Note: italic - said in English and in head. Normal - said in Japanese.

‘Be strong!’ thought Vera, ‘he’s just like those other wannabe bad asses back home. All you have to do is glare back at them to show them that they don’t scare you.’ She mentally shakes herself thinking back at how he was looking at her, it freaked her out. When their eyes meet the first thing she noticed was how hollow his dark blue eyes looked and the way he was glaring at her.

She thought the best way to not show that he did get to her in a way was not look at him. But of course he just had to talk to her. Her second thought was to ignore him. It always worked with those types of people. But he forced her to look at him and even had the balls to say that Japan was better than America!

‘How is Japan better? At least America has houses that look different!’ She snorted in her head, remembering how hard it was for her to find her aunt’s house.

She had gone out for a walk one time to look around, biggest mistake in her life! First off she wasn’t looking around to where she was going and also she has extremely bad sense of direction. When she had finally realized that she was lost she started to panic, looking around the area frantically. After walking around the winding roads, that looked all the same, for more than an hour she had given up and finally sat down on a curb giving her throbbing feet a rest. Then she heard her cousin, Chiyo, calling her name from afar. She had never been happier to see her cousin then in that very moment.

After that instant it had took Vera a week to memorize the route back to the house. She was a bit traumatized by that, so her answer was no, she was not liking Japan at all!

She leans further into her seat, avoiding looking at the direction of the wave of hate coming from that guy. Staring at the teacher she zones out for the remainder of the class period till the bell for their next class.

Vera watches the boy walk out of the classroom before getting up herself. She grabs her bag and pulls out her schedule from her back pocket. She looks at it for the second time today and reads her next class in her head, ‘culinary class with Yamagata.’

She folds the paper, stuffing it back in her pocket and starts to leave the classroom. She looks above, looking for the name Yamagata. ‘I hope this teacher doesn’t treat me like an idiot like the last one.’ She grumbles to herself. Finally finding the name of the teacher, she looks down to see a group of odd people in front of the classroom door. In the mist of it all she immediately spots Ruki and two taller guys standing next to him. The three of them standout the most from the cluster of people, she had to admit that they were good looking and gave out an aura that they owned the place. She also noticed a girl with light auburn hair pulled back into a long ponytail. The girl is leaning all over Ruki and he has his arms wrapped around her waist. It’s obvious that they were going out.

Walking past the group of delinquents standing in front of the class, Vera overhears the girl talking, “oh Ruki you look so hot today!” glancing to the ponytail girl, she gets a better look at her. The girl has a lip piercing on the right and a few earrings that are lined up in a row, adding up to six.

Vera can tell that she is part of Ruki’s clique ‘the delinquents’ or ‘the Yankees’ as she had heard the people around her call them. Ruki snickers, “thanks Akako, you look pretty damn y yourself.” She giggles in response and lifts her head to his and they start to make out. Keeping her gaze carefully averted from the disturbing site, she walks into the classroom.  

She gasped at how well kept this class was. It had really pristine countertops, white stoves, and stainless steel refrigerators. All the pans hanging above the stoves looked all shinny and new. It looked like a high class kitchen. Vera had to wonder how this poor school could afford all this.

Taking it all in, she goes up to the person standing in front of the room and hands her, her schedule. Ms. Yamagata smiles at her and says in broken English, “Hello, I am Ms. Yamagata. I’ll be your culinary teacher.” Vera gives her a heartwarming smile and nods her head.

Ms. Y leads Vera to the second to last table in the back of the room and introduces her to a boy named Kei. He turns to her when she sits next to him and reintroduces himself again, “Hi, as you already know my name is Kai. It’s nice to meet you.” He smiles and she notices that he has one deep dimple on one side of his face. She smiles back not being able to resist his cuteness.

The bell rings and the three guys go into the classroom last, walking to the back of the room to the table behind Vera and Kai. She rolls her eyes, annoyed that they are in the same class as her.

The teacher goes in the front of the class and claps her hands to get everyone to quite down, “Ok everyone as some of you already know there is a new student from America. Her name is Vera Radmund.” She looks over at Vera and nods her head to her direction. Vera gives an awkward smile and a stiff wave.

