Disclaimer: I don't own any Azumanga Daioh characters

Note: Another sporadic update. I'm very tempted to take this story in a very odd direction, but I'm not sure. These pairing stories just get so hackneyed no matter which way you write them. Does anyone have anything against zombies?

Chapter 2

On the third floor of the school building, in second classroom down from the stairwell, class 3-2 talked among themselves as they waited for their teacher to arrive. The chime had rung and classes were moments away from beginning. It was the first day of a new year and everyone was as excited as they could have been.

In the second to last row, a boy had shifted sideways in his seat to talk with the boy behind him.

"No way. This year is going to be great. I've been dreaming of this ever since I came to this school."

"Me too. Ever since I got here I couldn't wait for it to be over. Now the end is in sight," the second boy laughed and leaned back in his seat, folding his hands behind his head.

"That's not what I'm talking about. You know whose class this is, right?"

"Mr. Egi's isn't it?"

"Oh Hell no! Didn't you hear? Mr. Egi had a stroke," the first boy smirked and gave a knowing bob of his head. "He'll never teach again, but if he does then he better find himself another class."

"So who's teaching this one now?"

"You ready?" the boy's voice lowered as though what he had to say was of the utmost confidential nature. He leaned forward closer to his friend and narrowed his eyes with an elfish grin. "It's Ms. Mizuhara."

"What!" the second boy shot forward and nearly slipped from his chair. His hands held a white-knuckle grip to the sides of his desk and his cheeks turned a very faint shade of red. "I thought she was admin only!"

"Yep. You and I are one of the lucky few to experience this. From here until the end, it's Ms. Mizuhara."

"Dammit! I'm never gonna be able to make it through a day. That woman is like….She's like-"

At that moment, the door of the classroom was slid open and the teacher, carrying her roll book in one hand and briefcase in another, made her entrance.

In heels, Ms. Mizuhara stood about five feet, seven inches tall. Her brown hair came just to her shoulder blades and was usually kept in a tight bun or held back with a barrette. Being on the administrative staff, she was required to dress more professionally than regular teachers and her attire of choice was usually Armani black. Today's outfit, as every boy in the class immediately noticed, was the skirt and blazer ensemble complete with a starch white blouse and tastefully simple accessories. Gold studs (one per ear), a women's Rolex (she insisted that it had been a gift), a necklace with a small cat emblem, and of course those ovular, thin-framed glasses perched upon her ski-sloped nose.

"Good morning, class," she spoke with hardly a smile as she set her things on her desk and then turned to write her name on the white board.

The two boys at the back of the room sat with mouths open and eyes taking quick opportunities to gawk at the back side of their new teacher. The tight curves of Ms. Mizuhara were the most notorious ones throughout the entire campus. The second boy leaned forward to whisper in his friend's ear.

"I heard she's a Hell of a frosty bitch though."

"Just icing on the cake, my friend. Icing on the cake," his friend muttered with a grin, gaze keeping fast upon the woman in front of the class.

Without missing a beat from her busy pace, Ms. Mizuhara dropped the marker back into the tray of the white board before turning and taking up her roll book. It had been a long time since she had had to do any teaching, but when there was a task that needed to be completed, even one as big as taking over a class for a whole year, she was not hesitant in accepting the job.

"Please raise your hand as I call your name. There's a lot we need to cover today and I would like to get to most of it before lunch."

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At the end of the day, Koyomi entered her office carrying a box in her arms. Using her foot, she closed the door behind her before crossing the room to set the box down by her desk. Inside the box were various files and folders, all of them thick and bulging with paperwork.

Any employee of the school should have been so lucky to have their own office, but Ms. Mizuhara was hardly under the employment of the school system. Rather she was part of a research team that worked for a much larger establishment, and she had been hired under the guise of the school's psychologist. She was not opposed to the recent circumstances that had landed her a teaching position in addition to her counseling one. Her ultimate goal required that she observe students as closely as possible, and there was nothing better than to be able to see them in their own classroom environments.

