AN: It's been... idk. I'm not sure how long it's been, only that I'm sure the readers of Teaching Patience are about ready to strangle me. I'm gonna work on that next, I swear... this one just called out to me to be written. And so it is.

There is A LOT going on in this chapter, so do try to pay attention to the details. As for Kakeru... anyone (like me) who has only seen the anime will probably not know just who he is. I would suggest a quick wiki search, but it's really not necessary to know what's going on.

Also: thank Terra for kicking my butt into gear, and giving me LOADS of lovely plot-bunnies. Even if said plot-bunnies are rabid and possibly H1N1-carrying. Boy are they beautiful...

Enjoy!

When the alarm clock began its usual obnoxious beep beep'ing at exactly 6:15 the next morning, Kyo still hadn't come back. Or more accurately (as Yuki had, of course, gone to bed at a respectable hour and not tossed and turned on his bed, scowling towards the empty sleeping bag on the floor and firmly-shut window), wasn't there any longer, if he had actually come back at all. Personally, Yuki didn't get the guy. What was the point of finding a place to stay the night if you were going to spend it out in the rain regardless?

The arm not trapped under his stomach beat at the offending noise, and after several near-misses finally scored a direct enough hit to the snooze button. Silence.

Shigure's alarm blared from down the hall.

He nearly tripped over the Kyo's sleeping bag when he hobbled blearily towards his closet for a clean uniform. Five fresh and folded pants and jacket sets hung on the rack courtesy of Tohru. The spotless bathroom he entered to take his shower was also courtesy of Tohru. As was the neatly-stacked pile of warm and fluffy towels that awaited him afterward.

Unfortunately, the note – pink sticky note, flower doodles, loopy writing – left on the kitchen counter was also from her.

"YUKIII!" Shigure called down from upstairs, "IS IT REALLY SIX-THIRTY?!"

"WHAT–" he started to call back, before coughing several times as the cold morning air infiltrated his lungs. "WHAT MAKES YOU THINK IT WOULDN'T BE?"

Shigure didn't respond, but then Yuki didn't really expect him to. The older man made a habit out of staying up to ridiculous hours in the morning (doing god-knows-what in his study) and did a pretty good zombie impression upon waking. Yuki usually wasn't much of a morning person either, but at least he managed seven hours on a good night.

As for breakfast... He dug through the pantry for something edible that even he couldn't screw up. Powedered pancake mix... Scones that were half-moldy... A stale box of Chex-mix had been stuffed behind a teetering pile of packaged ramen noodles. The box joined a carton of milk on the counter. He figured it'd take Shigure at least a few minutes to realize that it wasn't corn flakes.

Feeling less like he was allowing his poor uncle to starve, he finally sat down at the table. While he checked over a page of logarithms from last night's homework, Shigure came in and sat down across from him. Yuki had to stop him from trying to eat the morning paper.

"Coffee," Shigure whimpered out by way of greeting. It typically took about three cups before the older man was ready to join the living.

Yuki glanced over to the pot, but it looked suspiciously empty even from his seat at the table. Still, he got up and physically checked to appease his hung-over-looking uncle. "Pot's empty." Thunk, as Uncle's head met the counter. "I'll make some more. Just... eat your breakfast."

"You're an angel, surely. Sent down from heaven just for meee..." Funny. That's not quite what Yuki was thinking about the other man...

The older man blindly reached out around the edge of the island he was sitting at, grasping at the silverware drawer on the other side. Yuki shook his head at his uncle's antics, letting the fourth scoop of coffee mix join its brothers in the ancient maker. The machine kicked on with a violent whirr. Behind him, Shigure was trying to find a matching pair of spoons by feel alone, or at least two non-plastic ones.

"Did you ask Tohru or Kyo if they wanted breakfast?" He gave up and dumped the last two spoons on the counter, both of which were completely different styles.

Yuki joined his uncle at the island, shaking his head. "Tohru had work this morning and won't be back until right before we have to leave for school," guesturing at the pink note, "and I don't know where Kyo is. He went out last night. Hasn't come back." The 'hopefully he won't,' he muttered only to himself.

