Disclaimer: Nay, I do not own anything involved with the original series School Rumble. They are owned by Jin Koboyashi.

AN: I know it may sound somewhat arrogant or something, but I'll say it anyways: I'd really like a review. If you see something that you'd like to point out, by all means review and tell me. Anyways, I'd like to say that I personally think the story is going along rather well (/arrogance). The real story, however, hasn't started. It actually starts in this chapter. Note that I lied in one of my notes, and that this chapter is actually going to be longer, most likely. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy it.

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Chapter 4

Eavesdropping

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The afternoon quickly shifted to nightfall as Eri explained to Mikoto about Sou. The night soon became morning as the sun rose from the horizon and broke through the clouds. The puddles that gathered on the streets have dissolved and left dark markings on the asphalt. The morning birds chirped their upbeat tunes that only made sense to them.

It was seven o' clock when Sou finally broke out of his sleep spell. He looked over at the digital clock lying next to his bed and mumbled, "Too early," and fell back asleep. He woke up again at ten o' clock and looked over at the clock. "Still too early."

"Shuda! It is NOT too early! Breakfast has been made!"

Sou sighed and literally rolled out of bed. "Jeez, Yomu. Dinner should be damned good if you woke me up this early," Sou mumbled to himself as if he were talking to Yomu.

Sou made his way to the kitchen to eat. The plate before him held a basic breakfast: half the plate was taken up by scrambled eggs, while the other half occupied some sausage links and a big pile of hashed browns. A smaller plate to the side had english muffins with a jar of strawberry jam placed next to it. Sou didn't care for the breakfast, but the pile of hashed browns caught his eye.

"I don't like hashed browns."

"Too bad, they're good for you."

"I don't want 'em."

"Then you can starve."

Sou sighed at Yomu's simplistic ways to force him to eat his food. Several minutes went by as Sou devoured the eggs, the sausage links, and the english muffins. All that towered before him were the hashed browns. Sou looked around the see if Yomu was watching. In the single second she wasn't watching, Sou tossed his hashed browns in the trash.

"That was some pretty good breakfast, Yomu."

"If I find any hashed browns in the trash, you're eating out of it."

Silently, Sou took the bag of trash out and replaced it with a new one. He then threw on a shirt and jeans and sstarted to make his way out the door.

"Where are you going?" Yomu interrogated.

"I'm going out, as usual."

"You go out so often."

"That's what normal boys do, Yomu," Sou responded. He knew Yomu always wanted Sou to be a well-mannered "normal boy". It was usually his excuse to get out of everything.

"Not this much! But whatever. Do whatever you think is 'normal,'" Yomu responded.

"Ok, then. Later."

Sou was still hungry, actually. Yomu didn't put much of eggs and sausage on his plate, and nearly covered it with hashed browns. Sou's stomach grumbled loudly as he walked around the city by himself. When he came upon a restaurant, and his stomach growled louder than ever before, he couldn't help but walk inside.

Now, Sou was normally okay in restaurants by himself. He could order whatever he wanted and knew how to tip. Unfortunately, when he walked in, the first person he saw...was Harima himself.

Harima Kenji. The whole reason behind why Sou was feeling lost. He never came into contact with him or got in the way of what he was doing. He was hardly aware of his existance until he realized that no one notices Sou because of Harima. Whatever he did was considered "copying Harima", or "too simplistic" to be realized.

Harima was sitting at a table, scribbling on some sort of paper that Sou didn't pay attention to. He was wearing a garish red beret as he focused intently on the paper. A waiter came over to him to ask for his order, and he shooed him away immediately by giving him a "stink eye" through his sunglasses.

Sou took a seat in a booth near Harima. It was close to Harima, so Sou could hear, but Harima couldn't see him. A waiter came over almost immediately and asked Sou what he wanted.

"Coffee. Black coffee."

"Okay, sir. I'll bring it out right away."

Sure enough, the waiter came out only seconds after he went to fetch the coffee. The steaming coffee filled the air with such an overwhelming aroma. Sou took a whiff and looked out the window.

