Gosh, I churned this out much faster than I expected to. Ryou POV. Credit to TK for helping me when I got a bit stuck. I don't own Yugioh.
SMILE
"Ryou! Think fast!"
I barely had time to register who had shouted at me before I was smacked in the face with something that, I presumed, had once upon a time been some kind of fruit. It was disgusting; I prided myself on managing to keep long hair without damaging it and never having it looking greasy. Seriously, those random goons you get all over the place that talk to everybody were often coming up to me and making an exclamation about how my hair was long but it didn't have split ends, or that it smelled nice, which would develop into a guessing game about which shampoo I used. I didn't even dye it; it was naturally white. Proper white too, not the awful off white colour that looks grey. My efforts this particular day, however, to have nice hair appeared to have been in vain as now not only was my hair covered in the obliterated skin of the 'fruit' and most of its contents, but so was my face and quite a lot of my shirt. I was only too thankful that I hadn't had my mouth open at the time of impact.
As soon as my brain had recovered from the shock and my face had screwed itself up, I could hear the majority of the form burst into laughter. I was scowling as I reached up to peel the solids from my face and hair and to attempt at scraping the juices from my skin. By now I had had enough of an opportunity to recognise the voice of my attacker as one of my friends, but even so this didn't stop me once again revising the reasons that I could not stand nearly everyone in the human race. It wasn't because they'd take every chance possible to assault me with various foods and implements; it was because afterwards they'd laugh about it. I mean, there I am, having done nothing at all to deserve it, but getting bruised, humiliated, pissed off and covered in God knows what all at once. It wasn't even funny. All it did was entertain the bastards for a few moments, and leave me angry for the rest of the day.
This, however, was an exception. Joey, the thrower of the 'fruit', was one of my friends, and I was prepared to make allowances for my friends. Not all the time though; for example, if Joey had deliberately set out to make another one of my friends a laughing stock, I would be making no allowances whatsoever. I didn't care about what anyone thought of me, but I was aware that my friends did; anybody who tried to make them feel bad, or self conscious, or whatever, would have me to answer to. Not the most welcoming of prospects.
After I had disposed of what I could of the 'fruit', I made a beeline for Joey and smacked him in the back of the head. The others I greeted with a smile before I sat down. Yugi was the first to greet me back, although it wasn't really in the most enjoyable manner.
"Ryou, have you done the homework?"
His voice betrayed the fact that he was in quite a panic, and this in turn told me that he had not done whatever homework he was talking about. Poor Yugi; I never did find out how he managed it. Never missed a day, always taking notes and there had not been a single class I'd been told of in which he didn't finish the work set. He was the classic 'teacher's pet' apart from one aspect - when it came to homework he was the most hopeless person in the world.
I, on the other hand, was usually quite good with homework. Keyword being usually. Yugi's panicked words had caused a quiet alarm bell to start ringing in my head, and I looked at him with a bit of confusion.
"Which homework would this be?"
"Maths. The straight line graphs and quadratic functions. The sheet."
There was a moment of silence, during which I simply sat with a blank look on my face trying to remember this particular piece of homework. Various prompts came from Malik who, being in the same maths set as Yugi and myself, knew which homework was being talked about. Clearly he hadn't done it either, but then again, he never did. It wasn't that he wasn't clever; quite the contrary in fact. He was the smartest person I knew. The problem with him was that he was just so lazy when it came to school. He never bothered with classwork or homework; it was once in a blue moon that he could hand in a piece of work that hadn't been copied. How he had managed to stay in the top set for everything throughout his entire school life was a mystery to me.
Either way, the prompts he was issuing me with eventually jogged my memory, and after fishing around in my bag I pulled out my maths book and threw it at Yugi. He gasped and said 'thank you!' at the same time, afterwards rushing towards his place at the back of the room to start copying. Malik didn't take long to follow, although he first decided that climbing over me was necessary to get his maths book from his bag. Which it wasn't; he could have easily gone around. That was another thing about Malik; he loved to do trivial things the hard or awkward way, just to annoy people.
With the two of them now occupied, it was mostly up to Joey and Tea to keep a conversation going. I wasn't the best speaker in the world. I could speak to my friends with ease, but although I could speak to my teachers and other peers if it was really necessary, I preferred not to. Tristan however, the last person in our group, didn't have a problem with speaking to anyone. He was just considerably quieter than Joey and Tea. Or perhaps it would be fairer to say that Joey and Tea were just considerably louder than most people I knew, Tristan included.
