Domino High School
The Lunch Hall
12:43 P.M.
The Tylenol had yet to take effect as Aglaia walked the empty halls to the lunch hall. She had decided to keep her ring in her pocket.
Maybe it was due to her wooziness, Aphrodite cursing her, or just plain bad luck, but whatever it was, something had her run into the girls from the morning previous yet again, just as she entered the cafeteria.
"Hey, Uglia, right?" a girl with shining hair asked.
"Um, it's--"
"Whatever. Listen, here's your bill."
"My-- my what?"
"Your bill. Your I.O.U? You said you're paying back for my skirt, right?"
"Uh--"
"And the makeup, right?" Something in her tone said that she better.
"Uh--"
"Good girl. Here it is."
Aglaia looked down at the napkin-written bill and she saw why it had to be written down.
Nervously pushing her glasses up her nose, Aglaia nearly spoke but was interrupted.
"And I'll need it by tomorrow. You know the sale down at the multiplex is starting and--" The girl looked Aglaia up and down again. "Oh wait, you don't know."
The friends behind her began to giggle and Aglaia blushed, searching for the strength in her legs to stand and fight, but only finding the strength to flee.
Before she could quite get past, a girl with brown hair nudged past her shoulder and stood between the crowd and her cowering self. Tea.
"Hey, Reina, leave her alone. What's your problem? Why do you have to pick on the new kid?"
"Oh, excuse me, Tea, but I was just trying to get my money's worth."
"You don't have to be rude about it."
"Why don't you bug out because it's none of your business?" Reina's eyes became dangerous, vindictive slits.
"Yeah, Tea, don't be such a self righteous bitch all the time," a girl with straight black hair behind Reina picked up your courage and spoke.
"Hey, why don't you all cool it?" Joey now stood beside Tea and his height was intimidating. Tristan was the same, on the other side.
This little display threw Aglaia off. She was slightly-- confused.
But then, more confused that Yuugi was nowhere to be seen.
"Ugh. Fine, whatever. Freaks."
Reina, followed by the group of girls who seemed to agree with most everything she said, left the few. As soon as she stepped aside, a girl with a ribbon-ed ponytail came with bowl of cold udon noodles towards Aglaia, who stood back and closed her eyes.
She felt herself pushed back slightly and took the rank, mushroom-y liquid on her skirt, but only a few drops.
She opened her eyes and saw little Yuugi with noodles knotted into his hair and a shrimp clinging to his shoulder.
"HEY! What was that?!" Joey clenched his fists, forgetting for a moment that they were girls he wanted to pummel.
"You jerks!" But Tea was fully prepared to pummel a few girls.
"That wasn't cool!" And Tristan would love watching.
Giggling and tittering, the group left in a cloud of victory.
Stepping forward after them, Tea spoke a threat she wouldn't fulfill. "You're gonna regret that!"
"I--- I-- I--" Aglaia's face reddened to the point of bursting and she did all she knew to do.
She ran out of the cafeteria as quickly as her legs would take her.
Down a Back Street Alley
12:43 P.M.
"I-- I-- I don't know anything!" The hairy twenty-three-year-old in sweats picked a fretfully empty alley to try and run down.
Shrieking wouldn't do any good here, especially with three Kaiba Corp attack hounds cornering him and the top dog himself standing behind them with a pissed off look on his face.
"Hm. I don't think either of us believe that. Now I'll ask you one. More. Time."
Seto Kaiba glared the glare that made his secretary piss himself a little.
"Where is my deck?"
"I-- I-- I-----" The man whined under the pressure that large suited man had around his neck. "It's-- It's Atsuko Kenichi!"
"Who?" Seto inquired.
The man with the neck hold on their victim pulled his neck and his face upward. "Talk to the boss's face."
"It's Atsuko Kenichi! He's new in town-- from Tokyo, I think-- and we gave the deck to him."
"Hmph." His loaded gun blue eyes stared down at the sweaty man in contemplation. "I don't buy it. Why would you give it to some stranger from Tokyo?"
"He-- He thinks he's gonna keep it, but really the higher ups are--"
"Are what?"
"Uhg--"
"Are what?"
"They're using him as a target, okay?! He's just holding it right now and some guys are gonna go after him later tonight to rough him up and get the deck. That's all I know! I swear! Please don't hurt me!"
The suited man dropped the begging fool to his knees.
"Hmph. Scum like you disgust me."
And they left that man sitting there, grasping his throat.
They loaded into the docked Kaiba limousine and he pressed the voice activation button on his Kaiba Corp handheld device.
"Computer," he addressed, "I need everything you can find on Atsuko Kenichi."
Aglaia returned to the nurse's office, this time with an apparently severe migraine. Of course, she had to go home, and the young nurse couldn't tell her no.
Dear Yugi: Please don't be mad at me. I'm very, very sorry. I'll pay you back for your uniform. I'm very, very sorry. From Aglaia.
"Will you look at that," Joey said as he read over Yugi's shoulder at the note found in the smaller boy's locker.
"That girl was kind of weird," Tristan pointed out.
"You think?" Joey quipped.
"I think it's sweet. She's just shy. I remember when someone else was shy like that," Tea crossed her arms and smiled in reminiscence.
Yugi smiled and placed the note in his pocket. "We'll see her tomorrow. Right now is anyone up for Burger Land?"
