By the time I got to school, the first bell had already rung and I couldn't find my classroom. Ugh, stupid alarm clock! I looked at my schedule, which told me I needed to go to classroom 3A. I rushed down the hallways, hoping not to run into a teacher. I already knew what they would say; "Were off to a mad start, Miss Mullens." I ran into a hallway and saw that all of the doors were labeled with metal plaques marked 1G, 2G, and so on. Ok, this is the G hallway. I thought to myself. I turned to the next hallway to find that all of the hallways were marked with P. P? Isn't this supposed to be the H hallway? Argh! I ran down a few more hallways, and found that they were marked with T, K, and F. What the heck?

"Argh, what does a student need to do to get to classroom 3A?!"I shouted without realizing it.

"Maybe get promoted out of 2A." said a voice behind me. I turned around to see a boy about my age with long white hair and big brown eyes standing behind me.

"Are you new here, too?" I asked him.

"Not exactly, but the school was reorganized over the summer, so I'm a bit lost myself." He told me. He sounded as if he had a British accent. But why would a British kid be in Japan?

"Do you know anything about where classroom 3A might be?"

"Sorry, but no. I'm looking for 3A myself."

"Oh……. Well, that sucks, doesn't it?"

"Yup."

"How long have you been going here?"

"I've been a foreign exchange student for about three years now."

"Do you live here?"

"Yes I do. I was going to go back to Britain two summers ago, but I just couldn't leave the place."

"Don't your parents worry about you?"

"My mother and sister are dead, and my father owns a museum about two miles from here,"

"He owns the Domino Museum?"

"Yup."

"That's good."

"Why would a Canadian girl like you be here?"

"How do you know I'm Canadian?"

"Your necklace says 'Canadian Gal' on it."

"Oh. Well, if you must know, I ran away."

"Why? Did something happen?"

"It's a long story."

All of a sudden, I heard footsteps around the corner. An about sixty-ish woman walked out from around the wall. All of a sudden she screamed in a raspy voice

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING CHATING IN THE HALLWAY?!?!?! CLASSES HAVE ALREADY BEGUN!!!!!!" I heard the boy mutter to me

"That's Mrs. Ratsdropael, the principle. She's always cranky and yells whenever she gets the chance. Everyone thinks she's going through mid-life crisis, but I think she's just, uh, 'off her rocker', if you know what I mean." I giggled to think I'd have a crazy teacher. The woman stomped up to us and glared at us.

"Mr. Bakura, I would've expected more of you. I never expected you would be chatting in the hallway with your friend. You know the drill around here, young man, you should be in class."

"Yes, ma'am." He replied flatly. Then she looked at me.

"And you are…….."

"Amy. Amy Mullens. I'm new here, so I'm kinda lost…." I said, embarrassed. And, like I said before, I knew what she would say.

"We're off to a bad start, Miss Mullens." She glared at me and made me feel very uncomfortable.

"Where are you children going to that you can't find?" she asked us calmly.

"We're looking for 3A." Said the white haired boy. She looked up the hallways and started to walk down one. She made a motion with her hand telling us to follow her.

"I never got to introduce myself. My name is Amy." I told the boy and shook his hand.

"I'm Ryou Bakura. Nice to meet you." He gave a friendly smile.

"No talking!" shouted the woman in front of us. So we just talked to each other through facial expressions for the rest of the walking. Finally, after about three minutes, we came to a classroom with 3A engraved into a small metal plaque on the door. Mrs. Ratsdropael opened the door and shoved us in. The teacher inside had weary, gray, untidy hair, golden-yellow eyes, a snaggled tooth and some wrinkles.

"It seems these two students got lost looking for your class. Here's two new pieces of vermin you can torture." She slammed the door behind her and we were left standing in front of the class. The teacher welcomed us with a scowl and a grunt.

"And who might you two be?" she asked in a scratchy voice that didn't seem to fit her looks.

"I'm Amy and this is…" I leaned over and whispered in his ear

"It's Ryou, right?'

"Yup. But call me Bakura." He whispered back. I turned back to the teacher.

"And this is Bakura." She examined us carefully and then told us

"There's two seats right over there you can cop a squat in. You didn't miss much, just attendance and seating arrangements." She pointed toward two desks over by the upper right side of the room. We walked over quietly and sat down, already bored even though we'd only been there for thirty seconds.

