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Posts
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40
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Arcana
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I. MAGICIAN
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EXP
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6000
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Tag
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@captjim
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OOC Name
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There Are No Good Mornings (Kei/open??) - Posted May 10, 2018 23:35:33 GMT -7
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((if anyone else wants to join just drop me a line first!))
Lewis ran his hands down his face again and stifled a yawn. Goddamn, but he felt like hammered shit. All the preparation for the first day of class never prepared him for how fucking tired he would be – like he was, without fail, every-fucking-first-day of school. You could have the best clothes and hair in the world but they probably wouldn’t change any impressions if you looked like a fucking scarecrow.
How much sleep had he gotten? Three hours, maybe four? He didn’t think he’d be psyched out by something kiddy like a first day at a new school, and he had been surprisingly confident and at ease about the whole thing, not just a new school but a new country – but then it all vanished when reality had hit, and that night he had been staring at the ceiling just thinking – fuck, fuck, fuck: I’m stuck here, what if I fuck it all up?
And so that was how he came to find himself at a café not even a block from school, which seemed to be a pretty popular hangout for students before classes started. Tons of people decked out in the same uniform as him had been filtering in and out, and they still had about half an hour before they had to get to school.
Lewis had managed to secure a booth before he ordered, and was waiting for his coffee to work its magic. He looked around as he idly sipped his coffee and yawned. Most students had spared curious glances toward him now and again, recognizing that he was a new guy, but they were all keeping their distance; maybe it was because he looked like he wasn't off to a great start. At any rate, the place was quickly filling up; if anyone wanted a seat then pretty soon they wouldn’t have a choice but to share his booth.
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Posts
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27
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Arcana
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XIII. DEATH
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EXP
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2000
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Tag
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@kei
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OOC Name
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Cedar
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There Are No Good Mornings (Kei/open??) - Posted Sept 8, 2018 16:34:20 GMT -7
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Notebook, pencils, pens, lunch --
Brows furrowed and lips pursed, Kei counted on her fingers as she mentally went over the contents of her backpack.
Pencil sharpener, eraser, umbrella, snacks --
What was she forgetting? Something was missing. She knew it. But she couldn't figure out what.
Notebook, pencils, pens, snacks --
She started again, shuffling a few steps forward as the line in front of her moved.
Lunch, textbooks, pencil sharpener --
"I can help whoever's next!" A cashier called out and motioned to Kei, and she walked up to the counter, still half-immersed in her thoughts. She placed her order, paid, and continued to mull over what she might have forgotten. But the harder she tried to think about it, the less certain Kei was that she'd forgotten anything in the first place... Which of course, meant that she had definitely forgotten something.
She just hoped that it wasn't anything too important.
She smiled at the cashier and thanked him as he handed her the hot chocolate she'd ordered. Moving off to the side, Kei glanced around the cafe, looking for a place to sit. Empty seats were few and far between though, sandwiched between strangers or piled high with backpacks. She spotted a few of her classmates in one corner, an unoccupied chair just beside them...
...And immediately turned on her heel, walking toward the opposite side of the cafe. She made her way to the closest booth, which was occupied by just one person. One person, who looked very, very tired, and in desperate need of the coffee he was drinking. Hopefully he wasn't too tired to mind some company; Kei smiled at him as she approached, coming to a stop at the end of the booth.
"Is this seat taken?" She asked, gesturing to the spot opposite him.
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Posts
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40
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Arcana
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I. MAGICIAN
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EXP
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6000
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Tag
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@captjim
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OOC Name
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There Are No Good Mornings (Kei/open??) - Posted Sept 16, 2018 9:31:31 GMT -7
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He looked around the café, waiting anxiously for the coffee to kick in. It was taking a very, very, very long time. What was the deal? Were his beans wimps or something?
Lewis was drifting into a fugue. The noise and movement of the world around him was blending together, starting to seem further and further away. It was too much effort to lift his coffee cup to his mouth. There was no way he had gotten four hours of sleep. More like one hour plus three hours of lying in bed with his eyes shut and trying not to think.
