Heal you

Chapter 1 - Hope There's Someone

Lukas woke up with a start: nothing good ever happened when he dreamed about the past. He cursed his damn dream and early awakening.

Grumbling, his right hand left the sweet and warm blanket to reach his phone. He took a look at the bright – too bright – screen, indicating 5: 32 AM.

Well, at least he slept more than 5 hours. Still better than yesterday. Groggy, he stayed here, staring at the screen a few more minutes, unable to act or think normally so early in the morning. God, waking up really was terrible. Couldn't he just sleep all day?

He put his phone down and let it fall on the ground; then, mind blurred, he let his eyes acclimate to the darkness, an arm still hanging on the side of the bed. He stared at his room, from the large Norwegian flag to the old pictures, too far and too little to be seen with precision – in the dark, they were just black rectangles covered with paler stains.

Laboriously, he raised his hand to take the cross-shaped hairpin he held dear, making some papers fall in the process. His eyes stopped on a bunch of pictures, more recent this time, now scattered on the floor along with the letter they came with. Yeah, he seemed to be happy without them, and somehow it made his heart ache. He felt terrible to think that way: he should be happy for his friend, but for many reasons he wasn't even close to it. He was envious of all this happiness, envious of these people smiling everyday as if life was beautiful, envious of this pretty girl standing by his side. Really, what could be so great about her? She wasn't even smiling.

Within half an hour, he succeeded to get out of his bed, stepping on a few pictures before wandering his way to the kitchen. Coffee was everything he needed, after all. He took a mug, filled it with the hot, marvellous dark brown liquid and started to drink it while preparing his second one.

He was there, standing alone in complete darkness. No perturbing noise or light: only black, grey, and his beloved coffee. It was so calm, so relaxing. So perfect. At least until light bled through one of the doors and someone started running all around his room. Damn, how did Mikkel manage to be so noisy on his own? He guessed his older brother was just a phenomenon – and not in a good way.

He started to grieve his moment of peace when a tall guy with blue eyes, blond hair and a far too recognizable grin appeared through the door.

« Oh, hi, Lu'! Looks like we both woke up early.

- We're always the first ones up.

- Yeah, but- 

- Stop. First cup. No talking. Just shut up and go before I throw you through the window.

- Roger! »

The Danish Norwegian rushed to the bathroom like every morning to fix his hair during an entire hour – how having this stupid haircut was worth it, Lukas kept wondering – leaving the Icelandic Norwegian n°1 on his own. Of course, he did so as noisily as humanly possible, which didn't surprise his brother one bit: no one could say that he was anything close to quiet, discreet or silent. In fact, he was rather a pain in the ass.

Now, third to enter the living room: an angry Swede, awakened by the noise and ready to hit a Dane. An usual morning, so.

If they lived here, altogether, it was for two reasons. First, the brothers' parents had been looking for a place to let their children stay while they took a trip around the world. Second, it allowed them to attend the prestigious international school known as Hetalia Gakuen. No one really knew why the school name was in Japanese, though, or what it meant exactly – Japanese students probably found it funnier to see people argue about the name's meaning than giving the slightest hint of an answer – but the rumour wanted the founder of the school to be Japanese, and the name to say something about how stupid Italians were. It had no chance to be true, right? What kind of people would call a prestigious high school with such a stupid name? That's nonsense.