Life had finally settled into a routine for Inez. Two weeks in, she finally learned how to harness the learning ability of Tamaki. The trick was to let his ego do the learning.

"Oh, Tamaki. I just fear that if you don't learn, it'll prove that I'm a bad teacher." She whimpered at him one day. "And I just want to be a good teacher, Tamaki"

"Baby Teacher!" He cried, "You are the greatest teacher to grace this planet, I wish I could just spend all my school days, alone, in a classroom with you."

"Oh! I believe you Tamaki, I do! But you are just being nice because you can't even memorize the sun and moon letters!"

"Baby teacher! I swear! Before the hour is finished, I will have the sun and moon letters put to memory!" Tamaki saluted, and ran to his corner to study furiously.

The twins ended up focusing their attention on making the class an eternal twincest play.

"I don't understand! It's too difficult! Kaoru!" Hikaru would whine.

"Let me check your work, brother." Kaoru cooed, sexually, back.

Inez walked over and checked his work for him.

"It's all correct." She murmured, annoyed.

"What?" The twins said together.

"Your work, Hikaru, it's all correct. Why are you whining?"

"Uh." He paused, staring blankly at her. "WHAHAHAAHA!" he wailed suddenly to Kaoru. "Teacher's picking on me!"

"HOW IS TELLING YOU YOUR WORK IS GOOD PICKING ON YOU?!" She hollered at them.

Yuri, the other third year, stopped her. "Don't stop them Chief! This is hot!" She said, clamping her hand over Inez's mouth.

"You can't treat a teacher that way!" She exclaimed, her daily complaint. Hikaru and Kaoru both stopped gazing at each other and interjected –

"You're not a teacher." They mocked.

"YOU TWO NEED TO LEARN!" Tamaki yelled at them from a corner. "IF NOT BABY TEACHER CHIEF WILL FAIL!"

"I won't fail…" Inez muttered to herself, then sighed and turned to the rest of the class and left Hikaru, Kaoru and Tamaki to fight, and Yuri to adore them.

"Okay…so, have you all finished that worksheet?" She laughed, trying to draw their attention from the spectacle.

"I've been finished." Kyoya muttered, not looking up from whatever else he was working on.

"Oh." She responded, "So how about you tell me what this says." She scribbled a word on the board.

"kabeer." He read, not as instantly as a fluent person would, but with relative ease.

"What does it mean."

"Large?" Kasanoda interjected.

"Right. How about this one?" She scribbled another word on the board.

"Jameel." Haruhi read.

"Correct, Jameel means beautiful. Haruhi, how would you say…uh, Tamaki is beautiful."

"Tamaki Jameel." She responded, with a slight intonation of unsure.

"Yup. Adjectives follow nouns and there is no verb 'to be' used." She said, writing out the simple sentence on the board.

"ANA JAMEEL! ANA JAMEEL!" (I am beautiful) Tamaki yelled, hearing that Haruhi called him beautiful.

"NO YOU'RE NOT." Kasanoda howled back at him.

"Who are you to talk?" The twins snapped back.

"Baby teacher chief?" Tamaki whispered, hugging her from behind. "Ana jameel?"

"You said it wrong." She said, not wanting to shatter his ever changing ego with her rejection of his beauty, even though he was undoubtbly beautiful.

"I'M NOT BEAUTIFUL!" Tamaki cried.

"DON'T WORRY! YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL! YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL!" Yuri cheered from the back.

"Tamaki, chief thinks you're beautiful." Kyoya muttered, still not diverting his attention.

"YAY!" he yelled, pulling Inez into another hug. "I'm beeeeeeaauuuutiful!!!" He yelled, twirling her around.

This is how class was on a daily bases, equal parts learning and equal parts dealing with the host club.

____________________________________________________________

John stared frustrated at the computer. Inez had run off to Japan and he couldn't figure out where she was.

John didn't understand why he liked Inez. Growing up, he had always been the best looking guy of anyone, everyone he knew thought he was the best looking person of everyone they knew. Added with his silent nature, preference for solitude, and a rockin' martial arts bod made him irresistible to any girl. Unfortunately, his preference for solitude was actually a need for solitude. John is a weird dude. Girls annoyed him, guys were jealous of him, so he didn't bother having friends.

Nothing changed when he went to Yale. Until second semester, when he shared a class with Inez. By the second week of class, John had already developed a small fanclub of girls in the lecture. They sat behind him a couple of rows every lecture and giggled at his every move.

This frustrated John, but he had grown used to it. But it was that one day, Inez ran in late, and in her desperate attempt to not disrupt the teacher, she took the seat right next to John.

"Sorry." She muttered, and pulled out a notebook, and didn't pay any attention to him.

That was what struck John. She didn't pay any attention to him. Most girls who casually bumped into him became flustered, blushed and said a few stupid words before he brushed them off.

The next lecture he went out of his way to make sure they sat in the same room. Nothing happened. The same with the next lecture, and quite a few after that.

