"Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind;
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind."
-A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare
CONFUSION
…all different fonts and sizes and shades of pencil color…
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"Return to the past now!"
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Yumi woke up in her bed, safe and snug. She realized that it wasn't morning of the next day, but morning of the day she had just been in…again. Sound weird? That's because it was.
"Sweetheart! Get up! You're going to be late for school." Her mother's voice drifted to her from downstairs, just like every morning. Yumi yawned, stretched, threw her covers back and quickly dressed into her normal black clothes. Then she ran downstairs with her black backpack in hand. She dropped the backpack next to the door on the way to the kitchen.
Her mom met her in the kitchen with a big grin. Yumi said her good mornings and poured herself a bowl of cereal. She loved cereal, all crunchy and sweet and soggy when they soak in the warm milk.
Breakfast was her favorite meal of the day. It got her ready for anything the day could dish out…again…
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"Rise and shine, Ulrich!" Odd said, mauling Ulrich violently with his white pillow. Ulrich jumped and awoke, growling and attempting to tackle Odd to the ground.
"Odd, shut up and go back to sleep. It's too early."
"Early? It's not early! It's time for breakfast! And we wouldn't want to miss that now, would we?"
"I hate breakfast. Breakfast is too early."
"Too bad, buddy boy." Odd wriggled his eyebrows and prepared for his final and ultimate plan. In one great bound, almost imitating what he could do in Lyoko, he leapt up onto Ulrich's bed and started to bounce around.
"ODD! OKAY, OKAY, I'M GETTING UP!"
Odd jumped down before Ulrich could kick him off the bed painfully. "Atta boy. Get dressed and let's go."
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"I hate reliving days," Ulrich said, lounging on a bench in the sun as the group waited for Yumi and for class to start…again…for the day. "You think it'd be good for students like me who never pay attention the first time class comes around. But I just end up fallingasleep even earlier the second time around because I've already heard all the things the teachers have to say, which isn't anything important anyway."
"Oh well," Odd said, glancing up as Jeremie joined the two of them on the bench underneath a tree. "Hey Jeremie, you talk to Aelita? How is she after that last Xana attack? She kind of looked drained when I last saw her."
"Huh?" Jeremie asked, totally zoning out. He had been staring at the school's main gate entrance, which was a little ways off from here. "What did you say, Odd?"
"I said, have you talked to Aelita yet? I want to know if she's okay. She was shaken up the last time I…"
"Oh, I haven't had a chance to talk to her yet," Jeremie said absent-mindedly. His eyes could have drilled a hole through the main gate; he was looking at it so hard.
"What do you mean you haven't had a chance to talk to her yet?" Ulrich asked, looking at Jeremie with a raised eyebrow. "You always talk to her in the morning. Actually you always talk to her any chance you get."
"I do?" Jeremie asked, not hearing a word Ulrich had just said. Odd and Ulrich exchanged puzzled glances and shrugged.
Suddenly, a familiar black haired girl came strutting onto school campus. She stopped, scanned the surroundings, and found her guy friends. Then she smiled and started walking towards them.
"Yumi!" Jeremie yelled and immediately ran toward her. Ulrich and Odd were left behind in his wake, glued to the bench, stunned.
"Since when was Jeremie ever that excited to see Yumi?" Odd asked with wide eyes.
Ulrich had the same exact expression on his face. "I dunno."
"Well, aren't you going to do something about it?"
"Why would I do that?"
"Because Jeremie is totally jumping all over the girl you have had a crush on for like, forever!" Odd said, throwing up his hands for emphasis.
"I had a crush on her?"
"Ulrich, what is wrong with you today?"
"You should ask that to Jeremie."
"True…"
As Yumi got closer, the two boys that were still sitting on the bench could tell that she was getting annoyed with Jeremie's constant excited chatter. "Um, yeah, good morning to you too, Jeremie. What's up with you today? Take extra happy pills? Hey, Odd." Yumi said with a smile, brushing back some of her shoulder length black hair and seating herself down next to him. Jeremie immediately sat down next to Yumi.
"Hey, Yumi," Odd said casually, frantically sifting through his brain to try and remember the last time Yumi actually said hi to him before Ulrich. He couldn't find a time before this one. "How's it going?"
"Same as last time we relived today," Yumi answered with a faint smile. "Nothing special."
"Uh, okay."
Awkward silence…
"So…" Ulrich started, wondering why such good friends would suddenly have an awkward silence like this. He was cut off, however, by a ringing tone that carried practically throughout the whole school grounds.
"Ulrich!" Sissi strutted up followed by a few of her closest girl friends. Yumi's eyes grew into round circles. Was Ulrich…blushing?
"Hey Sissi," Ulrich said, smiling at the principal's daughter. Sissi stopped in her tracks like she had just seen a wolf that was going to eat her.
"Ulrich, are you okay?"
Ulrich's smile faded. "What did I do?"
