“The classroom was this way.”
“No, idiot, he went this way when he showed it to us.”
“You have a horrible sense of direction, how would you know?” Elias demanded.
I swept a strand of my hair away from my face and shot him a dirty look. Elias simply rolled his eyes in response, hiking my bag a bit higher on his shoulder. Despite my insisting that I could carry it myself, he refused to as much as let me pick it up out of the car. I couldn’t see what was so difficult about allowing me to carry my own things.
“Because I can understand Japanese,” I informed Elias sourly, dismissing the problem of my bag for now.
He snorted, turning his eyes away from me and studying the classroom signs. Eventually, he hiked his bag higher on his other shoulder and set off down the hall.
“Where’re you going?”
I followed him, not bothering to hide the frustration I felt. He shot a cheeky smile over his shoulder at me, hardly the picture of a devoted bodyguard.
“The right way.”
I barely held myself back from cursing at him, instead settling for narrowing my eyes dangerously.
“This is not the ri-” I began, then cut off as he came to a stop and shot me a smug smile. “...oh.”
My eyes studied the sign hanging next to the classroom door. As annoying as it was, the sign read ‘2-A’, the classroom we’d been looking for. Elias’s smug look became expectant and I sighed.
“Fine, I’ll admit that you have a better sense of direction,” I grumbled, pausing as something occurred to me. “Wait, we were this close to the classroom the entire time?”
Elias grinned.
“Yup. I just really enjoyed watching your fru-”
I slammed my fist into his arm as I walked by.
“Go die.”
I didn’t wait to see his reaction as I slid open the door to step in. In my haste, I ended up bumping into someone and stumbling backwards. Despite my annoyance with him, Elias quickly steadied me from behind so that I wouldn’t fall. Pulling on the little patience that I had, I opened my mouth to apologize and turned my attention up towards whomever I’d bumped into. With his expression twisted into that impossible to read look he’d worn many times when I’d met him last was Kyoya. A second later he offered a -which I dubbed most likely fake- bright, apologetic smile.
“Cande-hime, are you alright?”
My annoyance disappearing immediately, I laughed under my breath.
“Just Cande, or Cande-chan if you must,” I corrected him. “And I’m fine, I had an idiot to break my fall.”
Elias must have picked up on the insult because he shoved me forward in retaliation. Since I’d been leaning back on him, it sent me stumbling into Kyoya instead. Unperturbed, Kyoya simply steadied me with what could have possibly been amusement flickering across his face.
“In my own experience,” he commented lightly as he took step backwards to clear the doorway. “Idiots don’t like being referred to as idiots. It seems to damage what little pride they have.”
I laughed, moving into the classroom as I did.
“That’s true. I’ll have to refrain from using words he recognizes when insulting him,” I replied.
“A wise plan,” Kyoya agreed. “I would suggest using complicated words. My own blonde idiot has difficulty understanding those sometimes.”
I nodded, glancing over my shoulder at where Elias was still standing in the hallway.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I informed Kyoya, then switched into Spanish. “Well, are you coming or not, Elias? Only an idiot would be late because he’s irritated.”
Elias narrowed his eyes slightly, then laughed, giving a shake of his head as his irritated expression disappeared. I felt a bit of annoyance flash through me at that. How someone could be as easygoing as him, I wasn’t certain. As I considered this, Elias stepped through, beaming at Kyoya.
“Hello, Ootori-san,” he greeted, using his limited Japanese vocabulary. “Thank-you for the… school.”
Kyoya adjusted his glasses, I have a feeling he was simply hiding his amusement at the blunder.
“I believe he means thank-you for the tour,” I guessed. “You were going somewhere, weren’t you? Don’t let us hold you up.”
Realization crossed his expression and he gave a small dip of his head in acknowledgement of the reminder. A second later he’d passed by me to the door and paused, glancing back at where we stood.
“I was just going to check on a last minute order for the Host club,” he informed me. “We’re having a special event after school, you should come.”
“I’ll think about it.”
He nodded, then slid the door shut behind him. I turned my attention to the classroom as a whole, scanning the room with my eyes. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t recognize anyone from my tour.
“Shall we get this over with?” I muttered quietly to Elias.
He nodded, his lips still twisted into that amused, easy-going smile of his.
“Of course,” he replied. “The sooner we start, the sooner we’re done. You sure packed the day full of things to do.”
