"You want to challenge me to a... basketball game?" Hikaru asked. He watched Anna skeptically as she challenged him.

Anna grinned dumbly. "Yep. And I'll win, too."

Hikaru turned to me. "Are you sure about this, Kaoru?"

I shrugged. "It has nothing to do with me. This was all Anna's idea. She's the one that wants to play against you."

Hikaru breathed out. "Fine, fine. I'll do it. But don't cry when you lose, understood?"

Anna nodded to him. "And the same goes for you." She moved her shoulders in two, quick backward circles, and I felt an uncomfortable vibe rubbing off of her.

Even Hikaru's posture implied his inner hostility towards her. He was bent over slightly, arrogantly, with his head resting on his hand. His usually lively yellow eyes were dulled with annoyance at her very presence. His legs were wide open as he slouched in his chair, trying to hold the disposition of aloofness, hoping the smiling girl in front of him would get the point that he was not at all happy that they were talking. From his frown, I could see that he could not tell Anna knew he disliked her. Because of the conversation between her and I from the day before, I already knew she was well aware.

Hikaru looked about ready to blow, so I grabbed her hand and pulled her away. Her body felt warm, and I pressed the back of my hand to her forehead.

"You're burning up!" I exclaimed.

"N-no, I was just... nervous. I've never challenged anyone before, so I was blushing." She began walking ahead of me. "That's all. Gotta get to class now. Bye!"

--

It wasn't until lunch time that Tamaki-senpai pulled me aside, and I learned about Anna's past.

"What is it, Tono?" I asked him.

"How's... how's Anna?" he asked, teary-eyed.

"She's fine. Why?" Then I snorted. "Don't tell me you're jealous!"

Senpai broke into an all-out sob. "It's just that... that she usually only gives me attention, and she hasn't even said 'hello' to me in the halls because she's always with you! Is she mad?"

I giggled. "No, she's not mad."

His eyes dried immediately. I sighed.

Tono turned serious very suddenly. "Kaoru, has she been acting funny?"

"She's a weird person," I said flatly. "She always acts funny." Tamaki-senpai's lips were in a straight line. I didn't understand his worry, but I knew I had to ask. "Why?"

Tamaki-senpai did not answer. He let his head drop, and stood quietly. The sounds of the lunchroom suddenly flooded into my ears as if they had not been there before. People walked by us, and my attention was pulled back into the real world by their distracting movements.

"Why?" I asked again.

Tamaki-senpai refused to answer my questions. I slammed my lunch tray to the table. The plate fell to the ground with a surprisingly loud crash!

"That's not fair!" I yelled. "You can't bring something up and then not finish! You can't say something like that and not explain!"

Tamaki-senpai barely moved as he ordered a quiet but stern, "shut up."

I was taken aback by his obvious anger. Still angry myself, I yelled, "why? Just finish!"

"I said, 'shut up'!" he roared in the same low tone.

I quieted as I noticed the silence all around me. The eyes of the cafeteria sunk into me, and I realized exactly what I had done.

Tamaki-senpai looked up, but not at me. He looked across the short aisle and exhaled a little. "Anna," he breathed.

I turned to see her staring at him. Her eyes were sad, but a forced smile spread across her lips. She knew we were talking about her, and I could tell she had a feeling what we were talking about. Rather, what Tamaki-senpai was holding from me. Anna just turned back around to her friends. They asked her something, and she shrugged, her lips flapping a mile a minute as she swiftly changed the subject.

"Don't call so much attention to yourself," Tamaki-senpai told me. "You'll only upset her."

"Why?" I asked, sitting down. I felt defeated. She had seemed so sad, all because I had let my anger get out of control. "What is it? I deserve to know."

"Both she and her mother are very sickly. Recently," he looked up to see if Anna was watching us. When she was not, he continued. "Recently, her only brother died, leaving her as an only child. You know what it's like. When our parents work, a sibling is all you have. I had my mother for a long time, and then I was brought here, to Japan. I had nannies and maids to look after me and to talk to, but Anna is different."

We both looked to her. She was laughing with her friends.

"She needs to talk out her problems," Tamaki-senpai said. "She's bad at finding things out about life on her own. She relied a lot on her brother. His suicide killed her."

I gasped a little. "Suicide?"

Tamaki-senpai nodded. "And when she gets sick, she's really good at hiding it until the last minute. And when she's sad, she'll smile. And then she goes home, and she locks herself up in her room, and there's no one there for her. She tends to blame things on herself and she cries over stupid, little things. And her biggest fault is she plays the victim, always thinking people have it better than she does. She has a lot of self-pity, and she wallows in it. But that's only because she thinks there's no one else to give her any, so she tries to soften all of the blows she takes by crying for herself. Everything bothers her. She has Sophie, but they rarely speak of their personal problems. The two of them have so many of their own." He laughed a little. "She's just a scared kid. But she has grown a lot. She's not so needy as when she was young in France, but she's still a little dangerous. She's very conscious of everything she does. There's no subconscious messages. Everything is for a purpose."

