"AI-CHANNNNNN!" Mai and Mii pretty much tackled Ai for a hug. Even Mii was showing emotion.

"We missed you so much! Whahappenuyou? Wherererou? Telusevrything!" They were bombarding her with questions so quickly that they became incomprehensible.

"Guys, guys, slow down a little! I'm totally fine!" Ai reassured her best friends. Eventually, Mai and Mii calmed down, Mai going back to leading the gossip and Mii going back to her emotionless "That's so lame" dialogues. It felt good to pretend everything was normal….

"And then he was like-" Mai was about to continue, but then they saw Shidou. Ai was unsure about what to do, since she knew that it'd be near impossible to convince her best friends not to hate Shidou without giving away all his secrets.

"ITSUKA SHIDOU!" Mai called out angrily.

"What do you want this time?" Shidou's face was tired and his hair messy. He didn't look like he was having it today.

"Um, what happened to you?" Ai asked, much to her friends' chagrin.

"Kotori woke me up in the middle of the night because she lost her house keys AGAIN." Ai and Shidou shared a laugh before Mai cut in.

"Hey! Don't try to avoid the topic by trying to brainwash our friend!" She demanded while dragging Ai away from him. Shidou sighed as Mai went on her usual tangent and he signaled that it was ok to play along with them. Unlike all the other times where Ai actually believed all the things she called him and accused him of, this ridicule made her feel horrible. And she knew that Mai would start spreading more twisted or false rumors about Shidou all around the school(and they always stick) by the end of the day… "How does he put up with all this? How'd I let myself be a part of this?" Ai thought angrily. The way Shidou was pretending that he cared about what Mai and Mii had to say seemed to make her more upset for some reason.

"Sorry guys, I gotta go. I feel kind of sick." She lied, and quickly ran off past Shidou in the direction of the school without giving anyone a chance to respond. When she looked back, Shidou sent her a "What can ya do" kind of face without the other noticing, and she ran faster.

"You made my best friend cry! You better go apologize!" Mai yelled again.

"That's so lame." Mii added on.

"Yeah, yeah…" The annoyed adolescent walked off, deciding to ignore what Mai and Mii had to say, until they blocked his way so that he couldn't escape the interrogation they had planned for him.

"Is it true that-" Mai began.

"Yes." He finished.

"But I didn't even fin-" Mai started again, a bit more upset now.

"Yes. Everything you accuse me of is true. All of it." Shidou restated.

"But- *RINGGGGGG*" The brunette was interrupted by the five-minute warning school bell.

"Gotta go."

"HEY! WE'RE NOT DONE YET!" She yelled, but turned around to see that he was gone.

"That's so lame."

"…ITSUKAAAAAAAAAA!" The famous gossip girl despised not getting the information she wanted.

In the classroom

During class, Ai and Shidou exchanged notes, much to Tohka's chagrin.

"Mouu, Shidou, tell me what you guys are saying." She pouted

"Don't worry Tohka. It's nothing all that important. But if you really want to know, I'll tell you after class, ok?" He gave a reassuring smile and pat the spirit warmly on the head, who beamed in response.

"Un!" The grape-haired girl nodded cheerfully. Just then, another note got passed to him.

"Why don't you stick up for yourself? With the strength and intelligence(both of which she used to think he lacked) you showed me yesterday, winning an argument would be no problem for you!" it read. Shidou wrote a hyphen under the message and wrote his own:

"It's draw too much attention. The dumber, less moral, the more spineless my image is, the better. In case something does happen where they see me using my spirit powers, the image they have of me wouldn't allow them to believe it was me."

He rolled the note back. After a couple of seconds, it was thrown as a hardball right into his temple. His irritation was out the window when he read it, however.

"That's just not right! Why are you trying so hard to keep it a secret anyways!?"

"Because spacequakes are viewed as natural disasters that lead to casualties world-wide. Not all people are as open-minded as you are, and most will simply blame the spirits' existence for the deaths of their loved ones when in fact, sealing the spirits the way I do turns them into humans. It's the only way to protect the innocent spirits out there being attacked without knowing why... If I can help all of them by taking a couple of false insults, then it's worth the trouble."

Ai went silent at his response. He was really passionate about helping the spirits. She decided that she didn't want to be a bystander, she wanted to be able to help too. Otherwise it didn't really make sense for her to know everything that Shidou did.

"Shidou. I want to help you in your battle. I want to become a spirit."

His jaw dropped. She was forgetting something…

"Did you already forget what I have to do to seal spirits? Oh wait, nevermind. I'm sure that was your plan all along~" Shidou teased. He made a mental note to apologize to her later.

Just then, Ai remembered, and blushed furiously.

"Wha! THAT'S NOT TRUE!" Ai shouted while standing up.

