Thanks to everyone who reviewed - you made my day! And to my dear sister, also known as "xiayen" (how she came up with that horrible mispronounciation of her name is beyond me), I am really sorry because... well, to put it frankly, I've gone too far in the previous chapter to make Maika like what she was in the first chapter - unless you want her to have schizophrenia, of course. Read on!

Chapter 3

"Tezuka-kun?"

Tezuka frowned. Four hundred and twenty-eight subtracted by two hundred and seventeen... That would be two hundred and eleven... now divided by thirteen...

"Tezuka-kun."

"What is it?" He asked curtly, not very pleased at having been disturbed while doing a complex calculation.

"Could you please pick up my eraser? It's on the floor by your desk."

Ordinarily he would have complied and picked it up, but he was halfway into a mind-numbing question which he had no desire to start all over again just for an eraser. His tone was bitingly sarcastic as he replied, not even looking up from his work, "I believe you have this pair of appendages, also commonly known as hands, which enable you to do such a feat as picking things up. I suggest you use them."

"I would," She replied pleasantly, "but it's at your side and I can't reach it."

He decided to ignore her, and turned back to the question.

Maika realised that Tezuka refused to help her pick it up, and there was no use waiting for him to do so. She wasn't lying when she said that she couldn't reach it, though. She looked at the white eraser, lying by the far side of Tezuka's desk, and back at her work. Since she couldn't very well continue without an eraser, she leaned down as far as she could and stretched out her hand.

Just a little bit more... a bit nearer... That's it! She rejoiced as her fingers brushed the side of the eraser. And in her sudden delight, she overbalanced.

She clutched wildly at the nearest stationary object, which just happened to be Tezuka's arm. Thrown off-balance by the extra weight, any chances of him staying upright soon vanished as Maika fell off her chair, bringing him down with her in a tremendous crash.

There was stunned silence for a moment as the class processed what had just happened. A groan came from the floor, startling all of them into sudden activity. The girls rushed to Tezuka's side, while Oishi started fussing about.

Maika found herself in a rather painful and extremely compromising position with Tezuka. His body was pressed closely against hers, and he was... well, let's just say that she didn't normally carry bags the weight of his body around. She was quite literally squashed under him, besides the fact that the scene looked extremely suggestive to an outsider.

"Ow... get off me, Tezuka!"

Tezuka, however, was having problems of his own. It was extraordinarily difficult to get up if a whole horde of girls were hovering over you anxiously, especially if you knew that in the process of getting up you'd hit them, thanks to the almost non-existent distance separating them.

But Maika did not appreciate the complexity of the situation. Seeing that he was not making much effort to get up (partly because of the girls, but she didn't know that), she took it upon herself to make him get up.

She pushed him, and with almost inhuman strength managed to lift him off her for a fraction of a second. Although she did not manage to push him off her enough for her to get up, it achieved its desired purpose: Tezuka got up almost immediately.

He brushed himself off, silently thankful that he had the foresight to avoid all the girls while getting up – or else he would probably have been kissed or molested a hundred and one times by now.

Maika wasted no time in getting up, once she was free of Tezuka's body, and turned around to see the teacher staring disapprovingly at both of them.

"I would like to see both of you after school."

When Maika opened her mouth to protest, the teacher said coldly, "And I suggest you do not create a worse disturbance than you already have if you do not want more detention."

There was a short pause before the teacher commanded, "Everyone back to their desks!"

Maika picked up her overturned chair, pointedly ignoring Tezuka as she tidied up her place before returning to her work. He did the same, and they stewed in angry silence for the rest of the lesson.

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Fuji walked in, his smile stretching from ear to ear as he thought about the interesting bit of news that was currently making its way round the school.

He spotted Tezuka and made his way to where the said buchou was sitting expressionlessly with his bento. "Saa, Tezuka, what happened in class today?"

Tezuka's eyebrow started twitching slightly, but he managed to control his facial muscles as he replied, "Nothing."

"Really?" Fuji smiled.

Tezuka did not answer, but Fuji noticed that the twitch grew slightly more pronounced.

"I heard a rumour that you were making out under the desk with a girl until the teacher caught you and gave you detention."

Tezuka nearly spat out his sushi. He glared coldly at the other boy. "Excuse me?"

"You may be excused, Tezuka." And Fuji walked off, smiling widely.

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"Both of you, clean up the class. I expect to see it spotless by the time I return."

The silence after the teacher left was deafening. Maika shot him one last glare, before sullenly picking up the broom.

He cleared his throat. For some reason, her glare irritated him more than it should have.

"It's your fault that we're in detention now." He resisted the urge to add, and I'm stuck here instead of practising tennis.

"My fault?" He could practically feel those brown eyes burning a hole through his shoulder blades. "If you had just bothered to pick that eraser up, none of this would have happened!"

A small snort expressed his opinion of that statement. "And who, may I ask, pulled me down with her?"

She crossed her arms. "Not my fault you couldn't keep your balance!"

"I couldn't keep my balance?" Really, it was funny how this girl managed to rub him the wrong way down from the word go.

She rolled her eyes. "Go ahead, put the blame all on me."

He did not feel a need to reply to that, as it was quite obviously her fault anyway. Instead, he just picked up the other broom and started sweeping.

But Maika was not finished with him yet.

"Just because you're the famed captain of the oh-so-popular Seigaku tennis club, it doesn't mean you're perfect! Even perfect people make mistakes sometimes – and if they do, they should be brave enough to admit them. No matter how big a fan club they have…"

"Or how freaky…" She added under her breath.

Realising that she was going to keep on about this until he apologised, he swallowed his pride and gave in.

"I should have picked up that eraser," He said stiffly, his own words sounding foreign to his ears. Tezuka Kunimitsu never apologised to anyone.

Maika started in surprise. Did he just say he was sorry? Her first reaction was to do a victory dance, but then she decided against it. She still didn't like him. After all, he just took all the fun out of arguing. And she told him as much.

Tezuka was shell-shocked. He gave her an apology, and this was what he got?

"Fine," Was all he said. But there was an unspoken message behind that single word: See if I ever make the effort to do anything for you ever again, ungrateful girl!

She laughed, and the merry sound startled him. "I was just kidding, Tezuka-kun. Really, you should learn to loosen up a little…"

His lips, which had relaxed into an almost-smile at her first words, thinned into a straight line at the last sentence. Everybody was always telling him to go and loosen up… He thought he had let down his guard more than enough times with devastating consequences – he still remembered the time Fuji decided that telling the whole school about his birthday would be doing him a great favour – and he had absolutely no desire to repeat the experience.

The rest of the world could just go jump off a cliff for all he cared.

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Maika stepped out of the classroom, only to be accosted by a group of girls.

"Yes?" She asked.

One girl shook her finger at her, almost incoherent with rage. "You - you - how could you play dirty like that?! Just because you sit next to him doesn't mean he likes you any more than us, you get that?"

Maika stared incredulously at them for a moment before their meaning struck her. "You think I planned this - the detention and everything?"

The girl shrugged. "It's pretty obvious. I mean, we're not that stupid."

Maika was having a little trouble believing her ears. "Who in their right mind would want to go for detention - with Tezuka Kunimitsu, no less?"

Tezuka chose this moment to step out of the classroom. He looked blankly at the horde of girls, and at Maika.

She caught his eye, and shrugged. "Beats me."

And she walked off, leaving him with a crowd of girls looking adoringly at him.

"Tezuka-sama! I love you!"

He sighed, and turned to walk away before the oncoming headache grew any worse. Maika had been right about one thing. His fan club was really freaky.

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So how was it? Review, ne?