So…yeah, I promised this story. Oh, before I forget…THANK YOU SO MUCH to my reviewers! I'm soooooo happy! You've no idea how happy reviews make me! And good ones, with something to say, too. Ya'll are da best!

Kurama: Now you get the cookie.

UK: That's why you didn't give it to me before? takes cookie Macadamia nut chocolate cookie with bits of white, dark, and milk chocolate! I'm in heaven! (For those who don't know, I'm on a diet. No cookies except on special occasions. No, NOT one of those stupid low-fat/carb diets, a normal one. Just without my sugar-high stuff like Mountain Dew and cookies and-and…POCKY! Cries I miss Pocky.)

Disclaimer: Recognize it? I prolly don't own it, cakes.

Chapter 5: School is the Blues

Bri

The last week or so that we had before school began, Keiko and I really hit it off. We went shopping the morning after Yusuke treated everyone to pizza. Botan met us on a Tokyo strip and the three of us shopped for clothes.

Keiko and I bought our school uniforms, which really weren't all that bad. They were skirts (ugh), but they were short pleated skirts that we were allowed to wear shorts under. I soon learned that these red skirts, along with the sailor-like white top and red ties, were very traditional Japanese uniforms.

The three of us (Keiko, Botan, and me) went everywhere in the days leading up to day one of school. Keiko showed me the Karaoke Box (and found out what a terrible singer I really am) and the American cinema (the actual movies with Japanese subtitles). They showed me how to play Go and a card game called Ryu-Ken.

Keiko S. and Keiko U. have a lot in common. I'm sure they would have been friends, had Keiko S. not committed suicide. Maybe the four of us, Keiko S., Keiko U, Botan, and me. BBKK. It sounded so good, I almost picked up the phone to ring Keiko S. to tell her about it before remembering that she was dead.

And I was dead, too.

So that meant that there was only BK.

Like Burger King.

I laughed at the thought and wrote it down in my journal later.

However, all good things must end, and school decided that we would be stopping all this foolish fun nonsense right away. Keiko, Shuichi, and I, lucky for us, ended up in the same classroom. A-2. Freshman, room two. Like Shuichi had said, we got up an hour early, dressed, ate, and boarded the bullet train for half an hour before arriving two blocks from the school.

The school was huge. Tall and majestic, yet simple and seven stories tall. We got our room assignment in the mail, of course.

It looked just like any other classroom I'd ever been in, except that the walls were bare so far and blackboard was still clean. The desks were in neat, straight little rows, with a hollow desk and a connected chair with a wire basket underneath. I was glad for it. These flimsy little briefcase things would never be able to hold everything.

Someone once told me that I had obsessive-compulsive disorder. I have to keep everything and everything has to be in its place or I go nuts. Maybe it was Keiko S. I don't know. I can't remember. I barely remember that she'd told me only a day before she took her own life that I needed to get more friends.

I'd asked her why. All I really needed was her.

And she'd told me that she wouldn't always be there.

Basically, I'd handed her the reason to die.

I'd killed her.

I stopped thinking those thoughts and concentrated on the room. I needed a window seat, like on the plane. I'd get sick if I didn't know where I was. I knew where I was, I just needed some solid reason, I guess.

Shuichi sat behind me. Keiko to my right. I sat in the second desk from the front, looking right outside into a cherry tree. So beautiful. The clock ticked away. Tick tock. Tick tock. I wanted nothing more than to sit and watch the cherry tree. A sparrow had made its nest not three feet from my window.

I saw a flash of black. Tried not to panic. Why would I panic? There was nothing after me, not that I knew of. It was probably my imagination. I shifted my eyes to the front, where a Japanese man stood strongly at the head of the class.

Like a military official.

I got the feeling this class would be hell. He stared down a sharp nose through a pair of sharp sunglasses, his chin jutting out like a rock. I heard Shuichi's breathing change pattern, only slightly.

I could tell.

He was worried, too.

"My name is Toguro-sensei," he said. "I am your homeroom and biology teacher. Welcome to this class. I will tolerate nothing."

He spoke a word I knew meant to basically stand and give respect. I scrambled to my feet as the others did it with practiced ease. Everyone bowed just slightly. I tried to mimic them, but probably failed miserably. Toguro-sensei spoke again.

"Wolf, I will see you after class."

How did he know my name?

However, I had little time to ponder. He dove straight into a lecture about biology overall, which I scrambled to take notes on. He talked way too fast! I couldn't translate it in my head, and then onto the paper fast enough. Finally, I just gave up and tried to understand what he was saying. I reduced myself to doodling on the scrambled notes from before.

They looked like scrambled eggs rather than katakana and broken English.

When the bell rang (it sounded like a piece of piano music, actually), I approached the front with a trembling visage. Toguro-sensei glanced at me. I could feel his glare straight through his sharp sunglasses. It felt like a knife in my gut.

"I expect the same respect from you as the other students," he said, slowly. "You came here with what you called competent Japanese. Act like it."

And he left me in the dust, stabbing me at least a dozen more times with everything he'd said and did in less than two minutes.

I sat back in my chair and sighed, staring at the ceiling. My hair probably fell on Shuichi's desk. I know how annoying that can be. I sat back up.

"You okay?" Keiko asked. "Toguro-sensei seems really strict."

"He sounds like a military officer over the maggots he has to whip into shape in a week," I said dryly. "I knew someone like that once. But he gives me goosebumps, a real bad case of them, too."

"Yeah, I think so, too. Why did he single you out?"

"I'm the stupid Yank, remember?" I grinned.

"But you're not a Yank, you're from Kansas."