"Yamabuki-san, would you like to correct the formula on the board and teach the class?" the interrupted teacher asked, a bit annoyed.

"Eto…" The blonde was nervous and, for some reason, her mind seemed to go blank. She had top tier grades, yet her mind couldn't seem to operate… Shidou stood up.

"I passed a note to her during class that contained a lot of false accusations to annoy her. It wasn't her fault." He lied.

"Oh, harassment during class, Itsuka-san… Since listening isn't important, why don't you teach the class?" The adult taunted.

"Sure." Shidou shrugged and walked up to the front of the classroom.

"Alright guys, watch closely." The class chuckled, expecting a prank of some sort from the incorrectly infamous Shidou. However…

"And that's how it's done. Now this formula is demonstrated in the text book at page 323 in the third paragraph. It's imperative that you memorize this as all of the formulas for the next two sections of this chapter will just be correlations of that. Also, while there's a complicated method to finding the coefficient to x in this equation… You can actually solve it by simply looking at the relationship between…" Shidou was teaching the class arguably better than his teacher. Everyone was wowed. He made everything seem so painfully easy that by the end of class, his classmates thought that their teacher was putting in extra effort to make them all fail.

"Before you go…" Shidou started aloud, but whispered in the teacher's ear while signaling to look at the window with his eyes

"Psst… spacequake over there." The teacher desperately looked outside the window for a good 15 seconds. In that time, Shidou wrote something on the board at lightning speed.

"I went through the teacher's papers, and he has a pop quiz planned for tomorrow in chapters 6-7.2. What I just gave you was a study guide for that. Good luck, everybody!" His classmates cheered and thanked Shidou in unison before sprinting out of the classroom to go home, all in a noticeably better mood. The spirits, the trio, and the teacher remained. The older man was completely embarrassed and bested, so he simply left while sending a death glare at the adolescent, who simply shrugged in response.

"Wow, Shidou. I didn't know you were that smart!" Tohka stated honestly. Ai, on the other hand, had her jaw dropped. All the blood, sweat, and tears put into getting A's for every class, and then he comes in simplifies everything to the point of zero-study-requirements! She was impressed, surprised, happy, and mad all at the same time, but then remembered that he was covering for her originally.

"Well so much for your image." The blonde stated sarcastically.

"We both know that a certain trio –cough cough- will have the entire school looking at me like they used to by tomorrow." The teen retaliated jokingly. Ai, whom he knew cringed at the mention of the trio since the incident, decided to let it go this time due to the following circumstance:

"Shidou-kun, thanks for bailing me out there." Ai thanked.

"Ah. No big deal, besides, it was I who teased you, remember?" Shidou immediately regretted saying that last part. Ai's face had turned red, and he couldn't tell whether she was angry or flustered.

"I hate you…" Ai stated while looking down, hair still covering her eyes.

"Uh, heheheh… Ai?" Shidou laughed nervously, still fearing what kind of expression was hidden behind his buddy's hair. Ai stomped out of the classroom, refusing to talk to Shidou even after he dropped Tohka off and started to walk her home. Then, he sighed.

"I'll treat to an all-you-can-eat buffet if you forgive me." He stated, knowing that this was what she planned.

"REALLY!?" Ai beamed, which reminded him of Tohka. He nodded.

"We can go right now if you want." Shidou pointed to the wide selection of shops and market areas around her. She was too focused on being upset to notice them earlier. 'I really need to follow his advice about my awareness…' Ai mentally face palmed.

"Thanks so much Shidou-kun!" Ai hugged him, elated.

"Hahah, no problem~" He laughed a little bit at the blonde's mood swing. Ai finally noticed what she was doing and jumped back.

"T-that was…" She tried to find the right words. He'd seen a childish side of her that she'd so masterfully kept hidden for years, and she had no plan B.

"You were just excited, let's go before it gets late." He pointed at the most famed(and by far the most expensive, but saving lives by preventing supernatural spacequakes was a higher paying job than one could imagine) buffet around and led her to the entrance.

"Konbawa! Would you like to try our hot new spicy oyakodon? It's our specialty." A man chopping up meat and vegetables at a speed just under that of Shidou's greeted them warmly. He noticed Ai was too nervous to order everything she wanted, even though her mouth was watering.

"Um, yeah, we'll take that and everything else you guys have available." He'd checked with Ai earlier just in case she was allergic to anything.

"AHAHAHHAHA! Good one, man!" The cook laughed and wiped a tear from his face. No way in hell can two teenagers finish all of this food!

"The girl here's really hungry. I'm serious." Shidou stated, while struggling to contain his own laughter.