Without missing a beat Ms. Y looks back at the rest of the class and starts to explain that they would be making cookies today. Vera turns to look at Kai and sees that he is looking at the teacher intensely. She hides her laughter in a cough.

When Ms. Y says it’s ok for the class to get up and get the things to make the cookies, Vera follows Kai like a puppy, not knowing what to do with herself. He notices her worried look and hands her a bag of flower, chocolate chips, and a bowl. She looks up to him and smiles, and then goes back to their table. When Kai walks back with the rest of the things he starts to explain the steps. It doesn’t even faze him that she might not know Japanese.

She sits back in her seat and thinks back to what her mother had told her in the plane, “I’ll give you a choice. Choice one” she puts one finger up, “live with me in Japan and go to school there.” I nod and she continued putting a second finger up, “or choice two, you can stay in Japan for the summer and at the end of it you can go back to live with your dad in America.”

She puts her hand down back on her lap and looks straight ahead, “but of course for choice two there are some circumstances. The first one is you still have to go to school there for the summer. Second is you mustn’t let anyone know that your half Japanese, so that means you can’t talk to anyone in Japanese other than family.”

Vera leans on the armrest putting her chin on her fist and whispers, “why can’t I speak Japanese over there?”

“Because it would be easier that way!” her mother said a little too fast. Vera’s eyes go wide in shock then she turns to look out the window.

Slowly she says, “Ok I’ll think about it.”

It had taken her the whole week to finally find the answer, deciding to go back to America to be with her father. That’s why Vera is pretending to not know how to speak Japanese. She won’t have a problem with keeping quiet for two months, just don’t get close with anyone. But this Kai guy was making it hard. He is just so cute in a cuddly kind of way.

 But in the other hand, she knows who is going to be easy to stay away from. Turning around she sees a mini food fight going on with the three delinquents. They are throwing the cookie dough at each other. It seems to hurt Ruki the most when he gets hit, but he doesn’t seem to mind because he just throws more at the two other taller boys.

She hears Ms. Y yell at them from behind her saying, “Uruha, Reita, and Ruki! You boys better stop wasting my food or I’ll give you a weeks worth of detention!” This stops them, but not for long. They continue only when the teachers back is turned to them.

Vera spins back to see that Kai has done most of the work. She stands up fast and says, “Can I help with anything?” he faces her with a question mark on his face. She chuckles and points to the dough and says it slowly with hand movements added, “Is there anything I can help you with?”

He finally understands and tells her, “Could you roll up the dough and put them on the pan?” he adds the hand gesture of rolling something in his hands and points to the pan. She nods and smiles, taking a little bit of the dough and starts to roll it up. Then she hears a nasty grunt sound coming from Kai. She turns to see a ball of cookie dough stuck on Kai’s back.

Vera gasps in surprise and immediately starts to wipe it off him. She doesn’t need to look behind her to see that they did this. Kai sighs and looks at her with sad eyes. He leans to her and whispers in her ear, “God, I hate them so much. Why can’t they just leave me alone? They always mess with me, especially the short one named Ruki.”

She whips her head around and shoots Ruki a quick killer gaze full of anger before turning around again. “Whoa! Did you see how that new girl was looking at you?!” the blonde one with the noseband says. He smiles and laughs, “I think she might want a little bit of Ruki in her.”

'That's disgusting!' Vera yelled in her head.

The other tall one says, “Um Reita I think you might have to get your eyes checked, because that look doesn’t have any hint of liking Ruki.”

Ruki shakes his head in agreement, “That reminds me, we have to teach this American a lesson afterschool today.”

Uruha asks, “Why?”

“Because she is a cocky that thinks she can ignore me.” Ruki answers back.

Vera gulps staring at the cookie dough with scared eyes, ‘! Now I have to find a way to go home without being seen by them.’ She could feel Ruki staring holes into her back.

