#eg0sum

And so it does. Clover rocks back onto her heels after tracing the room number on the plaque. Said hands are now stuffed into her pockets, making her the picture of idle disbelief. Or boredom, maybe.

What can she say, school wasn’t really her thing. Which is to say it was at one point, but now it isn’t. So she definitely looks out of place standing on the freshly-polished linoleum (they’d passed at least three ‘CAUTION’ signs and four disgruntled cleaning crews earlier), but it’s still for all of the wrong reasons for a girl her age.

Junpei, for what it’s worth, looks less disconnected from his surroundings, or else bored for a different reason and expressed in a different way. She pivots on one foot and turns to look at him, squinting a bit to see if she can’t pick up on any shred of strangely-expressed emotion on his face.

Which, true to form, she can’t, and so she sighs instead.

“… You really think he’s gonna be in here?”

Bars are loud, liquor is overpriced, and she’s embarrassingly bad at holding her liquor. An ideal setting for consuming alcohol was by herself with some Greek dub of Star Trek as white noise while she polishes off half a bottle of cheap pink moscato. 

But it’s one of those days-- the really exhausting kind. The kind of day that makes parents come home and tell their children how lucky they are to have their youth, with that sort of paternal contempt that made you resent your mom and dad a little.

As if they’d just tried to steal something special from you.

So when he asks to grab a drink after work, she says yes ( “sure why not” ) but with a tone you’d expect someone to say no with.

The bar is packed, as she’d expected of anywhere on this side of the island after five.

It’s a weird mix-- college kids and middle aged folk. The two of them are smack dab in the middle of the spectrum, young enough to be envied and mature (looking) enough to be respected. The prime of their lives, right?

A group of rowdy, clearly American, college kids sit down next to them at the counter, and Phi spares the guy in the PI KAPPA ALPHA sweatshirt a withering frown, distracted only when the bartender sets down her drink.

A frozen cocktail, mostly khalua and chocolate. 

“I hate college kids.” Down on his side a group of balding salary men hopelessly nurse beers. “But old people are kinda’ sad too. What’s this place’s demographic anyway?”