2024-02-11: Recovery Timeline
- Log: 2024-02-11- Recovery Timeline
- Cast: Akane Shinjo, Rikka Takarada
- Where: Nouvelle Tokyo - Takarada/Shinjo Apartment
- OOC - IC Date: 0098-07-20
- Summary: Akane has some personal business attended to, but now she's home and getting situated. Rikka and Akane talk about how things are going as far as school goes, as well as making some personal plans.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
July is here!
Surgery has come and gone; things were... a little rough at first, honestly! While the procedure itself went fine, some worries about infection risk added another day to Akane's hospital stay near the end.
Now, at long last, Ms. Shinjo is home. She's got a decent amount of pain medication, and is presently parked on the couch with a nutrient drink (clear, fruit-flavored!) and three slices of delivery pizza.
... the 'I probably won't have an appetite after surgery' thing didn't work out, it looks like.
"It is so good to be home," she enthuses, for probably the seventh time since getting home, between bites. Taking a pill in hand, Akane purses her lips a little, moves them back and forth, and dry swallows it.
Akane. Akane you have a drink right there. Akane. Akane. AKANE.
Glancing back thoughtfully, she asks, "So, what do you wanna do tonight?"
<Pose Tracker> Rikka Takarada has posed.
July is here!
Rikka has made frequent trips to and from the hospital to check up on Akane when allowed, but there wasn't a whole lot she could do. So, for the most part, her time - when she wasn't busy with other responsibilities - has been spent preparing the apartment for Akane's return.
And now... she's back! Rikka, of course, is seated right next to her, with a drink and some pizza of her own.
"It's great to have you back. I missed you." Rikka replies with a smile - probably not for the first time - and then...
Oh no.
...almost immediately cringes as Akane elects to just dry swallow the pill. She leans over subtly - but not so subtle that it won't be noticed - shifts Akane's drink to make it more immediately visible.
"Hmm... we could watch a movie, if you feel up to it? I picked up a bunch of lower-commitment stuff." Rikka considers, after a moment of thought. "I don't mind just cuddling, either."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane pauses as she sees Rikka nudging her drink over. She looks at her pill bottle, then looks at her drink. After a moment or two, she looks at her hand... then at the drink again.
Then she starts losing it giggling. "Ehehehe, oh my ggggoooooddd," she groans out, though she sounds more amused than humiliated by it. It gets her to lean in toward Rikka, too, saying, "I don't know what I'd do without you, ahaha... this would be so much worse to do alone." She reaches out, shifts the cushion under her butt, then reaches out again and snags another slice of pizza.
"I could go for having something on, yeah?" Akane agrees, nodding. "I'll leave what up to you. I kinda have the feeling I'm gonna need to watch anything twice to retain anything..."
With a little pizza still in her mouth, she asks, "Oh, uh -- how did your final grades end up going?" (This is a question Akane asked in the hospital too, but she seems not to have retained the answer.)
<Pose Tracker> Rikka Takarada has posed.
Akane giggles and groans at the same time - and Rikka laughs right alone with her. Akane leans toward her, and Rikka reaches out to give her a gentle squeeze of the hand.
"I promised." Rikka replies, offering her a smile. Of course, she'd be here even if she hadn't made that promise. "I think... even if I hadn't, you've got a lot of people who'd be there for you, now."
Akane agrees to have something on and Rikka nods, fishing for her phone.
"Thaaat makes sense. Let's see... how about this?" She says, tapping at the screen. The TV turns and she navigates through a few choices, eventually coming to a stop. Today's pick - an action movie with a fairly basic narrative, acting mostly as a vehicle for cool setpieces set against actors ranging from bad, enjoyably bad, to performing way too well for the piece of media they're in.
She starts the movie playing - then looks toward Akane as she asks her question. She's had to answer this one before - but it still takes a second for her to recall the specifics.
"I did... pretty well? I wasn't at the very top of the class, anyway, but I did good for the classes that mattered for what I wanted to do." Rikka replies. "My history grade kind of sucked, but it could've been a lot worse."
She looks toward Akane, then.
"How about yours?" She asks.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
That squeeze of the hand gets another giggle -- with much less self-deprecating groaning attached. "... Yeah -- you're right," she agrees, though, after a second or two. "It... feels nice. Having a lot of people in my corner." She nods, gently.
Akane looks up, murmuring, "Oh, cool. I haven't seen this one," with a nod, before listening to Rikka talk about her grades. "Ehehe... I mean, it's better to have a general education kind of thing go only okay than something you're passionate about," she says, managing to stop herself from being self-deprecating about the reasons history might be trickier this time.
