It's here

Both of the students were promptly dismissed. During the short walk out of the faculty room, Benjiro's muscles were tensing, making his movements stiff and almost robotic. As soon as the door was closed, he spun a random direction and walked as fast as he could without breaking into a full run. He froze when he felt a strong pair of hands turning him around. Spinning around he came face to face with the soccer player.

Last time, he had been too scared to think much about who he was being confronted by, but up close he'd call her 'not half bad', if his fight-or-flight response wasn't firing off like a machine gun. She had the legs of a soccer player, long, toned and scary in a pair of cleats. Her upper body wasn't as toned, but showed signs of regular exercise. The face wasn't bad looking, but such a piercing gaze, 'pretty' wasn't the first adjective that came to mind.

Suddenly remembering their last meeting, Benjiro covered his midriff.

"Relax, dumbass. Do you think I'd pull something right outside the faculty lounge?" She said in a muted tone

He slightly relaxed, but he kept his hands raised. There was something in her eyes that made him unable to look away. Like staring into the eyes of a cobra, one wrong move and game over.

Daitan pulled him closer, "Listen here, you creep. The only reason I'm agreeing to this is because I need to get back to the soccer team."

Benjiro pressed his lips together and glanced to the side, 'Well, only for about a month. Then you'll have a teacher you can threaten.'

"And, yes I know that this is only for about a month."

Benjiro's wide eyes shot back to her, 'Did she hear me just now?'

"But, the sooner I can get my grades up, the sooner I can do that", she explained threateningly, "But, I don't feel like having a Gollum lookalike, such as you teach me, so here's the deal: We'll get together every day, to avoid suspicion. But while we're together, you won't talk to me, you won't even look at me."

Benjiro swallowed hard, "Th-that s-seems a b-bit excessiv-ve."

Daitan tightened her hold on his shoulders, "Contrary to what you may be thinking, I'm not stupid and I can do my own studying. So, how does that sound? I learn what I have to, we both walk away with a reward of some kind and we don't interact the entire time?"

The only part of her sentences that sounded like a request was her upward inflection. Most of him was scared, but part of him just felt angry. He remained silent, realizing that he didn't hold any physical advantage, but he refused to show himself as weak. The lanky boy didn't know where this burst of pseudo-courage was coming from, but it felt reassuring.

"Well, are you going to say something or are you just going to stand there like a retarded scarecrow?" Daitan defamed

That brief feeling was gone, replaced by a knife's twist. Lightly shoving him away, she turned her back to the boy, "I have to go explain the situation to my team captain. We'll start tomorrow. Meet me in the library and we'll sit down for about two hours. Any longer than that and I'll probably start to catch your spinelessness."

With the next month's plan dictated to him, Benjiro leaned against a pillar, massaging his shoulders. His face was burning, his hands were twitching and his stomach felt like he had swallowed something boiling. Much like their first meeting, once she was out of his line of vision, Benjiro raised his hand up and folded all but one finger back in an ugly hand gesture, 'Wench!' he silently bellowed.

Taking a few some deep breaths, he waited a moment until he was certain the menace was down at the fields. Trudging off down the sidewalk to his own house, those familiar black thoughts crept their way into his consciousness. Whenever those thoughts arrived, since he had no company to spread misery with, he instead played out a few twisted fantasies in his imagination. In his last school, the other kids liked him well enough, but whenever he told them what he was thinking about, it wasn't uncommon for them to tell him that they wouldn't be surprised if he turned out to be a serial killer.

When he was finished pretending to be an unhinged psycho, he began weighing his options once more.

'Honestly if I were you, I'd probably just fold right now', A disembodied voice suggested.

'Inei! Will you quit popping out every time I'm deep in thought?!' Benjiro scolded.

The painted-face boy raised his hands in the air, 'Sorry, but in all honesty, if I were you, which in a way, I am, backing out of this is what I'd do.'

Benjiro looked down and exhaled through his nose, 'That would be the smart thing to do, wouldn't it?'

'Uh oh, I know that tone, you're actually considering this aren't you?' Inei warned.

'She's aggressive-'

'Which is why I'm saying you should avoid this girl', Inei interrupted, 'Haven't we both had enough of women that get violent any time something mildly inconvenient happens?'

With that thought Benjiro could feel a tingling on his chest and back.

'Yeah, but at the same time, she seems to be willing to stay away from us, if we don't bother her.' Benjiro observed.

Inei sighed and pinched his nose, 'That's not an excuse to potentially put yourself in harms way. You didn't even do anything that could be considered suspicious this time around. And you couldn't even get a word in edgewise.'

'If we just sit there and let her do her own thing, she won't bother with us, she gets herself a new tutor and we get ourselves a pick me up on our permanent record.'

'What about the drama club? You haven't even started coming up with the faces and hands of the Frankensteins yet. Or what about the poetry competition? You haven't written a word for that either. And don't forget that Hiromi, as wrong as she is about metal being simple and boring, is dead serious about winning it.'

'Seriously though! Doesn't she realize just how melodic and deep the genre can be? Once you get past how scary it appears, it's actually really good.'

'You're getting off topic there, kiddo.' The King Bee lookalike pointed out.

'Sorry, but don't worry, it'll work out somehow', the mop-headed teen reassured, 'The Frankenstein faces won't be needed until the school festival which isn't until spring. The poetry contest entry isn't until a week or two from now.'

'Your point being?' Inei said with crossed arms.

'The point being, this could be a great time to catch up on tasks A and B while just letting task C work itself out.'

Inei drummed his fingers for a moment, 'What your saying does make sense, but I still don't like this.'

'It's not like things were exactly peachy in the drama club. That Fujibayashi wench seems to think that since we prefer not to express ourselves through words, that we must be too stupid to understand human speech. And Higaki most likely won't be too upset that she doesn't have to go out of her way to wake us up in the morning.'

Inei pursed his lips and pointed at his companion, 'That is a good point. But it wasn't all bad. That guy, Kyo seemed to be willing to talk to us. And, don't forget, Higaki seemed a little less prickly the last few times we spoke.'

'And she also punched us really hard in the arm.' Benjiro recalled

'Yeah, punching her did seem like a nice idea at the time, but we probably said something we shouldn't have again.' Inei shrugged

Benjiro had been conversing with his alter ego so long that he almost didn't notice he was in front of his house.

"Oh, car's out front, Dad's home tonight." He paused to sniff the air, "And by the smell of it, we're having salmon tonight."