EDIT: I just realized I forgot to put in line breaks. I've fixed it, now. But I feel like a fool.

I know it's been a very long time. I apologize. School was driving me crazy. But somehow, I've managed to finish it.

This chapter would have never come out, if it weren't for my beta reader, MissMeep. Thank you so much!

Also, I would like to thank the reviewers:

Ciel D'or Serendipite

happy-go-lucky writer

DaPurpleDino

JigokuTenshi834

Nekotan1999

FanficLover

Kiraitan

MissMeep

And also all the people who added this story to their favorites and alerts.

Fuji stood over Kirihara's bed at four thirty in the morning, his eyebrow twitching slightly, a frown tugging at his lips.

The boy was still fast asleep. He was sprawled over the bed in a most undignified manner, with his mouth hanging open. And, as if that wasn't enough, he was drooling.

Yes, Fuji was facing a most horrendous sight indeed. But that wasn't the only reason why he was irritated.

Fuji had never liked Kirihara. There was something about the boy that irked him. He was arrogant, bratty, disrespectful, and rude. And he turned into a demon when he was angry. Fuji had disliked him from the moment they had met, and he didn't expect his feelings to change any time soon.

Kirihara, thankfully, felt the same way.

It wasn't easy sharing a room with someone who despised you. It irritated Fuji to no end. The two avoided each other as much as possible, and Fuji usually spent the night studying in the library, or he'd jump out the window and go for a walk. The school guards weren't very good at doing their job.

Fuji looked at Kirihara for a moment longer, and finally decided to wake him up.

He quietly reached for a stack of books on the younger boy's table, held them above Kirihara's head, counted to three, and dropped the stack.

Before Kirihara could start screaming, Fuji went into the bathroom and shut the door. As the screams began, he smiled happily to himself, and began his morning routine.

Ryoma woke up to the beautiful sound of his roommate screaming bloody murder.

At first, he ignored it. He pulled the covers over his head, shut his eyes tightly, and tried to sleep again. The screams only got louder.

Scowling to himself, Ryoma buried his head under his pillow and cursed Kirihara Akaya under his breath. The screams continued.

Ryoma was just about to get up and tell Kirihara to shut up, but someone beat him to it.

"Kirihara!"

Kirihara shut up.

Curious as to who his savior was, Ryoma pulled the covers off of his head and squinted in the approximate direction of the noise. Standing in the door way, with his arms crossed and face stern, was a tall, black haired boy, who seemed ready to punch Kirihara any moment.

"Sanada-fukubuchou!" Kirihara started. 'Sanada' silenced him with a look.

Assuming that the matter was in good hands, Ryoma rolled over and promptly fell asleep again.

Several minutes later, he was shaken awake by a smiling Fuji Syuusuke, who did not seem to understand that the day only started after the sun rose.

"Why are you up so early?" he asked him grumpily.

Fuji looked surprised. "You're actually late, Echizen. Self-study starts at five o'clock."

Ryoma glared at him. "Why?"

Fuji raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"Why would it start at five?"

Fuji paused for a moment. Then slowly, he opened his sapphire eyes and smiled vampirishly, just as he had done the previous day.

Ryoma quickly got out of bed.

Morning self-study, Ryoma later decided, as he stared down at his notebook, was the worst thing in the world since chemical equations.

It didn't help that he was doing chemical equations during self-study. And it certainly didn't help that he was still half asleep.

He allowed himself a moment to pray for Fuji Syuusuke's slow, painful death, before he continued staring blankly at his notebook.

Self study took place for two hours, on the ground floor of every tower. The rooms were huge, with a low ceiling, and rows and rows of desks. In the study hall of North Tower, there seemed to be more than four hundred students.

Needless to say, the atmosphere was suffocating.

Once he had entered the room, a teacher had called for him, given him a list of all the chapters he had missed in the past one and a half months, and had told him sternly that he wanted all the work finished in one week.

Ryoma had stared at the list, and then stared at the man. "I can't finish all of this in a week!" He had said.

The teacher had shrugged. "You'll have to find a way."

