Disclaimer: I don't own YuGiOh!

I'm pretty sure in Japan, students eat lunch in their classrooms.

Clothespins

Domino High School was in a rut. The students were trapped between week-long holidays, three-day weekends and snow days. No one wanted to go to school, especially with the end of the year fast approaching. What was the point? Kids dragged their feet and groaned out greetings to their classmates. Even the teachers were walking around like brain-starved zombies.

Until someone had the greatest idea ever in the history of DHS. A school-wide game. And what suited the main high school of a city well-known for its game tournaments better?

A mystery student had distributed simple wooden clothespins through out the grades. They were the cheap kind that could be written on. Not everyone had one, and some of the few that did quickly marked theirs with an ambiguous tag. Their favorite singer's name, the number to a Chinese food place along with the memo, "Call me," or scribbled drawings. But most of these select few clothespin holders kept them blank, for the purpose of recycling them among the student body.

And soon kids were walking around with clothespins hanging off their uniforms. It was a huge game of tag, where multiple people could be "it" at the same time, and stay that way until they discovered, much to their chagrin, that they had been silently branded. Most of the time, that discovery ended with a shout of curses and then a fit of giggles. If there was a tag on the pin, the offender was hunted down, (which was a downside of writing on your clothespin.) What is someone had tagged someone in your name, without you knowing?

Eventually the clothespins were becoming something of a Valentine's Card. Girls chatted during lunch about how many times they'd been tagged. But never by whom. That was always a secret. Because the clothespins were continuing to morph into something even more than a Valentine's notion, especially for the juniors and seniors.

By the time this new aspect to the game had spread, the box at the end of the hallway, (that had a sign tacked to it with scribbly handwriting, "Please Recycle Clothespins Here,") was almost always completely empty.

Domino High School also had the reputation of being incredibly competitive. The entire student body was abuzz, and the grating sound of dragging feet soon turned into the excited banging noise of heavy-footed running.

Let the games begin.

////

Tea groaned in disbelief. The puppy had chewed up her clothespin.

'It's destiny,' she thought to herself. She eyed the perfect handwriting, how she had painstakingly written each delicate black stroke, to spell out her clothespin tag, "I love you," in French.

'Je t'aime,' she mouthed.

It was her only clothespin, and now it was broken. God really didn't want her to tag Yami, Tea concluded. She threw the half-chewed pin in her bag anyway, with a defeated sigh. And just like that, it was game over.

////

Sitting at her desk, Tea flipped the pin around in her hand slowly. It was all for the better, right? Wasn't it? After all, how would she get to tag him without him noticing? Those huge purple eyes were pretty observant. Maybe after all that dueling. And the Other Yugi only came out in a duel. How could she possibly tag him? In the middle of a duel? It was just stupid to begin with.

Someone snatched the pin from her hands. Tea looked up to give the offender a piece of her mind. Boiling blue eyes met with those of calm cerulean.

"Kaiba?" she sputtered, even more pissed.

"Je t'aime?" he read off her tagged clothespin. "S'il vous plait." He said it just like an angry Frenchman.

He smirked and threw the pin back down onto the desk. Tea felt like she was about to explode, and her red face didn't hide it. Embarrassed and angry, she chewed at her tongue. How dare he? It was none of his business.

He should just keep his hot French-speaking self away from –

"Comment?"

"Excusez-moi?" he asked rudely.

Kaiba really wasn't expecting her to say anything back, so when her mouth opened to spit more useless words at him, in French, no less, he was annoyed. To say the least.

When nothing else spurted from her, Kaiba briskly walked away, and sat at his desk. People had been walking around like idiots all week, with clothespins hanging off various articles of clothing. Kaiba was immensely satisfied that no one had the nerve to tag him, or to do so without getting caught just yet. He didn't want to play their stupid game, anyway.

'What a bitter cookie,' Tea thought to herself.

She rested her chin in her hand and mentally berated herself for getting to school early. No one else was there besides the happy-go-lucky CEO and another boy she'd never got around to befriending. Tea took a look around, and sighed. The other boy was writing intently. The sound of his pencil hitting against the desk as he wrote was incredibly aggravating to the girl. Tea guessed that Kaiba, who sat four seats behind her and two seats to the left, was probably reading something. The girl didn't want to turn around and look at him. No, that would be satisfying for him. He loved the attention, and she knew he would love the idea that he was still on her mind and bothering her, though he'd already left her presence. But she was terribly curious for some reason. There wasn't anything else to look at in the room anyway. And she finished all her work the night before, it wasn't like she could pull something to do out of her bookbag...

Tea decided that it wouldn't be so bad if he caught her. She could pretend that she's heard something. But, damnit, then he'd think she was crazy. Better than putting her head down on the desk until class started, and him him think she was lazy.

Tea laughed. That kind of rhymed. She heard a book rudely snap shut. She turned around. She jumped when she saw Seto Kaiba staring in her direction.

"If you don't mind, Gardner, people are trying to read."

"Is my laugh really that bad? Or loud, for that matter?"

"Yes," Kaiba seethed.

"Moron," she spat, and turned back around. The jerk was probably mad that she had told him off earlier. He was the one who'd parked his limo in front of the school entrance. Why was he mad at her?

"Your name calling hurts," he quipped.

Tea badly wanted to stick her tongue out at him. But she gracefully kept her cool and stayed put, with her body facing the front of her room. If her mouth had any inclination of allowing her tongue to poke out, there was no way for him to see it.

Students were beginning to pile in, and the atmosphere finally started to thin out. The few who had arrived right after Tea and Kaiba's little "spat," might have noticed that the air was so thick that one might have been able to cut it with a spork. The sun was all the way up in its official morning position.

