A/N LISTEN UP

You need to read this or you will have no idea what is going on.

-clears throat- The main character, Mr. Ashton, is writing letters to his pen pal. In other words, you. He can't exactly write you letter after letter without getting any response, can he?

No. Which is why you MUST review for his story to go on.

And this is not going to be yaoi. I'm not much of a yaoi fan.

This is Ripple writing you a author's note, for the first and (hopefully) last time.

Disclaimer: I do not own any characters you recognize. All the rest? ALL MINE! -evil laugh-

Life is a pain. No matter how hard you work to force it your way, it slips out of your boundaries and whips back to smack you in the face. With a fish.

Sorry. I really should introduce myself before I get too far ahead. Especially since you are my new pen pal. Feel free to ask me questions, or tell me your story. I'm interested in hearing what you have to say about the mess that is my life. Anyways, my birth name is Raiden Sereno Ashton. I know, terrible name for a kid. Raiden is the name for the Japanese god of thunder. Consequently, my nickname, Rai, means 'thunder'. I am fifteen years of age, young for a sophomore in American High School.

I tried to be normal, I really did. But somehow…my overall self discouraged people from becoming friends with me. Actually, they refused to be within an arm's length. But maybe that's because I've never completely shaken off the title 'New Kid'. I might as well get it tattooed on my forehead.

Dad'n'I move around a lot, because he's one of the best tutors in the world. New jobs are always popping up. Dad wants to save money for college, so I always go to public school. The kids there don't even know who Dad is. All the better, I don't want to be seen as a nerd as well as a freak.

You're probably wondering what happened to Mom. Well, two years back, she got fed up with all the moving. They worked out that Dad would have custody over me, and Mom would have custody of Reizo, my identical twin. See what I mean about my parents being terrible namers? We live in AMERICA. Not JAPAN. Also, Reizo and Raiden. NOT good choices for identical twins. We have the same nickname, just spelled different ways.

Off track again. Sorry. Every time I do that, feel free to smack me. So back to my first comment. Life hates me. Well, it seems like that. 'Life is nothing without friendship' says Marcus Cicero. I guess mine is nothing then.

At least, that's the way I was feeling at the present time. My dad had just pulled me out of the first school I was actually starting to settle down in so he could go to a new, better-paying job. Normally, I'd be fine with that. But I had one problem with this arrangement. The location.

We were moving to Japan.

Hoping to find you well,

Rai Ashton

P.S. Write back soon!