[A/N: To give you an idea of how much I'm winging it here, the story was originally supposed to cut straight to the Chuunin Exams after the prologue. This is really fun, though.]

Chapter 3:

Stay away from him! both of the voices suddenly ordered, so forcefully that Yuki actually took a shaky step back.

In the silence that abruptly fell over the rest of the class, Yuki could hear Akiko give a sharp, frightened gasp behind him. The other boy didn't seem to notice. "What is your name?" he asked, taking a step forward so that he and Yuki were only inches apart.

Since he had the desk behind him, Yuki couldn't back up any farther. "Yuki," he answered, studying the other boy to try and figure out why the voices didn't like him. The boy had red hair, and strange dark rings around his flat green eyes. What caught Yuki's gaze most was that the other boy didn't have any eyebrows, and there was a symbol on his forehead that seemed to have been burned in.

"Yuki," the other boy repeated with a somehow off half-smile. "Interesting," he said quietly, his head tilted to one side as he stared into Yuki's eyes.

Get away, said the voices. Get away get away. He will hurt you.

Yuki winced as their intensity began to make his head ache. He wanted to obey the voices, and honestly there was something about this boy that set him on edge even if the voices hadn't been warning him. Still, he was hardly the one in control here, and if the other boy didn't step back he wouldn't be able to get away from him.

"Gaara-kun…" a girl's voice called timidly, a few desks away. "Come away, class is about to start."

The boy (Gaara, apparently) glared in that direction but walked over and sat down anyway. Yuki looked over to see a girl a couple of years older than Gaara and himself, with sunny blond hair tied in four fluffy buns. She glanced over and gave him an apologetic smile, and her mossy green eyes met his.

Yuki thought she was beautiful.

"Who was that boy?" he asked Akiko once he had sat down behind his desk. The wooden surface was worn and chipped, and had faded messages scratched, carved and scribbled onto it from students past.

Akiko jumped, as if she was coming out of a trance. "W-what?" This scared attitude wasn't like her, and Yuki didn't like it. She was supposed to be happy.

"That boy who spoke to me. Why was everyone afraid of him?"

"Oh." Akiko took a few deep breaths, slowly seeming to come back to normal. "Um, that's Gaara. He's really dangerous, all the kids are scared of him, I don't know why he's just in the first form class…Once," she continued, "a few of us kids were playing in the street, and we ran into him, and he tried to kill us! I didn't do anything, I just hit him with my ball on accident! And, and people say he's a monster," she finished, leaning over to whisper the words right into Yuki's ear. "But don't tell anybody that, it's supposed to be a secret."

Yuki nodded but did not reply as at that moment the teacher entered the room and called for silence. Yuki mostly tuned her out as she called roll, although he did note that the sunshiny girl was named Temari and that she was apparently Gaara's sister.

"…And now for our two new students. Wakahisa Akiko?"

"Here!" Akiko chirped, as if she hadn't been so frightened just a few minutes ago.

"And…Yuki."

"Here," Yuki answered, wishing again that he knew his full name, like all the other children did.

…

While he tried to pay attention for the rest of the day, Yuki didn't understand much of what the teacher said. Even though it was clear that the class was still covering the basics, the school year had gone on long enough that all of the children were supposed to know the big words—and of course, Yuki didn't. Gaara's disconcerting stares from across the classroom didn't help his concentration any, either.

Finally, the interminably boring lesson was over. The teacher (Yuki still didn't know her name, due to how late he had arrived) told them all to read the next lesson in the textbook before dismissing them. Akiko snatched up her textbook and headed for the aisle with Yuki close behind. He wasn't quite sure how to get back to the orphanage from the Academy, and he didn't think Akiko really knew either. Hopefully Yoshiko would come to pick them up or Setsuki would wait for them before heading home herself.

As he tried to get around the clusters of noisy children, Yuki found himself separated from his companion. "Akiko?" he called, pushing his way towards the back of the room and the exit. "Wait up!"

He saw a glimpse of brown pigtails with gold ties before the door closed; Akiko didn't seem to have noticed yet that Yuki wasn't right behind her. Pushing around the last few groups of his classmates, Yuki shoved the door open with difficulty (it wasn't that it was too heavy, he just wasn't tall enough to get a good angle to push it from) and stepped into the corridor.

Akiko wasn't there. Yuki hurried along the hall to see if she had merely gotten out of sight, but ran right into another child as he rounded a corner. "Oh, sorry…" he said quickly before trailing off as he recognized who it was.

Gaara said nothing, but his unblinking eyes bored into Yuki's. When Yuki tried to edge around him, he found himself pulled back by a tendril of sand around one wrist. Pulling against it did nothing but make the hard granules scratch his skin.

There were dozens of other children in the crowded hallway, but none of them did anything or even seemed to notice, merely walking around the two as if nothing was out of the ordinary. A few glanced at them briefly, but were clearly too frightened of Gaara to do more than that. There were no adults in sight.

"What do you want?" Yuki asked, tugging on the sand again and noting that it was flowing from a gourd of some kind that Gaara wore on his back. The voices wouldn't advise him on what he was to do now, so Yuki was on his own.

Gaara suddenly smiled, which Yuki found even more disturbing, if that were possible. "We are going to be friends," he announced. It was clearly not a request.

"Friends?" Yuki said, bewildered. Even if there was something wrong with his head, he knew friends didn't usually act like this.

Gaara nodded. "Did they tell you anything about me?"

Yuki stared blankly. Did Gaara mean Akiko? She had told him what she knew about Gaara, but he wasn't about to tell on her, Gaara might hurt her. But Gaara had said them—did he know about the voices?

"Mine told me to be friends with you," Gaara continued, turning and walking down the corridor. He did not release the sand that held Yuki, who was forced to walk beside him.

Yuki was shaken by this new revalation. Clearly, he was not the only one here who had voices telling him what to do. But from what Akiko said and what Yuki had seen, everyone was frightened of Gaara and thought he was a monster. Did that mean that Yuki would become like that too? Akiko wasn't afraid of him, not yet, and Yuki didn't want her to be.

As Gaara led him through the hallway, Yuki saw Akiko and Setsuki by one of the doors. He looked over to them, hoping they might be able to help, but Setsuki turned away and pulled Akiko along with her.

The voices still remained stubbornly silent, and Yuki started to wonder if Gaara could tell him what to do about it when the voices wouldn't say anything.

Finally, Gaara pushed open a door, and Yuki winced at the bright sunlight, briefly shielding his eyes with his free hand as Gaara pulled him over to where Temari and another boy were standing.

"There you are, Gaara-kun!" Temari said, sounding pleased although Yuki could see apprehension in her eyes. "You just took off after class; we were wondering where you were."

Gaara didn't respond to Temari's statement, even though it was clear that she desired an answer. "This is Yuki," he said. "We are going to be friends."

[A/N: Sorry for the recent lack of updates on everything. I'm studying Japanese and took a brief break from fanfic to get some more intensive work in. This is kind of short, but I wanted to get the plot going so it worked best to cut here.]