Possible TW: The subject of child abuse is danced around this chapter. While it is not discussed in depth, or even actually occurring (Unless you wanna count XANA as a perpetrator of that), I feel it is important to warn those who might feel uncomfortable with that topic in advance.


Yolanda Perraudin

Of course she knows about them—they're perhaps the most talked about group at Kadic this year. Both students and staff alike gossiped about them constantly: a group of five mismatched misfits making friends with one another seemingly overnight. In such a clique oriented environment, of course a group like theirs would become the talk of the school.

But even if there weren't constant rumors about them, she was fairly certain she would be very familiar with them anyway.

Because, supposedly, she'd seen them quite often.

It was the group's most frequently asked request: that they weren't feeling well and needed to go see her. And yet, despite how often they asked, she saw them very little. She wasn't sure what it was that they felt was so important they had to get out of their classes for, but it certainly wasn't to see her all the time. If anything, it felt like they avoided seeing her whenever possible.

Which made the times she did see them all the more… memorable.

It happened on a Sunday morning, on the day she scheduled the make-up health examinations. It had been a very busy day. Normally, there weren't very many names on the list, but after her abrupt… pause on the initial day (She still wasn't certain what had happened to her that day) she'd had to reschedule about half the eighth grade class.

Thankfully, the check ups didn't take very long, and by early afternoon she was done with most of the names on the list. She only had a handful left, she noted, and only one boy in that group. May as well finish that up, she figured.

She opened the door while looking at the name on her clipboard. "Ulrich Stern?" she read out, then looked around.

She didn't have to look very far. Ulrich had been sitting on the floor down the hall. Once he heard his name, he lifted his head, then hopped up off the floor and hustled over to her.

She gave him a smile as he entered the room. "Hello, Ulrich," she greeted. Ulrich let out a grunt in return.

Ah, the conversationalist skills of teenage boys.

"How's your week been?" She shut the door behind them and gave him a curious look. "Anything interesting going on?"

He shrugged. "Not really. Usual stuff. Math, Italian, too much homework from everyone…"

She let out a small laugh at his progressively displeased expression as he spoke. "I guess not every week can be as exciting as what's played on TV, now can it?"

His lips twitched at that. "Guess not," he replied in a strange tone of voice. He looked as if he wanted to laugh. Hm, strange, She hadn't thought she'd said anything funny.

Maybe another one of the 'inside jokes' that was popular with him and his friends?

Well, it didn't really matter. She started scanning over his file to check for any major changes in it. "Is there anything that I should know about before we start?" He shook his head. "Ok then. You should be able to get started on that homework soon at least. This shouldn't take very long."

Another shrug, not that she expected much else from him. He'd been at Kadic several years now, he knew the drill. He moved over to one of the nearby chairs while she grabbed the thermometer from her desk.

"If you're looking for more excitement, then you're probably looking forward to the soccer tryouts soon, I'd imagine. They're in a few weeks, aren't they?" she asked while they waited for the thermometer. He let out a hum right before it beeped. She checked it; a perfectly normal temperature.

"Yeah, I guess," he said in a bored tone. As she made notes of his temperature, she glanced over at him to find him looking around the room, a completely disinterested expression on his face. When his interest in that activity dried up, he moved on to playing with a loose thread on the edge of his shirt.

She frowned. "'You guess'?" she echoed. She grabbed the nearby blood pressure cuff and placed it on his arm. "You don't seem very enthusiastic about it. Why, are you worried you won't make the team for some reason?"

He shrugged again. "No," he said as the cuff started to tighten around his arm. "Just not planning on trying out."

"O-oh… I see..." She couldn't mask her surprise at the news. Her eyes went wide at him, though he'd turned away from her gaze to look at the window. She shook her head and focused back on what she was supposed to be doing. She continued in silence, but still, she couldn't keep her thoughts quiet.

If there was anything known almost school wide about Ulrich Stern, it was that he liked soccer, and that he was good at it. While he might not have been the best academically (She'd heard Suzanne bemoan his lack of effort enough to get a feel for what kind of student he was), athletically he thrived. She'd seen only a few of his games in his time at Kadic, but even she could tell that for someone his age, he certainly did very well.

Jim certainly hadn't been able to stop raving about the boys potential since he'd arrived.

For him to just suddenly... stop, to give up the one thing he seemed to excel in, sounded like an impossibility. And yet, here he was, talking about it as if it was as much of an afterthought as the weather.

She let out a hum in thought as she removed the cuff from his arm. "Any particular reason why?"

"Hm?" He looked back, and tilted his head. "Reason for what?"

"For not trying out this year,"

Finally, she got more than just a shrug out of him. He readjusted how he sat in the chair and looked down at his lap. "Just… don't want to this year, that's all. Got enough to do as it is..." he muttered that last part under his breath while he twiddled his thumbs, but she still heard it. She furrowed her brow.

