Fuller summary: the gang find out about the new relationship between Hao and Yoh and predict huge consequences. With Anna's help, they cook up a plan to both make Yoh and Hao come clean and teach them a lesson. Unfortunately for Horo and Ren, this plan means that they have to pretend to date each other…
Ren looked down onto the dark street, his unblinking gaze obscured by heavy rain lashing against the window.
He let his stare flick to the front of the classroom for a few moments, before getting bored and returning his golden eyes to the abandoned darkness outside.
He watched as his warm breath misted against the panes before it recoiled slowly to once again show the dreary weather of a winter's Tokyo.
Ren absently began writing into the condensation, not really caring if the teacher noticed.
But really, if the poor woman had not yet noticed that every one of her students was either asleep, on their cell phones or flirting at Hao, she wasn't going to notice one Chinese kid with purple spiky hair writing on the window in Mandarin.
Ren honestly didn't think that she knew that she had been teaching Science in a second year English lesson for the past month either.
He sighed quietly.
Substitute teachers, eh?
After what felt like an eternity of doodling onto his desk, Ren cheered inwardly at the sound of the bell.
His joy flew away from him like an uncaged bird, however, when he realised that it was lunch time.
Lunch time on a rainy day meant eating in the noisy, crowded cafeteria.
So, as always, Ren and Hao secured the table whilst Horo, Yoh and Manta gathered the food.
This method always worked well, partly because Horo was strangely good at carrying trays, partly because Hao was very good at getting any group of girls to give them their table and partly because Ren was good at being too damn stubborn to let anyone else have the table once it was secured.
When food was brought back to the table, Hao and Ren stared at their trays with mouths agape and eyes twitching, before pushing the food away from them for fear of nuclear waste content levels.
Yoh spooned some sludge up and held it at eye level, before letting it splash back onto his plate, causing small splodges to fly everywhere.
Hao glared at his twin and wiped his sleeve on him, before spooning up some of his own lunch and flicking it at Yoh, who ducked.
Ren's eyes widened considerably when he felt something splat into the back of his head.
He quickly attacked himself with paper napkins until most of whatever someone had hit him with had come off, before turning around to face Hao, who had gone pale and was grinning sheepishly at Ren, but quickly moved when Ren threw his entire plate at him, which flew on to hit the wall and fall onto the floor, sludge side down.
Unfortunately Horo, who was walking back from the serving area with a cup of juice, didn't see the plate until he had stepped onto it, causing the plate to slide forward, taking Horo's foot from beneath him, making him spill his juice over a nearby cheerleader and fall flat onto his back.
The juice-stained cheerleader, after shouting "NON!" for all the world to hear, promptly tipped her strawberry milkshake all over Horo's head.
Ren, seeing this, took Hao's tray (Hao had since wandered away somewhere), put it half off the table and stamped his foot down on the other side, thus catapulting Hao's plate across the lunch hall.
Ren quickly ducked under the table as balls of sludge flew his way, grabbed Horo by the ankle and dragged him under with him.
"Aahh!! Shit, dude! It's in my eyes!" Horo shrieked, rubbing his eyes furiously.
Ren sighed before handing Horo a clean napkin and dodging a very well aimed sludge ball.
Hao jumped onto the table that Ren and Horo were taking refuge under, before shouting "FOOD-FIIIIIIIGHT!" at the top of his lungs and diving under the table with them.
"Ow! Watch it, Usui!" Ren growled
"Not my fault! It's stuck like gum!" Horo retorted
Ren muttered to himself and glared hard at his reflection.
They had all safely crawled away from the food fight, and now Horo and Ren were in the boys' bathroom to get the gunk off of themselves.
Horo sighed.
"Ren, we might have to cut it all off."
Ren might have overreacted and told Horo to go and get run over, had he not caught the other shaman's devilish smirk in the mirror.
Ren rolled his eyes.
"Just keep cleaning, Ainu baka." Ren ordered.
"Don't have to. You're done," Horo replied, walking to another mirror and pulling a face, "Like my headband." He untied the previously white strip of material and pulled it off of his head. Remnants of the strawberry milkshake were caked into places where the fabric had been folded, the rest of the headband had also been tinted pink.
Horo's face twisted in disgust and he threw the tainted headband into the nearest trash can.
Ren watched with catlike curiosity while Horo washed dried flakes of milkshake off of his forehead. He couldn't help but notice how… different Horo looked without a headband on… he looked almost older, more mature.
Ren shook his head. As if Horo could ever look mature.
Horo suddenly let out a sound that was a strange mix of a growl and a sigh.
"I will be happy if I never see a strawberry milkshake again for the rest of my LIFE," Horo mumbled, pulling at his knotted hair, "It won't wash out! My hair will go purple!"
"What's wrong with purple?" Ren growled.
Horo muttered something about blue being manlier (at which Ren felt like stabbing him for)
"Rennnnnnnn, help meeeeeee!" Horo whinged. Ren rolled his eyes.
"Come here, fool."
Horo sighed happily and closed his eyes. Ren was being surprisingly gentle, for some reason. Horo remembered trying to get all of the dirt off of his scalp that time they played with the spirits of Goblin Soccer. It felt like Ren was trying to pull all of Horo's hair out on that occasion.
"Okay, class. Today we will be focusing, our cameras that is," The teacher stopped for a moment to laugh at her own joke before continuing, "Today we will be focusing on zoom shots and lighting. Now, get into your pairs from last lesson and set up your areas."
Horo and Yoh had been paired together, meaning that Horo had to do all of the work most of the time.
Horo reached up to adjust the lighting when somebody calling his name across the room startled him and he spun around, knocking the light so that it was now shining right into the back of his head.
"Horo!" Hao shouted, "Do you have a zoom lens I can borrow? One that can fit my Canon?"
Horo sighed and told Yoh to give his brother the lens while he readjusted the lamp.
As they had nothing else, Horo whipped the headphones from Yoh's head and set them on the table before taking a few quick snaps at different angles.
Being Horo, he was quickly getting bored and decided to walk over and see if Hao had broken his lens yet.
Seeing Horo coming, Ren switched his camera back to capture mode and quickly stood with his lens only a few inches away from his object: Bason's memorial tablet.
"Ren, one: we are working on zoom, two: you are so close to that tablet that it must be out of focus." Horo pointed out.
"Close-ups are a type of zoom, and not if I use the Macro. Now flit off somewhere else, will you?" Ren replied without so much as looking up, not noticing the sudden rush of heat to his cheeks.
Horo ignored Ren completely and wandered over to Hao (but not without jogging Ren on the way), to see the flame shaman doing what he did best… melting things.
Luckily for Horo and his Y5,000 lens, Hao's victim was a cherry-scented candle.
"You do realise that our teacher won't give you extra marks if the candle is melted." Horo commented
"Yeah, well. She said to use something that either conveys our personality or our past. I'm hot and as we both know, I played with fire quite a bit during the tournament." Hao smirked.
Horo sighed.
"Yoh's headphones don't really show my personality or my past… I need something more… me."
"You could always get Kororo to whip up an ice sculpture," Hao shrugged, "Ice is 'you', isn't it?"
Horo shook his head.
"Hey, at least we have three more weeks, eh?" Hao concluded.