jk (
breakdancing) wrote in
sagittariusly2013-01-26 08:49 pm
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asteroidbelt
...apparently it's going to be one of those days.
Absolutely nothing exciting was happening anywhere - not in the school, not in his classroom, not even in this club, for crap's sake. And this was supposed to be the most action-packed of them all!
JK didn't even bother hiding his yawn. He tapped his open mouth twice, then reached for the food bag Miu had bought for them before she left for her afternoon class. It's surely full of the most expensive take-out food he'd ever laid his eyes on.
He wasn't wrong.
Ahhh, the benefits of rubbing elbows with the richest in the school.
Absolutely nothing exciting was happening anywhere - not in the school, not in his classroom, not even in this club, for crap's sake. And this was supposed to be the most action-packed of them all!
JK didn't even bother hiding his yawn. He tapped his open mouth twice, then reached for the food bag Miu had bought for them before she left for her afternoon class. It's surely full of the most expensive take-out food he'd ever laid his eyes on.
He wasn't wrong.
Ahhh, the benefits of rubbing elbows with the richest in the school.
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He caught himself before he thought the phrase himself. That was not a thing Sakuta Ryusei could think.
When he entered Rabbit Hatch and it was only JK in the room, his fists balled reflexively, because he'd just thought it again. Despite his best efforts, he couldn't keep the irritation from his face. "JK-kun."
He couldn't force his underclassman to get out. To begin with, JK was technically his senior in the Club, if not in school proper. He clasped his fist loosely in his other hand; his normal standing pose—normal to the Club members, anyway. "Where are the others?" And why aren't you with them? Right now I just want to curl up and die—
—He'd thought it again. Damn it!
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--wait, he asked him something. "Gone home." Then JK checked his watch. "Or maybe somewhere else. I haven't talked to anyone today."
...except Miu, because she dropped by earlier. But it wasn't like Ryusei was ever interested in Miu's whereabouts. "You're the one with Gentarou-san and the others. Why are you asking me?"
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No, no, no. He'd blow his cover. To stall, he went over to the workstation to check on Burgermeal, but no, the Foodroids hadn't picked up anything, not even a little blip of suspicious activity that he could use to persuade JK to get out. It had finally come to this. Stuck in Rabbit Hatch alone with another member of the Club. Stuff of nightmares.
He couldn't help but feel that JK was mocking him, somehow. JK was in Tomoko's class but only JK was here. She'd go that far to ignore me. A numbness struck his abdomen as soon as he thought it. He was a martial artist; he knew that wasn't normal. Tomoko....
He turned. "JK-kun. What kind of curses does Tomoko-chan like to inflict?"
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No, no, no. That wasn't how this whole thing worked.
"You could try calling Gentarou-san, see where that will lead you." It wasn't rocket science, sheesh. Besides--
JK snorted and almost choked at his drink at Ryusei's question. "Tomo-chan... and curses?" Why would Ryusei ask about that, anyway? Those were the kind of information JK didn't even want to know about.
In between coughing he managed to ask, "--why--'dyou--wantto--know?"
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It was the question that annoyed him all over again. Shirakawa.... That had been the worst place for her to suggest picking up her book. He should have just dropped it off at her house, like he'd planned. He'd known when she suggested the amusement park that she'd been trying to lure him into staying; she hadn't said it, but he could almost sense it as if she'd had: you need to stop spending all of your free time at Jirou's bedside. Maybe she hadn't been thinking it and he was projecting. But that just made him feel guilty.
The universe had agreed, apparently. Tomoko had been there.
Why do I even care....
"None of your business."
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Did Ryusei... just show JK a bit of attitude, right there? JK, of all people?
The newest member of their club was usually so nice and agreeable - or silent, just the way JK liked people to be - that JK had thought him, well, nice and agreeable. Boring, all in all. But, now?
"Yeah, see--" Here JK nonchalantly reached for another french fry from the bag, "--you said so yourself, I'm an information dealer." Then he pointed at Ryusei using the french fry. "I don't deal information for nothing."
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"I can't imagine anything I know will be useful to you," he added. Club Trainee Sakuta had a secret; that had been unavoidable when Kisaragi had seen right through him that first time. Why doesn't Ryusei smile, Kisaragi had wanted to know. Ryusei had prepared an excuse for that, too. And then he'd blown it for the second time when Kisaragi had overheard him talking to Jirou's nurse. Fine. But if JK wanted to know about Jirou, then Ryusei would defer to Kisaragi's attitude. Kisaragi ruled the club in many ways; useful to Ryusei, as Kisaragi was so easily influenced. Kazashiro had warned him about JK; Ryusei had prepared defensive shots there, too. Did JK know how easy it was to obtain info on the info-dealer? Ryusei doubted it; JK was too laid-back to be guarding much of anything.
