Chapter 3: Perfectly Natural

Grieta was noticing a great change in her Filipina roommate. It all began the day after Tina didn't come to lunch. In their dorm, Tina had explained that she had stayed in the library the whole time and met Alfred's brother, Matthew. Like Alfred, Grieta only shared a few classes with Tina since Tina was in AP. Nevertheless, every time she looked around the classroom during the classes she had with Tina, she couldn't seem to find that Matthew guy anywhere. During lunch that following day though, Tina approached the lunch table accompanied by a familiar blonde boy. Grieta almost thought it was Alfred, but then realized that Alfred was already sitting at the table.

"Hey guys. This is Matthew Williams, Alfred's brother. Can he sit at the table with us?" Tina beamed, seeming a little bit too happy at the moment. Grieta almost expected Tina to be sulking since she apparently received a detention recently for being late to class for some unknown reason.

"Kuya Alfred, I didn't know you had a brother--" Juan began to say, while he made space at their table.

"...We've met before." Matthew commented, to the surprise of Juan.

"What? Really? When!?" he began to get concerned. This Matthew guy looked so much like Kuya Alfred that it was possible to mistake them for each other. What if he had been mistaking this guy for Kuya Alfred all this time?

"Just once, though," Matthew explained. "Some teacher gave me detention because he though I was Alfred, and I went to detention while the both of you were there." For a moment, Juan seemed to process the information, searching for the memories of that day.

"Ah!" he realized. "You were the fake-Kuya Alfred who was shouting at Kuya Alfred!" Juan accused, nodding to himself that his assertion was correct.

"Juan, don't be rude!" Tina scolded. If there was one thing she knew about Matthew, it was that he wasn't Alfred, and that he was his own person.

"Ah...sorry Ate..." Juan apologized, glancing over at Alfred since he felt that he wasn't wrong. But before Alfred could defend what Juan said, backing it up with how awesome he was, Matthew placated Tina by saying that he was used to comments like that, although this was the first time someone ever called him a fake version of his brother. This made Tina laugh, and Alfred didn't get why. 'Mattie didn't even say anything funny.' he thought to himself. After a few more odd questions directed at Matthew about which classes he took and if he was in any clubs, the conversations steered towards more normal topics while Matthew seemed to blend into their already-weird lunch table. Since that day, Matthew ate lunch with them, except for the days that both he and Tina were missing because they went to the library to do research or whatever it was they did.

The excessive bubbliness and seemingly not torturing herself over the detentions that she slowly accumulated were the first changes that Grieta noticed in Tina. At the end of the day, whenever Tina would get back to their dorm, Grieta always noticed that she would be returning from serving a detention because Tina would be smiling for no reason while she did her homework. Apparently, even though practically none of the teachers noticed Matthew come to class late with Tina, he would usually announce it and be given detention along with her. It was because of this that both the teachers and students started to realize Matthew Williams' existence up to the point that, after a couple weeks, anyone who had any classes with both Tina and Matthew could tell the difference between him and his brother.

Grieta didn't really mind the change in her friend. 'At least Tina seems to be enjoying school more and she's even a bit less uptight about everything' the Belgian would think to herself whenever she saw Tina and Matthew walking together. Tina looked almost more natural next to Matthew than she did when she was next to Alfred. Usually, she'd be exasperated and seemed to lose her patience whenever Alfred said something obnoxious or stupid, but then she would smile and scold him with fake anger. But with Matthew, she seemed more relaxed and generally less frustrated with herself.

Another thing that Grieta didn't mind at all was how Tina was more open about her past and emotions since meeting Matthew. At the beginning of the school year, Grieta had been a little bit disappointed that her roommate wouldn't share any of her secrets or told any interesting stories about her past, although she knew that Tina had once been friends with Antonio. But recently, Tina had been talking to Grieta more and asking her questions about boys. Tina mostly talked about Matthew and whatever great book he lent her or how he could cook perfect pancakes or how he scored most of the goals during hockey games, but Grieta was also able to learn about Tina's complicated past with Antonio, Alfred and Kiku. She was surprised to find out how many of the World Academy students Tina had already known even before transferring. It was no great surprise that Tina already knew Yao and his freshman younger sister Mei, freshman Michael Hong, the Korean brothers (freshman Im Yong Soo and sophomore Im Hyung Soo), Sunan Chalong and Soeur Borey, who were Thai and Cambodian juniors respectively, the Vietnamese Vice President of the Student Council, Hue Nguyen, and even Gema Pertiwi, the Indonesian honor student currently attending World Academy University nearby. But Tina also seemed to have known Arthur Kirkland, his Australian cousin Dylan, and even Ludwig Beilschmidt.