"It's still overcast? Dang. Guess I'll have no use for these again today," he said, referring to his sunglasses. He peered over the top of the booth to spy on Harima, who was still wearing his sunglasses. "How? How does he do it? How can you possibly wear your sunglasses ALL DAY?" he mumbled to himself.

Suddenly, the door to the entrance of the restaurant swung open, causing a bell to chime. Four teenage girls walked in, and as soon as Sou saw them all, he whipped around in his seat and looked back at his table. He immediately recognized them.

The first one was Eri Sawachika, who walked in with an energetic step while she talked with her friends. Immediately behind her was her exact opposite: Tenma. She stumbled into the room with about as much grace as a monkey. She walked in the group with a cheerful, yet completely aloof look. Sou's ears perked up when he heard the phrase, "Hey, is that Harima?" from someone within the group.

"Hey! Harima!"

"Oh! Hey, Tenma!" Harima greeted, raising his hand and then quickly lowering it to commence doing whatever he was doing.

Eri knelt over trying to see what he was doing, and Harima turned in his chair so he still had a decent amount of space to work on, but keep Eri from seeing. "Hey, Hige, what are you doing?"

"Nonya' business," he replied flatly. Sou took note of how he was talking while still completely dodging Eri's intrusions.

Eri walked around the opposite way, trying to see what he was doing, but Harima did the exact same thing, dodging her view with his back. Eri continually walked around the table while the other three watched, laughing slightly at the sight.

"What is it?!" Eri let out finally.

"Just as I said, 'Nonya business,'" Harima repeated equally flat.

"What's so important that you have to hide it? C'mon, just let me see!" Eri said, sort of imitating a bully.

"No," Harima responded childishly, and he repeated the process of pivoting to show only his back to Eri.

Eri sighed heavily and said to the girls, "C'mon, let's find a seat. That booth looks okay."

Sou's body contorted and shook at the sound of the whole group walking over to see Sou. But then he realized he wasn't supposed to care, so he loosened up and started sipping his coffee to make it look like he wasn't listening in at all. He sipped and sipped and sipped until he had to look over to see if they were coming. To his surprise, they actually sat in the booth across from him, and didn't notice him at all.

"God damn...this is even worse!" Sou thought. He finished his coffee and had nothing else to do.

"Ugh, I hate that Hige!" Sou overheard Eri say. Considering he could hear them all the way over there, he decided to take out his cell phone and look as if he was doing something while he listened-in.

"Who? Harima? Why?" Tenma asked, unaware of Eri's hatred towards Harima.

"He's just so...arrogant!" Eri responded.

"You know, you are too," on of Eri's friends said. This was Mikoto Suou, whom Sou didn't know of.

"What?! No I'm not!"

"Tch. Right. Anyways, you need to tell me about that guy you were walking with in the rain yesterday!" Mikoto said.

"Huh?! Eri was walking in the rain with a guy?!"

"That means they must've shared an umbrella," the fourth girl in the group added. This was Akira, who was also unknown to Sou.

"OOH! That's right!" Mikoto exclaimed excitingly. Mikoto, apparently, was one to get into gossip.

"Umm, well..."

"She won't admit it. No way. Not when it was with me," Sou thought to himself. Naturally, he had the feeling that no one wished to be around him, which was okay to him.

"Yuh...Yes..." she admitted. Sou nearly crushed his phone at the shock of her admittance.

"OOH! You did, did you?!" Mikoto exclaimed, almost leaning over the whole table.

"Oh, wow, Eri! Way to go!" Tenma joined in, also almost leaning over the table.

"Yeah, but it was because he didn't have an umbrella. I mean, I knew him, so I had to. It's just common courtesy of being a fellow classmate, right?"

"Yeah, not really," Mikoto shot down. She giggled, "So he's a classmate, huh? Then I REALLY need to know! Who was it? Huh? Huh? HUH?!"

"Um...it was...no...I can't tell you."

"C'mon! Who was it?!" Tenma begged.

"C'mon, Eri...you won't tell...right?" Sou thought.

"Just spit it out! You have nothing to lose!"