I shot him an irritated look, then quickly erased it when I remembered that whatever I did from this moment forward would establish my standing in this school. Sure, I could get by on my step-father’s name alone, but where was the fun in that?
“Not that many things,” I informed him.
At the same time, I spotted where the teacher sat near the front of the classroom. Gesturing for Elias to follow me, I skirted around the desks and started the annoying trek to the front. Conversations around the room hushed as they spotted the strange, out-of-place duo we made.
“Not that many?” Elias echoed with a snort. “Please. Just this morning alone, we had to rearrange your closet because, and I quote ‘if the items weren’t arranged by color by the end of the day, you were going to go insane’. Then you decided that we had to serve ourselves breakfast, because the cooks haven’t gotten used to your tastes yet and you didn’t want to bother them. Strange, considering you spent all of yesterday evening debating with them, surprisingly they were rather good natured about it all, over the health benefits of using some sort of seasoning versus another. Then, of course, we had to get here early so we could explore the school on our own and get lost before class-”
Hello,” I greeted once we’d reached the front, cutting into Elias’s rant. “You can probably guess who we are… but I’m Castro Candelaria, Cande for short, and he’s Mendoza Elias. We’re the transfer students.”
Startled, the teacher dropped her papers she’d been organizing and adjusted her glasses, peering at us with unconcealed curiosity.
“Yes, yes, I remember! How nice, how very, very nice. Hm… let’s see. We start with… oh yes, an introduction! That’s right.”
Jumping to her feet, she quickly stepped around her desk and placed her hands on my shoulders. Surprised, I could only stare at her as she quickly spun me around to face the class and manhandled me into the exact position she wanted me in.
“There, there, that’s perfect.”
I shot a questioning look to Elias who seemed to be trying not to snicker and draw attention to himself. The effort proved needless when she quickly moved back so she could steer him by his shoulders into a position only about an inch to my left. She then lightly tapped him on the small of the back and gave him a disapproving look.
“Stand straight!” she chastised. “Young men should never slump! It’s unbecoming!”
He gave me a panicked expression and I laughed, translating for him. Instantly, he corrected his posture perfectly and shot the teacher an apologetic smile.
“Elias would like you to excuse him, Sensei. He’s quite sorry.”
She blinked, then offered him a bright smile, reaching up to pat the top of his head.
“Nice boy,” she praised, causing a giggle to bubble from my lips as she clapped her hands together and moved around so that she was standing to my right. “Now then, Ootori-san should be back in just a moment, then we can begin the introduction. He had to step out to deal with some business, such a nice boy.”
Reminded of his parting words, I focused on Elias for a moment.
“I think I want to stop by their club after school,” I informed him.
He gave me a disbelieving expression.
“We’re too busy!” he retorted.
“How?”
“I swear, if I didn’t memorize your schedule, you’d be lost,” he grumbled.
I shrugged in response, dismissing the idea. I didn’t bother to memorize it only because I knew that he would. Why keep track of such useless things when I could memorize more important matters that he wouldn’t bother with?
“First of all, you have that meeting with the college after school. They want you to receive a tour of campus since your classes were verified yesterday morning. Then, you have a dinner with Senor Nakamora and Azami, to discuss family matters. I’ll be busy elsewhere. After that, you wanted to spend the night reviewing materials from both our classes and the books you’ll receive for your college courses. Where in that could you afford to stop by the club?”
I blinked, then considered the idea for a moment before nodding decisively.
“The college tour is an hour after the end of classes,” I announced. “And the campus is connected to this one, we could easily spend a half-hour at the club before having to leave.”
He frowned, and opened his mouth to speak, but then the sliding door pulled open once again as Kyoya slipped back into the classroom. Pleased, Sensei clapped her hands once again to draw attention up to her, before offering everyone a bright smile. I took this moment to study her a bit closer, realizing perhaps a closer look at her could give some indication towards the reasoning behind her… interesting personality she’d displayed so far.
Her black hair was messily held back in a loose ponytail bunched on the side of her head, charcoal curls hanging freely despite the tie. Her eyes were a light, brown, almost amber shade, and concealed behind partially framed glasses, the kind where the metal edged the bottom half, but the top half was purely glass, or at least at this distance that’s how it seemed to be. Perhaps there was something holding the lenses in place. As for her age, I would have placed her somewhere in her late twenties, early thirties at most. Although perhaps the slightly absentminded look her appearance gave her just made her seem younger, I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that my guess on her age was a bit off.