Shigure stuffed a large spoon of Chex-made-cereal down his throat. "It's been raining all night. Wonder where he went..." (It came out more like, "Iph bim waynin aww nyf," but Yuki had lived with the man long enough to understand him even at his worst.) Swallow. "We should probably buy more cereal too. This one's a bit stale."

Yuki ignored the milk and spoon, instead popping a handful of Chex-mix into his mouth dry, propping his chin up on his hand. It was still raining, although it seemed to have died down quite a bit from the hailstorm against their roof the night before. The sky outside the small window over the sink was still dark out like a black and murky mud-puddle, cloudy reflections of smog and the corruption of the city. Winter weather as dreary as the poetry Ms. Stewart, his English teacher, clung to like a lover.

He had an essay due today... He glanced at the cheap dollar-store analog clock (which had been purchased and tacked up next to the standard metal one after the metal clock's batteries had died; no one could figure out how to reset the time once they had been replaced).

Just on time – encroaching on the border of need-to-leave and about-to-be-late – the front door opened and shut in rapid procession, Tohru flying in nearly as fast as her apologies. Yuki tuned out Shigure's remark about missing her cooking and stuffed his schoolwork back into his bag. The formerly-pristing math problems crinkled like tin foil in between his history book and calculator. He cringed.

He shouldered his bag and stood, cutting into the others' conversation with the finesse of a politician. "I'm going to go grab my jacket. Get changed and I'll meet you by the door in five?"

Tohru nodded ("Hai!") and bounded up the stairs before him, pigtail ribbons flying behind her like an airliner's smokestream. It seemed fitting that even a janitorial job for a hotel wasn't draining enough to curb the girl's enthusiasm. She insisted that she needed the job ("school costs loads of money, Sohma-san!"), but he figured she hadn't caught on to why the school bills were no longer coming in under her name. The checks she sent in had been rerouted to a bank account in her name since the day she joined the Sohma household.

He could tell her and give her the free time off, but he knew she'd be opposed to the idea. She was just that way.

Lifting the handle up while he pulled the door open (it tended to catch otherwise), he frowned. The window was halfway open, the curtain on the opened side damp about the edges from the rain being blown in. It gave a satisfying click when it shut. He was tempted to lock it as well, but he figured that Kyo would want to be able to get back in if he decided to come back, seeing as Shigure was nearly as paranoid about his front door being locked as he was about his computer passwords (albeit for different, more perverted reasons).

His jacket was resting across the head of the bed where he had left it. Uniform shoes partially tucked under the bed out of the way. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he wormed his feet into the ugly black loafers, too lazy to bother untying the laces. They were leather. Leather stretched, right? When he pulled his jacket off of its comfortable position atop his pillows, it knocked the stack over and onto the floor.

"I should probably wash my sheets anyway..." something metallic caught his eye. "What the?"

Sitting delicately on the bed where the pillow had sat previously was a shiny gold coin.

"Is it an American coin, do you think?"

Yuki flipped the heavy piece of metal over in his hand. It was roughly the size of a Sacajawea coin and just as shiny (the only time he had ever seen them were on infomercials advertising the commemerative editions), but lacked the golden face that typically gave the coin its name. Or rather, it lacked any distinctive face or feature all together. Small etchings looped around the perimeter of the coin on both sides, but they were illegible – as though done by an amatuer hand with a powertool. Still, under the unnatural orange glow of the streetlamps, the faded scribbles didn't look like any English he had ever seen.

"No... at least not one that's still in circulation. Although, it doesn't look like an old coin..." He shoved down the desire to continue caressing the coin and dropped it in his pocket, forcing the gloved hand to join its partner clasping the umbrella over his head. Given the freezing temperature and the ominously gray pre-dawn sky overhead, it wouldn't be long until they had snow. For now they were stuck with the icy sleet of a weather still too warm for snowballs and snowmen. "I'll have Professor Vilhen take a look at it before math – if anyone would know what it is, it'd be him."