Sort of as I had predicted, Tea started things off. "Oh, speaking of homework, have you done anything on the poster for RE, Tristan?"
"Not a lot, I've just printed off some pictures. I don't know how she can expect so much. Annulment is the most ridiculous topic for a poster, I swear to God. What topic did you get?"
"Sex before marriage. Much more interesting."
Tristan looked a little annoyed that Tea had got a better subject than him. I could understand his irritation, though; it must be damn near impossible to make a poster based on annulment. Annulment, of all things! There's not even a lot you can write about it, let alone put on a poster. He should have been at least a little bit grateful that he was getting to make a poster in the first place though. I, being in a different set to them, had a different teacher. My RE teacher was a prick, and wouldn't let us make posters if his life depended on it.
Tristan got over his annoyance enough to keep talking. "What stuff have you got so far?"
"Well," she ticked them off on her fingers as she went. "Sex before marriage can lead to one or both partners demanding sex-"
At this point, Joey interjected. "Tea demands sex from me."
He hadn't made any effort at all to say it so she wouldn't hear; she glared at him for a few moments before continuing. "It can also lead to selfish behaviour, as sex should not be used to satisfy sexual desires-"
He interrupted her again. "Tea uses me to satisfy her desires. She's so selfish."
She didn't even bother to glare, just took a deep breath before carrying on again. "Sex before marriage also encourages the spread of sexually transmitted diseases-"
"Tea has Chlamydia."
"For fuck's sake, Joey!" His third comment earned him a kick in the leg. Tea refused to speak another word, and sat with her arms folded facing the other way. She also had her nose stuck up in the air, indicating that she wasn't really angry. Tristan and Joey sniggered, and I gave way to a grin. What was a bit of harmless amusement between friends?
Tea's sulking posture and Tristan's laughter vanished with the sound of the second bell, and both of them reluctantly reached for their bags. They were in a different form to Yugi, Malik, Joey and myself, so when the 20 minutes of registration began it was to their own form room that they had to go. I had to go to my own seat by the window. Joey didn't move, probably because he couldn't be bothered. Yugi and Malik didn't move either, aside from Malik leaning back in his chair and tilting it onto two legs every now and then. He never was the most patient person, and I don't hesitate to say that he had the attention span of a gnat.
Because I sat by myself, I had time to think without interruptions, and I realised how greatly my mood had improved in the short space of time between being hit in the face and moving to sit in this seat. My friends did me the world of good, they really did. I'll admit that they each had their faults; Joey took jokes too far sometimes, and Tea talked way too much for her own good. Malik could be the biggest bastard in the world, Yugi tended to get a bit grumpy when people had different opinions to him and Tristan often talked like he was the only person in the world who had problems. Despite these things, they were the most fantastic friends I could have asked for, and as long as I had them I didn't want or need anyone else.
Everyone else, however, was the main problem with my life. People just got in the way of what I wanted to do. I had my whole life planned out – I'd go to school and learn, I'd take a bunch of exams, I'd go to university and get a bunch of qualifications, I'd get a good job with a six figure income, I'd get married and have a beautiful family, and I'd live happily every after. These were my plans, and they were being thwarted by everyone else. School wasn't going as smoothly as I'd planned because of patronising teachers and ridiculous associates. There was constant pressure about the results of the exams having to be good, which if anything was only going to make my performance worse. I didn't expect the university bit to go well either; I'd been told by numerous members of school staff that not only are universities tricky to get into, but once you're there absolutely nobody will give two shits about how well you do. And the family bit? From how I could see my life going, that might as well have been in my plans for a laugh. I'd never had a girlfriend; and to be honest I'd never really wanted one. Every girl I'd ever met either smoked or did drugs or got drunk often or had a terrible personality. No one was appealing to me, and if I kept feeling like that about every girl I met, I wasn't sure that anybody ever would.
Humanity just tended to piss me off like that.
Having gone over these thoughts, my mood was again as foul as ever when my form tutor came into the room late and started hurrying about with an assortment of papers and envelopes and files. I turned my head away and frowned in the window's direction. I just could not stand the woman. She was the most patronising, ignorant, laughable piece of shit I'd ever seen. She wasn't even a good teacher. Most of my school's teachers were pretty good, but this one wasn't. She had no idea what she was talking about most of the time, made unreasonable demands of her classes and could not make any decisions whatsoever without the guidance of the Head of Upper School. Like once (she taught the bottom English set) she gave her class five minutes to read four sides of A4. I felt quite bad for poor Joey, and I was so glad that she didn't teach me.