So now, here he was, sitting at his desk between Mukahi Gakuto and the head boy, Tezuka Kunimitsu, frantically trying to finish pages and pages of chemical equations which made no sense to him whatsoever.

At that moment, Mukahi waved a hand at him to get his attention, and threw a crumpled paper ball at him. Then, using some quick hand gestures, he demonstrated how to uncrumple it, because that wasn't the most obvious thing in the world.

Ryoma snorted. Thanks to Mukahi's instructions, he successfully managed to perform the difficult task of uncrumpling the paper ball, and found a short, messy note:

'Hey, why did you join school so late? And why don't you play tennis anymore?"

Ryoma dutifully crumpled the paper up once more and tossed it back at Mukahi. He then proceeded to ignore him.

"Hey, you were supposed to reply!" Mukahi said out loud.

"Mukahi Gakuto! Stop talking and do your work!" A teacher barked from the front of the room. Several people giggled, and Mukahi glared daggers at the paper ball sitting on his table.

Ryoma smirked at him, and then returned to his equations.

Moments later, another ball of paper landed on his desk, this time from behind him.

Sighing, he opened it.

'The answer is 2FeCl2+2HCl+S.'

He jerked his head around and stared at the boy behind him in surprise. The boy(?) was older than him, with longish blue hair, dark blue eyes, and a rather feminine appearance. For a moment, Ryoma couldn't decide on his gender, but since the person was wearing the boys' uniform, he assumed that it was a boy.

The boy caught his eye and smiled at him gently. "Yukimura Seiichi," he whispered, his voice soft and melodic. "A pleasure to meet you."

Ryoma opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by-

"Echizen Ryoma! Turn around and do your work!"

Scowling, Ryoma complied.

Two hours of pointless suffering later, the bell rang, and the room was filled with the sounds of screeching chairs, tables, and laughter as the whole of North Tower headed outside.

Ryoma stood up slowly, yawned, and stretched, and then scanned the room for Momoshiro.

He couldn't find him.

Frowning, he looked around again, but the older boy had disappeared.

Ryoma's frown deepened. Now he'd have to find his way around the school himself, and he wasn't sure he could trust himself with that.

"Echizen Ryoma, isn't it?" A voice spoke up. Ryoma turned towards the older boy and nodded.

"Kitamura-sensei would like to see you."

Moments later, Ryoma stood in front of Kitamura sensei(who turned out to be his homeroom teacher)'s desk, fidgeting in his place.

Two minutes. He'd been standing there for two full minutes, but the man at the desk was ignoring him, and was instead organizing a stack of papers. Ryoma's precious breakfast time was ticking away…slowly…slowly…

He couldn't allow that to happen. He was hungry.

Ryoma cleared his throat, and the teacher finally looked up and blinked at him.

Ryoma blinked right back.

Something appeared to dawn in the old man, and, at last, he returned to planet earth. "Ah, you must be the new student, yes? Sit down, please."

Ryoma sat. Kitamura rummaged through his papers and pulled out a few sheets.

"This is your time table, this is the combination for your locker, and this is a list of clubs that you may join. The clubs only meet for two hours on Saturday, and if you don't want to join them, you may spend that time studying. Quite a few students have decided not to join any club."

Ryoma nodded, and decided not to join one.

"You will have self-study in the study hall for two hours in the morning, and two hours in the evening. Also, you have taken more subjects than most of your classmates, so you will have fewer study-periods during the day. I expect you to manage your time well."

Ryoma nodded again. Kitamura handed him the sheets, folded his arms, and then stared at him over his glasses intently. "I spoke to your mother yesterday, and she informed me that you know nothing about the ideals of Kaganeiro. So I would like you to listen to me carefully right now.

"Most of the successful people in Japan have graduated from this very school. We give education much more importance than they do in other places, so all of our students get very high marks in their final exams.

"When you graduate from here, you will need those marks to get into a good college, or university. These marks will, quite simply, account for the rest of your future. So I suggest you take what we tell you to do seriously. If you work only during the study time we put in your schedule, you will never be able to finish your work. Since you've arrived rather late in the year, you have even more work in front of you."

