Author's Note

Wowie. I suddenly received a bunch of notifications on this story in the last month or so. It brought back my attention to writing! I must say.. it's been a while. Although I do have an outline of what the rest of story will be like, I never actually planned to write it forreals. But I guess to celebrate all the people who still follow this story, I shall continue writing for you all! Love, Mei-Chan

Middleford High School

Chapter Three

What. The. Hell.

Although math was Ciel's easiest subject, for the first thirty minutes he just sat dumbfounded in his desk trying to comprehend what the hell the teacher was lecturing about. Maybe starting his freshman year with calculus was a grave mistake- especially since half of the material for the first semester had already been taught. How was he going to pass this class if he missed out on so much of the fundamentals already? He was deep in his shock of calculus that he didn't even notice that Alois was poking him on his side.

"Ciel!" Alois said with another jab to Ciel's side. This definitely got his attention.

"Ow! What was that for?!" Ciel turned to Alois with a glare.

"The teacher just assigned this worksheet for us to do and turn in. Weren't you listening? We can work with everyone on it. It'll be much more efficient if we just divide it up."

Then some familiar faces he met at lunch showed up with their desks and surrounded Alois's and Ciel's desks.

"Since there are seven of us and thirty-five problems, we can just all do five problems each." said Claude.

"Claude, let's work together!" said Alois positioning his desk next to Claude's.

"I call Sebas-chan!" exclaimed Grell.

"No, I'd rather work alone. Thank you." replied Sebastian as he turned away from the red head. Discouraged, Grell went to join Agni and Lau.

Ciel just looked at his five problems. He remembered learning about limits. But he never really delved into these types of problems before.. How many minutes had passed since he started to just stare at the page? He looked around at the others and all of them were working. All of them except for Sebastian. He had already finished with his assignment and was now doodling pictures of.. what was that? Cats? As Ciel was staring at the sketches, Sebastian's eyes met with his. Suddenly he felt a rush of nervousness move through his body as he looked away swiftly. Then he quickly covered up his paper. He didn't want anyone to see that he hadn't even started on the problems.. especially not Sebastian. However it was too late. He knew that Sebastian had already seen his paper with nothing on it. Through the corner of his eye, he saw a smirk come from Sebastian as he started doodling again. That bastard. Did he think that Ciel wouldn't see that dumb grin on his face? Sebastian was probably amused at Ciel's incompetence. Ciel tried to brush it off but he couldn't help but feel pitiful in this situation.

Looking back at the problems again with determination to show Sebastian that he could in fact do calculus, Ciel started to break down the first question. Huh? It wasn't as hard as it looked. With the knowledge that he had, he attempted to use whatever means necessary to solve the problem. Ten minutes later and with a whole page filled with guessing and checking, he finally came to a reasonable conclusion. Was it the right solution? Who knew. He was just satisfied of that fact that with his limited knowledge, he was able to get to an answer that was somewhat probable.

"Alright," he thought. "This isn't too bad. I think I can actually finish this."

"Is everyone finished?" Alois asked out loud. "Claude and I just finished our share of the problems."

"I'm finished." said Sebastian not glancing up from his paper.

"Grell, Lau, and I are almost done. We just have to finish this one last problem." said Agni.

"What about you, Ciel?" Alois asked.

"I-I've been done for a while of course. This assignment was too easy for me." Ciel said. He was obviously lying through his teeth but he didn't want to admit that he was already struggling with assignments on his first day. He then looked back at his page and started to panic. It took him 10 minutes to solve the first one and it probably wasn't correct either. What was he going to do? Fake a stomach ache and go to the nurse's office? He didn't want to reveal to the others that he didn't complete his part of the assignment.

"We're finished!" said Grell with a satisfied sigh. "Took us forever to explain to Lau. Contrary to popular belief he's not as good at math as his predecessors."

"I take that as a compliment towards my uniqueness." Lau replied with a grin.

"Okay so since Claude and I got questions one through ten, here are the solutions!" Alois said as he started to announce the answers.

As Ciel was writing, he started to panic more and more. Even though he had gotten the last set of given problems, he didn't have any more time to solve them before it was his turn to share his answers.

