His hallow eyes stayed with her the whole night, following her home and into bed. Even when she thought she had shaken the sickening feeling away and had peeled the image off from her throbbing brain, the image would come back clearer, dripping back into her mind faster and thicker than blood that trickled down the boy's head and down the bridge of his nose during the event of his torment. Gumi's trance didn't lift. She found herself cautiously walking through the hallways the following morning, hoping to hear anyone else mention the beating she had witnessed. Any gossip she heard in the hallways was, to her despair, not related to the boy, and she wondered if she had gotten her reality mixed up with her nightmares. She was left out in the dark for the whole morning, left to stare at her lunch during the middle of the day while her stomach performed cartwheels, left to wonder why she was being affected by his eyes. She had seen death and poverty before, and the sight of watching him being beaten to the ground shouldn't have surprised her. Gumi knew that it had to be the eyes, the eyes that lacked a twinkle that other eyes had, with irises that lacked any hope, completely devoid of any desire to live.

She tapped her chopsticks against her bento box slowly, staring at her face in the metal reflection. Gumi knew why his eyes affected her so much now.

"Gumi!"

Gumi, unprepared for the screech, lifted her head up, panicked until she saw it was Miku. She groaned, rubbing her baggy eyes. "Hi, Miku."

"You look a bit lonely, no?"

"Eeeh," Gumi stalled, "I think I want to eat alone for now," She said honestly.

"No, here, I'll bring my desk over!"

In a flash, Miku's desk was pushed across from Gumi's. Gumi placed her face into her hands while Miku took a seat.

"Yukari and Lily are in the bathroom, but they can join us when they get back. How's life?"

"It's actually going terribly."

She watched Miku's smile disappear. "My bad. Yeah, you do look wiped out." Miku pursed her lips upon observation. "What happened?"

"I don't want to talk." Gumi grumbled. She frowned deeply upon wondering if Miku knew about the abused boy. His eyes reflected off of her soy sauce. She shivered. "Actually..."

"What's wrong?" Miku plucked a piece of salmon into her mouth. She eyed Gumi with actual concern. Her eyes suddenly froze. "Are those butt-fuckers giving you trouble again?"

"'Butt-fuckers'?" Gumi raised her eyebrows, almost amused at the term. "If you mean the cat callers from gym class, the no, it wasn't."

"Then what's wrong? To be honest, you look a bit frazzled."

"I have my mind occupied on a lot of other crap."

"Like what?"

Gumi gulped nervously. "Yesterday after school-"

"Oh God, did one of the teachers hit on you? Y'know, Meiko-sensei tried to-"

"No!" Gumi yelled out of frustration.

"Meiko tried to flirt with Kaito once." Miku mentioned, her eyes hardening again. "I don't even understand how she still has her job. Sometimes she comes to school drunk off of her high horse and-" Her eyes met Gumi's annoyed frown. "Sorry."

Gumi suddenly ran her hands through her hair, twirling a long strand unsurely, believing the supposed unimportance of her thoughts. "No, never mind."

"Aw, c'mon, Gumi!" Miku wailed. She pouted while whining loudly.

"No, forget it."

"Please?!"

The high pitched whining reminded Gumi of a small, peppy dog that was impossible to shut up unless it was shot point blank on the head. Gumi sighed. The eyes wouldn't leave her alone until she got his eyes off of her chest. "Alright," She said reluctantly. Gumi didn't give Miku time to interject. "After school, I was checking out the building, walking around, shit like that. I got back down to the bottom floor and...and there were these guys just beating on this kid outside on the blacktop-"

Miku's lips settled into a firm pink line. "Did he have blond hair?"

"Who? The kid they were beating on?"

"Yeah." Miku frowned.

Gumi wavered at the unanticipated annoyance in Miku's eyes. She said something wrong already, hadn't she? "He did, but you could barely tell with all the blood-"

"Oh, he's fine." Miku sneered.

Gumi choked, completely puzzled by Miku's unsympathetic reaction. "Fine? Miku, they were kicking his rib cage in!"

"His name's Len." Miku tore the cap off of her water bottle. "You didn't get involved with the fight, did you?"

"N-no." Gumi shook her head with disbelief. "There were kids walking by and ignoring the fact that he was getting his face punched into his skull. Some people laughed."

Miku shrugged. "He gets beaten up every day because of all the shit he pulls."

"Like what?" Gumi nearly screamed.

"Ugh, Gumi, he's just a maggot." Miku clutched her water bottle tight, crackling it as her knuckles whitened. "He's creepy as hell; he used to stalk me when he was younger-"

Gumi cringed. "Really?"

