damned_institute | Day 40: Recreational Field

Entry tags:

Day 40: Recreational Field

Kio's breakfast ended on a much happier note than it had started. However, for once the announcement truly surprised him. He blinked as his nurse came to pick him up. Recreational Field? But.. but if they had a greenhouse, he wanted to go there. The prospect of gardening was a truly liberating one, an island of joy in this hellhole. He thought about going to the Sun Room and lying down, but it occurred to him that he hadn't had proper fresh air since being here. With a cheery goodbye wave to Honey, he followed his torturer outside.

It was much better than he had expected. The sun wasn't too hot (what time of the year were they in, anyway?), so he walked slowly along the walls, fascinated by the size of the field. He wondered if Sou-chan was alright. He hadn't even checked the board. Well, if Soubi wanted to apologize, Kio would be willing to listen. The place was so crisp and clean. He had to think if anyone had ever gone over the walls. What was out there? Freedom? Or a different sort of monster?

Leaning against one of the walls, Kio took as much advantage of the sun as he could. He desperately wanted a lollipop. One was quietly nestled in his pocket, but he would need to wait until the nurses were busy with other patients before he tried anything. Soubi had gone to some trouble to get them, the least he could do was make sure they didn't get confiscated. So with bated breath, Kio waited for a shift in the mood. He was, for once, content. Not happy, but not going crazy either.

[Sou-chan! Team Loveless deploy!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Junpei made a beeline right for the shed and found himself a baseball mitt and a ball. After a moment of leaving the shed, he turned back and grabbed another mitt. They had separated the guys from the girls, so this meant he could find this Kaito guy and find out what he planned on doing with Yukari. As he scanned the field looking for the person Yuffie had drawn and described, Junpei couldn't help but laugh a little. Half a year ago and he'd have been jealous that Yukari seemed interested in someone (other than himself) and want to sabotage that potential relationship. Now, he just needed to make sure she was going to be alright and that this guy was going to treat her well.

Despite all their bickering, he and Yukari really were friends. Funny how nights climbing a tower of hell fighting Shadows will bring people closer together.

[looking for Kaito]

Kaito had spent his lunch quietly, which was just fine by him this morning. After last night's stunning failure to get anywhere, he hadn't really been in the mood to talk to anyone.

A few quick checks of the bulletin board to check in with Yukari and bicker with Yuffie later, and he was feeling much better. He considering sticking to the sun room to give the bulletin a thorough perusal, but the outdoors were beckoning to him. At least he could scout out the walls a bit during the day, try to figure out a good way to get over them without breaking his neck due to shoddy slippers.

He let his nurse guide him to the field, and promptly hurried away from her as soon as they arrived. He had his own itinerary in mind, and didn't want her to get any ideas that he needed to be given something else to do. He headed across the southern edge of the field, bound for the far wall.

Junpei was idly tossing the ball up into the air when he spotted the guy that looked like the picture. Yup, messy hair. Catching the ball, he made his way to intercept the guy, meeting up with him a few feet from the wall.

"Yo!" Junpei called out, tossing the ball up and down with the extra mitt underneath his arm. "You play?"

[...Correction: I mean BREAKFAST in my last post, not lunch. orz]

Kaito reacted with a bit of a start when someone called out to him unexpectedly. The first thought that shot through his mind that it was a nurse, or an orderly, or someone in charge around here, telling him to stay away from the wall, even though he was really only going to look at it. Right now.

Turning to find a boy around his age casually tossing a baseball dispelled that notion.

"Huh?" Kaito said eloquently, forcing any lingering visible reaction to being startled away as he calmed himself. The boy had asked something... If he played something? Baseball? Catch? "Oh, yeah, a little."

Playing on sports teams at school had never really held his interest, but he'd always been a fan of gym. He was good at sports, and he knew it.

Edited 2009-04-01 19:06 (UTC)

Without further ado, Junpei caught the ball and then tossed the spare mitt at the guy.