"You're saying hi to me. You usually tell me to go away."
"Why would I do that?" Ulrich said, his voice becoming slightly nervous. He looked at his friends for support desperately. Odd was too shocked to say anything, looking from Ulrich to Sissi to Ulrich to Sissi to Ulrich to Sissi…
"He would never do that, I assure you, Sissi," Yumi jumped in suddenly, trying to help her friend. Unfortunately that only made the situation worse. Sissi practically fell over.
"Y-Yumi? Why are you…" Sissi suddenly looked like she couldn't take it. She turned on her heel and ran. Ulrich looked devastated. Yumi drew back and covered her hand with her mouth.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, Ulrich! What did I say?"
"No, its not your fault, Yumi. She just…doesn't like me." Ulrich hung his head and looked at the ground dejectedly.
"Aww…no, Ulrich, I'm sure she still likes you," Yumi went over to her friend and patted his shoulder. Suddenly she snapped out of it. "What am I doing? Why am I comforting you because Sissi just ran away from you? Usually I'd be happy."
Ulrich looked up at his Japanese friend. "Yeah, that is weird. And how come now all I can think about is Sissi and how pretty she is?"
"You think Sissi's pretty?" Odd said incredulously, poking his friend in the shoulder. "I never thought I'd hear that one."
"Okay guys, this is weird. Maybe I should have talked to Aelita this morning. But the weird thing is, and here I kind of told you guys a white lie…I didn't even think of her all this morning. I forgot to talk to her. All I could think of was…" Jeremie said, trailing off.
"Something definitely is wrong," Yumi said, standing back up straight again and looking at her three best friends. "Jeremie, talk to Aelita and ask her if anything weird is going on in Lyoko." Then Yumi stopped and looked up at the sky in a pondering motion. "But the odd thing is, nothing feels out of place."
Just as she finished talking the bell rang. The four of them went to collect their backpacks and headed off to class, wondering what the hell was going on…
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"Now, class, as you can see on this board here, the first key words about the French Enlightenment period are 'opposition to authority'. Does any of you have any idea what that could mean? What do we mean when we say 'opposition to authority'?"
Yumi snorted mentally. You mean like how we sneak out of classes to go fight Xana in the warehouse? That counts as opposing your authority, doesn't it?
Yumi was in history class and as always in history class she was bored out of her mind. Especially since she had done all this before. She watched as the boy in front of her blew the same fly out of his face in the same way as before. Yep, this was going to be boring. Yumi doodled on her notebook page, not paying attention.
"The French Enlightenment philosophers were in many ways influenced by the British philosophy, in particular the work that John Locke did…"
Yumi yawned. Then she looked down at what her hands had doodled. Suddenly she became wide-awake and animated. She had just drawn a Y + O and a heart around it. She blushed as she reached for her eraser and her heart did a quick flutter, but her mind was puking. What the crap is going on? Did I just have a misprint and write an "O" instead of a "U"? AHHHHH…
"They thought now that it was essential to remain skeptical of all inherited truths and that the individual should find their own answer to everything, something more of you students should do at this school, I might add." The teacher chuckled at his own lame joke. No one joined in the laughs. "Anyways, class, you should be taking notes on this. It is important. It will be on your test…"
Both Yumi's mind and heart relaxed in relief as the little heart drawing disappeared under her relentless gum eraser. Whew, glad that's gone, both parts said in unison. Yumi put her pencil back down to the paper and started to doodle absentmindedly again. At least it looked like she was taking notes even though she wasn't. She had read all this in the textbook already. No need to regurgitate it back to the class. The class could read…with a few exceptions…
"The Enlightenment philosophers decided that it was their duty to lay a foundation for morals, religion, ethics and the like in accordance with man's immutable reason. Now, can anyone tell me what that means, in simple, today terms?"
Yumi looked back down again to see how her "notes" were coming along. She nearly gasped out loud at what she saw and choked it back at the last second. Odd's name was written in all different fonts and sizes and shades of pencil color on her notebook page. Her hand lunged for her eraser again. Her heart was beating like crazy. Her mind told her that she was going crazy.
Something is definitely wrong.
When Yumi finished erasing all traces of the name she had been writing over and over, she gently put her eraser down and didn't touch her pencil again. Instead she put her head down on her desk and closed her eyes, taking a few deep breaths.
She should have tried sleeping the period away from the very beginning.
Author's note: All right. Now, before you guys start yelling at me about how I should be getting to work on my other two major stories, let me just say that this is just a random five chapter story I thought up while having a conversation to myself when I was playing Spider Solitaire. Don't make fun of me! Anyway, of course, like any random idea of mine, it had to come out on paper, so I obliged my hand and brain and did so. Don't worry about my other stories; I already finished this one so I can devote my time to my other stories. I just created this quickie purely for your enjoyment. I hope you had fun reading this chapter and pwease drop a review! Thanks!