Hisao watched the students roll into class for the Saturday morning session, each and every one of them sporting the tired eyes of people that had worked through the night. With only a day left to prepare, I suppose it's not so surprising, he thought. Thankfully, we only have to suffer through classes until lunch break, and then our time is our own.

Maru stumbled into the doorframe, muttered unintelligibly as he fell back into the other side of the doorway, bounced and smacked his face into the side he hit initially, rebounded back into the other side, and finally teetered fully into the classroom resembling nothing other than a spinning top just before it fell. With another muttering, he spun on his heel and fell backwards, beside Mutou's desk. "Ow."

Hisao watched the event happen with a sigh. Once again, I can't tell how much of that was faked and how much of that was real. He let his head fall to the desk with a groan.

Maru yawned, slipped his bag under his head, and closed his eyes.

Miki stood up and went beside Maru, chuckling as she did so. "Hey, you alright?"

Maru snored by way of response.

"I guess I'll take that as a yes," Miki said while shaking her head and walking back to her seat.

Mutou lurched into class with a tired stagger, looked down at the snoring Maru, and sighed while pinching the bridge of his nose. "Mister Kobayashi, wake up."

Maru continued to snore, although he also rolled onto his face and started pushing himself up with his forehead.

Mutou sighed deeper and stepped around Maru before scrawling some page and question numbers on the board.

Maru extended his arms in front of him, head tilted to the side. "Braaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiins..."

"Deeeeeeeeeesk," Mutou replied, pointing toward the furniture in question.

Maru muttered unintelligibly again as he shambled in the general direction of his seat. He paused as he passed Mutou's desk, rifled around his bag for a moment, laid a pile of papers on the desk, and continued with a wobbly walk to the seats. Unceremoniously, he fell on his face between rows.

Mutou eyed Maru for a moment. "Close enough," he muttered as he shook his head and slumped back into his seat.

Hisao decided the only sensible course of action was to see how many times he could hit his head on his desk before one or the other suffered structural failure.

Hanako looked down at Maru, who had landed more or less beside her, wide eyed for a few moments before cautiously bending over and shaking his shoulder. "A-are you... all right?"

"Zzzz... mm fime," Maru slurred. "Sweeeeeepy... zzzzz... Thangsth... Zzzzzzz..."

Hisao covered his head with his hands as he tried to ward off the headache that was already beginning to develop. Even so, he could still see Miki glance from Maru to Hanako and back, with Hanako hiding behind her textbook. I suppose that's to be expected, given that neither of them came back to class after the lunch break yesterday. It seems that Miki's too tired to question Hanako though, and trying to question Maru at this point would be like trying to question a sleeping sloth. Or a sleeping turtle. A sleeping sloth/turtle hybrid. He blinked. All of this reminds me that I didn't get enough sleep either.

Maru grabbed his desk chair and pulled himself into it, and managed to get himself situated on it, if on his stomach with his head and legs in either aisle rather than any rational seating method. He reached out and grabbed Shizune's empty seat, muttering all the while, and sat his book on it.

Hisao glared at him for a moment. I want to tell him to sit in his seat like a normal person. He noticed that Miki smirked at the sleepy blue haired girl beside her, who raised her middle finger in response. I sort of wonder what that was about. He sighed and joined the rest of the students as they shuffled their textbooks into position and got to work.

Aside from the occasional bout of muttering from Maru, not a peep was heard among the ruffling papers.

That can partly be attributed to the two empty seats beside me, Hisao reflected. For some reason Misha and Shizune aren't present; probably doing council work for the festival. It's very quiet without Misha present. I wonder if she was born as rowdy as she is, or if she is "making up" for Shizune's lack of voice. Speaking of Shizune, it's probably just as well that she isn't here to witness this; I can only imagine how she would take seeing Maru sitting like this, particularly while using her chair.

"Nakai, can I speak to you for a moment?"

Hisao looked up to see Mutou beside his desk. I'm so engrossed in thinking about Misha and Shizune that I didn't even notice Mutou approaching. "Sure... what's this about?"

Mutou frowned. "It's probably better if we speak outside the classroom..."

