"Serra-san, come and have lunch with us!"
It took Noelle a few seconds to realize that it was her the person was calling over. She glanced over in the direction of where the voice had come from to see Kyoko waving her over with Hana.
So far it had been an uneventful few weeks with nothing out of the ordinary happening. No Tsuna declaring his love for Kyoko while wearing nothing but his boxers, no various explosions all happening in Namimori courtesy of a certain smoking bomb Gokudera, and no sadistic Reborn putting Tsuna through pure hell as he trains him to be worthy of the title of Vongola Decimo.
The only thing worth noting was that Noelle had caught several boys in the act of forcing Tsuna to be their gopher about a week ago. Noelle promptly fixed that by threatening to kick their butts in front of the whole school where everyone could see them being publicly humiliated by a girl, a threat they took very seriously after one guy had to recover in the nurse's office after he had implied she was stupid due to her hair colour.
And all she had done was lightly punch him.
Grabbing a nearby desk, Noelle pushed it over to make Kyoko and Hana's two desk island into a threesome.
Okay, that just sounded wrong.
"Huh, store bought food again?" Hana asked, shaking her head at the plastic container bento that was holding Noelle's meal.
"Yup." Noelle said curtly. She did not want to go into a long conversation explaining why she couldn't make home made meals without destroying something. And anything she did manage to make always looked unappetizing.
"Can't you cook, Serra-san?" Kyoko asked her.
"Not really." Noelle said, carefully phrasing her words. "The only thing I can actually make without anything going wrong are cupcakes."
"So how come you decided to attend school here?" Hana asked, leaning forward.
"Hana-chan!" Kyoko scolded her friend lightly. It was rude to ask something like that!
'What? I'm just curious." Her friend said. "I just want to know why she decided to attend school here in Namimori instead of Tokyo or something. That's where most foreigners go, anyways."
"Hana..."
"It's fine." Noelle smiled at Kyoko reassuringly. "I can see where Kurokawa-san is coming from." Phew, she remembered to add the suffix '-san' at the end of her classmate's name. She did not want a repeat of the incident with the second year girls.
Hana snorted. "Don't be so formal; call me by my first name."
"But to answer your question, the one who taught me Japanese used to live here."
That was a blatant lie, but she could hardly tell the girls that she had actually come to Namimori to do her job as Tsuna's Guardian Angel.
"He said this was a nice place. Also, I prefer towns over huge cities. Much more quieter, the air's cleaner and you don't feel like a sardine in a can whenever you cross the street."
She wasn't sure if Tokyo was actually that populated since her example had come from her watching television but it made a good excuse as to why she preferred a town like Namimori where people weren't so used to foreigners rather than Tokyo where they weren't such a rare sight.
Well, she was the only one around for now.
"So do you like it here?" Hana asked, her dark eyes boring into Noelle.
Like she was going to say no with the way her classmate was staring at her like that.
"Uh-huh."
Noelle really did like Namimori; what wasn't there to like about it? It was a town, but it wasn't such a small one that everyone knew everyone. Though she did get a lot of stares wherever she went at the beginning, the shop owners and other people she often met on the streets had already gotten used to her presence and didn't see it fit to gawk at her any more.
Seeing Hana still staring at her, Noelle's expression deadpanned. "I'm telling the truth, so can you please stop staring at me like we're in an interrogation?"
Her classmate smirked. "Alright, alright, I'll take your word for it."
The three girls then proceeded to eat their lunch and make small talk before the break ended.
0000
Even hours after the incident, Noelle's face was still burning when she left the faculty office. She knew she should have sat out of P.E. today, but her teacher had insisted on her playing.
Much to the girl's horror, they were supposed to play BASEBALL. Noelle hadn't played anything remotely close to the sport ever since she was eight and she had broken the window of their kitchen with a girl's softball while her dad tried to teach her the sport.
Suffice to say, her dad wasn't allowed to teach Noelle anything in their backyard lest something be broken again.
So when the teacher announced what they were going to be playing for P.E., the blonde had tried to get out of the situation fast.
It didn't work and Noelle ended up hitting the baseball so hard that it went flying out of the school grounds...
...and into someone else's kitchen effectively destroying the window and an expensive looking vase.
After an hour of apologizing, another hour of making phone calls to her 'family' (the Serafin) and twenty minutes of explaining the circumstances of her strength to the P.E. teacher and the principal, Noelle was finally allowed to leave.
"Bet the whole school knows about it by now," The blonde scoffed to herself with faint bitterness.
If there was one bad thing she had to say about Namimori, it would be about how some of the students treated her. It was just a group of second year girls who for some reason didn't like her. She wasn't going to go up to them and ask, but she wondered if she did anything to piss them off other than show them respect they didn't deserve due to their status as being her senpai.
The other students were polite, but she knew that there was some sort of distance between her and them. The only people she could consider her friends were Kyoko and Hana.
Noelle wanted to hang out with Tsuna as well, but the Serafin told her that it would be best she didn't interact with him too much until Reborn decided to wreck havoc on his life. So she kept an eye on him while they were at school to make sure that he was doing well...
...as well as someone who was mocked and ridiculed by his classmates nearly everyday, anyways. No wonder he had such low self-esteem.
She couldn't tell if people treated her differently because she was a foreigner or if because she told Hibari off on the first day of school. She definitely couldn't wait to see their reactions towards her tomorrow.
Not.
A loud noise interrupted Noelle's train of thought and she realized that not only had school been long over but that she was hungry as well. Her stomach acid was clawing at the insides of her stomach, making her grimace slightly.
