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textbook-dinner · 2 days

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so i wrote a fanfiction..

One thousand years into the future, Kasane Teto wants nothing more than to be famous and loved. What better way to achieve that goal than to enrol at Vocaloid Academy and learn how to be an idol? Unfortunately, she’s stuck in run-down Utau Academy, where the most exciting thing that happens is a substitute teacher.

But in her quest to become a Vocaloid, Teto may discover powers far beyond her comprehension, and secrets that shatter the very fabric of her world…

Hiyama Kiyoteru

10 Kotone Road

Otomura

Japan

Tuesday, 28 February 3009

Kasane Teto

401 Akane Street

Otomura

Dear Mx Kasane,

I regret to inform you that your position in

Vocaloid Academy has been reevaluated due to unusual circumstances. We have enrolled you in Utau Academy instead, which is located on 16 Munashi Road. Classes begin at 9:00 am on 1 March.

Yours sincerely,

Hiyama Kiyoteru

Teto folded up the letter and continued walking. She wiped her blood-red eyes with her sleeve.

Rays of spring sunlight reflected off the holomirrors and shone between the buildings of either side of them, illuminating their two long, crimson curls and the patterns on their blue-gray-green outfit. It also illuminated the creases and stains on their military-styled clothes, but she supposed that couldn’t be helped. After all, she’d had to sleep in them for years, which granted her more than the fair share of teasing in primary school. Teto shivered.

She reached the end of the road and pressed the traffic light more times than was strictly necessary. Teto tapped the button in time to a tune that she would forget in a minute.

Hopefully this school will be better.

Teto had never managed to be liked by her classmates or even her parents, but that meant that the only way to go was up.

The colour of the light shifted from a too-bright red to a eye-bleaching green as Teto strode across the purple-blue tarmac. It was speckled with darker patches, which were liquid concrete capsules, designed to solidify and repair the road in case of accidents.

At least, that’s what the book she had stolen from the library as an eight year old said. Her mother had refused to get her a library card, on the grounds that it would fill her mind with irritating ideas and obsessions. Teto didn’t really understand what she meant. Didn’t everyone want to know the technicalities of road works at some point in their lives?

Once, when she was ten, her home economics teacher had asked the class to write a couple of paragraphs about how bread is made. Teto had arrived at school the next day with five pages’ worth of writing about the types of genetically modified wheat and the types of loaf they produced.

She didn’t make that mistake again.

Teto breathed out. She wasn’t at Koyone School anymore. She shouldn’t care.

What’s the point of a new school if I’m just going to drag my past around inside me? Teto pushed the school gates open. They were much lighter than she thought they would be.

She strode across the gravel path that led to the main building. It was bordered with dark green raspberry bushes that looked like emeralds in the early morning light. Every once in a while, the bushes would be broken up by reddish-brown benches scattered around the yard. They were the exact right level for someone to sit while picking berries from the highest branches.

Excitement bubbled up inside her. Every time she’d see something that she liked, no matter how small, Teto would get a little burst of energy. Not enough to run around or jump up and down, but enough to nessecitate flicking a hand or two.

She knew she was early, she knew she there was nobody inside to hear her, yet she tugged on the glass door. It didn’t move; Teto thought as much. It was otrynoxide glass: advertised on the vision as “bullet, grenade, missile and chimera proof.” Why they felt the need to put “chimera” in as a potential hazard Teto could never figure out. Even she knew that the lion-like, anthropomorphic beasts had died out thirty years ago.

Teto rotated on her heels and walked back the way she came. She hadn’t noticed it before, but behind the raspberry bushes there was a plantation of cherry trees, arranged in haphazard ways. She smiled. If even the trees were uneven, then maybe the first few weeks here wouldn’t be that bad. The first few weeks before she got back into Vocaloid Academy, of course.

They half-leaped onto the bench and waited for the other students to show up.

Ate raspberries, and waited.

Watched the clouds race each other across the sky, and waited.

Tried to eat the cherries, and waited.

Spit out the unripe cherries, and waited.

Waited, and waited.

They jumped up suddenly from the bench. They knew, subconsciously that it was still an hour before school began.

She pushed the cyan-tinted bushes aside and returned to the cherry tree. Teto tilted her head back. The branches struck out from the trunk like a perfectly imperfect starburst of leaves and fruits. Maybe if she stepped onto this one here… Her body moved before her mind, like she had climbed this tree before.She gripped the wave-patterned bark as she pulled herself up.