Something about this doesn't sound too good, Hisao decided as he stood up and followed Mutou.

Mutou looked at Maru for a moment, and then shook his head and walked into the hallway, Hisao in tow. He stood in the hallway, and scratched his head as he worked out what he was trying to say.

Not knowing what was going on, Hisao waited silently.

"So," Mutou began, "tell me, how are things?"

Hisao blinked. "Things?" I expected Mutou to be a little vague, but this is pushing the limits.

"You know," Mutou said with the barest hint of a scowl. "Things. You've had a week to settle in now, so how are things?"

"Er, fine I guess," Hisao replied.

"I see," Mutou said with a slight nod. "And how is your... condition?"

The pause before "condition" seemed a little unnecessary, Hisao reflected as he bit back a sigh. "Haven't had any problems so far."

A brief shimmer of relief passed across Mutou's face. "Good. That's good. The school nurse was a little concerned that you might have been pushing yourself a bit too hard. He asked me to keep an eye on you when he couldn't."

Hisao let out the sigh he had been holding back. "That makes sense..."

"I'd like to ask that you don't blow us off so freely," Mutou continued, his expression hardening almost imperceptibly. "As much as we try to give you the level of education that you would get at a normal school, you have to realize that you have limits. Our goal is to make sure that you know where those limits are, and how to maximize your potential within them. Do you follow me?"

"I guess," Hisao replied. "I mean, I don't plan on doing anything stupid."

Mutou smiled ever so slightly. "Well, that's a start, I guess." The smile faded as if it had never been. "So then, onto my next question; how are you finding your studies? I understand you were laid up for a while. We're not too far ahead, are we?"

"I don't really think so," Hisao said with a shake of his head. "I tried to keep up when I was in the hospital, so it hasn't been too hard."

Mutou tapped his chin and raised an eyebrow as he absorbed that information. "Is that so... I suppose there are still students out there that realize the importance of learning..."

I wouldn't go that far, Hisao reflected, I was only trying to keep myself occupied in my little life-support prison. "Well, yeah. You've got to keep up with these things, right?"

"That's exactly it," Mutou said with a small smile. "One wrong move in this world and you're left behind, right?"

"Er, right." Hisao nodded in a way he hoped was convincing. "Wouldn't want that to happen."

Mutou frowned. "No, now you wouldn't. Every week there's a new scientific discovery. Most of them mean nothing to the layperson, but any one of them could be the key to the Next Big Thing."

Hisao nodded again. "I'll keep that in mind..." It's obvious that Mutou's Serious Talk is over, and he's gone back to his standard, slightly scatterbrained approach to life. I think, in hindsight, that I prefer him this way. He's slightly more predictable in his unpredictability.

"Well then," Mutou said with a small smile, "I think that's all I really had to say. Let's go back inside, shall we?"

Hisao nodded. My relief at that suggestion is insurmountable. "Sure. You're the boss, right?"

Mutou paused for a moment with a blink. "I don't think any of my students have ever said that to me before."

For an instant, Hisao considered replying to that, but something deep within him told him to shut his mouth and get back into the classroom.

A few of the students jumped at the sound of the door as they rapidly tried to pretend that they were working on the questions on the board. Some didn't even bother, their heads slumped on the desk as they napped.

Maru glanced over at the two with a large yawn before burying his face back into his book.

Mutou didn't appear to notice, as he returned to his desk and retrieved a scientific journal from one of the drawers.

I guess I got him there, Hisao thought as he returned to his seat.

The class returned to the near-silence that Mutou and Hisao had left it in before their chat.

With a sigh, Maru rolled off the edge of his chair, creating a fair ruckus as he jostled his own desk in the process. His textbook decided to join him, and landed on his face. "...I am not a merry mutant," he declared.

Miki sighed as she looked behind her, Maru's desk having bumped her chair and woke her from her nap. She yawned and slumped her head back to her desk.

Mutou looked over at Maru for a few seconds before he shook his head and returned to his journal.

Hisao looked down at Maru. "You know, if you had been sitting in the chair properly, that wouldn't have happened."

"If I had been sitting in the chair properly," Maru returned as he rubbed his now-sore ribs, "then the comedy value would have been very much lessened."

