Title: Crawford no imouto

Author: Chisha

Category: Angst/romance… Since when did the category change? Oh well, there's still a little humor in it as well.

Warnings: Original character inserted for the fun of it. :) Also swearing and violence in later chapters.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters, except for Emily. Now I wish I owned a few of the others, but that doesn't change the fact that I don't. Damn.

Author's Note: Switching POV's again, as usual.

Chapter 4 - Of Mondays, Tests and Dates

I loathed Monday mornings. Not because school had to start again, but because I often had to do so much in the weekends that I would usually fall asleep on Sunday evening, to be woken up the next morning by Aya-kun… about to be late for school.
The same went for this morning. I knew I should have slept more, and the teacher wasn't helping. He was seriously hypnotizing me to fall asleep so he could send me out, I swear. I knew what he'd say. "No sleeping in class, Tsukiyono!" Psh.
I saw Saito sleeping on his desk as usual, but he had a tall guy in front of him, so he always got away with it. But I wasn't planning to sleep. I could sleep when I got back home. I was sure Aya-kun would let me.

I awoke from my attempts not to be bored or fall asleep when the door opened and the principal came in. A girl followed him. She looked very posh, her hair up in a loose bun, thin-rimmed glasses on her delicate nose, her school uniform without a single spot or crease. Her hair was dark blue, well-groomed and shiny as in a shampoo commercial. At first glance I thought her to be a little artificial, but then I noticed how natural her movements were - she followed the principal to where the sensei was scribbling on the blackboard, almost with the agility of a large cat, maybe a tiger.

The sensei stopped scribbling and turned to see who had come in, then slightly raised his eyebrows. I hated it when he did that - he was usually annoyed when she did it, this time obviously about someone interrupting his oh-so-interesting and skilled teaching.

'Something wrong, sir?' he asked softly, but I had developed good hearing due to my nighttime job, and I wasn't that far back in the class. I tried to overhear what they were saying, but the principal wasn't speaking very loudly either and there was some shifting in chairs all around me. Apparently I wasn't the only curious person in class.

Finally, the principal turned, greeted the sensei and left the classroom, leaving the girl behind. Nervous, excited whispers started filling the room as especially the girls started to giggle and discuss what was happening.

The sensei slammed his ruler onto his desk, shocking the class and calming them down at the same time. The whispering ceased abruptly.

'Class, apparently we have a student from abroad in our class as of today. I want you all to welcome her, and since she's American, help her with the language if she doesn't understand something, alright?!' he half shouted to get the point across.

The class simply nodded and more giggling erupted all around me, and I saw someone nudge Saito with his elbow. The lazy guy woke up, at least sort of, glanced at the girl and then rested his head on his forearms again.

'Well, Emily, please pick a seat, there should be some left,' the sensei encouraged the girl.

I glanced to the empty seat beside me and knew she was going to pick that one as she was already walking into my general direction. Some of the girls giggled as she walked by, softly whispering to each other and pointing occasionally.

'Is it okay for me to sit down here?' she asked in Japanese tinged with an accent that seemed heavier than most foreigners I'd met.

That means she has arrived only recently. Wasn't there another girl in the shop with an accent like that?

I nodded and made some space by shoving all the scattered notebooks back onto my own desk. 'Go ahead,' I added to the gesture, as friendly as possible. I always tried to look at people without prejudice, even if they were foreign, and even if they looked slightly posh, like Emily did.

She gave me a mysterious looking smile that scared me only slightly before she sat down, placing her bag next to the table, without making a single sound. That kind of surprised me. She did not seem to notice that the rest of the class were staring at her in awe.

'Maybe she's rich,' I heard Miko*, one of the girls, whisper somewhere behind me.

'Hai, she sure acts like a rich girl,' her friend added.

Emily suddenly turned around and looked Miko's friend straight in the eye. I had to hand it to her; she had courage. If she wanted to acquire some status within this class, she'd better not stand up to the more popular girls, like Miko and her friends. That was something you just could not do as a girl in my class.

Miko's friend gave her a shocked look back.

'That's probably because I consider myself a rich girl,' Emily said in a low, soft voice. It sounded kind of eerie to me. What kind of girl was this?

One that bites, and you have to agree with her. Popular girls can be stingy to new kids, especially if they're foreign, Omi, remember that.

After a moment of silence, Emily faced the blackboard again and got out her books. She glanced to my side and smiled.

'What's your name?' she whispered.

'Omi,' I whispered back. 'Nice to meet you, I guess, ne?'