"Here, dude. Let's toss it around a bit; it'll keep the nurses off our backs," he said. "You're Kaito, right?"

Kaito caught the mitt easily, and considered it briefly. The other boy had a point: the nurses might have gotten uppity from his wall inspection, but they shouldn't find anything wrong with two teens playing catch. He'd just have to survey what he could of the wall from his current position… Honestly, he wasn't sure what he had hoped to find, but at least the idea of checking out the wall made him feel like he was doing something worthwhile.

More interesting than the wall or playing catch, however, was the fact that the other boy knew his name. He couldn't recall seeing this guy around before, and he was good with faces.

"Yeah, I am," he confirmed, sliding his hand into the glove. Maybe they'd run into each other at night (though his voice didn't sound familiar, either), or Kaito had just forgotten. Or maybe he was from the future, or something like that? "Sorry, do I know you?"

Grinning, Junpei backed up to an appropriate distance and tossed the ball quite accurately at Kaito.

"Nope. I'm Junpei Iori," he said. "You know my friend - Yukari Takeba."

"Oh, you're one of Yukari's friends?" Kaito asked, catching the ball in his mitt. That could explain how Iori knew him, or knew of him. "She mentioned some of her friends from home were here, but never named any names."

He tossed the ball up in an arc to his other hand, and then threw it back towards Iori. "So how long've you been stuck here?"

Oh good, Kaito wasn't half-bad. Junpei rarely got to play anything baseball related aside from video games anymore thanks to SEES. He was more than happy with a simple game of catch.

"This is my second day, though I showed up during the night, so that might make this my third. I dunno," he replied. "And the others are Mitsuru, Akihiko and Ken, as far as her friends go. My girlfriend, Chidori, is here too, but she's a bit distant from the others." Which was an understatement, but that didn't matter.

"How'd you meet Yuka-tan?"

Only his second day? He must have arrived after the others, then, or at least after some of them. And for a total of six of them to be here…? That seemed like more than mere chance. Kaito wondered if there was some reason that so many of them had been… well, targeted seemed like a good word for it, no matter what unsettling implications were associated with it. Kaito already knew that the doctors must have had at least a cursory idea of who he masqueraded at nights, even if they'd gotten the details completely wrong… And they'd brought Kudou here as Kudou… Hattori, too, was a famous enough detective back at home, and Okita Souji?

He'd never given it serious thought before, though the thought had crossed his mind that maybe people were brought here because of who had already been brought here as their visitors… But maybe it had nothing to do with the visitors and everything to do with who they themselves were. If everyone here had some characteristic or secret or fame that made them an actual target…

Kaito shook his head. "You arrived at night? Man, that's gotta suck…" he commented, pushing away that line of thought for the time being. He could think on it later.

"I don't really have an exciting story for how I met Yukari, if you were hoping for one. We arrived around the same time, and ended up on the same couch in the sunroom a couple of days after."

Edited 2009-04-03 18:01 (UTC)

"Yeah, especially since no one explained anything to me before the doors opened and shit," Junpei replied. "I think my roommate's a deaf-mute or something."

He shrugged. "I didn't think it'd be anything exciting, knowing Yuka-tan. had you done like the heroic swooping in and saving her thing that most girls like, I doubt you'd be getting even the time of day from her." He rolled his eyes. "She needs some serious swooning lessons."

"My first night I almost got killed by a couple of cats," Kaito said, wincing. "And that was with the warning of monsters. I'd hate to think what could've happened if I'd wandered into that without knowing anything..." Or if Hattori hadn't been there to watch his back. "But you look like you're still in one piece, so you must've managed alright."

Iori's words about Yukari were much more cheerful than talk of night, and Kaito laughed, recalling the sorts of reactions the girl had to a little bit of harmless flirting. To do something 'heroic' for her, as Iori put it... He grinned. "I think you've got a point about Yukari! But the idea of her swooning seems kind of..." What was the word? "Creepy."

Junpei paused as he caught the latest throw. He took the moment to actually picture Yukari swooning and shuddered.

