harmonize_rpg | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who: Miyume and Taue
Where: Junes food court
When: Saturday, April 22.
What: Social link go?

Normally, Miyume would have gone straight to her club meeting after classes finished for the day but she needed to go to Junes and get some prescriptions refilled at its pharmacy before it closed for the evening. After checking in with the pharmacist at the prescription drop-off and being told it'd be about an hour, Miyume headed to the food court to wait. Once she had purchased herself a frozen strawberry lemonade and a pretzel covered in cinnamon and sugar, she settled down at a table and pulled out her phone to see if she had any new text messages or voice mails.

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Junes wasn't usually Taue's speed, but sometimes, one had to go pick up supplies -- plus, it was time that he didn't have to spend in the vicinity of his roommate, and Shinichiro was always about spending as little time around Mirai as was humanly possible.

That plan, he feared, looked doomed to failure when he spotted Miyume in the food court -- but he sighed in relief upon noticing no Mirai attached to her as if stuck there with superglue.

That was a pleasant surprise. Pleasant enough that he decided to go get himself a pretzel of his own (salted) and wander over in direction of the woman Mirai had been so...taken by.

"Good afternoon," he offered, with a wave of his hand, and then lowered his voice. "How're you holding up? You know, after our heads exploded and all."

"Good afternoon, Taue-senpai," Miyume said in a calm, polite tone, abruptly snapping her phone closed. She offered a friendly but somewhat bland smile; if Taue paid close enough attention, he'd see just a flicker of coolness in her eyes before they returned to normal.

"I'm holding up okay," she waved a hand in a dismissive manner at odds with her cute appearance. "How about you?"

"I've been better," he replied, easily enough. Who knew *what* Mirai had told her about him, if anything. Anything out of Mirai's mouth was unlikely to be positive.

Still, he pulled up a chair at the table, and took a satisfied chomp out of his pretzel. "How're things going with my roommate?"

There were little indicators that this conversation was going to go poorly, but damned if Taue would back away from it. There was something to be said for the fight, after all. He wouldn't pick it, but if she wanted to go there, he was more than ready to do so.

"Well," Miyume said distantly, covertly glancing off to the side for a possible escape route.

She'd known it was only a matter of time before Taue began poking his nose where it didn't belong. She'd met too many boys like Taue back in Tokyo, boys so determined to save the damsel in distress that they neglected to notice the basic facts of the situation. Like the damsel not actually being in distress or needing or wanting someone to save her. Boys who covered up their lack of emotional intelligence and feeling of self-righteousness with masks of genuine concern and empathy for other people. Boys who couldn't respect other people's boundaries.

Miyume wasn't really in the mood to humor Taue, especially after he simply pulled up a chair and sat down without so much as asking her if she even desired company at all. However, direct confrontations simply weren't in her nature.

"Be sure to get plenty of rest, senpai," she added with carefully measured sweetness that didn't completely veil a tone of dismissal.

"You can cut the friendly act," he replied, almost immediately, leaning back in his chair and putting his feet up on one of the other empty seats surrounding the table. "If you don't want me here, you can tell me to go."

He shook his head in a strange sort of way, almost dismissive of both the idea of leaving and the...very much not a moe-blob sitting in front of him trying to will him to disappear with the power of passive-aggression.

"The thing is, we need to talk. Once we talk, you don't have to have anything else to do with me outside of head-being class if you don't want to. That's fine with me -- quite frankly, it's probably going to be for the best considering our topic of conversation."

First impressions had been...deceiving, it seemed. This one was more than she'd seemed at first glance, a handful in the sort of way that he didn't particularly enjoy dealing with. Smart enough to get herself in trouble, by his line of reasoning, and clearly willing to walk into the line of fire for any number of reasons.

"So what's going to happen is this: I'm going to talk to you, you're going to roll your eyes at me and think that you have all of the answers and that I have none of them, pretend to consider what I'm saying if you feel particularly generous, and then I will get up and leave you to eat your sugary pretzel treat in peace and with a clear conscience."

The smile he favored her with for about a split second was as sacchrine as her words had been, but it faded, quickly, into a hard glare and a shake of his head.

"Deal?"

Miyume's lips twisted suddenly into a smile so bitter, malicious, and spiteful, one may have wondered if she'd been possessed by some cruel demon this entire time that had only chosen to reveal itself this moment. The look in her eyes was harsh, angry, and unforgiving.

Without a word, Miyume pushed her chair back from the table, picked up her untouched pretzel, and dumped it in the nearest trash receptacle. After that, she shoved her phone back in her purse, picked up her lemonade, and began heading as far away from Taue as quickly as her cane would allow her.

He was almost surprised she hadn't flipped the table while she was at it. Maybe made the lemonade spill all over him in the process, but he didn't think she'd had too much practice at being blatantly spiteful - how out of place that expression looked on her face was one indication of that.

He watched her go, expression neutral, walk-limping off in the distance. His eyes remained on her until she was gone and he could relax.

Following her, he decided, was a bad idea. A very bad idea, given that whatever had possessed her was likely to be directed at him.

"Ah, well," he sighed, unable to get rid of the nagging irritation at having been unable to complete his mission. He took a satisfied chomp out of his pretzel, still stretched out between two chairs, casual as could be. "She'll learn eventually, I suppose."

As he continued to work over the pretzel like a starving animal, though, another thought came to his mind, equal parts amused, distressed, and grudgingly respectful.

"At least there's another honest person at this place."

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