The next three days went by pretty uneventfully. I continued my lessons with Yuki, who eventually answered all my questions with one simple sentence - "You have to realize that there are always exceptions to the rules." That explained sponges to me. No symmetry, no tissue variation, and they were pretty much sessile. They made no sense to me, until Yuki said that. After that, there were just a few things I needed touching up on, and I was good. I figured I would ace the test no problem. That is, I felt that way until Friday morning rolled around.
What if I forget everything? What if she asks us something that was on the videos we watched? I didn't memorize those! Oh, I'm going to fail!
I stumbled down the stairs and mumbled what I thought was a greeting to Tohru as I passed into the kitchen.
"Morning," I told Shigure.
"And what a lovely morning it is. But, why do you look so down, Kyo-kun? Aren't you excited for finals?"
I groaned and sat down at the table, letting my forehead connect squarely with the wood.
"Uh… Oh!" Tohru burst, "Good morning, Sohma-kun!"
"Meh."
I couldn't help but smirk. He would never address her like that if he was even halfway awake.
"Want me to quiz you for the Bio final?" I asked him, smirking.
"The… what?"
"The huge test we've been studying for every second of the past three days?" I offered.
"Oh."
"So tell me about Kingdom Animalia," I smirked.
"Wha's that?"
I laughed through my teeth.
"I… what?"
"You are so stupid in the morning," I told him.
"Sohma-kun just isn't a morning person is all," Tohru said, smiling brightly.
"Okay," he said absently, plopping down next to me at the table and dropping his head on my shoulder. I busied myself imagining Zs floating over his head as Tohru put food in front of us. I looked down at the overly large and healthy breakfast, and I felt a sudden onslaught of nerves in my gut.
"I'm not really that hungry…" I said.
"Eat food, stupid face," Yuki mumbled into my shoulder.
I stared blankly at the wall.
"My face is not stupid," I muttered, starting to pick absently at my food. Tohru smiled at us and sat down to eat her own breakfast. I watched as Yuki continued to fall asleep on my shoulder until I got frustrated. I shrugged him off me.
"Eat your damn food before it gets cold," I told him.
"Uh…" I could almost see the gears coming to life as his eyes became slightly more focused and landed on his food. He picked up his chopsticks and slowly ate away at his food. I spared a final glance at him before I redirected my attention to my own breakfast.
"So do you think you're going to do okay on the test, Tohru-kun?" I asked, trying to make conversation.
"Heh, heh…" she smiled nervously, "I'll try my best!"
"Yeah…"
"So how do you think you'll do?" she asked me.
"Heh, heh…"
"Are you worried?" Yuki asked me, not looking up from his food. He was probably still tired.
"A little," I admitted.
"I'm sure you'll do great!" Tohru told me.
"Don't be nervous. You've been studying all week, haven't you?" Shigure asked.
"Yeah, I guess," I sighed. I cleared my plate and Tohru took the dishes into the kitchen.
"You guys ought to wear your heavy jackets," Shigure said, "I think it snowed last night."
"Really?" Tohru asked excitedly. She raced to the front of the house and pushed the shoji open, revealing a beautiful white landscape. Yuki groaned and looked over at the door.
"You'll get a cold if you just stand there like that," I told her.
"Hmm," she nodded, closing the door. She rushed back upstairs, and I followed behind her slowly, glancing back at Yuki who was still sitting at the table, lazily drawing circles on the wood.
"Get moving or you'll be late," I grumbled at him, turning and heading upstairs. By the time I had my uniform on and everything, it was time to leave. I met Tohru and Yuki back downstairs, and we grabbed our heavy coats and went outside.
I stopped, as did the others, to take in the white landscape. I really was beautiful. That is, until I got hit in the face with it.
"What the hell?!"
"I've never had a snowball fight before," Yuki shrugged, "I thought it might be fun."
"I'll give you fun, you asshole!"
I chased him up the path a ways, trying to pick up snow as I went. Once I had a decent snowball, I hurled it at the back of his head. It hit him in the back, but I convinced myself that I had been aiming there the whole time. Yuki turned, grabbing a handful of snow and hurling it at me, causing it to come down on me like falling snow fresh from the sky. A snowball hit me in the arm lightly. Yuki and I turned to see Tohru standing timidly, holding another snowball in her hand already.
At first, I was just chuckling through my teeth, but soon I had landed in the snow, laughing my heart out.
"You… you look so stupid…!" I burst.
