I swung out of the escalade, narrowly avoiding another couple walking past. I caught myself on the door and apologized with an embarrassed smile, surprised at the sheer number of parents and students milling around the grounds. 
    "Do you see them?" Kris asked, his arm gliding easily around my waist while my shoulder slid into the curve of his side. I frowned, looking around and walking through the front gates of the school. 
    "We should go towards the English room." I said, weaving carefully through other people towards the grass in the middle of the quad. Kris hummed agreeably next to me and I stood up straighter when I saw Ryu sitting several hundred meters away with Snake standing next to him.     "There!" I said, tugging Kris over happily. Snake looked up when he heard us, smiling softly and squeezing Ryu's shoulder. 
    "He's a bit nervous. The teacher told him to go over his poem again, but he'll be able to take the paper up with him." Snake said, his voice carefully calm as Ryu didn't even acknowledge Kris and I. 
    "You'll do fine, kid." Kris said, ruffling Ryu's hair with a gentle smile and sitting down next to him. Ryu only gave a distracted grunt and kept reading, his fingers flexing and wrinkling the paper. 
    "He's in total shut-down mode." Snake said with a bemused smile, looking at Ryu and draping his arm gently across the younger boy's shoulders. 
    "Ryu? Ryu, sweetie, are you alright?" I asked, bending down to look at his face. Ryu slowly raised his head, his face pale and his eyes wide. The paper was creased and trembling in his fingers, lined and frayed by constant folding and unfolding. 
    Ryu nodded silently, bending back over the words and reading them soundlessly. I sighed, ruffling his hair and looking around. More families were standing around chatting or wandering through the different classrooms, and a girl around Ryu's age caught my eye. She saw me looking and waved, her gaze dropping down to Ryu and a smile spreading across her face when she came bounding closer. 
    "Hey, Ryu! Nervous?" she smiled, revealing navy blue braces. She wasn't very tall, five feet at most, and her hair hung long and curling to her shoulder blades. 
    "Hey, Feighton. Do you have to read your poem, too?" Ryu asked, a nervous waver on the end of his words. He looked like he was going to sweat through his shirt, his knees bouncing rapidly when he tapped his foot. 
    "Yeah. I'm in the band, too, remember?" Feighton rested a reassuring hand on his shoulder, looking over at Kris and I. "Hey, I'm Feighton. Nice to meet you."
    While Kris and I introduced ourselves, Snake forcibly took the paper from Ryu and then pressed caring kisses to his face to distract him. 
    "Oh, looks like it's time for the reading to start. Good luck, Ryu!" Feighton grinned, shoving his shoulder good-naturedly and bounding towards the English room.  
    "Come on. Let's go." Snake said, helping Ryu up gently by his elbow and guiding him towards the English room. 
    Ryu lined up with Feighton and several other students at the front of the room, Snake sitting in the desks with me and the rest of the parents. Ms. Keller was at her desk, waiting patiently for all the parents and visitors to arrive before greeting us. 
    We were halfway through the students reading poetry when it was Feighton's turn. She sat gracefully on the stool at the front of the room, beginning to read after sweeping a wayward curl of hair behind her ear. 
    All of a sudden a very familiar ringing sound broke the silence. I closed my eyes briefly in despair, turning around to find Kris frantically pressing all the buttons on his phone he could find. The entire room fell silent, turning to stare disapprovingly at him, promoting a brief sheepish smile from Kris before he ducked back down to continue messing with his phone. 
    I reached out my hand to help him but Kris pulled away, giving me a stubborn look and stabbing at the screen with an insane amount of force. I sighed, sharing an apologetic look with Ryu, who looked torn between laughing or dying. Snake was shaking with silent laugher next to me, his palm pressed across his mouth and his eyes dancing with mirth. 
    "Mr. Wu, if you would just step outside—" Ms. Keller started, standing up and gesturing gracefully towards the door with the clink of bangles. 
    "No, no, I got it." Kris said, attempting to decline the call with heroic determination. I sighed and dropped my head into my arms, praying whoever was calling would just give up and go away. 