Tohru nodded softly behind her thick scarf. "Vilhen-sensei is a very smart man." She pronounced Vilhen like villain – an apt name if any, although the man himself would beg to differ. He seemed to think himself the school's silently appointed guardian of the fragile teenage mind. One time he had forced a student to construct a ten-page essay on the 'perils of dating' because she kissed her boyfriend goodbye on the cheek before entering her classroom. And it wasn't even his classroom. However, he was just bursting with (mostly useless) facts about culture and strangely enough, eighteenth-century detective fiction. Yuki imagined he'd be a lot better liked if he'd cease treating his students as the enlistees to his drill sergent, but he wasn't about to be the one to address the issue with the punishment-happy man.

He listened distractedly as Tohru stammered about some project the teacher had supposedly assigned to his Monday and/or Wednesday class the day before. It wasn't that he didn't find what she had to say interesting. He always found the girl interesting. It'd just be a bit easier to pay attention when your nose and ears didn't feel like they were about to fall off. Not for the first time he regret not grabbing a scarf as well.

Maybe a pair of earmuffs, too.

Besides, the orange-tinted glow of the streetlamps caught her blue eyes in their net, and the resulting greenish hue was enough to derail his thoughts long enough to miss the majority of the conversation.

Cute, kind, and not the slightest bit interested in him. In fact, she never seemed interested in any of the boys that flocked about her like baby ducklings – can I carry your books, Tohru? Can we carry you to your class, Tohru? Can we throw a parade in your honor??

She had always seemed naively oblivious to their attentions, but sometimes he wondered if maybe she played it off to spare their feelings. Then again, his respect for her didn't drop by that fact. She was too good for any of them.

"Oh Sohma-sempai, what a poor little kitty!"

He shook his head to clear his thoughts, and followed her pointed finger to a nearby garden fence, where said cat eyed them both warily. Perched precariously atop one of the warped boards, it was the dark orange color of the stretched skin of a tomato past fully ripe. Its fur was damp from the rain, the sticking up and matted strands around its shoulders and ears stained as red as its eyes.

Yuki didn't know very many cats to be happy animals, but this one seemed especially sour as though it were imagining death to whoever was foolish enough to leave it out in the rain.

Tohru, the bleeding heart she was, didn't seem to pick up on the animal's hostility. She set her bag down by Yuki's feet, under the safety of his umbrella, and slowly inched closer to the cat, the hand not supporting her umbrella reaching out towards the cat. The stray's hackles raised in suspicion. Personally, Yuki didn't see a positive ending coming from this. Either the cat wouldn't appreciate the girl's attention and swipe at her, or it would be content to let her pet it. Maybe even hold it. Wet. There was no feeling worse than wet cat hair clinging to your hands or clothes.

Yuki cringed sympathetically.

A little over a foot away the cat finally made its decision. Ears flicking back and sharp little teeth bared, the cat hissed lowly at her, tail flicking back and forth from where it lay draped over the top of the unevenly cut fence. Tohru gasped and took an unwitting step back, noticing it before Yuki did.

The tail was long – a foot and a half, if not two feet – and the exact length of the fur covering it was indescernable between the rain-damp matting and its aggitation. However, two-thirds of the way down the shaft it split, forking off into two very separate tails. It looked as though it had been in some sort of accident, probably one with some sharp blade, which had sliced it up the shaft and allowed it to heal in two distinct directions. Yuki guessed... an axe, maybe?

Tohru held her hand over her mouth in shock, eyes wide. He shared his thoughts with her, but even as he offered his pity for the poor animal's accident she was shaking her head, wrapping her free arm tight around her and backed up to again stand by his side. Neither pair of eyes left the cat's odd tail.

"Back home, in Japan..." she hesitated, not wanting to insult her new home, "there are stories about spirit cats with tails like that. They did very bad things..."

Yuki didn't want to offend her, so he bit down the urge to smile at another one of her strange stories from her homeland. Having Shigure as an uncle, he understood the effect ghost stories could have on a person. Still, cats with unnatural tails weren't all that uncommon. Maybe it was something to do with the town's close proximity to several factories and railroad tracks, but a good portion of the cats he saw everyday on his walk to and from school had either deformed or missing tails, paws, ears, or otherwise.

