakes and ignoring the fact that they needed to be fixed, maybe she should try the latter instead.

She had to do a bit of research to find Len's school. After all, her memory of the name was less than reliable. She had only the uniform to go off of and the fact that it was a private school. She found it by the time school let out on Friday, though she herself ditched that last half hour of her classes in order to find the school by the time Len was actually let out. She waited by the gate as students began to pour out of the huge, richly-built building. Her eyes searched the crowd, looking for Len's familiar head of blond hair. Instead, she spotted Yukari's large mop of purple hair. She did not doubt that Len would be with her.

Quickly, she hid behind the nearest object; a large oak tree with no leaves and a thick trunk. Len would probably run at the first site of her and it was better safe than sorry. She could hear their voices now. Without a second thought, she leapt from behind the tree to see the three teens she had expected not ten feet away. All three caught site of her as she walked steadily and confidently up to Len. Her face held pure determination though her legs felt weak and her heart pounded harshly against her ribs.

"Kagine Lin, Kagamine Len, whoever the hell I should address you as at the moment," she began in a loud, authoritative voice, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for fighting with you."

Len blinked. He had frozen the moment he saw her, eyes wide and maybe even a bit frightened. Aria and Yukari watched the exchange with interest and patience.

"I'm sorry for trying to brush you off and I'm sorry that we don't get along as well as we should. I'm sorry that I'm leaving, too, but that's not really in my control," Miku did her best to hold his gaze, though the heat of her face was steadily growing as she attempted to speak. "I love being friends with you."

Len blinked in surprise. His feet seemed to control themselves as he took one step forward and another and another before hurling himself at Miku. Both parties returned the hug the other offered, tightly wrapping their arms around each other. Len's slightly taller height allowed Miku to set her chin on her shoulder comfortably, the knowledge that she was actually hugging a boy, let alone Len, rivaling the appearance of it all. Len still looked like a girl, was still dressed as Lin, and was still around his classmates, some of whom seemed very interested in their little scene. All the same, Miku managed to pull out of their tight hug long enough to kiss him lightly on the lips. In front of everyone. Without a single hint of embarrassment.

It was surprisingly comfortable, almost familiar. When the allowed themselves to pull apart, both teens were blushing, faces still close. Normally, Miku would wait weeks to kiss someone; hell, it took her and Kaito two months to work up to kissing. But with Len, everything suddenly felt normal and simple. She even felt that she owed him that kiss for being nothing less than a total bitch. Besides, she had liked that kiss. She had liked it a lot.

"I really like you, too," Miku smiled, arms still around his shoulders. Who the hell cared if it looked like she had been kissing a girl? They knew the truth. The opinions of others mattered far less than she had ever realized.

"I hope so," Len replied. "Unless you happen to kiss everyone as an apology. In that case, I'm not sure I forgive you yet." His playful smile assured her that he was kidding. And Miku was happy.

Miku was really happy.

/

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