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 Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 12:23 pm
Anime club wrapped up early, the president banging his gavel loudly. It echoed; since this was the first meeting after the start of the new semester, no one had been surprised that only the officers had shown up. Even fewer people were surprised when everyone else left straightaway, leaving Tate to carry all the books and videos back to the library and the advisor's office. This was normal, and not a thing to exclaim over. Very few people, if any, had gone without seeing Tate Konstantin hurrying around with a full stack of books and videos from her belly button to her chin.
It was, however, uncommon for her to drop them. The books went skidding across the floor, DVD cases losing their discs. Tate, still holding a copy of a Japanese magazine, stared for a minute and then shook her head, biting her lip. It was not enough for her day to suck already, s**t like this had to happen too.
The track team would be getting out soon. She had to get all of this picked up before they tromped through, breaking DVDs, snapping the spine on the books, and she had money (she'd made it into the upper tier of Soul Calibur tournaments last week) but not the kind of money that allowed her to as-you-please replace all of these books.
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Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 12:50 pm
Ladon wasn’t exceptionally good at a lot of things, but what little he could do, he did to the best of his ablities and even more. It was why, at the start of the semester, he was at the track team’s first meeting of the year, going over their goals, plans to bring more recruits, and placing due dates for competitions. While it didn’t have the fame of football or basketball, track was Ladon’s club and his team, and he was dedicated as the rest (if not more). It was almost sad the first warm-up and test runs for recording keeping were done quickly, not all the members present. As a few of the sprinters were called over for a talk, Ladon was left with plenty of time to try and get a quick shower and a moment’s privacy.
Walking through the halls, he panted but felt lighter, his legs warm and tingling from being exposed to the cold air. Rubbing his hands, he turned a corner and stepped on something that nearly sent him falling over. Catching himself on the wall, he stepped back and looked down at a book. Bending down, he picked it up and looked at the cover to see what looked like a girl with cat ears, butterflies, and the title Loveless. Confused, he looked down and spotted more books, and one girl going about scrambling to get them all. She already had a large pile in her hands that she was staking with more and more to the point that he was just waiting to see them all fall over again.
He COULD go take a shower, and he was partially conscious of being sweaty, but if this girl saw him go and called him a jerk, she could really ruin him by telling all the girls. If there was one thing he knew, it was that you didn’t get on the bad side of girls. They could be just a mean as the rest.
“Need some help?” he asked, already dipping down and picking up another small book, this one with a girl with HUGE eyes. The title said Fruit Baskets. He could tell they were foreign, and had a vague idea that they were all really thick comics. He saw some girls read them from time to time in class.
He decided for the girl’s sake, he’d make his own pile as hers was about to come tumbling if she wasn’t careful.
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Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 2:15 pm
She was being careful; she'd spotted Ladon out of the corner of her eye, though, and so she was trying to speed up. The dark-haired boy (he was shortish, was he a freshman?) was a member of the track team, she knew, though she didn't know his name. It didn't really matter to her at that moment, either. If one of the runners was out and about, the rest would soon follow. Like bees. The track team was exactly like bees--annoying, but if you ignored them, they'd ignore you.
This particular member of the track team was helping her, she realized after a moment of popping discs back into the case. "Um, sure," she said, a little puzzled. He looked too young to be interested that way, so unless he was collecting blackmail she didn't know what he meant by helping her...
"You're on the track team, aren't you?" Tate was leaning back onto her heels; they'd gotten most of the books picked up. She held out one hand, thinking she could stack them and probably carry them properly this time. It wasn't that much further down the hallways to the library, after all.
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Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 3:58 pm
He didn’t know what threw it off, and he wanted to be sarcastic and tell her he was on the wrestling team, but he didn’t. A girl was talking to him without making any snide comments, as of yet. Who knew what verbal punches she was holding, and he almost felt like taking that question as a insult. Of course he was on track! What, didn’t she THINK he was on track? Did she think he wasn’t suited for it!? He was just as capable as the next guy.
