A/N: I'm not a definite expert on any of the subjects discussed. They are mentioned for the sake of entertainment. Consider reading professional material on those matters. This story should be considered an interpretation of an extension of Amau Ako's relationship stories.

Late in the day, Sensei received a Momotalk message from Amau Ako.

[Ako]: I need to talk to you again.

[Sensei]: This isn't about the collar, is it?

[Ako]: Don't tell me…

[Sensei]: I've kept my mouth shut, don't worry. I'm not in the mood for more bets.

[Ako]: I'm not trying to make a bet! And it's not like you can win every coin flip, anyway.

[Ako]: It's absurd that I even agreed to that…

[Sensei]: Well, I have a coin on me right now. Should I flip it to decide whether I'll go with you?

[Ako]: … Surely, you can't win twice in a row. Tails.

[Sensei]: It was heads.

[Ako]: Best two out of three.

[Sensei]: It was heads again.

[Ako]: … Why are you bullying me? Just get over here!

Sensei didn't actually flip the coin. He was just messing with Ako. He was going to go either way.

It's not the most enjoyable thing for him, but Sensei could clearly see the importance of helping Ako relieve stress, especially considering the heavy responsibilities of her job as senior administrator. Leaving aside the occasional scheme, it was clear that Ako was the only one even remotely qualified to do her job, save for the Head Prefect herself, and Sensei struggled to imagine Ako in any other position.

It was dusk, and orange clouds were beginning to dominate the sky. Sensei arrived just in time to the HQ when it started to drizzle, then rain outside. It was clear he was going to be trapped there for a while. He hadn't brought an umbrella nor a raincoat.

Well, I'm sure I can find a way to kill time when I'm done, Sensei thought.

How wrong he was… this was going to be his longest session yet.

When Sensei exited the elevator on the floor Ako usually worked, she didn't notice he had entered. She mumbled something Sensei could barely hear: "Maybe I'm just very, very unlucky… or Sensei is on it, too." At that thought, Ako's eyes brightened a bit; Sensei could tell she had been working for hours on end by her fatigued, slouched body. "Yes, it all makes sense now…"

Sensei thought it would be rude to eavesdrop any longer. "Hey, Ako." She jumped as if a ghost had traced its icy finger across her shoulders.

In an instant, she became a new person: a façade of fortitude rose, concealing her previously evident fatigue like a reflex. "Ah, Sensei! You made it." As the adrenaline of the scare wore off, she narrowed her eyes. "Hey, Sensei… you wouldn't have been at the outdoor café downstairs earlier today, have you?"

"I think I have. I was meeting Iori at the time."

Her eyes brightened, as if all the puzzle pieces had fallen into place. "Aha, so it was you!"

Sensei didn't know what she was talking about, but he let out a reflexive, "You got me." In the numerous easy-to-misunderstand situations he got himself in every day, if a member of the Prefect Team closed in on him, he knew at this point that it was easier just to spend the 30 minutes behind bars before being released after the situation has been cleared up. "What did I do again?"

"There is malice about this – and to think I called you here myself… who knows what would have happened!" She put a hand on her check and seemingly shuddered at the thought.

"… But I'm here right now."

Ako became conscious that they were the only two people on this floor of the building. "A purveyor of mischief… but not a serious criminal. You have too much to lose."

"Ako… are you okay?"

"Okay? Okay?! When I asked Iori to watch my ice cream, she left and somebody stole it!"

"Huh?" Sensei facepalmed. "Ako, this isn't what you think it is. You were already in the café for 15 minutes trying to haggle, and Iori thought you were going to return soon anyway. The line behind you was getting ridiculous. Of course they wouldn't give you special treatment. Then they would have had to give everybody behind you the same deal!"

"But the Prefect Team helped that café a few days ago – the temerity to refuse to give a discount to the manager of the team that stopped those thugs from taking all their money! What is a 20% discount worth anyway? Not the cost of a robbery, surely! There is a malice about this… " Her eyes widened with a new connection. "The clerk was in on it, wasn't he! Sensei, how did you get the clerk, too?"

Sensei clicked his tongue. "Well, I guess we all like a little mischief, huh."

Ako began to tear up. "Why are you all bullying me!"

"Ako."

She sniffled. "Yeah?"

"Do you want me to get you something from the café downstairs?"

She looked at him, not entirely trusting, but still tearfully replied, "Yeah, I would."

"Okay. I can get you something. Wait here a moment." Sensei took his time going downstairs to the outdoor café (which was under a canopy, thankfully). He asked the cashier if he had remembered a girl who had tried to haggle with him. The cashier did, so Sensei asked for what Ako had wanted before, then he brought it up to her.

In retrospect, Sensei should have figured that it would ignite the flame of conspiracy in her eyes again. She rose slightly from her seat when she saw the pastry he carried.

