[R] Hobby Buddies (Ignacio/Sydney)

[Syusaki]

It was actually pretty unusual to find Sydney at the park so often, since she never particularly liked the place. Though she admitted that it was one of the easy locations to designate as a meeting spot, to actually hang out at a park was utter blasphemy. Yet here she was, poking her freckled face into the floral foliage that decorated the park in an attempt to mask its rather bland and dull appearance. A silver digital camera dangled from one of her scrawny wrists as she rummaged around for an interesting shot. Photography was just another hobby she had idly picked up over the past couple weeks. Easy and cheap; it was pretty nice.

Her messy bob of rusty red hair contrasting against the pale green leaves of a bush, she curiously peeked over the plant just so a bit, making only her eyes visible. Although Sydney had been searching for something interesting to take a picture of, she did not realize she would be intruding in on someone else’s photo (it didn’t matter, because her presence made it rather dynamic, anyways). Startled to find another redheaded boy with a camera in his hands, she blinked. “Oh, sorry,” she mumbled and scuttled away.

That had been last week. Who would have realized that when she signed up for a baking class, that same lad would be here too? While the instructor briefly reiterated the written instructions that were all conveniently typed and placed on papers at each of the tables, Sydney kept curiously glancing back at the boy, wondering if it would be alright if she whispered a quick hello.

It didn’t matter though, since she just finished explaining and left the rest of the group on their own. Punctually, she turned on the balls of her feet and pushed out her hand for a friendly handshake. “Hey! I think I saw you at the park a while ago? I’m Sydney,” she introduced in a perky voice.  

[Seiana_ZI]

Ignacio had decided he needed to get out more.

Perhaps it was seeing long dead faces, perhaps it was becoming incredibly bored with his job once and for all, perhaps it was the fact that he felt like he should have finished time at Meadowview High ages ago, but whatever it was, Ignacio had one day decided to go back to hobby-hunting. It was something he had spent most of his time doing, back when things were alright, and maybe somewhere in the back of his mind he was striving to regain some sense of normalcy, some sense of balance...

Then again, this was Ignacio. It was more likely that he just got bored of what he was doing and decided to start doing something else instead.

So Ignacio didn't have much money saved up. Most of what he had was money to pay his rent (he was concerned he was coming up short this month, but kept forgetting to look for solutions) and money to pay for some food so he didn't completely starve when he wasn't stealing fries at Burger Queen. Still, he had a little bit of spare money, and he was using it to find interesting things to do these days. He picked up a cheap disposable camera and took some shots with that before getting them cheaply developed (now he had some prints on his walls, which made them a little less frightening), he rode the bus all around town because of his Meadowview-granted bus pass, and finally, he signed up for a baking class.

Perhaps that was the most unusual choice of all, but then again, Ignacio needed to learn how to make something besides ramen, the crappy cousin of saimin. The directions were said, but Ignacio was barely paying any attention. He was more concerned with taking some of the food in front of him and attempting to place it together in such a way that the food read "hello." It looked more like random garbage, but with the way Ignacio was biting down on his tongue he seemed to be really intent on getting this to work...

Until there was a hand in his face, and Ignacio looked up.

It was a while since anyone had introduced themselves to him. In his neighborhood, no one really paid any attention to each other, and he had cut off conversation with most of his old friends. Hell, he sat alone at lunch now, perhaps unheard of for the social man. Ignacio couldn't help the vague grin. It was nice to be paid special attention again. "Ignacio Araya, but you can call me Sua-ve." With an amused grin on his face, he took her hand and shook it. "I would say I remember, but I would have to say I don't."

It was true, Ignacio was forgetting a lot more than he used to, but he was slowly improving.  

[Syusaki]

She laughed. “Well, Sua-ve,” Sydney began, cocking an amused eyebrow at the older boy, “it’s alright if you don’t remember. It wasn’t a very impressive meeting anyways, but I hope I gave you a good picture!” Offhandedly waving at the memory, she swiftly turned on the balls of her feet to face the table of materials.

