Welcome to Gaia! ::

With September quickly coming up, Jack knew he had to prepare for the coming school year. Romano's Constitutional Haven being as strict as it was, he made to check and double-check the list of supplies he would need to shop for before actually going to the store. He may have seemed like a class clown to his peers, but in truth, he took his grades very seriously. And to do well at anything, he knew, one needed proper, good quality tools required for the job.

When he got to the store, however, there was such a large selection of each supply on his list that he became a little overwhelmed. Some things were cooler-looking than others but some looked sturdier. Some were cheaper and some more modern. Decisions plagued him as his hazel eyes simmed the many shelves of school supplies. Should he get a notepad or a binder of loose-leaf paper? If he got a binder, what size? Maybe a notepad would be good for one class, but a binder of paper would be good for another.

Would an electric pencil sharpener be better than a manual one, or would its noise and requirement of electricity make it less efficient? Should he just get a battery-powered one? What if he bought mechanical pencils instead of normal ones? But that would also mean he'd have to get extra refill lead and erasers and then there was the size of lead and -

CRASH!

The fifteen-year-old's eyes went wide. "Drat!" He got down on his hands and knees to quickly pick up the mechanical pencil display he had knocked over, gathering up armfuls of the packaged utensils to put them back how they had been before anyone could scold him for it.

He glanced around quickly as he did so, wondering how many people had noticed his blunder. With his disheveled appearance - wild hair, scraped knees, scratched-up arms - it wasn't uncommon for people to think he was a delinquent of some sort up to no good.

"Oh, uh...thanks," he said, regarding the girl's features as she spoke and trying to read between the lines. Was she angry at him? He had seen her nearly trip before noticing the pencils on the ground, so he assumed she had something else on her mind. Maybe that was why she seemed so distant and nonchalant in addressing him. Or maybe she was just that sort of person. Interesting.

"You don't...work here or anything, do you?" Jack asked, wondering if maybe he was about to get yelled at. Why else would the girl start telling him the proper way to put the stuff back? Maybe she just really liked organization. She looked about his age, though, so that seemed peculiar. "I wasn't messing around on purpose, I swear. I was just kinda lost in thought about what pencil to get."

He tilted his head. "Actually, you seemed pretty lost in thought yourself. Were you looking for something? Getting supplies for the start of school?" A friendly grin spread across his face.

"A student, huh? Sure you're not a robot?" Maybe not the most polite way to make conversation, but the straightforwardness with which the girl was giving him her answers was starting to weird him out. He played it off with a small chuckle as if he'd only asked to tease her. Inwardly he wondered if she would even take offense to the question at all.

"...Right. That's an all-girls school, isn't it?" Maybe she just wasn't used to interacting with guys, then? But she seemed perfectly calm. In fact, it was her near lack of expressed emotion that was disconcerting him. Were all the girls who went to Crystal Academy like this? What did they do to them at that school?

But no, wait. Crystal Academy was a high school and this girl hadn't even started there yet. It couldn't have been that school's fault that she was this way. Maybe it was her family? Perhaps it would become clearer if he could get to know her better.

Starting with who she spent time with, for example. He raised his brows at the mention of someone she had lost while looking for supplies. "Oh, maybe I can help you find them. Least I can do after you helped me pick this stuff up and put it back."

He was just about finished with restoring the display to what he thought it had originally looked like. Getting up, he retrieved his own list of supplies and stuck them in his pocket for later.

"What do they look like?"

"Uh...actually, you didn't say that," Jack pointed out with a slightly amused, possibly pitying smile. "You just said you were a student. And glad to know you're not a robot, but it was just a joke. Don't have much of a sense of humor, do you?"

He moved his list of supplies to his left hand and held out his right to shake. "I'm Jack. I'm a student too, but I'm going start attending Romano's once the school year starts. What did you say your name was?"

The red-head blinked at the mention of the missing person looking like the girl before him. "Uh...is she your twin, then?" He scratched his head thoughtfully. "How is her hair different? Color? Style?"

For someone with a sister, this girl really seemed socially stunted. Jack knew people with siblings usually knew how to interact with others better than single children growing up alone. If she was a twin, though, that might have explained things a little better because he knew twins were said to sometimes close themselves off from everyone else due to being caught up in their own little world with each other. Perhaps that was the case with this girl and Jack wondered idly if the other behaved the same way.

Jack's smile broadened into a toothy grin at Imagi's weak handshake as the gears in his head began to turn. People were so fun to play with when they were inexperienced at dealing with other people.

"White, huh? Is that natural, or did she dye it?" He began to peer around the end of the aisle to see if he could spot the girl named Aura in one of the others. "She going to Crystal, too?"

The boy smirked at Imagi. "Weren't you the one who got distracted with helping me?"

"Mmm...not usually," he answered. "I like to think I'm pretty good at focusing, even when I need to multi-task. The key is to keep in mind your priorities, provided you have any. Do you get more easily distracted than she does, or more often?"

Nope, no white hair down that aisle. Maybe the next? He continued walking as he talked. "If you get distracted a lot, is it that hard to believe she got distracted so quickly herself?"

“Oh.” Unable to multi-task? That also might have explained some things, like how Imagi must have thought she had told him she didn’t work there when she hadn’t actually said the words aloud. Or how before, the girl was remarking on how she couldn’t believe her sister got distracted so quickly and was now saying, ‘perhaps she did get distracted’ as if the thought hadn’t occurred to her before.

Jack had thought it’d had something to do with a lack of social skills or exposure, but now he wondered if it wasn’t attributed to just a short attention span or perhaps even short-term memory loss. It was probably better for him to reunite the sisters before they forgot about each other being in the store completely.

They were in luck. Around the next corner, they finally found Aura, Imagi’s white-haired twin, browsing the aisle. “Hey, I think I found her. Aura, right?” He turned back to the dark-haired girl. “You two should probably stick together from here on out since you’re the one with the supply list. I’d hate to cause you any ‘cognitive overload’, though, so I’ll just go back to my own shopping. Thanks for helping me put the merchandise back, Imagi.” He beamed and raised a hand in farewell. “Hope you and your sister have a good first year at Crystal Academy.”

With that, he turned on his heel, eager to return to the task of gathering his own school supplies. When someone helped him, even if he didn’t ask for their help, he felt indebted to return the favor so that he didn’t feel like he would owe them anything in the future. Now that he had found Aura for Imagi in return for nearly tripping her and then her helping him put back what he’d knocked over, he felt free of any obligations to the girl. Perhaps someday, though, they would meet again.