Tsunako couldn't open the door. She twisted and pulled and threw her weight against it and tried to break the small, fluted obscure window. Nothing. It was like the door was mocking her, looming over her with its one glass eye.

"Why in such a rush?"

She tried to throw her books through the window and screamed at the top of her lungs. Someone outside the room laughed.

"Tsunako! Don't be so noisy, it's not a terrible thing to have some… sensei-student time… It's really quite fun, very enjoyable, it's…"

Tsunako looked over her shoulder and then whipped right back around to the door, on the verge of tears as she nearly popped her shoulder out of place trying to break down the door. She couldn't unlock it, from the inside or out, without the key and the glass was obviously not going to shatter any time soon.

But Birds-Sensei's pants were already undone. Dumb luck had saved her before when other guys had tried to molest her, but fortune didn't seem to be on her side this time. His perverse grin was only growing as he drew closer to her, blood dripping from his nose. One hand was behind his back as the other reached out for her.

In a second she learned that, for someone so short and unhealthy-looking, he was fast. Faster than she could realize that he had struck out, grasped her by her hair, and that something strong-scented was beneath her nostrils. It flowed right through her head like a chilling breeze and her eyes rolled in their sockets as everything began to blur.

…

She was aware of things clattering to the floor…

…

There was a wooden surface against her back…

…

There was cool air touching her between her legs…

…

Something warm and wet was pulling at her one breast…

…

She couldn't breathe, something long and thick was choking her. What was it? She heaved and her hands weakly came up to pull whatever it was out. She was too weak to move, though – why was that? So she tried to bite down on the obstruction, meaty on her tongue, and thought she heard a yell of pain.

Then something hit her across the face and a distant voice said something, something she couldn't understand…

And then, in a shower of noise she couldn't understand, there was a roar of…

…

…

Rage?

Maybe.

But she was fading out too fast to be sure.

~::~

Birds-Sensei disappeared.

It was a strange case to begin with – his classroom had been spattered in blood, all Birds-Sensei's, from the ceiling to the furthest corners of the cubic space. Someone had meticulously taken the time to paint the room red with what had been Birds-Sensei, was what Tsunako was hearing. Except no one had been able to find Birds-Sensei himself.

The list of suspects was ridiculously long. After the investigation opened up, Birds-Sensei dirty past came to light. He had been wanted in three different countries for crimes against humanity and countless charges of poison, rape, and mafia affiliation. Within Kokuyo alone, several different children, girls and boys, of various ages were discovered to have been his victims, no matter if they had been forced to pose for his child pornography collection or if he had drugged and then raped them.

Tsunako herself had been brought in for questioning. Apparently, Birds-Sensei had been taking pictures of her. Lots of pictures. She had a whole album dedicated to her. Photographs and videos taken of her sitting in class, changing before and after gym, eating lunch, sitting around doing nothing, getting bullied… There were some even more disturbing pictures where she was on her way home or in her room doing things.

The chief investigator surmised that Birds-Sensei name was actually an alias for his ability to train birds to be spy gear – hence the pictures and videos appearing to have been taken from a bird's eye perspective either high in the sky or low to the ground. The police force had even managed to track one such bird down, a microscopic video camera attached to its head. The chief investigator informed her that it had been a canary and then asked her, Have you seen many canaries lately?

She had thought back and remembered more than once seeing feathery puffs of yellow hanging onto power lines or nesting in trees. Trembling, she had answered, Yes. And then had thought to herself, He stalked me with canaries.

At one point, the chief investigator had asked her outright if she had killed Birds-Sensei.

No, she had answered.

And then he had asked, Do you know anyone who would want to kill him?

And she had answered, with steely eyes that saw only the small, innocent children that, all over the world, had been ruined by Birds-Sensei's sick desires, No.

After two hours of being thoroughly questioned, she was released into the arms of her parents.

Because they knew. It was impossible not to know, after the investigation team had tested the class room for bodily fluids after discovering Birds-Sensei's extracurricular activities.

She had been raped on the teacher's desk. When she had had to go in for the rape kit, she had been told that her hymen was still intact, but she had been orally violated and there was some stretching that suggested that, anally, Birds-Sensei had been preparing to enter.

For nine days, she wasn't allowed outside the house and no one was allowed inside of it.

Her mom was cooking all her favorite meals and constantly going downtown and purchasing the kind of clothes she liked to wear best and the video games she loved to play most.

Her dad got temporary leave from his overseas mining job to stay home. He did nothing but hold her and any attempt to break free was defeated by his sheer strength.

She didn't mind, not really. It meant that she didn't have to go back to school and that she was being spoiled by her parents. So… who would mind?

In her opinion, it wasn't that big a deal. No, those other people mattered more than she did – those children, those poor, innocent boys and girls that had lost something dear to the monster that had been her sensei. After all, she was already a whore, wasn't that common knowledge?

They had been right, those girls that had said that all you had to do was lie there and hand the power over to the guys.

But, at night, with her dad squeezed into her tiny bed and her mom all but lying on top of him for lack of more space, she knew the truth.