For the remainder of the period she kept her attention on either the cookies in the oven or on Kai, constantly getting hit by the devils with no hearts. Every time he got hit by a dough ball he would sigh and give Vera a sad smile, trying to tell her that he was ok, while she just watches him with worried eyes.

She jumps when their timer beeps signaling that it’s time to take the baked goods out the oven. Kai pulls the pan out and places it on the counter, and then he starts to put some of them in a little baggy. Leaning over the cookies and inhaling the smell she moans, “Mhh, this smells good!”

He hands her the baggy full of the cookies and says, “This is thanks for listening to me even though I know you don’t understand me.”

She takes one of the cookies out and just as the bell rings for the next class, she takes a bite out of it. Her eyes goes big, “Wow this is good!” she gives Kai a thumbs up and bends down to get her schoolbag.

When she straightens back up, Kai lightly grabs her shoulders and says, while looking around, “Be careful going home today.” Then he lets go and walks out the class room, leaving behind a scared little girl nervously nibbling on a cookie.

---

The day had finally ended and Vera was one of the first to shoot out the classroom. Heading straight to the restroom, she decided to wait it out for a bit before going home. Sitting down on the cold tile in the corner of a restroom stall, she hugs her legs ranting to herself, ‘How could I be reduced to this?! Hiding in a girl’s restroom, too scared to go home. Come on Vera I know your better than this!’

She gets back up with a determined look on her face. Sticking her head out the door she looks around making sure she is alone. Stepping out when she is sure the coast is clear, she makes her way to the front of the school.

When the front doors come in sight beyond the rows of lockers, she starts to walk faster. Right when she was passing the last of the lockers she hears footsteps. She sees Reita turning the corner from one of the lockers a few rows away from her and sees him point at her yelling, “There she is!”

She curses under her breath and turns the other way, walking away fast from her only way out (that she knows of) and from the three, soon to be, tormentors.

Hearing their footsteps echo in the empty halls becoming closer to her freaked her out so much that she started to run, not knowing where she was heading, tuning corner after corner, looking back every few seconds like one of those girls running away from the killer in those classic horror films. She starts to pick up her speed knowing that they had also started running; thinking how long it’s been since she’s ran. How long she’s been on a track team. It’s been so long that the passion has been buried deep down inside her, and was beginning to boil over. But as soon as her leg muscles warmed up and her breathing picked up to a familiar rhythm, everything starts to become easier.

Within seconds she has left the group far enough behind where she can begin to look for a place to hide, checking every classroom door seeing if one was unlocked and had no teachers in them. Finally finding one, she swiftly closes the door and looks out the window connected to the door. She sees Ruki round the corner first and she quickly crouches down leaning on the door. Breathlessly, she begins to pray that they don’t find her.

To her luck she hears them slow down. Ruki says panting for breath, “… we… lost… her! Where the hell did that go?!” she feels her heart pounding all the way up to her ears, closing her eyes, begging that they would just hurry up and walk past the class room.

Reita wheezing, “I… can’t… breathe!”

Finally a breathless Uruha declares, “Let’s just go home for now, it’s not like we don’t have school with her.”

Angrily, Ruki grunts a “Fine!” and turns to walk away. Vera starts to relax with every passing footstep they take away from her.

Once fully relaxed and heart beat back to normal, she hears noises coming from inside the classroom. She hears giggling from, what sounded like a girl, and a few sounds of desks being dragged around.

Still crouching down next to the door she slowly turns around and cranes her neck to get a better view of what’s causing the noise. Her eyes go round from the sight she is witnessing.

Causing the racket is a girl sitting down on top of a school desk, kissing a really tall guy with black hair. Vera hears the girl coo, “Oh Aoi, that feels wonderful!”

The tall guy just moans in responds placing one of his hands on her face bring her back up to his lips again and the other hand slowly going up her thigh, up her short skirt. She giggles again bring him closer to her.

          Vera quickly turns back around, slowly and quietly crawling out the classroom escaping the love show. Standing up, she dusts herself off and asks in her head, ‘now where is the way out of here?’ while walking off to the direction she thought the front door was.

E/N: Here you are new update! I hoped you enjoyed it!