“Yeah, I’m one of the sprinters.” Well, he was technically a long-distance runner, but he liked saying he was a sprinter more. It sounded flashy and something worth bragging about. Running fast was just higher up on his scale of cool than running longer. Speaking off, he really wanted to get her out of the way and leaving before his team came. They could both prove he was on the team and make a horrible mess of playing with him. While it was camaraderie the way they ruffled his hair and used him as an armrest, it wasn’t flattering.
As he held his pile to hand it off and send her off wherever she as going, he saw her pile of slick DVDs and tittering books and imagined it all falling over again, leaving her to pick them up again while the rest of the track team came in. Since he already had a pile of books, he pretty much dedicated himself to staying to help her until she was done.
“Here, let me carry some of those. They’re going to fall over again like that.” Taking a good portion of DVDs, he sported a pile that was still tall for someone his size, but at least more stable than the combined one she would have to balance to get to the library. If Tate had any objections to this, Ladon would give her a sharp retort back. He was a guy and a strong one, so saying anything otherwise would only make him carry ALL of the books and DVDs for her to prove she was wrong. “Where are you headed?”
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Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 4:15 pm
A sprinter? That was odd, he didn't look tall enough or wiry enough for the part. Hell, Tate looked more suited to sprinting than this little kid did, with her lanky frame. This became immediately obvious when she uncoiled herself; even with her poor posture, she was five or six inches taller than Ladon. She wasn't thinking about it; she was thinking: He must be good, then, to do something without having the proper build. She tilted her head, wiggled her fingers; if she was going to be out of the way by the time the rest of them got there, she wanted her books now, please.
"That's cool," she said of the sprinting, finally. At the offer of carrying some of the anime club crap, she shook her head--"No, I've got it," but he already had some of her books in arm.
Tate would fail at self-defense.
She sighed in defeat, turning down the hallway. "The library, and then the teachers' offices. That's where those three at the bottom of your pile are going, the teacher's offices." As they walked down the corridor, she was mostly quiet; singing little snatches of anime theme songs under her breath, mostly. But they were nearing the library when she asked, "What's your name, anyway? I'm Tatiana Konstantin, call me Tate, though."
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Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 5:13 pm
Like she got it. She was clearly in need of help, and now that he was here, he WAS going to go through with it. If she was looking for someone to half-a** their responsibilities once they started, she was looking at the wrong person. Not only that, but he was capable. If anything, she could have given him a lot more to carry, the entire pile even! It wasn’t like he couldn’t.
Sinking a bit under the weight, he gripped the pile tightly on the bottom and leaned back a bit to let the pile rest against his chest and chin, walking alongside Tate and making sure the path was clear. The library wasn’t far off, but he wasn’t exactly built for upper-body strength. Maybe the pile was big enough after all.
As far as this was going, he thought he would be dropping books off and on his way back to the locker room, but introductions! Introductions was a step in a direction of, dare he think, friendship that nearly made him drop the books all over again. Tate (he knew her name!) could have just brushed off the encounter like most people, and he was on edge as to why she was going forward with making acquaintances. Either way, she’d probably regret it later.
Keep it together. Don’t screw this up.
“Ladon Shepard, but everyone just calls me Ladon.” Everyone? It made it sound like he had a posse waiting outside, waving him over to hop into their sport’s car. Ladon didn’t have a ‘everyone’.
Noticing that once they hit the library, conversation would be whispers, he struggled with what else to say. For a girl, Tate really wasn’t a talker, and he wasn’t really experienced in the art without getting overexcited and blurting random things that no one needed to know. “What are all these books for?”
Well, it was something at least.
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Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 10:50 am
"Be careful," Tate chided. She bumped open the door of the library with her hip and held it open with one foot so Ladon could pass through. They went to the circulation desk, and she flipped the ponytail in her hair over one shoulder as she sorted out the library returns from the office returns.
Most of the books were going into the dropoff. "Just put your stack up here, I'll sort it out," she said, patting the spot right beside her stack on the desk. "Ladon, all right. It's nice to meet you." It sounded like she was saying it by rote, uncertain as to what she really wanted to say.