Unfortunately, he seemed to have spent too much effort on the info-dealer and too little effort on everyone else. The goth girl had ended up the most dangerous to him. In a perverse way, he should have foreseen that. What was the one thing he couldn't fight? Magic. How had he been half-coerced into attending Kazashiro's prom with Usaka Ritsuko? Magic. An unacceptable oversight. Learned, unfortunately, the hard way. If his stomach got any number, she'd kill him. Was that her plan? She hadn't seemed like a killer. But neither had Eguchi Norio.
Never mind that Eguchi hadn't killed anyone—he could have. He'd taken Tomoko hostage and— Ow ow ow. He put a hand on his stomach. "I have a problem," he admitted through gritted teeth.
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All bits of information were useful. Sometimes those involuntarily given were the most interesting, because people thought they were inconsequential and that nobody paid any attention to them and usually, they were wrong about that manner of thinking, much to JK's delight.
He paused, then added, "I want to know everything on why you want to know. After all, if you're coming to me then it means your question can't be answered just by directly observing Tomo-chan's-- habits." Oops, almost slipped in the word 'weird' there. Good thing JK held that back.
Also? "Please use the air freshener under the sink? I might have to use the bathroom before I leave."
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Was he imagining it? Was his numbness spreading, or was he just panicking?
She wasn't going to kill him, he decided. Just make him suffer. Well, it'd worked. If she numbed his body completely and jammed the door, it would be the worst thing she could do to him.
There was no helping it. Unfortunately. He had to make the best of it. And if that was JK's price, then it was simple enough to give. "She's avoiding me," he said. "Didn't you notice?"
He didn't add that he'd been cursed. Who even believed that kind of thing? Everything he'd observed suggested that JK would, but he didn't want to give him the satisfaction right now.
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Not just him, but Yuuki noticed this strange thing, too. Miu made an offhand comment about it once or twice, but it was usually when both Ryusei and Tomoko weren't in the room. Gentarou was, fortunately, too busy befriending most of the other people in school that he didn't notice two of his friends were involved in an awkward situation. Shun just shrugged and shook his head when asked about it, whereas Kengo... didn't care about any of this stupid, unimportant thing. Obviously.
Discreetly, JK shot a quick look Ryusei's way. Why bother asking directly, when there were other indirect and more fun way of knowing how things came to be?
"Tomo-chan's the type to ignore people than directly confront them." He nodded to himself, then stood and walked around the table so he'd be facing Ryusei directly. "After all she's been through, it'll probably take a lot to anger her, but, man - I'd hate to be the person she's mad at." Another pause, deliberately longer this time.
"Wouldn't you, Ryu-sei-san?"
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"Are you saying that from experience?" he said. His face was probably going to crack from the smile he'd donned, from the effort he was using to force his face into it. More transparently fake than his other efforts, but it was all he could dredge up at the moment. He glanced at Softonya, but not even Softonya was listening to him at the moment so he couldn't ask the Foodroid to spray frost into JK's face. Even if he could, it was foolish to think that JK wouldn't catch on; the timing was too perfect. He'd have to do it himself, which was what he was trying to avoid.
He was done here, in any case. JK had just confirmed that it was Tomoko's doing. Of course, Ryusei had been assuming that all along, so it had been a waste of air to come in here to begin with. Without waiting for the response to his question, he headed for the door. "Bye, then!"
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It was a shame people in the club had no sense of JK fun. Le sigh.
"Come on, just sit down and I'll help you, okay? You're not looking so good."
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JK really had been his best option. He couldn't go to Joujima because he didn't quite know her well enough to determine if she would side with Tomoko and leave him to his fate. But if JK was going to append Ryusei's name and treat him like JK wasn't the younger of the two, that might be exactly what JK was doing. Kisaragi dropping his honorific was one thing; JK referring to him the way Kijima did was something altogether different.
It could be an admonishment at the way Ryusei was behaving—it was true that he was all out of sorts and panicking at something that might even possibly just be a psychosomatic reaction to the abject mortification of last week. But he didn't want to be admonished by JK of all people. "Don't call me that."
There was the possibility that JK wanted the information. Ryusei had been willing to barter that. He had already been warned early on by Kazashiro not to let JK use him. Ryusei had to maintain his cover, no matter how badly stressed he was; if he let on that he had anything to use, it would be JK who would find it out—Kisaragi's request that he help with the Switches notwithstanding.
