Akane woke to sore and stiff limbs after sleeping so awkwardly on her bed. After stretching, and shaking herself awake, she looked at the alarm clock on Miu's bedside table, which read 5:36 a.m. Aido hadn't come. She'd been awake all that time… for nothing!
Akane was furious and made no effort to hide it when Miu came back later that morning.
"What's wrong?" Miu had asked but only received clipped, angry responses from her roommate before she gave up altogether. Akane's mood didn't improve during school and managed to get herself detention in two of her classes. One, for walking out in the middle of a Physics project, the second, for blatantly ignoring their music teacher, Mrs Hara.
Miu had never known Akane to be so detached, restless, or downright disrespectful towards their teachers. She also wasn't sleeping. Miu would find Akane in the breakfast room every morning, dressed in the same clothing from the day before. She was burying herself in schoolwork, requesting extra assignments for Mathematics, English, French, and the Sciences. She was burning herself out, and Miu couldn't seem to crack the hard nut on her shoulders she called a head. On Thursday, at the changeover, Miu stood with determination. She wasn't just there for the pleasure of seeing the Night Class, she wanted answers and could think of only one person who might have them.
"Good evening ladies, you look so cute tonight! It pains me to have to wait the long hours of the night before I see your glorious faces again," Aido charmingly declared as he waved to the Day Class as he walked by. Aido's mood had improved drastically from how it had been last week, being much more energetic with the girls than usual, which meant he was still acting strangely, moving from one extreme to the next.
To the rest of the Day Class, his over-exuberance was a far more welcomed character than the cold front he had presented the week before. For Miu, despite her obvious infatuation with the blond, blue-eyed Idol of Cross Academy, she saw past her adoration of him and noted the inconsistencies with his behaviour. He and Akane had both been upset last week and their moods had got increasingly more prominent as the week wore on.
"Idol! Idol? Aido!" she called impatiently, as she was pushed and jostled in the middle of the crowd of screaming girls. God, I hope I don't look like that! How embarrassing! Her shame was doubled when a hand suddenly grabbed her forearm and pulled her through the mob, into the face of the person she'd been calling. He was so close, his breath fanned over her shocked and reddening face. He had the most devastatingly handsome smile she had ever seen. It caused her stomach to flutter and her heart to hammer erratically in her chest.
"You called Miu?" She stared, mesmerised for a moment before she shook her head to clear away the fog, the perfect image of her Idol had caused in her mind.
"I-I wanted to ask you… about A-Akane." His smile seemed to widen at the mention of her roommate, but she noticed the look in his eyes was different from his smile. They were dulled, almost angry. "She's been acting… differently. Something's bothering her. Do you know anything about it?"
"I haven't seen Miss Nakamura since that day at the gates, Miu. So, I'm sorry, but I don't know."
Miu frowned. She loved her Idol and wanted to believe him, but she was an attentive friend and very intuitive. She knew both Akane and Aido were lying to her. She sighed, not knowing where to go from here. She'd been sure he would have at least asked about Akane. Another thing that had changed. He never asked about her roommate anymore. The rest of the Idol fans thought this a blessing, giving one of them the chance to catch their Idol's eye with the competition out of the picture.
"I see," Miu turned her gaze to The Sun Dorms. "I hope I can convince her to sleep tonight. She's going to get sick if she doesn't rest properly." Without a glance at her Idol, Miu walked out of his light grasp and began walking back to her dorm. Aido watched her as she left, looking back with disappointed eyes before he was rudely shepherded on by Zero.