“Er, you may go ahead and introduce yourself to the class now.” said Miss Saotome, after managing to tear herself away from also staring at her pudgy student.

“My name is Akemi HomuUURARP!” the final letters of her introduction being punctuated by a sudden belch, causing quite a few fellow students to flinch in shock. Whatever was stewing in that gut of hers surely must have been quite potent if it wanted escape out of her mouth that badly.

“I-I'm not quite sure how to spell this...” said the clearly nervous teacher as she futilely attempted to spell out the Akemi girl's name on the blackboard.

“Just Homura is fine.” she said. If the sudden gaseous faux-pas was causing her any embarrassment she didn't bother to show it on her face.

“She's certainly, uh, quite a healthy looking girl isn't she?” Hitomi whispered as she leaned toward Madoka.

“Yeah, healthy all right. For a whale at least.” Sayaka added.

Madoka didn't respond back, as she was far to busy looking at Akemi Homura. Something about the new girl evoked something mysterious, yet familiar, about her, but she wasn't sure exactly what it was. As she stared at the girl, Homura caught her eyes for an instance, and Madoka swore she saw the edges of the girl's mouth give a slight twitch followed by what looked to be a nervous gulp. The pink haired girl looked back to her friends to see if they had seen the same thing but unfortunately found them chatting amongst themselves, totally unaware of Houmra's odd reaction to her.

Giving a small sigh of relief, Akemi Homura allowed herself to relax, if only by a minute bit. It was taking all of her willpower imaginable just to stand in front of this unbearable classroom, especially when her target was just mere feet away, helpless. Just thinking back about the brief eye contact they shared made a shiver run up her spine. It was bearing down on her soul at this point, having to put up appearances every single time just to get to Madoka. She almost considered throwing away at pretenses to this charade here and now just so she could-

“Akemi? Hello, are you alright Akemi?”

“W-What?” Homura responded, broken out of her train of thought by the call of her teacher.

“Um, I said are you alright. You've been standing for quite a while now.”

Homura turned to look back at her classmates, who all did their best to avoid looking back. Even Madoka looked like she was unsure how react. It was quite the botched first impression, one that would be hard to salvage. But Homura didn't want to waste anymore time, and was quick on her feet to rectify this.

“I need to go to the nurse's office! Right now!” yelled out Homura, to a now quite flabbergasted class.

“R-Right now?” asked Saotome, sharing in her students' shock.

“Right now!” Homura answered back.

“But class has just started...”

Homura stood silent, a single bead of sweat running down the side of her face as she let her bluff hang in the air.

“Well if you are feeling ill, I suppose it's okay. The nurse's room is right by-”

“And I want the class health coordinator Kaname Madoka to take me there!”

Again the class almost collectively fell over in shock at the Akemi girl's sudden declarations.

“Alright...Though I don't remember telling you Kaname was our class health coordinator.” Saotome said after composing herself.

Kaname Madoka herself was just as surprised. She looked toward her friends to see their reaction but all they could do was shrug, with Sayaka adding under her breath, “Good luck with the weirdo.” By then Akemi Homura had already rushed out of the classroom and Madoka quickly excused herself in order to catch up with her.