Several silent minutes had passed uneventfully after THE INCIDENT, with only the tapping of the keyboard by Haruhi and the bubbling of boiling water providing any kind of interruption to the monotony. I was feeling extremely uncomfortable with the situation I found myself in. Haruhi had been quiet for a surprisingly long time, something which would only happen to her if she was feeling depressed somehow, but apparently she was just focused on whatever it was she was working on (or obsessing over, pick your poison). Nagato had continued overseeing the production of the tea, as it gently bubbled in the pot. She hadn't moved at all, which wasn't surprising, but the way she did it most definitely was. Her shoulders were tensed and occasionally her knees would rub against each other uncertainly. Was she really this nervous about preparing tea for Haruhi?

Then the whistling of the teapot came, shattering the awful silence.

"Ah, about time. Hurry it up, Yuki, I'm thirsty!" Haruhi hollered, not removing her eyes from the monitor.

Like a protocol droid, Yuki assembled a tray with three cups for tea and the teapot itself. She then glided across the room like a ghost towards Haruhi, where she methodically placed a cup of tea on Haruhi's desk. She took the pot in one hand, held the tray away from obstructing her way, and began to slowly pour a dark green tea into the cup. Like earlier, when she had carefully allowed the water to trickle into the pot, the tea flowed carefully into the cup.

Haruhi continued typing, oblivious to the odd way she was being served. Eventually however, she glanced at Yuki, who was still taking her time to measure out the tea in a ridiculously cautious manner.

Haruhi frowned. "C'mon, Yuki, pour it in! We don't have all day to wait. By the time you finish, the tea will have frozen solid!"

"…Understood," answered the humanoid interface, quickly pouring tea up to the rim of the cup. She took a step back and placed the pot on the tray she had managed to hold perfectly level for several minutes. I guess there's no further need to worry about the little shiver, I told myself, trying desperately to calm down.

She stood there as if waiting for more orders or perhaps approval from Haruhi for her tea. Haruhi tasted it and smacked her lips. "Not bad…"

Nagato then proceeded to walk towards me. On the way she stopped at her spot, left a cup there, quickly filled it, and continued advancing towards me. Not exactly proper tea serving protocol to serve yourself before you've served everyone else, but I think I'll let it slide this time. She probably thought it would be more efficient to serve herself on the way over or something. She placed the final cup before me and filled it up to the rim as well. Amazingly, the teapot was seemingly empty after that, as Yuki tilted the pot so far until the final drips dropped in, that there couldn't possibly have been any more liquid inside it.

She then briskly walked away before I could even thank her. I turned my head around to see her place the pot where it belonged. I turned to my tea and carefully lifted it, not wanting to spill any. As I took a sip, I felt the presence of someone standing behind me. After I lowered the cup back down onto the table, I turned my head around once again and saw Nagato standing behind me, holding the tray to her chest with hands crossed over it. Even though there was no expression on her face, she seemed to be waiting for something rather expectantly.

"It's good," I offered a reply, growing increasingly nervous with every passing microsecond.

Nagato merely gave me a brief courteous nod before she walked away to her own seat, where she sat down, lifted her book off the table and began reading.

Her tea remained untouched for the remainder of the silence that once again fell upon the three of us. The steam gently curved around her cup, rising in spirals, creating a small, hazy shroud between me and her. Perhaps light was being reflected oddly through the haze, or more likely it was my own imagination, but I could have sworn I saw a slight tint of red on her pale cheeks.

I'm not exactly sure how many minutes it took until things got even worse for me. In any case, at some point, Nagato took out her bookmark and with carefully measured, confident and swift movement placed it between the open pages of her book. With both hands, she clamped the book shut with a small thump. She then placed the book on the long table, exactly the same distance from the two edges closest to it on the corner of the table on which it was placed.

Then Nagato turned her blank stare to her tea cup. She examined it for a lengthy moment, her hands held together, resting on the hem of her dress over her slender legs. She observed the tendrils of steam that still spiralled from it, now greatly diminished compared to their initial appearance. Nagato gave me a brief look, but quickly averted her eyes from my own staring ones and focused on her cup again. She then lifted a hand and brought it towards the cup like a crane. Slender fingers clasped the handle sturdily. The cup rose gently, but with a determined elegance on its graceful journey towards those small, cute lips.

The reason that so much stress has been placed in describing the actions of Nagato so carefully is to make it absolutely, positively certain, without room for an ounce of reasonable doubt, that what followed was not how Nagato Yuki acted. In. Any. Situation. Ever.

As the rim of the teacup was approaching those little lips, IT happened once again. Her hand trembled. A shiver ran through her entire body in fact. And the teacup that had been so precisely filled to the rim spilled its lukewarm contents on Nagato.

"AH! Yuki! What are you doing?! Getting our new costume all dirty! Unforgivable!!" Haruhi's accusing voice rang like church bells in a cemetery during a cold night.

Haruhi ran over to Nagato, pulled her up and almost ripped the piece of clothing off the small, seemingly fragile girl.

"How could you let this happen?" Haruhi cried out childishly. "Where's the paper, or some absorbent cloth? Huh, what is this, an abduction of all absorbent materials by Martians?" she continued petulantly, before she added thoughtfully while eyeing the blot on the dress. "…Maybe I can lick it off, you know, as a last resort."

Damn it! What are you doing? It's just a costume!

I had to actually get up and pull Haruhi off of Nagato before her outstretched tongue assaulted the smaller girl. Something like this may be the dream of countless men, perhaps even me included, but such things as this cannot and most definitely will not happen in the clubroom of a school, before the school day is even officially over. There's no telling who might walk in and cause some crazy scandal. I can already picture the headlines… On a related note, I'm surprised the SOS-Brigade has managed to avoid any headlines, of even the pathetic types like school newspapers, much to the chagrin of her royal pain-in-my-butt Haruhi, no doubt.

"What are you doing, idiot?! We need to clean that up before it stains!"

"Not like that!"

"Hmm, you might be right." Haruhi suddenly stopped struggling against me, turning to look at me with huffy contemplativeness. "Who knows what kind of lewd ideas you might be getting."

Me?

"Yeah, you. Body language always gives away pervs; that stupid look on your face, slight twitching in the hands and eyebrows, and the hint of an embarrassed blush," Haruhi listed like a regular Sherlock Holmes as she scrutinized me with an ugly scowl on her pretty face.

"Now get out, so we can deal with this problem without your idiocy stinking up the place," Haruhi said angrily, as she pushed me out of the room. Nagato remained standing in the middle of the room, blankly examining the spot on her new outfit.

Once again that day, the door of the clubroom was slammed in my face, but this time there was no wicked smile to send me off, but an angry and indignant glare instead.