A/N: Hello beautiful humans.
Kai's character here might seem OOC to some of you. Which is okay, because in the anime and many fanfictions, Kai is all aloof and not-interested-in-girls-except-the-OC. This is not the situation here. This fic is set in the Highschool AU, where Kai is a normal rich teenage boy. He'll of course not go all talkative all of a sudden. But there will be words and emotions from him too.
Thanks for the lovely reviews, Droplets of blue rain, Golden Glow of Amber and solitude 13. Thanks for favouriting and following, Golden Glow of Amber.
2.
"Tell me, tell me, tell me!" Julia started shaking a shocked Elena into answering her.
Elena had just came out of the principal's office after talking about the subject preferences her aunt Anna had for her. It was mostly stressing on the part of Ms Hall, the principal and awkwardness on the part of Elena. She seriously couldn't wait to leave the room as soon as possible.
What she didn't expect was Julia waiting outside for her, more like for her schedule, to see what classes they had together.
"Sto-op," Poor Elena pleaded as she felt her head starting to spin.
"Oops" Julia pouted apologetically seeing her friend close her eyes to stop the spinning. "Soo…" She trailed off not wanting to anger Elena.
"Well, see for yourself," Elena handed Julia her schedule.
Julia's expression changed thoroughly as her green eyes skimmed through the sheet; sometime she would grin, sometime would scrunch her nose, sometimes she would roll her eyes. "We've English and Physics together. Speaking of English, the homeroom teacher also takes English, so the first period is in the same classroom."
"This school's weird."
"Whatever, we also got calculus together, except on Fridays, when you're having Psychology…" She furrowed her eyebrows and looked at Elena, "Why did you take Psychology?"
"I didn't take Social Science, so instead of that I had to take two electives, P.E excluded." Elena shrugged at the wide eyed Julia.
"So you took three weird subjects just to not study Social Science," Julia rolled her eyes dramatically. "What's the third elective?"
Elena grinned cheekily before saying, "German."
Julia chuckled at her sly friend, "Obviously." She opened the door to her class, the teacher was already there.
He was middle aged, balding man, who looked as if he got the job on fluke. Something was creepy about his jolly grin. Or it's must be the fact that Elena didn't see much middle aged men smiling at her most of the time back in Germany, because those men were at her house for legal property purposes.
"You must be the foreign transfer student." The teacher pointed at Elena.
'Foreign transfer student?' She mentally scoffed, 'And he's the English teacher.'
She replied with a "Yes." She was a Grammar Nazi, but she also had enough manners under her belt.
"Miss Fernandez, you can proceed to your seat." He motioned at Julia, who trudged to the second last bench. "Tell us about you, dear," He looked at Elena, leaning against his desk, flashing another one of his grin.
Elena cocked at eyebrow at him and then looked around at the class staring at her expectantly.
'Here goes nothing.' She sighed and hitched up her bag. "I'm Elena Merkel, a transfer student from Germany." She had an almost invisible smile as she rocked on a toes slightly. 'Wow that was actually nothing.' She thought.
Elena turned to the teacher who looked at her as if to say, Say more. She just shrugged at him.
"Welcome to Crestview High, Elena. I'm Roger Patterson, your daily homeroom teacher."
'Homeroom is daily, Mr Engo.'
"Please find yourself any seat you want."
Her blue eyes once again skimmed over the class; there was only one seat empty, diagonally in front of Julia's left. She walked over and was about to sit down, when Julia stopped her.
"Wait, El." She turned to the guy behind her, "Yo, get lost." The guy gulped and got up motioning Elena to sit there.
"You're scary," Elena whispered, sitting down.
Julia shrugged carelessly, "I've the power. More like popularity." She snickered.
Roger clapped his hands, "No announcements for today, so open the Scarlet Letter." And then he turned to the board to write some notes.
"Hey there," Tala called her, sitting diagonally in front of her. "I'm Tala." He winked at her.
"I know," She rolled her blue eyes. "In fact, I know both of you." She looked at Kai, sitting on her left, across the aisle.
"Stalker much?" Kai commented, narrowing his left eyes slightly.