“Class, remember me mentioning we’d be receiving a couple of new transfers? Well, here the-”
“Sorry! Sorry, I’m late!”
The door burst open and a certain blonde appeared in the doorway, his violet eyes wide and apologetic.
“Souh-san,” the teacher greeted with a sigh. “Please, just take your seat.”
He paused in the doorway, eyes scanning the room and settling on us for a moment, before quickly moving into an empty seat near Kyoya, who seemed anything but amused.
“As I was saying, these two are transfers all the way from Madrid. Castro Candelaria-chan and Mendoza Elias-san.”
At my side, Elias made a face when he caught onto the fact that his honorific was ‘-san’ in comparison to my ‘-chan’.
“Do the proper thing and welcome them without any big fuss. Oh, I suppose that I’m supposed to give you the chance to ask questions. Well, get on with it, we have a lot to cover today!”
Following her announcement, I ended up answering a few, easy questions and dodging the more personal matter of why I’d suddenly moved. Eventually, the teacher declared questions over and ushered us to pick our seats, which ended up being in the front of the room, apparently people preferred putting some distance between them and the teacher. I couldn’t really blame them.
________________________
“What is this?”
Ignoring Elias, I stared around the club room with surprise, taking in everything I could. Girls were everywhere, fawning over whichever boy they found the most interesting. The boys were dressed extravagantly in what I had to assume we're pirate costumes. Or perhaps half-dressed would be a better description for a few of them. We’d only been studying them a moment when Kyoya spotted us and excused himself from his gaggle of girls.
“Cande-hime, Mendoza-san,” he greeted. “So you came.”
I nodded.
“It sounded in-”
“Cande-chan, Cande-chan!” a younger, childish voice interrupted. “You’re here!”
Surprised, I turned to see the small kid we’d met during our tour of the school. Like the rest of the hosts, he was was accompanied by two girls. One of which I recognized, the brunette we’d also come across during the tour. Nao glanced in our direction, alerted by Honey’s greeting, and offered a faint smile. I was surprised- it was far from the expression she’d been wearing the last time we’d met.
“If you’d like,” Kyoya commented, drawing my attention back to him. “You could join them for now. I doubt that Nao-senpai or Chie-senpai would mind the addition of another person.”
Surprised, I glanced at Elias whose gaze was averted elsewhere. Intrigued, I followed it to discover him staring at the two twins fawning over each other on the couch.
“Are they…” he began, eyes wide.
Kyoya’s lips twisted up in amusement.
“If you want, I’m sure you could join their group,” he commented offhandedly. “The twins informed me they know some Spanish and they did have a girl drop from their schedule today.”
When I translated for Elias, he snapped his attention away and gave a firm shake of his head.
“No, no, I’m fine,” he grumbled.
Amused, I focused on the offer Kyoya had given me before.
“If you don’t mind,” I replied with a grateful smile. “I’d love to join them. All of this looks… interesting and I don’t have very much time to experience it, so that’s probably the best option.”
“Interesting is one word for it,” Kyoya agreed, jotting something down in the notebook I’d only now noticed he’d held. “Alright, follow me, then.”
Within a moment he’d navigated around the giggling girls and came to a stop next to Honey’s table. The girl next to Nao studied us with bright, curious eyes as the older boy, the one who’d been declared to be dating Nao, glanced over us with what could only be described as an emotionless expression.
“Nao-senpai, if you don’t mind, Cande-hime would like to join you to get a feel for the club,” he commented.
She rolled her eyes, although there didn’t seem to be any malice behind the gesture. If I had to guess, it was more in response to Kyoya’s polite request. If her reaction to his behavior during the tour was any indication, she didn’t seem to have the highest opinion of him.
“I don’t mind at all, Kyo-kun,” she replied, her tone becoming very close to mocking.
Kyoya pursed his lips, glancing towards the taller boy, Mori.
“Oh, and the twins wanted to know when they’re allowed to spread rumors,” he replied, his tone just as polite as hers was sickly sweet. “They’re rather bored.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“Ever the polite friend, aren’t we, Kyo-kun.”
“Kyo-kun?” I questioned, unable to help myself.
Kyoya stiffened and Nao offered a smug grin.
“Oh, it’s his nickname. Feel free to use it.”
“...I see.”
It would seem that the first group of people I’d come to know at this school wouldn’t be boring.
“Thanks for letting me join you…”