A/N: Three assignments, placement beginning in March, a security guard dying in my school building, finding out that my cat has been missing for weeks and nobody telling me… I'm putting it all aside for you guys. I hope that you'll all forgive the way that this is written, or at least it'll be as funny as usual. So, without further ado, I'll let you get on with reading… DIDN'T I JUST SAY NO!

I was dragged from dreamland with another fucking headache and the disgusting, ugly burning of nausea in my stomach. My throat felt as though there was a knife stuck in it, one that wouldn't leave, my eyeballs were on fire behind my gummed up eyelids, and when I moved to roll off the bed, I was right-hooked by such a wave of dizziness that I fell back onto my side, gagging.

I rubbed off the sleep-gunge and squinted at my alarm clock until my eyes watered.

Fucking 00:48 in the fucking night. Honestly, what kind of shit was going on that I couldn't even sleep right? Damned disrespectful is what it was. Fucking stupid brain.

I rolled off the bed and landed on the floor with a bone-jarring thump, grumbling silently at the ceiling. The cold wooden floor was – shock, horror – better than the bed to my sweaty body, but I couldn't let that fool me. I knew I wasn't gonna sleep again tonight.

I just could not give a shit about anything anymore. It was too painful. It was interfering with my sleep cycle and giving me headaches like a tiny baby Satan was sitting in my skull and throwing a demon doll against the walls in a temper tantrum. My last fuck had flown, as had my will to live.

The floor was starting to hurt.

I remembered that, thanks to those two asshats, I still had homework to do.

I felt disgusting.

Welp, I supposed, there's only one way that this could turn out.

"You look more dead than usual." Kaiba matched my deadpan look with his own. I yanked out the chair and fell into it as my head donked onto the table in perfect, floppy sync.

"Please don't make it sound like you care for me." Kaiba sneered at my monotonous accusation.

"Please. As if I would ever want to date someone as irritating as you. How disgusting." Never a truer word, my frienemy. I knew I could rely on you to be an emotionless and calculating asshole, for which I was glad. No matter the day, no matter the hour, no matter the scores, Kaiba would never change. He was the one constant in my life of Hell.

Anyway, moving on. I rolled my head to the side and gave him the dead fish stare. "Where the fuck were you yesterday, anyway?"

"Unlike some people, I have a company to run." He sneered at me with his usual icy glare and mimicked the words that I had literally just said. "Please don't make it sound like you care for me."

"Bold of you, considering you have all the sense of humour of a dried-up chunk a' roadkill. You're not my type. I don't date assholes." I let out my breath, shoving my fuzzily-awake head off the desk with difficulty. "I was writing out notes from yesterday. Some new cunt in the class stole my pencil case and made me mess up."

"Hypocrite," he stated. Yeah, like I didn't already know that.

"Correction: I don't date assholes anymore." I shot him an annoyed look, but he was already typing away on his laptop as though this conversation had never started. Touché, Mr Kaiba, touché. "You're never so chatty, what gives?"

I started to take out my little squares of paper and a ruler. I didn't know what I was gonna make yet, but I'd memorised how to make a cube rose as well as writing out those notes last night, so I wanted to try it out.

Kaiba's reply made my fingers hesitate.

(Stop it. Stop shipping us. I know who you are, I can sense you. It's never gonna happen. Ever. So… STOP.)

(I LITERALLY JUST SAID STOP WHADDYA MEAN YOU STILL SHIP IT ARE Y'ALL HIGH OR WHAT?)

"You're insufferable, but a useful asset. Now hand over the notes."

(HA! That's what y'all get for hoping. Besides, didn't you even read the story notes? This ain't a Kaiba ship.)

"Geez, I thought it'd be more profound than that." The other students were slowly shoving themselves in through the door, trying to make it before the teacher came. Idiots, all of 'em. I packed up the paper and took out my copy. "I can't give them to you 'til after school, so - "

I froze. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. My heartbeat skyrocketed and launched off via my fist, which shot upwards into the jaw of the fucker who'd leaned in too close for comfort. Or it would've, except he caught it with one white hand, and squeezed it in a way that made my skin crawl. "That's cruel, sweetheart."

At that point, I would have willingly sold my soul to Satan for a chance, just one chance, to find Life and throttle them senseless. I hated, I despised whatever circumstance that had forced me to take this path and end up in this place, this Goddamn motherfucking ugly place, and I wanted out. Now.

As it was, I couldn't do any of the stuff that I wanted, now, could I?