"Yeah, he's a psychopath. Stay away from him. There's a reason why he's hated."

"Okay." Gumi muttered unsurely. His black eyes only became larger.

Miku sighed. "Some people deserve to be outcasts, Gumi, so everybody knows to stay away from them. Len is a creep, and it's important that you know that so he doesn't hurt you. The things he's done goes way back, but it'd take a day and a half for me to explain it all to you." Miku's face fell, her eyes now cloudy. "I don't like to explain it. He's done a lot of crappy shit to me and my friends."

Gumi felt a twinge of guilt. "I-I'm sorry, Miku."

"It's alright." Miku smiled brightly again when she saw her friends approaching from behind Gumi."Yukari and Lily are back!"

"Hey, Mi." A girl taller than the Eiffel Tower (seemingly so to the short Gumi) walked over. Her blonde hair, longer than her skirt, swished over her shoulder as she stood over their desks. Gumi strained to lean her head back to gaze at Lily's face.

"Gumi, this is Lily!" Miku gestured to the blonde. "She's a gentle giant."

"Miku, I'm not giant! Cut it out with that." Lily grudged.

Miku giggled. "And this is Yukari."

The smaller girl smiled lightly, but it quickly disappeared. She twirled one of her purple pigtails. "Hi."

"Miku," Lily sighed with sudden frustration. "You need to smack your goddamn boyfriend."

"Kaito?" Miku sighed. "What did he do now?"

"He fucking dropped out of tutoring."

"What?"

"And we tried calling Gakupo, but he has a wrestling match tomorrow tonight." Lily muttered.

"Great, we have no one to tutor one of the younger kids tomorrow." Yukari groaned.

"Fuck." Miku shook her head. "We can't cancel on him. God, this club is going down the shitter." Miku let her head fall onto her desk. She groaned pitifully. "I'm going to find a way to shove Kaito's math textbook up his ass!"

Gumi's ears, which distanced themselves from the conversation, perked up at Miku's last sentence. "Kaito taught math?" Gumi asked.

"We don't need him. He didn't teach algebra that well, anyway."

Gumi frowned at her decision, but seeing Miku distressed made her feel guilty. "I know advanced algebra, if you need help."

Lily looked at Yukari with hesitation. "You're the other head. You can make a decision without Gakupo for now,."

"Well," Yukari sighed after thinking it over, "How do we know? You could still suck, even if you were taught 'advanced' algebra."

"Wha-? Gumi isn't a liar, guys!" Miku vouched. "We'll just give her some test questions to see how well she does. Is that fine, Gumi?"

"Y-yeah, sure." Gumi's brushed a stray piece of rice from off of her skirt. "My mom wants me to join a club, anyway. She tired of me just sitting around my room."

"Just swing by after school so we can test you out," Yukari said. "Don't forget your head, either."

Gumi eyed the numerous mathematical problems on the piece of paper. She gulped, forgetting the last time she had performed a complete exponential equation.

"You have twenty minutes, Gumi. We're going to get a snack. Want anything?"

"No thanks, Yukari." Gumi groaned. She stared at the various algebra problems anxiously as the door shut behind them.

"Come on, brain." Gumi buried her head into her arms. "Please?"

"Exponents aren't that difficult, Gum."

Gumi huffed at her father. "Easy for you to say."

The engineer chuckled deeply. He scratched his dark green hair with his thick fingers sheepishly. "Okay, fair enough."

Gumi sighed. "I can't even use a calculator?" She stared at her neglected calculator anxiously.

"If you want to excel in your math club, you need to learn to do this stuff in your head." Her dad mentioned.

Gumi groaned. "But it's a Sunday. Piko gets to watch cartoons, but not me?"

"Would you rather get this done now, or later?" He asked patiently.

Gumi sucked in her lips as her father tapped his pencil against the desk. "Fiiine." She leaned into the table and almost barked at the menacing math problem.

"Now, let me show you how to get this done with just a pencil and paper."

And he showed her. It was almost poetry, from Gumi's perspective. He rushed into the algebra problem with ease, his pencil gliding over the paper without hesitation. He completed the problem better and faster than her fourth grade teacher ever wished he could.

"How...how did you do that?"

"It just takes practice, Gum."

"Gumi." She corrected him sternly, yet feigned annoyance while she attempted to hide the smile reaching her cheeks.

"You don't like it, Gum? Gum, Gum?"

