damned_institute | Day 51: Breakfast

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Day 51: Breakfast

Yuffie Kisaragi, indomitable bouncing ball of sunshine and unfathomable ebullience, was tired. It'd been a long night full of gibberish and getting nowhere fast.

"Can't I—"

Plucky, who had been busily loading a plate full of French toast and bacon, tittered. "I'm afraid not, Hanna, darling. A chat over a nice, hearty breakfast would do you a world of good, don't you think?"

"Aaaaactually—"

"Come on, let's find you a seat. Plenty to choose from this morning!"

For a long moment, Yuffie seriously considered doing something—anything—to act out. Punch her nurse, rub jam in an orderly's face, climb a wall and hang off the ceiling, jump on a table and parody Loveless… A ruckus like that would definitely jolt her back into gear, right? Sedation aside. And it'd turn Plucky's good day right on its head, which was always a bonus worth shooting for.

But, by the time she'd reached a decision—and it was an epic decision, a really awesome one; everybody'd appreciate the genius, she was sure—she was already alone. Her breakfast tray had been set down neatly by the nurse, who had left with an infuriatingly winsome smile.

"Wow," Yuffie muttered. Shaking her head, she picked a chair at random and threw herself into it. She kicked back, one arm slung across her eyes, to wait. For what, she wasn't totally sure. Some moron to decide that she looked like good company? That was how it usually went.

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Lucky was hardly the word he'd use to describe it, but she was trying to be friendly, so he tried not to mind it. Shiki had been like that too and she wasn't so bad. At least it meant she was nice or something, right? Not like most of the girls you'd see in Shibuya with bleach blond hair and creepy ganguro eyes anyway.

But Aino Minako? Seriously? She must've been teased in school. That or it was some personal declaration. He was kind of hoping for the former. Not that it was any of his business.

"Sakuraba Neku," he replied, nodding slightly once he'd finished a bit of the toast. With a name like that, it meant she was from Japan too though, right?

"You're from Japan right? What part?"

There, he wasn't that unfriendly after all. At least he responded positively to the introduction, and Minako's smile brightened just a little. Probably just a bad night, then, or the age. Teenage boys were often a little cranky, weren't they? Or so she'd always heard...

She dropped the last bit of the peel onto her tray and began prying apart the sections of the orange, absently licking a drop of juice from one finger as she glanced up at him again. "Tokyo!" Minako replied, suddenly even more interested in the conversation. Finally, someone from somewhere she knew. The others were nice and all, but still. "I go to school in Azabu-Juuban. You?"

Well, at least she didn't seem overly obvious or like she was trying to spread love and sunshine and warm fuzzies everywhere. Maybe she was just unlucky in the name department.

"Azabu-Juuban, that's not far. I'm from Tokyo too, the Shibuya area, one district over," he explained. Not that he'd been there very much, Shibuya was and always would be his home. Would it be rude to tell her she'd get laughed out of the district before she even hit the train station if she wore her hair like that?

"This might sound weird, but what year was it? That you last remember I mean," maybe that would explain it. Or maybe her mother still dressed her. Oh god, she wasn't one of those lolita types, was she?

Shibuya? Sure, she knew where Shibuya was -- it was kind of a neat coincidence that not only was Neku from Japan and Tokyo he was from not all that far away, relatively speaking. Not that she'd been homesick or anything, of course not. But even that little bit of familiarity was kind of welcome. Just... because.

"High school?" she asked as she absently chewed on a section of orange. After half a second she elaborated a bit on the verbal shorthand, adding, "I mean, you look about my age, so... I'm in my first year."

His question was definitely more than a little odd, though she was starting to get used to that around here. Nothing seemed to be normal around here, starting with the fact that it was here and not home, so... well, different years. Why not. "1994. Why?"

"I just started at Aoyama," he replied. Why was that important anyway? Not as if he hadn't considered skipping out entirely, but that'd been before the RG stuff.

But the second question at least made a few things make more sense, even if Minako just seemed more confused. 94? So he'd have been like what, a year old? They might look the same age, but if the lined up their timelines, that would be more than a little creepy.

"Because it isn't just places that don't add up here. There's people who'll say they're from all kinds of weird worlds and whatever else, but time seems to be different too." Take the way Sho had reacted to hearing he'd lost the Game not so long ago. He'd thought it hadn't even happened, but Neku remembered a very different story.

"I might be from Shibuya, but the last date I remember is in 2008."