Stretching her shoulders a little and taking another bite of pizza, Akane says, "Well, I blew art out of the water? Intro psych was nothing, I should have tried to test out of it..." She runs out of ways to talk herself up, though, and has to admit, "... math was just barely good enough to get the grade I needed to keep going. It was pretty rough the whole time, so it's not like I wasn't expecting it, but still... I'm feeling pretty good about future courses at least."
Her eyes track toward the screen for a bit, then back to Rikka. "You are so pretty," she says, out of nowhere.
<Pose Tracker> Rikka Takarada has posed.
It's good to hear her giggle like that. Rikka smiles, and nods.
"Best feeling in the world." She replies. "I'm happy for you."
Akane hasn't seen the movie Rikka picked out, it seems.
"Great. I kind of skimmed it to see if it was worth checking out, but I haven't watched it in full yet, either." She replies. As for grades... Rikka nods, carefully navigating a slice of pizza that's trying to fall apart on her. "That's definitely true."
She listens intently as Akane lists her own results, nodding along.
"I'm not surprised - I knew you were going to do great there." Rikka replies with a nod. "Yeah, you probably could have managed that..."
Math, though...
"I'm glad you managed to pull through, at least." She replies, then smiles. It's good to hear her be confident about the future, too. "Great - I know you'll go far."
Rikka's attention strays toward the screen - and then, out of nowhere...!
"O-oh," Rikka replies, taken aback by the sudden, genuine compliment. It's not that she doesn't expect that from her... but she didn't expect that now, when her guard was down...! She looks Akane with a genuine smile and a sheepish laugh. "Thanks..."
Rikka raises a hand near to her hair, drawing close to brush it out of her face - but she catches herself at the last second, thinking better of it at the current moment.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane swaps which hand she's holding the pizza in, then gives it a couple of wipes on her shirt... so she can safely let her now free hand comfortably rest on Rikka's arm. Then she has to fumble with the pizza a couple times with her own hand to stop it from flopping over, so she's not as attentive as she could be.
"Hehe..." Akane giggles, as she sees that sheepish laugh. It's good to know that she can still catch Rikka off guard every now and again, even if the terms of doing so seem to have changed a little bit.
When she notices Rikka moving to brush her hair out of her face, she glances down at the hand she just wiped off -- and then does it for her, gently moving a few stray locks. "... ggggoooooodddd it's going to be so hard to keep my hands off you for like a whole month," she whines.
She doesn't linger on the recovery process for too long, though, at least -- doesn't obsess over a temporary obstacle. Instead, she says, "I think I wanna get back to cooking soon... I can't just lie around and wait." ... She might need help with that, admittedly, between the pain and the spaciness...
Her eyes flick to the TV briefly, again. "I feel like I've said this before, but the picture quality on this is so good... you really did a good job picking out appliances."
<Pose Tracker> Rikka Takarada has posed.
Akane rests a hand on her arm and Rikka looks her way - content to just stare at her for a moment. Akane giggles and Rikka laughs a bit, owning up to being caught - and then offers an appreciative look as she gives her a hand.
"It's going to be difficult." Rikka sympathises with a grave nod - and then a laugh, unable to keep that up for long. "But we'll get through it."
Akane brings up wanting to get back to cooking soon, though, and Rikka nods.
"Sure, that'll be fun." She replies. "That'll give us something else to do together, too."
Indeed, she recognizes that she'll need a hand.
Back at the TV, though, Rikka looks quite proud of herself at Akane's compliment.
"Thanks~." She says. "I knew what we wanted and the sort of things we didn't, so it was easy to narrow down on quality while cutting out the filler since I know what to look for."
Definitely one of the benefits of growing up in a junk shop - alongside being able to fix all of that herself, when it inevitably happens.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
The grave look gets Akane to sit up a hair straighter -- but the laugh cuts back through that tension, and she relaxes again. "Oh -- I was hoping to do a whole set meal for you, but... ehehe, yeah, maybe I do need the help..." She starts to lean a little closer -- then pauses and scoots the cushion under her a little closer. Then she leans closer.
"Ehehe, yeah... it's a little smaller than I'd like but I get that refresh rate and size are kinda... once you start chasing them both it gets really expensive? I think we made the right choice, anyway... too much bigger and I think this place'd start to get kinda cramped."