She giggled as her father poked her side repeatedly with her pencil. She cast her eyes down to the paper, and her father explained every sing step with such clarity that Gumi wondered how she ever became confused in the first place. It was all so simple-

"Oh, duh."

"Why are you friends with her after like, a day? She's literally only been here for a day! It's been a day and you've been hovering around her ever since."

Miku crossed her arms over her chest and frowned. "Because she seemed nice? I'm not hesitating to befriend her just because she's an 'outsider'."

Yukari raised her eyebrows and put a coin through the slot of the vending machine. She had her eyes on the cake roll. She pressed a few buttons to retrieve her snack, losing her train of thought as she focused on her growling stomach.

"Yukari?"

Yukari excitedly retrieved her snack from the machine. She gazed at Miku again. "Huh- oh, sorry. It's just weird that you jumped onto Gumi like that."

"She seems cool." Miku shrugged. "And I'm not letting that maggot touch her."

Yukari sighed, while Lily snorted. "He knows better than that."

"Gumi probably realizes that he's a creep." Lily snapped. "Not even a random stranger would touch him with a ruler."

Miku answered a text on her cellphone; she slid it back into her purse. "I'm going to the bathroom. I've been holding in my pee all day." She whined.

"Don't forget to powder your face."

Miku rolled her eyes and offered Lily the finger before she strutted away. Miku turned the corner, and Yukari groaned loudly while she ripped a piece of her cake roll off with her fingers.

"When she's trying to befriend someone just because she's afraid they're going to get along with Len, that's when you know that she's messed up in the noggin." Yukari popped the piece of cake into her mouth, chewed, and tapped her forehead.

Lily shrugged while she turned on her own cellphone. "She just doesn't want to lose anyone to him. I can't blame her; She was really close to Rin, and y'know, it's still hard for her. You don't remember when Miku had to see someone for her nightmares?"

"Yeah, but it's getting obsessive. It's only been day two, and she's already saying crap like 'Gumi's quiet and shy, just like Rin was! She has the brains that Rin had!' She's already throwing her own expectations on her."

Lily shrugged again.

Yukari fumed. "That doesn't bother you?" She huffed as she bit into her pastry.

"Miku isn't that obsessed about Rin. She only made that one comparison. Even if she can annoying, she's been through a lot." Lily snapped. "You only dislike Miku because of her laugh."

"God, it'd make Satan go deaf." Yukari mocked Miku's laugh. "Tee-hee, tee-hee!"

Lily failed to hold back a smirk; it quickly faded when she heard the light footsteps, and mouth to Yukari to keep her mouth shut. Yukari grinned cheekily before her face fell into her habitually bored disposition.

"Has it been twenty minutes yet?" Miku asked from down the hallway.

"Almost." Yukari answered. "We should just head back to the classroom now."

Miku turned around and walked to the staircase, her feet bouncing eagerly upon the floor. Yukari sighed and quickly cast Lily a mischievous smile. "Let's go, Gentle Giant."

"Shut the fuck up, Yukari."

"Gumi, time is up!"

Gumi held the completed paper up in the air, yawning while covering her mouth. "I finished."

Yukari snorted. "There was a pre-calc question on there, too."

"It wasn't that difficult." Gumi shrugged.

Yukari took the paper, with her eyes scanning it over repeatedly. She took out the crumbled answer key from her shirt pocket, and gaped. "She got every single one right."

"No fucking way." Lily took the paper, compared of with the answer key, then grinned. "Not even Kaito got the whole sheet right. He didn't even get half the sheet correct."

Gumi felt her face warm exponentially at the sudden attention, and she quickly began downplaying her abilities. "I couldn't have gotten the whole thing right if Kaito didn't do that well…"

"No, we have to show Gakupo this! I'll be right back." Yukari snatched the papers from Lily and ran for the door.

"Is he on the blacktop?" Miku asked.

"What else does he do before wrestling practice?" Yukari rolled her eyes at the answer still unknown to Gumi. "I'll be back."

Yukari sped off, while Miku praised Gumi. "How long did it take you?"

"I only had about two minutes left. I literally finished on the dot, to be honest. I'm still a bit rusty."

"Rusty?" Lily screeched with disbelief. Gumi backed away from her. "You're a wizard."

"N-no, my dad just taught me tricks and stuff. I sort of have a knack for math, but not really." She did, but Gumi didn't want to brag, especially with the magnitudes of appraisal she was receiving from the two girls at once.

