damned_institute | Dayshift 43: Waiting Room / Lobby 2 [4th Shift]

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Dayshift 43: Waiting Room / Lobby 2 [4th Shift]

"Now you just have a seat and wait for your visitor like everyone else."

As the nurse went away from him, Kurogane huffed out some agitation but refused to have a seat. Hearing that he had a visitor had been one of the last things he'd expected. It was always the magician who got one, not him. And who the hell would want to visit him anyway?

During his first protests, the nurse had been telling him to behave since it wasn't nice to be sour to girls, so he knew it had to be a girl that was visiting. There were a few of those Kurogane knew could show up as a "visitor" for him, all of which were annoying. Some were worse than others too. He could probably handle if Sohma showed up, and maybe Amaterasu, but when it came to Tomoyo-hime... she was already hard to handle normally, no matter what world she came from. The Piffle version had been pretty much the same, just raised differently. If he saw her, even a fake her, she would probably be just the same and he'd have to at put up with it no matter what.

Eventually he chose to take a seat, knowing that he would not be leaving any time soon. Of course, he picked the one that was furthest into the corner to avoid unwanted conversations. He would already have to deal with a visitor; he shouldn't have to deal with anything more.

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"You are not," he snorted, then decided himself to ignore her attempts at convincing him that he was in the wrong.

He looked over the picture for a few more seconds, then brought his eyes up to the girl. "Who the hell is Mr. Mead?" he finally asked. The Amaya girl he had already guessed as being Orihime since he was pretty sure he'd heard that as her real name before, but he couldn't place the man she kept talking about. Or rather, he could if his suspicions of the man in the photograph were correct, but he was hoping that he wasn't right this time. Being right would just raise even more questions.

"I am! You just asked who Mr. Mead was, and before that you were trying to say that...that everything I thought was real before but isn't actually real is." If that made sense. Nicole wasn't entirely sure if it made sense, but she tried to get the point across.

"And you don't remember? He's one of the other teachers! He's always teasing you about things."

"Hearing and listening are different," he growled, but didn't press the matter.

Convincing her about what was real or not wasn't so much the problem as trying to get her to understand him. He was not asking thing just for the fun of it; he didn't know any of it. Not even remotely save for the few familiar faces. And that was why, when he pointed to the older blond man in the picture, he was asking about that man in particular.

"Is that him?" he asked.

She nodded in response. "Yeah..." Her attention was drawn across the hall again. "Though it's weird. Someone that looks just like him is over there," she said, tilting her head sideways. Nicole blinked a few times, squinting to try and get a better look. Yeah, that was definitely a little weird. If he hadn't been wearing grey, she would have sworn that it was her teacher coming to visit someone else here.

"They say everyone in this world has a twin somewhere, though. I've gotten told that I look just like my friend Erica," she said, trying to change the subject a little. "She's not in the picture, but we do have our hair cut the same way, so I guess I can see it."

She looked serious again, then. "So...are you really okay?"

Kurogane drew his finger back and narrowed his eyes at this "Mr. Mead" person. There was no mistaking him as being the magician, but just how much of the picture was true? There were too many possibilities to count for what the person could be. Another version of him from this world? Or an illusion created to confuse the ninja? Even a gap in time could explain some part of it given how mixed up Shura and Shara had been.

When Shiki spoke of twins, Kurogane gave the other room a glance, just catching sight of Fai's blond hair. That was another possibility, he guessed. The magician never did talk about his past (not the Kurogane cared to hear any of it), so he could have a twin, or a brother, or someone who he looked like where he came from. Asking the man directly probably wouldn't get him anywhere though. Despite that, Kurogane would be keeping all three options as possibilities.

And now that he had taken the moment to look, Kurogane remembered that he had been wanting to watch to see if the magician had a visitor. With him just a room over, he probably did, and Kurogane would bet it was the same visitor that always came for the man. That bothered Kurogane. He didn't want to have to deal with Fai being stupid again, and he had already been roped into helping Chise with... something tonight. How was he supposed to make sure that idiot didn't do anything stupid while he was stuck babysitting again?

Looking back to the girl, he sighed at her question and muttered out, "Why wouldn't I be?" as though he was fine as ever.

It wasn't his nature to tell others what he was dealing with. Shiki had known that when she was here, as had every other little girl that somehow decided to worry over him. Telling only made things worse and them worry more. No one needed to know.

The girl was quiet for just a few moments then, her usual chatter not seeming quite the right response. She looked between the man in front of her, the picture, and the man across the hall, and something inside her stirred for just a moment - a memory of this same kind of conversation happening before.

