1A/N: This fic is not intended as an insult to any one author who writes Misawa fics. Rather, this is my attempt to show what I think is the correct characterization. I am sure that there are different ways of interpreting canon, but I still don't really get why many authors portray Misawa as such a domineering person.

That, and I wanted to take a bit of a break from ManjoumexAsuka.

This takes place a few weeks before Asuka is converted, and parts of it were hinted at in "The Outcast".

Misawa's symptoms are based on the symptoms I had when I had strep throat in 2003.

Disclaimer: I still own nothing. Maybe I should do that master disclaimer after all...

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This January was a stressful one for Ayukawa Emi. The weather was colder than one would expect for a tropical island, so there was a large spate of colds and other winter ailments.

Several people had slipped on ice patches, and an Obelisk Blue girl had broken her wrist. Some rather dim-witted Osiris Red students had even decided to go swimming when the air temperature was below freezing. Apparently, it was some sort of bet. Whatever the cause, Emi had been forced to deal with several cases of hypothermia and frostbite the next day.

Even when people weren't sick, they were causing mischief. People tried to go "ice-skating" by sliding over the frozen puddles on the ground. (In fact, that was how the one girl had broken her wrist).

One night, it had snowed. Not much; just enough to dust the ground. Nevertheless, Judai and his friends had managed to scrape up enough snow to hold a snowball fight. That would have been fine, if one of the snowballs hadn't hit a window in the gymnasium.

That particular snowball had happened to include some small rocks, so the window broke. No one got in trouble, but Emi had had to suspend all her classes to wait for the repair guy.

All of these events were almost more than Emi could handle. If one more thing happened, she would explode due to frustration!

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Naturally, one more thing happened.

Emi had been in the infirmary, taking advantage of a rare moment of solitude by organizing one of her file cabinets.

She then heard the door open.

For crying out loud, not ANOTHER one!

The person at the door hesitated.

Had she just said that aloud? Yes, she had.

Emi heard the door open again, as if the person were leaving.

This wasn't good. Emi WAS the nurse, so she had to care for sick students, whether she liked it or not.

Emi hurried into the main room of the infirmary as quickly as she could, to prevent the person from leaving.

It turned out that the person was Misawa Daichi. He had indeed been in the process of leaving. And he did not look healthy in the least.

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Emi had never gotten to know Misawa well. He was quiet; liked to keep to himself. But he seemed like a nice kid.

One time he had even balanced Emi's checkbooks, for which she was still grateful. Emi herself was hopeless at the task.

But that had been some time ago. This was now. Now, Misawa was still trying to leave, despite being on the verge of collapse. He kept mumbling that he was sorry he had bothered her.

Emi kept having to reassure him that he could stay. All the while, she was silently cursing herself for opening her big fat mouth like that.

Meanwhile, Misawa had finally been convinced to stay. Emi saw a note in his hand. She told Misawa to hand it over.

She had barely unfolded it before recognizing the...unique handwriting of Chronos. Apparently, Misawa had been in Chronos's class when he had just put his head on his desk and fallen asleep during the middle of a lecture.

Naturally, this was extremely uncharacteristic behavior for Misawa. Chronos had been so taken aback that he hadn't even bothered to scold Misawa. He had just woken him up and sent him to the infirmary.

It certainly seemed like Chronos had had the correct instincts. Misawa was on the verge of falling back asleep, only to be startled awake by a coughing fit.

For a split second, Emi wondered why no one had accompanied Misawa to the infirmary, to see that he got there okay. But the thought soon went away.

Emi helped Misawa remove his coat (he hadn't even bothered to take it off), and quickly took his temperature.

Uh-oh. 40 degrees (in Celsius; about 104 degrees Fahrenheit). He was sick, all right. And it looked to be much more than a cold.

Meanwhile, Misawa had fallen back to sleep. Emi just let him be. She would do further diagnostic tests later.

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An hour later, Misawa was still asleep, so Emi left him with an assistant and went to get lunch.

No sooner had she stepped out when she was accosted by a small group of girls. They looked very worried.

"Ayukawa-sensei! Are you all right?" one of them said.

"We saw that monster go into the infirmary, so we were so scared!" chimed in another.

Monster? Emi was completely confused, and said so.

"Haven't you heard? He's like the most perverted guy at school! He trips girls to look up their skirts, and he spies on them in the bath, and..." she listed all the horrible deeds this monster had done.

Ayukawa decided that she had to break this up right here and now.

"Okay, that's enough of that!" she said. "If someone were actually doing all these things, we would have caught him immediately. Besides, no one fitting that description has been in the infirmary today. Only one person has been in, and that was Misawa..."

She was cut off by the girls shrieking, "Don't say his name, Ayukawa-sensei!"

This was just ridiculous. Emi gave all the girls detention for spreading false rumors, and sent them off.

However, a sense of anxiety lingered. Not because she believed the rumors, of course. She just could not figure out what gentle Misawa could have done to provoke all those nasty stories.

Who would want to smear a perfectly good person's name like that?

A/N: I'm going to split this story into chapters. It won't be many chapters; maybe three or four. I'm doing it so I can write a chapter fic that I can actually complete in a reasonable amount of time!

This fic takes place over about a week, so I should be able to do that.