However. However.... If there was one thing he had learned from Kijima, it was that JK would be there. JK didn't want to be alone. That was his weakness.
... He had no options. He couldn't fight properly with this thing weighing on him. Curse, or psychosomatic condition or whatever—it didn't matter so long as he took care of it. He had to remove obstacles in Meteor's—in Jirou's way. By any means he could. "... I need your help," he mumbled, head down.
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All right, no more using Ryu-chan to call Ryusei - that was easy enough to do. Sometimes it was easy to forget that some people weren't quite as accepting of being referred to as something else, no matter how charming the caller was. Again, some people were just too uptight.
He led the way back to the table, already consolidating facts in his mind. It didn't seem like Ryusei needed to go to the bathroom, then. His ailment was something else entirely. And he asked about Tomoko and her curses. And Tomoko was seemingly ignoring him for some time now, due to some reason...
Oh.
Well.
This was certainly interesting.
Unless he was entirely wrong, but everything seemed too convenient for him to be--
"So, you got hit by one of Tomo-chan's curses, didn't you?"
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'For some reason,' he'd said, but he did know why. He should have gone along with her scheme of trying to find Meteor, but if they were going to discuss Meteor for any length of time, Ryusei might slip and say something he shouldn't. If there was any consolation to be had from this, he thought grudgingly, it was that she was on the wrong trail, if she'd gone to the amusement park to look for him.
Whatever; the important thing was that he had to patch things up. He'd tried talking to her (lies to fix a lie; it wouldn't be true that Shirakawa would get mad at him if he kept her book a little longer, but what was true was that the book was an expensive edition and that she'd want it back) but since she was avoiding him, he had to take other measures. "You've known her the longest. How long does she keep a grudge?"
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JK did know her the longest but it didn't mean he knew her very well. They were in the same class, but at the beginning he usually sat far and away from her because of what she was - a space otaku, which automatically made her a loser in his circle of so-called friends. JK knew about her then much as he knew about some other kid in some other class - enough that he was abreast of interesting facts, but not a lot to warrant or necessitate any form of communication.
That changed, of course, when Tomoko joined the Kamen Rider Club. JK found himself coming to her for updates if, for some reason, he failed to show up in club meetings. He even found himself being dragged along to the Rabbit Hatch whenever there were meetings he was purposely ignoring. She was still his ultra-weird classmate with extremely creepy habits, but now that he was able to talk to her, he found her... well, cool. In a creepily weird way, of course.
JK slurped on his drink. It was easy to guess why Tomoko got upset about Ryusei meeting up with someone from his old school, and if he was wondering why... well, he wasn't as smart as JK thought him to be.
"Was this classmate, by any chance--" He reached for a burger lurking in the depths of his bag, "--a girl?"
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How much had Tomoko seen? When Shirakawa had asked if he wanted to stay, he'd almost been tempted. This Rider Club thing was wrecking havoc with his ability to stay on-goal; hanging out someplace where he wasn't reminded of Switches and where he could be himself for the most part had seemed such an inviting prospect. Shirakawa had tried to give him another book, too, and that had reminded him that he hadn't read the one he'd returned, that he didn't have time for such things. When he'd said no to both, she'd made that expression—the one that he'd maybe imagined meant that she thought—or maybe it was just him that thought it—that he couldn't spend all his time at the hospital.
Maybe it was that look that had done it. It only meant something if he accepted it, he would say to Tomoko if she'd give him the chance. Or maybe he should have gone after her to explain. He hadn't thought she would take it so seriously. But he should have realized—Shirakawa had been out of uniform. There had been so many ways to misunderstand the situation, but he hadn't thought of them at the time. At the time, he'd left to go see Jirou. It was just Jirou that needed him, he'd thought at the time. Jirou alone. Shirakawa's silent entreaties didn't mean anything.
"It was. Focus, JK-kun. You can't date her. Anyway, what should I do? I don't want Tomoko-chan mad at me."
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He jumped from his seat to go and stand right next to Ryusei, even going so far as leaning his elbow on the other man's shoulder. "Unless... she's cute. She is, isn't she? That's probably why Tomo-chan got mad at seeing you two together." Now he wondered where they were, what they were doing, and why Tomoko just so happened to see them doing who knew what. No problem, though. He could always gather information from his sources, as before he got to be an info-dealer, he had to be an info-gatherer, too.
