<span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 14pt;"><br/>Ito wasn't sure what he'd expected. Some part of him was so happy that Ryuu had just turned down Takada-san. It wasn't that he wanted to see the girl unhappy; Ito tended to be comfortable among many people. He probably should have been offended at how Takada-san ignored him, but in all honesty, Ito wasn't in her league and didn't expect her to pay attention to him, so it was kind of okay to him. He was more concerned about what this all meant for Ryuu. At least one of Takada's clique was whispering or passing notes during home room. It didn't bode well for Ryuu later, Ito realized. <br/><br/>He sat down when Ryuu did; why not? It was home room, they'd both been running, and standing for too long was probably weird. Ito listened to home room announcements and sort of tuned them out, which was probably a terrible idea, but Ryuu showing him a note written on the corner of his notebook caught his attention. Home room had transitioned into the first lesson very quickly. The day already felt like it was rushing by without him; it was as if the school year was determined to rob him of his time with Ryuu as quickly as possible. If it was possible to be resentful of Time itself, then Ito absolutely was resentful. <br/><br/>Ito opted to scribble back quickly on his own notebook, angling it so Ryuu could see.<br/><br/><em>'No, I'm not mad. I think I'm worried instead.<br/>I like spending time with you, but I don't want people being mean to you.'</em><br/><br/>He had to pull the notebook kind of quickly before a fellow student in a nearby chair tried to peek. That was really the only problem with writing notes to show; sometimes people just got nosy and could not mind their own business. Ito was sort of used to it, though, mostly because he was social enough to where people tended to want to know what he was talking about. <br/><br/>The teacher called on Ito to answer a question--it was a math one. Easy enough--they were covering statistics, and that was actually something Ito was good at for once. It was a bit unusual for the day to open with mathematics, but it was welcome for Ito, who felt like at least this gave him one thing he was decent enough at to focus on. Because he didn't feel like he was being a very good friend to Ryuu--though he couldn't pinpoint any one point he'd done anything wrong, Ito still felt like somehow he was failing his best friend. He'd asked him to go to a party, made him do a race, wound up in a situation where Ryuu had to pick not being bullied essentially or spending time with Ito...<br/><br/>It was a rough day already. Ouch. <br/></span>