a/n: Hullo, this is chapter two of The cool guy. Kingdom Hearts is copyright Disney and Square, and of these I am neither.

I hope you enjoy the chapter, and as always, please leave a review!

Chapter 2

"Hello, Roxas speaking, who is this? Oh, mum, it's you. Why didn't you say so? Yeah, um….nearly done." Roxas lied easily, casting one eye around the room, where boxes and boxes lounged unopened. In the corner, away from all the others, he'd placed the evil box from last night.

"Yes, it was easy. Mum. I told you, I don't need any help. That's right. I'm going to start looking for a job today. See? Don't you feel better already? I know I do….. Do what? Mum! I already told you----I moved out because I need to be successful. Not to find a girlfriend. Yes.Yes, I agree. It would be nice to find a nice girl with whom I could have a nice life. That would be….nice. Oh, sorry, Mum, that's the door. Well I don't know who it could be. One must first open the door. No, that's not sarcasm, that's being practical. Yeah. Why don't, uh, why don't you call me in like…a week? No, mum, every day is hardly necessary….how much of my life do you honestly think can change in one week?"

And with those words Roxas put down the phone and sauntered over to the door. In the coming days, when he would realize that it was the last conversation he would have that had been perfectly normal, he would wish that he had stayed on just a little longer.

But it was not to be, and while lying about the bell would have been effective in getting his mother---whom though he loved dearly (most of the time) was a terrible nag---off the phone and more importantly to him, out of his ear, the doorbell had in fact rung and was still ringing.

Persistently.

This is what we call a turning point in Roxas's life. After opening that door he would be confronted and confused and finally curious.

It would be curiousity, after all, that would drag him down to the ground--- literally! All to search for the truth.

It should then be documented that instead of exploring his other options which included ignoring the sound, hiding in the cramped closet, or jumping out the window, he undid the chain lock without a second thought.

Admittedly---there was a slight hesitation in Roxas's hand as he reached for the door.

But it was in his nature to put this down as a minor occurrence and so it didn't stall him from turning the knob and pulling the door open.

"Hello?"

"Hello? Hello?! I think you're rotting under the floorboards somewhere and all you have to say, Mister Holier-than-Thou, is bloody hello? Where the hell is my rent? I'll say it twice---since last time I obviously wasn't screaming loud enough---in little bits so maybe it'll get through your thick-as-hell skull. Cause I'm feeling generous today. You know? Thought I'd stroll over, nice and easy like. So. Where. The. Fuck. Is. My. Rent?!"

Roxas watched the spectacle with his mouth open. "I….hey, why aren't you looking at me?"

The man in front of him was adamantly facing not the door, but the wall. Roxas took a tiny step backwards.

"You know very well why I'm not fucking looking at you!"

"Um." Roxas tried again. "I—I already put down the first payment in the mail. So, uh, yeah…"

Roxas wondered to himself if this was some kind of joke they played on new tenants. If it was, it wasn't amusing.

"What? Wait a second---you sound funny. You got a cold? Well, it serves you right! I hope you get so sick you can't stand! Bloody guy, think you can do whatever you damn well please."

"Sir? ….I just moved in last night."

The person whose back he'd been staring at whirled around. Roxas had never seen anybody move like that before. Impending doom just never seemed to make much sense as a verb until that moment.

He found himself looking into the face of a person who hated him already.

It was an interesting face. Middle aged, maybe younger---the man wore his hair in a long graying ponytail. The graying could have been premature but Roxas wasn't hazarding any guesses about the eyepatch and scar, which struck a bizarre chord down the entire already awkward situation.

"Er. Hi. Roxas? I should be on ….your tenant list….why are you doing that?"

Roxas watched the man duck around his legs. Then run in small circle around him. The ritual ended when he tugged on Roxas's hair and Roxas decided that enough was enough.

"Look, old man," He snapped, slapping the man's hand away, "I don't know why you're acting crazy but it's not funny."

"Old? You wound me. And don't call me crazy, you bastard---I'm just trying to figure out how you made yourself over like this. You look like a completely different person."

"I am a completely different person!"

"Exactly, that's what I said! But how'd you do it? And don't think this gets you out of the rent---cause I am still pissed at you. But, I am impressed. Marly musta given you some tips. Nice acting too, it was a good touch, pretending to be a new tenant."

"I'm not pretending to be a new tenant! Look at all the boxes---I'm not whoever you think I am."

"Well of course you're not who I think you are. Isn't that your motto?"

