Brrrrzzzzzt. Brrrrzzzzzt. Brrzzzz—
Stein slammed his hand down on the alarm clock and checked his watch—5:00 AM, just like always. He didn't know why he checked his watch when the alarm went off. He'd set it to go off at five every morning and it did. Maybe it was all the horror stories he'd heard about alarms not going off when they should have, if they did at all.
With a yawn and a sigh of regret, he dragged himself out of his cocoon of warmth and pulled on his clothes. It was freezing, so he dressed quickly. Padding out into the living room of their dorm, he flipped on the kitchen light and started making himself breakfast—Spirit didn't trust his cooking anymore ever since he "got sick" from it, so he only cooked for himself now. With a plate of noodles and eggs, he sat down with his textbook and started reading. Shortly after, Spirit got up, rubbing his eyes blearily. As if he has a reason to be tired. He probably got a full night of sleep. Poor, naïve thing that he is. Stein thought. He almost envied Spirit his ability to sleep through anything, but then he thought of the implications of that, so he went back to reading.
"Dammit, Stein, why do you always have to wake up at five? You're so noisy when you get up," Spirit said.
"I have to do my homework. I'm working on that paper for Soul Study."
"Paper? What paper?" Spirit said frantically.
Stein thought for a moment. Now which paper am I doing, again…? "Oh, the midterm."
"What? School started two weeks ago! Why are you working on the midterm?"
"Keep your voice down or you'll wake the people next door. Gosh, you're so noisy when you get up." Stein said, not looking up from his book. Spirit bit his lip and sullenly huffed his way to the kitchen to make breakfast.
"…so when you see a meister with a soul that is blue, the person is most likely high-strung or—in rare cases—psychotic…." the teacher rambled on. Spirit and Stein sat in the back of the class and attempted to listen to the lecture. Or at least, Spirit did.
Stein was currently making a forest of pencils on the desk by standing them on their erasers. It wasn't as easy as he'd thought it would be. Several of his erasers weren't flat anymore because he'd used them so much, and some had eraser caps on them. If one pencil were to fall, the whole thing would topple, scattering his pencils everywhere.
It was right when Stein was standing his last pencil up that Spirit noticed what he was doing and smacked him in the arm, sharply telling him to pay attention.
The scattered pencils fell to the floor with a tickety-clackety-clack and Stein had to scramble to pick them all up. Several rolled off the front of the desk, assaulting the student in front of him, who turned around with a glare.
"Sorry," Spirit said as Stein stretched himself over the desk to try to recover his lost pencils. They were too far away. The professor had stopped his lecture. "Stein, sit down!" Spirit hissed.
"But I need my pencils back," he protested, putting his feet on his chair to give him more reach. The chair bucked out from beneath him, and with a squeal of surprise, he fell face-down on top of the student in front of him. The rest of the class burst into laughter. Even the teacher was hiding a chuckle—badly. Stein untangled himself from his classmate and rubbed his head.
"Okay, class, settle down. Franken, are you okay?"
"Hng… yeah…"
"Jeffrey, are you alright?"
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"Alright. Please return to your seats."
Stein, still rubbing his head, trudged back to his seat and flopped down into it, scooching down low so he could only barely be seen above the desk.
"Did you at least get your pencils?" Spirit hissed in irritation.
"Yeah." Stein said. "And his lunch ticket."
