"Good morning, Île-de-France! This is Karmia de la Rente with Radio One, bringing you a quick forecast for the Boulogne-Billancourt area. This Tuesday morning is shiny and sunny, with few clouds. A thunderstorm may head in around 6:30 tonight. Tomorrow will be mostly cloudy with a 75 chance of heavy rain. Now here's your favorite band, the Subsonics, with their popular 'Smash Hit--'"

Ulrich hastily slammed the Radio button on the clock. "Smash Hit" by the Subsonics had dominated radios all over Europe. There was no escaping it. If you planned on listening to music by any other group, you were out of luck.

Ulrich hopped out of bed, feeling nauseous. Odd was gone. All night Ulrich had dreamt of Yumi and Jeremie and had woken up in the middle of the night numerous times, sweat pouring out of his body, anxiety overwhelming him.

He was relieved that he made it to the morning and maintained his sanity.

It was cloudless and moderately cool when Ulrich went outside. Students were scattered about the courtyard, chatting with each other. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Yumi and Jeremie sitting under a tree. They seemed cheery today, but he walked in a different direction and pushed them out of his mind with great effort. He saw Odd and Aelita standing in the little corner where the vending machine was. It was as though everyone had a soul mate this fine morning, as though even the most hopeless loser could love and become accepted.

Everyone except Ulrich was happy.

- - -

"Good morning, class." Mrs. Hertz smiled at all of her students. "Let's get started. If you would open up your textbooks to page 40..."

Odd leaned over and said in a barely audible voice, "Aelita, are you okay? You don't look so good."

"I...I think something's wrong with me, Odd..." She fell to the ground. All the students gasped, and Odd was immediately at her side.

"What's going on?" Odd demanded to Jeremie.

Jeremie honestly had no idea. "I don't know! She wasn't like this before she was in the core. Xana could have bugged my program prior to my launching it. He could have bugged Aelita herself."

Odd raised her into his arms and carried her to the infirmary, where Yolande admitted she could find nothing wrong.

"I'm sorry. Your friend's case is indeed strange, but she seems to be fine. I can't treat her if I can't verify the source of the trouble. Just go on back to class and let her get some rest for now."

Odd was firmly determined to stay with Aelita. "Yolande, please let me be here with her! If something goes terribly wrong and I lose her, I'll never forgive myself for not being right there with her! I lost her once and I won't let it happen again!"

"Alright," Yolande gave in. She didn't understand what he meant when he said he lost Aelita once, but she understood his caring affection for this girl. "Stay as long as you like. All day if you so choose."

"You really mean it? Wow. Thanks Yolande, this means a lot to me." It was unlike any of the Kadic staff to let a student off for 10 minutes, let alone the whole day. Odd was very grateful.

- - -

Back in chemistry, the students were buzzing among themselves about what happened to Aelita. Jeremie and Ulrich were particularly concerned, guessing Aelita's mysterious situation was related to Xana.

"This is probably my fault. I don't remember scanning the program for viruses," Jeremie said dolefully.

Ulrich, in worse spirits now than he was when he woke up half an hour ago, chided Jeremie for letting the program go unscanned. "Well, that's just grand. Do you mean to say you never scan your programs?"

"Of course I do. But I didn't have time to scan this one. I pulled Aelita out of the core without any questions."

"The last two days have been nothing but disaster, and now this. I don't think things can possibly get any worse!"

Steamrolling the students' talking, Mrs. Hertz scratched chalk against the chalkboard. The students covered their ears and whimpered.

"I see I've got your attention," Mrs. Hertz said. "Without further ado, why don't we get back to the lesson?"

- - -

After chemistry came lunch, and Yumi and Ulrich spent the last few minutes of it with Aelita and Odd. Jeremie had gone off to his room to arrange a debugging program.

Aelita was still asleep when the infirmary door opened.

"I don't know exactly what is wrong with your friend here, but I'm recognizing signs of what looks like electric shock," Yolande informed the two new visitors. "But Odd says there was no electricity in the room."

Ulrich confirmed this. "There wasn't a spark anywhere. Can you find anything else wrong, Yolande?"

"No, I'm afraid."

"Are you sure?" asked Aelita. Yumi, Ulrich, Odd, and Yolande turned to Aelita, who jumped out of bed and stretched.

Odd laughed with mirth and put his arms around his friend. "You're okay!"

"Of course. I took a bad spell, but I feel keyed up now."

"Well, it's almost time for music class," said Yolande, "and it's time for a certain quartet to hurry up."

- - -

Yumi surveyed her living room as an artist would study his canvas before painting a masterpiece, making sure nothing was out of place. It had to be clean so she and her friends could tear it up during the party, for that was the masterpiece they would paint tonight.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Ishiyama were dressed like royalty this evening for the company dinner thrown by Mr. Ishiyama's department supervisor. They stood before the front door, holding umbrellas.

Mrs. Ishiyama handed her daughter a scrap of paper with Japanese on it. "This is our number. If anything goes wrong, such as a fire or terrorists, feel free to call us, dear. Is Hiroki at his friend's house?"

"Yes."

"Alright." Mrs. Ishiyama's tone grew solemn now. "Yumi, I hope you weren't thinking of hosting a wild party here tonight."

"Well...uh, you see, Mom...I kind of was..."

"Oh, that was just a test, dear. You passed. Well, we're off. Take exquisite care of the house while we're away." And they were gone, leaving Yumi with the puzzle of how she passed the test.

For a second, everything was quiet. Yumi listened to the rain whipping her roof until she heard the car start and veer down the road. Then she locked the door and called, "Okay, the coast is clear!"

Odd, Jeremie, and Aelita fell out of a huge cardboard box.

"What took them so long? We were crushed up in there forever," Odd said.

Yumi winked at her friends. "Well, you're not anymore, so...let's get this party started!"