A few weeks later, John bumped into Inez on campus. Literally, he was lost in his angry thoughts after working out, and she was searching through her bag for a pen.

"Oh! Sorry about that!" She exclaimed. "Wasn't paying attention, haha."

John didn't say anything except "grug" Inez had started to go on her way, but stopped.

"Hey, you're in my polisci class, aren't you?"

John snapped back into his cool demeanor. "Uh, yeah. You look familiar."

"Yeah! I'm glad I'm bumped into you! I had a question about the reading but I couldn't catch the professor –" She talked on about their class. He answered nonchalantly.

"Are you going to work out?" She asked, kind of ditzy, but he found it totally adorable.

"Um, no. I just finished – actually."

"Gotcha. Good for you, I'm not too into working out myself, but I did play tennis in high school and I can't even believe how much I miss playing it."

"Tennis? You like tennis?"
"Yeah, love it. Do you play?"

"Uh, yeah. Not often but I…like it." He lied.

"I feel like most people enjoy tennis no matter how little or much they play it." She smiled up at him.

John bit his lip. TOO CUTE was screaming in the back of his mind. His cool nature, his stoic temperament, his ripped chest meant nothing to her. "We should try playing sometime." He responded robotically.

"Yeah! That'd be great!" She beamed, and wrote down her information for him.

The rest is history, but now, in retrospect, John was starting to realize that maybe he went a little overboard on the whole "getting her attention" thing.

Now, she was in Japan, didn't have the respect to tell him. What was she doing in Japan? She was Middle Eastern studies! He was East Asian studies! Why on earth wouldn't she tell him that she was going to Japan! Unless – maybe, maybe this was her backwards way of getting his attention, or respect. Going to Japan, learning a language he was fluent in, a culture he was well-versed in, that would be Inez's way of impressing him.

What did this mean? Did she really like him but was persuaded by her roommate to act otherwise? She never was actually mean to him, she just started talking to him less and less – until she disappeared to Japan!

It was her roommate, definitely. He had to get to the bottom of this.

________________________________________________

Margaret took a victory hit. She had moved back into her room in her home in Detroit. She took another victory hit when she saw that Inez was online.

"Finally, ass face!" She yelled at her computer monitor, turning on her webcam. "What's up!"

"What?!!" Margaret's older brother yelled from the downstairs.

"NOT YOU." She yelled back, there was no response.

"Hey!" Inez beamed at the computer. Inez is a morning person, it was early morning in Japan, late evening in Detroit. "Are you stoked about going to Ecuador soon?"

"Stoked about GOING to Ecuador?! Yeah. Question in, are you stoked about being in Japan?!"

"Well, honestly, Japan is way different than I expected."

"That's what all the study abroad brochures say."

"But, seriously. I don't know if I can explain. Most of my students are members of this club…Host Club, or something like that. They like entertain woman romantically. It's weird, but half of them act like they're at their club all the time…it's manageable but extremely weird."

"Oh dude, totally. But I have to tell you. Fucking John came over to our dorm a couple of weeks ago. He was PISSED that you didn't tell him you were going to Japan."

"Oh! John! I…forgot to tell him…oh, wow. I guess he would be upset."

"He was. OH SHIT! Show me your room RIGHT NOW INEZ. I can see a little of it behind you, but is that for real?"

"Yeah, these people are serious about their luxuries." Inez commented, walking her laptop around the room, showing off all the splendor.

"Man. I hope my host family is that B.A., where's yours? I wanna meet this guy Prof Assad wants you to marry."

"Oh, Mori. Um. I might be able to catch him. He goes out to train every morning, hang on." She dragged her laptop to the hallway and looked down, it was large and empty. "You know what, you're probably going to have to wait on meeting him for a while. Mori is kind of…distant."

"Does he hate you?" Margaret asked, using a valley girl voice. "Are you totally annoying to him."

"I don't think so, he just doesn't express much. Then his cousin, who is also our age, went and told me all these deep thoughts about him and I just don't even know. He's distant but attentive, and I don't know how to handle it. He's like John but he plays totally in bounds."

"Oh. What? This isn't normal behavior for two young adults."

"Yeah, but none of the young adults I've met here behave by normal standards."

"I think I'm getting to know him more. If I ask him a direct, open ended question he will respond accurately. I think I'm starting to get to what really makes him tick because his answers are getting longer and longer."

"What do you ask him about?"

"Kendo."

"Sword fighting?"
"Yeah, I've been researching it. It's pretty interesting, the history and all. Mori's like resurrecting an extremely old style that no one has used for centuries. He knows a lot about it – it's surprising."

"And he's telling you all about it?"
"Yeah."
"Well, if that isn't blossoming love then I do not know what is."
"We are supposed to get married and all…" Inez kind of trailed off. "I have to get going, I have to shower for school."

"RIGHTOUES!" Margaret announced. "Next time you'll see me I'll be in Ecuador!"