A soft chuckle before she nodded, 'Nice to meet you too. Do you mind helping me with the parts of the kanji I don't understand?'

I nodded back and smiled. She was just a normal foreigner that needed help reading "our weird scribbles".

***

I went home thinking on today, barely paying attention to my surroundings. Emily had needed enough help on the kanji, but she said she was taking classes to learn to read our alphabet, so I wouldn't have to help her for long.

Not that I had actually disliked helping her much. Sure, I would have to spend just a little longer on my homework tonight, but she was nice and polite whenever she asked me something.

She also reminded me a bit of Ouka. Emily had the same hint of arrogance and even the same hair color as Ouka, and wore the same expensive perfume. That meant she was right about being a rich girl, or had a rich boyfriend or father. And Ouka also felt like defending herself against people with sharp remarks, like Emily.
But on the other hand, Emily didn't resemble Ouka at all. Just on those four things. The rest of Emily was really… refreshing. She was very straight-forward and she knew how to figure things out using logic that sounded simple but was quite complicated. For some odd reason, she never seemed surprised, as if she had known what was going on all the time, but faked surprise sometimes in order to satisfy people. It was a little mysterious.

'Yo, Omi!' Ken was waving his hand in front of my face and I was pulled back to the present. 'What's up with you? Had a bad day in school?'

I smiled at him and he smiled back. 'Iie, not at all! There's this new girl in my class. I was thinking it's the one that stopped by on Saturday, remember her?'

Ken tried to remember, but shook his head, 'Not really. So many girls come by on Saturdays that I tend to lose track of them.'

I chuckled. Ken's head was one big void full of chaos and soccer balls; he always forgot stuff.
Yohji came in carrying a flower pot - apparently Aya-kun had gotten him to finally do something for his money - and overheard us talking. He cast a big grin at me before dropping the heavy plant.

This noise caused Aya to rush in immediately and start telling Yohji off. It always surprised me how Yohji sometimes actually listened to him, even though Yohji was the older one.

'That one was expensive,' Aya muttered to Yohji. 'Clean it up and see if you can save it. Hello, Omi.'

'Hiya Aya-kun!' I beamed at him, trying not to laugh at Yohji's blunder. 'Do you remember the rich-looking girl that came in late Saturday afternoon?' One of them had to remember her, if only for my childish satisfaction.

Aya looked at me for a moment as he kept motioning Yohji to hurry up with the cleaning. 'Oh. Her.'

My satisfaction wasn't big because he sounded a little grumpy about it.

'Well, she's in my class,' I said, trying to get him to be a little nicer about it. 'What's wrong with that, Aya?' Yohji muttered from somewhere below. I heard clattering from the shards of the pot that he was cleaning up. A small bell sounded and Ken rushed to the front of the shop to help the customers that had just come in.

'I don't trust her,' Aya stated simply.

'I know, she seems a little artificial at first glance,' I agreed. 'But she's nice, I guess. At least she knows how to smile.' I couldn't resist sticking out my tongue at him.

'Don't let yourself be blinded by people's smiles, Omi,' the redhead mysteriously warned me before he went to the front as well to water the plants outside. I wondered what he meant by that, but I shrugged and went downstairs to the basement room to try and do some of my homework before it was my shift.

***

The rest of the week was uneventful, until on Wednesday when the sensei gave us work to study for an unexpected test, on Friday. Now that would not have been a problem, if it wasn't biology, and if Emily actually had been in our class for longer than half a week.

Which was the reason she came rushing to me, brow furrowed from frustration.

'How am I going to do this test without help?' she blurted out.

I chuckled, 'So you heard too?'

Emily nodded and adjusted her glasses, glaring through them fiercely before poking my chest with her finger, forcefully. 'Yes. And I need you to help me. You are the genius of this class, after all, aren't you?'
I stared at her finger on my chest and she removed it, giggling. 'Gomen ne.'

'That's okay. So you want me to help you study for Friday?'

A short nod and a dark look before she smiled again. 'My brother is going to kill me if the first grade I get is a bad one.'

How straight-forward she was. Definitely type Ouka, I mused. 'Well, when do you have time?'

'This afternoon if you like. Will one afternoon work?'

I shrugged. Of course it would, Wednesday afternoons weren't very busy, usually, so there was no problem if I helped her study. School ended earlier for the convenience of certain after-school activities. Every school had to have those, apparently. 'Sure. Where do you wanna study? We can't study in school, there's lots of busy stuff going on after the lessons.'

A grim expression appeared on her face and her jaw was set as she immediately said, 'You can't come to my house.'

