A/N: I wrote this for the Zexal Fanwork Marathon (which more people should participate in~) during Camp NaNoWriMo. Truth be told, this was the first thing I ever wrote for Zexal and I'm nervous to see if I got their characters down. Let me know if you want!

It's not like I want to hold her hand or anything gross like that.

At least, that's what Yuma keeps telling himself when his eyes stray over to Kotori's hand, which is weirdly close to his own. Of course he's going to be staring at it, seeing that it's only a few inches away. And no, his hand isn't creeping closer to hers. Definitely not. Because that would be weird.

"Yuma?"

It's not like he hasn't held her hand before. He held it when they were running through Heartland City during the Duel Carnival when Anna was chasing them. He hadn't even thought about it, just grabbed and ran. And they had held hands when they were flying towards the Astral World a few weeks ago. Of course they had, Kotori had been nervous about flying (and admittedly, he had been a little bit too. He'd never flown on earth after all.)

"Hey, Yuma."

And that was perfectly normal, so if he were to hold her hand again it wouldn't be that weird, right? Not that he actually wanted to hold her hand, because that was totally gross. If only she would move it-

"Yuma!" Kotori's voice called to him, snapping him out of his thoughts. He looked up to see her frowning at him and gesturing to the front of the class. "Ukyo-sensei has been calling for you for the past two minutes!"

"Huh?" He asked, looking over to the front of the class. Ukyo-sensei was looking at him with an exasperated (but not exactly surprised) expression on his face, and about half the class was staring at him. "Sorry, what was the question again?"

Ukyo-sensei repeated the question he'd asked three times already, and when Yuma didn't have an answer (well, how could he? He'd zoned out through most of the lesson!) he moved on. Yuma let himself flop into the desk, glad that the attention was finally off of him.

Kotori sighed next to him. "Mou, you have to stop being so distracted during class, Yuma."

"It's not my fault." Yuma said, turning his head so that he could look at her while he spoke.

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Really? So who's fault is it then?"

He was about to tell her that it was hers, but he stopped himself just before he said it. If he admitted that she was the cause of his distractedness, she might get it in her head that he might, you know, like her or something equally weird. And he didn't. Well he did, but only as a friend of course. So he couldn't tell her that, no way.

"I, uh… I'm just having an off day." Yuma settled for saying. There, that wasn't weird. And he'd had plenty of them before, so she shouldn't question them.

Not that there was anything TO question.

Kotori didn't look convinced, and she let him know that. "You've been acting really weird lately, Yuma." Her voice became concerned with her next question. "Is everything okay? I know that things have been a little strange, what with Astral and all."

Oh, here was a great excuse! Now that Astral was human and living with him, he could explain away any strange behavior. Though he wasn't acting strange around her. "Y-Yeah! It's still pretty awkward, having Astral being human and all. We're going to enroll him next week though, so it should get easier soon."

"That's great! I hope he'll get to be in our class." Kotori smiled sweetly, making Yuma's heart do something strange in his chest. He chose to ignore it.

"Yeah, I hope so to." Yuma said, smiling to himself. It was hard to imagine that after all the things they had gone through with Don Thousand and the colliding of the three worlds, that life could go right back to normal after all that. Well, not exactly normal. Even better than before.

Kotori giggled into her hand and Yuma asked her what was so funny. She tried to keep her face straight, but she couldn't keep the smile off her face. "I was just thinking that if Astral's in our class, he'll help you study and your grades might finally go up."

"Hey!" He exclaimed, feeling like there was an insult in there somewhere.

"Would you two please stop talking over there?" Ukyo-sensei asked, looking a little impatient. "Lunch will start in a few minutes, you can continue your conversation then."

"Y-Yes, sensei!" The two of them said, standing up straighter in their seats.

"What a pair of lovebirds!" Someone in front of them (Yuma couldn't tell who from his seat) said, prompting a round of giggles (and one angry hiss) from the rest of the class.

He could feel his face heat up. A quick glance at Kotori revealed that her face was turning red too. He quickly turned his face to the window, avoiding anyone's eyes.

What did they know anyways? They weren't lovebirds. Just really good friends. He spent the rest of the class period staring at everything BUT her hand though. Just in case they confused his distraction for attraction.

(Though if he was really being honest with himself, he really did want to hold her hand again… it had felt really nice and soft in his.)