"Bakura, let the fuck go and stay the fuck away from me," I hissed. I readied my free hand, trembling with righteous fury, but then he matched me, grin for glower, shoving my fist down onto the table.

"Why did you hang up last night?" He asked, keeping a light tone. His eyes burned with an evil ferocity that mine couldn't match, even though his face was a smiling, genteel mask of what the other girls would call "Sexay". There were little flickering red sparks in there, and – don't focus on his eyes, even though they are understandably pretty in an unconventional manner, you fucktard.

"Because I despise you and You. Make. Me. Sick. Now tell me how you found my cell number." Everything from last night re-ignited my spark of HELL NAE. The dick didn't even notice. Or at least if he did, then I didn't notice him notice, because I didn't give a shit.

(No, I – fine, I did, but have you ever had to be in close proximity with a fucker that you hate more than normal? It's disgusting. It's eeeugh. You never ever EVER want it to happen to you. So you understand my sentiments.)

"I'll tell you if you meet me on the roof at break." There was a hole being burned into my soul. I didn't like that feeling.

"Not a chance."

"I need to talk to you." Burn, burn, burn went his eyes. Wait a second… was his face… different from yesterday?

"About what?" I muttered, looking away. Damn. It's hard to argue with a guy who smoulders at you. I yanked his hand off my fist long enough for me to free myself before anyone else could give us the curious looks, preparing my notebooks for the class ahead. Beside me, I heard an almost inaudible "Tch".

I didn't notice the bell ring.

"Mr Bakura, please sit down." The teacher rapped the desk to the sounds of tittering from the class. I jumped as something was dropped in my lap, jerking round. "There's a seat next to Mr Devlin for today."

OH, sweet holy shit. Oh, my divine and devilish soul. This… this was…

I opened the note in my lap as Kaiba discreetly glanced down. He gave another little "Tch" noise. We shared a glance that seemed to mean nothing to him.

"Help me," I whispered, to no-one in particular.

"Your call, not mine," he muttered at the screen.

I looked down again, and the weight of all the sleepless nights I'd been getting hit me with all the force of a monster truck.

"Fuck," I swore, softly.

Don't disappoint me.

This was gonna be crap.

Well, balls.

The class was as slow as ever, but hey, at least my notes were pristine. I was happy in my position (sort of) and as awake as a snoring pig. If pigs snored. I didn't know. But I was conscious enough to hold the pen and write, which was all that mattered. Kaiba didn't speak to me for the rest of the morning, as usual, but here's where the strange shit starts.

(What, like it hadn't started already? Get real.)

Because Duke Devlin and Yami Bakura were sitting next to each other. Two rivals in love, fighting for the affections of somebody who had no desire to even look at 'em, and they were sitting there, in the middle of the class, hissing under their breath when they thought the teacher wasn't listening. (He totally was.) I heard several stifled grunts, sharp intakes of breath, and stabby noises coming from their direction, which, I gotta admit, made me wanna laugh my ass off, even though I was so dead on the inside that I didn't know how I wasn't sprouting a flowerbed outta my cranium.

What's more, several times during the series of lessons I caught the younger one, Ryou? I thought that was his name? Yeah. I caught him giving me weird looks. Like, "Who the fuck is she" looks. "She's not someone I know but I totally have some advice that might come in handy for her future, if she has a future" looks. It was weird, and on toppa that, the back of my neck just wouldn't stop fucking prickling. I had a constant tingling going on there that was really beginning to eat away at my nerves, not helped by the amount of tacks that I'd had ta shake outta my indoor shoes when I got into school.

In hindsight, that was the first of a long list of signs that I shoulda listened to a little harder.

So, up until now I'd thought that I'd had it as worse as it could possibly get. I'd been insulted, cheated on, abused, ignored, slapped, lied to and about, had my name slandered by just about everyone in the fucking school at one point, and I'd gained another trash bag stalking me. But y'all know my motto, by now, right? LIFE HATES MAKING IT EASY FOR ME.

'Course, I hadn't exactly, y'know, realised it by then, but looking back, everything that had happened to me, every painful and embarrassing moment, was all Life handing me combustible lemons and then slamming the "Explode" button. It was Life cackling as it span the Wheel of Misfortune to decide just how unlucky I could get, and hitting "Jackpot" each time. Which meant that all those lead-ups, all those little hints I was getting in the classroom that slow and drowsy morning, was Life gripping the knobs on the wheel with both hands and giving it a test swing. In other words, I was in there up to my neck.