”Eh? He was snapped out of his stupor by a girl (who seemed very cheery, energetic enough – a sighting of the strange, impossible-to-comprehend morning person in its natural habitat), something about a seat? He blinked very notably and for very long once, a tic indicating he was trying to piece together the situation. She needed to take the seat? ”Oh…sure, go for it.” He would not realize for several more seconds that she was not physically moving the seat elsewhere (because it was a booth) and was just sitting down. He thought to himself that he might have protested a few minutes earlier, but now he was just too damn tired.
Tired tired tired tired. He shouldn't have used that word. What was he thinking about then, anyway? Not five seconds later his head had gently settled on the table, and he was quietly, contentedly, snoring, like his brain had decided it had enough and was going to take a break for a while.
As his hand drifted away from the cup, one could make out the barista’s neat writing on the label – a character he wouldn’t have recognized even if he was firing on all cylinders. Decaf.
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Posts
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27
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Arcana
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XIII. DEATH
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EXP
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2000
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Tag
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@kei
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OOC Name
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Cedar
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There Are No Good Mornings (Kei/open??) - Posted Sept 30, 2018 13:27:53 GMT -7
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Time seemed to slow down as the boy stared up at her in silence. Kei's smile started slip and her heartbeat sped up. He was going to say "no", she was sure of it... And then she'd have to go find somewhere else to sit, which really wasn't a big deal except the only other seat she could see was by her classmates and god she didn't want to sit there which meant she was going to have to leave but could she even bring her drink on school pro--
"Oh... sure, go for it."
The boy's mumbled response cut through Kei's panicked, runaway thoughts, and she let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "Thanks!" She said, smile already widening as she set her drink down on the table. She slipped her backpack off and sat down with the grace of an elephant, unceremoniously dumping her bag at her feet. She then shuffled herself and her belongings as far down the booth as she could go -- had to leave room in case someone else needed a seat, after all!
Now settled, she sipped at her drink and looked over to the boy across from her. If possible, he looked even more exhausted than before; there were dark circles under his eyes, and he...
...Was he asleep?
Kei frowned, tilting her head slightly as she watched the guy carefully. ...Well, for a second or so, before her eyes drifted to his hand. Said hand had moved, relaxing and drifting away from the cup to reveal a character scribbled on the side. Decaf. Kei couldn't help it -- she giggled in to her hot chocolate. The poor guy clearly needed something strong, and yet here he was, drinking decaf coffee.
"Bad day for the barista to mix up your order, eh? ...Or did you just happen to order the wrong thing?" She hummed, speaking to herself more than to the sleeping boy, who was in no shape to carry out a conversation. Perhaps when he woke up, she'd repeat her question and get an answer out of him.
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Posts
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40
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Arcana
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I. MAGICIAN
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EXP
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6000
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Tag
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@captjim
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OOC Name
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There Are No Good Mornings (Kei/open??) - Posted Oct 25, 2018 18:36:51 GMT -7
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Unaware of Kei’s comments, Lewis continued softly snoring; under his breath, one could hear him mumbling to himself in English. "What the hell are you doing here, man?" He said, presumably in a dream.
His hand - and his head, actually, were now slowingly rolling back off the table, like he was slowly melting to the floor. "No, I mean, I'm not complaining, it's just..." he half-spoke, half-drooled as he edged across the table.
Suddenly, in his sleep, he stirred against whoever he was talking to – evidently the conversation took a bad turn. ”No, you always do this, you always make a big Goddamn deal out of everything,” he spoke up, and suddenly flung his hand across the table.
Knocking over his drink.
Spilling the (weak, decaffeinated, worthless) coffee on Kei’s sleeve.
Fortunately, it wasn’t very warm anymore, but it couldn’t be a great way for anyone to get the day going.
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Posts
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27
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Arcana
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XIII. DEATH
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EXP
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2000
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Tag
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@kei
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OOC Name
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Cedar
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There Are No Good Mornings (Kei/open??) - Posted Jan 2, 2019 22:23:22 GMT -7
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Kei was pretty sure that staring at sleeping people was considered impolite -- and maybe even creepy -- but she couldn't help herself. Even unconscious, this guy was more interesting than anything else in the cafe. She could hear him mumbling something in his sleep, though his words were lost in the din of the few dozen conversations going on in the cafe. She was tempted to lean in, to get a little closer just to figure out what he was saying...
