destinystrings | Education for Free (General School Log, all) (OPEN LOG)

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Education for Free (General School Log, all) (OPEN LOG)

Who: Anyone who wants to go to school
Where: Any of the schools found in the Calendar (there are other schools, but your characters would only be going to those)
Summary: General School log! Start your own threads, make threads, or just have your character going to school and meeting the others. You have carte blanche.
Warnings: Nothing for now.

April 1st. While for many it would be a day for jokes and pranks, in Japan (and by extension, Hinoto-Ri who clung on some things from the past like precious memories), it was the start of the school year.

Those that were of age had gotten their papers already, and hopefully you had read the messages involving it. Otherwise, SURPRISE!

Thankfully, it didn't seem like the government was pushing for you to go absolutely, but they were STRONGLY SUGGESTING it for your own good. Your own enlightenment, if you will. Besides, it was free education, why pass that up?

These are the adventures of those inside of school on their first days...

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[He watches her for a few seconds. He might have shrugged his shoulders were he not lying on a hard bench. Somehow, he's not surprised. She checks out meals with the same amount of determined focus that he evaluates food with.

He turns his eyes skyward, getting an eyeful of warm sunlight for his trouble. He's not going to come in between her and food.]

If you're gonna stare at it like that you might as well eat it.

[She tries to look apologetic and indifferent to that idea.

It doesn't really work.] I can't just take your lunch...

[No. It doesn't.]

You're not taking it.

[Not like he had been eating it himself.]

Just make sure to finish the vegetables.

[Somehow, she doubts he made this just so he could set it there and have her eat it for him. Unless he's learned to predict her more thoroughly than she can predict himself.

Still, it's best not to look a gift Shinjiro lunch in the... stomach?]

All right... Then, thanks for the food!

[But she does set her bento on the bench next to him. He has a chance to try her omelette before she finishes the chicken and vegetables and starts to look for seconds.]

[Most of his bento plans had involved skipping, a sunny rooftop, and a good amount of wishful thinking. Since that obviously ain't happening, the food might as well go to a worthy cause, even if unplanned for. (Not that her eating his food is much of a surprise in the long run.

He does eye her offering though. He'll have to sit up to eat it, and he almost doesn't want to move, but after a few seconds' worth of time he rolls over and sits up, reaching for his chopstick case under the bench. Might as well try it, if she's offering, so he does.

...It's pretty good. Not that he expected it to be any less, since she does know how to cook, unlike some of the dorm's inhabitants. ...Past inhabitants. Aki preferred buying pre-made food and burying it in protein, while Mitsuru couldn't be let near a cooking range without fear of imminent disaster.

He takes the liberty of silently finishing a third of it before setting it back down and the bento over to its original owner. He does, at least, know how much Minako can put away when she wants to—he's pretty sure it rivals or beats the amount of food he consumed during the years he was having his goddamn growth spurts. If she feels like searching for seconds, she'll find it.]

[Skipping is going to be a problem for him, with this new arrangement of multiple Arisatos monitoring his movements around the school. There's Miki too, but she's in another grade and Minako isn't quite certain she can depend on her. It's likely she was just as permissive as Akihiko had been. Not that Minako hadn't ignored Shinjiro's skipping back in September too, but... he was her senpai and she'd just been getting to know him then. Lectures on the importance of class were something she'd been working up to, now blossomed into full fruition.

She's about three-fourths of the way through his lunch and wearing a blissful expression when she notices him trying the omelette. She swallows her current bite before speaking.] ...What do you think?

[It's just an omelette and she really didn't spend that much time on it, but she still can't resist asking his opinion.]

[It'll just require a subtler ingenuity.

Though school hadn't always been an issue—not years ago. Not to say he hadn't skipped a few times when he felt like it. But after that October skipping school lapsed into habit and the classroom turned into a place he didn't feel comfortable being in.

He arches an eyebrow at the question as he lays back against the bench.]

It's good.

[And he means it. Not that there was much to it, and eggs were hard to mess up as long as you had at least a few ounces of sense, but there wasn't always a need to devolve into fancy shit just for a lunchbox. Ordinary didn't constitute bad or inferior.]

I'm glad!

[and then, although it probably went without saying at all...] Yours is really delicious, Senpai.

[He's about to reply—perhaps to make some half-hearted protest, or to pretend to ignore her compliment entirely and change the subject—when he feels his chest constrict and his lungs start to burn. He tries to surpress it, like he usually does when he's not alone, but there are many times he can't. This is one of them, and he quickly lapses into a series of of dry, wheezing coughs that always continues longer than they should.

It's yet another reason why he hadn't wanted to come to school.]

