"Just where do you think you're going, young lady?" a voice called out behind me as I made my way down the hall. I was only two steps away from freedom at the time. Two steps and I would be able to go watch Nik swim for gym class. But no, I wasn't even going to get two steps in.

I had just escaped from class with Mr. Teecher, or as he preferred to be called, Teecher-sensei, not that we were Japanese. Class was more boring than ever this year, Teecher having sunk to a new low of boredom for the new school year, so I had had made my escape. And, as everyone knew, if I could just reach the end of the hall right outside of Teecher's room I'd be home free. But some guy had to go and catch me sneaking out.

I turned to see if I could wheedle my way out of going back to class, since I didn't recognize the guy's voice. After all, it wasn't like I was going to get much out of Teecher's class, and there was a shirtless Nik to go stare at. And this guy was stopping me.

He can't have been more than a year older than I was. I had no idea why he was stopping me. He certainly didn't look like a teacher. He was pretty, with long green hair and surprisingly bright gold eyes. He was using those to watch me intently.

"I'm going somewhere where I might actually learn something," I said. "You have a problem with that?"

"Actually I do," he said. "Go back to class."

"Why should I listen to you?" I asked. "I've never even seen you before."

He looked put off, and rather angry. For a moment I thought he was going to say something else. Instead, he sighed, shook his head, and walked away, muttering. I took this as my chance to escape, and before he could change his mind I too those last two steps to freedom.

Once I was out of the hallway in front of Teecher's room I turned to look back on the guy. The thing about making it out of the hallway in from of the room meaning you were off the hook for skipping class wasn't an actual school policy, more of just an unwritten rule. If the guy was really intent on stopping me from getting away he wouldn't care about me making it out of the hallway.

When I looked he was nowhere to be found. This puzzled me, because unless he went into the room right where he'd been before he wouldn't have had the time to get out of sight. And I knew he hadn't gone into the room because the door was closed, and I would have heard a door opening and closing right behind me.

Still, it didn't bother me. I didn't care, as long as he wasn't going to try and stop me from going to watch Nik's gym class. And he couldn't really do that when he wasn't there, so I was free to make my way to the pool.

The pool at our school is awesome. It's humongous, at least for a high school pool it is, and very, very nice. I don't particularly like swimming, so I don't spend much time there besides standing outside, by the windows to the pool area, staring at Nik (and the other guys, but mostly Nik) swim. But it's still an awesome place, and it has huge windows that you can use to watch without having to be in the chlorine atmosphere.

There were two other people at the windows when I got there, also watching the junior/senior combined gym class swim. I assumed they were there, like I was, to watch the pretty guys, because I knew that they were the type of people to do that. They were pretty famous around the school, and I recognized them immediately.

They were Rana-chan and Stick Ana-chan, two of the three authors that hang around the school all the time. They're sisters, twins, and the other author as also a twin of theirs. Yeah, they should be triplets, but they use the word twin to describe themselves, so everyone else does as well. Rana-chan is the neutral twin, Stick Ana-chan is the good twin, and the evil twin is the H.A.T., which stands for Healer of All Typos.

Rana-chan and Stick Ana-chan are known to be extremely fangirlish when it comes to bishounen. I've heard rumors that the H.A.T. is that way as well, but she denies it whenever someone mentions that to her. So seeing them watching the pool during a gym classes wasn't all that surprising to me. Anyway, I knew that they sometimes watched the gym classes, or even the regular classes, just to stare at the pretty guys like Nik; I'd seen them do it before.

Of course, usually they weren't quite so open about their presence. They had tremendous power, and people tended to suck up to them because of that. So most of the time before they would be off to the side, almost watching from the shadows. All that had changed with Rana-chan's announcement at the beginning of the year.

At the huge school-wide assembly that was held at the beginning of the year she showed up, unannounced. She told us all that she and Stick Ana-chan were going to be involved in something during the year. She wouldn't tell us what, but she did say that students might get involved.

Nik was ecstatic after she announced that. He assumed that they were going to be using students as characters in a story, and that was something he'd been trying for forever. It's hard to get into one of their stories, and it seems even more so when you're trying to get in.

But because of that, Rana-chan said that she and Stick Ana-chan weren't going to be hiding around campus this year. So finding them at the pool window, where there aren't any convenient hiding places if you want to be able to see as well, was nowhere near as odd as it would have been otherwise.

Not that seeing them there was going to make me stop my plan to watch Nik's class. I didn't particularly care if they saw me skipping class. After all, they were doing the exact same thing as I was, with the exception of the skipping class part.

"Yo," Rana-chan said, a few minutes after I arrived when she finally noticed that there was one more person staring at the shirtless guys in the pool.

"Hi," I said, pulling my gaze away from the beauty that is Nik long enough to nod to her and Stick Ana-chan in greeting.

"You're a student here, right?" Rana-chan asked me. I nodded, not looking away from the window this time. "Shouldn't you be in class?"

"I made it away from the hallway without being caught and sent back," I said. "That means I'm off the hook. Anyway, watching Nik is a lot better than sitting and listening to Teecher babble about whatever's on his mind at the time."