Sitting down at her desk, she touched her finger along the mouse pad of her laptop. The monitor of the laptop flicked on to reveal a black screen with two text boxes- one for a name and one for a password. She typed in both, and within seconds the laptop booted up to the last screen that she had been looking at. The majority of the screen was taken up by several odd looking charts and diagrams, and the smallest hint of a bluish desktop pattern could be seen behind them.

Before she could turn her attention to her work, there came a very soft knock upon the door.

"Ms. Mizuhara?" the timid voice of her assistant inquired from beyond.

Koyomi looked up, one eyebrow lifted into a high arch as she reached into the box by her desk.

"Yes? Come in," she responded, hauling from the box the first of several folders to be reviewed and added to the information net that she and her research team had been constructing over the course of several years.

The door to the office was pulled open just a crack and the older face of Mrs. Akiko Sakamoto peered inside. Mrs. Sakamoto was the third assistant that Koyomi had had since starting at the school, and so far she was the one who lasted the longest. She had taken the place of Ms. Kobayashi who had been fired on the spot and then sent away for questioning after making the condemning mistake of believing that an assistant's job included cleaning up her boss's office. Ms. Kobayashi had been the replacement for Ms. Yoshiaki who had simply not been able to handle Ms. Mizuhara herself.

"Ms. Mizuhara, there's a Mr. Ryou Minakata on line two for you," Mrs. Sakamoto stated plainly, making a conscious effort to keep herself from stuttering. In the mornings Ms. Mizuhara was fairly easy to get along with, but not so much around six o'clock in the evening.

Koyomi sighed and glanced to the phone on her desk as though it was a small monster ready to pounce.

"Thank you," she replied and finally reached over to pick up the phone's receiver. "And Mrs. Sakamoto?"

The door that had just closed reopened and Mrs. Sakamoto poked her head back inside.

"Yes ma'am?"

"You can go ahead and take off. I'm going to be here for a while."

"Thank you," Mrs. Sakamoto smiled and bowed slightly, "Have a good night."

Koyomi waited for the door to click shut before hitting the number two button on the phone. The previously dead line opened and she brought the receiver to her ear.

"What do you want this time, Ryou?" Though her voice sounded exasperated, there was a smallest hint of a smile playing at the corners of her lips.

"Hey, you!" an energetic voice spoke up from the other end of the line. "I was just calling to check up and see how you're doing."

Koyomi rolled her eyes.

"And?" If there was one thing that she didn't like, and that most people knew she didn't like, it was being 'checked up' on. She cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder and turned to bring up another file from the box.

"Annnnd I wanted to see if you were still on for Friday night. Piper's at eight o'clock. The reservation still stands for six people and we all know how you are keeping those kinds of appointments."

"Dammit, Ryou!" Her conversational tone snapped suddenly to pieces. She let the folder drop onto the edge of her desk before taking the phone back into her hand. "You knew that this was the first week of classes when you made that reservation so don't try to guilt trip me into going when you know that I'm going to be busy and you know that-"

"All right, all right!" The man relented with a sigh. There was a brief pause and the sound of shifting from his end. "I'm just asking you to try. No pressure, but it would just be nice if you came this time."

Koyomi opened one of the folders on her desk and brought out the first stack of papers.

"I'm not making any promises."

"I know," the man's voice softened considerably. That Koyomi never made promises was something better left unmentioned.

"Glad we're clear on that. If there's nothing else, then I have to get back to work."

"All right. Can I call you tomorrow?"

"No."

"Um…ok."

"I'm kidding. Just don't call me at work. You have my home number."

"Yeah. Later then."

"Bye."

Koyomi hung up the phone and turned her attention to the papers in her hands. She scanned over the first report, flipped the page to scan the second, and then set the stack aside. She brought her fingers to the keyboard of her laptop and had no sooner typed the first word than was disrupted by the sound of a knock on her office door. Slumping back against her seat she brought a hand to her forehead and mouthed a perfectly visible 'oh my fucking god' before straightening back up.

"Come in!' she demanded much less amiably.

The door opened and Mrs. Sakamoto peered back inside.