"Look who's talking," Yuki commented. I sat up on my elbows, raising an eyebrow at him. His slightly pouted lips and cheeks flushed from the cold were just too feminine looking. That combined with the awkward way he was trying to hide how amusing he found it was just too much, and I was sent into another fit of laughter. That's when I heard it. Yuki laughed. Not a hysterical mirror of my own, but rather a gentle, tinkling laugh, that really did remind me of bells. It was the first time I'd ever heard him laugh.
"Get up, idiot," he chuckled, holding his hand out to me. I grabbed it, locking my thumb with his. He lifted me out of the snow. Tohru stared at us for a moment, but them she smiled and walked ahead. I looked at Yuki skeptically. He seemed to think she wouldn't make anything out of it, but I had my doubts. But then again, why should I care? It wasn't like we were doing anything wrong. We got along, and that was it. Right? I shouldn't have anything to hide from Tohru. Then again, it was Yuki who had tried to hide it in the first place. Did he think it was bad for Tohru to know we were getting along? It wasn't like we were doing anything that she wouldn't like, right? She always did want us to get along better, so why the hell did I feel like we had some dark secret?
We reached the school five minutes early. This one kid kept looking over at me once we got to class. He was starting to piss me off. I was pulled out of my plan to yell at him when our teacher walked in.
"Okay, so as you all know, today you will be taking you Biology midterm. If your pencil is broken, sharpen it now, because you are not allowed to leave your seat once the test has been handed out."
We waited for a few students to do just that, and then the tests were handed out.
Come on, Kyo. Focus. You've got this.
I made sure to mark each bubble on the answer sheet perfectly, making sure the teacher wouldn't be able to misread anything. I reread all the questions before actually choosing my answer. The thing that surprised me was that I actually knew most of the answers. The questions were all things I'd studied for, and I recognized tricks when I came across them. There were a few ones I didn't know, that I would narrow down to my best guess, but overall, I felt pretty good about it. When I finished, I turned my paper over. The teacher came by to pick them up when she saw that we'd all completed our work. She even gave us permission to talk, but no one did. We all remained silent as we watched her turned though our tests, uncapping her red pen on occasion to mark an answer wrong. At one point, she came across a test that required her to leave her red pen uncapped, given that she appeared to be marking every answer wrong. Everyone in the room held their breath, all dreading that the obviously failing test was their own, myself included. After what seemed like an eternity, she was finished grading them. She handed them back, giving the tests to the first person in the row of the respective student to whom the test belonged so that they could pass them back down the row. My test was handed back to me sometime in the middle of the passing-out process. A large 'A-' was scrolled on the top of the page in the sloppy handwriting that all teachers seemed to have. I smiled. I'd brought my grade up! I looked over at Yuki and Tohru across the room, smiling victoriously.
"What'd you get?" Yuki mouthed.
I held my fingers in an upside-down 'V', and then held my index finger parallel to the ground. Yuki smiled and gave my a thumbs up. I didn't bother asking what they got. Yuki undoubtedly had an A+, and Tohru probably had either a B or a C.
The bell rang for lunch, and we all stood and exited into the hallway. Tohru pulled us over to stand by the lockers while everyone else walked by.
"I'm so glad you did so well on your test, Kyo-kun!" she squealed happily.
"Hey, it's all his fault," I said, pointing my thumb at Yuki, "Damn, now I owe you, huh?"
"No," Yuki told me, "My reward was your grade. We're even. Now, if you'd gotten an F, then I'd have to kick you."
"Hey!"
We all turned to see that one guy from earlier, clenching a rumpled test in his hand that still loudly declared 'D-'. I was instantly angry.
"Why the hell were you staring at me earlier?" I yelled at him.
"Don't act like you don't know, bastard," he snapped, "I'm going to kick your fucking ass."
Author's Note: The word of the day is 'thumb'. I apologize if there were any errors I missed. I don't have a beta, so the mistakes are all my fault. I'm sorry. I apologize to the whole world. So anyway, cliffhanger! Who's the asshole who wants to beat Kyo up for no apparent reason? Well, I can't tell you that, it would ruin the whole thing. And why on earth does Kyo feel like his and Yuki being friends is some dark secret? I bet all of you have figured that out already. Kyo's just a slow person. Give him time, he'll figure it out. As for Yuki, the next chapter might just have to be from his point of view. After all, our little rat needs attention too, not that he's not getting plenty of it from Kyo's point of view. I wonder why that could be...? Well, review!