"SHIDOU-KUN!" Indeed he did say that he'd pretend to want to eat something to share the "bottomless stomach" title with her. He finally laughed a bit at how childish she was acting, and slammed some 3,000,000 yen($30,000) on the table.

"I'll pay double if you give it to us~" He mused while patting the head of his complaining blonde friend.

"DEAL!" The man tossed up the food he was cutting, arranged one of everything on the menu onto 14 trays, and caught the tossed up food in a plate in sushi form. Shidou made a mental note to make this man his cooking mentor later.

"Arigato gozaimasu!" The chef smiled brightly. The adolescents nodded and the blue-haired one carried all the plates to a nearby table.

"Bon appetite." Shidou gave his friend the go-ahead.

"ITADAKIMASU!" No sooner did she dig in like a starved animal. Thanks to a certain grape-headed spirit, her escort was used to this sort of thing and let her enjoy herself. Meanwhile, the other customers and employees stared at her like she had seven heads…

An hour or so later

BURP!

"Ahh, that really hit the spot!" Ai stated happily while letting out a 15 second belch that could be heard from across the street, despite the noise of the bustling crowds and rush-hour traffic.

"Let's go, I think we've drawn enough attention for one night…" Shidou's words caused Ai to look around. To her surprise, there were hundreds of people just staring at her in complete amazement. Many of them were recording with their phones, others were laughing, some older parents were telling their kids to look away, and some were chanting:

"ALL HAIL THE GODDESS OF BUFFETS! ALL HAIL THE GODDESS OF BUFFETS! PRAISE THE BOTTOMLESS BELLY!" while hanging up celebratory banners with her name on it. 'How the hell'd they get my name!?" Ai thought. Then she looked at her payer, who was nervously laughing while scratching his head.

"SHIDOU-KUN! WHY!" Ai threw a couple of jabs at him.

"I'm sorry, they pressured me into doing it! If I didn't, we'd have an angry mob chasing us downtown without you finishing your food!" He defended.

'He considered my thoughts and personal wants more than I thought…" She thought while blushing and then apologizing. That was filmed and posted to Youtube as the Buffet Goddess' true love, much to Ai's chagrin. Shidou figured it was only a matter of time before she exploded and threw a flashbang into the crowd made by Fraxinus for situations where he was drawing attention. Everyone, including Ai was blinded and stunned, so he carried her princess style and leaped over the wall of people. Before the blonde knew it, they were at her house.

"We're here." The hybrid said, followed by Ai opening her eyes. No sooner did her face flush a bright shade of pink and steam came out of her ears.

"S-S-Sh-Shidou-k-kun…" She didn't have the heart to say it, he'd surely notice her embarrassment and tease her further.

"What is it?"

"Er…" Again, her usual wittiness failed her in his presence. Just then, the perpetrator burst out laughing.

"I know, I know." He put her down.

"…Ah re?" It took a good 3 seconds for her to figure out that he just wanted to watch her struggle with her embarrassment before putting her down.

"Honestly, you're so obnoxious!" Ai fumed while storming off into her house.

"That's how you thank someone who treated you to an all-you-can-eat and then protected you from the crowd? Pftt." Shidou laughed to himself before walking home.

At the Itsuka household

"Okaeri, Shidou!" Tohka welcomed him back.

"Hey, Tohka! Sorry I'm late- huh?" Shidou's attention was diverted to the redhead who just kicked his abdomen and was holding her foot painfully on the floor.

"Kotori?"

"You're late! I'm hungry!" his little sister demanded, trying to hold back the tears.

"Kotori. Wasn't it you who taught me not to aim for the heavily defended areas of a person when in battle?" He crouched down on one knee and pet her head.

"She really must've been lonely. To forget even the most basic of battle strategy is unlike her."

"Mou, pat my head too!" Tohka begged, remembering how it felt today in class. Speaking of class…

"Wait! Shidou, what were you and that Ai-chan talking about?" Tohka questioned. After he gave them a play-by-play of his conversations with her, including the buffet incident, Kotori had a dead serious look on her face.

"What about her becoming a spirit?"

"That entire scenario was planned out so that she'd forget all about it." Shidou reassured. In truth, it wasn't planned at all, he was just genuinely spending time with his friend.

"What if she remembers?"

"Then I won't help her become one. When one becomes a spirit, they're sent randomly between our world and the spirit world for about a month, causing spacequakes uncontrollably. I might not get to her in time before the AST or Ellen kills her. I got lucky with you guys… I can't take that risk, I don't want to lose another important person…" He drifted on.

"As long as you understand…" Kotori walked past him and placed a hand on his shoulder before continuing.

'Ai…' Shidou was lost in thought.

"Shidou."

"Hm? What is it, Tohka?"

"I'm hungry."

"A-ah…"