He must've seen the look on her face, because he quickly added, "Because there's so much homework this year, I mean! I wouldn't have time for anything else! I mean, you know how Mrs. Hertz is with giving out homework…" He let out a sheepish laugh that trailed off, then rubbed at the back of his neck and looked out toward the window again.

She couldn't help the small laugh at his quip. So that was it, was it? "Yes, I've heard she likes to keep you busy," she said. She looked back down at her notes and scribbled on them some more. "Though I have to say, I'm impressed with your forethought to prioritize your grades like that. It can't be easy to give something like that up," she noted.

He made a dismissive noise and a slight tilt and nod of his head.. Whatever that meant.

"I'm sure your teammates will miss you," she noted.

"They'll get over it."

Her thoughts of Jim said otherwise.

"Well," she said instead, "Just take care that you still keep yourself active in some way. Activity is important for people your age,"

The strange gleam in his eye from before returned, as did a smirk. "Don't worry about that. I have my ways," he said. Then, he stood up and started to remove his jacket. "Height and weight next, right?"

She blinked. "Ah… yes, that's right." She heard more shuffling from him as she turned around to the scale and turned it on to set it up. She turned back around again to the table to rest her notes in and made some more marks in them.

There had been that look again… She still didn't think she'd said anything that strange. From her understanding, he and his group of friends found a lot of seemingly mundane things funny. Maybe she could try asking?

She heard the scale let out a beep—done already? She must've lost track of time. She turned around and…

All thoughts of asking about him and his friends vanished, and were instead placed by horrified panic.

Ulrich!" she gasped.

"What? Come on, it's not that bad, is it?" he joked. He looked back with a slight grin, but sobered upon seeing her face. "Yolanda…?"

She said nothing, only stared. Splattered all across his back were more bruises than she could count, big and small, in a variety of shades of blue and purple. There were more across his upper back and shoulders, but no part of his back was completely spared.

A million different ideas rushed through her head, each worse than the last. She swallowed and tried to compose herself. Gawking wasn't very professional, nor was it helping right now.

"Ulrich," she said in the calmest voice she could, "Why didn't you mention this?"

"Mention what?" He twisted his neck to follow her line of sight. When his eyes fell on one of the bruises on his shoulder, he stopped. "Oh, right. That."

She clutched her notes so tightly that the edges balled in her hand. That was not a proper response for anyone to have, let alone a 13 year old boy. Gingerly, she grabbed a hold of his wrist and gently led him over to the led, where she had him sit down. There she took another, closer look at the bruises.

They weren't… as bad looking as she'd initially thought, but the sheer number of them was worrisome enough as it was. Some appeared to be healing, while others seemed much more fresh, but the placement of each of those was utterly random. Of course, the fact that he had any at all was the most concerning part of all.

"How did this happen?" she asked as she inspected.

Ulrich shrugged again (And now she couldn't help but cringe at the motion, knowing what he'd been hiding) and hummed. "Uh… I don't know… Maybe I fell…?"

"Ulrich." She interrupted. She walked so she was standing in front of him, and looked down at him with a hardened, serious expression. "It's important that you tell the truth,"

At that, his mouth snapped shut with an audible clack, and he averted his gaze from her own. "It just… look, I don't know, ok? Things happen sometimes, and I …"

"But when 'things' happen, you should tell someone about it. Why didn't you say anything?"

His feet didn't touch the floor from where he sat, but they swung over the edge at a faster rate than they had before.. "I… forgot about them?" It sounded more like a question than a statement. "It… it just wasn't a big deal, ok? It's not like anything's broken or something."

"But marks like this are still-"

"Look, they don't even hurt that much." He folded his arms across his chest and looked toward the floor, muttering to himself.. "Nothing I'm not used to anyway…"

She bit her lip. She didn't like this, not at all. What did that mean, 'nothing he wasn't used to'? The amount of bruises indicated that this had happened before but…

How regularly did his back look like this?

...And what else could he be hiding?

"Ulrich," she managed to pull his eyes back to her. She could only gleam one thing from them: fear. But at what? "I need you to be honest with me when I ask you this question: did someone do this to you?"

He swallowed. He looked away again, first at the pillow on the bed, then toward his lap again. He gripped some of the fabric of the sheet under him in a tight fist. But still, he wouldn't say anything.

She sighed. "Ulrich, if somebody is hurting you then-"

"...No," he finally answered. His voice always had a kind of reserved sound to it, but now it had a strange edge to it. A note of worry, maybe even slight panic. BUt still it was quiet; she almost hadn't heard him interrupt her.

Her concern deepend. "You're certain about that?"

"Look, it's…" he huffed in exasperation. "It's not like that, ok?"

"Then what is it like, Ulrich?" she asked patiently. "Because with only this to go on, I have to assume that-"

"It was just Jim…"

"Jim!?" she all but shrieked. Jim was many things, but this… no! He couldn't be…!?

