Heh, I'm starting this before I go to school, let's see if I can get it done before I gotta leave! Not likely, but I can give it a shot! I'm also going to throw the others in here (Blade Children and Ayumu. I'm not sure where Hiyono is going to come in yet...any ideas?). One other thing, I know I haven't mentioned this before, but this is taking place in America. So that's the reason for the forks instead of chopsticks, and other America-related things.
Prosperpina: Glad you like my idea...I thought it would be more appropriate for Kanone to put him in school, but having Rio or Ryoko help him might not be such a bad idea. I was going to have the other three Blade Chlildren be in the fic as Eyes' friends anyway, so maybe I can do something with that. Thanks for reviewing and thanks for the idea!
CeTe: You hit the nail on the head, the other Blade Children make their appearance shortly after these responses! Glad you're liking the story, and glad you gave it another chance, too! Thanks for reviewing!
alpha2nd: Well, I'm glad you remembered, I couldn't do anything without my reviewers! And apparently the teachers don't care if he can't read or write. Poor, illiterate Eyes! And you bet he's cute...can you just imagine Eyes in your school? (Drools all over everything within a 5-mile radius). And so far there is no failing or bullies in the works... though that is quite suprising seeing as how I'm the one writing this. And, umm...the whole tv thing, yeah...I was hoping that those minor details could be overlooked. The same with the math and such...you just gotta pick at everything, don't you? Just kiddin', I realized that was wrong...after you said something. Well, despite some inaccurate historical facts, hope you liked it! Thanks for reviewing!
Lunch time. Eyes glanced around the cafeteria, looking for an empty seat. Unfortunately all of those were located at tables with other people at them. Eyes didn't feel that it was neccessary to make new friends, so he didn't want to just sit down somewhere. He really wanted to just go home, but that wasn't exactly an option. He looked around once more, hoping that he had missed something...and spotted an empty table. He quickly walked over to it and sat down, claiming it as his. Now the only problem left was something to eat. He looked at what everyone else had, and saw that the food that was located on the trays provided by the school was just this side of disgusting. Back before he was rescued by Kanone, Eyes would have eaten damn near anything. Now, however, his tastes had become more refined and the large portion of food that he saw in the cafeteria was enough to make his stomach turn. Deciding that he wasn't hungry anymore, Eyes turned his attention to other things.
More specifically, the two girls standing next to the table he was sitting at, whispering to each other and staring at him. One was very short and looked to be about 7 or 8, though there was something about the way she held herself that told Eyes differently. She had grey hair and eyes to match, but despite her childish looks, there was something almost evil about her. The other girl was much taller than the first and had short brown hair with crimson eyes. She looked like some kind of athelete, but other than that, nothing threatening. She looked much friendlier than the short girl, and Eyes had the feeling that she was the nice one out of whatever group they were a part of. Though, if the occassion called for it, she could be very "persuasive". The younger girl saw him looking and flashed him a sweet smile that seemed to have ulterior motives behind it, "Hello, my name is Rio Takeuchi, and this is Ryoko Takamachi."
Eyes just stared at the two, what did they want? Remembering how Kanone had told him to be polite, or else no one would like him, Eyes gave them his name in return, "I'm Eyes, hello." It felt odd to introduce himself to complete strangers, but he supposed that every friend, even your best one, was a stranger at one time or another.
The taller girl, Ryoko, smiled at him now, "Not to be rude, but you're kind of sitting at our table."
Eyes glanced around and saw that there were backpacks thrown on three of the other chairs. How could he have missed them, they were clear as day. Sighing, Eyes stood, ready to be in search once more or an empty table. He was ready to leave when Rio spoke up again, "Wait, you can stay if you want to!" She offered, "You're new here, right?" Eyes nodded, wondering if it was that obvious, "Well the other kids here can be cruel to the new kids. If you stick with us, though, you'll fit in just fine." Eyes considered this, he wanted to fit in if only to be able to blend in with the walls. Though seeing as how the walls here were mostly white and some shade of purple, he didn't see that happening. Nonetheless, he took his seat back, and watched as the other two girls sat down as well, "So, what grade are you in?" Rio continued.
Eyes didn't want to have to answer a bunch of questions, but he supposed it was inevitable to a new kid, "9th." He replied.
"Have you been here the whole year?" Ryoko asked, thinking back and not remembering ever seeing someone like him before. Eyes wasn't the kind of person you just saw once and forgot, either.
"No, this is my first day." He replied, tired of the questions already, and hoping they didn't ask him anything too personal.
Too late, "So where did you come from?" Rio asked, expecting him to give her the name of another school that he transfered from. Eyes hesitated, how was he supposed to answer this? He didn't want the whole school knowing that he was Kiyotaka's slave. Before he could answer, Rio squealed, "Wait a minute! I know where I remember you from! Ryoko," Rio turned to the other girl, "Could this be the kid that Kanone was talking about? Remember he said something about a boy named Eyes?"
