A/N1: Thank you, Tada-sensei. This means I don't own it, folks.

A/N2: This is an admittedly fluffy story. The plot idea came from Jess605. If you like it, credit that reader; if you don't, it is my fault. (That being said, if you are a fan of Kinnosuke, this may not be your glass of bubble tea. His character is canonically over-emotional, over-enthusiastic, and generally overblown, and I don't think I exaggerated him much here. The only time I managed an entirely sympathetic representation was in my story The British Invasion.)

A/N3: Definition of get/have one's wires crossed

informal, of two people. : to fail to understand each other : to be confused because each person has a different idea about what is happening or being said (Courtesy of )

None of Aihara Kotoko's teachers at her previous school would ever have described her as an intellectual. Even her father sometimes shook his head and called her 'not the sharpest knife in the drawer', a culinary expression of a kitchen implement with which she was familiar if not proficient. So it was not unexpected when her new friends from the orientation session were scandalized that she would be so disrespectful as to fall asleep during the opening ceremony of her first year.

"Kotoko!" Satomi slapped the back of her head. "That's a fine way to start your high school career, nodding off during the top student's speech."

"Aw, I don't see how bad that could be," she whined, rubbing her abused cranium. "They always spout a bunch of crap, so it's not like I missed anything. Plus, those geniuses are never much to look at."

"Are you kidding me?" Jinko gasped.

"Did you even look towards the stage?" Satomi demanded. "No, don't answer that because if you had, you would never have uttered such blasphemy."

"Huh?"

"Irie-kun is not only smart but he could win Mr. Junior Tokyo with his looks," Jinko proclaimed.

Kotoko elbowed her friend. "Now I know you're shitting me."

"Really? You're going to eat those words." Satomi grabbed her arm and dragged her through a group of people. "Feast your eyes on those two boys by the door."

The gasp was audible. "Sweet Mary, Mother of God," she breathed.

"That's more like it," the girl nodded, "although I didn't know you were Catholic."

"What? No, just something I heard in a movie," she explained absently. "He's an absolute studmuffin."

"What did we tell you?" Jinko asked smugly. "Look at how broad his shoulders are."

"And how his trousers hug his butt."

"Kotoko!" Satomi exclaimed, although all three girls held onto each other and giggled.

"I wonder if he really needs those glasses or just wears them to look smarter," she continued dreamily.

"Glasses?" Satomi and Jinko shared a lost look.

"Um, Kotoko," Jinko said, "are you talking about the guy standing next to Irie-kun?"

"Next to–? You mean that's not him?" She stared intently. "Irie's okay, I suppose, but who's his friend? He's the one who's captured my heart."

Irie Naoki had never been accused of being unobservant. With a busybody mother and an imaginative younger brother, to do otherwise would endanger his privacy and peace of mind. He supposed that being the object of admiration by a fairly pretty girl was no hardship, even if she was of the lowest level–intellectually speaking–at Tonan.

It gave him a sense of relief when he deduced that she was content to worship him from afar. He was of no mind to scale down his vocabulary in order to communicate with a member of Class F and, with an unprecedented sense of chivalry, did not wish for her to feel inadequate to his superiority.

His friend Watanabe chided him for those beliefs. "Irie," he laughed, "you are severely limiting yourself insofar as friendships are concerned. Perhaps she cannot discuss the mechanics of string theory, but then that is not typical date conversation, much less pillow talk. Besides that, she's a cute little thing."

"If you feel so strongly about it, feel free to ask her out."

"Not that I need your permission to do so, but I think I will do just that," he declared.

Unfortunately for that young man, Kotoko became as one frozen when he approached her and could not speak or move to answer his request for a date. Shrugging, Watanabe apologized for taking up her time and reported back to Naoki. "She must really like you," he informed him. "She appeared struck by horror at the thought of allowing anyone to come between you and her. I have to hand it to you," he patted his friend's shoulder, "you make for serious competition."

While Naoki thought that Watanabe had slightly exaggerated her response, he still accepted the outcome. So accustomed was he to thinking of her as 'his' (after a fashion) that he completely overlooked the glowing warmth at the thought of her rejecting his colleague.

Meanwhile, Kotoko repeatedly smacked the side of her head, muttering, "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!" at her inaction.

It is not to be inferred that Kotoko's female friends were the only ones to be aware of the girl's fascination with a member of Class A; there did seem to be some confusion over which young man was the object of her affection, as few could fathom preferring the spectacled student over Naoki. Kotoko made but one attempt to correct the misconception before her friends advised her to let them think what they like. "After all," Satomi pointed out, "if they're teasing you for the wrong guy, it won't bother you as much."

She agreed after that universal assumption had murmurs becoming whispers and whispers becoming conversations and conversations devolving into one Ikezawa Kinnosuke shouting, "Kotoko, why're you wasting your youth on that egghead Irie? Lookit the company he keeps–that buncha nerds. Nothing good'll come of this. Nah," he poked a thumb into his meager pectorals, "stick with Kin-chan and you'll go far!"

The girl let his self-important and mis-targeted ramblings roll off her back like water off a duck's, but her two pals immediately leaped to her defense.

"Kin-chan, we may think that this is a doomed romance, but by what stretch of the imagination are you any better?"

"Yeah, Kin-chan. Class F may be at the bottom of the school's ranking, but you're at the bottom of Class F's!"

"Kotoko here, poor deluded thing, is trying to make herself smarter for this bloke, not that it's working that well. But at least she is bringing our class average up."

"Not that it gets too far, with all your 0's."

The girl in question meanwhile constantly relived her interaction with Watanabe, each time able to provide a more satisfactory reply to his request for a date, in the event there would ever be a second time.

And so things slowly progressed. First year flowed into second year with conversations along the same vein. Nothing and nobody were able to veer Kotoko from her target, who by now had almost forgotten his abortive invitation.