おまわりさん

“Ah, I actually won something from the raffle. So it’s a $30 gift card to Luciole, huh?” That was that hair dresser place, wasn’t it. Honestly, it did surprise him that he did win anything at all, since he usually wasn’t really the lucky type. And getting his hair trimmed for free, sure was better than nothing at all! How unusual convenient things turned out for him for once! 

He would consider getting more than a trim, but it was way too cold to wear his hair any shorter. (Especially since he did wear beanie and scarf even on chilly summer days…)

“Sounds like you might be getting your sheep fuzz trimmed then?” Come to think of it, it wasn’t like anyone could actually see... Sou’s ears or jawline even sometimes. As a campus policeman, it was nice to see one of the students get something that actually was a functional prize. As someone who personally knew Sou, well, that just gave him a chance to be another thorn in the student’s side for the time being.

@omawariji​

This wasn’t going so well, Tomura speculated- if the people ignoring his whole existence as he stretched his arm out towards them to hand them a flyer was anything to go by. He wasn’t exactly sure what was wrong with him that people would completely overlook him. Was his demeanor not open or welcoming enough? Perhaps it was his all black get-up with his hood pulled over his shaggy hair- ah, he remembered he hasn’t exactly showered today. Maybe getting up at 7:30pm after a good 5 hours of sleep and throwing on an old pair of jeans and a hoodie over his head before heading out with the stack of flyers tucked under his armpit wasn’t exactly a good idea. Welp. At least this brown random street dog tailing his every move as he handed out flyers in front of the club Deviance kept him company- it certainly helped with his mood not plummeting from the strangers not giving him 2 seconds of their day.

Whatever, he scoffed, these people probably aren’t that talented anyway.

He stared at the unsightly red guitar drawn at the corner of the crumpled flyers in his hands before letting out a resigned sigh. His annoying lackey can create a couple more of these, he decided.

Neatly laying out four of the flyers on the sidewalk in a square, he gave his little furry companion a firm pat on the head before plopping his butt onto cement ground, folding his legs crisscross with each of his under the other opposite knee. What a waste of time, he plucked the cap of his iced drink with two careful fingers and laid it next to his thigh. He drank the rest of his watered down coffee, including the small bits of ice left in the liquid and set down the empty cup in front of him, munching on the ice with his molars.

The sound of loose change being dropped into the empty cup in front of him had him looking up, his brows knitted in a frown and jaw clinched.

“Dude, I’m not a damn hobo,” he called out, though with his low voice bordering on an irritated grumble, he wasn’t sure if the other would have even heard him, “but at least give a little bit more than that.” He wasn’t exactly sure how much money was dropped into the cup, but he just wanted to be petty.

Even when a long awaited day off came, it wasn’t like Keiji could ever stop his wandering feet from drawing him away from his apartment. Keeping his work schedule when his days shifted to nights wasn’t too hard; he thought of himself as more of a night owl anyway, so that worked out pretty well. At least this area had a decent nightlife scene that didn’t really require him to drive too far for the most part. Sitting around in his apartment just made him feel restless and while walking around the city wasn’t exactly his preferred venue of the park, it was better than trying to hunker down for an unproductive day at home. Besides, he could always drop by the park later when he had just about enough of people for the day -- and it was pretty much guaranteed to be empty by then anyway. 

This part of the city was always crowded with people regardless of the time and when Keiji was about to make a beeline for the park just so he could let some students (or faculty really, he didn’t judge) have some fun, his eye caught on some guy sitting near the entrance on some papers, a dog by his side even. Geez, some people were really down on their luck sometimes, huh? There wasn’t too much change in the pockets of these pants, but seeing as most people were overlooking this guy, Keiji figured he could make at least a little bit of a contribution. 

That was, until the guy spoke. Actually, now that he was stopping and actually getting a closer look at the guy, he looked a little familiar. Definitely not someone he knew by name, but someone he had at least seen a couple times in passing somewhere...