In The Atsuko Apartment
"Oh, sweetie pie," Kalliope, Aglaia's mother, cooned as she took her daughter's temperature. "Are you sure you're sick?"
Aglaia nodded like the little girl she looked like, hiding under a blanket with her mother tending to her.
"Aglaia," her mother said in that D-on-the-report-card tone.
"They don't like me there!" she exclaimed, unfolding herself from the couch.
"Aglaia! You're going to have to face strangers someday. And your knees can't be shaking while you're doing it."
Aglaia looked down at said knees.
"Now, get dressed. They're getting ready for a sale tonight at the mall! You know you can find the niftiest things in magazines. Like there's this dog up for adoption, and I think it was a Pekin-something. . ." Kalliope's voice faded as she left the room in a cloud of clearance perfume.
The Kaiba limousine drove by the school but he didn't bother entering.
A man in sunglasses and a black suit returned and sat across from his boss with two folders in his hands.
"Here is the Atsuko profile," he spoke and set the the boy's homework beside him without a word about it.
"There are two profiles here."
"Him and his sister. I couldn't take just one and leave suspicion."
Seto nodded. He glanced at the picture in the Atsuko sister's profile, scoffed, and turned to raid Kenichi's for information.
the Domino City Mall
5:22 P.M.
"Aglaia, pick something!" It was the clearance rack in Style Berry and Aglaia was tied up tight in a purple hoodie.
"But mom," she mumbled. "I would never wear that."
"Fine, fine! Have it your way," she huffed, causing a scene. "Let's just hit the food court and bust out of here." The dark olive-skinned mother tried her best at modern-day slang.
Aglaia followed a few steps behind her high-heeled mother with her face down.
"Aglaia!" a voice rang out.
The frumpy girl was taken completely by surprise, and she looked around like a startled meerkat from its burrow.
"Over here!" A girl with a box-like brunette bob in a pink school uniform was waving undeniably at Aglaia, and the shock Kalliope saw on her daughter's face surpassed anything she ever witnessed upon any opened gift.
Looking back at her mother, Aglaia took the frantic shooing as a yes and made her way towards Tea as quickly as she could without tripping.
Several steps away and-- stumble!- did anyone see that? No. No one saw that. No one.
When Aglaia came face to face with Tea, she noticed the remnants of a giggle, along with chuckling behind her.
"Hey, Aglaia," Tea greeted, and the three boys behind her. Aglaia's eyes immediately locked on Yugi.
"Yugi, I--"
"Don't worry about it, Aglaia. It's not a big deal."
Aglaia's face then went slightly blank, only to be replaced with a broad smile.
"Th--- Thank you!"
"Don't worry about it!" Yugi assured her, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Hey," Tristan, the boy with over-gelled hair in the back, addressed. "We were gonna go check out the arcade. Wanna come with?"
"Yeah, it'll be fun!" Tea encouraged.
Aglaia looked back at her mother who was barely resisting taking a picture with her cell phone.
"Sh-Sure!"
When the motley crew entered the arcade, the flashing lights and electronic beeping had the boys going from zero to eighty in less than three seconds.
Aglaia practically held onto the back of Tea's shirt as the two ventured towards the center of the increasingly loud electrical parade.
Aglaia nearly bumped into the Tea's back when she halted immediately. When Aglaia tried to ask why, she saw that the awed expression on Tea's face was directed at the two girls twirling around and getting wooed at on the Dance Dance Revolution machine.
In an odd blur, Tea grabbed Aglaia by the wrist (saying something along the lines of "Come on!", though it was drained out by the crowd) and pulled her towards the huge device.
Aglaia's train of thought went an awful lot like a buzzing radio. As soon as she tuned back into her station, she found herself staring up at a screen that told her she wasn't very good at dancing.
Booing was heard all around and Tea again urged her to "come on", so Aglaia proceeded in attempting to dance-- something she hadn't done since ballet in the second grade. (And that medical bill wasn't anything to be scoffed at.)
It began hesitantly, and though the crowds and the screen told her differently, Aglaia thought that she wasn't doing too badly.
That was until she found herself on her back over the arrow buttons as the screen raved "OWNED!".
Aglaia refused to rise (with the taste of vomit apparent in her mouth and a red face that threatened to burst) until a manicured hand reached down at her. Tea.
She took said hand, and with nothing but concern on her face, Tea led Aglaia into an adequately dark corner.
"Sorry about that. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, I'm fine," she blatantly lied as she reached up to adjust her glasses-- that weren't there.
"Where-- where are my glasses?! Where are my glasses!?!" Aglaia cupped her hands over her eyes.
"I've got them here!" Tea pulled them out of her purse, wondering what the panic was.
"You saw my eyes," she moaned to herself.
"What's the matter?"
"My eyes, they're-- oh, I'm sorry!"
Aglaia got up to run away, but Tea grabbed her elbow.
"Aglaia, stop it! Tell me what's wrong!"
"I've embarrassed myself so badly. . ."
"I don't care, Aglaia. You're my friend. Stuff like that doesn't matter."
Aglaia slowly took her hands off of her eyes.
"Really?" she couldn't help but inquire.
"Absolutely." She smiled a smile that Aglaia hadn't seen before. "Let's go find the guys. They'll be up for food if we can drag them away from their games."
Aglaia heard her mind's inner station loud and clear: So this is what it feels like.
[finally, right? I have good news if you've gotten this far. . . and enjoyed it. you can expect frequent, weekly updates from here on out. review if you dare.]