"Good point," she said. "So you're here to watch him?" She pointed down to Nik, who was easy to pick out because of his bright red hair. He probably would have flipped just knowing that Rana-chan recognized him.

"Yeah," I said.

"You have good taste," she commented. "I personally am watching all of the guys, but him in particular." She pointed down to a guy who looked like he didn't belong with the other juniors and seniors. He looked like he was twelve, at most, but a very pretty twelve.

The kid had long blonde hair, the kind that looked to me like it would cause a huge trouble when swimming, but never did for that kind of person because bishoujo and bishounen always look cool, no matter what, and long hair bothering swimming just isn't cool. His eyes, which I could see from as far away as the window (they were that huge), were bright green, about the same shade as Nik's.

"Uh, isn't he a little young?" I asked. "It kinda seems like Shota-con to me." Rana-chan laughed.

"I'm not watching him for that!" she exclaimed. "Anyway, he's nowhere near as young as he looks. Though he is pretty… No, he's one of my creations, and I'm making sure he doesn't hurt the students. He can get nasty when people annoy him, and he annoys easily."

"Oh," I said. "Then why's he here?"

"His boyfriend's at a meeting with the principal," she replied. "And Saka didn't just want to wait patiently for Rhua to get done, so I agreed to follow him and make sure he didn't hurt anyone."

"Oh," I said. And with that we both went back to watching the guys. After all, that was a lot more productive in our minds than talking. After only five minutes though, other people showed up, probably with the same thing in mind as we did, but much less comfortable with having others (besides their own little group) know about it.

"Oh, and what have we here?" the leader of the group said in a sneering tone.

"I think it's one of those idiot girls who doesn't know true greatness in a man when she sees it," one of her top flunkies said.

I knew the nasty girls weren't talking about Stick Ana-chan or Rana-chan, because I knew that they knew who the two authors were, and even idiots like them wouldn't deliberately piss off an author. And anyway, I knew the girls, and I knew why they were calling me an idiot. They were members of Ravin's fan group, and they were mindless idiots who had nothing better to do than "ooh" and "aah" over the second most bishounen guy in the school. (Of course, the second part was my own opinion; many others thought I had the order screwed up.)

Ravin was the head of the school newspaper, and a very, very pretty guy, though in my opinion nowhere near as good looking as Nik. He was my age, a junior, and one of the three guys in the school with a fan group of any decent size, though I don't think any but the most shallow of the other guys in the school envied him for his almost rabid fan group. The girls in that group were awful.

I hadn't remembered before that Ravin was in Nik's gym class. It was a combined junior/senior class, and both of the two most beautiful guys in the school were in it. But sure enough, once I remembered, I spotted Ravin easily, his waist-length black hair, flowing around him in the typical bishounen cool style, making him very easy to find. He was talking to Rana-chan's creation at the time, and the boy looked really annoyed.

Just then, as I noted Ravin, I heard yet more footsteps approach us. When I looked up, I found that this time it was a guy, a very bishounen guy, who I assumed was one of Rana-chan's creations because of the wings. He had long hair, a rather common thing among Rana-chan's creations I'm told, but oddly enough, it was a mottled black and white, as if she couldn't decide which color she wanted for it. His eyes were a deep violet color, very pretty. He also had a large pair of white feathered wings, which was why I was fairly certain he was one of Rana-chan's creations. There was also the fact that he was greeting Rana-chan.

"Hey, how did the meeting go?" Rana-chan asked him.

"Okay, I guess," the guy said, and then he turned to Stick Ana-chan. "Though I thought you said the principal was one of your creations…"

"He is," Stick Ana-chan replied.

"Funny," the guy said. "He doesn't seem the type. Where's Saka?"

"In the pool," Rana-chan said. "He decided he wanted to swim, and I let him, provided he doesn't try to kill any students. In fact, I was just pointing him out to Corinne here." She nodded her head at me, which brought the attention of the guy to me. I was pretty shocked, because I had no idea that Rana-chan actually knew my name.

"You know my name?" I asked, and Rana-chan laughed again.

"Yeah, I know your name," she said. "I make it a point to know the names of all of the students in the school, even though I'm no Headmaster."

"You said Saka's in the pool?" the guy asked. Rana-chan nodded. "Funny, I don't see him, or feel him either."

"He was right there just a minute ago," she said.

"He's not there now," he said.

"He can't have gone far," she said testily. "I know he can't teleport, because I didn't want him able to get wherever he wants that easily. I'm sure he just went to do something else. You know how he is when he's bored."

"Yeah," the guy said. "I'll go look for him."

"I think I'll help you," Stick Ana-chan said. "I don't like the idea of Saka on a rampage in the school, and that might just happen if he gets angry."

"Good point," Rana-chan said. "I'll help too."

The three of them then left the window area to search for the kid. A few minutes later the gym teacher called all of the guys out of the pool, since the class was almost over. I watched as they walked past the window, only keeping from drooling by sheer force of will. Nik glanced up as he walked past, noticed me, and waved. After that, I hurried away from the window, since I didn't want the gym teacher catching me watching them.