This caught Eyes' attention, "You know Kanone?" He asked. Could it be possible for him to get in touch with Kanone through these girls?
Rio turned to him and smiled, "Yeah, we've known Kanone for years. So you are the boy he was talking about? The one that Kiyotaka took?"
Eyes nodded, a bit sadly, "So...he hasn't forgotten about me?"
Rio laughed, "Are you kidding? You're all he talks about, we can't get him to shut up...it's kind of annyoing come to think of it." Rio pondered how they had actually gotten Kanone to stop talking about Eyes, and then realized that they had simply left. Rio smirked at this, and turned her attention back to Eyes, "So Kiyotaka put you in school?" Eyes nodded, "Why? It doesn't sem like the kind of thing he would do. Kiyotaka's not the nicest person out there. I mean, he can be great, but considering how you two met, I wouldn't expect him to do something so generous as pay for your education."
Eyes didn't have much time to think about a response to this question, before he heard another voice from behind him, "Yo. Hey, Rio, who's this?" Eyes turned to face a teenage boy with the brightest red hair he had ever seen. Other than that, the boy's eyes were very attention grabbing; they were an emerald green and they showed a great deal of whatever emotion the boy was feeling. Right now that emotion seemed to be a mix of annoyance and interest due to the "new kid".
"His name is Eyes." Rio informed the other boy, "He's new here, just started today." Rio then turned her attention towards said boy, "That's Kousuke, you can just ignore him for the most part."
"Hey, don't ignore me!" Kousuke complained, taking his seat between Ryoko and Eyes.
Rio giggled and Ryoko just smacked Kousuke, "Stupid, keep your voice down." She commanded, "And did you get my bread?"
"Why do I put up with this?" Kousuke grumbled, mostly to himself, and handed Ryoko's prized possession over. He growled at the 'good boy' comment that the action earned him, and then turned his attention to Eyes, "So where are you from?" Kousuke asked.
Rio saved the silver haired boy the trouble of answering by doing it for him, "He's that boy that Kanone has been talking about, remember?"
"Boy? What boy...Ohhhhh." Kousuke grinned as the realization sunk in and ignored the 'idiot' comment coming from both Rio and Ryoko, "So you're Kanone's new obssession, huh?"
Eyes frowned at the term, "I don't know what you're talking about."
Kousuke grinned even wider, "Sure you do. Kanone's been talking about you nonstop ever since that bastard Kiyotaka took you away." Eyes hesitated and Kousuke continued talking, "Say, I bet we could get you two back together." Kousuke offered, gaining the attention of everyone at the table.
"Kousuke, you're so stupid, how could we possibly do that?" Rio asked him, annoyed that he would get Eyes' hopes up like that. But she couldn't help but be interested in what Kousuke had planned, he may have been an idiot, but he was still one of the Blade Children.
Kousuke grinned, "Well, we could just have Kanone visit us at lunch one day..." He began. The others, especially Eyes, stared at him waiting for him to continue, "You two could just sneak off somewhere for the half an hour between classes, since it doesn't look like you're actually using this time for eating." Eyes shook his head.
"Kousuke, that would never work." Rio said, putting a glare on Kousuke's face and a frown on Eyes', "There are hall monitors everywhere, they'd never be able to get anywhere without someone seeing them."
Kousuke grinned, "That's not true, if you paid attention, Rio, you'd know that I'm one of the hall montiors." Rio gasped as she looked at the badge that Kousuke was wearing, identifying him as one of the guards of the school's halls. Kousuke grinned as he looked to Eyes, "So, what do you think?"
Eyes thought it over, not seeing any major holes in the spur-of-the-moment plan, he nodded, "It could work, I suppose." He almost asked if they were sure Kanone would go along with it, but stopped himself; of course Kanone would go along with it. He knew that Kanone wanted to see him as badly as he wanted to see Kanone.
With that settled, lunch decided that it was over by ringing the bell telling the students to get back to class, "Hey, Eyes, wait up!" Rio called, running after his retreating form. Eyes turned to wait for the short girl to reach him. Halfway down the hall she tripped over what appeared to be thin air, sat up, looked around, shook her head, and ran the rest of the way to where Eyes was waiting for her, "Stupid shoelaces." She grumbled as she approached him.
"Are you alright?" Eyes asked, mildly concerned.
Rio smiled and nodded, "Yeah, I'm fine. Anyway, I'm guessing that you don't have much of an education prior to high school, right?" Eyes was a bit wary of the question, but nodded, "Well, maybe I could tutor you!" She offered, smiling brightly.
"Tutor me?" Eyes asked, not sure of what she meant. Eyes' vocabulary was extremely limited, and often felt foolish for not knowing everyday words or what some commom things were. He never needed to be told more than once, but he simply didn't know these things. Most children went through several years of schooling and had help from their parents to learn these things, Eyes had had neither.