But despite how well Tina seemed to act recently, Grieta was worried that the habit of being late to most classes would result in disaster someday. And that day came while Grieta was watching Mr. Adnan pace across the front of the room, taking attendance in a visibly bad mood for reasons unknown. Almost as if knowing that they would come late, Mr. Adnan stopped at Tina's name on his attendance list and looked towards the door just as she and Matthew were coming into the classroom. As always, Tina apologized for being late, being sincere although it happens regularly now. Nevertheless, Mr. Adnan walked briskly towards the two, and grabbed Tina's arm, pulling her toward her seat, while he fumed about how much he hated kids that had no discipline. Then he forcefully sat her in her chair in the front, yelling at her that she probably meant to be late on purpose and that if this kept going on, he'd make sure she would be expelled and that her grades couldn't save her.

Tina stayed silent, looking at the Modern History teacher knowing that his threat of having her expelled would never follow through, that he probably couldn't even suspend her because the school was very lax, especially since her grades were good enough. This pissed Mr. Adnan even more and he tightened his grip on her arm, making her wince in pain. Alfred stood up, making a loud noise as he almost knocked his desk over, but almost nobody noticed him because Matthew had walked over to Mr. Adnan and grabbed the arm that was holding Tina's.

"Hey, you're going too far!" Matthew almost shouted, glaring at the older man, tightening his grip too.

"Oh, and you too," the Turkish teacher turned to Matthew. "You think just because your grades are good enough you can waltz in here whenever the hell you want!?"

"No," Matthew replied. "But we've been serving our detentions and you're going too far!"

"Hah, I should send the both of you to the Vice Principal!" Mr. Adnan threatened. But Matthew didn't even waver and he talked back to the teacher.

"Go ahead. Try it! We'll tell him how ridiculous you've been, threatening us with expulsion and physically attacking your students!" Mr. Adnan was taken aback, but continued to glare back at the resolute Canadian. But it was the teacher's turn to wince; he hadn't expected that brat's grip to be so painful. With that, Mr. Adnan let go of Tina's arm, and Matthew of Mr. Adnan's. The older man walked over to his desk, rubbing his arm as he took out slips of paper to give Matthew and Tina detentions for being late and interrupting class. Matthew took both slips and stuffed them into his pocket, but instead of walking back to his desk at the back of the room, he bent down to be at eye level with Tina who was sitting down.

"Are you okay?" he asked, voice more gentle, holding the part of her arm that was beginning to turn red, rubbing it with his thumb. She nodded.

"I'm fine, Matthew. Thank you..." Tina was a bit shocked at how fast everything happened. Her cheeks were a bit pink, but she didn't seem embarrassed with the contact, as if it were perfectly natural for the two to be in such close proximity. After a few moments of looking at each other, Matthew nodded and stood up, his hand lingering on her arm until he let go completely to walk to his desk. He walked straight to his seat, seemingly ignoring the rest of the class that had been watching his every move since he grabbed Mr. Adnan's arm.

Alfred was still standing up, also in shock at his younger brother's aggression, and the look in his eyes that almost made him...scary. He only remembered to sit back down in his seat after Matthew had walked past him without looking at him at all. The air seemed to be filled with surprised and all the other students seemed to want to start their usual murmurs and whispers to each other, but everyone hesitated, not knowing how to break the tense silence that had fallen over the class since Tina had said "Thank you."

Still irritated, Mr. Adnan made a grunt to bring the class to the attention of the only sound that filled the room. He assigned a whole chapter of the Modern History textbook to be read for homework and said they could start it now, but also that he'd give detention to whoever said anything for the rest of the period. Twenty minutes later, the bells rang, almost making the whole class jump at the sudden sound. Then, as if the whole incident had never happened, Matthew put away his textbook and walked over to Tina's seat. He touched her shoulder, since she seemed not to have noticed the bells ring as she was still reading the textbook chapter, and the two left to go to lunch or maybe the library. The rest of the class watched them leave, not realizing they could leave the classroom too.

Uh...yeah..

Oh Turkey, violence is never the answer D

Gah, and this chapter made me realize how fail I am at expressing any emotions, whether it be aggression or fluffiness....I don't know D:

Well, this chapter was shorter than the other ones [but that's okay since there's less dialogue and more explanation anyways], but that's because I want the next one to be in Alfred's point of view, but adding the next scene to this one would make it too long...