I walked through the school halls with the map plastered in front of my face. I was very much aware of all the pairs of eyes that were on me. I struggled to ignore them so that I could focus on finding the right lecture hall.

I finally breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the door just ahead of me. Other students were filing in, which meant that I wasn't late for class. I slipped in among them and pushed my way into the room.

"Hey, kid!" Someone shouted at me. I turned to see an older boy smirking down at me. "What are you doing here?"

I blinked at him nervously. "Uh... I'm here for Professor Kamijo's lecture." I tried. My voice went up a little at the end, making it sound like I had asked a question.

The boy laughed and jumped down from his seat so that he landed right in front of me. He leaned in and looked at me closely. I was so nervous that I clutched my bag to my chest and leaned away from him. This seemed to make him laugh more. "How old are you, kid?"

I gulped. "I – I... I don't want to tell you." I answered truthfully. I took a step back and looked around for help. Everyone was staring at me, but none of the m offered any help. "J – just leave me alone." I tried to sound threatening.

The boy just laughed again. A bunch of the other students also started to laugh. Before long that was all I could hear in the large room. The sound was almost deafening.

Just when I thought I was about to start crying, I got a hold of myself. Don't give him the satisfaction. I told myself. If I thought of this as a competition, my stubborn personality would take over and I'd be able to force myself to keep level headed. If I cry, he wins.

I took a deep breath and managed to get my hands to stop shaking. I glared back at the boy defiantly. He was laughing too hard to notice, but it still made me feel better. "Leave me alone!" I said loudly, surprising myself.

The boy stopped laughing and looked back at me. He looked startled. Then a smile spread across his face. "Oh, don't worry. I'm not going to hurt you or anything." He looked around at his friends. "School's just boring, so we need some entertainment." Then he turned back to me. "You understand that, right, little girl?"

"I'm not a little girl!" I snapped back. "I'm-" I caught myself before I told him how old I was. Don't let him win. "I'm Yuki Suzuki."

The boy nodded. "Well, Yuki," He was trying to be disrespectful, but it sounded normal to me, since I had grown up in America. "I guess you'll be meeting the Professor soon." He took a step forward and draped an arm around my shoulders. "Here's some advice, if you don't speak your mind, then he won't notice you and he may just fail you."

I blinked as he walked away, back to his seat. I jumped a little and hurried to take a seat as well, since class would be starting soon. I sat down close to the front and stared right where the teacher would be standing as he taught.

Only minutes into the lesson, I was starting to get bored. The teacher was going on about the importance of Shakespeare. It wasn't that I found Shakespeare boring (I was fascinated by his life and his work), but I had already read about all this on my own. Recently too, since it was what I had read on the plane ride to Japan.

"And when he died..." Professor Kamijo was saying.

"... of food poisoning on his birthday due to the fish." I muttered under my breath, feeling my eyelids start to droop.

"Quiet!"

I jumped and looked up just in time to see a chalkboard eraser flying at my head. I let out a sharp little cry of surprise as I brought my hands up to protect my face. I caught the eraser and blinked at it for half a second, then I looked back at Professor Kamijo. He was looking at me very angrily and it scared me a little. "Demon teacher!" I cried, standing up and throwing the eraser back at him.

"Wha-?" was all he had time to say before the eraser hit him in the face. I almost stayed there for a second before dropping to the floor. His face was white from the chalk dust.

The whole room was silent for a good ten seconds. Then the other students started buzzing with chatter. I just stood where I was while they talked around me. I was too shocked to move. I had never even thought that I was capable of talking back to a teacher, and I hadn't even thought about throwing something or yelling at anyone.

Professor Kamijo's eyes narrowed. He glared at me in an icy cold way that made me shiver. "Please see me after class." He said in a forcefully calm voice.

I shivered and nodded. Then I sank back into my seat.

"Oof!" I let out a fast breath as Professor Kamijo dropped a pile of books into my arms. I blinked at them and tried to read the titles. I couldn't because they were written in a fancy font, in Japanese, and I was looking at them sideways.

"I need your help to carry these to my office." Professor Kamijo ordered. He sounded really angry. "Now follow me." He led the way out of the lecture hall.

I stumbled down the halls after him, barely able to see over the stack of books. I nearly missed a turn a few times and I did bump into quite a few people, mostly him. "Sorry." I said quickly each time.

"Stop." He said suddenly, just before I crashed into him again. We were standing in front of an office door. "You can put those on the table to the right of the door." He directed as he unlocked the door. Then he opened it for me.

I stepped inside and quickly turned to my right. I had to look down in order to see if I was about to crash into the table. I managed to find it without hurting myself and set the books down. "Okay, sir." I said with a smile, turning to Professor Kamijo. "What now?"

He didn't answer me. He didn't even look at me. He was still standing in the doorway, petrified with shock. He was staring at something across the room.

"Sir?" I asked, turning to see what he was looking at.

Two other people were also in the room. One of them I recognized as another teacher, Professor Yo, whose picture I had seen when I studied the list of people who worked at the university. The other was a boy with hair the colour of toasted marshmallows.

The boy was pinned to a table, and Professor Yo was leaning over him.

They had both turned to look awkwardly at me and Professor Kamijo.

I blinked a few times. Then a happy grin spread across my face. "Shin-chan!" I cried out as I recognized the boy. I ran over to the table and stood beside him, ignoring Professor Yo. "What are you doing here?"

Shinobu scowled and pushed Professor Yo away. "Way to ignore the obvious." He muttered, almost too quiet for me to hear. As he spoke, he got off the table and straightened his shirt. I noticed that it was a vest with a school insignia on it, it must have been his school uniform.

"So what is it?" I said, a little hyper. I jumped up and down a bit like a little kid. "Why are you here!" I pestered him.

He scowled harder at me. "I should ask you the same thing. What are you doing in Japan?"

"I came here for school." I explained, beaming and grinning like an idiot. "I'm a student here!" I laughed at how strange it sounded.

"Student here!" Shinobu repeated.

"Shinobu?" Professor Yo interrupted our conversation and we both turned to look at him. "You know this girl?"

"She's a friend from Australia." Shinobu said quickly. He almost sounded defensive. "I haven't seen her for a while."

"Yup!" I nodded quickly. "I was visiting my cousin, since my parents took me out of school after I antagonized every teacher in my school."

"What?"

"Yeah." I said simply. "Ya see, I have family all over the world, and one of my older cousins lives in Australia." I clasped my hands behind my back and rocked back and forth on my heals. "I met Shin-chan there, and he told me all about Japan."

"No." Professor Yo held up a hand to stop me. "I was talking about the other thing you said. You antagonized every teacher in school? How?"

"Did you throw things at them too?" We all looked towards the door where Professor Kamijo was still standing. I had actually forgotten that he was there.

I pouted a little. "You threw the eraser at me first." I muttered angrily.

"Hey!" He barked at me. "That's what happens when you don't pay attention and talk during my class!"

"I was paying attention!" I blurted. "I was just adding extra facts that you were leaving out!" I looked away and lowered my voice. "It's what all of my teachers before hated about me." I muttered sorrowfully.

"Is that why you're at a university?" I looked up when Shinobu spoke. He was looking at me with a slightly tilted head. "I mean, since they had nothing more to teach you."

I nodded. "That's right." I grinned when I started remembering everything that had happened. "They gave me exams so that I could finish high school, and then I took the entrance exams for the nearby universities." I laughed slightly. "They were too easy, so I tried some from other countries."

All three of them stared at me. Then Professor Kamijo broke the silence. "How old are you?"

I spun around and grinned from ear to ear. "Twelve." I stated. "But I'll be thirteen in two months."