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Rachel played along softly with Yrael's violin, trying her best to match up with his pitch and tempo as the song continued. It was her first time playing a duet, after all, so nerves and lack of experience were both working against her. As the song ended she looked down at her hands, as if she were about to ask them how they thought it went.

Before she knew it, Yrael was behind her, his hands suddenly grasping hers and moving them onto a different set of keys. Not having expected this, she flinched away from him, blushing just slightly despite herself and looking rather taken aback.

"N-no, it's fine," she said, jerking her hands back and waving them back and forth. "Let me practice that a little..." She went back to her playing as Yrael went to tend to his violin, but she was so flustered that she stumbled over the notes for the first few seconds before managing to fall back into the earlier melody.

Rachel tried to ignore her obvious failure to play the first few notes correctly, plodding onward with the piece as she began playing in the new chord that Yrael had shown her. She nodded to him as he spoke, mostly tuning out what he was saying - that is, until he got to the part about thinking she wanted to date him. At that point, she stopped playing abruptly, wheeling her head around to face him.

"What?!" she cried out, utterly incredulous at this point and with a combined look of insult and mild disgust on her face. "I think you're reading me wrong, Mr. Yrael," she said, suddenly adopting a forced polite tone of voice. "I am very much not looking to date anyone right now. Guys are pigs..." she said, grimacing a little before looking back at him. "...Well, present company excepted. Anyone who plays that well can't be all bad."

Tristan walked into the room playing his flute, then stopped abruptly when he saw the pair standing at the piano. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interupt. I'm sorry!" He said as he started to turn red. He turned and started towards the door.

"It's okay," he mumbled. "I didn't mean to get so mad."

He let out a small laugh. It was genuine, and not his normal cynical one. "You remind me a little of her," he said, cover his face with one hand while still chuckling. "You're quick to jump to conclusions."

He looked at her, with a small smile. "Sorry," he said. "Sorry..."

He put violin on his lap and looked at the ceiling. "Up until now, all I really knew were guys. I knew my sister and my ex, but other than that, I've never really met women before. So I don't know how to handle them or talk to them."

He smirked. "If my words come out wrong, that's just a reason. You may look at it as an excuse if you'd like," he said.

"So were most of the kids at St. Michel's," Yrael said. "I was an R.A. for the dorms there. I had to keep breaking up a couple of guys in the middle of the night."

He sat there for a moment. "It's why I couldn't stand to live there. Not only that, some stuff happened, and my sister felt I should be transferred out," he said.

Yrael looked at Rachel, his blue eyes now almost completely red. "Is that why you don't like guys very much? It's that they always liked your brother rather than you?" he said. He smiled again. "It's odd. I feel like I can tell you anything. I guess that's a good thing. I don't talk to anyone right now."

He tested a few notes on his violin. The E string suddenly snapped, and slit him across the face as he was playing, leaving a long, thin gash, right below the scar on his nose bridge. As he put his violin down, a drop of blood dropped onto the chesnut brown instrument. He touched his face and calmly looked at the red liquid on his finger tips.

"Oh..." he muttered, in a disinterested fashion. "I need to get a new E string..."

He seemed more concerned about the violin than the cut on his face.

"No, not really that..." Rachel said quietly, sighing some to herself. "It's complicated. It's a lot of things, and I don't really feel like going into all that right now. I'm sorry." She honestly didn't want to get into the stories of how her brother always used his mega-charisma just to get attention from girls, or how whenever a guy did come along, he only bothered talking to her because of the effects of her supernatural good looks. All of that just reminded her of the difficulties she faced growing up - the things she came to Ria High to avoid.

She glanced up sharply as Yrael's E string snapped, cutting him across the face. Standing up, she walked over to him, raising an eyebrow in confusion at his apparent lack of concern for his own injury. Digging in her pocket, she pulled out a pack of tissues and handed it to him.

"You should at least wipe the blood off, you know."

"Hmm?" Yrael looked up, blood dripping down his cheek. "What was that?"

He continued to examine his E string. "Sorry if it seems weird, but I don't feel any pain," he said. "But I guess I should wipe the blood off..."

He accepted Rachel's tissues and wiped his face. When he finished, the cut was no longer there. He looked at the bloody tissue for a moment, allowing his mind to enter a state for a moment. The tissue sparked, before that spark grew to a large ball of flames and dying down, leaving nothing on his palm.

Yrael looked up. "I don't see a cut, Miss Rachel," he said softly. He smiled at her and went back to his string. "I'm a fast healer."