"Alright, problems eleven through twenty-five were ours." said Agni and he started to give out the answers that his group of three came up with. With each passing solution, Ciel started to feel more and more anxious. Now he really felt that he needed to go to the nurse's office. The anxiety was getting to his head and he began to feel lightheaded.

Next was Sebastian's set of questions. Crap. Ciel's turn was after him and all he had was one measly answer. However after problem thirty, the end of Sebastian's set of assigned problems, he went on to thirty-one.

"Weren't those my problems?" Ciel bursted out saying. Wait, why did he say that? He should feel relieved that Sebastian kept on going, but for some reason he felt that Sebastian had wrongfully taken something from him. With the outburst, Sebastian eyes looked over at Ciel sharply without turning his face.

"It's fine, Ciel! Sebastian never makes mistakes anyway. It's just a matter of whether he actually does problems or not. Consider yourself lucky that he also did yours!" Alois said with a laugh.

"Sebas-chan.. I feel hurt.. you never offer to do my problems for me." Grell whined.

"I just felt like doing them. Since my set of problems were so close to the end, five extra problems to complete the rest of the assignment weren't a hassle. Ciel can just have confirmation that his solutions were correct, right?" Sebastian said with a smile that was obviously mocking him.

"I suppose.." Ciel replied reluctantly. So Sebastian wasn't doodling the entire time, he had actually done his set of problems also. Although he anxiety was slowly starting to fade away, Ciel couldn't help but feel annoyed. Did this Sebastian really have no faults?

After turning in the assigned work, the teacher lectured on the new material and gave out the homework due the next class. Luckily for Ciel, today was a Thursday. All he had to do was cram for this one assignment and then it would be the weekend where he would have plenty of time to catch up on all the calculus that had already been taught earlier that semester.

With the ring of the final bell, the school day was finally over. Ciel was determined to go straight home and get all of his other assignments out of the way so he wouldn't have to stay up all night trying to figure complete the math assignment. He was halfway through the main hallway before an arm latched around his shoulders and violently tugged him to the side.

"Hey Ciel! A bunch of us are going to get frozen yogurt. Want to join?" Alois said enthusiastically.

Without looking at who all was going, Ciel firmly gave his reply.

"No thanks. I have to go home and start on the assignments for tonight."

"Are you serious? So you're one of those people.. all work and no play.. I should have known you're a good boy." Alois said in a sarcastic tone.

"Ugh. What's it to you?" Ciel said as he stormed off- leaving a confused Alois behind.

While walking down the tree-lined path in front of the school, he made eye contact with another blonde.

"Ah! Ciel!" Elizabeth exclaimed. She motioned him to come over to her group of friends. "You remember everyone I introduced to you at lunch, right?"

Ciel looked over at the other three as he walked closer. What were their names again? Oh right. Bard, Finny, and Maylene. He was pretty impressed with himself for remembering.

"Are you doing anything right now? We were all planning on hanging out at my house for a little bit. Would you like to join us?" Elizabeth said with a smile.

"No it's alright," Ciel said politely. "I have to help my aunt with something this afternoon." It wasn't a total lie. He was going to buy some dinner for the two of them before starting his school work. Better to buy something rather than having Madam Red clumsily prepare something for dinner. Who knew what other simple recipes she could screw up? Much less what it would do to their health.

"Aww okay." a disappointed Lizzy replied. "Next time then!"

"Yeah. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye." Ciel said as he waved to the others before walking home.

He remembered seeing a convenience store on the way to school and decided to stop by. Since he didn't really know how to cook either nor did he have the time to learn how to, he decided to just stick to easy convenient foods until he developed his cooking skill more. Madam Red's skills in the kitchen were probably never going to improve so it was up to him to be the one to learn how to cook. He picked up some instant noodles for Madam Red and then went over to the bread section where we picked up some yakisoba bread. As he turned around to make his way to the checkout counter, he then saw a familiar looking uniform in front of him. Looking up at the face of this person, he recognized it instantly. It was the one person that he really did not want to run into.

That smirk could only belong to one person.

Sebastian Michaelis.