Hisao pinched the bridge of his nose. "Then you did that on purpose."

"Of course," Maru replied. "Everyone likes slapstick."

If by everyone you mean idiots and masochists, then you're right, Hisao thought with a sigh.

Maru stood up and seated himself more properly before shrugging. "Well, I guess not everyone," he said. "But still."

"Maru..." Hisao rubbed his eyes. "I'd like to get this done before class ends."

"Eh, right," Maru said. "Same, really." He picked up his textbook and put it on his desk.

The near-silence returned once again, only to be broken some time later by the ringing of the school bells, ending the torment of those in class.

"Before you all leave," Mutou announced, "I expect the answers for those problems by Monday."

The class sighed as one, instantly regretting slacking off, but still acutely aware of the more pressing issues at hand.

"Heh." Maru looked down at his finished homework with satisfaction. He stretched as the classroom emptied hastily with everyone in a rush to their last-minute festival preparations.

Hisao stayed behind and tried to quickly finish the questions so he didn't have to bother with it over the rest of the weekend, with the festival and all. Apart from me, Hanako and Maru are the only ones left. Hanako is obviously waiting for Lilly. Maru... appears to have decided to nap. He sighed before chancing a glance at Hanako. It's weird that Lilly comes all the way to our classroom to pick her up. I expect that moving around is at least nominally harder for her than it is for Hanako. But it's none of my business, and I naturally don't ask about it from Hanako.

Despite the relative proximity of their seats, neither tried to strike up a conversation about that or anything else either, as an oppressive silence softened only by Maru's snoring fell on the classroom.

Time passed in near silence. Hisao thought it was probably just fifteen minutes or so, but it felt longer to him. He turned the pages of his notebook as Hanako turned the pages of the novel she was reading.

Hisao's pencil lead splintered against the paper just when he was about to finish a paragraph. He gave an irritated sigh and fumbled around for a sharpener.

Maru sat up slowly with a yawn as he looked in Hisao's direction. "Bluh," he observed intelligently.

Hisao shrugged as he sharpened the pencil.

Maru scratched his neck for a moment before blinking at the room and shrugging himself.

Hanako locked her eyes firmly away from either of their directions.

Before long, Lilly's tall figure appeared in the doorway. "Hanako?"

Her name was all it took to make Hanako jump up from her desk and run to Lilly. They talked quietly for a moment, but it wasn't long before Lilly left down the hall and Hanako idled back into the classroom, taking her seat once again.

Hisao watched Hanako out of the corner of his eye out of sheer curiosity at the idea that the two would be separated.

Maru raised an eyebrow at her before glancing at the door Lilly retreated from, and scratched his head. "Huh." He shrugged and stood up. "Eh, I'm gonna go... er." He scratched his head. "Fuck if I know, actually. I'll see you two tomorrow." He blinked. "Well, maybe, I guess. Tomorrow is fair day, or whatnot?"

"Festival," Hisao corrected. "And also Sunday, for that matter."

"Right." Maru nodded. "I knew that. Totally didn't forget it was a Sunday tomorrow. Totally on the ball." He staggered in the direction of the door. "Later, yo."

"G-goodbye Maru," Hanako said, voice even quieter than normal.

"See you," Hisao said.

Maru waved, weaved, and jostled his way past the door, nearly causing a repeat of his actions at the start of class.

Hisao breathed a sigh and shook his head before returning back to his work.

For a couple of minutes, Hanako did nothing but sit with her chin in her hand, staring at the desk dejectedly. The boredom evidently became too much for her though, her slender frame reaching into her bag and pulling out a small book.

Come to think of it, Hisao thought as he looked at the book in her hands, that isn't the one I saw her reading at the library. She must be quite a fast reader to get through them at this rate.

Mmm, delicious canon. Well, partial canon. Semi-canon? Semi-automatic canon? ... I'm done now.

LillyxHisao, if only I had more time. :( Jozern, you've more or less nailed it. ;) mickellala, yup! :D WillPlayGames, so you think it was Rin at her Rin-iest? :P AwesomeInstead, glad to see it had the intended effect, and that he's really shining in this chapter! XP