Veiled in Mist
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Post by Fuukami Haruka on Nov 13, 2014 22:31:27 GMT -6
Time: 12:00 PM; Lunchtime Date: June 2nd, 2003 Location: Classroom 2-D
Today was yet another humid but rainy day, with the sky a flat fluorescent gray as rain stabbed the ground like needles, which then splatter upon the asphalt and glaze it the color of graphite. There was mist in the air too, ethereally shrouding the landscape of Hikarizaka as if a spell had deeply sown itself within the tapestry of people and their little corner of civilization -- however, it could only be properly viewed through a classroom's window, constantly having to be defogged as the clock ticked by, and the rain droplets slid downward on glass and brick before hitting the ground.
Shouldn't the people in the room be hungry? one would reasonably ask. Perhaps; some were leaving, some were staying by to chat with their friends before their stomach growled in protest and nudged them towards the cafeteria. Others, fazed by the presence of other introverts, spread out on their pilgrimage to find an already emptied out classroom. The corridors heading towards the cafeteria were packed with young high schoolers, as if they were cattle, lively cattle that bounced back and forth like super rubber balls that could be found inside grocery capsule machines.
It wasn't as if Fuukami Haruka could see that, however. She was too fixated on the misty windows inside of 2-D's classroom. Having been a class representative, she instinctively found a need to tidy up and wiped one of the windows clean of fog. The fluttering of dragonfly wings could be heard -- only, it was actually the sound of the freshwoman's sighing. This... didn't look familiar. Usually, she met Iryna in some other forlorn place like the Courtyard or Cafeteria, but the former was wet and bathed in nature's tears while the latter was probably too crowded for comfort. Therefore, she decided to look for Iryna in the second years' wing, an area of the school so foreign to her that Haruka hadn't even visited it since orientation. Of course, she would get lost.
That was not to say that it wasn't an unpleasant experience; it was good early practice for next year's attempts to get to her classes on time. However, she never expected to see the white haired boy that loomed in the back of her mind inconspicuously like camelia blossoms in a spring meadow until she thought of him consciously. Then, Haruka felt as if he was standing right in front of her: a few meters away, which he was now. Everything became so much more vivid for the younger girl: the beating of her heart, her eeriely quiet breaths, the pre-planning she went through for this day, and automatic flickers of inferences that she did not fully understand until she thought of it properly.
She pressed on, stepped forward in a flash.
Tap, tap, tap...
In an instant, she was right in front of a boy, maintaining a polite distance. She didn't even see herself move towards him: only felt it, heard it, and smelled the leather of her shoes. Greeting him with a slight but deliberate nod, Haruka made eye contact with the upperclassman. Her dark brown hair, almost charcoal black, swayed as she readjusted her glasses, which gleamed as they caught the light cast into the classroom from the hallway. Having maintained her composure the whole time, the class rep for 1-B asked Mizukami Ayumu one question with a cautious but neutral tone: "Hello, I'm Fuukami Haruka. Pleased to meet you. Do you know where my cousin Fuukami Iryna is?" |
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Post by Mizukami Ayumu on Nov 13, 2014 23:47:01 GMT -6
She was someone he did not know.
There were a variety of ways that Mizukami Ayumu spent his lunch breaks. Of course he would eat, usually in the classroom, after having bought something in the cafeteria, but that did not occupy the whole of the recess; to top it off, the sophomore was a quick eater. Sometimes the remaining time would be used up in doing homework that one forgot to do the day ago, for a class that was in the afternoon, although that activity didn't usually take that much time, and it was not something that he made a habit of. Sometimes he would go to the library to read, although that was not as frequent as it used to, as one found out that school libraries often had limited fiction books... and they were not all guaranteed to be interesting. Sometimes he would just roam the corridors, possibly peek into the clubrooms, specially one certain room that tended to be desolate, but when it was occupied, it would have two certain upperclassmen... and sometimes he would just stay in the classroom, snooze a bit or write...
...today found the white-haired boy doing the latter, a notebook on his desk and a pensive gaze to nowhere in particular. ...he hadn't actually eaten lunch yet, but he'd eaten quite a bit on the break before at a whim... he could still go down to get something, but he thought he might want to pass up the milling crowd a bit, even if that would mean the selection would be significantly reduced by the time he got down. His classmates had businesses of their own, and so they did not bother him; some were rather used to his ways. However, there was someone to break his routine, even if it was so variable and flexible. Someone he had never met before.
