Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Can't You Hear Me? ❯ Chapter 1: All Alone ( Chapter 1 )

Can't You Hear Me?

Drof: JessiRae wrote something that really reached me…I can identify majorly with her character Heather…Anyway, I'm making this to make a point…And she gave me an idea….JessiRae, this fic is dedicated to my rather sucky school-life, and to you for giving me the idea.

Karasu: Great….a pity-party.

Drof: Not exactly….I own most of the stuff in the first chappie.

***

Chapter 1: All Alone

She sighed. She was alone again. All alone. She always had been, as long as she could remember. She just walked out one day, walked out of a life that she couldn't stand anymore, because no one tried to make it better, they only made it worse. So, now she was on her own, with only herself to talk to, only her self-criticism and brutal, merciless self-analysis that every day and night, every minute and hour, every month and week and year, stripped away all her excuses and reasons to the truth underneath, and revealed that she was only like this because she had been weak, and told her over and over again that she was alone because she deserved it, as punishment for her weakness.

She didn't know if it was right, but in the dark when she couldn't lie to herself anymore, that little voice told her all of her mistakes and her bad qualities, everything she'd done wrong and everything that was wrong with her, and she couldn't contradict her, because it was right and she knew it was. We are in the hands of fate, so it's said, but aren't our fates in our own hands? When you have nowhere to go, and nothing to live for, when you're worn away by what you can't stand anymore, what is there left to do but run?

So why did she feel so weak and wrong inside? Why did she feel as if she had erred in leaving? She told herself it wasn't her fault, but she knew inside that it was. She had been weak, and she'd left, and now she was all alone. But it just got worse and worse, coming home every day to be pestered and never left alone, until she just wanted to scream.

So she'd locked herself away. They'd insisted that she come out and join them, be a part of the happy little family from Hell. She'd refused, and finally just left. She remembered, it was icy, during a storm, and she'd been so cold, but she'd been alone, and she'd felt that horrible stress go away for the first time in her life.

Now she was traveling around, from place to place. Everywhere she went, something happened, and she had to leave. She made and effort to keep up her education, and she went from school to school, and at every school it was the same.

She was the New Kid, the outsider, and immediately the outcast. No one wanted to be near her. There was just something about her that made them hate her. Her hair was always messy, her clothes weren't exactly clean, and she looked geeky. She was short and thin, with too-big-clothes and fairly thick glasses with huge square frames that were much too big for her face. She had a nervous, apologetic look at all times, and walked with a hurried and harassed air.

This made her a perfect target for bullies. She didn't fight back, just tried to run, and they caught her almost every time, at first. Gradually, she became faster, and smarter about getting away. She was a good learner, and soon she could get away, once she'd learned the local escape routes. And so, she continued to live that way for about a year, until someone started taking notice of her test scores.

That was when the flattery started. Everyone tried to be her friend to get test answers out of her, and for a little, she went along with it. She was that lonely. But then she realized that they couldn't care less about her, and she stopped telling them. She got beat up a few times, but soon she stopped caring or even noticing. The lonely little girl had grown up, and was now a bitter, lonely, hard-hearted girl who had resigned herself to never having friends, and only in the darkness of nights let any emotion show on her face.

Even when she was dying inside, nothing showed, because to her, showing emotion became weakness, because people could exploit her then, and she didn't want to be exploited. She didn't want to be weak. But she was, and she knew it, and people took advantage of that. She knew that, too. But she also knew that if people saw no weakness, even if it was there, they wouldn't know it was there, and they couldn't exploit it.

And so, we find this lonely girl at a new school, in a new town, ready to start again and prepared to lose it all again. The town? Komomado. The school? Saisheiki Junior High.

***

The school bell hadn't even rung yet, and already the entire school was abuzz with whispers. The few students who came there early, mostly those who had a long way to go to get to school, were trading rumors.

"Did you see the new girl?"

"She's not from around here…"

"I think she's American."

"I heard she aced her entry tests…"

"I heard she aced tests we haven't even taken yet!"