It seemed like she was taking a while to think about things; she finally answered his question with, "I run the anime club. Sort of, I'm more like... the secretary." She shrugged, sighing as she started to go through his pile as well. The stacks weren't much reduced, but they were reduced enough that she could probably carry the whole pile by herself. (She dropped three DVDs into the dropoff and started forming everything into one stack.)
"You must be pretty good at track," said Tate, and then nothing else.
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Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 11:13 am
“I’m pretty good. I still need to train a lot more, but I never miss a meeting.” He wasn’t close to being their most vital member, but he was pretty sure that with time and dedication, he could get there.
Rising up, Ladon held on to the stack as he leaned up and put it on the counter. The school wasn’t really built for short people, and he was glad that he didn’t topple both their stacks over in the attempt. Glad to be able to finally flex his fingers, which had went numb while walking over, he looked at the massive piles. “Anime must be popular.” Maybe he should look into it then. If everyone else was reading anime, he should try and get into it too.
The thing was, he didn’t know what anime really was. He just knew it was Japanese or something and that most of them had big eyes. Seeing at Tate really wasn’t elaborating and not wanting to just break off a good thing in meeting someone who had yet to shoo him away, he went for it. He just hoped she didn’t think he was completely out of the loop and that he had somehow missed on a popular fad.
“I guess you’re the best person to ask. What is anime? I really don’t know. I see some people read them, but never went out and read them myself.” Ladon was more for being outside and spent his money on older books with delicate etchings.
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Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 1:12 pm
Nice. Tate smiled, appreciating his modesty and resisting the urge to pick him up. He seemed so tiny and cute--but didn't seem like the type to welcome comments like that. She would keep her mouth well shut, then.
"Dedication is an admirable trait," she said, tone neutral. "And so rare, too." She was quiet for a while, taking the stack of DVDs under arm carefully, fussing with the arrangement of it. The crickets were pleased at an opportunity to chirp and be heard. She looked back to him when he asked his question and she smiled, laughing a little bit. "No, it's really... not that popular. It's kind of dorky, really... It's Japanese animation. Manga is Japanese comics. It's sort of just a nationality/style combo, you know?"
She sighed. "It's on mostly at midnight on TV, so I buy the DVDs and watch them, you know..."
After a long hesitation again, she asked (nervously, she didn't exactly get along well with boys regularly), "Um, I'm going to take these to the faculty offices. Do you want to come with?"
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Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 1:38 pm
“Oh.” If it was dorky, he didn’t want any part of it. Part of being average and ignored was not bringing attention to himself. He wasn’t cool enough to counter a dorky hobby, and if he had to pick one, he’d pick his stuffed animals first. Still, another closet hobby would be all right, and if he ever saw this girl again, it would give them a reason to talk. The last thing he wanted was to just part ways and for that to be that. As far as social interaction went, the track team was all he had, and they were all busy huffing and training to actually have long conversations. This left him with no one to talk to for days, and even he had to admit that having most of his conversations with Elliot was getting a bit ridiculous.
Thus far, everything was going well. The girl didn’t poke fun at him, and he wasn’t saying anything stupid yet. Sure, she could have said more, but he wasn’t pushing anything. It wasn’t like he was brimming with topics of conversation right now. What was vital was that he left her with a good impression and that it kept going for a bit longer. This could be his last real conversation for a week or so.
At the invite, he nearly blurted out a yes, but bite his tongue to count for three seconds. One…two..th-. “Sure.” The track team was probably already in the showers, claiming the ones with the best shower pressure. This would kill time and better yet, talk to someone who actually was tolerating his company. Now he just needed to try and keep it going. “How long have you been reading…watching…interesting in anime?” He really had no interest in anime, but she did. People always liked talking about things they liked.
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Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 2:41 pm
If Tate knew how much he was overthinking her lack of speech, she might have said something. But she was genre savvy, not a mindreader, and in her view of the genre she was more of a background player since the arrival of the senshi and negaverse organizations. Background players didn't talk much. That was how it worked.
"Thanks," she said, smiling at him again. You smiled at people to show you were happy to spend time with them, right?