With one last hiss in the girl's direction, the cat leapt nimbly off the fence, darting across the rain-slick street, where it was swallowed up in the shadow of the appartments across the street. Yuki set his hand on Tohru's shoulder comfortingly before handing her back her bag.

"We better keep walking. School starts in..." he fumbled one-handedly to check his watch under the double layers of coat and glove, "twenty-five minutes. Don't want to be late."

"Uh, hai!"

The rest of the walk to school was made in nearly complete silence, only broken by their gasps as swirls of icy wind snuck their way into the gaps of all their layers, and the uneven beat of sleet against their umbrellas. As they walked, the black of the sky brightened marginally to a murky brownish-purple. The fog dissipated slightly from its perch among the branches of the trees, still clinging to their last leaves. Reflected orange glow of the streetlamps drowned the puddles accumulating between the old cobblestones.

Despite being the 'good part of town', East & Main was just as old as the broken-down and disease ridden sector he usually cut through when he wasn't concerned about the safety of the girl beside him. Shigure claimed that its 'old and inherent evilness' was the reason he lived in a cabin-like house out in the middle of the woods. Personally, Yuki thought it was because city cops frowned upon having a wild and crazy style driving in the middle of busy streets. The man wasn't happy unless he was digging in the dirt one way or another, and the windy trails he had plowed through with his jeep was more than enough to keep him entertained.

Still, with tennants who could afford basic cable and didn't have their electricity shut off every other week, this route was much more appropriate for a seventeen-year-old girl.

It was outside the school, atop one of the tall brick supporting columns of the main gate, that they saw the cat again. The rushing students surging through the iron entrance didn't seem to pay the cat any mind, but both Tohru and Yuki halted midstep towards the gate, causing several students behind them to swear and push around the two stopped at the entrance. Realizing they were causing a scene, Yuki guided Tohru through the gate and around the side, where the cat had turned to watch their procession. Its forked tail curled around its hind legs.

Tohru leaned in slightly, and Yuki resisted reminding her that the cat couldn't understand them anyway. "I think it followed us here... I wonder what it wants."

But the animal had gotten there before they had. Could it be a coincidence? "I don't know. Maybe I was a mouse in my past life, or something."

Tohru laughed nervously, glancing furtively across the emptying courtyard to the school entrance. Where they should have been probably a few minutes ago. Something about the way the cat's eyes locked onto his drew Yuki in though, and he didn't notice she was calling him until she tugged on his coat sleeve gently, glancing up at him through thick lashes.

"Sohma-senpai, the bell rang. We'll be late..."

"Of course," he said. "We don't want to keep them waiting."

As he was ushered through the doorway he glanced back to the cat, just in time to watch it leap down from the wall and out of sight.

"…of course the only way for Silas to know he was being betrayed was through Gabriel, but it's quite evident in line thirty-three that..."

The teacher's voice, sweet like too much sugar in coffee, floated through his ears, but he paid no attention to the words. Outside the rain had finally stopped (somewhere between discovering that he had read the wrong pages and the realization that with this teacher, it didn't really matter). Though the sky wasn't gaining color quickly, the streetlamps were going out at a rate that would suggest it was. Already, everything beyond the front gate was black, and half the couryard was swallowed up in shadow. Long rectangles of orange-yellow spilled across the front lawn from the lit classrooms.

A shadow moved through the one he was gazing upon.

"Now everyone!" Ms. Cartwright's voice cut through the cloud, "Open your notebooks to a clean page, and compose a poem. I want at least twelve lines, rhyme scheme of your choice. The topic is love – might I suggest, why it's ill-fated because men are inconsiderate bastards?"

When Yuki looked back towards the courtyard, the rectangles still stood out as clear as day. No mysterious shadows, nothing out of the ordinary. He forced his eyes away from the window and drew out his notebook along with his classmates. Two rows over, Haru's chin slipped off his palm and landed with a thunk on his desk. He never even stopped snoring.

After three more tear-enforced poetry assignments, the bell rang, waking up those who had decided their time was better spent in dreamland. Yuki let his slim mechanical pencil drop to the paper mid-line, not really knowing what he would've said if given the time to complete it.