Apparently Kaibas only came out at night. Maybe their icy stares were nothing more than a children's myth, Tea mused, as she chatted it up with her friends, who had finally arrived. Of course that was beyond stupid, but so was Kaiba's face. He was a big Stupid Face. Tea grit her teeth visibly.

"Tea, are you okay?" Yugi asked delicately.

"Yeah, sure, sure," she said, waving her hand dismissively. And then she did it. Tea turned unconsciously around to the back of the room, where Kaiba sat. She'd felt his eyes piercing into her back, or at least that was the excuse her brain made up.

Nope, the stare of the mythological Kaiba wasn't so made-up after all.

A smirk instantly appeared on his smug face. Tea twitched.

////

When Joey Wheeler suddenly and silently stood up, Kaiba's deep blue eyes flickered over his book to the left side of the room. He gave an amused huff. Wheeler was trying to get a clothespin onto Gardner's uniform blazer.

He was leaning haphazardly over his desk that was situated right behind hers. She was writing in a notebook. Her mouth was slightly agape with concentration. Kaiba could see a vein in Joey's hand throb, and his knuckles turn white under the pressure of his own weight, as he tried to reach over his desk to her with the other hand. 'How sad,' Kaiba thought.

Tea tucked a few strands of loose hair behind her ear, and suddenly ducked down to her bookbag, where she kept it on a hook on the side of her school desk. Joey had been within an inch of clipping her, and he had decided to go for it at the worst possible time. He missed, and his pin fell to the floor in between his desk and Tea's. Kaiba saw his lips mouth an expletive.

Kaiba really had no interest in Yugi's little cheerleader. But he did have to give her a pin's head worth of credit for having him realize that the school's stupid clothespin game could possibly be a tad bit of fun for him. Joey Wheeler was going to have one more tally mark under his losses to Seto Kaiba.

////

Lunchtime couldn't have come soon enough.

Students began to clear their desks and push them together into the usual lunchtime groups. The door opened, and lunch attendants with their white aprons and hairnets made their way in, along with the lunch carts.

"Lasagna!" Joey and Tristan screamed, before the lunch attendants had even opened the lids to the warmers on the lunch carts. One of them smiled and greeted them; it was a daily occurrence.

Students lined up for their lunch. Kaiba stayed put, and produced an apple, along with the book he'd been reading that morning, before Gardner had decided to rudely interrupt him with her exasperating laughter.

The room got loud and the usual lunchtime activities and chatter began. It was, however, unusually loud that day, and Kaiba's mind drifted away from his book.

"Dude, you really gotta take better care of your deck," Tristan told Joey, who had his Duel Monsters cards sticking out of the pocket of his uniform blazer. Tea laughed, and agreed. She had her legs crossed. Her skirt fell mid-thigh. Kaiba looked away, only to have his eyes land on a face that was perfectly framed by chocolate hair.

"Tea, I bet you're really good at this clothespin game," Yugi piped up. He gave the girl a warm smile, but she shook her head.

"Nope, not at all, why do you say that?"

"Oh, I don't know...you look like you could tag someone without them knowing. Quietly, you know? I mean, you're a dancer, and all, right? I'd think you'd be graceful."

Tea's face went pink with embarrassment. The sweetness of the moment was ruined by the disgusting sound of spitting and choking.

"No way!" Joey howled. Tristan's snickering made it seem like he agreed.

"Tea's always the loudest. She can't keep her trap shut durin' duels, how's she gonna tag somebody?"

Kaiba almost broke out into an ear-to-ear grin. Tea's face went from a gentle pink to a fierce, fiery red. Her arm instantly stretched out and grabbed the blonde's ear. The look on her face said that she wouldn't hesitate to rip it right from his head. The girl pulled so hard that his head slammed down onto the desk, inches away from his tray of lasagna.

He screamed out his apologies, and the girl seemed to forgive him. It made Kaiba's stomach lurch the way they all laughed together after something like that. He would have had an employee murdered for such outward treason.

"Anyway, my only clothespin got really messed up. I have to get a new one so I can play again," she admitted, and took a bite of her lunch. She did so with a elegant little flick of her wrist, that didn't go unnoticed by a pair of azure eyes from the back of the room.

"You'd better hurry, Tea, before the only way you get your own clothespin is after someone tags you with theirs," Tristan commented. Joey looked away. 'Pathetic puppy,' Kaiba thought.

"Who would want to tag me?"

"Of course someone would tag ya. I don't see why anyone would wanna tag, uh, Kaiba over dere," Joey snorted, and pointed his nose to the CEO.

Kaiba gave a soul-shattering glare in return.

"Shut up, Joey!" Tea whispered. Too late. Too loud.

"You're the last one to talk, Wheeler. I saw you try to clothespin your little girlfriend there, and fail miserably."

Tea rose an eyebrow and quickly turned to the boy sitting across from her. Joey jumped up, growling, embarrassed. "Stay outta dis, Kaiba!"

"Why so touchy, mutt?" Kaiba was terribly nonchalant. He took a bite out of his apple. He twirled it around the base with his index finger and thumb. The crunching, crushing sound of the bite resounded through the classroom. "Not my problem you can't even pin someone sitting right in front of you."

"Is dat a challenge, rich boy?"

"That's enough!" Tea urged, under her breath. Joey and Kaiba went to their respective metaphorical sides of the ring. The gang went on to talk about something else. No one mentioned the clothespin game for the rest of the period.

Kaiba laughed to himself from behind his apple. That settled it. He was definitely going to tag Tea Gardner, and show that dog how it was done, in effect, putting him in his place. A doghouse, perhaps? Kaiba smirked. Amusing.


I'll admit it's not the best chapter. D: I needed to get the story going. Reviews are appreciated. :D Thanks to everyone who reviewed the first chapter.