She led the way out of the library, stack of DVDs under one arm. "Since I was ten," she said, "there was this mahou shoujo--magical girl--anime they played before Hey Arnie came on, and I would always sit and watch it and eventually I just stopped caring about Hey Arnie and all I wanted to watch was that stupid mahou shoujo anime, then one of my friends got me a book about the history of anime, and then it kind of... spiraled!" Tate laughed. "I'm probably boring you."
Actually, she was very confident she was boring the poor boy.
"If you're interested," she said, hesitantly, "you could come over after school sometime and watch some of it with me."
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Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 3:38 pm
She was using some terms he didn’t understand, and the title of the show sounded foreign and not something he thought he wouldn’t butcher if he tried repeating it. What he did get was that she use to watch a show and fell in love with it, and that she was still talking to him. He could understand that much, and he went with it, listening as he followed her and wondering if she needed some help with the DVDs. Reaching out would be means so he waited to see if it would cause her any problems. Right now, he saw that he wasn’t serving a purpose in carrying anything, and that what he really was here for was company. This was a greater compliment than Tate probably knew, and he happily followed along, lettering her talk and just nodding his head.
“No. It’s not boring. Everyone gets wrapped up into a hobby after all.” Even if other people thought it was stupid. He had plenty of hobbies that spiraled out of control.
What he didn’t expect was an invite to her actual house, and nearly choked on his own breath. He didn’t get invited to someone’s house, especially a girl’s house. “Ah, sure. Maybe I’ll get it when I see it.” Or maybe he would come over and completely ruin what could be a great friendship. Still, HE, Ladon Shepard, got invited to someone’s house. He didn’t care what they did. She could rant and rave about anime till the cows came home!
“Um. What day? Do you want my cell number or something?” He had no idea what the procedure for this sort of thing was. Did he call her when the day came around? Did he see her at her house or were they going to walk together? Did he dress up?!
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Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 6:32 pm
"Are you okay?" Tate frowned and patted him on the back with her free hand as they turned into the administrative hallway; she kept walking until halfway down, when she took a left into a room full of cubicles. The nearest cubicle was the one where she stopped to drop off the DVDs. Tate took a post-it note to write the time and date she'd dropped them off for the teacher, signing it TKonstantin. She took another two and left the miniature cubicle farm.
She considered his sudden deluge of questions, muddy green eyes narrowed. "Any day but Tuesday," she said, "Tuesdays I'm here late, for the anime club..."
On one post-it note, she was writing her name, address and phone number. The other she had stuck to the wall next to where she was writing. "Maybe this Friday, after track practice? I'll pick you up. I'm not the best driver, but I'm not the worst, either..."
Now, if she were in a shoujo manga, what should she do then? Tate actually didn't know, which was weird... She decided not to fuss about it. "I mean, if that time's no good, I pretty much don't do anything except for Tuesdays."
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Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 8:51 pm
“No! No. It’s good. I’m free after practice on Friday. We can meet up then.” He really wished he had his phone so that they could exchange numbers, but instead waited for the post-it. He’d put the number in his phone first thing once he got to the locker room. Speaking off, he really needed to take a shower. Still in his gym clothes, he was pretty sure he wasn’t smelling like daisies right about now. “Thanks. I”ll put the number in and..I’ll send a text for how long I’ll long I’ll be in track on Friday. That way you’re not waiting around for too long.” She had a car, but even then, he didn’t want her to get board.
So it was parting ways now, right? “Thanks for inviting me. I guess I should be heading back to the locker room. I’ll see you Friday then.” He waited for the paper to be exchanged, and once he had it, held it tightly and at it’s corner so he didn’t smear the words.
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Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 9:58 pm
She nodded and crumpled up the spare post-it note; if he didn't know his number, there was no point. "All right, text me when you get to your phone," said Tate, smiling a little shyly. The gawky girl looked a little worried, like... like she expected him not to text, or something. "Um... I'll see you?"
Already she was stepping backwards--the senior parking lots were at the other end of the administrative hallway--and waving. Awkwardly. "Have a good day, Ladon," she called.
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