It's is nine o' two. That means that my internet connection effectively just went down two minutes ago, and will not work again until midnight, thanks to my adoring parents. I have two tests tomorrow and I need to finish I book that is written in French, so I'm doing the right thing by writing this instead. There is good in neglect.
Yugi promised to come visit Miho and Tea again for lunch tomorrow (sans Yami, to Tea's great disappointment) and was just about to leave. It was five minutes until lunch ended, and the halls were crowded with those who preferred to stand while digesting, or those who liked to stick other people in lockers and slam the door shut.
Tea's phone rang. She placed her hands on it. "I'll see you tomorrow, Yugi!" She smiled at him. Usually those smiles were enough to make Yugi melt, whether he was over her or not. Now he just nodded and smiled back, then excused himself to leave. Miho waved goodbye.
"BYE YUGI!" she screamed. Tea rolled her eyes and picked up her phone. "Hello?" she said, cradling the phone against her ear as she fiddled with her locker. "Mom?"
The hallway was so loud, she felt like shushing people. She could barely hear the person on the other end of the phone. They were whispering something to her. "Mom? The reception's bad. Mom?"
Someone inadvertently knocked into her, causing her to drop the phone. "Hey!" Tea stamped her foot and glared at the person who had knocked into her—Joey Wheeler.
"Sorry, Tea. Was it important?" Joey leaned over and plucked the cell phone off of the ground, politely depositing it in Tea's waiting hands.
She sighed. "Don't know; I dropped it before I could hear what they were saying, whoever it was. It must've been my mom, this is a new cell phone. Hey, where did Miho go?"
"She said something about shelving a few books before the bell rang. It's almost like she likes her work, eh?"
"Well, have you ever noticed that Miho likes to organize things? Like, in her room, she has a whole fashion of these cool, glass animals, and she arranged them in alphabetical order- boy and centipede and dragon and unicorn…"
Joey looked at her with an unwavering gaze, but she knew that the wheels were turning in his head. "None of those are animals, though."
"Well, mythical creatures too." Tea and Joey walked into the classroom, and she unloaded her stuff on the desk.
"'Boy'?"
"She prefers to call it the beau-ideal; that makes it more mythical."
"Oh. Is that like, a nice guy or something?" Joey scratched his head. "'Cause girls like it when we're nice, right?"
Tea pursed her lips together, thinking hard. "…Do all guys refer to males in general in the 2nd person?" she finally asked.
Joey blinked. "Yeah. Yeah, we do."
"Ah." Tea clicked her tongue. "Well, yeah, Joey. A beau-ideal means, like, a role model."
"You like using French words, huh Tea?" Joey sat backwards in the seat in front of her, ignoring the girl pouting because he was momentarily reclining in her seat. "Like, I remember you using the word 'bourgeois' once in Duelist Kingdom."
"You remember stuff like that?"
"Yes… I also remember the size shoes you were wearing."
Tea gaze Joey a creepy look. "Uhmm… riiight… That sounds a little like Crump."
Joey grinned lopsidedly, swinging his legs over the side of the seat and hopping to his feet. "Aw, lighten up, Tea; I didn't know what size your feet were, or are, and furthermore, I don't even care!" Joey whistled happily.
"…Is something good about that?" Tea asked curiously, wanting to curb the derangement that started when Joey's eyes became two rounded chibi arches.
"Yeah!" Joey said. "Because this girl that I'm with now, her boyfriend broke up with her because he said her feet were too tiny."
"Oh…"
"Now he's going out with that girl." Joey pointed to, well, that girl. She was chubby, had short, black hair, a slightly tanned face pocked with white freckles, and very, very fat lips. When she spoke, her mouth was a rounded black hole, an endless abyss of verbal diarrhea. Tea seemed to remember that she was in Ryou Bakura's fan club, and that she was always one of Duke's cheerleaders.
"…Good for him?" Tea sweat dropped. "Um, Joey, lean closer."
"Why?" Joey leaned towards her. Tea sweat dropped even more.
"Closer."
"…No," Joey said, suddenly embarrassed. He moved over to his seat. Tea tripped as she rose to her feet.
"No, Joey, wait, I meant that she's too UGLY and just wanted to ask if your new girl is prettier than her and I didn't want to say it out loud!" she screamed. Everybody looked at her, including the Fat One.
"…Ehehehe…" Tea ran out of the room. The bell rang.
"Miss Tea, you're late," said Ms. Jono amusedly. She had watched her run out of the room, only to freeze when the bell rang, right in the doorway. "Now don't make me send you to detention…"
Tea's face flushed, and she turned to the teacher and bowed. "Sumimasen," she said softly and reverently. "It will never happen again."
Unfortunately, she bowed just a little too low, and the next person to enter the room got a darned good look at her underwear.
And that person was the substitute teacher.
The guy was only in his early 20s, perhaps a college student from a nearby university. His face was beet red, as was Tea's. She quickly moved towards her desk, throwing a dirty look towards Joey, who mouthed the word, 'What?'
The sub nervously went up to the front desk. "Class," Ms. Jono said, "this is the son of my best friend's… booooooooooifurendo!"
"Ooooh," they all oohed.
"He's cute," Miho said. The guy sweat dropped. His palms were sweaty/knees weaks, there's vomit on his sweat already---oh, pardon, I went off in song.
