Hello readers! I am Pikachika23, the writer of this story. This is the typical disclaimer: I don't own Pandora Hearts or any of the characters, and the plot is only loosely based on the actual manga, but still includes the original plot elements.

Anyways, the characters in the beginning really only include Oz and Alice, but the others such as Gil, Break, Sharon, etc. will all show up sooner or later. Be mindful that this is also a romance between Oz and Alice, but the rating WILL NOT CHANGE. Just thought I would inform you.

Okay, I will end this note here and enjoy!

Oz

As I walked into the classroom, the one thought echoing in my mind was: It's the same thing…

The classroom was typical: rows of desks neatly arranged before the whiteboard. The teacher's desk, which was piled high with lots of papers and scattered with stray pencils and pens, was tucked right in front of the entire class. I caught sight of one of the top papers: a test taken nearly three months ago, with tons of blank spaces that weren't marked incorrect. In other words: this teacher was a slacker.

Most of the desks were occupied. A group of four girls that were conveniently arranged in a square were busy talking their lives away and hair-flipping every two seconds. A kid with these huge glasses was holding a huge book and only looked at me for one second before he lost interest and got sucked back into the pages. Besides him, I didn't get any attention.

The teacher was an old, nice lady that probably couldn't touch my shoulder even if she stood on the tips of her toes. I had to crane my neck downward to see her, which made me feel pretty rude. "Everyone, this is Oz Vessalius," she said, standing on several huge dictionaries in the front of the class. "He is a new student here and I hope you'll treat him as your friend."

Then, when before I was invisible, twenty pairs of eyes fixed their target as me. The whispering immediately began. "Vessalius? As in Vessalius Resorts?"

"His father must be that famous hotel owner!"

"His family must be rich!"

Then, the murmuring ceased, and they waited, anticipating and excited. I had to say something…anything…All I really wanted to do was tell them to please, just leave me alone, I don't want this, not again…

Instead, with a huge eye smile, I said: "Hi everyone! I'm Oz, and I look forward to attending school with all of you!"

Idiot.

The girls swooned after I spoke, like I was releasing pheromones just by greeting the class. Everyone clapped politely, almost carefully. I mentally sighed. I knew that no matter how outgoing I was, there was no way they were going to overlook the fact that I was the son of one of the richest people in Japan. They would treat me more like a servant treats their master than they would treat me as a friend.

I always remembered moving around Japan. When I was five, I had walked straight into a van of a couple of kidnappers after they held out some candy to me. Yup, in other words, I did exactly what they tell kindergartners not to do: accept gifts from strangers. Father hired a complete police force in order to get me back home. He knew that it would happen again if necessary precautions weren't taken. He suggested bodyguards to me, but I didn't want them. Considering that I was five when he told me this, I imagined a bunch of giants wearing black suits and pointing guns everywhere. It took him five hours to coax me back out from hiding under the bed.

But later I realized it was just that I didn't want to be followed around my whole life. Instead, I agreed on one thing: I would attend public schools, where it was always so crowded a kidnapping couldn't be missed. And if anything was attempted, I would move. Immediately. It was a little better than having bodyguards. Just a little.

This was probably my fifth school, which wasn't too bad considering it was ten years since I was successfully kidnapped. You would've thought that people would come daily to carry me away, but they didn't. "Sit right back there, next to Alice," the teacher told me, waving her arm in such an obscure direction that I couldn't tell which empty seat would be mine. "Alice, please raise your hand."

But before I could even spot a hand from shooting up into the air, one girl commented, "Oh, but Mrs. Luis, don't you think that if Oz sits next to her, he'll lose all of his happiness? After all, she sucks your soul." The rest of the class giggled.

"I'd appreciate if you'd be quiet once in a while," Mrs. Luis responded coolly, and I could guess that this kind of thing was nothing more than typical inside this classroom. But, the comment did make me wonder about this "Alice" person. "Alice, please raise your hand."

Slowly, an arm was raised into the air from the far back corner next to the windows. There sat a girl with long, brown hair and a small plait down each side. She wore a dark sweatshirt with the cartoon of a white rabbit falling down a hole, a pair of jeans, and white boots. Her legs were crossed underneath the desk. She was staring out the window, not even looking at me. She was bored, and I wasn't doing anything to help her situation.

I walked down the aisle and plopped down in the desk next to her. "Hi," I said brightly. "I'm Oz."

"I heard you before," she said absentmindedly, still staring out the glass.

…

What, no introduction or anything? Huh, this was strange. As Mrs. Luis began to start the class, I wondered what was so different about this Alice character. It had come to my attention that girls just naturally swooned as long as they were within a ten-yard radius of me. But she wasn't even shaken.

No, I'm not an arrogant jerk that needs to have every single girl chasing after him. In fact, it makes me pretty scared when a bunch of members of the female gender stare at me with those creepy, bright and blinking eyes. But it was normal for that to happen, and a girl that couldn't care less about my presence was pretty out of the ordinary. It piqued my curiosity.

And a curious Oz is…interesting.