Disclaimer: CLAMP owns Tsubasa! And if you don't know that… you probably haven't read much of the manga.

ANNOUNCEMENT: I am SOOO sorry for all of you who saw this when I posted the wrong chapter! You saw nothing. All of you. Okay? This is the right one!

A/N: Sorry it's been forever! I have the third chapter here~! Oh yeah, I wanted to notify you all that I put up a roleplay forum for Shiritsu Horitsuba Gakuen so if you like that idea, go to the forums and seek it out!

Chapter Three

Kurogane yawned and stretched, blinking wearily at his alarm clock. It was five in the morning. Why was his alarm going off at five in the morning? No matter. He couldn't think with that alarm going. He slammed the alarm clock off and glanced around the room. Something wasn't right.

"Good morning!"

"WHAT THE HECK!" Kurogane said, before employing a few other choice words that he wouldn't necessarily let his mother hear.

"Happy Birthday!"

"WHY ARE YOU HERE!"

"You could at least be grateful that I came to wish you a happy birthday this early in the morning." Kurogane felt a weight sink onto his bed as the person (who he only recognized by their voice) sit on his bed.

"It's the 'this early in the morning' part that I'm not too grateful about," Kurogane groaned. "Why'd you come here now? It's a Saturday, too."

"Well… because… I'm going to London with my parents and my sister later, so I had to come see you now."

"Tomoyo… couldn't you have called? Like at a time where normal human beings are awake?" Kurogane asked. He heard her laugh.

"No, I wanted to see you in person," she said.

"Well I can't see you anyway, it's too dark in here," Kurogane groaned, reaching over his alarm clock and flicking on the lamp. He blinked in the sudden light. Tomoyo was seated on his bed, dressed as fashionably as ever in a purple scarf and a matching beret over a white T-shirt and black skinny jeans. Kurogane, in comparison, was not dressed up. He was wearing a black tank top and his boxers, although he'd rather not be seen by a girl while wearing the latter.

"Tomoyo, what are you going to do if my mom comes upstairs asking what all I was yelling about?" Kurogane asked.

"Hide," she replied as if it was the logical suggestion.

"How… how exactly did you get in here anyway?" he asked.

Tomoyo jerked her thumb at the window across his bedroom, which was currently open. Kurogane groaned. That girl was insane. More insane than any girl ever had the right to be. "I just wanted to come… since I know you don't have many friends…" (gee, way to spell that out right away) "I almost brought Fai and Yui, but since we just met them yesterday, I figured showing up at their house at this time of the morning was a little strange."

"And it's not strange for me?"

"Yeah. You should be used to my craziness by now, I hope," she said, nervously shifting her hands on the bed.

"Eh, well, three years is a while," Kurogane said. "But seriously, Tomoyo, what possessed you to do this for me anyway? I would have had a perfectly fine birthday without you jumping through my window at five A.M."

"I guess…." She twisted the blankets on his bed around in her hands before continuing. "… because I like you." Tomoyo found herself staring at the sheets without anything intelligent to say in the least. Then, out of nowhere, she was pulled into a pair of strong arms and words she never thought she'd hear from Kurogane were being whispered in her ear.

"Thank you."

xXx

"You're kidding. She came over at five?"

"Yeah, that's Tomoyo for you."

Kurogane hadn't expected Tomoyo's appearance that early in the morning. But what he really hadn't expected was for Fai and Yui to show up later that day in all their spaziness to tell him that Tomoyo had revealed to them that today was his birthday and that they should go visit him. So, currently, since they had nothing else to do, he was telling the twin terrors about the morning's events.

"Are you sure you weren't dreaming, Kuro-chan?" Fai asked.

"Of course I wasn't! Why would I dream about her anyway!" Kurogane violently denied.

"Maybe… because… I don't know, Kuro-silly, people dream strange things!" Fai said, with an obvious lack of excuse. Well, Kurogane didn't really care whether Fai had a reason for the things he said anyway. But he knew he wasn't crazy and that Tomoyo really had come over earlier that morning!

"What are you boys talking about?" Kurogane's mother poked her head in from the kitchen. Oh. Right. Kurogane hadn't told her about Tomoyo's visit.

"Nothing, Mom," Kurogane said, still none too pleased with her after her reaction to the arrival of the twins. Apparently Kurogane's mother thought he didn't have very many friends at all. Which, of course, was the truth. But he did have some! That is, if a couple of nutcases who followed him around for reasons he was yet to uncover counted. Something in the back of his mind told him that didn't really count anyway. Ugh.

"So, Tomoyo-chan is in London right now?" Yui asked. Yui, thankfully, seemed to have the ability to always change the subject and keep a conversation on track right when it was needed. Kurogane liked that about him.

"Yeah. Apparently her mom had some business trip there," Kurogane said. "She's always doing that; randomly taking trips for a weekend or something without much prior notice. That, and sewing weird stuff."

"Sewing?" The word seemed to have piqued Fai's interest.

"Uh-huh. Come to think of it, she mentioned wanting to make you an outfit… you should probably stay away from her before you end up wearing something that looks like it belongs in a fashion magazine," Kurogane said. "A girly one," he added.

Fai, it seemed, already looked like he was wearing something that belonged in a fashion magazine. He'd shown up at Kurogane's house wearing a black fedora and a matching vest over a white T-shirt with some sort of gray swirling design on it. That, plus the fact that his jeans looked like they were too tight for blood circulation, made him look like he belonged in… Tomoyo's brain or something. Kurogane was scared of this kid. Yui wasn't anywhere near as bad, he was just wearing a light blue polo shirt and normal-looking jeans. Kurogane definitely knew which twin he'd rather be stuck with on a desert island. Or something. Actually, if he was stuck on a desert island, he'd rather bring… no one. Well. That didn't matter.

"Oh, she doesn't seem too bad," Fai said, referring to Tomoyo.

"She's not, when she's not…" Kurogane began to list items off on his fingertips, "sewing funny outfits, decorating things in pink, videotaping every other second of your life, or squealing about something stupid and girly."

"Don't lots of girls squeal about things?" Yui asked. Kurogane wanted to reply 'yeah, lots of girls and your brother' but he didn't. He had self-control! He just… forgot about it sometimes.

"Well I think it's sweet that Tomoyo came over to celebrate your birthday!" Fai said.

Sweet? She'd come over that early and it was considered 'sweet'? Well, Kurogane couldn't deny it, Tomoyo had put a lot of effort into coming to see him. She'd somehow had to sneak out of her bodyguard-surrounded, security camera-infested house and come all the way to Kurogane's house. It wasn't too far a distance, but the route there crossed a number of busy streets. Then there was the issue of how exactly she got inside his second-story window… Kurogane still hadn't figured it out. He wasn't exactly sure why Tomoyo had gone to all the trouble, but he wasn't exactly saying he minded.

"Yeah… I guess it is."