"Here. Are we even?"

Ako gave the pastry a tiny bite. "You really shouldn't bully your students Sensei…"

"I promise I have no malice in my heart."

The pastry was evidently everything Ako wanted it to be. She couldn't help but break a smile. "Well, we can call this even for now." She sighed. "It's just my luck that I would get caught up in the most recent crime wave. Sensei, did you know that ice cream sales are associated with crime?"

Sensei scratched his head. "I don't think that's quite right."

She tilted her head. "Why not?"

"Strictly speaking, yes, you're right, but I don't think getting ice cream is what increases crime. That's correlation, not causation. It is supposed to be heat that increases crime."

"No, it's simple: when there is more ice cream being bought, there is more ice cream to steal. So, my ice cream got stolen!"

"Wait, no – I mean, I guess, but that's not how that example is supposed to play out."

"Plus, who likes summer anyway? It's always so hot! I would much rather go outside in winter than in summer… so that can't be right. All the criminals who don't like the heat would just stay home, so there shouldn't be a net-effect. It really is just the amount of ice cream there is to steal."

"… Look, I'm not an expert in the relationship between ice cream and crime, but let's both just go out on a limb and say they don't actually cause each other."

Ako sighed. "What I really don't get is that whoever stole my ice cream didn't even take the cup! They just ate my ice cream and left. Was it some practical joke?"

"Say, Ako… was there nothing left in the cup afterwards?"

"No, there was some liquid left in there. A surprising amount, actually."

Her ice cream just melted in the heat! "Yes… what an eccentric thief, indeed. The Prefect Team is really going to have their hands full with that one."

"I have compiled a 20,000 character report on it already." Sensei tensed when he heard the character length. Ako leaned a bit closer, lowering her voice. "Though, just between us, I can leave you off the report… since you bought something for me." She gave a sweet smile.

Sensei exhaled with relief. "I would greatly appreciate that." He did not feel like the idea of getting raided in what was already a busy week for him. "And I bet you would appreciate a hand with some of that paperwork, yeah? I assume that's why you called me here."

Ako giggled. "Sensei, that would be a losing bet for me. You know that. I can't trust you with bets anymore – I'm officially swearing them off when I'm around you, for my own good." She winked. "Though, if you want to throw me an easy one, I wouldn't mind."

"Is there such a thing for you? I feel like you've been on an unlucky streak recently. You could bet that the sky is going to be blue tomorrow, and a sandstorm might just rev up and make the sky orange the entire day."

She groaned. "Tell me about it. Everything's a mess! In truth, if you had caught me thirty minutes earlier, these piles of paper wouldn't be half as tall." Ako rubbed her eyes. "The Pandemonium Society is so mean. They dumped all these papers here and told me it was some queue that some other secretary didn't finish before she quit." She slammed her hands on the table, a familiar intensity returning to her eyes. "Sensei! What other secretary manages prefect affairs?! Do secretaries – I don't have a secretary! I'm the senior administrator of the Prefect Team. Where did these come from? There's malice about this…"

Wait, this might actually be bullying. "Yeah, who knows. Maybe there is a-" plan to supplant her – but Sensei caught himself before he could possibly provoke another conspiratorial tangent. "Here, let me take some of this off your hands."

"Thanks, Sensei. You do remember how to do it from last time, right?"

"It wasn't that long ago. First, separate the papers that need approval and those that don't. Second, separate urgent and time-sensitive requests, then organize what needs Hina's approval and what needs your approval, right?"

Ako gazed at Sensei, surprised. Then she laughed. "That's perfect." She smirked. "If you were working for Hina. Just about every bit of that is wrong for me."

That's right… Sensei had helped Hina organize papers not long ago. Some neurons crossed each other, and he had gotten the instructions mixed up.

Ako continued, "My work is mostly after-battle analysis and mediating between the Prefect Team and the Pandemonium Society. So, we first separate the reports from the inter-club messages and notices. You can start with that." She hefted an intimidating stack of papers onto a desk not too far from hers, possibly meant for an assistant that never got hired. It landed with a dull thud. Sensei wondered if it was too late to back out.

"Hopefully this is the only 'mess' you're talking about," Sensei said. "I don't think I've seen this much paper even on my worst days."

Ako gave a deep sigh. "No, the stacks aren't the only problem. The papers are all wrong, too." She slipped a leaf of paper from the middle of the pile on my desk and faced it towards her so Sensei couldn't see it. "Guess: is this a report, an inter-club message, or a notice?"

Sensei rubbed his chin. "I can't tell. Can I have a hint?"

"Hmm." She puckered her lips in exaggerated thought. Then she tapped her temple, as if she were about to deduce my thoughts. "Reports usually come in packets and can easily fill both sides of a paper. That's your one hint." She smiled. "Now guess."

"It has to be an inter-club message, right? That's all I got."

