Vera walks into the school and spots Kai at his locker. “Hey, I want to talk to you.” She looks around making sure no one was looking at her talking to him.

Kai looks at her with his signature one dimple smile. “Ok what is it?”

She bites her bottom lip, “well it’s about the Ruki thing. I’ve never had a boyfriend before so I don’t know the first thing on how to get a guy to like me let alone one that I’ve dissed many times over.

Kai looks up at the ceiling, tapping his chin with one finger. “Hmm you can always act like yourself.”

Vera rolls her eyes and pouts, “like myself? But I’m not the nicest person to talk to.”

“You were sweet to me from the very first day.” He shakes his head.

“Yeah but that’s because it’s you Kai, you’re like the sweetest person ever.” She smiles and stands up on her tiptoes to reach his cheek to give it a quick squeeze.

“Well can’t you pretend that he is me?” Kai asks and rubs his cheek.

Vera thinks for a second, biting her thumb nail, “Yeah I guess I could but wouldn’t it feel wrong imaging him as you if I’m trying to make him fall for me?”

“I’m not telling you to do the whole time, just at first till you get the hang of it.” He laughed.

“Alright well I guess I got that part kind of figured out, now for the other problem. How am I going to start talking to him if I can’t talk in Japanese and he doesn’t understand much English?” she asks with her eyes frowned.

Kai closes his locker and begins to walk toward his class. “That is something you’re going to have to figure out yourself.” He says before walking into his classroom.

Vera stands there for a second with opened in amazement. ‘Ugh why do I get myself in these kinds of things?!’ she asks herself. She walks down the hallway but not before she yells jerk in English to Kai.

She walks into homeroom and makes her way to the back of the class, nodding to the people who said morning to her. When she lifts her eyes from a girl that just waved to her to the back of the class, she sees Ruki and his girlfriend at his desk.

‘What a miracle that he is in class this early.’ She thinks with one of her brows lifted.

She sits down and puts her bag in front of her pretending to be looking for something but she was actually curious of what they are talking about. “Man I slept so good last night! I should sleep over more often.” Akako exhales.

Ruki makes a noise as an agreement.

Vera’s eyes go big and looks up at them, to see that the girl was sitting on Ruki’s desk. She has on a shirt and pants that were a bit too big on her; obviously they were Ruki’s.

Akako looks down, pulling the t-shirt out and pouts, “Oh my god I’m like soo fat!”

‘Yeah you’re ing Jabba the gut!’ Vera thinks sarcastically and goes back to looking for the non-existing thing in her bag but still gives a few glances to Ruki and his girlfriend.

“Oh no babe you’re like a y mermaid.” Ruki says with no emotion in his voice, just like a robot.

“What’s up with you with these types of mystical creatures?” she giggles, “first it was a unicorn now it’s a mermaid. Okay tell me what type of mermaid do you picture me as, since you had painted a funny image of a unicorn last night.” She crosses her legs and puts all her weight on one arm.

Vera looks from the girlfriend to Ruki waiting for an answer. He rubs her arm with one finger and parts his pretty pink lips, “you’re the type that sits on rocks and sings, leading sailor men to you with your enchanting voice.”

Akako puts a hand over her heart actually touched by his words. Vera choked down her laughter feeling tears forming at the edge of her eyes by how hard she was trying to keep her laughter in control. “Aw so does that mean that you’re my sailor man? And this is WAY better than peeing rainbows.”

Ruki nods still rubbing her arm, “Yup and it wasn’t peeing it was farting rainbows.” He corrected her.

Vera let a few giggles escape before she covered with her hand. ‘If only she knew that he just compared her to a siren, which lures men out into sea with their beautiful song causing them to run their ships into rocks and killing them.’

At the sound of her laughter Ruki and Akako look at her. The girlfriend gives her a sneer, “what are you laughing at?”

Ruki sighs, “Give it up, she can’t even understand you.” While he was saying that, he was looking at her with something in his eyes like he knew something.

Vera’s heart starts to beat fast and she tries to gulp down the lump forming in . “I guess you’re right.” Akako says. Sighing, she slides off the desk, “well I should get going before I’m late for class again.” She places her hands on either side of Ruki’s face and leans down to kiss his lips.