With every inch she got from the ground, it felt as if weights were lifted from her chest that she didn’t even know were there. Teto soon wondered how they ever breathed with all that pressure.

All too soon, the branches thinned and Teto was forced to stop. She could feel the ultramarine sky above her. She wanted to feel the wind rush through her hair, trace the outlines of her face and curve her wings into their fullest shape.

She glanced behind her. Her shoulders were as normal as ever. Is this one of those delusions people get? Oh Crypton, I can’t afford to have more going on with me.

Teto wrapped her body around the reassuringly solid branch around her and forced her eyelids shut.

I am Kasane Teto. I am fourteen years old and I start secondary school today.

Today is the 1st of March, 3009.

They opened their eyes a crack to see the whitewashed walls of Utau Academy about two metres below the ground, shining in the sun.

I am not a failed Vocaloid.

She wrenched her gaze away from the grey-beige shape, and glanced in the opposite direction, towards the fence. The road leading towards the school was completely deserted. The only people around were the ones that popped up now and again on the holomirrors. These were originally designed to focus sunlight down from the tops of the skyscrapers, but now they absorbed so much light they worked more like billboards.

An advertisement for a cafe faded seamlessly into one about headphones, then again into a video about the importance of vaccinating androids against malware, and lastly into 39 News. She had first discovered her idol on that mirrorshow, about five or six years ago- she would have been eight that day.

It had been a typical day for Teto: beginning with Mom and Dad shoving her out of the door, and ending with having to hide from Yukari and her gang. After taking a detour through a few side streets, where the buildings were only ten metres tall, she had to admit she was lost.

Panic began to creep into her, slowly choking her from the outside. The street looked safe enough now, but what would it be like in two hours’ time? Or more?

Just then, she noticed one of the holomirrors had switched their displays. She looked up.

Maybe they’d show a map of the streets. Teto loved reading maps.

On the screen, two twenty-something girls, probably sisters, had jumped into their plush seats. They both had the same ginger hair and green eyes, the only differences between them were their clothes: one had a white top and the other was wearing black.

“Hello Otomura! I’m Kanon,” the one on the right had exclaimed, the more serious of the two.

“And I’m Anon,” chimed in the one wearing white. “This is 39 News, and today we’ll be interviewing none other than the diva, the icon.”

“The biggest consumer of antigravity bands this side of the Pacific,” Anon had mumbled.

“Hatsune Miku!” Anon cheered, throwing out her limbs and spinning around in her chair. The sleeves of her shirt trailed behind her. Kanon’s expression was unreadable.

Another chair, this one blue instead of the warm orange of the sisters’ seats, had conveniently materialised out of the floor. Anon regained her composure just as another girl strode towards her and shook her hand, which set her off again.

She had flowing, aquamarine hair, the same colour as her eyes, which shined like emeralds in the studio lights. She was only a year or so older than Teto, she realised with a jolt.

“So, Miss Hatsune, you’ve managed to become one of the most beloved singers in Japan,” stated Kanon.

“Miku.”

“Haha, excuse me?”

“Just call me Miku. It feels strange to be called Miss by someone ten years older than you,” she smiled.

She acted like conversation was so natural. Not once did she slip up or forget the word for something or talk so slowly that the other person got distracted halfway through. And the others seemed to really respect her, despite Anon’s fits of giggles and Kanon’s coldness. She was like a magnet for love…

“Speaking of that,” Anon interrupted, leaning over the back of her seat, “how did you manage to get popular at such a young age. That’s exactly what me and my sister have been trying to do for years.”

“That’s what you were trying to do. I was trying to get a girlfriend,” Kanon said dryly.

“Same thing!” Anon spun around, kicking off the carpeted floor. Teto wondered how much it had cost, and who would have to repair it later.

“No, relationships require mutual cooperation and understanding and you don’t get any of that in-“ Kanon sighed, resting her face in her gloved hands. “You can only control yourself, you can only control yourself.”

“Anyway, what is the secret of your success?”

“My success?” She laughed, then sighed deeply, as if mentally preparing herself for what she was about to say. Anon stopped spinning.

“But my real inspiration was always my brother. He was already stressed from having to take care of me after our parents,”- she hiccupped slightly- “died, but he still had the time to pursue what he loved.

He was the one who helped me write the lyrics to my first song.”

Miku’s aquamarine ponytails fell over her face.

