A seven-year-old girl repeatedly taps her sandal against the floor. Impatiently, she puts a hand on her hip, blows a strand of hair away from her face, and flips back her teal pigtails.

She'd been waiting ten minutes for the boy in front of her to finish playing her favorite game, NegiCrusher. She already played every other game in the arcade except the one he was trying to beat right now, and she's just dying like melted ice cream right behind him to get her hands on the joystick and buttons.

She crosses her arms over her chest and stares at his back. He looks to be around twelve, has a mop of short brown hair, is wearing a knitted blue scarf around his neck, and a navy colored jacket. She can't blame him for his attire considering the mid-January snow piling up outside, but she happens to be comparing it to her own clothes.

She and her white t-shirt with her cherry red skirt and black stockings; she was never really affected by the cold weather like everybody else was. The differences that separated her from the other kids didn't seize to irk her.

'How much longer is he going to take?' she wonders.

But after a minute of silence to think up more complaints, she's then captivated once she hears the noises from his gameplay. The sounds of the lasers rapidly being fired at the enemies match the constant mashing of his buttons. She glances over his shoulder to take a peek at the screen that's flashing a rainbow of colors in his face.

Her widened eyes reflect the game, shining from her amazement as she watches the numbers in the corner rise. Up and up. The numbers keep changing to the next one in line- five to a six, six to a seven, seven to an eight. They suddenly increase more and more, taking gigantic jumps from hundreds, even thousands. Before she knows it, another number adds onto the five digit score.

One hundred thousand points and still ongoing.

The game finally switches to the black completion screen that displays the scores in a white pixelated font. He inputs his name while her eyes are attached to the numbers: 120,341. It's at the very top of the list- the first place position she's been striving to achieve. Right next to it under the name heading, the boy puts "KAI" as the three letter capacity.

The tealette runs up to him and tugs at his sleeve.

"How did you do that!?" She points at his score and beams, "I've played this game a bajillion times and I've never gotten that high of numbers before! How'd you do that!?"

He laughs and gives her a look. "You wanna know?"

She furiously nods her head. He slips a coin into the slot and positions his hands on the controls. The game commences with the character coming into the screen.

Even though he hasn't revealed his techniques yet, she's watching his hands like a hawk- just in case he would attempt a single move he wouldn't tell her. She wants to get straight into figuring out his tricks and perhaps copy every one of his movements the next time she plays.

"So when you get here..." She's distracted by his hand on the joystick that his voice nearly startles her. Her gaze trails to the screen where he continues to speak. "You jump to this platform. Then when the negi approaches..." A walking green onion appears in the game, "you attack it as many times as you can before it gets the chance to attack you."

"Oh..."

"When it drops down here... you jump off the platform to the vicinity where it can attack." The characters nears the green onion just about to conjure up a move. "Since it takes a few seconds until the move hits you, you want to jump back on that platform, and at the same time it unleashes its attack, you come back down from behind and damage it. Keep jumping on and off to avoid getting hurt and hit it when its facing the other direction."

"Ohh... that makes sense. I usually just charge after it and attack as fast I can..."

He smiles, saying, "Do you want to give it a try?"

She shows him a toothy grin and he scoots over to make way for her. Once his hands are off the machine, she takes his place as the player. She's elated to give his advice a spin and her eyes are immovable from the screen. The girl is too enticed to stop now that she's practically smacking the buttons as she leans closer, diligently watching every movement like she's on a mission for flawless gameplay.

The last enemy disintegrates into little pixels, causing her character to pump a fist in the air, leading to a black screen. Scores appear one on top of another so slowly she swears she's going to die before seeing her place. All the previous scores from before are recorded and her own ascends on the list.

'Fifth, fourth, third...'

Inserting itself below first, she replaces second with 101,027. Her expression lightens. She happily types in her usual arcade initials, MKU.

"See? I knew you could do it." He comes up behind and pats her back.

"Ah, I'm so happy! This is my highest score yet!" she squeals. Without a thought, she whips around and throws her arms around him in a hug. "Thank you, thank you!"

They pull apart and she's staring him in the face with gleaming blue eyes. Seeing him now, just by doing this small thing for her, she can only smile. He's venerated by this little girl.

"I'm Miku." She holds out a dainty hand.

He shakes it and replies, "I'm Kaito."

. . .

Word Count: 973

. . .

Side notes: A childhood scene from my soon-to-be published fanfic, "Just Hit Restart" (JHR).

A/N: You guys don't know, but I am very much in love with this fanfic I have planned. It's an old idea from February and a couple months ago, I decided that I was going to revive it. JHR is an action-packed RinLen with a pinch of KaiMi, mixed in with video games. Len is the protagonist who teams up with his unusual crush, "Rin," and his best friends Kaito, Miku, and Gakupo.

I wrote this drabble as a little sneaku peeku for how Kaito and Miku met... and my excuse for wanting to write kids. Kids are fun to write because you can exaggerate and make them all cute and bubbly. Also smol Kaito, originally a brunette until he dyed his hair blue at age fifteen. This drabble scene will be included in the actual fic, but perhaps with improved writing.

#lazydrabbletuesday