Vera looks away, hating looking at couples kiss, definitely one that she is going to have to ruin.

When they were done swapping saliva, Akako walks out the classroom not even bothering to close the door behind her. Vera was still looking at the open door when she hears a deep voice close to her ear. “I know you can understand every word I’m saying.” She feels shivers go down her spin and feels goose bumps forming at the back of her neck.

“To tell you the truth,” the voice continues, “I still don’t know why you’re keeping this a secret, but I’ll find out about it sooner or later and I’m aiming for sooner than later.”

She turns around, ignoring the fact that Ruki was really close to her face. “Please don’t tell anyone!” she whispers back, blinking back angry tears and her heart pounding against her rib cage.

---

Ruki’s eyes go big in surprise because he didn’t expect Vera to react that way. He just got close to mess with her and said that without thinking.

He wasn’t even sure himself what he had said was true till she turned around and actually, for the first time, acknowledged him. And in Japanese at that!

Ruki backs up an inch away and smiles slyly. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone…” she breathes a sigh of relief and even smiles a little bit, “I won’t tell anyone YET.” He adds.

Vera’s body goes stiff and her eyes form into little slits. He couldn’t help but laugh at her reaction, “I’ll have a lot of fun knowing that I’m the one that knows about this and I could even use it against you.” He laughed evilly in his mind.

She mumbles English curses under her breath and looks at him like he is dog at the bottom of her shoe. He leans in closer cupping his hand over his ear. “What was that? Did you say something?”

She stares him down with her stormy grey eyes, this is the second time she challenged him with her eyes. “No I didn’t say anything!” she hissed back through clenched teeth.

He laughs, reaching into his pocket and pulls out his phone. “Good, now give me your cellphone number.” He gives her a crooked smile.

Vera looks away, staring at the blackboard like there was something on there that was important to her. “Don’t have one.” She says, not even bothering to look at him.

He leans in closer and whispers into her ear, “bull.”

She shivers and pulls out her phone. She holds it close to her chest like it was her baby. Ruki holds out his hand and waves his finger motioning her to hand it over to him. She presses her lips and places her phone on his hand, but let her own hand linger on his for a few seconds before pulling away.

Ruki acts like the skin contact didn’t affect him by busying himself with programing the numbers into the two phones.

He holds the phone out to her when he was done. She reaches for it but when she tries to pull it out of his hand, his hold tightens and he looks her in the eyes, “You BETTER answer me no matter what you’re doing. Your grandmother could be on her death bed and I wouldn’t care.”

She’s still trying to pull the phone out of his hand with her lips pressed into thin lines. “And what if I don’t?” she asks with bitterness coded in her voice.

He laughs and shakes his head. “You’ll regret you didn’t answer.” he simply replies.

The delinquent finally let’s go of the phone and Vera throws it into her bag like she was playing hot potato. Then she looks back at him with a deep frown. “Why are you doing this?”

He leans back in his chair and props his feet on the legs of the desk in front of him. “Because this way you can’t ignore me or run away either.” ‘And this might be the only way I can get you back for all the times you out bested me and… for kicking me in the nuts too.’ He added in his head.

“That’s the only reason?!” she hissed.

He looks at his black painted finger nails and nods, “yup pretty much.”

“You have no life.” She huffed.

“You don’t know anything about me!” he hissed, getting up in her face again.

“What will your girlfriend think about you calling another girl for no reason?” she challenges him, looking him up and down.

“She doesn’t need to know about this.” He says with a shrug dismissing that remark.

Vera whispers into his ear, her cheek brushing against his, “we’ll see about that.” She even dared herself to give him a kiss on his earlobe.

He gulps, his heart pounding against his chest and feeling his face getting hot. ‘I’m afraid we will.’ He thinks leaning back in his chair again.

 Then Ms. Sato walks into class, “alright everyone get in your seats now! I have a new project so listen up.” Everyone groans and moans complaints except Vera, she just acts confused. ‘Damn she is a good actress!’ Ruki thought. “Alright, alright settle down you bunch of crybabies! This assessment will be a partner project. You guys are lucky that I was being nice!”

