A/N: In no way, shape, or form is Itazura na Kiss mine. (Well, except for the volumes that I've purchased. Hurry up with the last two, DMP!)

Aihara Kotoko was not a naturally feminine person. Due to her mother's untimely demise, she was left with a father who was ill-acquainted with ruffles, bows and furbelows.

Believing that there was safety in numbers, Kotoko, along with other children of employees, was given into the care of the mother of the owner of the restaurant where her father worked. As that person had hidden well an over-affection for sake, this meant that oftentimes the children were left to their own devices. Being the sole girl in the group, consequently Kotoko was raised with a thorough knowledge of ball sports, a liking for shounen manga, and a passion for violent video games.

Even in middle school, after outgrowing the need for an after-school caretaker, she could still be found with her early friends, terrorizing imaginary demons in city parks and clambering on playground equipment like a monkey. She was no stranger to scrapes and bruises, and her injuries included four black eyes, seventeen stitches and innumerable scrapes and bruises, although no broken bones. Her uniforms were covered in ill-repaired rips and often her hair appeared uncombed. Once she even plucked a caterpillar out of it (acquired during an unauthorized tree ascension) and, accompanied by screams from her female classmates, gently set it outside the classroom window. While those young ladies were experimenting with makeup and flirtation, Kotoko continued her rough-and-tumble tomboy ways with no embarrassment. It just seemed…natural…to her.

Her father, despairing of his daughter ever gaining ladylike ways, encouraged her to test for a high school away from her rowdy acquaintances. Using the excuse that this school would be more convenient for her to reach his recently opened restaurant after class, she acquiesced. Aihara Shigeo made many trips to the shrine and purchased several charms for academic success. Although her father's prayers and the cloth charms pinned to her backpack didn't hurt her chances, the real reason that Kotoko took the exam seriously was the result of something else. It was the first time that her father had made a serious request of her, addressing her as an equal. It wasn't that she was stupid, per se, just that the crowd she had run around with had more interest in physical than intellectual activity. Whatever the reason, she made the cut-off for Tonan High School—barely—and with a mixture of trepidation and excitement prepared for a new adventure.

Old habits die hard, however, and the night before the opening ceremony she was tagged in a multiple text for a last round of video games before cracking the books. Therefore, having stayed up until four a.m. battling Nazi zombies, the first morning of high school found her at her most lethargic. She recognized no one as she entered the campus, so she took an aisle chair in the freshman section and endured multiple 'pardon me's as fellow students walked in front of her, tripped over her extended legs, and glared at her for blocking the path. With the spring day being unseasonably warm, the building un-air conditioned, and the initial speakers droning on in monotones, her head was nodding to the side by the time the top student of the incoming class stood up to give the welcoming speech.

Irie Naoki had never needed much supervision. A serious child, he always viewed the world distantly and objectively. After an early trauma (which still occasionally revisited him in nightmares), he never wasted his time or efforts in dealing with persons whom he deemed inferior in intellect. Of course, family was the exception to that, although at times he wished that he was half as successful at tuning out his mother as she believed he was.

So, when he did speak, whether it was in class or in an assembly, he expected to be listened to. As he sat on the platform awaiting his turn at the podium for the Tonan High School entrance ceremony, he noticed a person sitting in the freshman section. Her head, adorned with two stubby pigtails, one of which was distinctly two centimeters lower than the other, was nodding in a reverse Fibonacci sequence. By his calculations, she would be sound asleep before the end of the program.

He rose when it was his turn and gave his speech, not once referring to the paper in front of him. His mind compartmentalized itself so that he was able to recite the compilation of ancient platitudes and proverbs disguised as an intellectual pep talk while monitoring the condition of the student. He noticed that she sat splay-legged, with her feet in front of her like a boy, and that she was slowly listing to her right, towards the aisle. As his mind calculated the physics needed to project her tipping point, he felt irritation from the student's lack of attentiveness to the proceedings. This, an emotion he usually only encountered with his mother—who, good Lord, was standing at the back with the video camera—grew to the extent that when he descended from the stage at the end of his speech, he proceeded down the aisle in the opposite direction of the seat that his friend Watanabe had saved for him.

As he neared the slumbering student (were those gym shorts peeking from under her skirt?), he deviated from his path in the exact center of the aisle and aimed a sideways kick to jar her chair. The disdainful sneer that graced his face as he performed that maneuver became an outright laugh when she jerked awake, shouting, "Die, you bastards!" into the echoes of fading applause for his speech.

Many a female student (and a few males) fell in love with him upon seeing his face lightened so in laughter, but over the next two years they despaired of ever seeing it that way again. He was the cool, even cold, Irie Naoki, confident in his intellect, disdainful of those who lacked the intelligence to share a classroom with him. The only expression that ever crossed his face was a haughty sneer or absolute boredom.

On the other hand, Aihara Kotoko made quite an impression on her fellow students, especially those who shared the Class F classroom with her. Scolded by the teachers and teased by the students for her abrupt ejaculation (in her dream, she had been swarmed by zombies and was down to her last ammunition clip), she found herself the center of attention among the females because of the attention paid her by the 'genius dreamboat'. Once she admitted to having no memory of even seeing Naoki, most of them lost interest.

Two of them stayed at her side; Satomi and Jinko thought that Kotoko was a pretty fun person, and she became great friends with the two girls who had attended middle school together. Upon visiting her apartment, Satomi was aghast at the contents of her closet, and together she and Jinko decided to feminize the tomboy. Over a period of months Kotoko began to accumulate more clothes and shoes that she had ever thought she needed and learned how to arrange her hair in a different style for each day of the week.

And so the first two years of her high school career passed. Happy with new friends and a new school, she was pretty much unaware of and undisturbed by the presence of Naoki. She might have been able to match his face with his name if she bothered herself, but she really didn't care to. She was content to remain within her circle of comfort.

However, the day after the level 2 earthquake leveled her new house was when Irie Naoki was forcibly inserted into her daily life.