To Be Immortal Means...?

Note: The "immortals" in this story are NOT the same as the ones in the Magic Users series. (Magic Users is AKA Sparkling Love/Twinkling Memories.)

I stepped into the classroom. How boring, I thought, taking a look at the board. Math at the start of the day? Who does that?

Oh, right. Teachers. No wonder I hate school. I glanced at each of my classmates, too. I wanted to cry because I didn't recognize any of them and my parents said that my BFF Kyra was in my class.

"Oh!" I shouted when I bumped into someone. "I – I'm sorry!"

"No need to fret," the person said. I looked up at him. It was a boy with short, blonde hair and kind blue eyes. "I just have a bad attention span." He rubbed his back.

"No, no!" I cried. "I was just standing here! It's my fault, not yours!"

The guy sighed. "Fine. You win." He held out his hand. "My name is Zack O'Connor. It's nice to meet you!" he exclaimed.

"I'm Gina Newman!" I replied, shaking his palm.

Zack kept on smiling at me. "Now if you excuse me, I have to go to my locker. I forgot my textbook." He left the room.

"Oh! Bye," I called.

The rest of the Math class simply blew by. I didn't mind, though. I hated Math, after all – it was my least favourite subject.

And my second least was Phys-Ed.

It was just forty minutes away from lunch, my favourite time of day. We had Phys-Ed, and we were told to go into pairs. Zack was taken already, so I had to go with some other guy, with black hair and mean blue eyes.

And we had to do tennis! Oh yeah, baby, I love tennis!

Main disappointment? Playing against Zack and Maya (she talked to me in English so I knew her name) with some guy I didn't know the name of.

Boooooring.

"Hey!" I shouted at my teammate.

"What?" he asked me rudely.

"What's your name?" I asked him.

"Zero." He had an expressionless face on.

I began to giggle. Of all names, they called him "Zero"? I thought.

"Hey! It's not funny!" he screamed at me.

"Yes, it is!" I shot back between laughs.

"No, it's not!" he continued.

All of a sudden I stopped laughing.

"My parents just really liked the number zero at the time, and it's pretty popular in Japan, too," Zero explained.

"Oh, um, okay," I replied. I hunched my shoulders up.

"Now then, who are you?" he asked me, handing me a tennis racket.

"Gina."

"Okay then." Zero looked away from me and at Zack. He narrowed his eyes, and Zack just smiled.

Quite the determined hottie.

What?

Did my conscience just tell me that Zero was hot?

I totally began to redden.

And then he has a shy cutie as an opponent, it continued.

Was my conscience, also known as my "sense of right and wrong", talking about Maya or Zack?

Zack, of course.

And then the game began.

Well, I don't know how, but it was a tie. But anyway, that was that.

At lunch, I was bored. Kyra did find me, but she had three new friends and ignored me.

And for the rest of the day, I was dazed. I felt like I was being shunned. I really hated that feeling. I just wanted new friends, but that was my worst point.

So after school, what I saw was a bit intense.

Zack and Zero were being killed by some monster.

Or rather, the monster was trying to kill them, but nothing was happening. I hid to watch what else happened.

Zero had a sword – a sword! – and Zack was using some power.

I was shocked at that. I paced quickly, away from my sighting.

That night, I looked "unable to die" on a dictionary website. The word I got was "immortal", and so I looked up "immortal person".

Guess what I got?

"An immortal is someone who can live forever. The main thing that makes that a disadvantage is that they can never fall in love."

I was shocked. Never... fall... in... love. Those four words were ones I thought couldn't happen.

But now I got it. People always thought "immortals" were so lucky to live forever, and wished they existed, but they already have. Another thing it said was that they could "die whenever they wanted".

That's kind-of nice.

The next day, I hung out with those two. I discovered that they were brothers – twins, to be exact. I had always wanted a twin. When I told them that, Zero just said bluntly, "You'd hate it."

For the next week I became friends with them – good friends, too. We all shared our secrets.