She was just happy that she couldn't remember much of anything. Because, when she was done trying to tell herself that it didn't matter what had happened to her, she could still hear that roar of rage.

Mukuro, her hero, her savior, rushing to her side and playing the part of the brave, noble knight as he freed her from the monster's constrictive imprisonment.

Mukuro, her boyfriend, the guy she loved – and he most likely hated her right now. Because why would he love a whore?

No, his avoiding her was answer enough. The fact that she couldn't find him or even Lancia-Sensei or M.M. or Ken or Chikusa – all of them had disappeared as if they had never been, leaving her alone.

She wasn't worth a sparkling lake.

She drowned her lonely, one-person world in dry tears.

~::~

Namimori High was not known for being an accomplished school. There grades were overall average and their sensei were not the most cooperative, much less easy to learn from. As a matter of fact, it was said that their principal was a complete airhead that was all but controlled by his staff.

But one thing Namimori High was known for was being safe. Apparently, they had a disciplinary committee that kept people in place. It made a nearly communist environment, and students were reported to have been beaten by the same committee that was supposed to be keeping them safe from harm, but it was just as easy to say that their crime rate was incredibly low if not altogether nonexistent.

Her parents enrolled her there and her dad walked her up to the front gates her first day.

They were two minutes late and a man wearing the disciplinary committee chairman badge stalked up to them and hissed something about biting them to death for their tardiness.

Tsunako had looked up into the stranger's eyes and she swore she thought something flash through them right before the man turned on his heel and dismissed them with a snort.

"Fuck," was what her dad said as he rubbed a huge, meaty hand across his face. "FUCK."

"What's wrong, dad?"

"Well, baby girl, another guy just bit the dust."

She tilted her head, not entirely sure what he meant.

He had smiled tiredly at her. "I wish you knew just how easy it is to fall in love with someone as cute you."

She could have laughed. Fall in love? With her? Hilarious. She hadn't, though. Ever since Mukuro had left and taken everything and everyone Tsunako had held dear to her with him, things like happiness, joy, and laughter had dissipated.

She had loved him, damn it. Loved him with all her heart. But one stupid day, one stupid door, one sick fucker later – and it was all torn apart.

Wait, she couldn't think like that.

Obviously, all the blame was hers. She shouldn't have let herself get trapped. She shouldn't have been such a whore.

She hated herself.

~::~

The student body of Namimori was largely formed of minor bad characters. They walked around, acting tough and mean, but Tsunako had gone to Kokuyo and she knew the true look of someone who could really screw up someone else's life.

None of these people could fill that description. Except, maybe, Hibari-san, who was the man who had said something about biting her to death her first day at Namimori.

Once she got past the wannabes, it was still hard to find her place. Maybe it was because she wasn't really looking for a place to begin with. She wanted to be with Mukuro, still, and if she couldn't be with him, she was okay with not being with anyone.

Except everyone else seemed to have something against that.

If they weren't wannabe tough guys, they were tough guys who didn't understand just how tough they were.

"No, it's okay… I don't eat lunch." At least, not since Mukuro and his gang had stopped eating it with her. That wasn't even her being depressing, but a conditioned thing. If Mukuro or Ken and Chikusa hadn't been there to eat lunch with her, someone else would have eaten it for her.

The strange man with the scar through his eyebrow, standing side by side with a small redheaded girl who looked like she could have been Tsunako's twin, glared at her like she was some form of complicated he didn't get.

"Don't eat lunch? Lunch is important for the body to grow big and strong TO THE EXTREME!"

"It's okay, Onii-san," chirped the girl. "Please calm down, I think you're scaring Tsunako-kun."

Anyone would have been scared with that bear of a man yelling in their face. Tsunako gulped and tilted her head down. "Thanks for offering, though…" And then she closed her eyes and hoped they would go away.

She just didn't know what to do with all of this kindness.

When she peeked through her bangs, she saw they were still there, looking curiously down at her.

"What're you doing?" growled the white-haired beast. "ARE YOU PLAYING HIDE AND GO SEEK?"

Then an arm loped around her shoulder with a careless laugh. "Come on, Tsunako! Let's all eat a good lunch together, neh? My old man made extra sushi, so I'll share with you."

Yamamoto Takeshi was someone she did know by name. When he had bumped into her the other day, he had kindly introduced himself and then had somehow tricked her into watching him at baseball practice.

"I'LL SHARE MY RICE BALL! Kyoko-chan made them, so they're delicious TO THE EXTREME!"

"Oh, Onii-san." The redhead, who she thought might be this Kyoko-chan, smiled pleasantly. "Let's all eat a good, healthy lunch."

Tsunako, under the tireless force of all three of them, caved.

The food tasted great, but it lacked something. The company was amazing, but it felt awkwardly incomplete.

She stared morosely at her rice ball and wondered when she would stop waiting for Mukuro to slide back into her life like the prince who saved the princess from eternal loneliness.