“Beginner friendly ways, huh...?” While it certainly was possible that Sou truly wasn’t feeling well this week, Keiji was pretty confident in his decently reasonable deduction that the other... well, the other clearly wasn’t the type of guy to step foot into a gym for any reason. If it wasn’t apparent from just how weirdly overdressed he was for the gym itself -- at least the neck wrap around his nape wasn’t his usual big red dotted scarf -- it sure was apparent when Sou went straight for the dumbbells when Keiji told him to just grab the barbell bar for the time being. As amusing as it was to watch the poor guy struggle with some small weights, he was sure that there was bound to be some kind of liability on his part of Sou actually hurt himself trying to patch up his pride like this.  

Besides, it was Sou who really asked him to help him out with working out... so it was only the responsible and friendly campus policeman thing to do. This was just a long process of ruling out things that the other couldn’t do for the time being, maybe he would do better with some kind of cardio to build up stamina for now... Ah, but it was probably better to get his actual fitness status from Sou’s mouth. As painful as that might be. 

Keiji is truly a good man, sworn of duty and valiant and true to catch a fool like Semimaru’s already empty enough noggin. There’s little bouncing that occurs but if this were an anime Semimaru would still see stars. 

Give him a minute, he’ll muster up the gratefulness in a second.

“Holy hell…can’t believe how evil those bugs are…I always knew I wasn’t crazy.” Eventually after a minute or so he sits up and looks at Keiji.

“Yeah, I guess….are you? Do ya need an ice pack? You saved my life, dude.”

Maybe settling on how evil bugs were wasn’t exactly the lesson that Keiji thought that the other should have in mind, but at least he could breathe a little sigh of relief that kid seemed to be mostly fine -- even able to sit up after a moment or so. “Too bad I couldn’t catch the slippery little guy, might’ve had to escort ‘em off campus myself to make sure it wouldn’t terrorize any more of you kiddies later on.” A quick look over seemed to mostly confirm that the other was okay and Keiji reached out to give that hard head of his a little ruffle.

@omawariji​

continuation from [x]

❝You’re already doing a good job of keeping the campus safe. You shouldn’t exert yourself more than what your body is capable of.❞ He has always been very appreciative of campus security even if he doesn’t show it as well as he should. Their mere presence keeps students in their best behavior and they remind him that discipline is still valuable in today’s youth. He’s heard of the constant parties the kids throw in the dead of most nights and he could only imagine just how many hours of sleep their officers have been deprived of.

He feels bad for them. He really does. But this is also beyond his control so there’s nothing much he could do but to offer one of them a quick snack and a cup of coffee from his own supply.

❝Do you have any sort of routine to de-stress?❞ He questions curiously. ❝I personally enjoy a good workout or a warm bath. Knitting is good too if you want to focus your mind on something else. My daughter could very well hold a world record for having the most homemade woolen sweaters a nine-year-old could ever have.❞

Maybe Keiji had resigned himself to being around the kids for so long that he was a little thrown by the seemingly genuine words from the other. Among coworkers, there wasn’t too much small talk exchanged between them - not that he could really blame them. It was hard to find time to do anything besides a quick little trudge over to a bar on an off night to share a drink before heading home for the night. And that was a habit that he’d been trying to kick since coming to a college campus; couldn’t exactly tell these kids to lay off the alcohol if he was in the bar several nights in a row exactly. It had been some number of years since he had been in patrol too, so these weird hours could really still kick his ass sometimes. 

“Appreciate the concern, guess you never really know how you take to a situation without actually experiencing it, huh?” He managed a weak smile at that, pinching the bridge of his nose in a long known trick to try and perk himself long enough for the coffee to start kicking in. Professors were a pretty safe bet around here, the university tended to vet their staff pretty clearly, but Keiji wasn’t exactly the type of guy who liked to talk too much about himself if possible and unfortunately, he hadn’t ever been the greatest with keeping his stress low. Maybe if he hadn’t been so stressed out before... well, that wasn’t anything he would delve into now. 

You know, Joe should have probably thought about it deeper before offering to clean up the room. Everyone was having so much fun playing the games, but they all discussed all the work they needed to get done. Whether it be for classes or an actual job, both took a lot of time. A few others members tried to insist that they stay with him, though he had stated it would be alright on his own. However, now stood the challenge before him, fitting all of these large boxes into a carrying bag. Why in the world do games come in such obscure box sizes? It was becoming more of an obstacle than he anticipated. 

That’s when he saw the police officer come his way. The first thoughts in his head were about being in trouble, what had he done to get written up for?! Was he here too late? There have been multiple times where Joe was on campus later in the day, but he didn’t thing it was that big of an issue! Joe was becoming more nervous as the awkward time passed on by. 