Silently and with lips tightly pursed, she observed the various materials that were neatly placed in their wrappings. The class was starting off with a simple recipe of vanilla pudding today—Sydney was looking forward to the end product, she absolutely loved sweets with a fiery passion. By no means was she an expert at cooking, but when given the correct instructions—neatly written and not in her scrawl writing, mind you—she could manage on her own well enough. Usually. She glanced at Ignacio before grinning and clapped her hands together, feeling pumped for this. “Alright dude, let’s do this!”

She reached over for a measuring cup and the carton of milk. As she began to carefully pour in the cloudy white liquid Sydney asked distractedly, “So how much does the instructions say to pour? Three cups, was it?”  

[Seiana_ZI]

Now when he thought about it, there was a bit of red hair in the picture he attempted to take of that bush. It was actually a bit distracting, but it gave the picture more life than just green and had appealed to his mystery-loving ways when he first noticed it, but he had soon forgotten about the red stock of hair until she mentioned making his shot interesting. He pursed his lips for a moment, pleased to finally put a face that he should have remembered better with a name, and nodded his head decisively. "I was actually wondering about the random bit of red in the bushes for a while. Figured out it was hair, but..." Well, without a face to match it too, identification had been almost impossible.

Ignacio glanced down at his attempt at making the word "Hello" out of ingredients again and determined it was nowhere near perfect. Maybe if he took a cup of sugar and poured it in a straight line he could attempt at an 'l.' He would do the same for the other 'l' but that would make his hello bland. He had already attempted to use some olive oil for the 'H,' but that hadn't worked so well, Ignacio noted; there was already a small puddle that he probably should clean up before he attempted to make "Hello"-shaped cookies.

...Wait, they weren't making cookies. He shook his head and squinted his eyes, staring down the glass bowl in front of him as if it would force him to keep his attention on it for more than five seconds. His attention span was about to crack when Sydney interrupted his focus--thank goodness--and Ignacio turned his attention to her.

Well damn. Was it three cups? Maybe it was two. Twenty? No, that was way too much. It definitely wasn't ten, because that sounded like too much too, but it might have been four. Ignacio decided to briefly glance over to another group to figure this out by the power of deduction (since he hadn't been paying any attention). Once they poured in three separate cups of milk, he nodded, turning back towards Sydney. "Yeah, three'll work." Ignacio bit his lip, before picking up the bag of sugar he was originally going to use to help make his 'l,' and once again turned towards everyone else.

It looked like those people poured in two cups. No, three. Two and a half? The pouring didn't take so long on that one. Ignacio decided to take a measuring cup and just go ahead and dump two cups in. "Was it two or two-and-a-half? Also, your hair's red, does that mean you're Irish? I've got some Irish heritage, too, though my father's side is Spanish. From Spain."

That was completely irrelevant to anything.  

[Syusaki]

Sydney flashed him a pleased grin, reaching up to pinch a strand of her rusty red hair. “My wonderful hair made for wonderful contrast, right? Since red and green are complementary colors.” She had never taken art class—oh wait, there was that one time she thought that taking art lessons would improve her designing abilities, didn’t work—yet even so, everyone knew the basic complementary colors and the prime colors and the basic color theory, right?

She carefully measured one cup and dumped it into the mixing bowl. Bent down on her knees so that she could eyeball the measurement more accurately she began to pour out a second cup. Sydney figured that there was at least two cups of milk, but how much more? Just two? Three? Four? Two to four cups sounded right, but she had no clue which amount to pick. When there was a pause longer than she had hoped she quickly turned toward Ignacio, who was busy glancing over at the table next to them. She cocked an eyebrow at him. The teacher wouldn’t foolishly leave the entire class without written instructions to follow, so why wasn’t he looking at their co—

It was covered in ingredients, the typeface beyond the point of no return. Huh. Well.

Had she been the perfectionist type, she might have flipped and thrown a fit, but lucky for Ignacio, Sydney wasn’t. Far from it, actually. She shrugged as her partner threw in another two cups. “Two cups. Two and half. Either way, we have three cups now!” she chirped happily. Sydney grabbed the vanilla extract and was about to measure until she realized she had absolutely no clue how much to put in. “Hmm. You think we could get another copy of the recipe?” she mused thoughtfully.

“If I’m Irish, I have no idea because both my parents moved from Australia,” Sydney truthfully answered with a humorously-serious face.