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It was precious that Tatiana was trying to comfort him about the situation. Somewhere in his mind, he could not help but appreciate her efforts, but it still did not seem to fix a thing. His body did not relax, he did not tend to his snack, and his eyes remained upon the brunette's dark ones. He placed a false, yet very convincing pleasant smile upon his lips as he commended her for her efforts.

"I appreciate your cooperation, Miss Tatiana." He added a slight nod of the head, as if approving her decision. However, he was just waiting for the question which he would have to decline answering: Why was Howl Wickham at Hillworth to begin with? It was truly a mystery to anyone who might have known him, and many of his classmates could not help but come up with wild speculations as to why the "school hot chick" was in such a school. Only Franz and the school faculty knew the truth.

In an eager fashion, Howl took to the new subject quite quickly. He seemed to ease his body slightly, and even managed to scoop up his plastic fork between his fingers.

"Student mentoring?" He plucked up a small slice of strawberry and bit into about half of it. He pondered what this specifically entailed, and after swallowing down the bit of fruit, voiced his question: "I am not familiar with this. Can you tell me what your duties are with this 'student mentoring'?"

For a moment, the brunette began to ramble about her less-than-proper dealings with school in a previous year, and though he found such to be absolutely disgraceful, he did not let his features show this notion. He might have been at Hillworth, but it did not mean he had taken up the habits many of his peers. Where many students had dodged the rules as frequently as possible, Howl worked within the confines of the rules. The closest he had been to breaking rules was wearing his own clothing rather than his Hillworth uniform off of the school premises.

"Alas, I cannot say that I have ever done anything of the sort, Miss Tatiana. I do imagine it can dampen your permanent record though if you do such things." He took the second bite of his strawberry and seemed to think over missing school on purpose without reason.

As he listened, he continued to pick at his food at a steady pace. He certainly seemed to take his time with eating. Perhaps he had been raised to count how many times he chewed his food or something? One never really knew why he took so long, but it was a fact that Howl never really rushed eating. His head bobbed up and down on occasion as she spoke, and the only interjection he made was the mention of his character.

"You are quite the kind person, Miss Tatiana." He liked to think he was a good person, even though he had made foolish mistakes in the past. There had been doubts in the past though, as to whether he was truly a good person or not. It was not very frequent that a man followed through with a plan to kill another man (though Howl refused to call Brandon anything but a boy). He had been speaking with his therapist about this issue, though most of the therapist's efforts seemed to focus more on the "obsession" issue.

By the time the girl had slowed in her explanations, there were only a few pieces of fruit left in his plastic container. Taking a quick break, he set the fork down again and returned his full attention to the girl "It is always a splendid feeling to know that a person listens to your advice carefully. The 'student mentoring' sounds similar to the 'peer counseling' we had at my old school." He smiled gently, then could not resist commenting on an observation he had made. "You seem to know your way around chopsticks, Miss Tatiana. I am hopeless with such utensils. I always have to use forks when I eat any sort of Asian food." He chuckled, knowing how silly this must have sounded, coming from himself of all people.

"I certainly hope you are exaggerating a bit, Miss Tatiana, about Miss Mariska." In all honesty, he was getting a bit confused by all the names which had been thrown about so haphazardly, but he tried to not let it show. However, he was wondering if this Mariska was a sibling or a parent.

He proceeded to finish off his last pieces of fruit before setting the plastic container and utensil to the side and sliding the gift bag towards himself a bit. He did not dig into the gift just yet though. The girl had uttered yet another apology to him. If there was one thing he knew, it was that you never tried to make someone feel guilty over a mistake. All it did was agitate the situation, and perhaps encourage some other sort of rebellious act.

"Do not worry about it, Miss Tatiana. As I said before, I cannot keep secrets from you it would seem." His voice laughed, trying to make light of the situation, before he moved onto a different subject. "Would it be fine for me to open up your gift now?" Certainly, she had given him permission before, but it never hurt to get permission two times.

What had the brunette just done? Howl lofted a brow curiously, but made not a single comment about it. Instead, he tilted the bag carefully towards himself and allowed his delicate fingers to fish for the contents. He could have pulled out all the papers and thrown them about sloppily, but that was not how he tended to things.

His fingers managed to find the smaller item first, slipping the card out and setting it on the table. He smiled and prematurely offered a "Thank you, this is quite a delightful surprise," as he looked over the monetary value on the gift card. He was about to move the bag off the table, but paused.

"Oh, is there something else in here?" he asked casually as he began to fish into the blue bag again. It was strange that he didn't find the larger item first, but now that he knew there was something else in the bag, he found it without a hitch. It was pulled out with one hand, but he drew his second hand to hold the other side and began to look this DVD case over.

"Witch Hunter Robin?" he read aloud, not very certain what to make of this gift. Regardless of his confusion, he once more offered the polite "Thank you, Miss Tatiana."

He listened with much interest to the explanation, and once Tatiana had fully explained, he seemed to lighten up drastically.

"Oh! So this is what the Japanese animation is? I will watch it as soon as I am able to! I don't really have easy access to a DVD player, but I will find some manner to watch it."

His eyes for a moment seemed to look over the packaging, noting the images on the outside. The artwork seemed to have a fair deal of detail to it. It was somewhat difficult to believe a cartoon could be such an interesting thing to watch. However, Howl wanted to go in with an open mind. He flashed a lovely smile to his current companion and offered a very sincere "Thank you for the consideration, my dear. I feel a bit spoiled now!" His voice chuckled before he turned his attention back to his gifts. It would do him no good to leave them out if he hoped to transport them to the dorm.

With this thought in mind, he then slid his gym bag back out and unzipped it. As he set to tucking his new possessions into the depths of his bag, he casually commented "Seeing as you did not need to get me any sort of gift, I feel that there was no way possible that you could be copping out on a gift."

He carefully maneuvered his fencing uniform to cover his new possessions so that they would hopefully remain hidden when he returned to the campus. With a rather high-pitched "Zzzzzzp," his bag was closed up and once again pushed it under the table. The teal-haired boy lifted his body back up into a sitting position, and casually stroked his hair out of his line of vision.

And then he winked to the girl. "I would like to remind you, Miss Tatiana, one of those gifts was for your birthday, and one was for Christmas. Also, I do not consider two barrettes as two separate gifts." Where most lads could not get away with a wink without it seeming corny, Howl was able to pull it off very effectively. It was usually about the timing after all.

With a smile and a mild nod of the head, he decided to ask something rather considerate: "I do not hope you take this the wrong way, but how much time do you have left to your break, my dear? I would not want to be the reason for any sort of tardiness." He was concerned, and his voice truly seemed to express such.