I decided to occupy myself with tapping my pen on the table; a pastime of mine that really got on her nerves. It was this time of the school day that I hated. Nothing was achieved, at all. She set us nothing to do, I could talk to no one due to my sitting alone and it wasn't like I had anything I could be catching up with because I'd done it all. It meant that all I could do was sit and involuntarily reflect on everything that angered me about society and the people I was surrounded by every day. To be honest, I found it rather tedious.
My gaze and frown were averted from the window to the door as I heard someone opening it. I didn't really care for who they were or what they wanted. I never did. It was just a pleasant distraction.
Three guys from the sixth form were standing in the doorway. I longed for the time when I would be able to be in the sixth form to hurry up; it would be wonderful to be able to have finished compulsory education, yet come into school of my own accord. I wouldn't have to wear the ridiculous uniform either. To be more precise about the guys, one was leaning against the doorframe eyeing our entire form like a lion would its prey. The second guy was with one hand holding the door open so it didn't crush the first guy, and with the other hand holding out an inch thick wad of paper towards my form tutor and trying to get her to take it. The third, as that dense woman had her back turned, was doing a 'party boy' around the room, stopping at various people to do the stupid dance at them specifically.
I was one of these unfortunate people. Having some bastard's arms flailing about my head and his groin propelled towards my face was a most unpleasant experience, and all I could do to receive it was look up at him briefly, scowl and turn back towards the window.
As he danced off to thrust himself at others, I couldn't help but think about how much he looked like me. I'd noticed before; it's impossible not to notice when someone looks like yourself, and he wasn't exactly a person you could miss. It was mostly the hair. His hair was white like mine and that's not exactly a common thing, although I'm pleased to be able to say that it was nowhere near as well kept. It stuck up and out all over the place; really, it was like he hadn't run a brush through it in a decade. People were often commenting on how much we looked like each other. I didn't know what he was like in personality as I'd never spoken to him, but from what I had observed he was nothing like me. We only had one common trait; neither of us cared about other people's opinions. It was easy to tell. If he cared, he'd at least brush his hair every now and again.
Aside from that, we appeared to be opposites. He was loud, I was quiet. He got on with anyone he wanted, whereas I had difficulty. He thought having fun was the most important thing in life. I thought differently. Without going into a novel of detail, he was the model example of the kind of person I absolutely detested.
I turned back to look at him. He had joined the other two again, and they seemed as if they were about to leave. A welcome idea to me. A distraction was good, but a bad distraction was worse than no distraction at all. The guy with the paper was standing there faffing for a minute before my form tutor shooed the three of them out. It was the first sensible thing I'd ever seen her do. Two of them walked straight off, but the guy who had been dancing, for one reason or another, felt the need to stop. He pressed as much of himself up against the glass door as he could. This was, perhaps, one of the most juvenile things I'd seen for a long time, until he decided that he also felt the need to lick the door repeatedly. This was then, without a doubt, the most juvenile thing I'd seen for a long time. The rest of the form, of course, erupted with laughter and giggles and "oh my God"s. I just couldn't believe anybody could be so disgusting as to lick a door. The only thing that consoled me was that he could have gone a step worse and licked the carpet.
My form tutor, again, had to shoo him away, only this time she tried a bit harder by opening the door and actually making a shooing motion with her hand. At least it worked this time and the last guy did leave. Gosh, how I hated people like that. They were so infantile and vulgar, just to amuse all these people they'd never spoken to. It was beginning to piss me off to such an obscene amount that I forced myself to stop thinking about it. I was, however, spared the chore of having to conjure up another thought when the bell for first lesson rang. The thought was there automatically; which lesson did I have? As I rooted through my bag once again for my timetable, I vaguely remembered that Yugi was in possession of my maths book. After brief thought and the discovery that I had Physics, I figured that I'd leave my maths book with him. He'd keep it safe, and I really couldn't care less where it was as long as it was returned before the maths lesson.
Ah, that was fun to write. And now, I know almost exactly where I'm going to go with the next chapters. Reviews make me happy (and the reply function works again! Yay!)