Author's notes: I should really have gone to bed twelve hours ago. This is not supposed to be a serious story, it's just something I happened to write when I ought to have been focusing on my Digimon story for Camp NaNoWriMo. Please do yell at me for procrastinating on principle, even if you happen to not hate the result. :)

Orihime Inoue wasn't stupid.

She knew precisely what the world in general thought of her; that she was a world-class ditz.

Of course, Orihime knew that the joke was on the world in this case, for she knew she had an uncanny knack for reading other people, understanding what they were thinking and recognising their motivations.

This meant that she had been one of the first to realise that Uryu Ishida was acting very strangely around her.

"Orihime?"

Orihime recognised Uryu's incredulous voice at the classroom door before she even turned to look at him. "Oh, hello, Uryu!" she said brightly, brushing a cardboard circle out of her face.

"Just... why?" he asked, gesturing at her head.

Orihime smiled smugly. "I know what you're up to, Uryu!" she said in a sing-song voice, and noticed as the boy turned pale.

"I... I don't know what you mean," Uryu responded swiftly, pushing his glasses up his nose and turning away slightly.

"Silly Uryu! Of course you do," Orihime said, with the air of telling a particularly petulant toddler that one plus one does not equal three. "I've noticed," she added, grinning.

Uryu coughed slightly. "No. There is nothing to have noticed. How is your handicrafts project coming along?"

"Don't try to change the subject!" Orihime chided, forcing Uryu down into his seat. "I know that you watch me in class when you think I don't see you. You sit next to me whenever you can find an excuse to. You sometimes even turn bright red around me! Imagine that!"

"Yes, imagine that indeed," Uryu said coolly. "I still don't see what this has to do with your, ah, interesting headgear."

Orihime stared at Uryu in astonishment. "Well, yesterday I saw you had a particularly hungry expression when you looked at me..."

"I'm pretty certain I do not want to hear any more of this," Uryu hissed under his breath.

"... and I thought that we could still be friends if I were to wear this hat I made!"

Uryu blinked. "You've lost me."

Orihime gave a small laugh. "Well, see, the thing is that I know you're," she lowered her voice, "an alien vampire."

The girl took Uryu's speechlessness as her cue to keep on talking. "Obviously, I don't want you resort to cannibalism, so I thought that if I were to wear a hat with garlic on it, you wouldn't be tempted to drink my blood, and there's something about aliens and circles, right? I thought that perhaps little cardboard circles would stop your alien side from trying to... eat... me?" Orihime finally tailed off at Uryu's bewildered frown, before he burst into laughter.

"Oh, you got me, Orihime," he said, a trace of something (was it relief?)in his voice. "Very good. I am indeed an alien vampire. That's it. Nice deduction skills!"

"I know, right!" she giggled. "Hey, you've gone red again! Is that because you want to drink my blood?"

Uryu pushed his glasses back up his nose, covering most of his face with his hand. "Yes! That's correct! Don't worry, though, I won't drink your blood, the garlic will do its job."

"I'm so glad," Orihime said, happily, grasping Uryu's hand on his desk. "I don't know what I would do if I couldn't still be your friend!"

And with that, Orihime released his hand and turned towards the front of the class, away from Uryu, resulting in her missing the very slight look of sadness which briefly flashed across his face.