"Look, mister. My name is Roxas. I saw an ad in the paper about this room two weeks ago, and moved in last night. I dropped a fucking box on my foot. You can see the broken plates if you want. Now be rational. Even if this guy you think I am would pull a stunt like this---would he break a whole box of china over it?"

The man looked over Roxas's shoulder. Saw the boxes. Saw the lack of furniture. His eyes met Roxas's.

"He's really gone?" He said weakly.

Ten minutes later Roxas found himself sitting across a small table from the landlord, sipping coffee. He wasn't quite sure how he'd managed to miss the fact that the apartment complex included this quaint café on the first floor, and put it down to his foul mood last night---more than one thing had caused him to drop that box, he was sure.

The dominant color was white, with splashes of crimson. The wood paneling and glass tables lent it an artistic flair that reminded Roxas of a chain café, and indeed it seemed this place was graced with the same sort of people---

You know the ones. They stand around in the aisles of your local bookstore and talk about plays they don't understand and how very nice it is that "there's some culture here, after all."

The sort of people that Roxas himself had hung out with until he couldn't take it any longer. Lately, Roxas didn't hang out with anybody.

(Much to his mum's distress. He could hear her voice like she was sitting right beside him: 'Art and poetry are very well and good, Roxas, but they're no substitute for real people.' In retrospect telling her that he strongly preferred the company of inanimate objects probably wasn't a good move, and to be honest it wasn't exactly true. Some of the time.)

"Er, yeah, kid, go ahead. Coffee's on me. It's nice, owning all the space above this little shop….did I mention I'm sorry?"

"That would be your twelfth time. How the hell does a landlord not know about it when a tenant moves out?"

"Name's Xigbar. And this wasn't your ordinary tenant. It really figures, I suppose. Guy's always moving around, always not there when you're looking and there when you're not. I feel bad for you, though. I imagine you're going to get a lot of visitors, seeing as that was where he was most of the time. Lot of people trying to find him and talk to him, just like me. But they won't all be as nice as I was."

Roxas spluttered and tried to hide it by gulping down the rest of his hazelnut coffee. (With way too much sugar, but he wasn't complaining. It was more expensive than he could afford to buy regularly.) If this guy was "nice" he didn't want to see the rest of the neighborhood.

"Um, pardon my asking, but why?"

Xigbar laughed. "Cause he's the coolest guy around, of course. Everybody knows his name! And that's the way he likes it. Or so the rumors go. He's more popular than breathing…"

"What is his name?"

"You've gotta be new, kid, if you don't know Axel."

"But…what makes him so cool?"

Roxas finally noticed the people at the tables around him snickering. It made him just a little bit angry, the whole situation. Coolness? Who out of highschool even used words like "cool" to describe a person?

And this…Axel character. Carrying on like…like a….Roxas, with his unlimited vocabulary, didn't even know the word to use. Words seemed to be failing their normal purposes at this point and time, so he decided to put them away for a while.

Xigbar shrugged, and Roxas stood up.

"Look….uh….thanks for the coffee, I guess. I've gotta go. Job hunting."

"Right. I'll see you later. If you make it, that is. Just remember, not everyone's as kind as me!"

"Whatever," Roxas muttered. He set down a tip for a waiter he couldn't remember seeing, and walked out of the café with his usual attitude.

Roxas walked like he meant it.

Perhaps this isn't clear.

Roxas walked like every step mattered. It takes a rare person to think this way. Others believe in merely starting points and ending points, never minding what may come between.

This idea bored him and from a young age he recognized the sad fact that most people will never think twice about even half of their steps, let alone all of them. And at some point he recognized that it was impossible for him to think about every single step he took.

So he decided that instead, he would simply never dawdle, and always walk like he meant it.

You are probably wondering what in god's name this has got to do with our story. And the answer is, not much, if one is thinking in terms of normal weight.

But the facts remain the same:

Roxas walked like he meant it, and for him this entailed the cursory balancing on the edge of the sidewalk, sporadically skipping, and, every once in a while, whirling around to see where his footprints were left. It was an odd sight to behold in the city, as normal as it was back in his small town where everybody knew: Roxas was aloof and uninteresting and he just happened to walk like that.

It was such an odd sight that the man pulling a cart across the road filled with flowers stopped to stare. This in turn caused the man who was watching the man pulling the cart instead turn his attention the younger man walking.

This man, the former one, not the one with the cart, watched from his new apartment window. He only saw the younger man's back, and a flash of blonde hair when he turned around for an instant---the sun was blinding so he didn't get a good look, and he didn't dwell on it too long seeing as he had boxes to unpack and places to go. All he would remember was thinking that for a fleeting moment it had looked really cool.

Thanks for reading!