I felt my eyebrows shoot up in surprise. It wasn't really what she had said that startled me, but the way she said it. What was so bad about coming to her house; I hadn't even mentioned it!

'Um… Okay. I'm sure my friends won't mind if we study in my apartment…'

Emily seemed to be relieved because she smiled her trademark slick smile again. 'If it's no trouble.'

So, she came with me to the Koneko. I got surprised looks from all three of my teammates when they saw what I had brought in. Aya-kun was onto us like a hawk, as if something was wrong with taking people with me. Sure, I'd never done it before, because there had never been any need to. But I'm always glad to help and I saw no reason to not help a new girl out.

His amethyst glare settled on me, demanding an explanation without him actually saying it. Yeesh, was he uptight. Did he really not trust anyone?

'Hiya Aya-kun!' I started, as cheery as possible, but not toocheery because that would make him even more suspicious. 'I'm helping Emily-kun study for a test we have on Friday. I hope that's okay? I already promised.'

I felt Emily shift from one foot to another nervously as Aya's cold eyes settled on her next. 'Sure. Just don't do it in the middle of the shop.' For some reason he was glaring daggers at her, getting a little too close to his shi-ne glare to be safe.

Stepping aside, I gestured at Emily to follow me upstairs to my apartment, to save both me and her from Aya's usualy grumpiness that had gotten a little worse with her around. I was a little surprised as I saw her return Aya's deathglare briefly before following me, haughtily making her way through the shop.
Yohji whistled but got told off by Aya immediately. I saw Ken put up a thumb as he went back to work. I wondered why. Were they thinking I had a girlfriend? Just like them if that was the first and only thing they could think of.

Up in my room I made some room on the low table - it was full of other school books that I hadn't needed that day. Then I grabbed the biology book and opened it at the point where I was supposed to start teaching.

'Man, your red-haired friend is pretty anti-social,' Emily blurted out suddenly as soon as I looked at her.
The comment was so straight-forward and sudden that I started to laugh. She frowned at me as if I was crazy. 'Everyone says that,' I managed to explain after I had calmed down. 'You stand up to him pretty well. Most girls just giggle and run.'

Emily's eyes narrowed. 'I can't stand people who boss me around and glare at me like that. I haven't even known him for five minutes and he gives me that cold glare as if I am the lowest creature on the face of the earth. Someone should tell him the truth some day.'

Blinking at her rather confused, I decided to start helping her study. After a while I could even notice how much I was studying myself while explaining. It was like writing it down - you memorized it just by doing it.
When I went down after two hours to get us both a drink, I was welcomed by Yohji's excessive winking and another glare from Aya. I quickly hurried back up after getting the drinks. I found Emily sitting there with the biology book, concentrating by the looks of it.

Setting down the drinks I glanced at her and noticed her absently rubbing her right temple with one hand.

'Daijoubu, Emily-kun?'

She looked up, not startled at all, and smiled. 'Sorry Omi-kun. I was focusing on this bit.' She held up the book and pointed at a paragraph that had been particularly hard to explain.

'I got drinks,' I beamed, and handed her a glass. She thanked me and began to sip from it carefully as she went through the pages once more.

'I think I got it!' Putting down her now empty glass, she handed me my book, a triumphant look plastered on her face.

I grinned and started asking her things - apart from a little language trouble, she had it all memorized. 'You're good!' I complimented her.

'I know,' she chuckled. Then her look got more serious and she stared at me for a few minutes.
I stared back, it was kind of creepy to be staring in those brown eyes behind those glasses, as if Aya-kun was staring at me. Though this one was female, and the stare was calmer, not as cold, though still icy.
The look seemed to last longer than it actually did, and when she broke the silence with another quick smile, the look in her eyes never changed. 'Wanna go out with me on Friday?'

Again so straight-forward! I couldn't do anything than stare at her for a moment. She had asked me out? On an actual date? Why?

Emily seemed amused as she saw my face. 'Omi-kun? Did you hear me?'

'Uh… Hai… I heard you. W-why are you asking me out?'

'To celebrate that I passed my first Japanese test, of course! And to thank you…' Her smile got a little nicer, not as cold as before. 'And because I like you…'

I didn't believe her until I saw the soft pink on her cheeks. She was blushing because of me! All those girls that always visited the shops would kill her for being in this room alone, and then she was asking me out too.
How… special.

'Of course I'll go out with you,' I heard myself stutter, giving in to her invitation, not knowing why, only knowing that I liked it.

***

Emily passed her test with a grade better than any other foreign girl could have mustered in such a short time. Apparently she was more intelligent than the others could have guessed.