"Good thing I have money." She said, even though there was no one on the empty street.
After five minutes of wandering around, she was finally able to find a place that was serving food. To her surprise, that place looked awfully lot like the sushi place that Yamamoto's dad owned.
While she was sure that Yamamoto would probably be in his room or at baseball practice or something, that didn't stop Noelle from scoping the place out. Besides, she was also hungry and it had been a long time since she had eaten sushi.
"Welcome!" The man behind the sushi bar greeted her when she came in. Like most of the people in Namimori so far, he stared at her before shaking his head as if to clear his mind. He gestured for her to take a seat in front of the bar where she could watch him prepare his meals while eating at the same time.
"I haven't seen you around before." The man grinned. "Are you new around here?"
Noelle's lips tilted upwards into a small smile. "It was that obvious, huh?"
He laughed, but not in a mean way. It was like talking to an older Yamamoto, though she was sure that he wasn't as oblivious to what was going on around him as the future Rain Guardian was. He did after all teach his son the art of the sword without asking him why Yamamoto wanted to learn how to handle one out of the blue.
"Well I bet you've never had real authentic Japanese sushi before, have you?"
"Oh, I've eaten sushi before." There were plenty of Japanese restaurants in America, after all.
"But have you tried sushi actually crafted by an authentic itamae in Japan?"
"Is 'itamae' a term for a sushi chef?" Noelle asked, not recognizing the term.
"Yup!" Yamamoto's father set aside what the girl recognized as a tamago nigiri.
Noelle grinned; she was beginning to like Yamamoto's old man more and more. "Well if you put it that way, then no!"
The man grinned. "Then you're in for a real treat! What will you have?"
She checked to make sure she had enough money again (four thousand yen) before making her order. She watched Yamamoto's dad skillfully cut and mold the sushi into life before he placed it on a wooden platter and handed it to her. Noelle broke her chopsticks into two, said a quick 'itadakimasu' and then proceeded to dig into her food with vigor.
Noelle was so hungry that she didn't realize that someone was talking to her until they placed a hand on her shoulder. She jolted slightly and whirled around to see the face of her grinning classmate, Takeshi Yamamoto.
"Serra-san, what are you doing here?"
He was sweaty and holding a baseball bat that was leaning against his shoulder. It wasn't that hard to guess where he had been.
"I'm eating dinner." Noelle blinked. She pretended to be surprised at seeing the most popular guy in her grade at the sushi bar since she wasn't supposed to know that this was where Yamamoto lived. "What are you doing here, Yamamoto-san?"
"I live here!" Yamamoto was still grinning. Even from where she sat, Noelle could tell that he took really good care of his teeth.
"Oi, Takeshi." His dad scolded him. "Go upstairs and change before greeting our guest!"
Yamamoto's laugh had Noelle smiling. Honestly, it was hard not to be smiling when she was around the happy go lucky baseball player.
"Ha ha ha. Sorry about that. I'll go upstairs and change then." And he was off.
Noelle turned back to her platter and resumed eating again.
"You know my son, Takeshi?" Yamamoto's dad asked her when he was out of ear-shot.
"He's a classmate of mine." Noelle paused and then looked sheepish. "And it's kinda hard not to know him. He's pretty popular with everybody."
"...I see." Yamamoto's dad was wearing a small frown on his face. It was strange; he didn't seem happy about his son being popular due to his all-around-good-guy status. "Does he have any close friends?"
Noelle stared at the man for a few minutes before her face took on an thoughtful expression as she thought about his question. She pictured him surrounded by students who praised his accomplishments and admired him, fans who cheered him on whenever he was playing baseball and while she tried to conjure up an image of Yamamoto actually hanging out with someone he considered his friend, nothing came up.
Finally, she shook her head. "...no. Not that I know of. He's surrounded by plenty of people but at the same time, there's some sort of barrier between him and the other students."
"So, no change." His father sighed. "It was the same thing in elementary school. Other people were attracted by his laid back friendly nature but you couldn't exactly call them friends." His eyes narrowed just for a moment that Noelle nearly missed it. "So how's school going for you?"
"Huh?" Noelle looked incredulous. What was with the sudden change of topic?
Then she heard the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs and realized why Yamamoto's dad had quickly switched topics.
"Oh, it's okay." Noelle shrugged. "I mean, the people are nice. Guess the only thing that surprises me is the amount of homework I get!"
She was never going to complain about American education again. The amount of homework the teachers gave them made it look like she had been attending kindergarten class in comparison.
Yamamoto pulled up a seat next to her. "So how's the food?"
"Good! Speaking of food..." She looked up at the sushi chef. "Can I have another platter?"
Both Yamamotos laughed.
"You sure can!" Yamamoto's dad said as he took away her empty platter and started preparing a new one.
"That was an amazing hit!" Yamamoto said.
"Huh?"
"In P.E.! When you hit that ball it went flying away so fast that you scored a home run and got four points for the team!"
Noelle promptly stared at him before folding her arms on the table and burying her head in them. She groaned; apparently no one had told him about the part where she had broken a window and a two-hundred thousand yen vase.
And sorry this chapter is a bit short, but I wanted to get Noelle meeting Yamamoto out of the way so I could get a start on the actual story line! So yeah, this is pretty much Noelle's background from dying to training as a Guardian Angel to setting out for her task.
I'm sure some of the people out there will be picky about Noelle's treatment from her fellow peers, but what do you think? And yeah, the second year girls who don't like her are a bunch of snobs.