I See Red
Chapter 1: Red Panties
Okita Sougo can pin the blame on one specific person apart from the girl herself, and that would be Tokugawa Soyo, the top student and one of the class reps of class 3Z. She was the one who promised to show the weird transfer student around and to give her the tours and all that tedious nonsense that class reps classically enjoy doing. But suddenly there she was, bringing the transfer student to his table and asking him to take over.
"Why should I? I'm not interested in showing that thing around school." Was it even a girl? The student-in-question had lazy eyes hiding behind swirly eyeglasses, much like their homeroom teacher, and was lazily picking her nose as she was being introduced.
The girl didn't flinch upon his statement. She had those weird things on her head, those buns with golden embroidery, and briefly Okita wondered if she could understand Japanese or not.
Soyo, not even fazed about what the girl is doing, gave Okita her best smile. "It's my mistake, I know. I have too many responsibilities with the student council since we have the school festival coming up after exam week. We had a number of unexpected problems and it will take up most of my free time to fix them, so…"
"Ask someone else to do it. The Disciplinary Committee is also occupying my free time." Okita already turned away and opened up the latest Shonen Jump, not bothering to finish their conversation. Then came the first time he heard her voice.
"Soyo-chan, it's fine, yes? I don't need a guy like that showing me around. Who knows, instead of showing me around the school, he might just lead me to the bushes outside where he buries his bones or where he takes a dump or something."
"So, the pig can speak Japanese." He smirked. "Tokugawa-san, you heard it from her. She can go get lost and find a separate magic kingdom or something."
The girl's foot came flying towards his face. Sougo blocked it with his forearm, and he felt something in him spark, riding in that magic that he felt moments before.
Before he knew it, he was aiming for one of those damn buns with the embroidery—what the hell were they called anyway?—and it was much harder than he thought, because that girl kept dodging and dodging and her feet and arms and head were all aiming for him to bring him down. She had just missed each time she had tried to hit him, and he also found himself hitting the air each time he aimed for her.
That was until he hit something solid. The victorious smirk he would have smirked was cut short when he realized he hit something clad in white, and much more solid and old-smelling than what he was expecting.
"Souichirou. Kagura. If you guys want to kill each other you're in the wrong high school. You aren't in the Battle Royale universe. Idiots."
"It's Sougo," mumbled Okita as Ginpachi-sensei's fist lightly tapped him on the head. He saw that he did the same thing to the new girl.
"Gin-chan, he started it! He was rude and he was going to dig a hole and take a dump in front of me, a proper lady. Yes he did."
"Sensei, she was acting like a real yankee just now. As a member of the disciplinary committee, I was only enforcing the law."
Ginpachi-sensei bonked them both over the head again, this time a little harder, and both of them rubbed their heads in pain.
"Play nice, you two. Detention for fighting in the classroom and destroying school property."
True enough, the teacher's desk, a ceiling fan, and at least five desks were destroyed in their scuffle. He could see a number of their classmates cowering in the corners furthest from them. Kondou, the head of the disciplinary committee, must have tried to stop the fight at one point, but he was passed out under a desk. Hijikata was helping him up and glaring at him from afar.
The teacher rubbed the back of his head and mumbled something about teenagers and their raging hormones. Softly, he turned to the girl and muttered, only loudly enough for Okita to hear, "Kagura, it's your first day here. Take it easy, won't you? Gintama High isn't anything like where you came from."
The monster girl puffed her cheeks and crossed her arms. "S-sorry, Gin-chan. I'll try."
Ginpachi then turned to Okita. He had eyes of a dead fish, and Okita felt like putting on the stern look he was giving him at that moment was too much of a strain for his facial muscles. "And you, Soda-kun. I expected more from you. You have to treat the new students kindly. Usually transfer students who come in the middle of the semester end up being one of the main characters in a manga."