Teto gasped.

If she can be loved by millions without her parents, then maybe there’s still hope for someone like me.

There’s always hope.

And with that, she set off. Somehow or other, she found her way to here. She may have imagined it a little more poetically, and preferably ending in her getting friends, but still! She would have been going to Chipspeech if it hadn’t been for her efforts, and she’d never met a single famous coder.

“Hey.”

Teto jumped. She spun around and saw two serious-looking eyes looking up at her. One was a fiery red, the other the same shade of deep blue as the streak in the person’s black hair. Well, black wasn’t the right way to describe it. It was more a mixture of hues ranging from dark grey to indigo to the colour of the sea on a moonlit night.

She leaped off the branch immediately. This person was much taller than her, and probably older, but Teto wasn’t sure. She wasn’t good at judging the ages of teachers.

Why did I have to get in trouble before school even began? I can just imagine what they’d be talking about.

“I’m sorry, Mr- Mr,” she stammered. He had probably mentioned his name already. And of course I had to forget it, like everyone else’s names.

“Mister?” The stranger burst out laughing.

“Oh, if I had a hundred yen every time somebody thought I was in my twenties, I wouldn’t owe Rook any money.” He looked suddenly alarmed. “Don’t tell him I said that.”

Teto nodded, still getting rid of the guilt she had began to feel.

“Ruko’s the name, and coffee’s my game,” They reached out their left hand, the one without a glove.

“I’m Teto,” she replied. Did they just really like drinking coffee, or was there a new sport involving drinking as much coffee as one could in a minute? Did she invent that sport? Are there jobs dedicated to inventing sports? How would I know?

“I don’t really play any competitive sports,” she said, just to be on the safe side.

“Figure of speech. Anyway, what brings you here? It’s not every day I see someone climbing trees in this day and age.”

“Didn’t want to be late,” they mumbled.

Ruko looked at them.

“I mean, I showed up here early so that I wouldn’t be late, and climbed the tree to see if anyone else was coming.” Right after she finished talking, she realised several ways she could have said that better.

“I’m not the kind of weirdo who spies on strangers, by the way. In case you were wondering.” There was a slight pause.

“Sorry for assuming the subjects of your wonderment.”

Teto screamed internally. Who even says wonderment nowadays? He’s going to hate me, and pretend to be my friend, and I won’t be able to tell anyone’s motives apart.

“No, no, you’re cool. I’ve never had my wonderment assumed before.” She smiled, and they were gripped by an urge to smile back at her. All too briefly, it was gone.

“You seem organised. Maybe you could convince my brother to act normal for once.” They sighed in an over-exaggerated way, putting one hand on their chest, as the other clenched into a fist.

“Wait, what’s wrong with him?” Teto asked, suddenly animated. It’s probably impossible. But maybe- maybe he’s like me.

Ruko lazily opened an eye. “Always late,” he said, with an expression of misery. “He has to leave half an hour early to every event he goes to, and even then he’s ten minutes late.”

“Not true,” chimed a deep voice in the distance. Teto spun around. A person was ambling across the grass. This was clearly Ruko’s brother: few other people would measure up to his height. He strolled up to his sibling and turned to Teto.

“Don’t listen to Ruko,” he whispered. “The only reason I’m late is that I have to spend forty minutes waking her up each morning.”

They both had the same brown skin and dark hair: one of the only differences between them was that both of his eyes were red. His short, messy hair shone with ruby hues, instead of Ruko’s cyan shades.

“It’s not my fault I need my beauty sleep,” sniffed Ruko. “Clearly you wouldn’t know anything about that, Rook.”

“It’s true, I don’t.” Rook looked down at his oil-coloured shoes. “Only because I don’t have any siblings who are actually beautiful!” He jumped up, narrowly missing Ruko’s blows.

“You take that back!” his sibling laughed, pushing him onto the grass. Rook grabbed one of Ruko’s purple-coat tails and pulled them down unexpectedly. They yelped, startled into a feminine voice.

“You idiot! It’s going to take me all day to switch back now,” he grumbled in an unfamiliar pitch.

Teto had heard of people who could speak with different voices before, but she’d never actually met one of them before. The most popular hypothesis was that after years of training their voice, singers eventually passed their abilities down though genetics. It was a pretty shoddy theory, but the only other option was that it was an artificially created mutation, and nobody wanted to think about that.

Teto watched the siblings wrestle on the ground, and sighed. The chasm in her heart that she tried to hide opened up once again. She was on the outside.

