Orihime was confused.

She frowned at the book she was holding, utterly bewildered about the fact that her teacher would set such a difficult English text. Glancing up from under her tree, she spotted Uryu watching her from a distance, an indefinable expression on his face.

"Uryu!" she called, waving frantically and gesturing for him to come and sit with her, after all, it had been several days since he had been crying in the classroom and she hadn't spoken to him properly since.

The Quincy appeared to sigh before he reluctantly made his way towards her, eyes hidden by his glasses as usual. When he reached Orihime's tree, Uryu sat down next to her without a word.

"Uryu, are you okay?" Orihime asked gently. "I'm really sorry if I accidentally upset you the other day, I have no idea what it was all about, but I feel as though it was my fault somehow..."

"Don't worry about it, Orihime," Uryu replied, resignation in his voice as he picked up a leaf from the ground in front of him and tore it to pieces. "It doesn't matter."

Orihime scrutinised her friend's face, concluding that he wasn't being completely honest, but she eventually decided not to press the point. He must have his own reasons for not wanting to talk about it, she reasoned.

"Do you think you could help me with my English book?" Orihime said instead, gesturing towards the book in her lap. "You're so good at English, you must be able to explain to me what I'm doing wrong because what I'm reading just doesn't seem right. It makes complete sense, but it's not what the teacher described it as, so I think I must just be reading the wrong book."

Uryu finally looked at Orihime, a light frown on his face. "Which book were you told to read?"

"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," Orihime responded enthusiastically, eagerly showing Uryu the picture of the train on the cover.

"Ah," Uryu enthused, as his formerly downturned mouth began to quirk upwards as he took the novel from Orihime's hands. "Yes, I think the series is precisely the sort of thing you would enjoy, Orihime. It's a wonderful story about a seemingly-ordinary boy finding out that he is special and discovering his place in a completely different world full of magic. What's wrong with it?"

Orihime frowned. "No, I'm pretty certain that's not the plot. In the version I read, Harry is a mental patient. He begins by murdering a man with two heads who killed his parents several years ago. Harry continues the story by making up a number of fantastic stories and acting them out with other patients in the mental hospital, and one of the teachers, Snape, brings out his paranoid side, and then it ends when Harry is judged to be too unstable for the hospital and is sent home to live with his aunt and uncle who have to lock him in a cupboard so he can't be a danger to anybody."

Uryu's jaw slowly dropped as Orihime's monologue continued, realising once she had finished that his mouth had been gaping open for at least half a minute. "Orihime," he said, gently, placing the book back in her hands. "Would you mind showing me the first page?"

Orihime flipped the book open, turning straight to the back cover.

"See, there's your problem," Uryu patiently pointed out. "You haven't been reading the wrong book, you've just been reading it backwards. English books read from left to right."

"Ohhhhhh," Orihime breathed, staring down at the book and moving her bookmark to the front of the book.

"Did you not realise that the sentences between pages were coming out garbled?" Uryu asked.

Orihime shrugged. "I just assumed I was making a mess with the translation," she said.

"It's not a problem," Uryu said kindly. "You should try again from the real beginning. The book will make much more sense to you if you read it the correct way, and you will probably gain far more enjoyment out of it this way. You might even want to read the whole series, if you like it enough. I thought the ending was perfect."

Looking up from the book, Orihime's gaze was caught by a peculiar expression in Uryu's eyes. And Orihime read.

And Orihime understood.

Author's notes: Okay, this is the end. Really. Promise. I am 300% certain this time.

After re-reading what I wrote at 6am yesterday before I went to sleep, I concluded that I needed to find a definite end to this before I ended up taking this story further than it ought to go, derailing everybody and driving my favourite character well and truly over the edge in the process. (Yep, Uryu's my favourite character. I just happen to enjoy being really horrible to him. That probably speaks volumes about my personality...)

So, I decided to take pity on Uryu for a change and give him an happy ending for once. If this counts as an happy ending. It's the closest to closure I'm able to write, anyway, so it's up to you to decide what you think happens after that. :D