Rio nodded again, "Yeah, you know, like teach you how to read and write. You won't get very far in school or life if you don't know the English language." She informed him, "I'm friends with Kiyotaka's little brother, Ayumu, have you met him yet?" Eyes shook his head, he wasn't aware of any family that Kiyotaka had, "Well, he'll help you, too. He's really smart, and Ryoko said she'd help, too. Though she's usually busy with track meets or her other friends, but she can help out with some things. So, what do you say?"
"Sure, I guess." Eyes replied, it would nice to know what was going on in the classes he was taking.
"Great, well I can't come over today, but maybe tomorrow! If you see Ayumu around, just ask him for help if you need it until then, okay?" Eyes nodded, and Rio turned to leave, "Alright, I'll see you tomorrow, Eyes! And we'll talk to Kanone tonight, too!" Rio yelled as she ran down the hallway to her class, tripping once more over that same invisible force that had gotten her before. Eyes smirked slightly at the clumsy girl, maybe friends weren't so bad.
Back in class, history went over fairly well, though Eyes didn't see the point in learning about a bunch of dead people. Sure, they did their thing, but it was the living people's turn now. Why didn't they learn about things that were happening now instead of then? German was the last subject of the day, and though Eyes didn't know how to speak the language, he was on the same page as English when it cam to reading and writing. And, what fun, they had a different teacher for German since Mr. R could barely keep up with the one language he knew, "Guten Tag, Klasse." The teacher, Mr. Glockner, greeted them.
"Hallo, Herr Glockner." The class responded, almost in unison.
Switching over to the class' dominant language for the directions, Glockner continued, "Okay, class, today we're going to learn how to conjugate a verb." He began writing on the board, "The first verb we will do is 'sein', which means 'to be'. As you already know 'I' in Deutsch is 'Ich', 'you' is 'du', and so on. Now this verb is different from most that you will come across, but it's an important one, so we will learn it first." He finished writing out the conjugation on the board, "So, copy this down. Ich bin, du bist, er/sie/man ist, wir sind, ihr seid, and Sie sind." He watched as the class copied the verb into their notes, and saw that Eyes was not, "Junge, copy this." Eyes didn't realize that he was being talked to, and simply stared at his desk. Glockner walked over to him and stood in front of his desk, drawing Eyes' attetnion to him, "Why are you not copying this down?"
Eyes hesitated and then looked away, "I...I don't know how to write." He said quitely. He didn't neccessarily want everyone knowing this fact, but couldn't see anyway around it.
"Don't know how to write?" Glockner questioned him, "Very funny, get to work." He said and then turned to go back to the front of the classroom. Eyes just watched hm teach the rest of the lesson.
At the end of the day, Glockner dismissed the class, "Okay, class, if you want to leave today, then you must translate a sentence that I give you. Each sentence will be different, so you can't cheat off of each other." The class lined up in front of the door, "Okay, Brandon." Glockner said to the kid first in line, "Translate this: The boy swam in the lake."
Brandon thought about it for a second and then replied, "Der Junge ist in See geschwummen."
"Wonderful, next, Jessica. The girl went to the store."
"Die Madchen zu der Supermarket gegangen."
"Lovely, next." One by one each student translated their sentence until only Eyes was left, "Ah, the funny boy. Okay, let's see...We all drank the milk and ate the bread."
There was no way Eyes could know this, he's only been in class one day. He had heard all of the other sentences that he had given, this was the most complicated one out of the bunch, "This is my first class, I don't know anything yet." Eyes informed him.
"We had this example on the board, did you copy it down? I'll let you look through your notes."
"I've already told you I can't write." Eyes said, very annoyed that this man thought he was joking.
"Then can you at least translate the first part, we all drank the milk?"
Eyes thought about it, what had he learned? 'We' was 'wir', right? He thought for a second more, "Wir haben der Milch getrunken." he finally answered, unsure if he should have used 'der' or 'die' with milk.
Glockner smiled at him, "There you go, you got it." Eyes sighed, relieved, "I'll see you tomorrow...Was ist du hassest?"
"Ich hasse Eyes." The boy answered easily, he wasn't sure where it came from, but it just flowed out of him. He had heard everyone say their names earlier, and just said what they did, substituting in his name.
"Eyes. I'll see you tomorrow." Eyes nodded, and quickly left.
Outside he spotted Kiyotaka and walked over to him, "Eyes, what took you so long?" The other questoned him.
"I got held up after class." Eyes replied, wondering for the first time what Kiyotaka was thinking putting him in school, or if he was thinking at all.
"Well, let's go, dinner should be ready by the time we get home." Eyes followed Kiyotaka to the car that he had come in, and when they reemerged at Kiyotaka's house, the older one turned to him, "So, how was your first day?"