"Yeah, and of course, Shiato is gonna kill her…"

Let me explain. Shiato was the most popular girl in the school. She aced her tests, had huge fan-clubs, had whole offices in her mansion filled with love-letters, could get any boy she wanted, and was currently going with about three different boys at once. Currently, she was after a boy who's scores and grades were the talk of the town…Suichii Minamino, age fifteen, popular pretty-boy and child prodigy. His only rival was Yuu Kaitou, a boy who was just as smart, and far surpassed him in some subjects. Shiato had gone after Kaitou at first, but when he obviously wasn't going to faint at the sight of her, she dismissed him as a gay jerk.

Of course, any boy who didn't want to be her eternal love was, in her book, a gay jerk.

Nice girl, can't you tell?

Now she was going after Suichii Minamino, confident she could beat any of his `sniveling wench fangirls', as she put it, to his affection. Of course, he'd been hounded by every girl in his school and several others for years, and still didn't have a girlfriend. But, Shiato was confident enough that she could get him. After all, she had everything else…Money, a mansion, servants who waited on her, fan-clubs at school, guys falling at her feet like bugs that ran into a bug-zapper too many times, *lol*. The only thing she didn't have was that which she was determined to get…

Suichii Minamino.

As the whispered rumors about the new girl reached her ears, she thought she might have a rival in her venture. Of course, no one could possibly be better than her. She wondered how this girl cheated, in order to get all her tests right. There was no way she could have aced them without help. Saisheiki was a school for only the smartest students, and the tests one had to pass to get in were brutal. As far as she knew, the only people who'd aced their entry tests and hadn't cheated were Suichii and Kaitou, and not even they had gotten perfect scores. But apparently this girl had.

Shiato resolved to see this girl. `Maybe', she thought, `maybe she'd be a nice addition to my group. She could help me study. I'm sure she'd be overjoyed to help me.' And with that arrogant thought in mind, Shiato went to find and scope out the new girl.

***

"Damn it…" the girl muttered. "Can't find my classes….ARGH!! I wish I could read Japanese…" She stood in the hall, looking from the schedule in her hand to the doors in the hallway. `It'd be easier,' she mused, `if they had numbers to mark the rooms'.

However, the rooms were marked by way of small plaques on the doors with the teachers' names, and they schedule only told her the names of her teachers. "And I'm probably reading this gibberish wrong, on top of that," she sighed. She had just resigned herself to going from class to class, trying to find the right ones, when, on the way to the third door from the left, which seemed as good a place as any to start her search, she bumped into someone.

"Oh, sorry!" she said. She looked up to see who she'd run into. He was a boy, a little over five feet, with long red hair and emerald-colored eyes. He looked down at her, as most people did, considering she was five inches over four feet.

"It's alright," he assured her. "No harm done." It took the flustered girl a moment to realize that she had spoken in English, and that he had responded in the same language. "Would you mind telling me why you were in such a hurry? Class doesn't start anytime soon. Most people haven't even arrived yet."

"I, uh, can't find any of my classes," she said. "I can't read Japanese."

"Then how did you manage to pass your entrance exams?" he asked.

"Oh, um, they were in English," she said. `Weren't they?' she thought to herself.

"Hm….That's a bit odd," the boy said. "Well, let me see your schedule." She handed it to him, and he proceeded to examine it intently. One of the teachers happened to be walking by, and he noticed the short girl with messy brown hair and too-large clothes standing next to the top student, looking rather lost.

"Suichii," he said. The boy looked up from the girl's schedule.

"Hm?" he asked.

"I'm glad I found you!" the teacher said, in Japanese. The poor girl had no idea what was being said. "This is our newest student, BHS. She's extraordinary!"

"Really?" Suichii asked. "How so?"

"On her entrance exams…She got perfect scores! Even better than Kaitou…Better than you!" the teacher said.

"Really," Suichii said. Interest gleamed in his eyes. The only people who'd managed to ace their tests were himself, Kaitou, and Shiato, and none of them had received a perfect score. And if this girl had…Suichii had a feeling she would be an interesting addition to the school.

"Yes!" the teacher said. "Anyway, could you show her around? This is the first time she's ever been in this district, and she doesn't know the school at all."

"Of course," Suichii said warmly. "I'd be happy to help her get used to the school."

"Thank you!" the teacher said. "Now, I have tests to grade and such, so I must be on my way." And with that, he went off to his classroom.

"Erm, what just happened?" the girl, now identified as BHS, asked.

"Mr. Tanaki was just saying that he wanted me to show you around, which I'll be happy to do," Suichii said.

