#file.load(modern);

        ❝ Aha~ It sure is, huh. Aha... hah... ❞  

        ❝ Muuh—! As if I'd be that nonchalant...! Don't just "guess that's broken" me! ❞  

        ...IT WAS JUST A simple match, a quick little 1v1 basketball match simply done for the heck of it. While inexperienced in this particular sport she may be, Hakuno Kishinami's great stubbornness is not a force to be reckoned with; not to mention her own notable skills when it came to things pertaining to athletics, quite surprising for such a delicate-looking girl. It was supposed to be a harmless little thing, but five minutes turned to ten, and ten turned to fifteen, and so on and so forth. The climax came when the girls were neck-to-neck in their match (not that either of them was keeping track of scores to begin with, but it seemed that neither of them had any intention of giving any less than their very best). Both their hands were on the ball when it was just about to be pushed down the net, when—

          —A resounding KERR-RAAKKK throughout the gym broke the intense atmosphere of the situation. Like the silence after a great performance, Hakuno's eyes would owlishly blink first. Now just what had caused that... incredibly loud, ominous sound... Her body remains completely stiff, the only movement being her head as she commands it to look down (in a very rigid, robotic motion — not so out of place with her current blanker-than-usual expression) on to her hand, which she could now see was connected to Yuzuki's own by... the damn basketball hoop?! D-D-Did the two of them exert a combined force of eight hundred forty-one (841) megapascals on this poor thing?! Wh– Whaaa... What are they, gorillas?! (Apekuno and Yuzuking-kong?!).

         ❝ This— We... We have to fix it somehow...! W-What to do... Tape! No, no, that's probably too weak— How about... DELO MONOPOX VE403728?! ❞  

          A SINGLE WHITE ROSE, blooming in spite of the winter's adversities, ever-stoic. And yet it is a fragile thing —— a fleeting sort of beauty, in arm's reach; but in a way, distant. As slender hands are taken into larger ones (a difference that doesn't go unnoticed, noted silently), her gaze is drawn along with it, though the only reaction from maiden would come from the slight parting of her lips. A glance to Ray, doe eyes widening a fraction; hazel eyes appearing just a bit brighter. When eye contact is made, her gaze would jitter downwards again, to their connected hands.

          It's such a gentle touch... Though a porcelain doll she may resemble, she doesn't see it herself. Hakuno Kishinami thinks of herself much harsher; an empty, empty thing rather than beautiful blooms. Not to be treated gently / kindly / like this. Such things are / such things should be far beyond her reach — and yet here it is right now. And here she is right now, not wanting to pull away.  ❝ ...‎Your hands are very warm. ‎❞  Commented in a soft voice, as if afraid to disrupt this tender moment.

          Then her hands would slowly move— to lace their hands together, in a gesture just as soft.