Odds & Ends

Fuck. Partner work. Two words Yuri absolutely hated. First of all, he hoped this was simply an in-class exercise, because anything else would be pure torture. Yuri was a good student, he did his work (mostly), and he studied for his tests, though most of his focus went towards his skating, which is usually what he did after school. A partner or group project meant wasting his skating time, something he did not approve of.

And second of all, he barely knew anyone in this class because Yuri really hadn’t taken the time to get to know anyone yet. Actually he wasn’t really sure if he planned on getting to know anyone. School was for school, not friends.

He didn’t even like this class, some random general requirement class he was forced to be in, so he had chosen to get it out of the way now, rather than deal with it later. He was still feeling a bit undecided about what he wanted to major in, but his grandfather had been adamant about wanting Yuri to finish school, so he’d kept it up, though he knew the only thing he really wanted to do was skate.

They were going to be working with the people directly next to them, and directly next to him was a girl he’d never talked to. He’d seen her glance over at him a few times, but that wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. He was a well-known figure skater, and even if people weren’t familiar with the sport, most people knew who he was simply because of rumors, which seemed to spread fast around the campus. Unfortunately, he had no idea who she was; he never thought to ask.

He flicked his green eyes in her direction. She was smiling, though it seemed forced? No, that wasn’t right…worried perhaps? Yuri was terrible at reading people so he really couldn’t tell.

The worksheets were handed out, and he was about to ask what topic they had, when she turned to him and asked him what he thought about friendship.

“HAH?!” Yuri yelled, probably the loudest he’d been in class thus far. Reaching out, he grabbed the worksheet off of her desk and scanned it himself, his brow twitching. What a horrible topic!

Well, it wasn’t all that terrible, it was more that Yuri didn’t have a great deal of experience with friendship. How the hell was he supposed to answer a question like that?!

“Friendship, huh…” he grumbled, placing the paper back on her desk. He rest his chin in his hand, puffed out a large puff of hair.

“It’s fine or whatever…if you know good people,” he scoffed. This girl seemed much nicer than he was, and he could tell from her smile that she had to have at least a few friends, so she was most likely far better suited to answer this question than he was.

“You look like you have a better answer to this than I do,” he grumbled.

Shiki was thrown off guard when the response to her question was a loud “HAH?!” and all she saw was Yuri lunging towards her desk to grab the prompt paper.  A peal of laughter left her lips and a wider, more candid smile formed on her mouth at the sight, for she found his extremely animated actions funny.  She had never seen the boy act so animated like he was at the moment.  Some of their classmates stared at them, curious about what caused the outburst, but Shiki ignored them, hand slightly over her mouth to stifle the giggles.  She more worried that Yuri would take her the wrong way, honestly.  “Sorry...ahaha...not laughing at you...that was just...your reaction...pfft!”

As Yuri puffed up his hair with a sour look on his face, Shiki removed her hand, a smile still present on her lips.  Despite his appearance, Yuri was quite funny (to her, at least).  She was sure that the friends he had enjoyed his company despite the fact of who he was and how he he was presented.  

Shiki’s smile slowly faded into an expression of seriousness and contemplation when Yuri scoffed out an answer and grumbled at her about looking like she had a better answer to the prompt.  She rested her left cheek on her left hand, lips pursed.

“I don’t think I have a better answer necessarily.  Your answer’s completely legit.  I agree that it friendship’s better with good people.” Shiki pointed out.  “Or for me personally, the right people.  I’ve had friendships turn out to be really toxic and vapid.  I don’t think I can even really say they were friendships, actually.”  She thought back to some of her ‘friends’ from high school.  They were more interested in building a connection for appearances, rather than legitimately wanting to be friends with her as a person.  She would’ve thought it was for networking, if not for the fact that networking wasn’t as extremely personal as they tried to be.  There were also some friendships where she saw her friend’s friends try to destroy them despite the fact that they were friends.  Could they say that was really friendship?

Hiyori was exhausted. The day had been a long one – with classes in the morning and then spending the afternoon looking after patients at the hospital, it was no wonder she felt tired. Tired didn’t even describe it.

Her hair was in an unkempt bun, bangs getting in the way of her eyes as Hiyori walked down the dark streets of Bellevue. Even at nighttime the streets were lively, with the stores lit up brightly and people going about their way. Something in one of the store’s windows caught her eye and Hiyori walked up to take a look.

Or she would’ve, if it wasn’t for the fact that dozed off, head pressed against the glass.

She had been wiping down tables near the display window when she realized someone was looking in - or rather...sleeping in?  Shiki slowly straightened up in surprise as she inspected the girl standing in front of the display window.  Sure enough, the girl was, for some reason, dozing off against the window.

Slightly concerned - okay, maybe very concerned, because she doubted the girl wanted to be napping against a window like this - Shiki put down the washrag, wiped her hands on her apron, and slipped outside and approached the girl.  Upon a closer look, she realized she had seen this girl at Enyo and Bayside.  It was possible that the two were neighbors and potential classmates, but Shiki had only seen her around, not interacted with her.  She had heard of a once-extremely prominent family moving into the neighborhood with a daughter, but she wasn’t sure if this was the daughter.  This was understandable, as Shiki was not around the Bayside neighborhood as often as she once used to be because of school; so she wasn’t as aware of what was happening there nowadays.

video game challenge    ➢  [1/7 video games] 

[ ANOTHER DAY ]

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