"No." Elena replied defensively, "There's little something called social media too, y'know." She smiled mockingly, before turning to her book.
"… Ms Merkel, since you're new, you can pair with Mr Hiwatari. Your chemistry grades match his anyway." Elena nodded at the teacher, and went to sit beside Kai.
"Hey, we meet again." In reply she only got a nod with a small smile. Elena didn't care to mind much of Kai's curt replies. She had to focus on maintaining her GPA instead of pondering why a guy's not talking to her properly.
"Okay class, I want you to create a lyophilic solution of starch and prepare a detailed report with your partner. The report should be on my desk on Wednesday morning." The chemistry teacher, Mrs Karla, smiled warmly at them and turned to the board to write the procedure and instructions. She was by far the sanest and least creepy teacher Elena met so far. Her math teacher, Ms Smith, was scarier than her aunt Anna. Mrs Dooley, the physics teacher, dressed like a shrink.
"Let's start…" Elena rubbed her hands in excitement, her eyes twinkling as they browsed the chemicals.
Kai looked at her weirdly, "This is just an assignment… you know that, right?"
"Of course I do," She said with a 'duh' tone in her voice. But the weird twinkle returned in her eyes, "But I love experiments!"
"Um, let's just do this," Kai was no wonder creeped out. Elena loved doing that, creep out people with her fascination with chemical experiments. In her 8th grade, she had her chemistry teacher run for the hills because she manically laughed after her first explosion in the lab.
Elena grinned to herself and set to work. When they were in middle of the experiment, a girl walked past her, accidently dropping a dilute base on her shirt.
"What the hell?!" Elena exclaimed, seeing the chemical seep through her shirt. She could already feel a warm itch on her skin.
"Oops, clumsy me." But the pink-haired bimbo didn't look apologetic for even a second. And without a sorry, she swayed her way to the back.
Elena narrowed her eyes at her retreating form, and then looked at the shirt, "Ugh, why me?! I don't even have spare clothes." She let out an exasperated sigh.
"I have a spare shirt in my locker." Kai offered.
"You're an angel, Kai." Elena looked at him dramatically.
Kai rolled his amethyst eyes, but with a smile.
Julia was doing some mild stretches when she heard a low whistle. Her head rotated towards the sound, making her long ponytail practically slice through the air.
Her eyes narrowed as she saw that it was Tala.
"Must say Jules, you're rocking those shorts." His eyes skimmed her long tanned legs shamelessly.
"Why can't you find someone else to bother?" She rolled her eyes lazily.
"I did. She rejected me." He slumped on the ground with a pout.
"Really? Who's she? I wanna meet her." She sat beside the redhead.
He offered her a water bottle, "Elena."
"She's out of your league, Tala." Julia took a huge gulp. The day was hot, and doing five laps along the perimeter of their huge ass ground didn't justify it.
"I know. She's more like Kai's type." Tala waved it off.
Julia laughed, "Kai's type? How do you know his type so well?"
Tala stiffened, his ears turning red. "I-well we have been friends for long enough." He started picking at the grass.
Julia could smell sus. "I've been friends with him just as long. I don't know his type."
"We're best friends. I know him better." He said hurriedly, still not meeting her eyes. Julia decided to drop the topic. She liked teasing Tala, but never to the point of humiliating him. Even though she found the whole situation quite intriguing, Julia knew they had to draw the line somewhere.
"FERNANDEZ! IVANOV! QUIT SLACKING!" The P.E teacher's, aka the coach's voice boomed at them from the middle of the field.
"Let's go, milady." Tala got up, bowed slightly for a dramatic effect, and held his hand towards her.
Julia merely pushed his hand away and got up herself, "Save them for your princess, Prince Charming."
She was already ahead, when he called out, "So you do admit I'm charming!"
"Loco." She mumbled and chuckled to herself.
"Here," Kai handed Elena a shirt and banged his locker shut. He could go back to class but it was only few minutes until lunch. So he leant against his locker, propping a leg up, and checking through his barrage of notifications. This was the worst thing about being popular, people always texted him. And since he was him, he never bothered to reply to any except a few whom he knew. Not to brag or anything, but he had 100+ unread texts on all of his social media.