Well, all but one for me.

I fell in love with the two. How? Easy.

Zack was really nice and shy and cute and... well, you get it.

And Zero was really determined and protective and cute.

So yeah.

But would I ever tell them? No, of course not. That's embarrassing.

That month, they told me that they were immortals, and that if they were ever to fall in love with anyone, and they meant anyone, they'd lose their immortality and be lousy, old, normal humans.

"Except, you're not lousy or old or normal..." Zero tried to say, "You're way more special than the others."

"Zero, are you blushing?" asked Zack, smirking a bit.

"O–Of course not!" Zero stammered.

After a quick look at him, I could tell Zero was beet red. He was looking away from us angrily and he was really tense.

"Just relax," soothed Zack, smiling at his almost-duplicate. "As long as you don't break the rules, you'll be fine." He stopped smiling all of a sudden. "You haven't done that yet, have you?" he asked suspiciously.

"NO! Why would I, stupid?" Zero screamed. He stormed off, fists clenched.

Zack and I looked at each other for a second. Then we began to laugh our heads off. It had been such a long time since I'd laughed so hard, it hurt.

After school, Zero (who, unfortunately, began ignoring us) and Zack couldn't hang out (which we had planned) so I had to walk home. But all of a sudden I heard a familiar voice.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

Zero?

"How dare you break the rules!" a man screamed at him. "You promised you'd never fall in love. Now that you have, I guess I'll have to make you human and kill you!"

"How many times do I have to say it?! I'm sorry!" Zero tried again. I looked at him. He was... crying? But Zero said that he never cries, and Zack said that was the truth.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry!" the man taunted. "You can't just go and break the rules. Just saying 'sorry' isn't gonna cut it. The penalty since yesterday is death. Do you hear me, Zero?!Death!"

I took a step back.

The man took a look at Zero and made a sympathetic face. "...Oh. You're crying for the first time."

"It hurts, dad! It hurts! Is this why we can't fall in love?! Because it causes pain?!" Zero screamed.

I gasped. His... dad. The man going to kill Zero was his dad.

Mr. O'Connor shook his head and smiled sadly. "No-one knows. I guess... that it's our problem." He played with Zero's hair the way I wanted to. "Why don't we see whether your crush is worth your time. Then we can have an excuse for your life."

Zero just nodded.

Before I had the chance to see who Zero loved, I just ran off. Ran off of pain and despair. I couldn't take it.

Zero doesn't love you. That was the chant repeating in my head. Zero doesn't love you. Zero doesn't love you. Zero doesn't-

"Gina?"

I looked up. Kyra. "Oh. It's just you," I said, tears tumbling down my cheeks. "What do you want?" I rubbed my eyes.

Kyra ignored my snobby comment and hugged me. "What happened?" she asked me.

"S...someone's going to kill this person I'm friends with..." I explained, leaving out who it was, why murder, and what Mr. O'Connor and Zero planned to look at.

Kyra looked at me sincerely. "That's not the entire reason," Kyra smiled and stated. "Come on. You can tell me anything. We're BFFs, remember?" She pointed at her heart.

The Best Friends necklace! My heart soared. I made her a "Best" necklace and a "Friends" necklace for myself. If she still wore it, then we're still best friends...

I smiled. "It's a long story," I whispered.

"You don't need to explain if you don't want to."

I sat down on a bench. "No. I will."

I spilled out the entire story of what happened, right from the beginning when I bumped into Zack and was forced to play tennis with Zero to now, where Zero was in love. I left out the "immortal" part, sure that she wouldn't believe me.

"Oh, no," Kyra said, compassionately patting my back. "That's terrible."

"I know," I responded, "I just ran off. There was a chance it was me, right?"

Kyra smiled and nodded. "That's correct."

"It's a small chance, though. There's hundreds of girls at our school that know Zero."

"No." I looked at Kyra like she was crazy. "That's not it," she began.

"What's not it?" I asked.

