𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚂𝚒𝚕𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝙾𝚏 𝙻𝚘𝚟𝚎 | 𝙵𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚢 𝚃𝚊𝚒𝚕 - 𝙶𝚛𝚞𝚟𝚒𝚊

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝟺: 𝙰 𝙽𝚎𝚠 𝙵𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚗𝚍

Later...
Community Center
4:25 PM
Third POV:

Gray stood at the door of room 104 as he nervously held the loaf of bread in the paper bag. A girl at the age of twelve stood at the doorway with a blank look on her face. She had short pink hair and green eyes and was wearing a red sweatshirt along with some shorts.

The silence seemed to last forever until Gray finally spoke up. "I-Is Juvia Lockser here?"

The girl shrugged. "She's not here."

Gray could clearly see Juvia at the back of the room reading a book and pointed towards her.

"She's right there."

"Not her." The girl insisted and said, "There's nobody here named Juvia. Who are you anyway? I mean-Are you actually a friend of hers?"

Gray hesitated for a moment and couldn't utter the words to speak.

"Thought so." The girl said before closing the door in his face.

Meredy walked toward the desk that Juvia was sitting in and stood in front of her.

Juvia noticed the look on her face and signed, "Are you okay? What happened?"

Meredy signed and said "Nothing to worry about. There was a rat in the hallway, a really gross one."

Juvia had a slightly disturbed look on her face as Meredy sat down in front of her. Juvia shook her head before opening her water container and offering Meredy a drink.

"Don't worry, he won't be back," Meredy muttered to herself before lying her head down on the desk.

About an hour later...
Gray's POV:

I was walking home eating the loaf of bread I bought after my failure at the Community Center.

I should've known that things would turn out this way. Why did I think I would automatically be forgiven for the things I've done? I'm such a selfish fool.

As I turned a corner, I saw the pink-haired kid from earlier with my bike walking towards my house.

"What the..?" I murmured.

The kid stopped when he saw me and gave me an enthusiastic smile. "Hey, you! Over here! Look, I found your bike! This is yours isn't it?!"

When I got to the pink-haired kid he explained what happened.

"It's a good thing you had your address on it."

"That's great, but where did you find it?"

The boy huffed. "That jerk dumped it in a rice field. Man, it took me forever to find it. Thank goodness I did, and I found you too."

Suddenly the invisible "x" I had projected on everyone vanished as I finally got a better look at the boy's smile.

"Is something wrong?" He asked hesitantly.

"It's nothing. Tell me, what's your name?"

The pink-haired boy gave me a surprised look and said. "Don't you already know? I'm Natsu Dragneel, I sit behind you."

"Uh-Right, I knew that."

A small smile grew on my face as I offered him some bread. "It's really good bread, want to split it with me?"

And that was the beginning of their friendship. From that day on Natsu and Gray became inseparable, well-it was mostly Natsu dragging him around, but Gray didn't mind. He hadn't had a real friend in so long that he had forgotten what it was like.