"His name is Elmer Maryellen Iotsupica Nathaniel Emcee Man," Ms. Jono said lovingly. "Say hi, El-kun."
El-kun sweat dropped.
"Hi," he said.
"WOO! WHAT'S YOUR SIGN!" yelled Joey, loudly. Everybody laughed. The guy sweat dropped. "Is he… gay…?" He had only whispered it to himself, but Bakura, entering the classroom with a large knife in his hand, nodded drunkenly.
"Yes," Bakura said. "Yes he is."
"Bakura!" Ms. Jono pried the knife from the thief. "I told you, if you do that one more time, I'm seriously going to spank you!"
"…Fun…" Bakura slurred. Several of the students giggled.
Ms. Jono gaped at him. "…Bakura, are you drunk?"
"If I was drunk, would I tell you?" Bakura pointed out the obvious.
Ms. Jono pursed her lips together, apparently deciding. "Uhm… you might."
"Well, I would have to be really, really, really—" Bakura spread his arms wide, "—really drunk. And no, I'm not. What I took was so much worse…"
"I'm writing you up."
"No, don't! Have mercy! It was Benadryl…"
Ms. Jono's eyes widened. "NO! NOT BENADRYL! NOOOOOOO!"
"--What's Benadryl?" Tristan asked.
"It's an allergy medicine," somebody told him.
"Oh."
"It makes you really sleepy, though."
"Oh."
Ms. Jono was standing there, wondering what to do with Bakura, who had just fallen asleep standing up and was snoring quite loudly. Some of the girls giggled, and said, "Aw, how cute," since he couldn't hear them. Miho and Tea looked irate, and Kaiba looked downright furious at this idiocy.
Meanwhile, Elmer Maryellen Iotsupica Nathaniel Emcee Man looked nervously from side to side, monolithic sweat starting to seep through his clothes. The nervous man, as soon as Ms. Jono had her back fully turned to him, made a clean run for it. Minutes later, everyone stopped what they were doing to amusedly watch him run across the schoolyard, as, thinking that nobody could see him, he started doing ballet.
An hour later, after a classroom game of "let's feed 'Kura sugar water and carbonated beverages," Bakura Mimoto (that was what Ryou had said his name was) was back to his normal state, and sulking.
"BAKURA'S GONNA GET FAT!" Miho stuck her tongue out at him and pulled down on her lower eyelid. "He ate THREE PIECES of that cake they served at lunch today, as well as all of this soda! And it isn't even Diet!"
Bakura growled. "Shut up, wench."
His stomach rumbled.
The class laughed. Bakura hissed at them. They shut up. Bakura was not one to be crossed. Most of the school didn't even know why, but they avoided him just because he had this quasi-gothic vampire's aura around him, and sharp teeth. Some had seen him taunt the gym teacher, and anybody that could make Coach Karita scream like a girl—all Bakura had done was bare his teeth at him—was one to be avoided vehemently.
Bakura leaned forward in Miho's ear. "This has to stop," he hissed. "Before this week is over… we are going to… work this out."
Bakura leaned back in his seat, satisfied. Miho sort of gaped at him before going back to his seat. The class's whispers indicated that they wanted to know what Bakura had said—what could make Miho look so horrified?
Bakura stared intently out the window during class that afternoon. He might've been blushing. He was certainly upset with himself. He felt like a pantywaist, because he wanted to talk things out with Miho, just like adults always recommended. (Then again, adults also recommended edited CDs and non-violent video games, so who cared what they said?)
Why? Bakura tapped his pencil against his desk. His left hand was up against his face, with the curve of the index finger pressed against the area above his lip. His eyes, ever suspicious, were fascinated by the windows. Not what was outside the windows, but the windows themselves. Glass was good. :)
The tomb thief decided not to figure out why—screw it. Bakura knew he had to work things out. Things weren't that bad… yet. But something was telling him to work things out so that he had a clean record… maybe it was Ryou. When Ryou came home, Bakura didn't want to be in the middle of a social war.
If Ryou came home. What if his better half had been joking? He'd done it once before, and Bakura had been infuriated. He'd practically breathed fire down Ryou's neck over the phone. What was—
"Mr. Bakura!"
Bakura's head snapped up. "Uhm, yes, Ms. Jono?" he said pleasantly, hoping that he'd get points for being cute.
"What is the oldest wooden structure in Nara prefecture?" She glared at him.
Bakura curled his lips, giving her a sneer. "The Hyoruji Pagoda," he declared. "Even I know that."
Ms. Jono's lips formed a round 'O' shape. She looked astonished. "Oh… um… yes." She blinked.
"Really?" said Joey. "'Cause I didn't."
"Didn't what?" Bakura scowled.
"I didn't know that!" Joey exclaimed.
"We took a field trip there last year, Joey!" Tristan reminded him. "Sheez."
"Oh! Oh yeah!"
And the teacher just stood there, embarrassed and dumbfounded. Just like he wanted Miho to look. Now, if he could only think up what to say.
Maybe he should start with, "Your mother"…?
Your mother was a hamster! He could hear Ryou citing it with such clarity… Bakura closed his eyes and slumbered through the rest of the class. He woke up with doodles all over his arm in sky-blue highlighter.