"Zero might be popular, and many of the girls know him, but each one loved him and he rejected them all. There's a big chance it's you now. His face was red, remember?"

"Yeah, but he was mad. His face gets red a lot when he's mad."

"He could be embarrassed." My eyes widened at that. "Like, he said you were waaaaay more special than the others. That's something."

"I...guess so..."

"I KNOW so."

After that, I hung out with her, happy that we were talking again. We talked about make-up and clothes, but then she mentioned some guy named Chris Morton who had a huge crush on her.

"Oh! Right... you're still upset about the Zero thing, aren't you... sorry."

"I'm fine," I replied. "I'm fine."

I didn't cry. I was fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm-

"Just go in there and tell her," I heard Mr. O'Connor's voice say.

"NOOO!" Zero's voice screamed.

"Just do it," Mr. O'Connor tried again.

"Stop peer pressuring me!"

"I'm not. If you don't tell her, then you're not gonna be immortal together."

"Grr..."

Kyra and I turned from playing Go Fish and looked at Mr. O'Connor holding Zero by the shirt. They were floating.

"WHOAAAA! How do they do that?" Kyra asked no-one in particular.

"Hello. Are either of you two lovely young ladies Gina Newman?" asked Mr. O'Connor.

"I'm Gina," I replied, pointing at myself.

"Well, my son Zero wants to talk to you."

"No I DON'T!" Zero snapped at his dad.

"You just told me you did."

"...fine," Zero grumbled, teeth clenched. "Gina, can we talk in private?" he asked me.

"Sure," I replied. "Kyra, could you go and check what mom's making?" I asked Kyra.

"Okie dokie!" Kyra saluted and left.

"Dad, just leave. You know what 'private' means," Zero told his dad. Mr. O'Connor left.

"Okay. So. Ummmmmmmmmm." Zero looked unsure of what to say. "My dad's so annoying! He's forced me to do so many things."

"...are you saying you're vulnerable to peer pressure?" I inquired.

"Uh..." Zero looked away from me. "You, my dad and I are the only ones who know, okay?"

"Okay."

"Well, anyway. I've been denying something for an entire month, and I just admitted the truth today," Zero explained. "So I came to tell you."

"What is it?"

"The fact is... I love y–––"

"Mrs. Newman's making lasagne!" Kyra shouted.

"KYRA FRANCIOS! HOW DARE YOU INTERRUPT ME!" Zero yelled.

"Fine, I'll leave," Kyra sighed. She walked out the door.

"Stupid neighbor..." Zero grumbled.

"She's your neighbor?" I asked.

Zero nodded. "But back to what I was trying to tell you." His face became red. "I... I love... love... uh...uh..."

I just stared at him attentively.

"Mn... I love..."

I stayed silent.

Zero just looked at me. He breathed in, then out. Then in, then out.

But then he kissed me.

In between when our mouths were touching, he had said "I...", "Love...", and "You...". The dream words came out of him.

As soon as we stopped, he just stared at me, worried I didn't feel the same. His face was red and now I held his soft hands.

I let myself blush madly for once. "Me too," I replied, closing my eyes. "I love you too."

Zero smiled kindly. "Here," he said, holding out a ring. "It's so you can be immortal, too." He opened his palm to show my hand, and then put it on my left ring finger.

My left ring finger.

"Zero, are you asking me to..." I began.

He nodded. "Will you marry me in the future?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied. "I will."

Zero set a finger on my mouth. "Tell no-one."

"Okay."

And after that, I became immortal. I promised that I'd marry Zero in the future. No-one ever knew. But that would be until they're invited to the wedding.

"Hey, Gina! What are you doing?"

Oh, but they already were.

"Oh, you're writing about us, huh?"

And the wedding already took place.

"Love you, Gina."

"Love you too, Zero."

Life is perfect.

A/N: I'm making the second one-shot for this one, one starring Zack, Chris and Kyra XD Lol mainly because Chris isn't even IN this one. YAY FOR SEQUELS!