Part Three

After lunch the rest of the day was a blur. Joey barely spoke to me the rest of the day, as if I had badly injured his honour. I couldn't concentrate on any of my lessons and kept being shouted at by certain tutors about 'paying attention' I didn't see Seto again for the rest of the day, but for some reason I kept having this feeling in the back of my head like he was constantly there, tormenting me with out even being near me. I hated it, this feeling I couldn't control, not being able to get him out of my head, the words he spoke to me, the way in which he said them. It was driving me insane with all this thinking.

Mercifully the bell rang out to announce the end of the day. Slowly as if in a dream I slung my bags shoulder strap over my right shoulder, pushed back my small plastic chair and slumped wearily out of the classroom. Down the hall, not caring for the light conversation happening around me as I pushed open the heavy double doors and out into the school yard,through the metal gates, and walked along the road to the bus stop.

After waiting a whole hour for a bus to arrive, I was freezing cold, wet from the light drizzle of rain that had started to fall half hour ago and angry beyond all belief at Seto Kaiba. Its was all his fault, his fault that I had missed half my class. His fault that nobody has spoken to me since lunch, and his fault that I had been mad all day with thinking of him. What made me even angrier was that I had seen him not an hour ago travelling in a fancy car up to his office at Kaiba Corp, all nice and warm with his heating on. I thought as a little car rushed past me that little bit too close and soaked me through ' karma' I said to myself bitterly just as the bus pulled up.

Scrambling around at the bottom of my wet school bag with a scowl on my face, I wondered how many of my school books had wet smeared, inky pages in them due to that stupid little car that just couldn't drive that little bit further away from the pavement.

"ah" I said in triumph for myself as I found what I had been looking for. My fingers closed around a small metal key with a keyring of a miniaturized globe hanging off it. I shook the small globe with the attached key from the damp bag and rammed it in the lock. The old, creaking door groaned under the pressure as I pushed my body weight against it the old door the peeling paint dropping away as the door finally gave in and allowed me entrance to my home.

"Where'd you been?" a gruff voice demanded as I walked in through the door.

"to school." I said back in a lazy monotone as I shoved my school bag off my shoulders and onto the nearby post that lead up the stairs.

"don't you give that cheek to me" he snarled " why've you been so long?"

I idly wandered to the doorway to the living room, to confront my stepfather.

" I was so late to cook your tea because the stupid bus never turned up."

His expression was of utter disbelief, but being a lazy git, he decided to avoid a confrontation and return to his lame TV show. I stared at my stepfather with contempt as he slumped even further into his pitiless existence. He moved his ever enlarging arse down into the sagging brown leather chair his only exercise being lifting the remote and flicking through the TV channels.

I shook my head but felt myself being glad that he was in, for him, such a good mood,for when he was in a bad mood it always bode ill for me. He was never a nice or charming man, but he kept a roof over my head and for that I was grateful . I walked straight toward the tiny cramped kitchen to make chicken and chips before his mood turned for the worse. It was late by the time I pulled my bag up stairs by the strap letting it thump dully against the fading carpets. Hearing my stepfather mutter protrusively under his breath about not respecting his 'hearing space'.

I lazed upon my bed and closed my eyes against the day trying to block out everything that went wrong and concentrate on the few things that did go right with the day. Slowly I found myself coming to my time in the library. With a smile a leapt up and grabbed my bag and crammed my hands into it pulling out my book. Feeling the fluttering of anticipation of opening the leather cover and feeling the soft pages under my fingers as I let my mind completely into the story and disappear. I smoothed my fingers over the shiny, silver letter engravings on the binder. It was one of my favourites ' pride and prejudice ' a classic and an epic story along with it and this one was a special edition with illustrations. That is why it caught my eye , I loved the story but had never seen this particular edition before and was thrilled when I booked it out.

Now I looked at this book with high expectations as I steadily opened the front cover and started to read. After a while I was close to finishing the few chapter in when I felt a sharp shooting pain in my neck, then I realised that I had been sitting cross legged on my bed hunched over the book for nearly half an hour and the time had flown by. I leaned back on my bed feeling the cold, cotton covers under me as I massaged my aching neck with the palm of my hand feeling the intense realised as my muscles started to relax I closed my eye against eye strain from reading too much as I sank back onto the not so soft, misshapen pillow leaving the book to dangle carelessly in one hand. Suddenly I felt something softly slide out of the pages and fluttered onto my chest, as light as a feather or as tender as a lovers kiss. My eyes snapped open and studied closely at what had disturbed me.

There upon my chest at the nape of my white,school shirt was a small white piece of paper folded up and stuck at random in the book. I stared at the paper for a while as I slowly put the book at my side and peeled the paper off my chest and opened it up gradually revealing the message that was secretly concealed.

'thinking of me?'

it was a simple statement, but it completely threw me. How would send me a message with no name. And why? And then it hit me … Mr Seto Kaiba once again had completely unarmed me, when I was least expecting it , it's like he's planning this , I thought to myself irritated at his presumption that I would still be thinking about him now, at home. Suddenly I felt my anger rise in my throat like the phoenix within me spreading his wings and roaring his protests as I found myself now once again drawn to thinking of him again, which is exactly what he wanted. I screwed up the note tightly in the palm of my hand and chucked it with all my strength at the wall in front of the bed letting out a high pitched scream of anger and defiance which echoed loudly around the small room. The ball of paper hit brightly painted lime green wall and fell softly down onto the cream,roughly carpeted floor. Then flopped back down onto my pillows as I heard a bang on the ceiling below and my stepfather bellow "SHUT UP" as he poked the ceiling with a walking stick he kept near by just in case he might just shift himself off that damn chair. I groaned inwardly at the sh*ttiness of my life and decided to phone the one person that always cheered me up. Joey.