A/N: Many, many liberties taken here with Aki and Shinji's life in the orphanage, since I will readily admit I don't know much about that other than the very big events (such as Aki having a sister, them being in the orphanage in the first place, stuff like that), so if anything here is directly contradicting known canon, please let me know so I can try to fix it!

Shinjiro had avoided people as long as he could remember. His parents had left him, so why would anyone else bother to stay? The only two people in the world who were meant to love him unconditionally had stuck him in an orphanage before he had even learned to crawl. Even as he grew, the other children avoided him like the plague, his anger and pain engulfing those around him and pulling them under until they simply couldn't take it anymore and ran, with tear-filled eyes, to seek comfort in their friends.

Shinjiro told himself he didn't care. He never spoke to the other children and they never spoke to him. It was fair, and that was that. In fact, he was quite sure that unless one of the adults working at the orphanage had spoken his name aloud, none of the other children would even know who he was. He was the bully, the monster, the one to stay away from because he could steal your soul right out of your body. At least, that was one of the many rumors the older kids used to tease their younger friends.

It wasn't until Aki came, tailed by little Miki, that Shinjiro truly began to wish that he wasn't so much of an outcast. Everyone loved Aki from the beginning. Though he was shy and awkward, the love he shared with his sister was enviable by all those lonely kids, and they were all eager to bask in a true, familial relationship.

Shinjiro saw Aki looking at him, as he sat on the single swing in the yard of the orphanage, swaying weakly back and forth. He saw the movements of Aki's mouth as he didn't break eye contact, knew that the new boy was asking the others about him. Despite Aki's polite whisper, the answer was shouted loud and clear, and Shinjiro knew it was meant to shame him along with ensure his continued loneliness.

"We don't know who he is. No one ever talks to him, since he's so weird!"

Years ago, this would've affected Shinjiro enough to bring pinpricks of tears to his eyes, but it had been so long since he had spoken to another of his own free will that he knew that he deserved those words. His only reaction was to dig his feet into the dirt to stop the swaying of the swing and direct his eyes down, allowing them to follow the path of a beetle over a fallen leaf.

It was a shock when, just moments later, a pair of tattered sneakers stepped in front of the leaf and very much into Shinjiro's line of sight, causing him to look up before he had even made the conscious decision to do so.

"What are you doing over here?" Shinjiro spat when he saw the nervous brown eyes of the new boy and his shadow of a sister, clutching the back of his shirt and peeking around his side.

"M'name's Akihiko. You can call me Aki though. Wanna be friends?" The boy looked worried. Scared even. After all, all the other kids had just done nothing but declare Shinjiro the freak of the orphanage.

But Aki was able to look at him and smile, even when all he knew were the rumors and the stories and the opinions.

And that was how Shinjiro knew.

A/N2: And that's that! Hopefully everyone who's managed to read this far has enjoyed it, but whether you have or not, I'd love it if you reviewed to tell me what you thought! I really love this couple, and I hope to write more of them after replaying P3:FES. :) They need more love!

Again, apologies that so much of this introspective little story was based in headcanon and interpretation, but I tried to stick to the canon as much as possible, so if you do see anything that is particularly contradictory, I'd love to know so I can try to fix it! (Can't promise I will fix it, depending on what the contradiction is, but I would still like to be aware of it.)

Again, thanks for reading, and hoped you liked it! ^^