About one thing the girls of Domino High were agreed: the upcoming transfer student was bound to be the most exciting thing to happen in their school in quite possibly forever.

Mid-year transfer students were always at least somewhat exciting, because there was the question of what mysterious and thrilling reason they had for changing schools in the middle of the term. Granted, none of them had ever actually met anyone with a more interesting reason than 'we moved' but they had all read enough manga or seen enough TV dramas to know how thrilling and mysterious things could be, if reality would just cooperate. And this transfer student wasn't just any transfer student; this transfer student was a foreign, exotic, gorgeous transfer student. They knew this because Takahashi Megumi from class 2B had been excused to the nurse's office with a 'stomach ache' (really, she had been up late the past two nights helping her grandmother prepare their shrine for an upcoming festival, and was hoping to get a nap) when she spotted him being given a tour of the school along with a slightly older and equally gorgeous woman.

"I'll bet he's a Persian prince and she's his father's new young concubine, but the two of them fell in love and have run away together," Yamamoto Keiko, who had a bookshelf half full of romance novels – the other half being spy thrillers – in her room, speculated as the girls from class 3D were in the locker room changing for gym. The other girls cried about how romantic this would be, and tragic, not the least because none of them would have a chance at him.

Suddenly Mazaki Anzu snorted in disgust, cutting off Sugiyama Yuriko from reminding everyone that the country was called Iran now and they didn't have any royalty. That Anzu was disgusted wasn't a surprise – she was infamous for her dislike of all gossip, calling it nothing more than vicious lies used to bully – but it was a surprise when she suddenly exclaimed, "They're not lovers! She's his older sister and they're both normal people from Egypt, not Persian royalty." Then she stormed out while all the rest of them were in too much shock to ask any follow-up questions. A few girls tried asking her later, but the only thing she would say further on the matter was that they should ask the new student himself, once he got here.

"The older sister was really graceful, wasn't she? I'll bet she's the new dance instructor at Mazaki's studio," suggested Mori Sakura, and her idea had some weight to it, as she was, currently, the smartest person in year 3. Kimura Ayumi, Sakura's chief rival and, currently, the second smartest person in year 3, was quick to point out that she attended the same studio as Mazaki and she hadn't heard of any new teachers, to which Sakura replied that maybe Mazaki was actually good enough to deserve one-on-one tutoring, unlike some people. The discussion devolved to pointless bickering from there, as it often did between those two.

But regardless of how Anzu knew, the fact was the transfer was now confirmed to be from Egypt, which made him exotically foreign, rather than just foreign, and meant he was already much more promising than the last transfer student.

Not that there was anything wrong with Bakura Ryo, a conclusion that they all would have drawn even if Ishikawa Eriko, who had a bit of a manic glint in her eyes and a tendency to carry her shinai everywhere she went, hadn't been a big fan of his. He was good-looking, unfailing polite, and kind to everyone he met; a prince character if there ever was one. It was hardly his fault that everyone was disappointed to find that he wasn't actually from England (nor was it Ando Chizuru's, who had been in class 1C at the time and trying to impress some older girls, fault, or at least so she would contend because who had ever heard of a Japanese person with naturally white-blond hair?).

But, as Kudo Hiroshi, the third most popular boy in year 3 after Bakura Ryo and Otogi Ryuji (fourth most if one was to count the as of yet unnamed transfer student), was quick to point out, Bakura was also a total games otaku. He spent all his time either working on that weird board game ("Monster World," Morita Sachi corrected. She didn't play the game herself, but her younger brother did, and she liked helping him come up with campaign sometimes), or hanging out with Mutou Yugi and his friends playing that card game ("Duel Monsters." Neither Sachi nor her brother played that one, but she didn't see how it was that hard to remember). Not that there was anything wrong with any of them either, aside from the fact that Honda Hirohito and Jonouchi Katsuya had maybe probably definitely been delinquents in junior high, but if there was ever a games otaku it was Mutou Yugi. ("Did you know," Murata Rei said in her signature superior tone that had half of her audience automatically tuning her out and the other half listening attentively. "Did you know that he actually calls himself the 'king of games'?")

Of course, there was no worry that the new guy would be anything like that, when he was clearly a complete bad boy. After all, he actually wore leather pants to tour of the school. It was rather unfortunate that Shibata Tomoyo, an avid if not particularly gifted player of Duel Monsters, did not interrupt the two passing upper classmen at that point to inform them that Mutou Yugi, who nobody would ever mistake for a bad boy, regularly wore leather pants outside of school. Unfortunate, because if Tomoyo had all the information available she would have been able to readily identify who the new transfer student was and her popularity would have skyrocketed, at least until Tamura Yoshiko came in one day claiming that she had seen the transfer student riding a motorcycle. (No one would be more surprised than Yoshiko when that rumor ended up being true).

Finally came the transfer student's first day. He was put in class 3A, which was deemed monstrously unfair, as that class already had Bakura Ryo in it. He spoke flawless, but lightly accented Japanese and stumbled over the words slightly when introducing himself, starting to say his given name first before correcting himself. It was adorable, and a crowd of girls flocked to his desk at the first opportunity to tell him as much, but they found themselves brushed off because Ishtar needed to use the restroom. (He did not, however, need an escort, something he was quite emphatic about when five girls all volunteered to show him the way.)

Undeterred, the girls clustered around his desk and discussed what kind of girl he probably liked while they waited for him to get back. All except Takeda Ayane who didn't care what kind of girl Ishtar Marik liked, since she was dating Aoki Kouichi in class 2C and was only hanging around like this because she hadn't yet figured out how to tell her friends she was seeing a younger boy. And because of that, she was the only one who noticed that almost as soon as he left out the front door, Ishtar came back in the back door to the classroom with a mixture of determination and trepidation on his face as he stared at… Bakura Ryo?

"I think," Ayane said, interrupting Miura Kagome's speculation that Ishtar probably liked very feminine types of girls, "that he likes pale and a bit nerdy. Princely too."

There were exclamations of confusion that slowly died out as the girls turned in the direction of Ayane's gaze. Ishtar had now crossed over to Bakura's desk, where his shy greeting was meet by a smile that was so enthusiastic and genuinely warm that even Kimura Midori – no relation to Kimura Ayumi – who thought Bakura's attractiveness was vastly overstated, felt her heart flutter a little. Ishtar sat down at the currently empty desk next to Bakura and the two of them began talking together, perhaps a bit more intent and leaning a bit closer together than entirely necessary.

To a one, all the girls looked away, to give the no doubt soon-to-be couple their privacy. All of them except Kinoshita Natsumi, who was already planning her fan art and possibly a doujinshi – a golden hand resting on creamy pale skin was going to look just gorgeous. Then Ueda Suzume, the eldest of three girls and a pair of particularly incorrigible boys, gave Natsumi a light smack on the back of the head, and she looked away too.

The girls all looked at each other, and for a moment there was silence.

"So who wants to come to my house after school? I used this new recipe for an apple cake last night that I you all to try." Everyone immediately volunteered – Kojima Riko made such great sweets that her parents would actually sell them in their bakery for a fair amount of money – and life went on.

AN: So this is quite possibly the most sexist thing I've ever written. I can only hope it came through that all these girls are awesome in their own unique ways.