Chapter Three

The next morning, Aihara couldn't stop giggling for some reason. She sat at breakfast, her face red from laughing under her breath.

"Good morning." She said as I took my seat at the table, as though she knew a secret. But I couldn't have cared less.

I don't even want to know what it's about. I thought as I went about my own business. Her giggling ensued. I shot her an irked glance, though it only seemed to make it harder for her to contain herself.

"Kotoko, what's wrong? Are you feeling well?" Her father asked her.

She swallowed her laughter for a second to answer, "No, I'm alright. Never mind."

"Maybe she studied too much and cracked." Yuuki said to me. Aihara's mouth became a thin line, but then she peered back over to me and another snicker escaped her.

"Maybe." She said through her laughter. It was so odd. I couldn't wrap my mind around her.

What? I thought at her. I ground my teeth together and picked up the newspaper to ignore her.

At the end of breakfast, my mother handed me and Aihara our lunch boxes to send us on our way. Like the day before, I went ahead of Aihara. If she knew the way, then she didn't have to follow me to school.

Still, she caught up and followed those two meters or so behind, not saying a word though it was clear how amused she was. It was enough to make me want to turn around and snap at her to stop it.

I walked faster, immensely agitated and rubbing my neck to keep from tensing up. I arrived to Tonan before Aihara did, though she made it to school perfectly fine without me. Why was it that she had to follow me, again?

Oh, right.

It was because she had such a thing for me that she couldn't lose the precious time. And my mother was encouraging it. My instincts told me that my mother somehow knew of Aihara's infatuation. If she did, no good would be coming from it since she'd taken such a liking for Aihara. I could see it now… my mother and her plotting the ways in which they could get me to have any sort of loving feeling toward Aihara.

The thought of those two scheming maddened me. It was too bad there wasn't a way to separate them before such ideas came to their minds.

Class A and I studied through the first half of today's lessons, undistracted. And like every other day, we completed our homework.

For lunch I pulled my lunch box from my bag. Noticing it was lighter than usual, I looked down to find it was a light shade of pink. The wrong lunch box.

Watanabe caught sight of it, "What happened to your old lunch box?" He asked. I let out an irritated breath and pinched the bridge of my nose. I could see right through it. My mother knew. She had this planted so I would be forced to see Aihara to exchange the lunch boxes. And I wasn't being paranoid either. I knew my mother too well for that.

"It's not mine." I said to Watanabe, shoving the lunch box back into my bag and dangling it over my shoulder, "I'll be right back." I made my way to the door.

"But if it's not yours, then whose is it?" He said. That was one question I couldn't answer. Watanabe wasn't one to spread news, so I was sure I could've trusted him, but I couldn't risk someone overhearing.

I paced down the hallway and down two flights of stairs to Class F. I paused before the door, readying myself for the reaction by Class F when I tear Aihara away from them.

Appearing in the doorway, I remained neutral.

"Aihara." I said. She sprang to attention from studying. Every set of eyes from Class F stared me down dead.

"Naoki Irie," Kinnosuke said with disgust and took stance in front of Aihara, as if to protect her from me, "How dare you speak to Kotoko?" He looked like he would've been ready to fight me. Such foolish, rash behavior.

"Aihara, can you get your bag and come with me?" I said, ignoring Kinnosuke. He wasn't worth the time. Befuddled, she nodded.

"Yes." She said and gathered her bag up off the floor. I began down the hallway, knowing she would catch up. Whispers peppered the air of Classroom F behind me.

I brought her as far away from Class F as I could, leading her all the way outside and to the back of the building where I was sure no one would see.

When I stopped, she swung around in front of me, questions in her eyes. There was a sliver of foundationless hope behind it.

"What is it?" She asked. I opened my bag and pulled out the lunch box.

"This. My mother gave us the wrong ones." She tugged her own bag open.

"Oh, you're right." We switched the lunches.

"If your nosey classmates saw this, it would cause a commotion." She nodded slightly and I closed my bag.

"Such an inconvenience. It's so confusing because we go to the same school." I said, giving my mother the benefit of the doubt, that maybe she'd gotten it wrong by mistake.

A devilish smile crossed Aihara.

"Really," She said, "You might even mistake my uniform for yours and wear it to school." The statement left me confused.

"Why would I do that?" I said. There was no telling what she was thinking. A small giggle escaped her throat.

"Only because you grew up wearing a skirt, didn't you?" She said. My heart stopped. I stood there stunned into silence as she fished into her front pocket.

The picture she produced snapped me back into reality.

"Ta-da!" She said as she flashed a picture of me as a young toddler. I'd known this would come back to haunt me someday. How badly I'd wanted to discard of all those pictures, but my mother wouldn't let me, even resorting to hiding them. I'd searched the house from top to bottom and I never found the albums, so how had she?

And this picture was one of the worst. A frilly pink gown dressed me, white flowers decorating my hair.

"Where did you get that?" I said. Aihara smiled down at the picture.

"Your mother gave it to me." I cringed.

Why did she do that? I asked myself. My mother knew how I felt about those pictures, yet she risked the secret being exposed to the entire student body by sharing it with someone so careless as Aihara.

"Can you give it back?" I held out my hand for it. As soon as I got my hands on that thing, I would shred it without any second thoughts.

"No." She said and looked at me in such a way that it was almost a tease. It angered me and I reached for the picture to take it from her.

"Just give it back." She darted out of the way.

"No, I won't," Again, I reached for it, but she hurriedly tucked it back into her pocket, "You've been so mean to me. Sometimes I can be mean, too." I gave up, a headache forming right at my temples. It sickened me to know that such a picture was in her hands and that it was up to her if she wanted to share it with others.

"I didn't know geniuses could have weaknesses," She flashed a goofy smile and dread filled me to the brim, "I can give it back to you with one condition."

Is she seriously trying to blackmail me? I thought. Less than a week knowing her and she was already the biggest nightmare I'd ever encountered.

"Help me study for exams for a week." I stared at her for a second.

"Me help you study for exams?" It was impossible. My brain would explode. I wouldn't be able to handle her for so long even without the studying.

She nodded sharply, "How about this… If I get into the top 100 list, you can have it back." It was even more impossible than the last proposition. Delusions like these could only come from Class F… the only class that didn't know what they could and could not do.

"I don't think so." I gave up on the hope of ever getting the picture back and maybe being humiliated in front of the entire school some day soon, and all because my mother refused to buy boys' clothes rather than girls' when I was little.

The amusement was wiped from her face, "Why?" She pouted.

"It would be a waste of time to challenge the impossible," I snapped. What did she think would come out of it? A miracle? "Someone as stupid as you would never make it into the top 100 list."

"Okay," she said, reaching into her pocket, "Then I'll just show this picture to-"

"Wait a minute." I said in a rush, reaching over to grab the picture if she should present it again. She taunted me with it like bait, to reel me in and get me to comply with her blackmail. All the while, a grin stretched across her face.

"Fine," I said. Happily, her eyes widened, "Starting today, I'll help you every night for a week." It would be the end of me. She would kill me by overworking, trying to get her to understand math equations she'd never fully understand and speak broken English.

"Yay!" She said, beaming brightly.

"But I won't cut you any slack, got it?" She came back down from her high, "People in the top 100 are from Class A and B. You are aware of how hard it'll be to put a student from Class F on it, right?" She nodded, becoming more serious.

"Good. See you tonight." I said dejectedly, already feeling the frustration of teaching someone like her. I left her behind to walk back to class and she skipped off a moment later.