He seemed nonchalant as he continued. "Yeah, it wasn't anything big. He just-" He cut his absurdly casual sounding voice off as he realized what he was saying. Then, his eyes went wide, and he threw his hands out in front of him and waved wildly while he rapidly shook his head. "Oh, that sounds bad. No no no, that's not what I meant. I uh… meant gym class. Y'know, phys ed! Jim in gym" he rambled.

He scratched his cheek and let out an awkward laugh. "Y-yeah, it probably happened during gym class—completely unrelated to Jim, the gym teacher though! Easy mistake to make, ha ha..."

Her eyes narrowed as she folded her arms. "Ok… then how did it happen in gym class?"

"It er… uh…" he stammered. He tried to say several things, but nothing would come out coherently. Clearly, whatever he was trying to say wasn't going to come out. He snapped his jaw shut tight and let his shoulder droop, and looked back down at his lap and twiddled his thumbs.

"Ulrich," She reached out to place a hand on his shoulder, but stopped just short, thinking better of it at the last second. She let it drop back to her side. "You're not in trouble for any of this... But I need to know: who did this to you?"

He hesitated. "It… it really wasn't anything big. It was just… stuff that happened during martial arts practice with Yumi,"

She frowned. "Ishiyama?"

"Do you know any other Yumi's?" he retorted. At her sharp look, he glanced off toward the side again.

"...I wasn't aware Jim was still keeping up with those classes," she noted after a pause. She'd thought they'd been cancelled due to low attendance.

"...We still like to practice a lot," he said.

She sighed. Of course they did. She started to rub at one of her temples; these kids would be the death of her.

"Er…" he suddenly spoke up. "Yumi won't get in trouble for that, will she?"

She pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment. "No, she's not in trouble either. But all that being said, you two need to be more careful. A bruise here or there is one thing, but this is unhealthy. For both of you. "She stopped as a thought crossed her. "Do I need to tell Yumi these same things, or is it just you acting so recklessly?"

He shrugged.

She should've expected that.

She sighed again. "Regardless, you need to cut back on this now before you really hurt yourself, ok?"

"Ok, ok, get it already," he grumbled. "Can we just… finish this up? ...Please?" He tacked on that last part like it was an afterthought.

Seeing as she probably wasn't going to get much further with him, she relented. She nodded and made some marks in her notes again. "Yes, we can finish this up. However," she pointed the end of her pen at him. "I'm ordering you to lay off of strenuous activity for at least a week, including gym."

"But-"

"I don't want to hear it. I'll be writing a note to Jim about this, and if I catch wind of you ignoring my order then I promise you you're going to regret it, understand?" He gave her an angry glare, but nodded, if begrudgingly. "I also want to see you back here within a week as well. And don't think I'm letting you walk out of here without giving you something for those."

He looked like he wanted to protest still, but instead he held his tongue. "...Fine," he muttered, then even quieter than that, she heard a "Thank you…"

Better than she usually got at least.

His health exam continued on mostly as normal—the only major surprise had been the bruises. Ulrich Stern was otherwise very healthy but… something was still off. The whole time, she could stop fixating on the marks.

They would be distressing to see on anyone, but Ulrich was barely 13. And perhaps some would believe that was simply due to overexertion when it came to his martial arts practice. Even she had to admit it wasn't an entirely implausible explanation for some of the bruises he had.

But for many of the others…

Unless Yumi was slamming him against walls or literally beating him then…

Of course, Yumi wouldn't do that, regardless of whether or not she had the ability to. But that left an important question: just what were the marks from then? Ulrich clearly wasn't going to answer without lying or dodging the question, which only made her more concerned.

She'd heard that his group was very secretive. She'd have believed that based on how often they used her office as an excuse to go running off somewhere—it wasn't so uncommon to hear it sometimes in the past, but never had it occurred this often in a school year. But no one knew where they went in those times.

Did this have something to do with whatever it was they went? And if so…

Just what was it they were doing, and how much more worried did she need to be?


This was an interesting one for me. Yolanda was kind of a blank slate for me. Technically, I guess Yumi's mother was too, she got even less screen time, but I could at least have her be a concerned mother. Yolanda... I guess she was kinda pushy in some episodes, but usually it was because something bad was going on and she didn't want any distractions. I did what I could with her, but I'm not sure how I feel about it overall.

Why use her, you ask? Well, there's only so many consistently present adults in the show, and I felt like not including the person the group always pretends to go see was an opportunity too good to pass up on.

And on a slightly different note... we are living in a rather scary time right now. I'm not going to discuss anything in depth, one because I don't like dating things by discussing real time events in the notes anymore, and two, because I know many use fanfic as a form of escapism.

All that begin said though... please stay safe everyone. Wash your hands, stay inside as much as you can, and remember: one day, we'll get through this together.