"Aw, maaan," Lan whined, walking next to Maylu as the left the school building. "I can't believe we're gonna have another math test already."
"Already?" Maylu repeated, raising an eyebrow. "Lan, our last test was two weeks ago!"
"Exactly! We should only have one a month," he grumbled. "Heck, we should only have one a year. Better yet, none at all."
Maylu just rolled her eyes. "Dream on, Lan."
Lan was about to retort when he noticed a glimmer of black out of the corner of his eye.
"Hey, that looks like Chaud's limo," he said, stopping.
Maylu halted next to him and turned to look. Sure enough, a sleek black limo had pulled up to the sidewalk next to them, and the chauffer was now stepping out.
"Ms. Sakurai?" he inquired politely, looking directly at Maylu.
"Yes?" she said, not looking nearly as surprised as Lan had thought she would.
"I'm here to pick you up, as requested by Mr. Blaze," he said, bowing slightly.
She smiled and bowed slightly in return. "Thank you very much."
The man pulled open the door at the rear end of the car and gestured.
Lan looked from Maylu to the car and back again in confusion. "What the heck…?" he said finally. "What's going on?"
"There are a few things I still don't completely understand from the math unit we're in right now," the girl explained as she slid into the car. "I wanted to make sure I get it all figured out before the test tomorrow."
"But…what does that have anything to do with Chaud sending you a limo?"
Maylu smirked at him. "Chaud is going to help me study."
Lan's jaw dropped so far that he was amazed he couldn't feel his chin scraping against the sidewalk.
"He's WHAT!"
And then, of course, after the initial shock wore off, there was always the other problem…
Lan's face grew horrified as said problem dawned on him.
"But you always study with me before a test!"
Maylu rolled her eyes. "Lan, you always end up getting online to netbattle with Megaman while I sit in your room looking over my notes by myself. I'd hardly call that studying with you."
And with that, she moved completely into the car. The chauffer shut the door after her. He then returned to his position at the driver's seat, and Lan was left to stare at the car in utter disbelief as it drove away.
XOXOXOX
Maylu couldn't help but snicker quietly to herself as she thought about the look on Lan's face when she'd told him who she was going to see and why. It was too bad she hadn't had her camera with her.
XOXOXOX
When the limo finally arrived at the building where Chaud worked, the blue-eyed boy was waiting for Maylu at the front doors. Upon spotting him, Maylu grinned.
"It's too bad you weren't there to see Lan's face when I told him what I was doing," she said.
Chaud couldn't resist smirking slightly. Then he gestured towards the building. "C'mon, let's head inside. The sooner you're done studying, the more free time you'll have later."
Maylu nodded, and together they walked through a large pair of double doors and into the lobby.
As they moved towards an elevator with Chaud leading the way, he inquired, "So, any particular way you want to go about this?"
"Well, Ms. Mari gave us a review sheet to work on…"
"Do you know how to do some of it?" Chaud asked.
Maylu nodded. "Yeah, I can do most of it, I think, but there's a few problems that just don't make sense to me."
"Actually, I've got some schoolwork I need to do too," explained the boy.
Maylu blinked. She kept forgetting that Chaud was a student, too.
"There's an empty meeting room on one of the upper floors that we can use. You can get started on your sheet, and I'll work on my stuff until you get stuck and need help. Fair enough?"
"Sounds good to me," she said. "Actually, almost any option would sound good compared to Lan's idea of studying."
Chaud shook his head. "I can imagine. How have you survived this long?"
Maylu grinned. "I'm tougher than your average girl. It'll take more than a few years of study sessions with Lan to break me."
XOXOXOX
Despite intent concentration on her math, Maylu couldn't help but glance over at Chaud every so often, which was easy enough because his chair was right next to hers. (This made it easier for him to reach her when she needed help.)
She found herself fascinated by the way he worked, completely absorbed in what he was doing. Lan had never been that way when it came to school, and probably never would be. She watched Chaud's pencil scraping across the paper rapidly, pausing occasionally to erase and rewrite something. For some reason, the actions seemed to humanize him, and Maylu felt something inside of her twist strangely.
"Ah…here's one I don't understand," she said, after a time.
The dual-haired boy tucked his pencil behind his ear as he turned to her.
Maylu found the gesture oddly adorable. She felt her face beginning to grow warm, and hoped fervently that her cheeks didn't look pink. To her dismay, the heat grew stronger as Chaud leaned close to her so he could see her paper more clearly.
"Well, first of all," he said finally, pulling his pencil from his ear, "you're looking for the number of favorable outcomes versus the number of possible outcomes. Do you have scratch paper I can use, or should I grab some?"
Maylu pulled a blank paper from her folder and slid it over to him. She watched and listened closely as he pointed to certain numbers from the problem and wrote them on the scratch paper, slowly manipulating the numbers into a solution as he explained the process. Maylu mimicked the steps he gave her; then indicated a similar problem farther down on the worksheet.
"So…if there are a hundred rabbits being given out randomly to a hundred people, and I want to know how likely it is that a person will get a brown rabbit, I put the…number of brown rabbits over the…total number of rabbits?" she said hesitantly.
"You've got it," he affirmed, smiling slightly in approval.
Maylu felt a pleasant warmth tingle inside of her. "Thanks for helping me," she said, feeling suddenly shy.
"No problem," he replied as he turned away, for all the world looking as though he hadn't been interrupted in his own work at all. But if Maylu had examined him closely, she might have noticed that the tips of his ears had reddened just the tiniest bit.
XOXOXOX
" I got an A!"
Maylu punched the air victoriously. Her parents would be so happy. She couldn't wait to tell them.
"…I got a C," Lan said glumly, staring at his math test as though he could somehow use mental will to change the poor grade he'd been given.
"That's what you get for slacking off," Maylu retorted, not feeling the least bit sorry for him. What kind of results did he expect from something he put little or no effort into?
A sudden thought hit her. She pulled out her PET. "Roll?"
"Yeah?"
"Send a message for me, will you?"
XOXOXOX
Ding.
"Chaud, sir, you have mail," Protoman said as a digital envelope slid out of a cyber portal and landed in his hands.
"Who's it from?" the dual-haired boy asked, slipping the PET out of its carry case.
"It's from Maylu."
Chaud blinked. "Put it on screen," he said at last.
Obediently, the red navi opened the e-mail and enlarged it so that he was hidden behind a sheet of white.
Chaud's eyes flicked over the words.
"Thanks so much for all your help.
Guess what? I got an A!"
This sentence was followed by a snapshot of Maylu sticking her tongue out cutely and making a victory sign with her fingers.
"Maybe we can do it again sometime.
Maylu"
A slight smile spread across his face. 'Yeah, maybe…'
XOXOXOX