"I think you and Gakupo will get along! He's an ace at math. I think you actually might be a bit better than him, too." Miku whispered. "Well, then again, maybe not, because Gakupo is a pompous-"

Lily abruptly cut Miku off. "Gakupo, provided that his jealousy won't eat him up first, probably will accept you into our club. Do you have any experience with tutoring?"

"I-I use to help my younger brother," Gumi said, "if that even counts. It's really not that big of a deal."

"Any experience helps. They're here." Lily hopped over to the door, with Yukari waltzing in.

"Gumi," Yukari said, "this is Gakupo."

Gumi went to stand up to greet Gakupo, but instead, she sat frozen in her chair, her eyes falling onto the tall boy, with purple hair of length comparable to Lily's. She stared into his eyes, the same eyes that glimpsed at her before he nailed his fist into Len's face. Gakupo walked towards her; Gumi's shoulders twitched nervously.

"She got all of them right?" The tall boy asked gruffly. He snatched the papers from her; Gumi winced. "I didn't even get them all right on my first try."

"I had the answer sheet with me the whole time," Yukari said.

Gakupo stared at Yukari as if she was mentally deficient. "You didn't take her cellphone? She could have cheated."

Gumi scowled with dismay while Miku began to rummage through her purse. "Oh, I have it!" Miku chirped. She grabbed Gumi's cellphone from out of the black leather bag and waved it in the air, then tossing it back to Gumi.

Gakupo pursed his own lips and sighed. "Yeah, fine, she can join." He stared at Gumi, and Gumi set her eyes to the floor. "Tomorrow night, you're tutoring Gacha. He's a seventh year student."

"S-sure."

"That was it?" Gakupo asked boredly.

"Kaito dropped out, so that's why we got Gumi, to replace him," Yukari said.

"Lazy prick." Gakupo muttered. Miku's lips curled downwards.

"I'm out." Gakupo grunted and swung his bag over his shoulder and opened the door.

Miku strutted after him. "Nice chat." Miku retorted. "It wouldn't kill you to stay for a few more minutes to get organized? We have to prepare a new folder for Gumi so she has all the assignments for Gacha, since Kaito probably threw his out by now. Not that he ever brought the folder with him to meetings. I really have to kick his-"

Gakupo snorted. "I have shit to do."

"Fine." Miku sighed. "Good luck with your match," She said, making sure she sounded insincere.

Gakupo walked out the door. Miku's lips formed a tight line. "He's such a prick. Why does he have to be the male head? Kaito would have been a better captain."

"Your boyfriend just quit the club." Yukari deadpanned.

"Yeah, I know, I meant to make a statement."

"Gumi, are you alright?"

Yukari looked at Lily, occupied with Gumi's distress.

"Gumi?" Miku blinked, snapping out of her frustration, and asked, "Are you alright?"

"Uh...I'm fine." Gumi rubbed her eyes. Her heart banged inside of her chest wildly as if it wanted to free itself from her rib cage. She was convinced that she had just stared into the eyes of a beast. "I'm fine. Let's just make my folder and get it done?"

"Oh, that'll be fun…" Miku giggled nervously. "Uh, do you have an extra binder by any chance? Like, a big one?"

"Erm…I might have one at home?"

Within moments, Miku threw a large stack of papers on the desk in front of Gumi.

"These are all the assignments for Gacha until his tutoring session is up."

"…do we get paid for this?" Gumi asked hopefully.

Miku, Yukari, and Lily laughed.

"We wish." Lily snorted in between her laughter.

Gumi groaned and hid her red face behind the large stack of papers.

"Oh, good, you joined a club."

Gumi nodded, momentarily halting the conversation to slurp her noodles up from her bowl. She put her chopsticks down and wiped the corner of her mouth with her cotton napkin while she looked at her mother. "Yeah. It's for tutoring younger kids and stuff. I'm teaching a kid some math after school tomorrow."

"I'm sure you'll do fine." Gumi's mother smiled wearily, with exhaustion tugging from underneath her red eyes once filled with passion. Yet, that was only from a time that seemed too distant for the woman dressed in scrubs to remember. She turned her head to her son's direction. "How was your day hun?"

Piko shrugged and picked at his rice, separating each strand of rice from the steamed vegetables. The mother sighed and focused on her own food until the phone rang. She muttered an explicative from under her breath, jumped from the table weakly and rushed to the kitchen.

"Hello? Yes, this is Haku…"

Gumi listened to her distant mother's voice. She focused on the raggedy tone that was imbedded in the waver of her voice as she stared at her small dinner, avoiding Piko's interrogating gaze with all of her strength. Gumi herself couldn't be bothered by her younger brother's pettiness. She jumped at a sudden slam. Within moments, her mother appeared in the dining room, folding herself in a light jacket.