A lowerclasswoman, a girl, approached him, and introduced herself.
Fuukami Haruka... Sure enough, as her name denoted, she was related to a certain pink-haired girl who was somewhat his friend, through a series of rather... well, strange sounds a bit... uncommon occurrences. He blinked a bit at her pronouncement; he wasn't sure if Fuukami-san had ever told him that she had a cousin among the freshmen... he really should pay more attention to things. She... he wasn't good at picking up details, but he thought she and her cousin... if this person was really her cousin... didn't look much alike... except perhaps their stature. And... the length of their hair, though that probably wasn't for genetic reasons.
"...pleased to meet you, too." He ended up saying, bowing a little, almost a nod. "Um... I'm Mizukami Ayumu." He introduced himself, since she did, to be polite, but he had a sneaking suspicion she knew already of him... because of all the people in his classroom, she went directly to him. She couldn't just be asking for directions... "Fuukami-san's class is in the next room... she might be there." he said, still a little unsure why she looked at him for her.
"Beyond that, I don't have an idea where she could be. I'm... sorry?" It was faint, but he sounded uncertain.
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Post by Fuukami Haruka on Nov 14, 2014 15:26:06 GMT -6
And he was someone she did not know.
The classroom's population quickly thinned out until only the two acquaintances remained. It was true that the bespectacled brunette could have bothered one of the more cheerful, energetic upperclassmen that passed by, but she knew none of them nor their names. They were just people that simply passed by. Why would she want to bother them if they didn't look like anime protagonists if they weren't anyone she had the slightest clue of? No one here was any of her friends or anyone who had any interest in talking to her. They must have had their own mundane yet interesting lives, and Fuukami Haruka had missed out on all of it. Too bad, so sad. Actually, she wasn't even sad at all. The departure of most of the other students in the room only caught the girl's glance for a minuscule amount of seconds. So, it was a good question. Why did she go to Mizukami? Was it because she knew of him or saw him before? Or was it because he was sitting next to the window she had just defogged? All of those facts were true, so Haruka supposed all of them were the reasons for her decision to strike up a conversation with the boy who kept to himself. Hopefully, he didn't mind.
Wiping her right palm, lightly coated with condensed fog onto a nearby desk, only then she gave him a closer look. A quick glimpse to her left showed that Mizukami had been writing in a book, left open on his desk. She didn't pay too much attention to it, knowing that writers often liked their privacy. Therefore, she couldn't afford to spend too much of her time trying to get to know him here. But she could kill two birds with one stone: asking him about the trip to Okinawa, for instance. Maybe she could point out his book and infer he was a writer, so she could help reserve some down time for everyone so he could write and everyone else could do their own thing. However, that had the nasty chance of being nosy and rude, considering one was not supposed to know about those kinds of things unless if she got to know him well enough in order to do it.
Of course, Haruka looked different from Iryna. Iryna, as her name suggested, was half-Russian, and thus got her pink hair, well Haruka called it red, really, but almost the same thing. Judging from his blinking, she guessed that maybe he thought they didn't look alike? Well, some things they shared, such as their diminutive stature and doll-like faces and their flowing hair (color aside), but really, a half-Russian person looked far from being identical to someone who was pure Japanese, not that it meant too much, since they were related, right down to the DNA. In the end, people were the same down to the core. Apparently, even clones would grow to be very different, being exposed to different stimuli and developing different neuron connections, but that was another boring explanation for another day.
Haruka bowed back to the upperclassman, a bit lower to show emphasis on the fact that he was one year her senior. "Thank you, Mizukami-senpai, for the directions. I'll be going there in a second, but first I had a question because I've heard you're her friend and going to Okinawa with us. In that case, do you have anything we might need to know about, such as special needs, medications, or any places you'd like to go to in particular? Since I'm in charge of planning the trip, I'd like to ensure that all of the people joining us will enjoy this vacation." She enjoyed planning for just about everything, really. Surprisingly though, she actually didn't come all the way here to specifically ask him this. Although Haruka had known of Mizukami prior to, she had no ulterior motives here. Genuinely, she had planned for if she met him and ask him these things, but she never planned to meet him in his classroom. Meeting him here was completely unplanned when she had planned to meet the aforementioned redhead in her own classroom. It was pure chance she missed by one room.