"Fufufu, that's the thing." She flipped the paper in dramatic fashion. "I can't tell. It's in braille!" It was as she said. The paper was populated with dot formations meant to be felt over by finger. "Who even comes up with this? I can't even read braille. This is going to stay in my office forever!"

"Hold on, now. Give it here." Sensei held his hand out. "I'm a bit rusty, but I think I can get the gist of it."

"Wow." Her surprised expression turned into a sultry smile. "So talented~. I didn't know you worked for blind students before, Sensei."

"I'm there for every student who needs me. Now, let's see if we can decipher this bad boy." Sensei began tracing his finger through the braille. Ako saw him stop a couple of times, reread some passages, then continue. "Woah." He read a bit more. "This is…"

"Sensei! You're leaving me in suspense!" Ako whined. "What is it?"

After reading about half the page, he noted, "This is definitely illegal in some countries." Yet he continued tracing his finger.

Ako snatched the paper from his hands, and Sensei laughed. Ako whined, "Why would they give this to me? They're so mean!"

"Haha, yeah. We should call Koharu here. She collects contraband like this. It's very… important for her. To keep Kivotos moral, of course."

"Can Koharu read braille, too? Gosh, now I feel like I'm behind."

Sensei scoffed, "What's that I hear? Don't sell yourself short, Ako. You're a model student here. Koharu doesn't know braille, but she'll find out. She would go that length for justice. If you set your mind on your passions, the world will bend to your will!"

For a moment, Ako gave a sincere look. Her eyes spoke, Do you really think so? It was gone with a sigh. "Do you think being passionate about not doing paperwork counts?"

He chuckled. "Maybe that passion might get you an assistant – oh wait, why don't you look at that? I guess the world does bend to your passions."

She smiled. "You know I can't do that do you, Sensei. You're more like… special reinforcements. Most of the time, I can handle it." She rested her head on her hand as she sat at her desk. "I guess it's my passion for the Prefect Team that pulls me through all this…"

Sensei hummed an acknowledgement. Then they both began to work on their respective piles. Luckily, most of it was ordinary paperwork. Sensei put the anomalous paperwork that he couldn't make sense of to the side to be dealt with later. After thirty minutes, Sensei got the impression that Ako was stuck on something. She was mumbling, and every now and then she would make a noise of frustration. Sensei considered waiting it out, but he felt obligated to intervene when it became clear she hadn't progressed in 15 minutes.

He rolled over in his rolling chair and looked over her shoulder. "Having trouble?"

"Hold on, I think I'm getting this." Instead of a paper packed full of words, the quintessential office work specimen, the paper was crowded with diagrams and pictures of apples, circles, and amateur syllogisms. At the top of the paper laid a devilish question: Prove 2 + 2 = 1.

"You can't possibly be serious."

"Shush, I think I have it this time. Here." Ako then proceeded to explain a Ven diagram with one apple at each side and two apples in the overlapping portion. Her argument centered around symmetry about an axis and how if we define the "system" as either non-overlapping segment of the Ven diagram, we observe a single apple. The inspiration from her college-credit physics classes was evident. The effort was endearing, if not hopelessly misguided. "What do you think, Sensei? My genius scares me sometimes."

Sensei searched for the words to let her down gently. "Hey, you know Albert Einstein?"

She blushed and twirled her blue, wavey hair with her finger. "Oh, stop it, Sensei. You flatter me too much."

"He would tell you to refund your degree – but hey, we don't need him anyway. We need to go back to Newton for this."

"Bully!" Ako whined. "Let's bet on it! The loser has to rob a bank."

Aren't you part of the Prefect Team!? "I really, really don't feel like robbing another bank," Sensei groaned. Memories of Abydos came to mind.

"Another-" Ako gawks. She couldn't tell if he was joking or not. She cleared her throat to gain a semblance of poise. "I'm not looking forward to writing that report."

"I think you'd be too busy robbing a bank, Ako. Here, this is how you're supposed to do it." Sensei attempted to explain axioms to Ako, how it was necessary to explain the meaning of the symbols in the equation, and how all these aspects are dependent on those axioms that are initially put down. "If you think about it, numbers are symbols that we made up. What those symbols mean is up to us. We can make 1 into 2, 2 into 1 – whatever we want, as long as we adhere to our axioms, which are essentially rules we put down for how we're going to do math. So, if we consider all natural numbers – that is all non-negative whole numbers, for the sake of this demonstration – we can state that 0 exists, then we can define the number after 0 as 2. We can write this as S(0) = 2. Then we can define the number after 2 as 1. We can write this as S(2) = 1. Using an axioms for addition we defined earlier, we can use the equation S(A) + B = S(A + B), and the equations S(0) = 2, and S(S(0)) = 1. Finally, we can write 2 + 2 = 1 as S(0) + 2 = S(0 + 2), which is just S(2), which is equal to 1." No doubt, he got at least something wrong, but for the limited scope of the question, he thought this was more than functional.