Yohji tried to help me dress up for my date, while Ken stood in the door, leaning against the frame, snickering from time to time at the things Yohji was pointing out to me. At some point I was so annoyed with their teasing that I kicked them both out, asking them if they didn't have anything better to do.
When I finally got ready I went to where Emily had asked me to pick her up. For some odd reason I couldn't go to her house - she had been very mysterious and jumpy about that, so I decided not to ask her about it - so we had agreed that I would meet her somewhere near the theater. As on all first dates, according to Yohji anyway, we were going to see a movie and maybe to a club afterwards.

I was surprised at the way she was dressed when I met her. I had only seen her in her school uniform so far, but now she looked as if she had come from a fashion magazine. It was obvious that someone had forced her to get rid of her bun, though, because she would never have worn it in a high ponytail like that. Sure, if it hadn't been as casually messy as it was now, she could have done it herself. Maybe someone other than her brother lived in that house as well…

The movie was fun and I was glad she liked it too.

Afterwards we went to have a drink somewhere and I got curious about her odd family situation. At one point I couldn't hold back any longer and just asked.

'So… Your brother is your guardian, Emily-kun?' I took a wild guess.

She nodded, 'He is. He's the only one of our family who lives here, the others are all some place else. I bet your friends at the shop are your guardians, ne?'

'Yeah… They're pretty annoying most of the time but they can be responsible when they have to. Or at least two of them can.' I snickered, thinking of Yohji's amount of responsibility. Zero.

She giggled at this comment. 'Must be fun.'

'Probably more fun than having your brother as your guardian,' I teased.

Emily grinned and looked out the window we were sitting at. It was dark but the sky was clear - no rain for now. 'Yeah… He can now pay me back for everything I did to him when we were younger. He's like ten years older than me.'

'Wow, ten years…'

'But there's others - his housmates. They're strange, but one of them is pretty cool.'

That last one must have helped her just like Yohji tried to help me today then…

I noticed her staring at me and when I looked back she started blushing lightly. I smiled to make her feel more comfortable - I knew almost for sure that she had a crush on me by then, and I couldn't help but notice that this date had been very fun. I liked being with her. Did that count?
Yohji would say it would. Ken would say it would. Aya would say I couldn't trust her. I decided to listen to Ken and Yohji for now.

'Omi-kun… I had fun tonight,' she said softly, suddenly shy.

'Me too.' I just knew I was starting to blush from that stare and the whole situation. 'It's ah… it's a good thing you had fun too,' I stuttered. I could slap myself in the face just then. I was a mumbling idiot! I had to stop talking right now or I'd make a big fool out of myself. How did Yohji do these things at least thrice** a week?

But before I would babble nonsense all over her, she grabbed my hand in both her own, making me look at her.

'You know, Omi-kun… You're much different than most American guys.'

'I-I am? In what way?'
Shut up, Omi, shut up.

'I don't know… You're more considerate, actually look at people's personalities…'
How could she have found all this out in just a simple week?

'… You're just cute,' she admitted.

Okay… I could live with that. I felt the blood rise to my face some more as she said it. Especially when she leaned over and I had a real close look at her eyes. Then, she got even closer and simply kissed me. On the mouth. I tasted her lips on mine, and it didn't even last a few seconds, but seemed to last for a whole minute. When she was almost done I closed my eyes and gave in. She owned me and I had no idea why, but I had to see that I got to own her as much as she had me in the near future or I'd lose control.

Therefore, when she released me, I kissed her.

*Any of you remember Miko? Look for her in episode 16 of Weiß Kreuz. She was about to be burned alive! *sadistic, high-pitched, Farfarello-like giggle*

** I wuv that word. Thrice.

~~~

Author's Note: Wow. This was a pretty long one and took me even longer to finish. I hope it was worth the wait! I'm not happy with some of the conversation and setup in this chapter but that's about the best I can pull off so far. I'll try and get better.

Lenihan:Hey I see you changed your name. And Holy shit another one of those long reviews! Nagi's reason: he hates people. He doesn't want Schu in his room, and the more people are in Schwarz, the more uncomfortable he gets. So I guess you were half right. Thanks for liking that chapter!
Skylighter: You'll probably never read this, but thanks for liking how I did Crawford. ^_^ And yeah, Omi, cause I like him =P
Misura: Thank you! Sorry for picking on poor Schu like that. I felt kinda sorry for him afterwards, too.

The Japanese that I don't know but love to butcher around for this chapter

Hai Yes

Iie No

Gomen ne Sorry

Daijoubu Are you okay