...Wait, was that English?
Brows furrowed, Kei did lean in a little bit. She still couldn't hear much, but she was able to distinguish a few words -- enough to figure out that yeah, this guy was definitely speaking English. Given his accent (or lack thereof, to Kei's ears), she figured he was from somewhere in North America. And, since he was wearing a school uniform that meant... Transfer student! And that was probably why he had decaf coffee -- somewhere down the line, he or the barista had mixed up his order, and he hadn't known enough Japanese to recognize the error.
Smiling smugly, Kei settled back in her seat, feeling like the world's smartest high schooler. She reached out to grab her hot chocolate just as the boy's dream took a turn for the worst. His hand shot out, sending his coffee teetering toward her. Kei squawked, and jammed her knees into the underside of the tabletop with a loud thunk as she tried to jerk away from the (presumably) hot liquid. The impact knocked her own drink over, sending hot chocolate spilling out to join the lake of coffee pooling on the table... And soaking into Kei's sleeve. The coffee might have been lukewarm, but the hot chocolate was still hot enough to burn a little; Kei hissed and jerked her hands up, trying to keep her sleeves from touching her skin. Her knees were killing her now, too -- that table was hard!
More pressing, however, was the mess of hot chocolate and coffee that was now covering most of the table. It had yet to reach the edges (thank goodness for that!) but it was still going to be an ugly, sticky mess to clean up...
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Posts
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40
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Arcana
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I. MAGICIAN
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EXP
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6000
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Tag
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@captjim
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OOC Name
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There Are No Good Mornings (Kei/open??) - Posted Mar 5, 2019 12:09:20 GMT -7
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Abruptly, Lewis woke up. Those quick cat naps were the best, a couple of minutes out, and he suddenly felt like he had been given a powerful jolt of energy. His mind was clear and unburdened.
Cluelessly, he stretched his arms and rolled his head. That was the other thing - they never wrung you ought, made you feel crappy or more tired than you were before - but, man, he did have some weird dreams - not, like, outlandish weird, but things and people he hadn't thought of in months... Why'd they pop into his head now, anyway?
Ah, yes. Now. The present. Where was he, anyway? Coffee house. School. That's right. The mundanity came back to him.
Eventually his eyes settled on the table. Taking a brief, perfunctory sort of notice at the mess in front of him, Lewis raised an eyebrow and looked to the girl on the other side - oh, that's right, there was a girl sitting there. If the awkward way she was positioned could accurately be called sitting, anyway. He noticed she was clutching her arm, which led his eyes back to the catastrophe on their table. Impressively, she had managed to take out both their cups. Well, he was awake now, so he wasn't so bothered that his coffee was a casualty. He spoke quietly and haltingly, the words still coming to him slowly and the language unfamiliar. "No offense, but if you sit like that, it's no wonder that you spilled our drinks."
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Posts
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27
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Arcana
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XIII. DEATH
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EXP
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2000
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Tag
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@kei
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OOC Name
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Cedar
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There Are No Good Mornings (Kei/open??) - Posted Apr 17, 2019 9:50:59 GMT -7
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What a disaster. How was she going to deal with this mess? She couldn't very well leave it for the staff to deal with! That would be rude. And unkind.
More pressing, though, was the stranger's coffee. He might have been the one to knock it over, but there was no way to prove that. Kei was the obvious culprit. Oh man, was he going to be angry? Was he going to yell? Scream? Start a fight? Kei's heartbeat sped up just thinking about all the ways things could go wrong. Maybe she could replace the spilled coffee before he woke up? But, oh, she didn't know his order. Decaf, sure, but what else? Sugar, cream, milk? And the barista probably wouldn't mark the cup in the same spot, and the coffee would be hot too, not lukewarm like it should be and oh man, what was she going to do --
-- Aaaand he was awake. Kei jumped; she'd been paying no attention to the guy, and missed that he woke up. And looked at the table. Oh god, he looked at the table, she was out of time and he was going to get angry and --
-- And he was very calm. And nonchalant. And apparently disinterested in the whole thing.