“It’s alright! I can handle these on my own!” He states while bending down to grab a large stack of game boxes. Of course, it was a bit too much to hold so they start tilting, and then proceed to fall down to the ground. 

This kid sure was sweating a lot. It was kind of hard to tell if it was because of all the board games he kept on shuffling around with or if all of the possible crimes he had committed instantly came to mind with Keiji’s presence or maybe it was just how people usually got nervous around any form of law enforcement. That was a lot to unpack in the moment though and while it might have been amusing for someone else to watch this poor guy struggle even more with the board game boxes, Keiji wasn’t exactly too keen on possibly having one of the boxes fall open and send game pieces spraying just about everywhere. 

Which several of the boxes were rather dangerously close to doing when a bunch of them fell from the student’s hands again. Sheesh, talk about stubborn -- squatting down to help the poor guy gather up those boxes before he could really say anything, Keiji grabbed a couple of the other ones just laying about and stacked them up. It was strong arming his help, but he had a feeling that this was probably the only way to get the other to accept it. 

Yet Another Symbol Meme ☂️ - shelter my muse.

Really nice of that passing rain front to just remain squarely on this area for the last couple of days. The concern about some of the storm drains flooding had really made directing traffic for student and staff parking a real pain in the ass, and Keiji couldn’t say that he was entirely against buying out one of the lots at a nearby store for overflow parking. Of course, that just added some extra time for his hourly rounds during the day and night since there was that extra chunk of land to make his way over to before coming back onto campus. At least he could take a bit longer on a new route to get over there, passing by a couple of benches and doing a bit of a double take when he saw a figure just sitting on one of them. He wasn’t the type of guy to use an umbrella when he could just put on his rain poncho and walk around like that, but he still had a small one tucked in his pocket just in case. Maybe this guy could use that. 

Yet Another Symbol Meme 💢 - snarl/growl at my muse.

There were a lot of things that Keiji could excuse – being alive on this planet for almost thirty years at this point sure gave him the revelation that a lot of things didn’t actually really matter in the grand scheme of things rather early on in his life. Not a lot of things mattered so much to him when he had worked in a field where seeing all the bits of humanity that people liked to pretend didn’t exist was commonplace. Numbing yourself to some of that was almost a necessity in his field and maybe he had been a little hurried along when a certain incident still throbbed dully in his head from time to time. Keiji knew a threat when he heard one though and while he liked to consider his relationship with Sou Hiyori – no, his real name was something else, wasn’t it? – to be at least a little amicable, this friendly campus policeman had to draw some lines in the sand when their sometimes antagonistic relationship was starting to veer close to subjects he would rather not let others know about. 

“You’re a bit of a troublemaker, aren’t you kiddo?” He joked, humorless chuckle in the back of his throat. For someone he called a kid, he was acutely aware of just how sharp Sou was and just how skilled the other was. Gauging the level of danger there was happened to be a skill of Keiji’s and while he was pretty sure that whatever records still remained in his employee file were sealed, nothing as was ever as secure as people liked to think they were. Especially not from someone with Sou’s particular skill set – people always remained a variable in most situations and this was one where he would like to eliminate as many as those as possible.

Yet Another Symbol Meme💤 - fall asleep on my muse.

Some nights still weren’t as kind as others – despite the fact that years had passed since that little incident happened to him, there were still some sleepless nights that liked to plague him from time to time. Of course, everything was a little more manageable nowadays since there weren’t too many situations that required him to even consider the usage of a gun, but a strange thing the mind could be. The state of having to flip flop his schedule around too was unconsciously taxing too, that much he knew. Maybe that was why he was all the more sympathetic to the plight of poor college students – some of which probably didn’t receive nearly enough sleep to make it though the hours of class they had to sit through. There wasn’t much for him to do here, so at least sitting on random benches during random lulls was at least something he could do to keep an eye on things.

Yet Another Symbol Meme🗨️ - verbally praise my muse. 

