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10: What's Wrong?

"Len?" Gakupo snorted. "He's boring. You should hang out with me."

"Well, Len needs me," I answered. "We need to talk about something."

"Oh, he 'needs' you, now, does he?" Gakupo mumbled.. He bore his gaze into mine and it made me feel very uncomfortable. "Well, beautiful, I need you more."

"Ugh," I cringed. Suddenly, I felt his fingers touch my waist. I screamed at him. "You creep!"

He laughed. "You're so much fun to tease. Go ahead, do whatever you want with Len. We'll play some other day."

"Right," I exhaled. "Some other day."

"Oh, and don't mind my touching, please," he chuckled lowly. "I'm still going for Luka."

"You should," I said. "But you seem to have recovered from her rejection already."

He shrugged. "Sort of? I expected her to say no. Just wanted to try it. Do you know how perfect we look?"

I nodded. "Yeah, your purples and her pinks, for one," I said. Gakupo sighed and put his head down on his desk.

"Another day without her," he sighed melodramatically. "And another day closer...to asking her out once again!"

That guy sure was persistent.

At lunch, I didn't head directly outside. Neru and Teto were at my locker and they had dragged me down to our usual place, because they thought Kaito would pass by to call me out to play with them. I didn't get a chance to tell them that that wasn't going to happen, but it was fine because I wanted to talk to Miku, anyway.

"You have to take pictures," Teto said as we walked into the classroom where we always sat for lunch. "Hot pictures."

"Okay?" I blinked a couple of times. We took our seats. "Look, you guys, I'm not..."

"Gumi!"

"Huh?" I turned to face the doorway. Neru and Teto squealed.

"Still nice to look at," Miku mumbled, laughing softly. She was sitting right beside me. We were all looking at Kaito.

"Hey," I said, trying to keep it cool. I didn't want to stutter in front of him anymore but it was hard to meet his beautiful cobalt eyes. "How are you, K-Kaito?"

"I'm...," he looked away. "Not too great...just wanted to tell you that we're not playing today."

"Huh?" I frowned. Len and I weren't playing, for sure, but I didn't know that the game had been called off entirely.

"Yeah, I'm not playing," Kaito explained, shrugging. The way his bangs fell over his eyes as he looked down at the ground made my head spin. I didn't know when my feelings towards him had become so intense. "They decided to just call it all off."

"Oh...," I nodded slowly. "S-Say, have you seen Len? He said we'd meet outside but I'm just wondering..."

Kaito shook his head. I felt Neru grab my wrists and I pulled away from her grip, shooting her an extremely dirty look that I never knew I could offer.

"Stop," I hissed. "Okay? I'm just talking."

Teto whimpered. I felt a little bad for behaving that way but these girls sometimes took it too far. It was true, I liked Kaito. I was pretty sure I did. They didn't need to know that, not yet, anyway.

"I'm going to walk around," Kaito said. That was when my heart began pounding like a drum. "Do you want to come? Maybe we'll see him. If nothing else, I'll drop you off outside."