Hello all. Random new story from moi. I like this one. I'm going to update and finish it to take a break from my other two stories (I don't plan for this one to be very long). I've been trying so hard to write them that it seems my brain has set up a wall against them in protest…'Seeing Miniature' fans, can you survive on this for a while? New readers too? (I'll probably still make the odd update on my other stories too, when I have a random burst of inspiration. It happens.) Hope you all enjoy.

I Found Your Diary

Chapter 1

It happened in the morning, when everyone was making their way from homeroom to their first class of the day. The hallway was jammed and everyone had been forced to a complete standstill. Whilst he waited with the rest for some teacher to attempt to clear the congestion, he happened to look down. And he saw it.

Just a notebook. Most likely dropped by some hapless student, and now left lying in the middle of the floor for one thousand pairs of feet to trample on. Left to its demise, probably forgotten about already. Such a shame.

Without really knowing why, he stooped and picked it up, brushing the accumulated dust off of the shiny, padded black cover. A nice notebook, with a proper spine as opposed to a spiral binder. Reasonably thick, not too heavy. One of those books that just feels satisfying to hold in one's hands.

He wondered for a moment who had dropped it. The thought was almost immediately dismissed. What a stupid question. It could have belonged to any one of his one and a half thousand fellow students.

He realized that the traffic was finally beginning to shift. Making a note to hand it into lost-and-found later, he shoved the book into his bag and valiantly fought his way forward through the tide of dull-hearted adolescents who dragged their feet and hung their heads and tried to make their way to class as slowly as was humanely possible. How he hoped that he would never grow to hate school as much as that.

He was managing to make reasonable progress through the crowd. Maybe he'd actually make it to physics before lunchtime.

As it happened, he did. He wasn't even late. How lucky. Or perhaps not. If he had been held up for a while longer by the almost impenetrable mass of humans and semi-humans, then that would have been a few moments less he would have had to spend in the tediousness of this class. He may not loathe school as much as many of the other pupils, but physics was far from being his most wakefulness-inspiring subject.

He took a seat at the back of the class and mentally prepared himself for a mind-numbing fifty minutes of listening to (well, being vaguely aware of hearing) Mr Malden, AKA Merry Malden. Needless to say, the nickname had been applied solely for the purpose of irony.

He was so busy brooding over the unfairness of life that he almost missed his name on the register.

"Tala Ivanov!" the teacher called for what must have been the second or third time.

"Here," he replied, managing to restrain any remark about how he disliked his name being insulted by being spoken in such a sleep-inducing monotone. Normally when someone heard his name for the first time, they did a double-take it was so unusual. But if, heaven forbid, he was ever introduced to anyone by Merry Malden, they'd have hung themselves before he even got to his surname.

Shortly afterwards the lesson began. Almost as soon as it did, eyelids around the room began to droop as if on cue. Unperturbed, the man kept droning on. Tala wondered if he even noticed that no one was listening to him. Looking around the class just now, half of them were asleep, those lucky enough to be seated by the window were making the most of their vantage point and the rest were either doing homework for another class, passing notes among themselves or just doodling. And of course there was himself, twiddling his thumbs and staring at a particularly remarkable area of the floor where the corner of a grey linoleum tile had been peeled back to reveal the dull concrete underneath. Tripping hazard, that.

Maybe he should try counting the cracks in the ceiling.

Or, then again, he could try staying sane.

He started rooting through his bag to find something to amuse himself with. Piece of blu-tack, packet of chewing gum, scrap paper, anything. Anything was better than this torture. Death by monotony.

His hand found the rescued notebook. He pulled it out and plopped it onto his desk. Whoever had been careless enough to lose it surely wouldn't deny him one page to keep his poor, motivation-starved brain alive?

He flipped the book open at a random page.

And it was full of writing.

He blinked and looked closer, leafing through the creamy-white sheets of paper. Page after page of small, neat handwriting, written in everything from plain pencil to glittery blue gel pen.

He went to the very front page. It was a yellow colour with purple flowers creeping all around the border and the words 'This Diary Belongs To' stamped in the middle, with a dotted line underneath.

The line was blank.

But there was writing in the book. So it belonged to someone.

A diary. Right, that meant reading anything in it was a gross invasion of some poor soul's privacy and therefore was a crime he should be hanged for.

…

But he had found it on the floor. Had it fallen, accidentally, out of an over-flowing bag? Or had it been left, no longer wanted? Would anyone ever come to claim it at lost-and-found? Or would it simply become swallowed up among the teeming mass of old gym shorts, plastic figurines, hair bobbles and the odd sock?

Reading just a little wouldn't hurt. He wouldn't say anything about it. No one would ever know. He'd hand it in later, and there'd be no harm done.