"But…" Ako stared intently at the paper.

"If you need advice for the bank, you can ask, but it won't be free."

"No – it's just… that's not how math works." Ako snapped to attention. "Wait, did you actually rob a bank?!"

"Baseless rumors. My students and I would never rob a legitimate bank."

"'Legitimate' is doing a lot of work there, Sensei…" She shook her head. "What I'm trying to say is that we can't just make two into one. The number one refers to something in the real world – like one apple, one life, one kiss." She covered a soft giggle with her hand. "I'm sure you would like to make one kiss into two kisses, but you're out of luck there."

"Well, you know what they say about luck. It's like bank robberies: you have to plan, make sure you're in the right place at the right time, then you have to act."

"Kinda like kisses."

"You plan kisses?" Sensei raised an eyebrow.

She had said it as if it were the most normal thing in the world. It was only in the extensive silence that she became conscious of it. "Why are you looking at me like that? How many kisses have you had since coming to Kivotos?"

"Just about as many banks I've robbed."

The first thought that came to her mind was, Wow, that's a lot of banks, but what came out was, "Y-you don't know how it's like. When you have so little time… I can't be spontaneous like you."

Sensei laughed.

"Why are you laughing?" Red spread across Ako's face. "This is bullying. You shouldn't bully your own students."

"I'm sorry, Ako. I really didn't mean to tease you. It's just that I'm not spontaneous at all, and I don't exactly plan either. You don't have to tell me, but how many of your plans work?"

Ako covered her blush with her hands. It was as good as any other answer she could give.

"It's okay. All I'm saying is that no plan survives first contact. You're smart, Ako. Believe in your ability to adapt. I promise it isn't nearly as agonizing as scrutinizing every movement of your hand, every cup of coffee you serve. You can bet on that, believe me."

His words didn't seem to sink in for a few moments, until he saw Ako peek between her fingers.

Sensei winked. "Let's just settle with, 'Math is complicated' for now, alright?" He sighed. "This is college level stuff. I'm not sure what the Pandemonium Society is doing shoving this in your face, especially considering the work you're supposed to be doing." Sensei couldn't tell if it was from the hours of work from before he arrived or if it was from the recent excitement, but Ako seemed to be on her last legs. She swayed slightly from side to side, rubbing her eyes. "How about this: let's put this on hold. I'll send a notice from Schale to the Pandemonium Society. It isn't right that you have to handle all of this on your own, and I know Makoto likes to harass the Prefect Team because of its relative autonomy from her. Take a break. I'll take it from here, at least until tomorrow."

At this point, it was well into nighttime, but the rain had not let up one bit. Ako noticed, too. She stretched her arms upward, curving her back. Her body was lithe. "I really don't feel like going out in this rain."

"That just might be what we have to do, Ako, unless we want to sleep here." Although the office was large, there were no big, comfortable chairs to recline on. There were merely a number of padded, single-seat wood chairs lining the wall immediately near the exit, presumably to accommodate what few visitors would have business with Ako.

"I don't think…" Ako started.

Sensei turned to Ako. In the low-light of the office sustained by the two desk lamps they used, a shade fell over her face as she bowed her head slightly and clasped her hands together in front of her. Is she cold? Sensei thought. He felt a distinct desire to lift her eyes to his, as if it would anchor them both in that moment.

"I don't think I would mind that… if it's with you." She smiled with her eyes lowered, as if she couldn't believe she had just said that.

How could he say no?

They did not know how long the storm would last. It began to matter less to them both. They turned off the lights. Sensei let Ako rest her head on his lap as she used the three padded chairs as a make-shift bed. It was his responsibility to give her that much. He tried his best to get comfortable, though it was obvious at that point he was not going to get any sleep; her slow, deep breathing gripped his attention. Though, he was convinced she wasn't sleeping: the breath changed. It got faster, then slower. If it wasn't clear enough he wasn't going to get sleep, she turns over, her face now facing towards him. He could feel her breath on him. He dove into the feeling.

Who knows how long he stayed like that, his eyes closed – feeling – until there was movement again. Ako raised her head from his lap. Like a slow dance to the sound of muffled rain drops, she draped her arms around his neck and leaned in, planting a kiss on his cheek.

When Sensei opened his eyes and turned to look at her, even in the darkness of the rainy night, she beamed. Her eyes were two sapphires. A mix of apprehension and determination stirred within them. He couldn't help but smirk. "You missed."

The giggle in that low light was worth it – like the feeling of gazing at a blue moon, but it was in his chest. He wanted to bathe in its light. Like a dare to herself, she whispered through smiling lips, "I won't miss next time."

This was her night of spontaneity.