Feliciano stared blankly at the chalkboard, going absolutely insane from boredom. This was Calculus, a subject he had given up trying to understand long before. Since then the class had been a flurry of blank notebooks, random homework answers, and failed tests. His grade was hovering happily around an F+, and he didn't give a shit.

Actually, it had been a similar story in most of his other classes. Feliciano was an artist, not an intellectual. Lovino had gotten any brains that might have been in the family. He was the one destined for college, and everyone knew it.

"Mr. Vargas, at least pretend you're trying to do the assignment."

Feliciano blinked, and the board came back into focus. On it was written instructions to complete a problem set from the textbook.

He glanced at the clock. There were two minutes left of class. At this point, why bother?

He heaved his book out of his backpack and dropped it onto the desk with a loud thud. Then he opened the front cover and flipped through the pages one at a time. The teacher, who had been standing there watching him, rolled her eyes and marched off to help someone else.

The bell rang, and Feliciano slowly gathered his belongings and trudged out of the room. Some cruel twist of fate had given him his two worst classes together, in classrooms right next door to each other. He was the first to arrive at Chemistry as usual, and sat down to finish the sketch of a kitten he'd started during Calc.

The teacher droned on for a while, but Feliciano tuned him out. When he was working on the ears - the whole mood of the picture depended on his finding just the right angle - he noticed the rest of the class was moving. He looked at the problem written on the board, at the notes written before it, and pieced together whatever he could to fake his way through it.

There was something about Electron Configuration, with a lot of Ps and Ss with numbers written after them... In the margin of his notebook, utilizing the only space left beside his gigantic kitten picture, he began to scrawl his "answer."

P1, Q2, R3, S4, T5-

"You're doing it wrong," a voice interrupted.

Great, so apparently he now had a lab partner - and a nosy one, at that. "Yeah, I know, but see the problem is that I don't really-"

He looked up, and froze midsentence.

A girl sat beside him, straight blonde hair pulled out of her face with a clip at the back of her head, revealing clear, deep blue eyes and a pale complexion. She was dressed in a tasteful black sweater that hugged her body nicely, a knee-length, pleated blue skirt, and conservative black flats.

This must be the girl he'd heard about - the gorgeous smarty-pants perfect student, here as an exchange student from Germany. The description didn't even do her justice.

And now she was his lab partner.

"You're Ludia!" he blurted out.

"I am." She tugged a loose strand of hair behind her ear in an attempt to conceal her impatience. "You were saying?"

"Just that... I don't really... know what I'm doing. Could you help me?"

She nodded, scooted her chair over, and leaned in to see his notebook more clearly, close enough that Feliciano could smell her perfume.

He was suddenly very, very interested in Chemistry.

Aww, Feli, y u no lyk skool?

It was nice to write the Italian inferiority complex from another angle. Lovino definitely has his baggage, but I'd be surprised if Feli was totally happy-go-lucky all the time. I might write more of this characterization later. There's a delicate balance between completely happy and secretly suicidal, and I kinda wanna find it.

Thanks ahead of time for your review. ;)