Minako automatically popped another piece of orange into her mouth, chewing her breakfast without thinking about it while inside she considered that information. 2008. 2008 was the future, though not as far into the future as she'd seen before. And Mason had thought it was 2010, so even farther ahead than Neku. They couldn't both be lying or crazy, could they?

(Okay, maybe they could... Alfred and Arthur probably were. But. That was different.)

"Huh," she said finally, picking up a napkin to wipe the orange juice residue off her hands. It might not even be her future, since there were supposedly people from different worlds -- but that kind of thing gave her a headache, so probably best not to dwell on it too much. "So what's Shibuya like in the future? You don't happen to know of a particularly beautiful idol singer named Aino Minako, do you?"

At least she took it pretty well. She wasn't throwing a fit or calling him crazy or anything. She had to be new, but maybe he'd been lucky enough not to get her in her very first shift or two. He did raise an eyebrow at her reply though. An idol singer? Narcissist much? She'd probably get along great with that Eiji Ouji guy...

Maybe that explained the name. If it was a stage name, at least it didn't seem quite so ridiculous. "It'd probably be a trip if you're used to the 90's. Fashions change there on the daily and so do idols. If there's been an Aino Minako, I've never heard of her."

He gave a shrug, "but it might've been before my time. I didn't start following music real close until probably five or six years ago."

See, now he was giving her that look. It was the same one Artemis always gave her when she declared her intention to become the most popular idol singer ever, and mimicking it was kind of an accomplishment given that Neku wasn't a cat. So maybe she was completely aware how unlikely it was, especially given all of her other duties and so on and so forth. But that didn't mean she couldn't dream, right? What a boring life she'd lead if she did nothing but go to school and fight monsters.

Minako just beamed cheerfully and gave a small shrug in response to the raised eyebrow, turning her attention to the bagel on her tray. "Kind of weird to think that, really. I mean, in your time I'd be something like twice as old as you are." She paused a minute to think about that, wondering if her math was anywhere near correct, then decided it didn't really matter all that much. "I bet a lot of things have changed."

Would the shopping district in Juuban be anything like what she knew? Stores opened and closed all the time, and in... however many years that was there'd be a lot of change. Or, well, maybe whatever disasters the future held that would eventually give rise to Crystal Tokyo had changed things a lot more than simple turnover. There was a cheerful thought, wasn't it.

Twice as old. Yeah, that was kind of a creepy thought. Not like they could do much about the time difference. And talking to someone his own age, regardless of what time it was now, was definitely better than talking to some... 30-something Minako still bent on holding on to the tattered remains of her youth.

Then again, there were people who thought they were from some magical fantasy world with elves and magic and dragons and fairies, so... maybe he wasn't so bad off with at least getting someone in the same general area.

"I wouldn't really know. Hachi's still around. The 104 building. And the crossing isn't all that different. They still had the big screens up around there back then, didn't they?" he tried, scratching his head a little. Sure, some shops came and went, but at least some things stayed the same.

"Hachi... hey, wait!" Minako sat up a little straighter in her seat, squinting at Neku as though she'd just seen him for the first time. "On the bulletin board yesterday, was that you? And that guy I was talking to about the statue and the story behind it and stuff." It was a bit of a coincidence otherwise -- but too bad she hadn't paid any attention to the names on those posts, huh.

Of course, his most distinctive characteristic wouldn't carry over into text, given that nobody could see the headphones in a written note. Even if they were his why did the nurses let him wear them all the time? Minako was even almost jealous... not because she wanted to listen to music or anything, because she didn't, but because he actually got to be unique amidst a sea of gray-clad sameness. (The fact that she had her hairbow went completely ignored, of course. That was different.)

Still, he seemed like a nice enough kid, if she didn't think too hard about the time weirdness. They were at least from the same place, roughly the same age (here, at least), and probably thinking about things sort of the same. Even if he likely didn't have to wear odd-looking clothes in order to fight monsters nobody else knew existed, lucky boy. She was glad she'd met someone at least that little bit familiar.

"Huh? Oh. No. No, that was Sora. He looks a lot like me, but he has brown hair, no headphones," he replied, once he'd figured out what she was talking about. He chose not to go into detail on the weird way it felt like he was looking in a mirror around the other guy. They were way too much the same to be coincidence, but he knew for a fact they weren't family. The same was true with his roommate, Roxas, but he'd yet to find any real connections between the three of them.

"We went to Shibuya the other night, when there were all those crazy portal things and he asked me about it."

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Day 51: Breakfast

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