He looked at Ryoma hard, as if trying to tell him that if he didn't finish his work on time, he'd be roasted on a spork.

"Don't expect anyone to go easy on you because you've transferred late. Also, please remember that the school doesn't tolerate rule-breakers. If you are expected in the study hall at five, you'd better be in the study hall at five. Am I clear?"

Ryoma nodded hastily.

"Well then, you may leave." The man turned back to his paperwork, and Ryoma stood up.

"Oh, one more thing: Don't forget the school motto."

'Knowledge Itself, is Power. How could I forget a creepy motto like that?'

Breakfast was a solemn affair.

The food was amazing, of course. Ryoma had never tasted anything like it. It did, however, make him even more suspicious – to a normal onlooker, everything in this school would be perfect. But he still couldn't shake off the feeling that something was terribly wrong with it. His recent meeting with his class teacher had, if anything, proved his point.

He stared at his food suspiciously for a moment, wondering if there was poison in it. A moment later, he realized how stupid he was being, and shook the thought away.

Anyway, it wasn't the food that was bothering him. It wasn't even the people he was sitting with, although that did bother him a little. He was at a table with Momo and Kikumaru which wasn't a very solemn combination at all.

What was bothering him(as in, really bothering him) was the fact that nearly every person in the room was studying while they ate.

'Seriously? After two hours of being locked up in that room?'

"Ne, Momo-senpai," he started, looking in the vague direction of his senior's face (which was hidden from view by an abnormal amount of food). "Why is everyone acting so…strange?"

Momo said something that sounded strangely like, 'What is it to be a duck?'

Ryoma blinked. "Huh?"

Momo swallowed the (unhealthy) amount of food in his mouth, and continued, "What are you talking about?"

"They're all…studying. In the cafeteria." When they had food. Surely there was something wrong with that?

"Oh, that. Well, of course they're studying. We always have a test in the first period. Speaking of which," Momo paused. "Why am I not studying?"

"Probably because you couldn't hold a textbook while you hold so much food."

"Ah, yes! That was why!"

"So, we always have tests in the first period?"

"Yup. All the classes have it, every day."

Ryoma stared at his senior in horror.

Momo laughed. "Geez, Echizen, don't worry. You'll get used to it."

Ryoma was afraid he would.

After breakfast, he did indeed have a test. A chemistry test, no less. He had done so much chemistry in the past three hours, that he was all set to oxidize his question paper.

Somehow, though, he managed the quiz, and all was well.

Not really.

The next few hours passed in a blur. He discovered that the annoying redhead who chased him on a tricycle was his classmate, as was another annoying boy who had two years of tennis experience and an abnormally loud mouth, who was followed around by two, slightly less annoying black-haired boys.

What was worse, they all (red-head included) seemed to enjoy each other's company, and thereby assumed that he would, too.

Sadly, he didn't.

Classes were quiet, however, since no one dared to speak when the teacher was in the room. Questions were asked rarely (if at all), and every student took notes sincerely and memorized every word the teacher said. It all seemed alien to Ryoma, who was used to loud, lively classes, full of idiots who couldn't keep their mouths shut.

Kintarou had attempted to ask him something during Math, and had been caught, and he now had detention for a week. But, looking at his schedule, Ryoma could only wonder where people would have time for detention.

From five to seven, they had self study. Then they had breakfast, and school started at seven fourty five. At twelve, they had lunch, and classes resumed at twelve fourty-five. School was closed at five, when they were given one hour of free time, before they were expected at the study hall. And then they had dinner, and were sent to their dormitories.

Would they sacrifice their study periods for detention? Or maybe they'd have to stay up late…

"If you work only during the study time we put in your schedule, you will never be able to finish your work."

Ah yes, there was that. So they'd have to stay up late anyway. Just how much work did these people have?

Well, he had a lot more, thanks to having transferred late. He knew he should have stayed in America.

He sighed, as he trudged back to the dormitories. Classes were over, and he had one hour before self-study, so he was going to sleep.

That's it.

Please review! It gives me lots of ideas.