“I get tired of being bored, bored of being tired, and the cycle begins anew. It’s not a very complicated process…” He manages to keep himself from punctuating the end of that depressing dialogue bubble with a sigh.
Tiredly, boredly, his gaze shifts from the insipid, half-torn lamp post that once lit one of the campus’ pathways down towards his own hand, and the girl’s hand, and the surprising degree of autonomy it must have had to grab a hold of him all its own.
It’s not that he fears it, but he does have a suspicion in the back of his mind telling him he might be killed. It feels unlikely, but you never know with people whose very beings are unlikely.
Truthfully, he wouldn’t mind. Being killed by a cute girl isn’t the worst way to go. In fact, it’d be one of his preferred ones. In fact, since he can’t think of any others, currently, it’d be his most preferred one. He can’t prefer things he doesn’t know, and his inability to think about anything other than the potential end of his life and the pretty girl touching him doesn’t let him know very any things. One can’t know without thinking, and his thinking has been outsourced to an astral projection of himself standing elsewhere without even having the decency to watch this unfold.
Well, if on a whim he wants to prevent it, he’ll just punch her in the face if he sees her pull out something dangerous.
“I can’t say I’ve never skipped,” he starts, raising he hand that has yet to be usurped by her, and pressing his pointer finger against the very middle of her
forehead, “but it’s usually always been with good reason, you know? Life circumstances, like being caught up doing something else, or having an emergency back at home, or working overtime. I think it’s perfectly reasonable. Are you a frequent skipper, Akazome-san? Or, was it Nomura-san…”
He watches her eyes up and down the way she watched tigers in the zoo - or, close enough. There's the stillness that doesn't come from fear, the soft roll of air that moves almost in time with her own, but none of the jealousy. He isn't digging his fingers into her mouth and prying it back until her teeth could fit in his palm, not dreaming jealously of biting her back with a jaw strong enough to turn those flints into something fearful. He's just. Watching. Waiting, almost.
"Two last names is confusing, isn't it?" She giggles, pulling in on her tiptoes only to tug them both away. "It's a family tradition, you know, giving your kids archaic names! We're going to the roof, by the way, it's the best spot for smoking. Anyway! I'm named after one of the literary greats, but my mother hated his first name. So, Akazome it is. You don’t have to bother with honorifics. I can tell we’re going to be the kind of friends that don’t need them!"
It means, she thinks, not saying it, "red-dyed". He doesn't need to know that, though - or he does, already, studied ancient poetry with none of the feverish intensity she did. Names and their meanings pull her too close to the edge of what she's ignoring, etymology a well half-covered in the woods that it does nobody any kind of good to peer down into. Red-dyed. Like the hills they came from.
The sun ripples over both of them and she thinks of tigers again, tigers into forests into shadows, just so. The inky inky marks that dapple leopards, the inky inky hands that dealt them, jaguars cut from blue velvet. It's always something like that with her. Cats, and stories, and fires. A thousand metaphors chasing after her. El-Ahrairah.
"Anyway! No, I don't skip often, but I know how to. It's more fun that way, I think, to know that you could do just about anything."
Holding his wrist is awkward as they turn the stairs, clumsy. Easier to hold his hand.