"It's fine. Sorry to put you on the spot like that, but there's no need for you to apologize." Of course he was uncertain. While he was Iryna's friend, he had been too busy writing to keep tabs on her -- not that he would even invest his time in that to begin with.
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Post by Mizukami Ayumu on Jan 28, 2015 22:53:53 GMT -6
"Okinawa..."
Well... she had said something about that, and he had agreed, but he supposed... he had not given it as much thought as it was supposed to receive. At the very least... his lowerclasswoman was putting more thought to it. So it was Fuukami-san's cousin who was in charge of the preparations? Well, or maybe part of it... it made him feel a little guilty. Still, planning things was something that was... okay, it was neither something Ayumu liked or disliked, it was just something that he did when he felt like it. Winging things about can lead to amusing surprises, too. Ah, but he supposed he should give her something less troubling as a reply.
"I... well, I'm perfectly healthy. I think." He chuckled lowly, a bit nervously. "As for places in Okinawa to go to... I'm very sorry, I haven't thought about it yet in detail." He clapped his hands together and made a small bow. It was the truth, although said in a less coarse manner from his rambling thoughts. He was yet unsure of this girl's temperament; after all, this was his first conversation with her. She may or may not be like Fuukami-san... (wait, they were both Fuukami-san... how was he supposed to speak of her...) and even Fuukami Iryna, while agreeable, had her volatile quirks.
"I'll look it up, but I'll probably be fine with wherever we might go..." he said, rather flakily. Still, it was yet again true; he did not think much of vacations, and his going into them was mostly because of the people, the company involved, rather than what things a different place could offer... he supposed it might be a strange way of thinking, but that was how he thought.
"Is there anything else you might need?" he ventured to ask... perhaps it was the feeling of guilt again.
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Post by Fuukami Haruka on Jan 29, 2015 11:34:49 GMT -6
"Yes, Okinawa."
For a moment, she was puzzled because the white haired boy looked a bit nervous, almost guilty. What was for him to be guilty about in the first place, though? She had no clue, but no matter. In charge of the preparations, she had to do her best for everyone. That was simply Fuukami's duty of sorts, needing to be the best she could be in order to fully enjoy her vacation. Although, there would be certainly more than enough lazy days for the group, seeing that she wanted to finish her summer homework as quickly as possible and relax afterwards.
"Good, good," the freshwoman replied, making eye contact with him intently, as if she were registering his information in a mental list. Then, her voice softened benignly and her gaze became less firm. "No, that's quite alright. It won't be some time until the trip actually happens, anyway." There wasn't a need to worry. At that moment, the first year felt as if she were dealing with him delicately, almost as if he were a child, even though he was very well older than her. Regardless, she began to wonder if she should allow more free time to create a flexible schedule, only rigid whenever there were time limited appointments.
"You don't have to look anything up unless if you want to," she reassured him, thinking that it would be too rude to ask of him. For a moment, Haruka was worried she was unsettling him. If he were anyone else, like one of those delinquents in her class that caused much trouble, then she wouldn't hesitate to lay down her demands on him. However, he was a demure, unassuming upperclassman who wouldn't hurt a fly. It'd be pointless to bother him.
"Is there anything else you might need?" the boy quietly managed.
"All I need is a way to contact you again in case if anything sudden happens, but since you know Iryna-neechan, that's covered," explained Haruka gently in response to his question. "Though, please let me know whether one of us is inconveniencing you." Giving a hint of a smile, she hoped to make a joke to lighten up the mood and at the same time, try to assess his relationship with her older cousin.
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Post by Mizukami Ayumu on Feb 4, 2015 0:21:07 GMT -6
The added gentleness of the younger girl did soothe Ayumu's apprehension, although not entirely. It would take quite some more time for him to get used to her, but at the very least she found her pleasant, if a little bit too businesslike. If Fuukami-san was somebody who seemed to pull him this way and that, then this... Fuukami Haruka was... more stable, strong. The Mizukami himself was somebody who floated about at a whim, whether his own or another's, if it wasn't particularly a problem... and so the other Fuukami... well, it was not that he found her imposing... but perhaps just a little. Haa... he wasn't much of a senpai, wasn't he?