"Okay, you've got a point there. Still, all girls should at least know how to swoon," he replied. "So what kind of crap have you two been doing? I guess she's been here like a week or something."

"Yeah, somewhere around there," Kaito confirmed, nodding briefly. "I've been here about a week and a half, so it should be around the same for her. We've been trying to get outside of the Institute to investigate the surrounding area, but we haven't exactly been making it very far." To say they hadn't gotten far was an understatement, really.

"Outside?" Junpei looked at the wall, standing up on his tiptoes in a futile attempt to see over the tall wall.

"Have you managed to get over the wall?

"The first time, yeah. But that's all we managed," Kaito said, looking towards the wall after he'd caught the ball. "Soon as we were over, it was morning. On the second attempt, we didn't even make it out of the halls."

Kaito threw the ball back to Iori, shaking his head slightly. "We're going to try again, though... And hopefully it'll go a lot better this time."

"Well, that sucks." Junpei thought for a moment. Wait a minute...

"So, do you go over first or let her take the lead?"

"For the wall? I helped her up and then followed," Kaito said, choosing to leave out the part where his attempt to go up the wall solo had worked less-than-spectacularly. He made a mental note to find a real pair of shoes before the next time he tried a stunt like that.

"Why do you ask?"

A grin split Junpei's face. "You know.. she wears that really short skirt. Makes me wonder if when they gave it back to her here, did they give her a pair of those really cute panties she wears back home."

Talk of Yukari's (short) skirt instantly reminded Kaito of the lost opportunity last night to flip said skirt, just to find out how Yukari would react. And to find out the answer to certain questions about undergarments.

Obviously, Iori was a man of Kaito's own heart.

Still... something about the conversation had struck Kaito as odd, almost as if it was slowly turning into an interrogation. Maybe it would be best to proceed with a bit of caution.

"No idea," Kaito replied, answering carefully. "I didn't ask, and she didn't say. Besides, she was still wearing the institute uniform when we went over the wall, so it's not like I saw anything. How do you know what kind of panties she wears at home, anyway?"

"I share a dorm with her - opportunity, man. Opportunity. How I could possibly pass up a chance to find out? Sure, I got smacked a couple times, but it was totally worth it the day she had the frilly ones with the little hearts on."

Junpei wasn't as much of an idiot as he seemed. He had been watching Kaito the whole conversation and the line about not asking about the panties set off a bell in the teen's mind. Okay, so maybe it was time to stop being Junpei, Ace Detective, and start being the guy that might find a need to break Kaito's face in the future if he end sup hurting Yukari.

"Talk of those sweet panties aside, dude, I've got a serious question for you." He decided to wait to make sure Kaito had stopped picturing those awesome panties on Yukari and was paying attention to him.

From the sounds of it, the relationship between Iori and Yukari must've been a lot like the relationship between him and Aoko... He made mental note of the mention of physical retaliation on Yukari's part for future reference.

When Iori said he had a serious question, Kaito nodded. He'd thought that it was turning into an interrogation, but it seemed Iori was finished beating around the bush. "Ask away," he said.

"You gonna make a move on her?" Junpei was blunt and direct. "An ancient old guy from history says you're a good guy, but I need to know for myself."

That.... had not been what Kaito had been expecting.

Granted, he hadn't really been expecting anything in particular, but of all the questions that Iori could've asked, that hadn't been one that had crossed his mind. The question had caught him off guard, and to his dismay, it showed.

"Huh?"

Junpei crossed his arms, not particularly thrilled with the articulate response he'd been given. Obviously, Kaito hadn't been expecting the question, but that wasn't going to make Junpei let the topic go.

"I know her, Kaito-kun, and she's reacting like there's something going on between you. It might be a tiny thing now, but if you intend on making it something bigger, I need to know," he said evenly. "I'm not telling you not to, just keep in mind I'll be watching. She's my friend, so you know what that means."

Day 40: Recreational Field

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)