At the front of the room (which was really the back, but the young teacher had rearranged all the desks towards the lawn-facing windows to inspire her students. Because of course teenagers found frozen grass thrilling...), Ms. Cartwright threw her arm up over her forehead dramatically, like the drama teacher she had always really wanted to be.

"Don't pretend to care about poetry for my sake, students. Not everyone can have the gift of words and beauty that run rampant through the veins of a... an artist!" She turned toward the windows herself, leaning a hand against the glass as though to hold up her fragile soul. "How the school board thinks I can teach children who..." The students behind her took the opportunity to sneak out before she could rant any more.

"I can't help but feel kind of bad for her," Yuki admitted to Haru as they rounded the corner towards the junior and senior wings. "Even if she is a bit of a basket case."

Haru nodded. "She cries a lot."

"She's just..." Dramatic. Loud. Obsessive. "Underappreciated."

Haru scoffed, stopping at the fork between the two wings. "And she makes sure we know it."

That she did. Yuki waved 'bye' to Haru, who strut down the Junior hallway like he owned it. Then again, the Sohmas – particularily the ones living in the main house – had donated quite a bit of money in the effort for better schools and opportunities for families. Perhaps the idea wasn't so far off.

Yuki shared only one class with Haru: English, which the younger boy had only been enrolled in because of a supposed talent in sticking words together. One that apparently didn't need to be proven in speech, nor assignment. How the boy managed to scrape by with a B was beyond him.

Two of Tohru's fanclub stood guard around another member's locker as the girl entered her combination, engrossed in conversation. Yuki chuckled quietly at their antics, stepping forward to get into his, which was only two lockers down. Neither girl even glanced at him.

"It just seems like... such a coincidence, you know what I mean?"

"Oh, I know," girl number two answered, popping her gum. "And I heard he's a real hottie, too." Yuki groaned mentally, finally getting off the old and rusty lock and setting it on top of the locker shelf for safe-keeping.

Girl number one practically cooed. "Ooh, which one?"

The girl messing with her locker glanced up, pushing back her Tohru-inspired straight bangs. "The teacher, of course. He's a doctor, you know." The other two grinned widely at what Yuki could only assume was a good point. "But the new student's quite a looker too. Very exotic."

All three girls burst into annoyingly sharp squeals, and he slammed his locker door shut with a bit more force than necessary. They glanced over long enough to give him disaproving look,s before breaking out into excited whispers and flitting off towards whatever classes they had next. He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in annoyance. He didn't get girls. Probably never would. He was content with that. It was the giggling he couldn't stand.

The hallway was still pretty full and he had the majority of his four minute passing-time left, but he wasn't really in much of a mood to chit-chat. Besides, Tohru had gym this period out in the C building and even if Haru wasn't family, he was still a full year younger, and in a completely different wing.

He needed more friends...

He pushed open the orange-painted door to the chemistry classroom, always shut because of the now-retired teacher's obsessive need to keep everything he considered a 'foreign chemical' contained inside and away from the student population. He didn't seem too concerned about those who ventured beyond the doors, however. The man had experienced a caffeine-induced panic attack the week before, and until the administration could find a suitable replacement, second period had become a sort of study hall where the only rule was that the students stay inside the classroom. That and no murder. The police generally frowned upon that.

Immediantly he could tell that something was different today, though. The brown-nosing, first-to-their-seats students were all huddled together as close as the desks would allow in their places in the front, and the classroom was a buzz with whispering. He spotted a member of the student council he knew, Kakeru, along the right hand wall, and sat gracefully in the neighboring seat, letting his bag flop to the floor.

"What's going on?"

"New teacher," the Chinese teen whispered back, nodding his head towards the front of the room. "Nobody knows what to make of him yet."

Yuki followed the nod to the previously-abandoned desk, where a tall dark-haired man sat hunched over a thick book, bangs completely covering his left eye. The man glanced up, the light from his reading lamp reflected in the one visible green eye, and Yuki started.

