From Computerized To Real (On hiatus until July 2021. See bio.)

Chapter 1: Where am I?

I opened my eyes.

I looked at my surroundings and noticed that I was in a triangle-shaped area in the middle of three buildings. Beside me was a large circular fountain. People were walking in and out of the buildings and around the area that I was in, talking and eating and splashing their hands in the fountain. The bright light from the sun reflected off the water in the fountain making the water sparkle.

I was trying to think of where I was when I heard someone shouting.

"Look, over there!"

I looked around, and when I couldn't find anything too exciting to look at, I searched for the source of the voice. I looked to where the voice had come from and saw three teenage looking girls running towards me. They stopped in front of me and started speaking excitedly about something. I couldn't understand what they were saying because they were all speaking at once. But I did catch one word that they said, over and over again:

"Kaito."

The girls kept saying that word like it was something important. What did this word mean? What was so important about it?

I held up my hands in a defensive kind of way. "I don't understand," I said to the girls, but they didn't seem to hear me as they continued on with their excited speaking.

I looked around at the other people in the area but no one else seemed to be watching us. I did notice, however, one girl walking towards me. But she was different from the other three girls.

The first three girls had run over in a hurried and excited way. This new girl was walking over to me in a way that suggested that she was going somewhere important, like she had business to attend to. Apparently, that business had something to with me because she came right over to me. She reached around the other girls, grabbed my wrist and pulled me away from them. This new girl was shorter than me and had shoulder-length reddish-brown hair.

"I've been looking all over for you," the new girl said. She spoke as if she knew me. She turned to the other girls and shooed them away. They began to protest but the new girl told them that she and I were late for something. Finally, the three girls walked away from me and the new girl looking rather disappointed.

"Who are you?" I asked the new girl.

She turned and looked at me, her gray-blue eyes looking right into mine. "What, you're not going to thank me for saving you from those fangirls?" she asked.

"Um..." What were fangirls? And what did she mean she saved me? I hadn't thought that my life had been in danger. Wait...were those other girls dangerous?

She sighed. "Sorry. I suppose I should introduce myself. I'm Annabelle." She held out her hand. "And you are?"

I started at her hand, not quite sure what she wanted me to do. "Uh... I'm... I don't..."

Annabelle lowered her hand. "You don't know your name?" she asked curiously.

I nodded.

"That's weird." She looked like she had just realized something. "Then perhaps you're... Oh, never mind."

"What? Perhaps I'm what?" I asked eagerly. If she knew anything about who I was I eager to know.

"Nothing. It's an outrageous idea."

What was outrageous was that she wouldn't tell me what she knew. "Just tell me!" I haven't meant to raise my voice, but I was just getting impatient with her.

She looked at me funny.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to shout. It's just that I don't know anything about who I am. If you know anything, please tell me." I gestured in the direction the first three girls had walked off in. "Those girls kept saying something over and over again--"

" 'Kaito?' " Annabelle guessed.

"Yeah. What does that word mean?"

"Well, Kaito is the person you're dressed up as," she said. "Do you know anything about him?"

Until Annabelle had mentioned it, I hadn't even realized that I was wearing clothes. I looked down at myself. As I looked down, locks of blue hair fell into my face. I pushed my hair aside to see my clothes. I was wearing a white, thigh-length coat with blue trim. The cuffs of the sleeves were blue with a yellow stripe in the middle that went all the way around the cuff. Underneath the coat I was wearing a blue t-shirt. I was also wearing brown pants and white shoes.

My neck suddenly felt hot. I reached up to figure out why and discovered I was wearing a blue scarf.

Why was I dressed so warmly when it was hot outside?

"No, I don't know anything about him. Who is Kaito--?"

As soon as I said that name, something inside me told me that it was my name. I couldn't figure out why, but it felt right that this was my name.

"I think...I think that I'm Kaito," I said slowly. I looked back at Annabelle. "But I don't understand. How did those girls know my name?"

"I think I know why," Annabelle said. "Come with me. We should go somewhere else to talk. I told those girls that you and I were late for something, so we need to leave here so that they don't get suspicious."

"Okay."

I looked around again. This small area with the fountain was the only place I knew. I hadn't been here for very long, but it felt strange to leave it.

"Well, are you coming?" Annabelle said. I looked at her and saw that she had begun to walk away from the fountain.

"Yeah, I'm coming." I took a deep breath and walked forward.