"Welcome to your new your new science class. My names Mrs. Gnafwolley and I'm your teacher, as you all probably guessed, and you're my new torture to- I mean, students! Hehe, yeah…… students is what I meant. Anyway, in this class, you will be learning about living organisms and biology, and yes, we will do dissections. I know some of you are not very comfortable with dead animals and cutting them up, but you'll just have to get used to it, we all need to do them in order to pass the marking period, no exceptions. Now let's get this lesson started off. You two hall-wanderers are gonna get some special work for the period while the rest of us get all of our stuff set up and get some basic instructions to the room."

She passed out two worksheets to us while the rest of the class got out their binders for instructions. Luckily the worksheets were multiple choice, since science was not my best subject. I looked at the worksheet and what I saw made my heart sink down into my stomach. I didn't know any of these! Question one: At what temperature does water boil at? How should I know that? We hadn't gone over these kinds of things since sixth grade! Argh! I stopped to think for a minute to see if I could remember it, but unfortunately nothing came to mind. Then it's like a nagging voice in my head was saying 2……..2…… I looked at problem #2, which said 212 degrees. That sounded about right. I moved on to the next question. Question two: what temperature does water freeze at? Luckily I knew this one, it's always on the weather channel around wintertime. 32 degrees. I put down answer #3 that said it and moved on to the next one. How does the moon affect the tides of the ocean? Again, I did know this one, but I didn't at the same time. I knew the moon did affect the tides, but I didn't know how it did. Then a number just came to me like on the last question before. 4……. 4……… I looked at number four, which said the moon's gravitational pull pushes and pulls the tides. I didn't if that was right or not, but I put down four anyway. Then I had an idea. I wondered what would happen if all I did was guess at the numbers. I figured I'd take the risk. After all, what could happen? It's just a worksheet that the teacher would probably just rip up anyway.

After Science class was over, the next subject was math. I absolutely hated math, for more than one reason. 1. Most math teachers that I've come in contact with are boring and/or mean 2. I stink at it 3. The teachers never explain anything properly. Bakura was not in my math class, so that just made it even worse. I walked into the dull room, and my mood sank. Almost everything in the room was plain, dull, blah grey and everyone already inside looked like they wanted to fall asleep. Even the bright blue school uniforms that everyone was wearing seemed to be duller. At the front of the room stood a man with dark grey hair, dull green eyes, and a black work suit on. Just looking at him made my eyelids get heavier.

"Good morning class. I'm your teacher, Mr. Rizzo, and welcome to your new math class. Here you'll be learning and reviewing arithmetical subjects and operations and what not. If you'll stand at the front of the class I'll put you in your assigned seats." The teacher said in a dull, bored voice. Everyone stood up sleepily and walked to the front of the classroom.

"Ok, you'll sit there, you sit next to him, you sit by the window, you sit……" Man, this is more boring than trying to fall asleep.

By the time the seating arrangements were in order and attendance was taken care of, half the period was already over. The teacher was only explaining the rules, and that was probably the most boring thing anyone could hear. Just as I felt my eyes starting to close, I glimpsed a folded up scrap of paper on the edge of my desk. I quietly opened it up and read

Is today Wednesday the third? I'm not sure.

-Joey Wheeler

I looked around me to see who might have left the note there. I noticed some guy with sandy blonde hair, brown eyes, and a green jacket eyeing me. I looked at him, and he flashed me a goofy grin. I guessed this was Joey. I took out a piece of scrap paper and wrote

Yep. Why?

-Amy Mullens

I slid the note to his desk, and he wrote on the back part

No reason. It's just that my sister's birthday is on the fifth, and I wasn't sure what day of the week it was….. I wrote back

Who's your sister? He scribbled

Her names Serenity Wheeler. I quick put on the back

Younger, older, or twin? He wrote back

Younger. I was about to write back when the teacher grabbed the sheet of paper we'd been passing and said in a dull groan

"Well, what'd we have here? Some note passing, eh? For that you'll get one more page of homework tonight, you two. Congrats." He tore it up and threw it in the recycle bin. I sighed and looked at Joey again. He rolled his eyes in annoyance, but said nothing more. I gave a small smile, and went to actually pay attention to the lesson while he took out a video game. The teacher was talking about rational and irrational numbers, which I already knew pretty much by heart. This really sucks I thought to myself. I put my head down on my desk and sighed. I glanced up at the clock, and fond that class would be over in a few minutes. Feeling relieved somewhat, I closed my eyes and just relaxed.