I still hadn't decided whether or not to accept the limey fruitcake's freaky invite, but I knew that at break, I'd have to leave the classroom and leg it to the toilet. If I happened to decide to maybe peek up that way, then, no harm done, right? Besides, I had the powers of both God and Narrative Causality on my side, right? (TIP: No I fucking didn't.) Of course, the muttering behind me wasn't a big help, either. Every time I heard that insidious little whisper of my ex's, my teeth ground together so hard, that Kaiba put in noise-cancelling headphones. Still, I had my notes, I had my paper, and I still had my sanity, yeah?

Hah. NO.

The bell rang. Everyone got up to leave, but I managed to dodge around the throng and make my way to the hall before the rest of them, my notes clutched to my chest. Kaiba would've been shocked if he hadn't decided to keep staring at the stock market. The lockers weren't overrun yet, so maybe I could make my way there first, then go pee –

That was my first mistake.

" – So, like, she slapped him really hard –"

" – I heard that, like, she's a bitch to everyone – "

" – Somebody should teach her a lesson."

I reached my locker as the Girl Gang closed in around me like a Venus flytrap. Internally, I swore. I hadn't been fucking watching where I was heading, since my brain was all mushy with the lack of sleep. Normally, I'd have seen such an obvious trap. Meanwhile, I turned around, looking the ringleader straight in the eye.

"Fancy seeing you here, Helena."

She gave me a thin-lipped smile, flicking her hair back from that pretty little face of hers. "Oh I'm sorry, honey. I don't like speaking to trash." One of the girls tittered behind me. An angry flush turned the back of my neck hot, but I kept my cool.

"And I've never heard an empty corridor speak before, but that's beside the point. What do you want." I pretended to be bored, watching the little tic rise in her eye before vanishing back into the Barbie-smooth façade she always wore around me. An uneasy, claustrophobic sense filled me. I heard some of her cronies move closer, closing the circle tighter. What a mess.

"We just wanna teach you a few things, sweetie. Don't we, ladies?" Uh-oh. I had a bad feeling about this… Maybe I shoulda kept my mouth shut… No! They were morons, evil cunts who'd rip you limb from limb as soon as look at you, so why should I listen to them -

Someone yanked my hair, hard. I winced, falling back into someone else's sharp claws raking down my arm. My notes were snatched away from me the instant my grip loosened, and then someone decided to start kicking my legs out from under me, and… well…

"Hey!" I lunged towards Helena, the perfectly-manicured claws ripping through my hair, across my cheek. She opened one of the copybooks, ignoring me completely. "Give those back!"

"Wow, so boring." She flicked though the pages, scanning each page. Her eyebrows crinkled in disbelief. "I can't believe that you'd have time to write out all these. Except that, well, I can. It must take hours."

"Helena, I swear to God, if you so much as drop one of them then I'll end your miserable life, so help me – " The girls holding me back started laughing as I struggled. Passers by glanced, then quickly walked on by. I was alone in this, like always.

She locked eyes with me, her face blank. `Then she ripped the copy in half, throwing it over her shoulder. "Oops."

Tears of rage welled in my heated eyes. My heart hurt, I wanted to hit her, punch her, kick her until that pretty bitch was in hospital. I didn't hear the scream rip from my throat so much as feel it. I didn't notice the strength that allowed me to rip myself free of the airheaded wannabes behind me. All that I could think of was her eyes widening as I leapt at her, arms swinging round to clobber her, the wordless shout still echoing in my lungs.

DIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIE –

I shoved her back, watched her stumble and fall on her skinny behind in the middle of the corridor. I stood up straight. I took a deep breath, exhaled all the thunder in my mind. The circle stepped away. Honestly? I didn't care. How could I, when I'd seen what I'd seen behind her?

"You're right," I told her. "It does take hours to do those notes. But you know what? It doesn't matter. Nothing matters." I stepped forward, past her, and knelt down to pick up the collapsed heap of paper that had once been my English notes. "Because I can write them again, and again, and again. And to be honest, I don't give a shit what y'all think about me."

"You – " she started. I stood up, looking past her, towards the person who held the rest of my academic record.

"Can I have those back? Thanks." He gave them to me with a little smile. Not my type, but still cute. "It's Ryou, right? We've never really talked before." I turned my back on the gaggle of cunts, moving towards my locker. After all that excitement, my bladder was ready to burst. Oh dear.

"No, we haven't, have we?" He gave me the weird look that he'd been giving me all morning, and continued, "Do you mind if we do? Talk now, I mean."

Oh. Shit.