"Are there any cctv cameras here?" Elena asked, looking around.
"No…" Kai replied slowly. He couldn't understand whatever went through the girl's mind. Well, he couldn't understand whatever went through any girl's mind. They were the most complex creatures. Men were merely made as sperm donors. Kai believed if woman could procreate without sperm, men would've gone extinct long time back.
Women ruled the world, that's the truth.
"I'm starting to love public schools more and more," She handed Kai back his shirt, and before Kai could ask her anything, her own damaged shirt was off.
'WAIT! HER SHIRT IS OFF!' Kai's eyes went wide like saucers. But weirdly enough Elena didn't seem to be fazed by anything.
She put her spoiled shirt on Kai's hand, and took back the white one. It was larger than her size, so obviously the full sleeves hung past her wrists. (Kai would never say it to her face, but she looked adorably sexy in his shirt.)
Pushing the sleeves to her elbow, she tied the lower halves of the shirt into a knot at her stomach. Fortunately the knotted shirt looked good with the faded ripped denims. She opened her mid-back length hair out of the ponytail, and ruffled them and combed the front part to the side with her fingers.
All the while Kai just stood there with his wide eyes at the nonchalant girl, who just changed her whole look in front of him. Earlier she looked like a normal high schooler, and now she looked as if she was ready to model for the front page of Teen Vogue.
Finally, after putting all her stuff in her locker, she looked up at the dumbfounded Kai. Elena snapped her fingers in front of his eyes, startling him.
"What…?" Elena asked him cautiously, seeing him ogling at her. Kai blinked and shook himself out of his temporary stupor.
"I-uhm, never mind."
"Okay…" She took a deep breath and hugged herself, "By the way, your shirt is very comfy. I don't think you're getting it back anytime sooner." She winked at him, and starting walking towards the cafeteria, leaving behind a flushed Kai.
"Tell me about this shirt, El. It smells like cologne…" Julia asked Elena as they stood in the cafeteria line. Then Julia's eye widened at a thought, "Did you have sex with someone?"
Elena scrunched her nose at her friend's assumptions, "No, why would I do that?"
"Just a thought," She shrugged, "But what's up with the shirt?" Julia picked at the white shirt.
"This girl dropped a chemical on your shirt, so Kai gave me his spare one." Elena stepped forward as the line moved.
"Kai you say…" Julia trailed suggestively.
"Stop making assumptions, nothi- Whoa!" She was cut off as someone bumped her shoulder and pushed past her. Her footing slipped, making her fall back.
Elena squeezed her eyes shut, waiting to fall down. Her first day in an American high school and she already was going to humiliate herself. If it was like the teen movies she had watched, her rest of senior year was doomed.
But she never fell. A hand held her back, and another held left hand.
She slowly opened her eyes to just look at another gem-like pair gazing at her with concern. This definitely felt straight out of a movie scene, or a cliché rom-com book. Whatever it was, Elena wasn't hating it.
"Are you okay?" Kai asked her softly.
"Yes…" Elena replied more softly, losing herself into his eyes. Fortunately due to this, she didn't see the seething face of the pink-haired girl from before who had pushed her.
"The others want to eat, lovebirds." Tala practically yelled at them, snapping them back to reality.
"Thanks," Elena blushed furiously, as she scrambled back, tucking her hair behind her ear.
"Y-Yeah," Kai's ears were also turning red by this point.
"Let's go," A giggling Julia grabbed the tomato-Elena towards a table.
"Come on, man." Tala lightly slapped Kai's back.
A/N: This is it. Hoped you all liked it.
Also, I wanted to address this mistake I made in the original writing of this fic. I had called Lucy and her group 'sluts'. Back then, I didn't know the broader judgement of the word. I would like to apologise for that. No one, not even the negative characters of a mere fanfiction, should be slut-shamed. We're no one to judge the lifestyle of others and call them rude and hurtful names.
All things said...
Stay safe and keep reading,
Rome :)