~::~

She learned a lot about Hibari Kyouya in her first three weeks at Namimori. Or, at least, she learned what little was known about him plus a lot of what other people had made up about him out of fear and terror and jealousy.

He drove a motorcycle and owned a mansion two miles away from school. He had apparently eaten his parents as a child and also appeared to have the local police force bought off. His hobby was making sure dead bodies were never found again and devouring babies for sustenance.

Tsunako doubted a lot of what she heard, but she managed to sift through it in her boredom till she thought she had a basic idea of who the man behind the tonfas really was.

It helped when, one day, she saw him up a tree saving a stranded kitten.

This was what she was supposed to be afraid of? This was a man worth running away from?

Tsunako had met men and women alike ten times worse. Hibari Kyouya was, to her, just another kind person at Namimori… if not painfully inhibited.

And she met painfully as in other people suffered for how shy he was. In that way, he reminded her of Ken.

It wasn't four afternoons later that she went looking for him only to find him "biting to death" some graffiti artists who had thought that penises was an acceptable wallpaper for Namimori's left wing corridor.

Bodies limp on the ground around him, he spun around to face her, still in battle mode no doubt.

The cold look in his eyes made her think of Mukuro. At the same time, she saw Mukuro nowhere in the creature that was the chairman of the disciplinary office.

"Sorry for interrupting you, Hibari-san." She held out the squirming, prickly bundle that had been, till that moment, coddled dangerously close to her breast. "I don't know what to do with it, so I, I thought of you."

Wordlessly, he took the burden from her and held the small, shivering baby in the palm of his hand. Its dark eyes looked glossily up at Hibari before it curled into itself.

"It's a hedgehog," he stated blankly. Then looked up at her.

It took her a moment to realize he had just prompted her to tell him why she had handed him such an animal. "W-well, I saw it on the side of the road a-and there was a larger hedgehog, umm…" She licked her lips and gave the baby a considerate look. "kind of… flat. So I thought it didn't have anywhere to go and y-you're good with animals…"

"You assumed that I would want a hedgehog."

She flinched. "I, I just thought you would know what to do with it more than I would."

"You expect me to kill it?"

"Hiiee! No one said anything about killing it!"

Hibari blinked at her. She slapped her hands over her mouth.

She needed to work on that squeal.

"… Thank you, Sawada Tsunako. I will decide what to do with it."

And then he turned around and walked away.

As easy as that.

The next day, a small hedgehog was seen riding on Hibari's shoulder as he stalked the school looking for rule breakers.

"It's actually really cool!" Yamamoto chirped at lunch. "Who would have thought that he had a thing for animals, right?"

Tsunako carefully bit into her sandwich and said nothing.

Mukuro had had a thing for flowers.

~::~

It was Valentine's Day. Exactly seven weeks since she had last seen or heard of Mukuro and his misfit gang.

She and Mukuro had had one other Valentine's Day where Mukuro had invited her over the night before the holiday and they had stayed up the entire night, failing to make chocolates but having fun trying. Between every batch of disappointment, they had shared kisses and watched Godfather on TV.

She wouldn't get to be with him for it this year, though, now would she? She walked to school that morning expecting a horrid experience –

Only to be stopped at the front gate, not even late to class, by none other than the school prefect.

"Hibari-san….?"

"Herbivore," he had snapped, seeming unusually irate as he dropped something in front of her and then walked away without an explanation.

It was a small heart-shaped box of expensive chocolates. Tsunako carefully picked it up and continued to class, bemused.

Yamamoto gave her a bento with heart and cupid-shaped sushi inside, blushing and grinning foppishly as he did so.

Ryohei screamed something along the lines of "BE MY VALENTINE" before shoving what had to be the world's biggest teddy bear into her arms.

Kyoko had laughed at her shocked expression.

That night, she went home….

Happy.

~::~

It had to have happened at some point.

Girls were evil, no matter where Tsunako went. And once they found something to sink their wicked claws into, there was no mercy.

"I heard some girl got raped at Kokuyo High," said one girl to her gaggle of four others.

"You mean that Tweet-Sensei?"

"I thought his name was Birds?"

"Does it really matter?" the second asked the third, who demurely admitted that it didn't.

The fourth thought about it for a moment before announcing to her fellow harpies, "I heard that she was leading him on."

There was silence.

"… Whore."

Then they all laughed and talked about the girl who must have been trying to get better grades by screwing her sensei. Or maybe she had done it for lesser reasons.

Tsunako turned on her heel, bangs shielding her expression, and walked straight into Ryohei, who held her tightly and then handed her off to Yamamoto who hummed in her ear and whispered, "It's okay, you can cry", as Ryohei went off after the girls in a fit.

Because, at Namimori, you just don't say things like that. Even though Ryohei and Yamamoto had no clue who the girls were talking about, they wouldn't stand for it.

They just thought that Tsunako was upset by what they had said.

She looked up and saw over Yamamoto's shoulder at the silently guarding Hibari.

Always silently guarding.

Like a knight.

Or more like a dragon.