...right, Ryusei was asking for his help. JK rubbed his chin, pulling downwards as if stroking his non-existent beard. "Since she's ignoring you, have you tried... giving her notes? Sending her flowers? Girls like that, you know." Then he frowned. "Though Tomo-chan's... well. You know how she is. Maybe she'd appreciate it if you sent her dead bugs instead of fresh flowers."
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Was JK still mocking him? "If I could do that, I would have. I'm asking you about Tomoko-chan. Can you find out for me or not?"
Incentive, he needed incentive. Introducing JK to Shirakawa was out of the question. What else would JK want? Ryusei only had the one female friend who wasn't a Rider Club member. Discard that idea, then. Earlier, JK had said that his price was merely info—info that Ryusei would have given him anyway because he couldn't very well ask for help without disclosing the details of what he needed help with. So that was out, too. A favor? No; it would take a lot more than this for Ryusei to throw away his dignity. Their interests didn't overlap, so there was nothing Ryusei could do for him there. What else did Ryusei have?
He had a bit of numbness for one. Shifting an arm a bit behind his body so JK wouldn't see, he flexed his fingers once, twice. He had to make this quick. "It's urgent. Is there anything I can help you with...?"
It came out more insincere than he'd intended. He was going to have to patch this up. "I'm... a little stressed out," he added meekly, "but I'll do what I can."
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But an offer was an offer, and not cashing on that now would make that a debt he could get later. It was too good to pass up.
"Why don't we talk about payment after I help you patch things up with her?" It came out silky, the way he said it, but JK couldn't help that.
He'd offer to help Ryusei with whatever curse he got hit with, but not like JK knew about that stuff. What if they made things worse with that route, anyway?
He rubbed his non-existent beard again. "If Tomo-chan got jealous, then maybe it'll take a lot more than giving her gifts to make her forgive you. What if-- you ask her out for a date?"
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That and he didn't want to be indebted to JK. Tell me upfront what you want or I'm leaving. "I can't do that. I don't make deals like that, JK-kun."
If what JK wanted was to humiliate Ryusei with that suggestion (or the execution of such), then Ryusei wasn't going to bite. It'd been JK who'd suggested that Shirakawa's simply being a girl had been the problem; asking someone on a date after she saw that couldn't be anything but insulting. Especially not since Ryusei couldn't follow up. He didn't have the time to mollify Tomoko in such a time- and energy-intensive manner. Even if....
No. "Let's assume that I can't."
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Hahaha, no.
Anyway, this was proving to be more difficult than JK thought. Both his suggestions were drawn from his own experience. Heck, both his suggestions worked on girls he knew and wooed! Of course, both those girls have difficulty differentiating right from left and knew nothing more than the contents of their wardrobes - just the way JK liked his women to be.
Tomoko never fitted in any of those criteria. A part of JK wondered if Tomoko fitted anyone's critera.
He glanced at Ryusei and smiled benignly at him. What if--
What if.
"Oh, you can't? Even if it's to save your own ass from her curses?"
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He didn't know anything about JK's girlfriends. For all Ryusei knew, taking advantage of girls was JK's modus operandi. Asking Tomoko on a date just 'to save his own ass', like JK had put it, was taking advantage. "You're very set on this idea, aren't you?"
And anyway, since Tomoko was avoiding him, he doubted that she would even let him come near enough for him to ask. Ideally, he wanted something that he could have JK put on her desk. A flower, maybe. That in flower language conveyed his affectio— No. Not that far. He didn't know flower language, but he could look something up in the library.... But this was Tomoko. Maybe she didn't even like flowers that weren't black and prickly. And he couldn't count on her knowing flower language, either. But information on her likes and inclinations was what JK was supposed to be for. "I don't need anything grandiose. But it's okay if you don't know, I can ask someone else."
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He was intent on keeping it that way, thank you.
Now, Tomoko and Ryusei were in no way in the same league as Miu and Shun, but JK was sure if he dug deep enough, if he waited long enough, he'd find something about the two that could be beneficial to him.
Before that, though--
"Now, now, hold on Ryusei-san-- I was just... getting started!" Getting started to lose ideas, really. He never thought this would actually be difficult!
"What if you start with something small? Say... try to make her smile? Or laugh?"
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He was acutely aware of his own need to hurry. JK hadn't answered his question; how long did Tomoko hold grudges? He needed to know whether or not the week had made her germane to whatever act that JK was thinking of. If Ryusei was going to go along with that idea, anyway.
JK also hadn't commented further on his payment either way. Ryusei didn't want to bring it up again in as many minutes—it'd make it seem like he had something to hide—but he needed to resolve that, too.
One thing at a time. "What are you thinking of?"
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