She said herself that he need not look into it... but he supposed, what with how she was handling so much of their venture, and perhaps a little of his pride as someone older... well, the least he could do is pitch in a little, even if it was just what places he'd like to go to. If, after checking things out, he still didn't really have a very definite opinion, then that was that.
Well, there might be other more substantial things that he could do... now that he knew that some sort of preparation was going on... but even as he asked, it seemed there was nothing of the sort. He wasn't bold enough, or informed enough, to meddle further... and perhaps he was a little lazy... these things had a way of muddling together. A way to contact, huh... he could have given her his number, but yet again he dared not, and like she said... she could contact him through Fuukami-san, anyway.
"Ah, no, no... I'm not inconvenienced in the slightest..." he answered. There might have been times in the past, but such inconveniences were not things he would run away from. At the very least, that was his meager form of bravery... to be at the side of a friend. As for this whole plan of a trip... he supposed his lack of propensity toward the idea could make it an inconvenience to him, too... but at the same time he was not exactly opposed to it. Inconveniences are only truly inconveniences when one decides so, he concluded. "Fuukami-san has taken care of me a lot." he admitted sheepishly.
He looked back at his notebook; the page he was supposed to be writing on was largely empty, except for a few doodles of meaningless spirals with some evolving into snails. "So, you're going to Fuukami-san now?" he said, hoping it didn't sound like he was pushing her away. "I could come with you..." he followed up, to rectify that possible implication.
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Post by Fuukami Haruka on Mar 31, 2015 3:45:59 GMT -6
Being a boy and a girl, it ought to have been even more awkward for Mizukami and Fuukami to have interacted. However, it was only a little weird, and the situation was falling into a silent synergy as Haruka did her best to give him a proper amount of space while remaining staunch to her cause and agenda. Unfortunately, her impression was nothing but strong. And even though things were becoming much smoother, there was a lot that could be done -- but they had all the time and the world to talk to each other in person if Fuukami ever found the need to (it wasn't as if Mizukami would seek her out) and the trip to look forward to. For now, this first impression would have to do. After all, the only plan the freshwoman was actively trying to achieve was to gauge him in person and not by word of mouth. Everything came smoothly afterwards.
It was impossible for her to fully look into the white haired boy's mind and peruse through his biases and thoughts about the people around them but so far, they seemed like objects of interest to look into if she could. Nonetheless, she was curious to see what he'd be up to now as she couldn't imagine anyone so passive to be completely unaffected by an unexpected encounter, not even this little boy, whom she heard was so malleable yet versatile all at once.
However, Fuukami knew better than to judge him by gossip, even if the one talking about Mizukami knew him fairly well, perhaps even better than everyone else at the school -- nonetheless, she did not know him or his past; how could that be anything for her to judge? No, she had to focus on something more important, like determining how all the other pieces would come into play and fall into place. In that split-second, it was no wonder she had come to look upon herself as if she were some sort of mundane chess master. Indeed, it was always fun to play pretend when looking into reality's face.
"I see." To hear that Iryna had been not a trouble at all was a slight surprise to the younger Fuukami, but she wouldn't let it show. She loved the redhead to bits, but sometimes the older girl could be a bit difficult to handle. Yet, equally, when he voiced that Iryna had taken care of him, the brunette met him with a nod and an equal, if not more genuine, nonchalance, as if she had expected this at the very least. The only disconcerting matter at hand, however, was that she had no idea of his opinion or wishes regarding the trip. On another hand, she had not yet scoped the depths of his dynamic with her older cousin. Nonetheless, Haruka could find more about that once they had finally reached 2-C, the classroom next door where she was bound to meet the star of the occasion. Speaking of which, Mizukami mentioned something highly relevant...
"Ah, yes, thank you for reminding me," she replied as gently as she could. Haruka was not her mother, but everyone would have been damned if they didn't agree that she did a good impression. Then, at his sudden suggestion, the first year couldn't help but raise a brow and wry grin too. "And, please, come only if you'd like to," she tactfully assented while attempting to assess his intentions.
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