Senpai? [Minako looks up, alarmed and at first thinking he'd started to choke on something he'd eaten - but then she recognizes the sound. She'd seen him like this enough times before. The only difference is now, she has good reason to suspect it's not the result of a persistent cold, allergies, or asthma.

Setting down the lunch - she'd just finished, anyway - she moves to the bench and sits next to him. Then she waits silently, watching but not touching, until the coughing fit subsides.]

[The coughs subside eventually, his lungs settling into complacency and finally giving him a chance to breathe. When he speaks again, his voice is slightly raw, but he sounds more annoyed than anything else. You get tired of coughing fairly early on, especially when you really can't do much about it. He does move a little to give her more room to sit.]

...It's fine.

[She's really not sure it's fine, but she's even less sure that bringing it up would help the mood. So instead she squeezes his hand. Her gaze turns to look out past the chain-link fence surrounding the roof.]

It's a pretty nice view from up here, isn't it? Not as nice as back home, but you can see a long way.

[He follows her gaze as his breathing steadies, and gently squeezes back. He can't see as much as he can from where he is, but he's can see enough.]

Yeah, it is. Most of it.

[There are some parts of the city that aren't quite as glamorous if you bother to look, but for the most part, the view here is better than most.]

It's kind of surprising how much Hinoto-ri looks just like any other city. The small things are different, but the big things stay the same almost everywhere.

[She glances down at him, her expression a little curious. Her purpose started as making conversation, pushing them away from the far more serious topic there's no solution to, but now she's getting into it.] Did you ever get to travel very much?

Not much.

[Even the minor school trips had to be managed. You had to pay for them—not like the school as going to foot the bill, at least, not the majority of it. And when the orphanage was barely breaking even as it was, there wasn't a lot of breathing room to let every kid go on a class trip. You had to wait your turn and hoped you got lucky.]

We went to Tokyo for a day in elementary as a class once. Then Nara later on.

[Though that was in Junior High, just before they graduated from it and he moved on from the orphanage. It had been in the fall, before Mitsuru had gotten her hands on them. Aki had been with the Sanadas then, and money suddenly wasn't as much of an issue as it had been anymore. Then things happened and he had lost the desire to go.]

Those are both fun cities. I lived outside Tokyo for a little while... [and a lot of other places, big and small, but she's not going to get into recounting that right now.]

Sometimes I wish I could've just gone places on vacation more often though. Like, Yakushima was a lot of fun. It's too bad you missed that. [and it's totally not because she didn't get the chance to see him in a swimsuit.]

Edited 2013-04-08 00:25 (UTC)

[ > Implying that Shinji would have stripped down to a swimsuit.

> Your optimism is showing.

> Though then again...]

Aki told me about it. Not sure I missed out on much.

[She glances at his face, wondering whether 'not missing out' is referring to the beach, or whatever everyone got up to while they were there. His expression is hard to read.]

What did he tell you about it?

[Regardless of what he knows and what he doesn't, there's nothing that happened there that he feels he missed out on.]

Enough. Beaches aren't really my thing.

Edited 2013-04-08 01:23 (UTC)

Why's that? Do you sunburn easily?

[hmm...] Is that why you're always covered up?

[Logic at its finest.]

Or maybe I like keeping my clothes on. [And is fonder of his beanie than he would care to admit.] I don't need to prance around a beach with my shirt off.

[That's a lot of unnecessary sun exposure, for one.]

[the idea of him prancing makes her laugh.] But guys being shirtless on the beach is normal. You'd just stand out if you kept everything on.

Well, unless you're like Akihiko-senpai and keep the shirt but forget the bottoms...

[He's pretty sure he'd stand out now regardless of whether he wore a shirt or not. His scars certainly aren't a pretty fashion statement.

In any case, if he wanted to be hot in any sense of the word, he'd rather it be from wearing a coat than from being shirtless.]

Tch. You make it sound like he wasn't wearing a damn thing. He does it to—

[He cuts himself off and lets the sentence hang. There's no reason to make excuses for Aki being himself. They're not kids. He's always been weird, and if wearing next to nothing down there helped his performance, then Aki'd be more than happy to do it, and your eyes just had to deal with the unfortunate consequences. Might as well not try to make it sound normal and try to justify his actions anymore.

Besides, he ain't here.]

It doesn't matter.

Edited 2013-04-08 02:30 (UTC)

I guess the speedo isn't anything new, huh? [And scars can make a man look dignified. Just ask Akihiko himself, in about two years.

She's still laughing.]

Well, don't worry, Senpai. I'll put lots of sunscreen on you if we go to a pool or something this summer.

[all of those excuses = sunburn is still his real problem.]

Edited 2013-04-08 02:33 (UTC)

Soon as he started "training" seriously he—

[He cuts himself off again and his expression flatlines. Her "if" statements are never "if" statements. The only time they are is if you die first.]

I don't need to swim.

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