She calls one of the teacher pets to pass out the rubrics around the class. When it reaches him, his eyes pop out. ‘Being nice my !’ Ruki mentally yelled and imagined flipping his desk over. Sure the rubric wasn’t hard for two people to divide the work with but the problem was how much work there was to do.

‘Well I don’t care anyways ill just make my partner do the work.’ Ruki says, already calm and looks at the rest of the rubric as if he cared what was on it.

“Ok I’ll call out the names of the groups and” Ms. Sato looks at ever one over her clipboard of names, “no one can change partners.” Everyone moans but she continued as if she didn’t hear anything and calls out the groups. Ruki keeps his eyes on the paper not even listening to the teacher.

He only looks up when he hears his name being called out, “and last but not least, Ruki and Vera.”

Everyone gasps and gives apologetic looks to Vera. Ruki looks at her to see how she was taking in this information in, but her hair was covering her face. But he knew for sure that he had a stupid grin on his face because this just happened to be the nicest thing Ms. Sato has ever done for him. This had given him even more chances to be around her and she couldn’t even push him away because he knew she wasn’t going to do all the work herself… or was she?

“That’s not fair Ms. Sato!” Daisuke squeaks up. “He’s just going to bring her grade down. You should partner her up with me instead!”

“Shut up Daisuke.” Ruki growls at him.

“No! And that’s not my name!” He has the nerve to say.

‘Wow he really wants to be partners with her to even talk to me like that.’ Ruki jumps to his feet and grabs Daisuke by the shirt causing him to look up at him. “What did you just say to me?” he asks in a calm voice.

“I said, no and she should work with me and not with a piece of Yankee trash like you. Also my name isn’t Daisuke, its Daichi, you !” He says looking up at Ruki.

Ruki bit back his laughter because he’s been calling him Daisuke for years and now he finds out his name, but that funny moment wasn’t going to stop him from punching the out him for talking back to him.

“I don’t want to work with that trash either!” Daisu-, I mean Daichi’s partner yells from his seat. His words only added fuel to the fire and Ruki lifts his fist up and was about to make contact with his face when someone grabbed his arm.

He whips his head around, ready to hit the person for stopping him. But the person who was holding his arm was Vera. She looks at him and says in English, “Stop!” even Ruki could understand her and he never even paid attention to English class.

He grits his teeth and yanks his arm out of her hold. The sudden movement almost caused her to fall on her but she managed to stay on her feet. She looks at him with wide eyes and was about to say something but Ms. Sato’s voice cuts in. “STOP!” she yelled and starts making her way to them at the speed of light. She grabs Ruki by the ear and pushes him into his seat. “You” she pointed to him, “stay there!” then she looked at Daisu- Daichi, “and you have no right to be saying that to your fellow classmate!”

“But  ” he begins.

“But nothing!” she yelled shutting him up. “You also don’t have the right to demand for a partner change.” She looks up at the whole class, “this class is a dictatorship and I’m the dictator! I am the law, whatever I say goes.” she looks back down at Daichi. “Do you understand now?” he gulps and nods. She smiles “good” then she gently slaps him once.

Now she looks at Vera, who was already seated in her seat. “Thank you for the help.” She says kindly to her and goes back to the classroom. “Ok now that everyone knows who your partner is we can start discussing the project.”

“Why did you stop me?!” Ruki hissed the words at Vera.

She looks at him and whispers back, “because you could have been kicked out of school and I need you.”

His brows go up and leans back, “you need me?” he smiles, “I’m flattered, but I already have a girlfriend.”

She frowns her eyebrows and shakes her head, “no you idiot! I’m not going to do this ridiculously hard project alone.”

If it was someone else saying that to him, he would have punched them… why didn’t he do that to her? Was it because she’s a girl? He nods to himself, ‘yeah that has to be it.’

“You’re lucky Ms. S is here or I would have hit you for calling me an idiot.” He lied.

She pulls out a book and says, “Whatever idiot.”

He chuckles and looks out the window.