"That'll be a help," BHS said. She was glad that she'd met someone who didn't immediately hate her. She was also surprised that she'd met someone who didn't immediately hate her. She wondered if he was just another person trying to get her to help him on tests. She was pretty sure she'd heard the teacher say something about `entry tests', though she wasn't sure if it was the right words she'd heard. Her command of Japanese extended to a few words like `what' and `hello', and that was about it.

As much as she wished she could coldly turn away and say frigidly that she didn't need his help, she couldn't, because, as much as she hated to admit it, she did need his help. However, she resolved to make sure he knew good and well that while she needed his help, she wasn't going to take anything else. She didn't trust this boy. Something in his eyes, that gleam of interest at something the teacher had said, as well as something else, something deeper than interest and a bit frightening, told her that he could very easily be her undoing.

At every school she'd been to, there had always been one of Those People.

One of Those People who bring out the worst in others, even if they don't mean to, one of Those People who made you act stupid and not think right, who got you in trouble without meaning to, or perhaps with the intent to.

Those People seemed to follow her wherever she went, flocking to her like butterflies to nectar-filled blossoms, or flies to a dead decaying carcass, and wherever they appeared to her, trouble followed.

Those People had always been responsible for the accidents that made her leave schools. Not always directly, but always they had the lion's share of a helping hand in the accidents.

Those People, whether they were male or female, kind or cruel, tall or short, thin or fat, young or old, teacher or student or crazed highway-robber; whether their intentions were good or bad, whether they were malicious plotters and schemers or well-meaning fools with slow minds, always managed to bring her grief.

Something about him told her, no, cried out to her, that this boy was one of Those People. She looked at him, and her dark brown eyes showing no more emotion than they normally did, save a bit of confusion, but in her mind she was already analyzing him, stripping away what layers she could and storing away the information she found. And, like a hawk, constantly alert for the prey that sustains it, she would be on the lookout for more information about this boy.

Because he was one of Those People.

And he was examining her just as intently as she was him. He could tell she didn't trust him, and that was bad. He had a feeling he would have to work hard on this one.

Because she was one of Those People.

To him, Those People were the people who caught on to his games before anyone else, those who saw what he was up to and could come up with a response and reaction to every move he made. Kaitou was one of Those People. So was Hiei.

And he knew that this girl was too. That could be a problem, because at the moment his position here was best described as precarious. Koenma had detected a strange sort of energy, or rather, an absence of it. There was a black patch, like a dark void of nothingness that was some form of energy. `Or,' he thought, mentally voicing Koenma's second, and far more serious and frightening choice, `a demon or a human without energy that we can sense. A dead creature, with no soul inhabiting its body, and thus, no boundaries to its power.'

Such creatures of darkness were familiar to him. In his days as Yoko, he'd known of them, and researched them extensively. ~Creatures of darkness?~ the Yoko in him asked, amused. ~It is an apt term. From the darkness they are, born and bred in it. It surrounds them like a dense fog, shrouding their auras and intentions just as a dense fog would shroud a dark forest. The darkness surrounds them, they live in it, breathe it in and bask in its essence. Yes, they are truly creatures of darkness, creations and lovers of that which we are all created from, and are most of us, afraid of.~

`You are unusually eloquent today,' Suichii thought to the Yoko with a mental smile. `And for once, it's not about that repulsive girl, Shiato.'

~What have you got against Shiato?~ the Yoko cried.

`She's a greedy, grasping wretch of a girl who wouldn't lift a finger to save her own kin from death unless there was something in it for her, that's all.'

~We've known worse people.~ The Yoko's voice was wry and teasing.

`You've known worse people,' Suichii thought vehemently.

"Um, excuse me?" piped a small, meek voice. Suichii looked to the girl, whom he'd forgotten in the course of talking to the Yoko.

"Sorry about that," he said. "I was just thinking." He proceeded to help her find her room, and as he did, one thought rang clearly in his mind, a thought both he and Yoko shared.

The game was on.

***

Drof: ….NOT how I imagined I'd end it, but still good, I guess. Whaddaya think? REVIEW OR SUFFER THE WRATH OF THE GIANT EVIL RUBBER GLOVE!!!

GERG: *appears.* NARGALFICH!! *disappears.*

Drof: See the terror?!! Um, PRONOUNCE `GERG', okay? It's a name. Gerg. Like `Grr' with a `g'.