2024-08-13: Who Is Communicating?
- Log: 2024-08-13: Who Is Communicating?
- Cast: Koyomi Yamanaka, Mujina
- Where: 7-21 Convenience Store, Nouvelle Tokyo, OCU Japan
- OOC - IC Date: 13 August UC0099
- Summary: Koyomi Yamanaka wanders into a convenience store to grab some food. Mujina of the Kaiju Eugenicists is already there. They communicate... about as poorly as one might expect.
<Pose Tracker> Koyomi Yamanaka has posed.
Contrary to popular belief, Koyomi Yamanaka is NOT the kind of useless layabout who just sits under his comforters playing MMOs all day! He's way more into CNC crash videos right now, for one thing.
But, to whit, for the complex intermingling reasons that form a man's life, Koyomi finds himself at loose ends toward the middle of a Tuesday afternoon. And so, like anyone with money and the freedom to go wheresoever he pleases, Koyomi has ended up at the 7-21 contemplating the rice balls.
He stands poorly, hands in his pockets, shoulders slumped. "Do I feel like tuna today," he mutters to himself, peering out from behind untidy bangs.
<Pose Tracker> Mujina has posed.
Tuesday afternoon is a good time for 7-21. The lunch rush for people after cheap takeaway meals is over, and it's before the office workers come home to pick up their beer and snacks and regret their life choices.
For now, it is the NEET hour. When the NEETs come to eats.
Indeed, another NEET is in the store right now. Not that she'd acknowledge the title. But does being a Kaiju Eugenicist count as employment after all? ...It doesn't pay these days? Volunteer work then.
Anyway, the point is right now Mujina is staring at the Coldee machine. It looks like a shaved ice, but... not. Strange...
Conveniently it is right next to the onigiri.
What Mujina hasn't noticed yet is the person who has walked up next to her, even though she really, really should.
The shot lingers on Mujina and Koyomi, standing in close proximity but not looking in their peripheral for a good ten seconds, the only movements being the flicker of the lights in the onigiri fridge and the stirring of the Coldee machine.
<Pose Tracker> Koyomi Yamanaka has posed.
Seconds pass. Koyomi tips his head and scratches his ear. "Hnnn," he mutters. "Yeah, sure, roe, I guess," he adds, then reaches over to grab his decided snack.
"Probably grab a drink, too," he says to himself, and turns directly away from the Coldees, shambling toward the sodas, holding up his choice of snack with a listless type of contemplation. And in this mental palace, he recalls: "Gah, right, I should get one for Captain," he mutters to himself, and spins on his heels, and raises his eyes about 3 degrees above their current angle so he can see Mujina.
Then he yelps and throws his onigiri skyward in alarm!!
<Pose Tracker> Mujina has posed.
The sudden noise to her left draws Mujina's attention, and she looks away from the Coldee machine to see what the cause is and comes face to face with-
She stares at him, as the Onigiri flies up in the air. He looks... familiar, somehow.
Mujina continues to stare at Koyomi arms crossed under her breasts, her right hand wrapped around her elbow.
"...Do I know you from somewhere?"
The Onigiri's descent begins, as Mujina continues to look at the man unemotionally.
<Pose Tracker> Koyomi Yamanaka has posed.
Koyomi's shocked brain recalculates several things with the kind of awe-inspiring rapidity only a man with an anxiety disorder could achieve, so rather than answer Mujina's question he huffs a startled, "Hhha!" as his brain identifies the onigiri, calls for an interception action, and his hands swiftly rise up, and fail completely to catch it, and indeed instead propel it at full speed directly into Mujina's nose.
...
....
"...D-dynazenon," Koyomi says, lamely.
<Pose Tracker> Mujina has posed.
There is an unceremoniously plastic krsh and a kind of unpleasant squish as tuna onigiri smacks into Mujina's nose at low velocity- eliciting, surprisingly, a quiet 'ow!' - before bouncing off, falling, bouncing again, and falling to the floor of the convenience store.
She stares at Koyomi again, but her brows are furrowed. "What was that for?" She says, with a little more intonation than before, a little more energy.
The question seems to hang in the air for a bit, and then she gets the answer to her question from Koyomi. She looks at him quizzically...
And then a spark of recognition.
"Oh. Gauma's fake kaiju."
There's another long moment of silence.
"Why are you here?"
<Pose Tracker> Koyomi Yamanaka has posed.
Koyomi looks down at the disaster he has wrought. "...I missed," he says, in something approximating explanation, and shambles forward to go retrieve his lost onigiri.
"...same as you, probably?" Koyomi asks, a bit confused by the nature of the question. "I was getting food..." He stands up, briefly looking at the packaging to make sure the contents are still good. Seems...fine...?
He looks back up, though from their respective angles all Mujina can see of his eyes is brown fringe. "...The screamy guy's not around, is he...?" Koyomi would very much like to not be isolated with Onija.
<Pose Tracker> Mujina has posed.
"Oh." That seems... explanation enough, for now.
The same as her? That would be interesting in and of itself- but instead Koyomi gives her a mundane answer. "...Oh." She pauses. "This is my first time here. I was curious." And bored. Very bored.
She turns back to the Coldee machine without even looking at Koyomi and, after a moment, reaches for a cup.
"...No. We don't usually move together." She seems... slightly relieved to have some space from Onija right now? It's hard to say. Her voice has gone back to that flat tone.
She slides the cup under the first of the six Coldee flavour pumps- Cola- and pulls down on the lever, watching the 'drink' fill up the cup slowly.
She stops at about one sixth full, providing no further stimulating conversation.
<Pose Tracker> Koyomi Yamanaka has posed.
"Oh," Koyomi replies to the valuable intelligence that the Kaiju Eugenecists mostly don't hang out together. "Familiar," he says, limply, instead, spare hand going to his pocket. ... ...
Mujina fills the Coldee cup while Koyomi cluelessly watches for several dozen thousand dollars of episode time.
"Uh," Koyomi stammers, realizing he's staring to no effect. Something's bugging him. The red guy seemed fit to burst with anger at the mere concept of Gauma. The glasses guy was clearly really focused on him, too, in his own quieter way. This girl...something's not the same...
He scratches the side of his head, mutters something even he doesn't catch, and goes to grab a tuna onigiri. "Guess I'll tell him I saw you," he says, and turns to head back to the sodas. He'll have to use another aisle to get around Mujina, anyway.
But...before he goes, he does glance a little over his shoulder, and those blue eyes peer with focus from under his bangs. "....want me to tell him anything?"
<Pose Tracker> Mujina has posed.
With the same enthusiasm, Mujina's cup moves from the cola to the peach iced tea flavour Coldee. Grab the lever. Pour.
"Sure." She says, of Koyomi telling her she plans to tell Gauma. Mujina doesn't seem to care particularly, honestly. Or rather, it's expected. "We'll probably keep encountering him either way, whether he knows where we are or not."
Her hand stops on the handle, releasing it, when Koyomi asks his own question.
She opens her mouth-
Strobe Memory (Maaya Uchida) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnHL_eWtwqA