That hand lazily plays with Rikka's hair a bit more as Akane watches TV for a bit. "Uuugh, it feels like I'm bruised everywhere from my knees to my boobs... even on meds it's kinda hard to get comfy," Akane complains -- though she doesn't seem that bothered. "... uh..." A pause, as Akane works through something slowly. "Are there any chores you wanna trade with me since I probably shouldn't be doing the garbage?" Sometimes that does get to over 5kg, and Akane probably shouldn't be lifting things...
<Pose Tracker> Rikka Takarada has posed.
"I am looking forward to that... but we should probably wait until you're back up to one hundred percent." Rikka admits, offering her a smile. "Just think of it as extra time make some plans."
Akane starts to lean closer - then readjusts before actually doing so. Rikka shifts herself, to make it easier and, hopefully, more comfortable for her.
"Yeah, like... I'm pretty sure some of the really good ones are worth more than what we paid for everything combined?" Rikka agrees with a nod. "But, yeah... I think we made the call, too. I think this is just right for us."
She does make a mental note that Akane wants a bigger screen, though. It's not something she can act on right away... but the future is another story.
Akane plays with her hair and Rikka looks pleased, before offering a sympathetic smile. She dpesn't seem too bothered, at least...
"I bet... anything I can do to help?" She asks - then pauses, as Akane seems to realise something. "Oh, uh..."
A part of her had been planning to shoulder the entire load while Akane was recovering... but it might be good to give her something to do.
"Do you think you can handle the dishes?" She asks. As she speaks she reaches for the napkins, meticulously cleaning her hands now that she's done eating.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Oh yeah, like, once you get down to instant refresh rate you're talking thousands of..." A pause. "... I guess it's hundreds of thousands of yen now, actually, huh." She's still getting used to the currency transition that came from the Federation falling apart. Daily purchases are one thing, but big-ticket items still haven't quite registered...
Taking a moment to breathe as Rikka tries to figure out something Akane can do, Akane snags her last slice of pizza too. She's still eating. (... She'll need to do laundry again, she realizes, if she keeps wiping her hands on her shirt and skirt -- and that will be something she needs help with...)
"Yeah, I can do that," she affirms, before taking a bite. Through a mouthful of food, she adds, "I kinda like doing the dishes sometimes... it keeps my hands busy without taking a whole ton of thought? Maybe we should rebalance the chores after this..." It's not the first time she's thought about it, but this time she has an excuse to bring it up.
<Pose Tracker> Rikka Takarada has posed.
Akane corrects herself, and Rikka has to take a second to doubletake over the currency conversion, too. That's still something she needs to think about, as well...
"Yeah, it's a lot. I'm sure it looks great, but I bet I'd be feeling that pricetag every time I see it..." Rikka replies with a small laugh.
Akane agrees to the dishes, though - and Rikka makes a mental note of the laundry, coming to the same realisation around the time Akane does - and Rikka nods.
"Great." She replies with a smile, then a look of interest. "You do? I don't mind it, but I prefer chores that are a bit more active..."
She nods.
"Yeah, good idea. Now that we've figured out what we're both good at..." Rikka agrees. They might've had some things figured out going into this, but there's still plenty to learn. That, to Rikka, is a good thing.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Ooof, yeah. Maybe once we..." Akane pauses. "Well, we'll figure out the money situation somehow." 3G does pay them, even while they're in college, since theoretically they're on call and it's very much an emergency-driven sort of position anyway... but it's still good to be a little frugal. There are other expenses than huge TVs to think about!
Akane watches TV in silence for a bit. She needs to finish that pizza anyway. Once she does finish it, she takes a drink of her little bottle of nutrition drink. "It's hard to imagine that it's been, like, a year and a half..." If December 0096 Akane had been told that this was where she'd be in July 0098, what she'd be doing, and who she'd be with, she would have laughed in their face and said it was unfair. "I'm really looking forward to it. ... I think we're both transforming, and..." She turns a little pink. "... I think I like it now~."
<Pose Tracker> Rikka Takarada has posed.
"Yeah. We've got time to save up." Rikka agrees. "It is good to treat ourselves every now and then, once everything feels stable."
Her attention drifts back to the TV as they sit there in silence together, until Akane's words bring her right back to her.
A year and a half...
"Yeah..." Rikka replies with a small laugh. "...We've come a long way since then - both of us."
Akane's looking forward to it - they're both transforming... It isn't lost on her what it means for her to say that. With a gentle smile, Rikka takes her hand.
"I think I like it, too."