    There were about thirty more seconds of mortification until Kris shamefully handed the phone to me under the desk. I silenced it quickly and slid it into my back pocket, standing to make an apologetic bow before remembering people didn't do that in America, and then dropped back down in my seat. 
    "Please, Feighton, continue." Ms. Keller smiled, giving an encouraging look to the laughing girl before sitting back down. 
    Feighton continued and the parents gradually swiveled back around to the front of the room, averting their scathing glares. I clapped quietly when Annabelle was done, sitting up a little straighter when Ryu timidly walked up to the stool. 
    He introduced himself, bowed out of nervousness like I had done just a few moments earlier, then looked down at the stool. It was, I'll admit, a ridiculously tall stool and came up past his hips, preventing him from just sitting down comfortably. 
    Ryu gave a little awkward hop, one hand holding his paper and the other braced on the stool, and sat down. Unfortunately, he had miscalculated the amount of force he would need and completely unbalanced himself backwards, flailing backwards with a bird-like squawk and almost crashing to the ground. 
    "Ryu!" I exclaimed, my eyes wide as I watched him careen towards the floor. Feighton lunged forward, one hand grabbing the stool and the other wrapping under Ryu's arms, easing him onto the floor and pulling the stool away before it could land on him. 
    "Careful!" Kris exclaimed, half-standing up and beginning to rush forward. Feighton pulled Ryu easily to his feet and dusted him off, righting the stool and smiling. 
    "Easy. Try again." Feighton grinned, holding the stool steady while Ryu sat slowly. He cleared his throat, introduced himself, then started reading. 
    Thank god his poem was short. That's all I'm going to say about how incredibly nervous that poor boy was. When he finally got to hop down form the stool and scurry back behind Feighton, everyone clapped and Snake whistled loudly, giving a cheeky smirk and wink to the parents who turned around with more disapproving looks. 
    When the rest of the students were done reading, Ryu came to the back of the classroom to lean happily into Snake's side. 
    "I am so sorry about my phone—" Kris started sheepishly, giving Ryu a shy smile. Ryu waved his hand with a relieved look, grinning. 
    "Don't worry about it. I finished!" Ryu said, sighing deeply and smiling. Snake wrapped an arm around around Ryu's waist, kissing his forehead. 
    "We're so proud of you, great job!" I smiled, messing up his hair and chuckling when he made a face and struggled to smooth it down again. 
    "You did wonderful, baby." Snake grinned, flashing white teeth as he nuzzled into the hollow of Ryu's jaw. 
    "Do you want to check out any other rooms?" Kris asked, sliding his hand into my back pocket easily. 
    "Yeah, let's go check out the science room. There are some cool experiments." Ryu said, grabbing my free hand in his and pulling Snake and me after him, Kris following through his connection to me. 
    There were tons of people in the science room, milling around and inspecting all the different displays. There was one model based off a Rube Goldberg exhibition, with a bunch of dominoes leading to a marble that would set off the rest of the model. I walked around it carefully, turning to look at the frog sitting in a tank on one of the tables. 
    I leaned forward to inspect it, looking at the other fish swimming around in a tank next to it. A lizard caught my eye next and Kris walked off to the other side of the room, Snake and Ryu following. I turned to join them, straightening up slowly.  
    My left foot skidded forward and I heard a brief clank, followed by many more. I looked down, my eyes widened as I realized, holy hell now I've down it. The dominoes set up for the Rube Goldberg demonstration had been activated by my foot and were now rapidly falling, getting closer and closer to tripping the rest of the display. 
    Frantically, I started kicking at them as subtly as I could, trying to knock enough over to stop the flow. While I was kicking I could hear Kris calling for me from somewhere on the other side of the room, sounding absolutely lost. I looked up to find Ryu staring me dead in the face while I continued kicking, giving me a look that said 'my legal guardians are insane and I'm disowning them' before promptly walking out the door and into the quad. 
    I sent my foot sweeping over the dominoes in a last ditch