Jeremie woke up to a loud pounding at the door.

"If you're in there, Belpois, open up!" a gruff, impatient voice shouted from outside.

Jim, Jeremie thought sluggishly. He tried to move on top of his bed, limbs prickling uncomfortably beneath him with pins and needles from the position he had slept in. It was painful to open his eyes, thanks to the bright light turned on in his room (his room? Jeremie couldn't really remember, still half-asleep), but there was also sunlight glaring painfully behind his closed eyelids when he cringed away. Daylight steamed in through a window on the opposite wall, too bright to be morning. Had he somehow slept through the day's classes...?

Before he could remember, the knocking at the door stopped. Too late, Jeremie registered the sounds of a doorknob turning: a hinge from the door creaked as it was swung open, the voice of Jim bellowing loudly into the room. "You had better have a good excuse to give to the principal, Belpois! Your teachers say you missed you missed all your classes this after—"

Suddenly Jim's voice cut off, the silence aghast. Jeremie blinked through sleep, clumsily reaching toward his own face to verify his glasses were on. "Sir...?" he started, bewildered. But, Jim's startled voice interrupted him:

"What the—Yumi?"

All this had happened in seconds. With rising alarm, Jeremie fought back against the fog of sleep that blanketed him, awakening fully to the familiar sight of his dormitory ceiling. He was in his room at Kadic, just as he'd thought before.

Jeremie shifted on his bed he was lying on top of, trying to look at Jim. "What did you..."

Only when he heard a familiar voice near his right ear, a tired groan, did Jeremie register the warmth of another body stirring to life beside him. From the sounds of it, Yumi was clearly just waking up.

"What's going on? Jim...?" her voice asked groggily from the bed next to him. Jeremie turned, baffled, to see Yumi moving sluggishly on the mattress beside him, pushing up with her arms to an upright sitting position. She glanced around Jeremie's room, clearly disoriented at the sight of her surroundings. "Wait a minute, what am I doing here?"

Jeremie opened his mouth to answer—or perhaps, to ask the same thing—but Jim's voice cut them both off before they could speak.

"That's a VERY good question, Miss Ishiyama!" the gym instructor said loudly from the doorway, stepping fully into the room with an angry face that was quickly turning red. "Both of you! Get off that bed, hurry up! Do you have any idea how many school rules you're violating right now? I can't believe this...even from a couple of troublemakers like you two, this has gone way too far!"

Jeremie blinked up at him stupidly, slowly sliding his legs off the bed. Yumi seemed to be a little quicker on the uptake, scrambling to get her feet onto the ground so hastily that she nearly fell over on her head.

"Jim—it's not what you think!" Yumi said, unsteadily straightening herself on the ground as soon as her feet were planted. "Jeremie and I were talking, and we fell asleep, I swear! That's the end of it!"

As soon as she said it, Jeremie's memory kicked into gear. The events of earlier in the afternoon flashed through his mind confirm that, yes, that was exactly what had happened. Jeremie had skipped lunch earlier to return to his room to work, Yumi came along to keep him company, and they'd had an idle conversation while he typed away at his laptop on the bed. They must have fallen asleep at some point after that.

A second later, he realized exactly what Jim must be thinking had happened, having walked in on the two of them asleep in such a compromising position. The idea itself was so ludicrous to Jeremie that he unwittingly let out an incredulous laugh, holding up his hands in a joking sign of surrender.

"Hey, Jim, come on," he said, a little breathlessly, unable to help the stupid grin that spread across his face. Because, really, of all the misunderstandings. "You know that's ridiculous, completely impossible! Yumi and I, we'd never—"

"You think there's something funny about this, Belpois?" Jim barked, pointing angrily to the hallway behind him. "We'll see if you're still laughing once the principal hears about this! I'm marching the two of you down to Delmas's office, this INSTANT!"

The smile quickly slid off Jeremie's face. He and Yumi looked at each other automatically, exchanging a helpless glance, before meekly pulling on their shoes as Jim loudly continued to berate them.

When they stepped out of his dorm, Jeremie saw other doors were opening in the surrounding hall, curious heads of students peeking out to see what all the fuss was about. Classes must be long over by now, he realized. Just how long had he and Yumi been asleep, anyway? It hadn't been late in the afternoon when they went to his room, barely past midday. But with all the attacks going on this week, everyone in the group was completely exhausted...

Feeling the heat slowly rising in his cheeks, Jeremie bit the side of his mouth in embarrassment and hung his head to avoid his classmates' stares. He and Yumi walked in silence down the hall, behind the still-lecturing Jim, both of their sets of nervous footsteps hitting the ground in perfect tandem.