His fingers eagerly turned to the next page. The first entry was dated a few months ago. All animosity towards physics forgotten, he began to read.

9th April

I've never tried to keep a diary before. I always thought it a stupid, sentimental practice that people used so that in the future when they have forgotten the woes of their youth they can read their generally fictitious diaries and look back with sickening nostalgia. I never had time for such things. But now I am considering that maybe, if I write the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, then perhaps my thoughts, dreams and memories will actually be worth something in the distant future when I have taken up life as a hermit and am ruling over an ever-growing colony of cats. Such is my outlook for my life.

Ah yes, my life. Such a dull matter. What wonderful bedtime stories I'll have to tell my children and grandchildren (or cats, as it were.)

Then again, the real reason I'm writing this could just be that my Guidance teacher has insisted upon it. She says that life is easier to understand if it's all written down and recorded. Personally I think that life loses its worth if it all has to be documented and filed away in the back of some dusty drawer probably never to be thought of again. How sad. But regardless of this opinion of mine, I still have to write this. 'No less than two pages a day,' I've been told. She insists she won't read it, just look through to make sure that I've written a sufficient amount each day. Oh yes, and if someone left the D-Day plans open on Hitler's desk he wouldn't have read them.

Perhaps I should introduce myself. Or maybe not. Does anyone really care who I am? I'm whoever you want me to be, whatever simple definition you think suits me best. If you think I'm a worthless, pathetic nobody, then in your eyes I will always be a worthless, pathetic nobody, regardless of what I say or do to change your mind on the matter. So why should I bother telling you who I think I am? What do you care?

I won't write my name or any of my personal details. I want you to form your own opinion of who I am through what I write. If you knew my name and recognized it, then your opinion would be biased by the way you see me act in the outside world, at school or at home, it doesn't matter. That's not ME. I am only me HERE.

I wonder who I'm even talking to. This diary? Some never-before-acknowledged imaginary friend? After all, it's not as if I plan on allowing anyone to READ this. Certainly not. Unless I leave it behind after I die and then millions of years in the future, when the human race has driven itself to extinction, higher life forms from other planets may come down and find it and think it a useful source for finding out what it was like to live as a 21st century, angst-ridden, hormone-high Earthling teenager. But apart from that, anyone who reads this while I am still alive will find themselves with their heart cut out and limbs chopped off and being fed to a pack of rabid wolves before they can even say 'I didn't know what it was, I swear'.

Here, Tala squirmed uncomfortably. But this person couldn't kill him in nasty ways if they didn't know he'd been reading. And really, how could they know? If they bothered to claim it at lost-and-found, they wouldn't know who had handed it in. And even if they did find out and decided to interrogate him on whether or not he had read anything…he could deny it. Hell, under pain of torture he'd deny it. There was no proof.

Feeling somewhat consoled, he continued reading.

There are a few things I must mention about my character, however, for you (whoever 'you' are) to form a proper opinion of me.

Firstly, to other people I am the person who could have been in your class since primary one but you never notice their existence until it's graduation day and you're looking through the yearbook and you see a photograph of them with 'Most Likely to Die Alone' underneath. I'm not entirely sure what the reason for this is. I seem to have some kind of anti-people barrier around me that repels all human beings within a five-mile radius. I've just never made friends in school. Or anywhere really. That's the second thing you should know. I am the 'lone wolf'. Perhaps the primary reason for this is my mysterious afore-mentioned barrier but I can't really deny that I've never made much of an effort to interact with other people. It just never seemed necessary to me. What do I need friends for? To surround me like flies buzzing around an open sewer? That's what the 'popular people' look like. Do you think the flies actually care about the open sewer? No, they just want to see what they can get out of it. The situation with those of high social status is somewhat similar. Think about it. We all know they are perfectly unpleasant people. So why should they have so many friends? The answer is: they DON'T. They have no friends. Only flies in human form.

I think I openly expressed this view of mine to them at some point. Needless to say, many were highly insulted. Another contributing factor to my living as an outcast. And guess what? I couldn't care less.

There, two pages full. I think that's enough inane babbling for one day. I bid thee farewell. Bah.

He closed the book slowly.

…

Some first entry.

Who was this person writing this? It annoyed him that they had refused to write their name, or anything, really, that would allow him to work out their identity.

But…he wasn't supposed to work out their identity. He was supposed to decide who he thought they were. The two seemed to be rather different.

He gave a smirk. Well, this should be fun. After all, Tala Ivanov always did like a challenge.

In case anyone's wondering, other characters will come into this…it seems that, coincidentally, a lot of the different teams (despite them all actually coming from different countries) attend the same high school. Now ain't that funny.

Anyone want to vote on a pairing(s)? I never know which ones to put in.

Please review!

Until next time…

Fiver