Eyes tried to decide the best way to describe it. It hadn't been all bad, he had met Rio, Ryoko, and Kousuke, and they were going to get him back with Kanone. And while that was all good, the actual class part was long and confusing, that seemed like a good way to explain it, "A bit confusing." He confessed.
Kiyotaka nodded, "I expected that much, but everything went okay?" Eyes nodded, and Kiyotaka continued, "Well, if you need any help, I've got a yougner brother, Ayumu, he'll help you out. He's the one that cooked breakfast and is making dinner. I would have introduced you two this morning, but by the time you got up, he had already left for work."
"How old is he?" Eyes wondered out loud, Rio said that he could help Eyes with his schoolwork, but if he was already working, then perhaps he didn't want to be bugged by a kid.
"He's only two years older than you, but he's very advanced. He graduated nearly two years early and got a job as a detective right away." Kiyotaka explained, "He already agreed to help you out with anything you needed, though, so don't hesitate to ask." Eyes simply nodded and followed Kiyotaka inside to be met with a variety of aromas that engulfed the both of them as they entered the house.
The two walked into the kitchen, and saw a brown haired boy standing in front of the stove, wiping some sweat off of his forehead. He turned to see who had entered and grinned, "Hey, you must be Eyes." Said boy looked Ayumu up and down, "I'm Kiyotaka's brother, Ayumu."
"I figured that much." Eyes said, a bit coldly. He didn't like the way Ayumu adressed him, like he was talking to someone mentally challenged.
Ayumu lost his grin, and Kiyotaka smacked Eyes in the back of the head, "Don't be rude. Ayumu's the one helping you with school and cooking your dinner, so be greatful."
Eyes glared at Kiyotaka, but said nothing to him. Instead, he turned to Ayumu, "Hello."
Satisfied, Kiyotaka smirked, "Well, Ayumu, if you can take him for a little while, I've got places to be."
"No problem." Ayumu assured him and bid farewell to Kiyotaka as he left. After he was gone, Ayumu turned the stove off and placed the food on the table, "Hungry?" He asked the boy who was still staring at him. Eyes said nothing, but sat down and began eating. He wasn't sure why, there was just something about this boy that didn't feel quite right. Ayumu sat across from Eyes and looked at him, "I heard about you from Kousuke and Rio." Ayumu informed him, "They said Kiyotaka took you away from Kanone." Eyes paused from his eating to glare at Ayumu, who either didn't see it or ignored it, "What Kiyotaka did was wrong, true, but you do know that Kanone's birthday is in a couple of months, right? Once he's 18, Kiyotaka can't keep you from him." Eyes looked back up to Ayumu, what was this boy trying to do, cheer him up? Eyes just wasn't in the mood to be cheered up.
"That may be so, but what makes you so certain that Kiyotaka won't ask Kanone a large amount of money in exchange for me?" Eyes pointed out.
"Because, technically, you still belong to Kanone. If Kiyotaka tried to keep you, Kanone could sue him."
Eyes did a double take at hearing this, "He could?"
Ayumu grinned and nodded, "And you know he would, too. Besides, keeping you would most likely make Kanone hate Kiyotaka, and that's the last thing he wants."
"How are you so sure of all this?" Eyes asked, wary again. Why should he believe Kiyotaka's younger brother? Who's to say that Ayumu isn't just trying to get information out of Eyes about Kanone?
"Because I know Kiyotaka and I know Kanone well enough to know that Kanone loves you, and Kiyotaka loves him. My brother hasn't lost his mind, yet, he won't go crazy and try to keep you from Kanone any longer than he has to. I know it doesn't make a lot of sense, why would Kiyotaka take you just to have to give you back in a few months? But he still holds onto the hope that, without anyone else, Kanone will see how much Kiyotaka loves him, and love him back in return."
Eyes considered all of this, "Why does he love Kanone so much? It would seem to me that if Kanone rejected him once, than Kiyotaka would have enough common sense to realize that it wouldn't work."
Ayumu sighed, "My brother is what you would call a hopeless romantic. Ironically enough, hope is all he has left to keep him believing in the possibiltiy that Kanone would ever love him." With that said, Eyes and Ayumu finished their dinner and Eyes retired to his room for the rest of the night. It still all seemed odd to him, and he still couldn't figure out why Kiyotaka had sent him to school. Was it to get on Kanone's good side? Would Kiyotaka hope that Kanone would come back on his birthday to get Eyes, see how much Kiyotaka had changed the boy's life around, and fall in love with him? That was ridiculous, Kanone wouldn't go for a scheme as obvious as that one...would he?
Hmmmmm, maybe he would...you never know! Ugh, I've been typing for the past hour and a half. This is one of my longest chapters in a while, I think. Well, hope you liked it! As for the whole German thing in there...I just felt like putting it in! Review!