Kei responded to this unexpected development by staring blankly at the boy across from her, looking like a deer caught in the headlights.
"Um," she said dumbly, still trying to collect her thoughts. "Er, it was an accident. ...Do you want me to get you another coffee?"
Could she afford that coffee? Maybe. Did she owe that coffee? Absolutely not. Was she going to try and explain that he'd knocked his own coffee over while sleeping? Hell no.
While she waited for the boy's response, she wondered if he would pick up on her accent. It was near identical to his; the only real difference was that she could piece her sentences together a bit quicker, thanks to years and years of practicing the language with her family.
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Posts
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40
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Arcana
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I. MAGICIAN
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EXP
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6000
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Tag
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@captjim
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OOC Name
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There Are No Good Mornings (Kei/open??) - Posted Jun 14, 2019 16:06:29 GMT -7
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Lewis mulled over the surface of the table, minor catastrophe that it was, and glanced around. It was too early in the day to get upset with this girl, who was already plenty upset with herself, it looked like… but he think he knew how to solve this. No employees were looking, nor any other students… and the students at the next table over had stepped away.
He half-listened to the girl, the intricacies of her unique accent lost to him, but at the offer of a new drink Lewis cocked his head in interest at the girl’s offer and flashed a smile. ”Don’t worry about it too much, but I’ll still take you up on the replacement. First, let’s attend to this.” He indicated the mess… …And slunk over to the adjacent table, grabbed the unattended bags, and put them in the seats at their table. He took his own backpack, as well as the other girl’s bag, which he proceeded to hand to her. ”Well, hopefully whoever was sitting there will be kind enough to attend to the mess they made,” he shrugged nonchalantly. The world was a stressful enough place, and truth be told he’d not been having a great morning before he passed out (and evidently, this girl wasn’t having a great time either), but if there’s one thing he’d learned from years of doing group projects, life is always better when you can pass the buck to someone else. Lewis indicated the exit and said, ”You know, come to think of it, I did see another coffee shop a couple streets away which is probably a lot less hectic. What do you say?” |
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Posts
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27
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Arcana
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XIII. DEATH
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EXP
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2000
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Tag
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@kei
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OOC Name
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Cedar
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There Are No Good Mornings (Kei/open??) - Posted Aug 24, 2019 7:10:20 GMT -7
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Kei breathed a quiet sigh of relief when the boy spoke about cleaning up the mess. She'd been half-expecting to do it all herself, but he was apparently kind enough to he-
What is he doing? The napkins are at the front... Kei frowned, not entirely sure what was going on. Her frown deepened when he picked up the bags at the next table over -- what was he thinking?! Was he going to steal something? Use the bags as a makeshift napkin to wipe up the mess? That would be horrible! Holding up her hand, she opened her mouth as if to start chastising him, but was stopped in her tracks when the guy just dumped the bags in their booth.
She took her own bag from the stranger without pause, though she was still frowning. She was torn -- she knew that leaving a mess like this was horrible. Dumping it on someone else -- whether employees or other customers -- was even worse. But confrontation wasn't Kei's strong suit anymore, especially when dealing with strangers. What would he do, if she protested? Would he quietly slink away, or wait for Kei to finish cleaning up before she bought him another coffee? Would he start yelling and make a scene? Surely he wouldn't yell, that would draw attention to the both of them, and by extension, the mess they'd made.
...But if he did yell...
Kei's gaze flickered to the corner of the shop where her classmates were gathered. They still hadn't noticed her yet... And they definitely wouldn't notice her if she just slipped away. Leaving a mess was bad, sure, but... Drawing the attention of her peers was decidedly worse.
Sighing, Kei slung her bag over her shoulder before looking back at the boy. She offered him a smile -- the cheeriest one she could muster given their current situation -- and gestured toward the door. "Lead the way. ...Ah, I'm Kei, by the way. Kei Muramoto. Nice to meet you!"
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