Ok, I won't waste your time by telling you about all my other classes. All of them were pretty much the same as the last one. For lunch, I had some sesame chicken and some lomein, my two favorite Japanese foods along with some coke. Bakura sat with me there, and we talked about the things we'd gone through and what we liked. It turns out he'd had a tough past, too. He said that he used to black out at random times and not remember anything that had happened before. He had even woke up from one of his blackouts in the middle of Egypt once! He also told me about how he woke up one time with a horrible wound in his arm, and even though it was bandaged up, he was still in horrible medical condition. He had no idea how he'd made it all the way to where he was. Ok, I'll admit that's bizarre, but I've had a bizarre story to tell, too, about that prison-type orphanage in America. It turns out his mother and sister had died in a car crash many years ago. It was almost weird about how much we had in common. Anyway, after school the science teacher wanted to talk to me, which I had no idea why. She pulled me aside and pulled out the paper I'd worked on that morning, and I was baffled by the grade I'd gotten; a hundred! But I had just guessed everything on it…….. Either I've had some bizarre stroke of luck, or something weird is going on here……. Ok, that freaked me out, but weird stuff always happens to me, and I never know why.

After the science teacher consulted me, I just walked out feeling rather confused. Bakura was waiting for me outside, which made me happy. It looked like I had made a good friend in school already. He gave me a sweet smile and asked

"What'd she want to talk to you about?" I replied

"Its about that paper we needed to work on this morning. Apparently, I'd gotten a hundred on it, which is pretty weird…."

"Why is it weird? It just means you're smart."

"No, it's weird because all I did was guess on it."

"All you did was guess and you got a hundred on it?"

"Yup." He gave me a curious stare and said

"That's rather strange. I've never heard of such luck before."

"Neither have I."

"So besides that, how was your first day?"

"It was fine."

"That's good. Anything exciting happen?"

"Not really."

"Well, that sounds very exciting." He said sarcastically.

"What about your day? Anything exciting happen to you?"

"Nope. Just another ordinary day for me."

"Huh." I thought of something. I asked him

"Say, do you know a guy named Joey Wheeler?" He looked at me and said

"Yes, I know him. Why?"

"Just wondering. What do you know about him?"

"I know that he likes getting into fist fights, pulling pranks on others, playing card games, and hanging out with his friends. Why do you want to know about him so much?"

"He was passing notes with me in math class today. I was just curious who he was."

"What'd he want from you?"

"He just wanted to know the date."

"And you're so curious because he couldn't keep track of the date?"

"No! It's not that…… Its just we kind of got into a semi-type of conversation. He told me about his sister and stuff."

"Well, that's strange. He's not really like that to most people. I'd suggest you be on the lookout for him. Knowing him, he's already planted some sort of prank for you tomorrow at class or something."

"Ok then. Thanks for the warning."

"You're welcome." We got silent for a moment. Then I asked him

"Hey Bakura?"

"What?"

"How often do you get these blackouts?" At that question he got silent. I saw concern and uncertainty flickering in his brown eyes, and he slowly replied

"Occasionally….." I could see by his expression that there was something he wasn't telling me.

"Is something wrong?" I could tell that his mind was somewhere else now.

"No…. I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I'm perfectly ok."

"If you say so." Now curiosity pricked me like a needle in my side. What wasn't he telling me? I knew there was something wrong, something he didn't want me to know about. I decided to push the thought out of my mind and try to forget about it. I took a look around to distract myself and realized I had no idea where we had walked to. Dark, looming alleyways yawned next to us, the buildings around us were made of faded red bricks and full of graffiti. Sunlight still streamed down onto the street, but this place did give me a funny feeling, like we weren't supposed to be here. Bakura still seemed to be lost in thought, so I gave him a nook on his side, and he seemed to pull back to the present.

"Say, do you have any idea where we are?" His breathing quickened, and he looked around and said quietly

"We seem to be by the Domino Church." He stood ridged and grabbed by wrist without warning and started to pull me out of the area.

"Hey, where are you taking me?" I had no choice but to run along with him. Shock and fear filled his eyes again and I knew something was definitely up. I ran behind him, having no other choice. As soon as we came back to a street by the school, he stopped and caught his breath. He let go of me and turned around. I asked

"What'd you do that for? You've been acting like you've seen a ghost all afternoon. What's up with you?" He kept panting and replied

"I wish…. I could tell you……but I can't……. it's too dangerous….."

"I can handle anything that you tell me. Just spit it out!"

"I can't! I'd put you in danger if I told you, and you'd think that I'm crazy." I felt like snapping back at him, but my manners caught me and I just gave up. It probably wasn't worth yelling at him, after all, he seemed so nice and friendly. He can't have done anything that bad….. Could he?

