Exception
By: Aviantei
2. More Pissed Off Than Usual
Now that we've covered Kanda's likes and dislikes (or something akin to that matter), let us move onto a new but equally relevant topic: his daily life. Wake up, school, home, homework, bed. The occasional detour into swapping home and homework, which was a paradox as it was, as well as some form of trip every now and then as one of the group otherwise known as his friends had something planned. Wash, rinse, repeat.
It was a simple schedule, but that was really all Kanda needed. After all, it was the only concretely simple thing in Kanda's otherwise complicated life. Even when things got fucked up—cough, cough, choke, choke, Lavi—it was something to fall back onto. When one day went to hell, he could always pick things up and try again the next morning.
Sadly, things went to hell far more often than Kanda would have liked. He tried to ignore this fact and just carried on as always, which sometimes involved strangling a certain rabbit.
As we were.
Before things could get too overly complicated at the breakfast table, the bell rang, signaling the beginning of the school day. Kanda took the chance to bolt for his locker, one of the few places of solace they had. Since things were assigned due to alphabetical order, Lavi Bookman was nowhere near Kanda Yu's locker.
Now if he just avoided breakfast he could actually have the majority of his mornings without the stupid rabbit, at least until he got to class, which was obligatory. Trying to ignore his own stupidity, Kanda decided to take some pleasure out of the fact that the students that had the lockers next to him stayed out of the way while he gathered his things for class. There were benefits to certain incidents back in the old days, even if they hadn't seemed that way at the time.
A few lockers down, within a visible distance, Ivy was organizing her things with perfect precision. Anything that had been inside her backpack was in its place on the top shelf, and she was building up a stack of the items she needed for the first few periods of the day in her arms. Her bag was on a hook, her emergency jacket on the other, and one of those ridiculous hanging things with a mirror and slots for varying school supplies was fully stocked. It was like the perfect locker that teachers hoped their students had but never did.
Ivy was done gathering her things before Kanda even came remotely close to doing the same. She leaned against the opposite wall in wait for him like it was the most natural thing in the world. To think, only a year ago Ivy had been the new girl and one of the science teachers, Lenalee's crazy older brother, Komui, had forced Kanda into taking Ivy as his lab partner and show her around the school. Even weirder was how easily she had managed to fit into their group's life.
Personally, Kanda blamed Komui for a lot of what Lavi said. It made things a lot easier in this school, where you could just blame everything on one of them or both. It certainly made Kanda feel better.
The Japanese teen finished gathering his things and started down the hallway. Ivy fell into step beside him, clearly running on autopilot. She was thinking about something. Seeing as this was his last chance to talk to someone besides Lavi for the next couple of periods, Kanda went for it.
"What's with that face?" he asked.
Ivy seemed flustered that he had even noticed. She paused, fiddling with a pencil tucked into the spirals of one of her notebooks before answering. "I'm just a bit worried is all…" she said, looking at Kanda out of the corner of her eye. "I can't say for certain, but I really think you seem a little more pissed off than usual."
Kanda considered his actions earlier, and figured that was probably what it seemed like. Being more pissed off was certainly one way to put it. It was probably going to end in being pissed off anyway. That was how most things went anyway.
"Implying that I'm usually in a state of being pissed off," he countered, a slight smirk pulling at the edges of his lips. One could even say that it was something like a smile, if something like that was inclined to show up on Kanda Yu's face.
"Ah, I…" The color darkened on Ivy's face as she stumbled over her words. "Sorry, I… It's more like… Oh, you know what I mean!" she protested, causing Kanda to chuckle. Before he could say anything else, they reached the stairwell where their paths split up, Ivy almost heading down the hall with too much enthusiasm. "See you later, Kanda-san! Please try not to kill Lavi. We've barely made it into the school year."
Kanda grunted.
She raced off down the hall before Kanda could reply, and the Japanese boy resigned himself to heading up the stairs. This was all the more reason for him to hate Mondays. A perfectly good weekend ruined by an entire day with the stupid rabbit.
Kanda should have learned a long time ago not to fill out his class schedule in pencil, have it sitting around for more than twenty-four hours, or leave it unguarded in a notebook anywhere remotely near Lavi, but he had done it all anyway. Such actions of stupidity had allowed for Lavi to tamper with his schedule. The result had been that Kanda Yu and Lavi Bookman were to not-so-coincidentally spend every period of their senior year together in the same classes. Kanda felt as if he should horrendously injure himself as penance for his sins, if killing Lavi wouldn't make up for the whole fiasco so much better than any act of self-harm ever could.
"Come on, Yu-pon! We need to get to class!"
Speak of the devil and he will appear. Why such a rule also applied to Lavi, Kanda had no idea. The redhead latched onto his "friend's" arm, almost spilling the books from Kanda's arms and the two teens faceplanting onto the stairs. Kanda did his best to shake the rabbit away, but was unsuccessful.
This was surely hell.
"Get off me," he growled.
Lavi only shook his head. "Your little chatting session went on longer than usual, Yu-pon, so we can't risk being late," he said, pulling Kanda up the stairs. As they turned, Kanda could see Allen heading down the opposite hallway. He could have sworn the beansprout was laughing and resolved to punch the British boy in the face in the highly foreseeable future. "Let's move, our education awaits!"
It really was such a shame that the books and Lavi's influence prevented Kanda from being able to strangle the rabbit. He settled for shouting curses as he was dragged down the hall, and if he went to detention for it, Lavi was sure as hell coming with him.
More pissed off than usual indeed.
It figures that I double post to make up missing last week's update and I just end up posting a revision. Oh well.
A big thank you to 808wolfgirl, Resenwolf, Fruitstogether, and dancass for your favorites, reviews, and follows since I posted chapter eighteen. I'm glad that new people are enjoying this story despite the questionable quality of it's earlier pre-revision chapters.
As usual, I'm working on this story (revisions and new content) bit by bit. There is not currently a scheduled date for the next update of Exception. If you're curious, feel free to check out my blog thing where I attempt to talk about writing for further news.
I'm really curious if these updates seem like a worthy improvement over the originals. If you have any thoughts, please let me know!
[POST] 020514