"It's Sougo." He said this knowing full well that it will go over the silver man's head, and true enough, he was muttering for the girl and Yagami Souichirou-kun to fix their mess and to go straight to detention after class.
In a class like 3Z, destroyed desks were nothing new. It was mostly from Shimura Tae's angry rampages with every creepy attempt that Kondo did to woo her. One time it was when that crazy guy with long hair called Katsura—who wanted to dissolve the Disciplinary Committee for being "dogs of the corrupt school system"—put cherry bombs in their desks.
Any ordinary school would have expelled them for all their attempts, but Ginpachi-sensei always found a way for them to stick together, because god as his witness, all of the slobs in his class will graduate if it's the last thing he did. To be fair, that guy's hair must have turned so white from taking care of wayward students for all these years.
Classes ended by that time, and as part of their punishment, Ginpachi let everyone else go home, even those who were originally on cleaning duty, leaving the two of them alone. Tokugawa, who is at fault for everything that happened, gave both of them a sweet smile before leaving. Okita saw an evil gleam from her eyes, for some reason…
The new girl wasn't as fiery as she was moments ago—the result of the telling-off she and him got from Ginpachi. Sullenly, she arranged the tables and chairs at the far corner of the room as Okita took care of the blackboard.
The room was eerily quiet, only filled by the sound of the baseball varsity team practicing outside, and it bothered him. Usually he could keep his mouth shut, but for some reason, he couldn't, around her. He blamed that weird spark that he felt earlier, and even though she quieted down and was seemingly trying her best to avoid him, that weird, pissed-off feeling he had for her wouldn't go away.
"What's with you and the homeroom teacher?" he said in the most monotone voice he could muster.
The girl kept her mouth shut, not even looking in his direction. She quietly continued to rearrange the tables.
He knew that with his next words, he was asking for it, but he couldn't stop himself. "Gin-chan, huh? Calling sensei so familiarly. Are you guys shacking up or something?"
In the blink of an eye, one of the desks from the far end of the classroom flew to his head. He caught it with some difficulty, but he was at least able to avoid further damage to the room.
Her face was as red as her strange-coloured hair. "What is your deal anyway, Yagami Sofa!? I've only ever heard you say mean retarded things to me, idiot!"
He rolled his eyes. He decided to ignore the misnomer—it was getting tiring to correct these idiots. "You misunderstand me, China-girl. I only want to learn more about you, since you're the newbie and all from another planet. Isn't it normal to be curious about our dear transfer students?"
"And who says you could call me China-girl, you—you Chihuahua from Planet S? Do you want to see red?"
She misused the term, he realized, but didn't feel the need to correct her. "You didn't answer my question. So, how long have you been sleeping with the teach—"
Her foot was in his face again. He caught her leg in between his two hands, and he gave her a smirk. "I see red, alright. Although, your panties are closer to fuchsia than red—"
She growled like an animal and kicked through his grip. Automatically his hands moved to get those god-forsaken buns off her stupid red hair again, his body unconsciously moving in-sync with hers, parrying every blow, throwing hits that don't quite make it to their targets. The background noise disappeared, and it was only him and that China girl and the blood pumping through his veins and rushing to her rapidly reddening face in that small space in the universe.
Somewhere along the way, he was pinned down, and she was pulling on his hair and yelling something in Chinese to his face, her blushing cheeks so damn close to his, and then something hovered behind her and her stupid red face was getting farther and farther, and-
"Oi, you punks! Stop it this instant!" An angry voice came from somewhere. The smell of tobacco filled his nostrils, and the small universe broke.
Tsukuyo-sensei lifted the younger girl by her collar. For her small frame, she was deceptively strong. She had an unlit cigarette in between her teeth, and it was clear that she was on her way to her cigarette break when she heard their fight.
"Seriously, you two are terrible at cleaning a room. Kagura-san, what were doing to Okita-kun? Is that how you treated others in your previous school?"