Part of her wanted to recall it as a memory of something that happened here; asking the same questions and getting the same response. Had it been after...No. She shook her head firmly, as if reminding herself that all of that had just been a nightmare. A nightmare she'd awakened from, one she could put in the past. Just a bad dream, one that could be dismissed with a shake of the head and a firm nod.

"Well, it's like all the times someone hit you with a volleyball in class," she said. "Even if your nose was bleeding because the ball had hit you really hard, you'd say you were just fine, even though we knew you weren't. It usually took most of the class to get you to go see the school nurse."

"What's a...?" he started, but found that knowing what a volleyball was didn't matter to the overall point.

He'd heard this before, and from more than just Shiki. Ururu and Orihime, and most recently the Chise girl... he didn't get just why the hell they had to be so persistent about it! If you had problems, you dealt with them on your own. It was only when people didn't deal with their own problems that Kurogane got angry.

He could handle things, and he didn't need anyone else bothering him to try and help. Especially not some little girl he barely knew who didn't know herself anymore.

"I'm fine," he eventually said.

She shook off that first question. He'd probably meant to ask 'when did that happen?', and she didn't have the heart to tell him it had been their fault the last time - they'd just been horsing around with the ball while waiting. And none of them had meant to throw it that hard, really! They'd had to go talk to the principal after that, too.

"You're sure?", she finally asked.

He looked to her, staring intently for a few moments, before turning his eyes away.

This was backwards, and he knew it. If anything he should be the one asking if she was all right. Things had to be less dangerous from the Institute where she was - the most dangerous things so far sounded like it happened at school with someone (who wasn't him) was getting hit hard enough to bleed - but that didn't mean there wasn't something else. This was still a world that Landel lived in, and there was too much Kurogane did not know. Whatever she told him, he couldn't trust to be the truth.

Maybe that was why he wasn't the one asking if she was all right.

"I said I'm fine. Stop asking," he ordered, but did not look back.

She didn't know what that stare meant, but it made her nervous. It was actually the lack of showing any temper that made her more nervous than anything else did. If there had been that usual show, she could have smiled, laughed it off, and gone on, but...she wasn't used to that level of seriousness from him. There was one more thing, though, the second item she'd brought with her. Maybe that would defuse it just a little?

Nicole didn't say anything for a moment, looking down at the floor before fishing around in her bag again, this time pulling a black and red bandana with gold accents out of it. "This is from me," she said, quietly. "I sewed it during home ec."

When she went for her bag again, Kurogane braced to see another picture. The first one had been enough, and with all the weird things she'd been telling him about who she thought he was, he had to prepare for the worst.

It wasn't a picture she took out though, so he didn't have a problem with giving it a look back. "What is it?" he asked only moments after seeing it. It looked like cloth, but that could make it anything. There were so many different things in each world he visited, after all...

"It's a bandana I made," she said. "You liked to wear them around your forehead in class sometimes. I remember the black and red ones, so I decided that a combination of the two suited you. I hope it turned out all right." She smiled softly as she held it out to him.

So that's what it was. At least it was something he understood, but that didn't make him any more inclined to actually take the bandana. He just stared at it, considering.

Just as he wasn't good with conversation, or any part of being social, he wasn't good at accepting what amounted to a gift from the girl. Why had she made him something anyway? If the person he was supposed to be was anything like him, then he wouldn't have wanted Shiki making him anything at all.

"I'm not changing my mind," he said after some thought, finding that the only reason behind her wanting to give him something would be in hopes of him moving closer to being "cured". Even if he could be an illusion, it was possible that she was the Shiki he knew, and Kurogane wasn't going to mislead her with that possibility in place. "Got it?"

So, he was just the same as always. Was she going to have to get up and tie the thing on him? She hoped it wouldn't come to that, but hadn't ruled it out as a possibility, either. After all, this was her - the girl who had, with a little help, managed to get a full third of the boys in her class to wear dresses one day. Persistence should have been her middle name.

"You're always so persistent," she said, with a half-smile. "I shouldn't expect less from you, though."

Snorting, Kurogane turned his head away like a kid who didn't want to eat his vegetables. He didn't like feeling that he was being talked down to, but at least that was one thing that hadn't changed about the girl. She was pretty stubborn herself, just like all the girls he had to deal with.

"They probably won't let me keep it," he said, trying to find a reason not to take it that wouldn't upset her. He didn't really want to take it - he already had his clothes back somehow - and again, he wasn't going to mislead her about anything, so he wouldn't take it just because she wanted him too.

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Dayshift 43: Waiting Room / Lobby 2 [4th Shift]

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