"Have you seen him yet?"

The question dictated that he himself hadn't, though Ciel had no doubt in his mind he'd been hearing all kinds of rumors. Alois was wiggling his left foot as rapidly as he possibly could, reminiscent of a dog and its tail. He wasn't left handed, yet when he fidgeted it was always his left leg that trembled the most. Ciel regarded this unplesantry as well, unpleasant, and tried his hardest to ignore the way the table shivered and shook with each coming movement. Ciel had quirks of his own, the pathetic nub of eraser remains on his pencil being a testimony to that. But he did nothing so unseemly that it made noise or wobbled. He cleared his throat, leaning slightly in opposition to his friend. An attempt to reclaim the former margin of personal space.

"Two of them actually, they're twins."

This made Alois' leg twist about even more. So much so that it bumped up against Ciel's own, making his face grow hot from the indecorousness of it all. Ciel did not like being touched. Not by his best friend or by anyone else with proximity in his life. And unlike Alois, he wasn't interested in being touched by the foreign exchange students either. In total fairness, it wasn't as if they were ugly. Or at least, uglier than any of the other students. But something about the two of them put a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. In other words? They made him want to chew his eraser.

"So you did see them! Year?"

Year was dictated by the color of your uniform collar. There were four colors total, and both boys were only on their third.

Alois was watching him more intensely now, expectation quivering in his doll blue eyes. The tabletop danced about some more. Ciel glared at him, and the tabletop danced about a little less. Some days he was easier to pacify then others.

"I only saw them a moment Al, not a full body view."

Alois grew into a silent state, but it was not because of Ciel's abrupt and unsatisfactory way of answering things. Class had begun, and today was the day for Presentations. Normally such information would make Alois even more jittery than before, bouncing off walls as if he were still eligible for the First Color. But even the peppy blond knew that this particular teacher was not to be trifled with. So Ciel would be allowed some peace and quiet to recollect all of his many thoughts. At long last.

"Phantomhive?"

A small sigh escaped his lips, one he was clever enough to keep nearly inaudible.

Or not.

His chair screeched with the very movement of his standing, his heart leapt up a bit, but his legs did not wobble. From standing position, he could more clearly see the upper half of the classroom, and the clean cut between blackboard and ceiling. Alois piped up again, for he could only remain taciturn for sporadic bursts of time, even on his best days.

Their instructor chided him for this, but Ciel couldn't make out exactly what he was saying or what had already been said, for he was busy thinking again. He had to do a lot of this for steady durations, lest he utterly humiliate himself in front of his classmates. One particularly foul morning of Presentations he had Conjured up only half of a doe, and had to kneel over it and snap its neck on site to stop all that pesky screaming. It had scampered fast for a being with only its upper limbs, chest and head. So fast that Ciel had gotten blood all over his uniform. It had not been a good day.

But today would be better, he knew this because he was going to make it that way, he knew this because he wasn't going to be bothered about the weird twins, or his friend's little penchant for them.