"Amy, I'm going to walk you home to take your mind off of it. Where do you live?" he asked me as calmly as he could manage.

"I have an apartment in South Eltings."

"So do I."

"You do? What floor?"

"Thirty sixth."

"Isn't that the penthouse suite?"

"No. But that's right above mine."

"That's nice."

"What number is yours?"

"601."

"Well, maybe I'll visit you sometime. Mine's 235."

"Great. I'll visit you too"

"Does your father live with you?"

"Yes. He is usually gone during most of the day though. He needs to open the museum at about nine and its closing hours are at about nine thirty."

"That's a little late for a museum, isn't it?"

"Yes, but he says that people like to come and look at the space and night sky exhibits when it's dark out because he puts on these light shows at night that usually are a big attraction."

"Do you go to the museum often?"

"Sometimes. My father needs me to help straighten it up on certain weekends. Most of the time I'm either hanging around town or lounging around the apartment."

"Does your father work on weekends too?"

"Yup. It's a seven day a week job maintaining a museum."

"And in the summer?"

"In the summertime he does take two weeks off to go on vacation, but that's about it."

"You and your father aren't very close then?"

"No. We never were. I was always closer to my mother."

"What about your sister?"

"We were best friends when she was around."

"And you say they died in a car crash?"

"Yes. Some drunk idiot at a bad intersection was careless and crashed into them. And you know what is really screwed up?"

"What?"

"The guy who crashed into them was only charged a five dollar fee for not yielding the turn."

"Ouch. There was no lawsuit or anything?"

"No."

"That really sucks."

"Well, at least you still have your father. I don't even have that much. Both of my parents are dead."

"You said they died in a fire, right?"

"Yup."

"How did the fire start?"

"The fire department wasn't sure, but they suspected there was a gas leak."

"Did you have any siblings?"

"No. I was an only child."

"Huh." I looked up and saw that we were right outside South Eltings Apartment building.

"Well, here we are. You said your apartment was 235, right?" Bakura asked me.

"Yep." He walked me inside through the revolving door into the

lobby. I took a look around the lobby like I always did when I first looked in. The tan walls were welcoming, the hard wood floor worn from midnight dancing, the DJ stand and stage vacant, and colorful lounging chairs filled with people chatting and laughing. I've always been an observant person, which I never really knew why. I was always inspired by beautiful works of art and pretty designs. he beckoned me to the elevator and I followed him. I stepped in and I glimpsed him pressing the close doors button.

"What floor are you on?" He asked me.

"Eleventh." I told him. He pushed the eleven button along with the thirty six button. As we waited for the elevator to come to a stop, he said

"Well, Amy, I enjoyed out conversation. I will see you at school tomorrow, right?"

"Right!" I replied. The elevator door slowly opened to my floor.

"Until then, Amy! Enjoy your night." he gave me a warm grin

"You too!" I said to him as I walked out. I saw him waving goodbye as the doors closed in front of him, and I gave a quick wave. I really like him I thought to myself quietly. He's nice, charming, kind, polite, and kind of cute, and I love the accent...... but there's still something strange about him, something not quite right........ I walked down to my apartment with my key card in my hand. I came to my door and stuck the piece of plastic into the slot, the little light above the handle flashed green, and I pushed through it into my living room. I set down my bag, walked into my bedroom, and flopped down on my bed, reviewing my day. Even though I'd almost gotten ran over by a limo, almost gotten my arm dislocated by some guy with a strange haircut, and gotten some bizarre stroke of luck on a chicken-scratch worksheet, I thought my first day went pretty well. I still had some questions, though: about that Seto guy in the limo and about Bakura. Just who the heck is Seto? Why did his name sound so familiar? Why was he so interested in me? And Bakura: Why was he so scared when we got to that church? What was he hiding from me? Did something bad happen there? I still had a billion questions, but I didn't have time to answer them, and if I did keep thinking about them, I would just be distracting and frustrating myself with them. I didn't have any homework, since it was the first day, but I was unusually exhausted. I took a look at my alarm clock, which said 3:23, but I figured I'd take a short nap to clear my mind. My eyelids slowly got heavier, my mind clouded, and I slowly drifted off to sleep.....

Writers comment: Ok, this took way too long to write! I'm usually a much faster writer than this! Man, with school and everything, I got to keep up. Sorry for the wait! I promise the next chapter will be posted much faster. And yes, I know I can be way too descriptive! Sorry if I bored you with the second chapter!

-warriorsfan12528