Kagura pouted. "Sensei, he started it—"
"It doesn't matter who started it." She sighed. "I… understand your situation, Kagura-san. I know it's difficult to adjust, but… you can't let your father down. And don't think that we'll let you off easily just because he's a teacher here."
Okita blinked twice at this new information. He tried to recall the morning, when China-girl introduced herself. He wasn't paying attention, but he didn't recall her saying her last name, or anyone pressing her about it for that matter.
"… I understand, sensei," she said. Her swirly eyeglasses hid her eyes.
Tsukuyo-sensei sighed again and crossed her arms over her bosom. She then turned to Okita, the cigarette clenched firmly between her teeth. "You should know better as well, Okita-kun. You know you can't afford any more trouble for yourself."
Okita nodded. "Yes, sensei." He put his hands in his pockets.
"Now—I don't want to add any more detention time for you two. I will speak to Sakata-sensei about you two." Without another word, she dragged them by their collars to detention, where they sat in sullen, angry silence for the rest of the afternoon.
It was almost predictable what happened the next day—this whole situation is playing out to be a third rate shoujo manga plot. Okita felt an annoyed vein bulge out of his forehead as he listened to China-girl whine incessantly to what Ginpachi-sensei ordered them to do.
"Gin-chan, you can't be serious! I can't stick around this lunatic, no siree! He's so stupid I feel my intelligence quotation dropping by the second the longer I'm around him!"
"It's quotient, stupid. And if that's true, it must be in the negative thousands by now," he muttered, earning him a glare.
"See what I mean? Please, Gin-chan. I can go on cleaning duty or write I won't act like a violent shonen manga heroine on the black board five hundred times..."
Ginpachi-sensei didn't even look at her, only continued to suck that ridiculous lollipop with the smoking end. "Not my decision, kiddo. I had to speak with the principal after Tsukuyo-sensei caught you aggressively making out in the classroom after destroying what's left of the desks—"
"We were NOT making out—" the China girl shrieked, and Okita put his palm to his face, thanking the fact that they were arguing in Sakata's cubicle, where no other student would have been at that time.
"—and Principal Hata told me to do whatever is necessary to make you two blockheads get along. So, until you guys can prove that you won't destroy this school every time you run into each other, you have to get used to each other." He took out the rainbow-coloured candy from his mouth and pointed it at Kagura. "Besides Kagura, I've seen your lousy excuse of a transcript from your previous school. I prefer that one of the top three students make sure that you adjust well in our curriculum… and Soba-kun is the least busy of them."
Okita sighed. "Sensei, I have duties in the Disciplinary Committee too… this kind of arrangement would get in the way, to be sure."
The arrangement, of course, was basically what Tokugawa wanted to happen in the first place, which means that Okita would be showing Kagura the ropes, giving the tours, making sure she adjusts, and making sure she does decently in class, even going so far as him being her personal tutor, especially in Japanese classes.
"Ah. About that, So-la-ti-do-kun. You're temporarily suspended from the disciplinary committee until Kagura can make it on her own."
Okita clenched his teeth and opened his mouth to protest, but was cut off. "Be glad that you aren't suspended from school. That goes for the both of you actually."
The two of them shut their mouths.
The silver-haired teacher nodded. "Okay. So you two promise me, all right? Get along. You don't have to be friends if you don't want to, just don't kill each other on sight. And for the love of god, be nice." He glared at Okita when he said the last sentence.
"Got it," they both mumbled, and they were dismissed after.
- end ch 1 -
AN: I have loved OkiKagu for a long time but I never had the courage or the ideas to write fic about them. I was planning on something more ambitious but it is difficult for me to write. Instead this one wrote itself. Pardon my mistakes-this was intended as a one-shot, not even a proper one, but for some reason it's spanned more than 10 pages already and I had to cut it into chapters. Please give me feedback (on stylistic aspects would be good too, or if i got their characterizations right). Thank you for reading.