The Wanderer

I: Meet the New Guys

"Very good, Aala." Japanese professor Sarah Stanko praised the Bryer girl after she gave a complicated sentence in Japanese in response to a question the professor gave. Aala sat back, a satisfied smile on her face, while Stanko's gaze went to Aala's drooling older brother. "At least one Bryer shows promise." Aala's smile faded as her eyes moved to their right corners to look at Daijon, who was sitting right next to her. "Daijon!" 

Daijon jerked awake upon hearing his name. "I didn't touch your swords, Akeno!" he blurted out.

The words of her student utterly destroyed Stanko's indignation, replacing it with confusion. "What, Mr. Bryer?" she asked, after several seconds of stunned silence.

Daijon realized where he was. Still in school, with class still an hour away from its end. While that was terrible, he supposed, when compared to what he thought was happening initially, this was a much better situation. In the midst of his thoughts, he noticed the stares he was getting from his class. They were all still bewildered by his waking statement and awaiting an explanation of some kind. 

The boy closed his eyes, gave a smile with feigned embarrassment, and rubbed the back of his head. "It's nothing." he assured. "D-don't we have more important things to focus on than what I said?"

After a second or two, he let himself open his eyes to see Stanko's lips shrugging, as if agreeing with him. After staring at him for a few more moments, Stanko turned back to the SmartBoard and resumed her lecture on irregular verbs. 

Daijon sat back in his seat, letting out a sigh. A moment later, he looked to his left as he felt like someone's gaze. Sure enough, Aala was giving him the usual: that disapproving death glare that she thought still had any affect on him. Her green eyes twinkled as she stared at him, while he gave her a look of utter boredom.

After several seconds, Aala let out a barely audible groan when she deemed shaming her brother with her stare a failure. 

"Keep staring at me like that and people are gonna talk, Aala." Daijon said as she groaned. In response, Aala resumed her death glare for another moment due to a reflex.

"Don't say creepy stuff like that, Daijon." she quickly said as her face reddened more and more. Her voice almost went way too high from how flush she was feeling now. "We're related, you idiot."

Daijon looked off to the side for a second. "So?" he asked.

Aala sighed as she took a moment to write down what Professor Stanko was putting on the SmartBoard. She always managed to forget how many weird opinions Daijon had on things. An outsider would probably find such thinking cute or charming. Aala envied those people. Especially since she had to live with her troll of a big brother. 

As Aala focused on Professor Stanko's words, she felt someone's finger tickling her belly, moving along her skin as slowly as possible. Her head jerked in Daijon's direction, she swatted away his finger, and suppressed the urge to yell at him. He smiled shamelessly at her while giving a shrug.

The Bryer girl spent the remaining fifty-six minutes of her final (and favored) class utterly annoyed and pissed, the good mood she had been completely ruined. Leave it to her brother to make her unable to wait to leave her favorite lecture and ruin what she thought couldn't be ruined with a few words and one action. 

After the class' end, Aala left the room as quickly as possible. She picked up the homework off the table and pushed past all her classmates, while ignoring Daijon calling her name. Yeah, he and her lived in the same house, but if he didn't know she'd left, that would probably give her a few minutes of blissful solitude at home. At least she hoped. She had done this plan so often since they had started going to Civitate Dei Area Technical College. Daijon was a lot of things, but stupid wasn't one of them.