Sweet and Sour [An OHSHC Fanfic]

Chapter Four

“The classroom was this way.”

“No, idiot, he went this way when he showed it to us.”

“You have a horrible sense of direction, how would you know?” Elias demanded.

I swept a strand of my hair away from my face and shot him a dirty look. Elias simply rolled his eyes in response, hiking my bag a bit higher on his shoulder. Despite my insisting that I could carry it myself, he refused to as much as let me pick it up out of the car. I couldn’t see what was so difficult about allowing me to carry my own things.

“Because I can understand Japanese,” I informed Elias sourly, dismissing the problem of my bag for now.

He snorted, turning his eyes away from me and studying the classroom signs. Eventually, he hiked his bag higher on his other shoulder and set off down the hall.

“Where’re you going?”

I followed him, not bothering to hide the frustration I felt. He shot a cheeky smile over his shoulder at me, hardly the picture of a devoted bodyguard.

“The right way.”

I barely held myself back from cursing at him, instead settling for narrowing my eyes dangerously.

“This is not the ri-” I began, then cut off as he came to a stop and shot me a smug smile. “...oh.”

My eyes studied the sign hanging next to the classroom door. As annoying as it was, the sign read ‘2-A’, the classroom we’d been looking for. Elias’s smug look became expectant and I sighed.

“Fine, I’ll admit that you have a better sense of direction,” I grumbled, pausing as something occurred to me. “Wait, we were this close to the classroom the entire time?”

Elias grinned.

“Yup. I just really enjoyed watching your fru-”

I slammed my fist into his arm as I walked by.

“Go die.”

I didn’t wait to see his reaction as I slid open the door to step in. In my haste, I ended up bumping into someone and stumbling backwards. Despite my annoyance with him, Elias quickly steadied me from behind so that I wouldn’t fall. Pulling on the little patience that I had, I opened my mouth to apologize and turned my attention up towards whomever I’d bumped into. With his expression twisted into that impossible to read look he’d worn many times when I’d met him last was Kyoya. A second later he offered a -which I dubbed most likely fake- bright, apologetic smile.

“Cande-hime, are you alright?”

My annoyance disappearing immediately, I laughed under my breath.

“Just Cande, or Cande-chan if you must,” I corrected him. “And I’m fine, I had an idiot to break my fall.”

Elias must have picked up on the insult because he shoved me forward in retaliation. Since I’d been leaning back on him, it sent me stumbling into Kyoya instead. Unperturbed, Kyoya simply steadied me with what could have possibly been amusement flickering across his face.

“In my own experience,” he commented lightly as he took step backwards to clear the doorway. “Idiots don’t like being referred to as idiots. It seems to damage what little pride they have.”

I laughed, moving into the classroom as I did.

“That’s true. I’ll have to refrain from using words he recognizes when insulting him,” I replied.

“A wise plan,” Kyoya agreed. “I would suggest using complicated words. My own blonde idiot has difficulty understanding those sometimes.”

I nodded, glancing over my shoulder at where Elias was still standing in the hallway.