AN: Don't own DGM—if I did, then I wouldn't be here, writing drabbles.

Something akin to a drabble about how Kanda is smarter than he seems and acts. This was written for a purpose, actually, to sort of explain something to a someone who knows who they are.

^_^

Kanda Yuu wasn't the type of person to be deemed 'smart' by the people who knew him. He hardly cared for reading (when was the last time he even picked up anything closely related to a book other than a mission report???), and preferred to gutting akuma to anything related to math.

So most people brush him off as an idiot. No one really acknowledges him as being 'sharp'.

He was fine with that, too—if he was known for being smart, like Lavi, he'd be pestered nonstop by the Science Department for help with this or that. However, that doesn't mean that his memory was any duller than any of these allegedly 'smart' people, or his reasoning was any slower.

Kanda just chooses to be modest about it and not wear the huge neon sign with a fat, pink arrow saying 'I AM SMART'.

So to evade that fat pink arrow, he's settled to playing dumb. Lavi isn't the only actor around here.

When someone cracks a joke, he pretends not to get it (he does, oh he does, but it's really not that funny). When a certain idiot rabbit drops his innuendos and romantic (che, as if) little 'riddles', Kanda gets it and knows the answer immediately. He's just playing dumb.

Like so:

"Baka usagi, what do you want for Christmas?" Kanda, being the courteous, kind gentleman he was, was getting gifts for everyone (in actuality, forced by Lenalee to compile a gift list).

"Yuu-chan, you should be able to guess~" Lavi says, his eyes twinkling. He grinned before wrapping his arms around Kanda.

Kanda got the stupid little hint and most certainly knew what he 'wanted'. But he's got to stick through with his act.

"I have no idea what the heck you want, baka usagi. Get off me and tell me, or you're not getting anything at all."

"Aww, Yuu-chan, you're not fun at all! If you can't guess this, then I'm not telling you," Lavi said, unlatching his arms.

"I'll see you around, Yuu-chan!" he chirped, and darted away before Kanda had a chance of castrating him.

When he was properly out of sight, Kanda took out the little notepad Lenalee gave him.

Then, in chicken-scratch handwriting (this on purpose too) he wrote:

'Don't bother about Lavi. I already know what he wants.'

He could literally hear inside his head Lavi's annoying voice: "For Christmas, Yuu-chan, I want Yuu!"

And he was actually right. The next day, with much pestering (from the annoying redhead, of course), Lavi said exactly that to him.

So with his blank glares that are angry at nothing and everything, and his perpetual scowl of annoyance, most people think that's he's too thickheaded to get these things. And even Lavi, who prides himself in knowing every damn little thing about him, doesn't know this fact.

Some people call it 'playing coy', but the only 'coy' he's interested in are the ones swimming around in a pond. Girls do it to play cute, but honestly, Kanda's not a girl, and he most certainly is not cute (the aforementioned idiot rabbit would like to object) and does not want to be cute.

His memory isn't that bad, either, but people who talk to him have started to think that he has short term memory loss. He chooses the term 'selective hearing', because honestly, none of their idle chatter is worth his time. Kanda's ears have a filter on them—if it's not important enough, then he won't listen to it.

Like Lenalee's constant chirping, or Komui's rants about Lenalee's nonexistent boyfriend (poor girl; at this rate, she'll have to become a lesbian), or Allen's protests about his non-beansprout-ness.

And 97% of all Lavi says.

There's no love anymore But why 97? Even Kanda doesn't know. Perhaps 99 or 99.9 is too cliché, and thus not worth Kanda's attention.

Or because that inside all that babbling, there were things that Kanda actually wanted to listen to. 3% is not a lot, but it's more than expected.

But point is, Kanda is not clueless or stupid. In fact, he's extremely smart.

He just chooses to outsmart them all by acting dumb.

What did I say? Drabble, right? Still, you've come this far, please press that lonely little button that says Review!

Thank you!

~Chuugoku-chan~