Average
MK
DNAngel
For Lucathia_Rykatu

	If you asked anyone at school, they'd tell you Niwa Daisuke was pretty average.  
His grades were decent, even in art and gym.  He wasn't outstanding in any particular 
class. He was a bit clumsy, but always well intentioned, polite and in a rush to get home 
after school.  If he sometimes seemed tired, well, his father had been away for a long time 
and his mother often asked him to run errands, and he took time beyond that to do 
favours for his neighbours.  He was nice, average, kind.

	He had a crush on Risa, which was obvious, but again, normal.  All the boys liked 
Risa.  The question was always who, aside from Dark, did Risa have interest in?

	Riku hadn't really cared before outside of her interest in her sister.  They argued 
and competed and sometimes threw things at each other, but they were sisters, and they 
cared about each other.  So of course she was interested, but it wasn't exactly a priority.

	Until Daisuke.  At first, it was nothing.  Daisuke was too normal and average to 
have caught Risa's attention, too ordinary.  He was safe.

	And then suddenly, it looked like her predictions ha been all wrong.  Suddenly, 
Risa was making lunches for Daisuke, meeting him nights out and telling him things.  
What they talked about, Riku had no idea, but it bothered her.  

	Not because she was jealous, (which she was, sometimes, being just friends with 
Daisuke) but because so often he would look sad afterwards.  He'd mope a little, droop a 
little, and then straighten his spine and focus like he had been given some kind of talking 
to.  Sad, resigned Daisuke hurt Riku.  He wasn't himself.

	So she stepped in and did what she had promised herself she wouldn't doÑgot 
involved.  Only pushy or more outgoing girls like Risa did things like that, not Riku.  But 
she did it, and kept doing it, and it was embarrassing and awkward at first, and then easy.  
Scarily easy.

	Out of nowhere, Riku had Daisuke's attention for real some of the time, instead of 
his sometimes-somewhere-fleeting distraction that anyone could have.

	They were friends, maybe best friends sometimes.  She saw more and more how 
she wasn't the only one focusing on him, how much people didn't know.  It became clear 
very quickly that Daisuke was far less ordinary and boring than she had thought.

	Satoshi, some had gossiped, stared at Daisuke sometimes.  Only it wasn't just 
sometimes, it was Ðalways-.  Riku knew now that he was obsessed with, fascinated by 
Daisuke.  And Daisuke wasn't entirely oblivious.  Sometimes he would flush or stutter or 
run away, and other times he'd seek him out directly.

	And those conversations with Risa were about DarkÑwhat Dark might like, how 
to improve her cooking for Dark.  As if Daisuke would have anything to do with a 
criminal like Dark.

	And Daisuke could paint and jump like she never saw him do in gym class.  He 
always said it was an accident, or luck, but it wasn't.  Daisuke did things no one else 
could, and it all rolled off him naturally.  He was shy about it, not gloating.  Almost as if 
he didn't want people to know.

	Daisuke, Daisuke, DaisukeÑwho sometimes said or did strange things, who had 
the attention of Satoshi (who was cold but openly acknowledged as gorgeous and 
important) and of Risa (her much prettier sister) andÉandÉ

	Before, Daisuke had been special to her, but to no one else.  Safe from others.  
But now she knew he was special and so did they, and that scared her.