When they were younger, they would walk past sisters and brothers on the way to school, always talking or bickering or hugging. None of them ignored each other the way Teto’s parents ignored them, and even if they did, they always made it up afterwards. When she was six, she tried to get her friend’s moms to adopt her.

“Oh, Teto,” they laughed, after ruffling her hair, “your family love you deep down, don’t you know that? Now, chin up.”

If only that was true.

Creak.

The school gates were pushed open. Teto winced. It was still a mystery as to why the school never bothered to replace its analogue gates. Maybe they couldn’t afford to, or maybe they wanted to seem unique. Either way, the sound made her want to claw out her ears.

Two people entered the yard and stopped at the bench opposite her. They both had blue hair and oddly formal clothing, but the similarities ended there. The girl was looking around like she had never seen the sky in her life, while the boy was focused on cleaning his monocle.

The dapper duo’s arrival was just the beginning of a tidal wave of people that swept towards the school. Students of all shapes, colours and sizes soon began to fill up the yard. A boy with translucent hair chatted to someone whose eyes were covered with a caracal-styled helmet, while a girl tried and failed to stuff a blue balloon into her bag.

The sound of their talking burned. It was like someone was sprinkling pepper inside her skull. She could feel their voices pressing in on her, and it made her acutely aware of the sweat running down her forehead.

Is this how I die? Teto thought feverishly.

No, I can’t die. I have to become a Vocaloid. I have to show them that I’m worth loving.

They pulled their hands over their ears. She pushed her way through the crowd, dodging the hoverskaters and jumping over ponytails.

“And then I said, “import your own oranges!”” gossiped someone. She ducked to avoid being hit by an arm. A small green creature darted towards her, sending her flying into someone. Heads turned towards her.

“Watch where you’re going, airhead!”

“Sorry!” Teto yelled, skipping around a gaggle of robots. They glared at her. “Sorry!” she said again, not stopping to look behind. She had to get away, to a place where she could think.

After what seemed like forever, the view cleared and cool shadows covered her. There were fewer people here. She let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

They stepped over a snoozing girl, and made her way across the lawn. Instead of raspberries, the bushes here bloomed with fuschias and carnations, more naturally coloured than Teto was used to.

With every step away from the crowd, a wave of calm washed over her, sweeping away the dizzy warmth. She wished she could stay here forever, where she didn’t have to wait for something to be said that made her want to cry or scream or faint so that she couldn’t feel anything anymore. Here, they didn’t have to monitor every word they said and how they said it, in case the other person would use it against them.

It was a bit lonely, but that was alright by her. After all, nobody could mock what she was saying in her head.

A flash of silver.

They blinked.

The sun shone through the trees, reflecting off a metal structure in the distance. As Teto got closer, they could see droplets of water were spurting out of the centre, arcing into the air and cascading back down into the pool.

A fountain.

She rushed towards it. Inside the stainless steel basin, shimmers of sunlight and reflections of the sky competed for area. The bottom was devoid of leaves and the other dirt one would expect to find in a fountain surrounded by leaves.

Leaning in closer, she angled her head. She had filed her fangs yesterday, but it was better to be sure.

“Oh, are you crying?”

Teto whirled around. Luckily, the person wasn’t talking to them. He was facing a girl whose long white hair spilled over onto the ground where she was sitting.

The girl sniffed, leaning back into the tree. Black sleeves trailed down over her hands. She pulled some of her snow-coloured hair over her face, looking away.

“Weak.”

The girl inhaled sharply. Even from a distance, Teto could see her eyes beginning to shine.

“Weak, that’s what you are,” the guy continued. “I thought that here would be the one place where I wouldn’t have to deal with all these whiny humans”- the way he said it made it seem like a swear – “but you proved me wrong.”

She scowled, as if this happened to her on a regular basis. “Crypton, I wish I wasn’t on stealth.”

Something flashed in the girl’s eyes. “Ritsu-“

“You don’t know my name!” she yelled. “I would never tell it to someone like you!”

He looked around angrily, and his gaze caught Teto’s.

“And what are you staring at, weirdo, with your shiny cat eyes? I swear, if this is a new human fashion-“

They blinked. Were their slit pupils really that noticeable? At least they wouldn’t have to look Ritsu- if that was her name- in the eyes, which was always a plus. Teto’s gaze scanned their opponent.