"Um...it...was..."

"You won't tell, Eri, right?"

"It was..."

"RIGHT?!" Sou was now sweating with angst and he stared with fear at his cell phone.

Eri was searching around the whole entire room until her eyes caught one specific target. She stopped trembling, and then she responded, "It was Hige."

Mikoto and Tenma instantaneously sat down. "Oh, I can see why you didn't want to tell."

"It was pretty embarrassing," Eri said, going along with the lie she made.

"Tch. Good job, Eri." Sou congratulated. His sweating stopped, and the fear from his face faded away.

"Hey, look at that guy over there! He's been texting for a long time, hasn't he?" Tenma whispered. Although it was a whisper, Tenma could never keep quiet enough to not be heard.

"Didn't I see that guy somewhere?"

Sou began to sweat again, the the fearful expression crept back into his face. What should he do? What COULD he do? He couldn't ignore Tenma's remark, or else they'd keep staring at him until he put his phone down. If he answered, he'd be found out. Either way, they'd figure out who he was, so he went with the less humiliating one.

He swiftly reached inside his pocket and placed his sunglasses on his head. He then systematically lowered his phone and stared at the group. He raised an eyebrow and began fake-texting again.

"Hey! It's Sou!" Tenma shouted. "Hi, Sou!"

Sou's grip on his cell phone loosened to a point where it slipped out of his grasp and slowly fell to the ground.

"Just now...I felt something..." he thought to himself. His cell phone flipped and twisted in mid-air as it barely missed the table and continued falling. "It felt as if...as if something very dynamic just happened." The phone flipped over and over again, getting closer and closer to the cold ground. "It's as if...Tenma's voice..." The cell phone hit the floor, and its battery flew out of the back, "was a time bomb!"

Sure enough, a loud bang followed Tenma's cheerful greeting. Sou could definitely tell that it was Harima pounding his table in anger. Sou stared blankly at the four girls, who were returning his blank stare.

"Why are you wearing your sunglasses?" Tenma asked. "It isn't THAT bright in here!"

Sou shed his sunglasses and kept staring expressionlessly. His cold blue eyes fixated on the group. They were giving him strange looks and whispered back and forth. Sou had to say something. "Hey. What is it?"

"Oh, nothing. Anyways, these are our friends: Akira and Mikoto!" Tenma introduced.

"Hey," Sou repeated.

"Hey," Akira answered. To Sou, Akira looked JUST like Yomu, just the exact opposite personality. Calm, cool, and quiet, Akira didn't say much else past "Hey," but that's all she needed to say.

"Hey," Mikoto mimicked. Mikoto was, what looked like, a completely normal schoolgirl. Average height, medium-length hair, larger-than-average measurements. She was either the definition of schoolgirl or secretary.

"...Hey," Sou said, slightly unsure of if they were making fun of him or not.

"Sorry about yesterday," Tenma apologized.

"That's alright. Nothing too big. Just hurt a little bit."

"Wait, what happened yesterday?" Mikoto asked.

"Uuuuhhhh...remember when I was talking about the person I ran over? That's him."

"WHAT?! YOU ran him over? So that's why he was at the Hospital!" Eri said, without fully realizing what she said immediately. When she finally did, she hit herself on the forehead.

"Oh, so you know him, too, Eri?" Mikoto teased. "And exactly how did you know he was at the hospital without knowing why he'd be there?"

"Uh...um..." Eri mumbled.

The moment...was way too embarrassing. Sou had to get out of there, "Hey, look...I better get going. Later." Sou got up from his booth and walked towards the door without any other word. He noticed that Harima was gone. He also noticed that he forgot to pay for the black coffee...

...He didn't really care.

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AN: Thank you for reading this sorta long chapter. If you like these longer chapters, then you'll be happy to know that there'll be more at some time in your life. Also, please review and tell me how it is. Oh, by the way, I ALMOST didn't make this deadline. I got a new puppy this week AND it was the final week of Marching Band. We got second, but we weren't even a point behind the first place AAAA band. Last year, we were five points behind. Improvement? Si.