"I have to go back."

"It's alright, mom." Gumi smiled reluctantly. "Be careful."

"Don't be silly, Gumi, I'll be fine." She kissed Gumi's head, than Piko's. "Make sure you both finish eating."

"We will!"

"Gumi, Piko, I'm really sorry-"

"Mom, it's okay. I'll take care of everything, it's the least I can do."

Haku sighed, staring at her only daughter guiltily. She turned to Piko before walking out the front door. "Please be good for Gumi?"'

"Whatever."

Haku ran her hand through her gray locks, casting Piko a sad stare before grabbing her purse and rushing out the door. Gumi clenched her fist, spinning around to chide her brother. "Seriously, Piko?"

Piko shrugged. He picked up his plate carelessly as he stood up from the table.

"You're going to finish eating-"

Piko let his dish fall into the sink and walked off. Gumi quickly peeked into the sink to make sure the plate was still intact, and then let herself be fueled by her held back anger.

"This is getting ridiculous, Piko!"

She heard the door slam from upstairs. Gumi held up her fingers and clenched them mid-air, as if to choke someone, but soon enough she let her hands rest at her sides again. Her fingers trembled at the vibration in her pocket. She reached for her cellphone and blinked.

"Hi." It read.

"Who is this?" Gumi wrote back. She had begun to clean up Piko's discarded meal from the sink when she received the reply.

"Lily."

Gumi raised an eyebrow. "Who gave you my number?"

"Uh, Miku? You gave it to her?"

Shit, that's right, Gumi sighed mentally at the memory. Miku hounded her for her number during her first day until Gumi finally gave in. She knew that distributing her number wasn't going to bring any good. She felt her personal space shrink within moments. "Oh, ok. What's up then?"

She finished washing Piko's dish when she heard her phone dance on the marble counter.

"Miku just wanted me to tell you that you don't need to be scared of Gakupo. He's just a jerk, that's all."

Gumi frowned. "Why didn't she tell me herself?"

She picked up her bowl and attempted to finish her meal, so at least her mother's efforts didn't go to waste.

"She had some stuff to do, and I guess she wanted more support regarding that Gakupo is a 'brainless idiot', putting it in her words."

Gumi tapped her lips as she read the message. She typed back quickly, "He seemed smart, though. He's just…intimidating."

Gumi forced down the rest of her dinner. She poked at her leftover carrots and decided to send another message. "Can I ask you something?"

Bzzzzzz.

"Don't let him scare you; he's just like that because he's the 'alpha male' or whatever guys call themselves to make themselves seem better. And sure, shoot."

Gumi let her thumbs hover the keypad before she typed her message. "What's up with Len? Miku has a grudge against him, too. Does she just hate all guys in general?"

Gumi made her way from the table to the sink again, now washing the dishes. She occupied herself by watching the suds slink down fingers. When she finished drying the last of the forks, she realized that there was no buzz from Lily.

'Shit, I shouldn't have asked." Gumi groaned and tugged at a strand of her hair. She twirled the same strand, tugging and pulling with her thin forefinger until she felt the vibration. Gumi hesitantly held out her phone before reading the message.

"Ok, well, Miku kinda has a right to hate him. You really should know, I'm surprised no one told you yet. Miku doesn't like talking about it, though, and no one else does, either. Can I just tell you before school tomorrow? I debated texting the whole story to you, but I think if I do that, my thumbs will fall off."

Gumi sighed. "Sure."

"'K, thanks. See you tomorrow."

Gumi slid her phone into her back pocket and blew her disappointment out through her nostrils. She didn't like to be kept waiting, and she was tempted to ask Lily if she could just tell her now, but if this boy caused enough trouble to everyone, was it worth it to make Lily upset? Gumi didn't want to cause trouble, either, and she already caused enough of it on a regular basis.

Gumi looked at the time and emitted another annoyed sigh. She had homework to do, too.

Okay this was a filler I'm so sorry… and you get a cliffhanger, too. CLIFFHANGERS FOR EVERYONE.

But from the time I wrote the first chapter to now, I packed for Spain, flew there, and am now in my dorm, and I've been settled in for about a week, but I had to buy supplies/food/remove the mold from my dorm's washing machine and so on. My sleep schedule is still off ;3; The next chapter will be much more exciting because it will be I promiiiissssseeee ;-; Buh-bye for now- and thanks to all who've reviewed the story so far! I appreciate the support! /w\