"So s-sorry to bother you again, but your six fifteen appointment is here."

"My what?" Koyomi frowned at the older woman as though she had lost her mind. She then looked beyond her assistant to see a student standing there holding his books under one arm. The boy had obviously heard the tone of her voice and looked ready to leave and come back another time.

Immediately Koyomi stood up from her desk with a pleasant, though rather forced smile.

"Oh yes! Six fifteen! Please come in," she said as she walked to the door to greet the student. Her first day as a teacher had left her nearly forgetting her original role as the school psychologist.

The boy looked carefully at Mrs. Sakamoto before inching his way into the office. He really should have taken his friend's advice and scheduled an appointment in the morning.

Koyomi rushed back over to her desk where she shut down her laptop and gathered up the reports she had been looking over. The reports were slipped back into their folder and both folders were then tucked back into the box that she shoved under her desk. She then sat down and opened up the top desk drawer in search of her student report book. Every student who saw her was documented in the book along with the date, time, and reason. The book wasn't in the first drawer but rather in the second, as she found after a bit of rummaging.

"All right then- Kino, is it?" she inquired with a smile, looking at the student over the tops of her glasses.

"Yes ma'am," the student replied as he took a seat in one of the chairs in front of Ms. Mizuhara's desk. He felt rather awkward as he watched the woman scramble about to get everything for the appointment that she would need. A leather-bound notebook and several pens were what she brought from her desk, and then she got up to go to a filing cabinet in the very corner of her office. She unlocked the top drawer of the cabinet and began sifting through various files that had had been organized there.

"Your last name is- don't tell me," she said as she checked the file names. The first 'Kino' she came across, she tugged out and looked over her shoulder. "Hisao?"

"Tsunashima."

"Tsunashima! Yes, I remember now. It certainly has been a long time. How've you been?" She replaced the incorrect file and continued sifting. From the front of the files all the way to the back of them she searched, but the student's name was not among them. She searched once, and then twice, her temper rising just slightly with each pass. Finally she slammed the drawer shut and returned to her desk. She would have to find his chart later and just take notes on a piece of paper until then.

"Um…I've actually never had an appointment with you before," the boy averted his gaze to the shiny name plate at the front of the woman's desk before looking back up to see if he had invoked any anger.

For a moment Koyomi sat still and rigid with her hands pressed flat to the surface of her desk. In the next instant she covered up the extent of her embarrassment by sitting back in her chair and crossing one knee over the other. She laced her fingers in her lap and smiled coolly.

"Oh…yes. But I know you from somewhere though." Her voice was smooth and her exterior was the perfect image of a collected young woman who was in charge of everything in her life. On the inside she was madly scouring the cluttered information network of her mind for the boy's image.

"I'm in your homeroom class."

"Yes, of course! Of course you're in my homeroom class," she laughed humorlessly and removed her glasses to pinch the bridge of her nose. When she replaced her glasses she cleared her throat and smiled again. "So what brings you to my office today?"

"I've just been…experiencing a lot of stress with school." Kino's voice grew soft and he shifted uncomfortably. Right away he had been able to tell that his level of stress was nothing compared to the well-dressed wreck sitting across from him and suddenly he was feeling rather foolish.

"Stress…I see," Koyomi's tone turned professional and she leaned forward to fold her hands on her desk. "Stress can be a very hard thing to cope with sometimes. Do you spend a lot of time worrying about things?"

"Yes. Grades, and kendo club mostly."

"Uh huh," Koyomi took up a pen and opened up the leather-bound book to start taking notes. "And does this constant concern keep you from focusing on one task at a time? If you're at kendo club, do you worry about homework assignments and such?"

"Yeah. It wasn't so bad last year, but this year I'm one of the top ranking competitors."

Throughout the entire session, Koyomi kept her attention on the student, always nodding in understanding or asking for clarification on certain matters. Several times though, she couldn't stop herself from stealing the smallest glance to her watch. The box underneath her desk seemed to have a voice that only she could hear, and it was telling her that it was in her best interest to take care of it as soon as possible.

Note: Ba dum ching.