Thank you to those who reviewed, and to those who didn't: remember, review or die.

And I'm glad you think it's better.

Also, to explain math, there's no calculus or whatever, just Core Math (for stupid people) Optional Math (for not stupid people) and Advanced Math (for people who are smart/like to make their heads explode)

Chapter 2-

Buruma flopped down into an uncomfortable plastic seat. Her advanced math teacher hadn't yet arrived in the room, and only a few students were starting to filter in. She received a few looks and her heart sunk even further into her stomach, school was such a closed community, all these people were a year older than her, they had their friendship groups already organised, and she wasn't going to be welcome to sit with any of them in her classes. She would be stuck with the loners.

While not exactly 'popular', Buruma was not a loner by any stretch of the imagination. She had numerous friends, and no real enemies; she just didn't have the patience for the absolutely shallow nature of those considered popular. While she herself could be shallow when the situation arose, as it quite often did, she craved intelligent conversation, and friends she could confide in. Being horrendously popular didn't offer that.

Despite her rejection of the popular lifestyle, Buruma had no desire to be confided to associating with those who, for whatever reason, were undesirable in the school society.

She looked up at the sound of someone dumping their books one desk down from her. She looked over. A reasonably attractive guy, with sandy, brown-blonde hair and dark eyes smiled back at her. He reached out his hand across the desk between them.

"You must be Buruma."

"Uh…" she blinked at him in surprise, of all things she hadn't expected him to know her name. She raised her arm mechanically and shook his hand. His grin widened, the corners of his eyes creasing as though he was laughing. She liked this guy, she'd decided.

"Well, I'm Damien. Nice to meet you, hope you don't feel too excluded here." Buruma mumbled something incoherent in reply, still stunned at the idea of someone actually talking to her, let alone being friendly. She noticed his warm eyes move focus and she swivelled her body around as Damien waved his hand in a friendly wave to the person now entering the room.

Buruma's breath caught in her throat and she sunk into her seat further. Shit. The one guy, the ONE guy she couldn't talk to without turning into a giggling mass of stupidity and he had to be in her first class. She realised, as he walked over, that he was going to sit next to her too. Great, it was the perfect way to begin the school year. Get put in a class with no friends and then sit next to the guy you adore and turn into a clumsy mute who couldn't solve so much as a quadratic equation if her life depended on it.

Fortunately, he ignored her. A brief scowl was all the indication he gave that he so much as knew she was there. She spent the entire lesson with her head bowed, face flushed scarlet, focussing on her work. Every once in a while she cast a furtive glance at the guy next to her, occasionally catching a look from Damien, who would raise his eyebrows at her. She felt an affinity with him, despite having only met him briefly. It was only when the bell rang that she realised she still didn't know the name of the person she was in love with.

--

Chichi struggled to keep an even pace. She hated PE so much. It was a pointless subject, in her eyes. How was running around the school repeatedly supposed to contribute to her education? As far as she was aware, PE had neither added to her intelligence, nor her enjoyment of school. All it had done was make her tired and sweaty and a long way behind her friends. She could see Kuririn and Juuhachigou up ahead of her; about to round a corner and become hidden by the large, redbrick building that was the science block. She struggled to make her aching legs move faster but gave up after about 30 seconds, preferring to lean against the warm bricks and gaze up at the endlessly blue sky.

A lone wisp of cloud floated amongst the blue, and Chichi was reminded, harshly, of how lonely she'd been feeling lately. Part of it was due to the fact that, after a fight with her father that had resulted in her violent temper inspiring her to throw and break numerous of his most precious possessions, she'd moved in temporarily with her cousin. But Chichi couldn't help but feel that wasn't the only reason for the aching chasm that was somehow consuming her from the inside. Sighing, she pushed herself off the wall and sluggishly picked up the jogging.

Juuhachigou pushed a few stray blonde wisps from her sticky forehead and sped up as she forced herself up a flight of stairs. She heard a breathless laugh behind her and she turned around, collapsing onto the stairs in the same movement.

"All right, Juu! I give up… but you're only faster because your legs are longer," Kuririn bent over, hands on knees, and grinned up at the tall blonde, who just rolled her eyes and laughed lightly.

"The bell's going to go for first break soon. We may as well skip the rest of class, we've run further than most of the people." Kuririn nodded and straightened up, the school didn't operate PE classes very well, most of the time the teacher just told them to run around the school while he sat in the gym drinking coffee. Most students just ran out of his line of vision and wandered off to talk somewhere. The odd few actually ran, those who were deathly afraid of doing anything wrong, those who were fitness freaks, those with no one to talk to, and Kuririn and Juuhachigou, who had set an unofficial challenge between each other in their first PE lesson at the school. They had been in the same class since, and always raced each other. Juuhachigou always won.

Juuhachigou waited for her short friend to catch up to her, and they trudged up the stairs side by side. They wandered around the school for a few minutes, each lost in their own thoughts, before Juu pointed out a bench just outside Buruma's computer class. They sat down to wait in silence.

It wasn't often that Kuririn was silent, and Juu shot him a confused sideways look. He looked so funny, being so short, and lacking a nose. Despite his funny looks, though, he was a great friend. He never failed to make her laugh, and never seemed too busy with his other friends to talk to her. Lately, though, the others had been making jabs at her, saying that she and Kuririn should be dating. It had made her angry, but at the same time, she'd been thinking about what it would be like. She'd had three boyfriends in the space of her 15 years, and none had lasted more than a fortnight. She hadn't been able to maintain a friendship with them afterwards either. So even if she wanted to go out with him sometime in the future, Juuhachigou had promised herself that she wouldn't. Their friendship was too precious for her to throw away like that.

The bell rang, jerking the pair out of their deep thoughts, and back to the here and now. A few people filed out of the classroom they were sitting in front of, and the two stood up, almost in unison. When Buruma emerged, Kuririn gave a friendly wave, and she walked over to them swiftly, an enormous grin making her eyes sparkle.

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Yay! Another chapter, and it was LONGER! Anyway, I want at least 3 reviews before I update again, I don't think I'm being too greedy, seeing as I got 5 for this chapter (5 reviews, of course, makes me write more than 3 does) Yeah… Damien's new, Ai will be in it, for old readers, but she'll be called Ami, just to make her slightly more Western, seeing as it's set in Australia.

Review or die, my minions.