"He looks all serious-like," Kakeru continued, and Yuki leaned in closer to encourage the exciteable teen to speak more quietly. "Like a serial killer or something. Something for the School Defense Force to look into, huh? Gonna' help out this time, what'dya say?"

More students trickled into the classroom. "I doubt he's a serial killer," Yuki reasoned exhasperatedly. "Live in reality, please."

"But he's got the 'I'm-gonna-kill-you-slowly' stare, and just look at the mafia briefcase next to the desk!"

Yuki blinked. "What? Mafia briefcase...?"

"Yeah! Like, the ones drug dealers use to sell their dope, then shoot the guy and throw him cement-footed off the docks!" Kakeru was not hampered by what most would call 'logical thinking'. The only briefcases Yuki could recall seeing were ones held by lawyers. Sometimes a student or two with one collected from their parents' closets in pre-stickered condition could also be seen walking down the halls.

A dark shadow spilled across their desks and even Kakeru was smart enough to shut up. Steely green eyes met Yuki's. "It holds my stethoscope. They're expensive. I don't want it broken." His smooth voice neither sounded amused nor annoyed, but when he stalked back to the front of the room, Yuki was left with the feeling that he had just narrowly escaped the aligator's sharp jaws. Kakeru elbowed him, giving him an 'I-told-you-so' look that he dutifully ignored.

The bell rang in total silence, and the intimidating man looked out across his students for a few more tense moments with his hands clasped behind his back.

"The teachers at this school aren't fit to teach kindergarten. I am to understand that last week, your chemistry teacher decided that it was appropriate to not only throw three different glass beakers but to leave you all to your own devices as well. I hope you can understand why that's unacceptable." A few girls that had managed to bully the nerds into giving up their front-row-seats looked as though they'd faint if he'd so much as look in their direction. "You can call me Dr. Sohma, and I will be your new chemistry teacher."

Gasps and more whispering erupted, and several students shot searching glances at Yuki, seemingly waiting for him to either admit or deny the man a relative. Kakeru elbowed him again, but he didn't know how to answer the question he knew he would find there. That was the thing with the Sohma family – you never knew just how large it really was.

A daring girl who was sitting directly in front of him stood up, egged on by giggling friends.

"My name's Tanya Harding. Let me know if you have any problems settling in," she said cloyingly, letting her nails rest lightly and purposefully on his forearm. White-tipped acrylic. Expensive.

Dr. Sohma plucked off the hand like lint, before glancing down at the offending limb with distaste. He flicked the large embellished cross ring. "I'm sure that such gawdy jewelry - regardless of it being... somewhat of a cross - is against the dress code. Are you going to remove it or am I going to have to report you?" Get your hand out of my personal space, bitch. Growl.

Before the shocked girl could do much more than gape stupidly, the door flung open, accompanied by a few swears and a hot-headed teen that Yuki was starting to wish had actually been killed by those gangsters in that alley.

"Yeah, I know I'm late. It'd be a hell-of a lot easier to find classrooms if all the doors weren't painted the same fricken..." Kyo let the rest of his rant hang in mid-air, sharp crimson eyes locked on those of the teacher's.

The older man stepped forward, allowing the nervous girl to sit back down, and turned towards the tense teen standing in the doorway. "Kyo, language. I don't want to have to send you to the principal's office on my first day."

"YOUR first day?!" the red-head erupted, before seeming to notice where he was, and let his fists fall to clench uselessly at his sides. "Figures you'd be stuck working here..."

Something in the air seemed to sizzle, and Dr. Sohma's eyes went cold, although his voice never left its normal monotone. "Class has started. Sit or I'll remove you."

Kyo didn't seem happy about it (when did he ever?) but he found a seat somewhere behind Yuki, who hadn't been able to take his eyes off of the altercation between a supposed relative and someone simply claiming to be one. What was going on here?

For the rest of class, while Dr. Sohma dictated about the proper sequence of elements, Yuki could feel Kyo's glare the whole time.

AN: Aaaaand... it's done. Awesome.

As always, I can't guarantee that the next chapter will be out soon, but hopefully it'll be just as lovely.

Thanks for reading, and...

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