"You say she's sick?" I asked when I thought he had finished.

"Yes. She has epilepsy. It's controlled perfectly, with medicine. But she's prone to fevers, which set off her seizures."

My eyes widened. "Fevers?" I said dumbly. "She felt hot earlier."

"You idiot!" Tamaki-senpai exclaimed. "Why didn't you bring her to the nurse right away?"

"Because she made up some excuse and left for class!" I yelled as I ran to her. I grabbed her head and felt her forehead. It was cooled off.

"You... don't have a fever," I exhaled.

"Told you," she muttered, annoyed with me.

"Sorry," I said sheepishly, and retreated to where Tono was as the bell rang.

--

"You don't have to do this," I told Anna as she stretched in the gym.

"Oh, but I do," she told me, a determined look on her face. She stood up straight and swayed a little, but went immediately into another stretch.

"Are you feeling ok?" I asked with a deep, skeptical frown on my face.

"Yup!"

"Did you eat enough?"

"I always do."

This game did not sit right with me. "I don't know if you sh-"

"Ok!" Hikaru yelled as he ran up the court to us. "Who's ready?"

Raising my index finger, as if trying to physically point out that this was a bad idea, I began, "I think you sh-"

Anna squealed.

"What?" Hikaru and I asked.

She turned to me, blushing. She pointed to Hikaru, who moved his head back a little with annoyance. "Do you see how cute Hikaru looks in that uniform?" She made a grumbling noise. "You could look just like that! Wear a sports uniform for me some day!"

My finger fell slowly at her familiar fangirl ways. "You're joking."

Her head twisted like crazy from side to side. "No!"

Hikaru sighed. "Are we gonna play?"

"Yes, please," I heard her whisper. She turned and jogged across the court to get a ball, and I had a strange feeling I had just been played.

The two began to play. Anna was good, for a girl, but not at all quick enough to keep up with Hikaru. She lacked aggressiveness on defense (I saw that coming), but she could dribble well and outsmarted Hikaru a few times, although their cunningness was often matched (which I also saw coming).

As she jumped for a layup, her knees gave out, and she fell onto her shins from midair. She put her hands over her face and curled into a ball.

"Are... are you ok?" Hikaru asked while I rushed over to them.

Tono beat me to it. He pushed Hikaru away and pulled Anna up over his shoulder. I waited for her to fight him to put her down, but I noticed instead she clung to him.

The next thing I knew, we were all in the infirmary. The nurse was speaking with Tamaki-senpai and Kyoya-senpai. Haruhi, Hikaru and I all waited on the couch for them to finish discussing whatever was wrong with Anna. It seemed serious. More serious that I thought it would have been.

Then, Kyoya-senpai walked over to us while Tamaki-senpai went behind the curtain where Anna was laying down.

Kyoya-senpai spoke calmly, as if he was uninterested in the subject. "She just got a little dizzy. It seems she had a fever after all."

"That's impossible! I checked her!"

"She took an Advil, which lowered it. She thought that would be ok, but it still triggered some sympt-"

"Are you stupid?" Tono yelled from behind the curtain. "Are you that starved for attention, that needy for someone to ask you 'what's wrong' that you'd put yourself in that kind of danger? That you'd make us worry so much?"

"That's not it, Tamaki!" she sobbed. "I didn't think it would be basketball, but I had to go through with it anyway."

"What?" he asked, outraged. His tone vibrated down the hall, and I knew exactly what she was going to say.

"I wanted Hikaru to like me, that's all. He hates me. I really like Kaoru, and I wanted Hikaru to accept me, too." She took in a few deep breaths and let out a sad cry. Tamaki-senpai hushed her gently, and she continued. "I thought I could play a video game or something. I didn't know he liked basketball so much. I wasn't happy about it, but I was afraid that if I waited, I'd lose the courage to ask him. So I thought, you know, that it would be fine. Even when I had a fever earlier. I thought I could last. I didn't know I was so damn weak that I couldn't even last a while at basketball!"

Hikaru stood up suddenly, his bangs hiding his eyes. "Damn it, she's so annoying!" he growled, and ran over to them.

Anna gasped. "I didn't mean any of that!" she screamed. "I don't even care if you like me!"

"It's ok," Hikaru said gently. "I'm sorry I seemed like such a jerk. I do accept you. I like your drive."

I could hear movement on the bed, and Hikaru yell, "aw, c'mon! Don't hide under the blankets!"

Haruhi and I exchanged glances, and we walked over to them, followed slowly by Kyoya-senpai. Anna was hiding under the blankets, probably embarrassed by her behavior. Hikaru was pulling at them angrily, also probably embarrassed by his behavior.

Tamaki-senpai pushed his hands through his hair. He turned to me. "Good luck with this one," he said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she yelled, popping out of the bed and hitting Hikaru's head with her own.

I sighed, and a small smile turned my lips up. "Can you get up?"

Anna nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine. I got some more Advil and something to eat, so I'm better now."

Tono grinned. "Let's all go home, shall we?"