Ah, seriously? Wasn’t it enough that Sou already lived in his building and worked at the convenience store that Keiji so happened to frequent a decent amount during his working hours? Now the kiddo wanted some kind of praise from him? Of course, part of his job as being some friendly campus policeman meant that he should encourage the students here when he could – in healthy and appropriate ways that would help their young minds along so they became well adjusted adults… or something like that. Yet Keiji was pretty sure that Sou was asking this to just be a pain in his ass, since Keiji was still sort of investigating exactly what the other guy was trying so hard to hide. 

“Y’mean to tell me they’re paying you to listen to sob stories too? That’s like, basically a bartender! I don’t have any sorrows to spill, though.”

“With that kinda phrasing, I gotta think ‘bout it a little bit now, right? You wouldn’t ask about it if there wasn’t something going on in that lil noggin of yours.” 

Of course, prior to coming here, keeping in physical shape was a pretty important part of his job – it was that much easier to keep up with suspects and the like on foot if he was at least prepared to run for a while if necessary, plus he would rather put his body to the test rather than rely on a certain something else… Not that Sou was really asking about that. He didn’t really have a pressing issue like that on hand and Keiji kind of doubted that the issue of self defense would really ever come up in a field like computer science, unless the other went for something like computer forensics, but he doubted that Sou would really want to be involved in that. In terms of personal health, Sou also didn’t really seem to be the guy who worried too much about that either. 

So was there someone he was trying to impress? The other stared pretty hard at his arms sometimes when it was warm enough for Keiji to wear his short sleeve uniform and always had some kind of pained expression on his face (for a split second) whenever there was anything strength related on hand. Maybe it was personal improvement? Though, he didn’t want Sou to get the idea that he would look like him after just a couple of gym sessions either. 

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Keiji hasn’t always been the most sober person in the world out there, but watching all the shit that students crammed down their throats at the end of a stressful exams week had a great way of keeping him in check. It didn’t stop him from having a drink or two after a particularly long day, but he sure didn’t want to make a fool of himself like how some of these students could be at the end of a bottle – or a shot glass really, in this case. He couldn’t say that he could exactly tell when someone at least had something in their system, but his guesses were pretty good and this guy didn’t look like he had all that much… yet. Though, enough apparently to say something like that to him on his little trip back to his dorm room as they passed each other in the hallway. Arching a brow and casting a slightly amused expression over to the other, he couldn’t help making a little comment at that.

“Is that something you should really be telling your friendly campus policeman? I am friendly, but I’m here first for your security, you know.” But sheesh, was something on this kid’s mind now? Some embarrassing things could be spilled in a state of mind like this… and he was curious, among the slight concern starting to build inside of him. 

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Working on a college campus really was endlessly amusing in a variety of ways, Keiji had responded to some pretty unusual calls when he was a detective, but there were only so many ways someone could break into a store to get at the cash register, but the mixture of young adulthood and poor decisions present in a place like the school dorms made unusual situations each and every night. Here he was somewhat sleepily manning the front desk this night before an RA could come, taking a moment to glance over at the hallway cameras and doing a slight double take when what looked like suds were bubbling out from the laundry room. At first, Keiji figured it might just be his eyes messing with him – he wasn’t the pinnacle of good sleeping habits, after all – but watching a certain student walk over to the laundry room with a basket and soon drop the same basket with a surprised yelp meant that this was all in good reality. 

Luckily, it was just the washing machine that happened to be closest to the door so the mass of bubbles wasn’t quite as big as it could have been (still enough for Keiji to radio over custodial to take care of this mess) and now he was just watching the other somewhat begrudgingly feel around for his card to rinse off the rest of the suds, grumpily answering him on why he added so much laundry detergent to the machine to begin with. 

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Nao was a bit of an odd student, though something Keiji quickly learned both from his time as an officer and his time as campus security here was that ‘regular’ was anything but. Helping her find that precious photograph of her beloved professor had been anything but boring, but at least that seemed to cement him as a good person in her eyes? It was enough for her to take his joke that her doing a portrait of him as thanks seriously and now here they were in this situation. In particular, just a large canvas painting of his tired mug in her hands that she was presenting to him with a wide smile.  

More so when he made the mistake of jokingly asking if she had given it a title and received that rather grand title. Still, she put in a lot of work into this and some embarrassment wasn’t something that came up much nowadays, but… well, something about this painting reminded him just a little bit of how she had gone to fashion that portrait of that professor of hers… Keiji was a little overwhelmed, to say the least.