"Duh. I'm still from America, though. They seem to hold that against you in other countries, from what I've seen so far. At least in Japan."

I sighed and sank into the desk. "He talked so fast, I couldn't keep up. I guess I'm just going to have to look through the book and learn as much as I can on my own…"

"Nonsense. Just ask him to slow down."

"He lectured the entire hour. I don't think he'll slow down for one student. He made it quite clear that he doesn't like me."

"You're not even going to try?"

"What good will it do?"

"You sound exactly like Yusuke, you know that?"

"I don't skip class."

"But you aren't trying, either!"

"I like to learn, unlike Yusuke," I said in defense. "It's just that I don't see the point in forcing people to teach me something that they obviously don't want to teach. He's got other students he has to deal with. Why bother him?"

She just growled in that frustrated way we all know and love. I sighed again and nearly started when the piano bell played again. Another teacher stepped into the room, a tall, sharp-looking woman with pale pink hair. She introduced herself, and then dove right into a lecture on pre-calculus. What was with these teachers and lectures?

She was a little slower than Toguro, but I managed to keep up in romanji. I wrote the notes and would probably translate later. I barely understood that we were going to start just normal algebraic stuff at first, then get into infinities and junk like that. I wanted to wrap a cord around my throat by the end of it all.

Our third teacher was a short little woman with white, white hair and the most piercing, wise blue eyes I'd ever seen. Her name was Gunner, and she was half German. She would be our English teacher. Almost immediately, she told us to put away our book. She spoke in English.

"You know all of the things you need for a traditional English conversation," Gunner said. "What you don't know is how to read English literature. This class will focus on short stories, poetry, and one novel. It is called Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. We will learn about enjoying English, rather than learning it."

I liked her instantly.

"Now, our first poem is called Tyger, Tyger…"

I never felt more wonderful after a class than I had after reading and discussing Tyger, Tyger, which had incidentally been one of the middle school poems I'd read in the sixth grade. Gunner left the room, after which was our "lunch" period. Shuichi tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a little box.

"You forgot your lunch this morning," he said quietly. "Kaasan made them."

"Oh…I didn't know. Thanks, Shuichi." I smiled over my shoulder, which he returned weakly. "There isn't a cafeteria?"

"No. There isn't."

"Oh. Sorry, I didn't know."

"That's all right."

I turned around to eat my lunch. It felt so weird, eating in the classroom, with everyone pushing tables out of the way. People had started up music and were dancing in a corner. Several little groups of girls were talking and laughing. Keiko and me ate silently, but talked after we were done eating. Shuichi had mysteriously disappeared.

When the thirty-minute lunch break was over, he hadn't returned. The teacher came in and started class (history), but Shuichi was nowhere in sight. Where was he? Was he really skipping class? Keiko told me he sometimes would do that. But why? Keiko had no reply, other than an almost unnoticeable shrug.

The history teacher continued to yak until at last the hour was up. After he'd left, Shuichi slipped into the room as if nothing had happened. I turned around to ask where he'd been, but one look in his eyes told me not to. I don't know what it was. Sadness? Loneliness? Heartbreak? What was so depressing that he looked like that?

I listened to the Japanese teacher, and then the electives came. I had art, in another room down the hall. Shuichi had gym. Keiko had music. I got into my classroom, which basically had several easels and two walls of storage. The teacher was seated on the floor, a pair of huge round spectacles falling off her nose.

About five students sat on the floor, for lack of other places. The teacher did so as well, so that we sat like kindergartners on the story time rug.

"Oh, hello," she said. "I'm Gina. Just Gina. Everyone introduce themselves, we've a small class this time round."

"Ichigo."

"Tsuna."

"Shinsuke."

"Kohaku."

"Bri."

"Okay, that was easy. Now, pick a medium, a paper, and an easel and get to work. Whatever comes into your head, I want to see."

That has to be the oddest command I've ever heard.

But, I complied. I picked out a packet of paint that said "acrylics" in English and katakana and a sheet of thick white paper. A nice little brush, a pencil, and an easel and soon, I was ready.

But for what?

I thought for a moment, and then spotted an old poster on the wall. A boy stood with his back to me, his head turned just so that we could see his profile. I rather liked it, except I really wasn't good with drawing boys. I was more a girl person. I don't know. I just started sketching on the page, and soon this face appeared in a profile. I don't know who she was or how she'd gotten into my mind.

But I liked the simplicity of the picture.

I painted until the timer rang. It was time to go home. But I wanted to finish my painting! I sighed to myself as I cleaned the brush and put away the paints. Gina looked at the five beginnings and stopped short.

"Who is this, Bri?"

"I don't know."

"Why did you draw her?"

"I just…liked it. I saw that poster, and…well…it flew out of my fingers."

"Hmm. Well. Class is over. See you all soon! Bri, I'd like to see you for a few minutes."

I waited until the others trickled out.

"Why didn't you inform anyone that you could draw like this?"

"Didn't see the need. Why, I'm not that great…"

"You have all the instincts. You're good now. You can be great. I want you to explore these ideas further. You have it in you. I know it. See you tomorrow."

"Yeah…sure…bye."

And I walked out, a little confused.

So…yeah, Bri can draw. Now that I think of it, the only reason I let her be "good" was to connect her with Gina…oh, and that angel…dang it. Small point. Oh, well. Review? Still two more to go! (Sounds like that chant during the Dark Tournament. "Two more to go!" Ugh, I still have nightmares about Karasu. He's almost exactly like BTK. Anyone heard about the BTK trial? WE GOT HIM! WAY TO GO, WICHITA POLICE!)