A/N: Okay, here is the next one. This is quite short and a bit different but I wanted and needed to get this out of the way. And sorry for the short author notes on the previous chapter. I was in a hurry. By the way in this one Francois's name is written 'incorrectly' because my Word doesn't have that special C... And I didn't have internet at the moment to use... Adn I don't have either those special question and exclamation marks for the Spanish I wrote here. But nevertheless enjoy!

11. Hola! Bonjour! Como estas? Ca va?

Who had the brilliant idea of getting pen pals? From aboard, Spain? That was insane! We weren't kids anymore!

That was the main idea of the thoughts going on in the heads of class 8-D. Of course there was some students too who were excited about the idea, like Francois Dubois, but not that many. The fourteen-year-old blonde was looking out of the window, daydreaming and smirking to himself. If he was lucky he could get a pretty girl to chat with. Or a cute boy. Either was fine, not that he had told anyone about it. He ran a hand through his wavy blonde locks that reached his chin as his emerald green eyes casted one last glance on the school yard before focusing on the teacher who was instructing them. The main idea with the pen pal project was to hone their skill with some other language. In their case it was Spanish since that was the language their class studied. Class C had German and B Italian. Class A specialized in finer aspects of English language and was really small because everyone studied at least little English and wanted to learn some other language too. And then there was another smaller class, F, which was for Portuguese if Francois remembered correctly.

But back to the present. Each of them were to get a name and photo and basic information of a student they were to write then. All the information was what the student in question had given themselves. So it might be false too. When they'd gotten the information, they were to write a letter to introduce themselves, in Spanish, they teacher would read them through("that's violating privacy and letter secret!" someone interrupted and the whole class laughed) and then they'd be sent as a packet together to the sister school in Spain that was the other end of this project. The project would go on the whole school year and the letters would affect their Spanish grade. And naturally the letters from Spain would be in French and affect the grade the students there got from French.

Francois was excited about all this but when he heard the 'rules' his enthusiasm was knocked down a beg or two. Teacher reading the letters?! That's horrible! It was like teachers eavesdropping to the conversations he had with his friends when they went behind a corner for a quick smoke.

"Here you are, Francois. You get Alonso Verdacia." The teacher gave him an envelope with the name written a top of it. Francois sighed. Of course the hag would make sure that boys would get boys and the girls would get girls. Paranoid bitch… He eyed the envelope warily. It was just a regular white envelope. How boring, Francois thought until he turned it around. The back of the envelope was drawn full of tiny stick characters in fancy positions. It was a bit familiar.

"That's the Dancing men." A girl next to Francois told him. She was the bookworm of the class with her other bookworm-y friends sitting around her.

"Quoi(How so/Excuse me)?"

"A Sherlock Holmes story. Dancing men. It's quite good." The girl continued. Francois couldn't recall her name no matter how much he tried.

"Really? You like British literature then?" He leaned his cheek against his fist and flashed a smile to her. She smiled back, expression not changing.

"I like all kind of literature." She replied. "Do you want me to translate that for you? I remember the code by heart now."

"Bien sur(Sure)." Francois gave the envelope to her and she began working. In a minute she was ready.

"Here."

"Merci. What's your name by the way?"

"Mylene."

"Nice to get to know you Mylene." The boy took the envelope back and looked at the translation.

Let's take all the fun out of this. Teachers are such pricks, don't you think?

The blond smiled. Yes, he'd definitely take all the fun he could get. And without teachers noticing…

He opened the envelope and looked through the information he got. Alonso was his age, played football and the guitar, lived in Barcelona. What he could read between the sentences was that he was quite mischievous by nature, maybe even devious when he felt like it. He also had an older brother Miguel who was leaving to Italy for better work in a year. In the photo was a tanned boy grinning widely to the camera in a tee. He had messy chocolate brown locks which were quite unevenly cut. Some of them had even escaped the low ponytail he had. His brown eyes were also twinkling. He was quite cute in Francois opinion but not his type. Not that he was even sure what was his type.

Nevertheless Francois took a pen and started to write a reply. Later he would tell about this all to his cousin Michel in Quebec…

Hola, Alonso! Como estas?...

Alonso smiled widely as he read the letter he had gotten from Francois. It was almost Christmas now and they wrote each other every week. They had exchanged addresses to escape the teachers' radar and started writing more freely. That concerned their topics and the language they wrote. Along the time there started to be more slips in their letters and eventually a whole new language was formed between them, a mixture of French and Spanish. But only between them. They trusted each other and talked about everything they had in mind. Francois had even been the first person to know that Alonso was watching more boys in that way than girls. And he gave the Spaniard his full support and warning to be careful. Not many people were as accepting. And Alonso had been the one to comfort Francois when he heard that the French's best friend, the girl who had translated the Dancing men, Mylene, had been bullied and as a result made a suicide. It had been heart-shattering. Without her they probably wouldn't have come this close. And it was almost impossible to believe that it had been only a couple of months that they'd known.

But it didn't matter. They had each other now.

A/N: Oh, this was supershort actually! I didn't even notice... Anyways I want to point out now that Alonso and Francois have no romantical interest on each other and won't have. And Michel means my OC Michael[Maikhl] Willows but because he is Quebecian(?) and Francois is French, he is sometimes called Michel [Mikel] which is the French version of the name. Just like Matthew and Mathieu. :) About all my other OCs will call him with his given name though. Jacques and Elsa are probably the only exceptions...

The next chapter is longer if I remember correctly... But it will have BTT! And Akseli will finally make his debut! Update on Monday. See ya then ;)