Ritsu was a little shorter than her, but much more commanding. His deep mauve-brown dress was layered with painstakingly sewn golden frills, the same colour as the hat that was attached to his headphones. The white portion of her top fanned out in a triangle shape and was edged with delicate black stripes, the same colour as her choker. Ritsu’s long, straight hair was the colour of heated copper and sweet wrappers on a sunny day.

He stared her down with eyes that made her think of jewel beetles.

“We have the same kind of belt,” Teto observed. Wait, I wasn’t supposed to say that!

“I like it,” she followed up quickly. Hopefully a compliment would defuse the situation. But then again, Ritsu seemed like the kind of girl who got compliments almost daily.

Her expression was unreadable. Perhaps she was trying to smile, or maybe she had remembered that there was a piece of mould on the bread she had earlier.

At least she’s not actively trying to make my life harder. Hooray! I guess. It’s better than what I’ve had to endure over the winter break.

Teto motioned to the girl, who was watching the two from beside the tree. Go! Run! Hide! Run and hide! It was a shame telepathy only worked for robots.

“Oh no you won’t!” said Ritsu. “I’m not letting her go until she tells me how she knows me.”

He glared down at the girl. “You’re not one of them, are you?”

“Them? I don’t know who you’re talking about!” she half-sobbed. “Besides, you were the one who started this conversation.”

“I saw you writing notes about me in your diary.”

“I don’t have a diary!”

Ritsu reached into the girl’s bag, which was lying a small distance away. “Then what do you call this?” He brandished a drab-looking dark blue notebook in front of her. It was covered in stickers of hearts and cupcakes.

“That’s- that’s my home economics journal.”

She started flicking through it. “Dear Diary,” Ritsu read out. “I can’t believe it. Today I didn’t get into Vocaloid Academy.”

Tears ran down the girl’s cheeks.

“Mother said that I never had any hopes of getting into it in the first place, and that I should just get a job without any qualifications.”

She was sobbing at this point, and her hair was completely covering her face.

Ritsu looked at her for a second, as if he almost felt bad about what he was doing, then continued.

“I haven’t told her about uncle Dell. He says that my training begins tomorro-“

He glared at her. “Dell? Who Dell?”

“I don’t know his surname. Yowane, probably, same as my mother. But I could be wrong,” she added hastily.

Ritsu paused. “This is too suspicious to be a coincidence, but he never mentioned anything about family…” She stood up, and walked straight into Teto.

“What on earth are you still doing here?”

The white-haired girl looked up at Teto. Her blood-red eyes were filled with tears.

“You think you’re so tough, and yet you’ve been standing here the whole time, not even lifting a finger,” snarled Ritsu.

“I- I know what it’s like-“ they turned towards the girl. Why can’t I just speak?

“Don’t tell me you’ve been kicked out of Vocaloid Academy too!” Ritsu exclaimed. “Wait until the rest of first year find out. I heard that the school paper has been running low on news lately.”

It felt like Teto was being consumed by rage. She scowled, fighting the instinct. “You can’t just throw out someone’s secrets to be ripped apart by strangers!” she half-screamed, as her hands clenched into fists uncontrollably.

“Who’s going to stop me?” She smirked. “Grow up, drill hair. At least my actions have a purpose.”

At least my actions have a purpose.

They roared, springing off the ground and knocking into Ritsu. She flinched at the unexpected cold, but that made her even angrier. Everything was a blur of red and grey and purple and green.

Whatever she could find, she pushed away from her, ripping out rows upon rows of gold just so that he could feel what it was like to want to roar out. Teto grabbed hold of the back his piano-key top, pulling it towards her, then letting go with force.

Ritsu turned towards her with a vengeful expression. Teto ducked as a series of bright flashes lit up. In a swift movement, she grabbed Ritsu around the waist and shoved him as hard as she could.

All the anger seeped out of her as quickly as it appeared.

Teto watched, panting, as Ritsu stepped out of the crater in the fountain. She looked around. A crowd had gathered around them. One of the nearby trees had somehow caught fire.

“Thanks for saving me,” whispered the girl. “but I wouldn’t get into fights with him again, if I

were you.”

Teto was about to ask why, but then she looked towards Ritsu. He had taken off his sleeves to dry them in the sunlight. Even from a distance, there was no mistaking the

Metallic joints and seams running along his arms. What she had belived to be freckles on his face were in fact screws.

Teto’s newest enemy was a battle android.

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