1012/This Doesn't Suck

This Doesn't Suck
Date of Scene:	16 January 2024
Location:	Mitakihara Ward
Synopsis:	Kyouka offers Kyouko some free ramen. Kazuo happens to be there.
Cast of Characters:	Kyouka Inai, Kyouko Sakura, Kazuo Saitou

---

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    A random cold, winter evening in Tokyo. It might even be snowing a little bit.

TXT to Kyouko: hey you ever try that ramen cart down near cat street?
TXT to Kyouko: good on a cold night like this.
TXT to Kyouko:meet me there in 30 min. ill treat you.

    Around 30 minutes later, Kyouka comes wandering down the sidewalk in Mitakihara. Although it's chilly and indeed lightly snowing, she's not dressed in any particularly different fashion, wearing black jeans and a red sweater beneath her usual leather biker jacket (such jackets are functional in nearly all weather conditions). And sunglasses, of course. She never seems to be without those things, even on a dark snowy night. (Dark is relative, streets in Tokyo tend to be well-lit, especially in a busy area like Mitakhiara).

    The ramen joint in question is a yatai, a food stall, set up right on the sidewalk against the buildings. As is usual in winter, the owner has draped plastic curtains down from the overhanging roof, creating an enclosed space around the few stools facing the counter, and has a space heater running inside. Kyouka pushes the plastic aside so she can slip in to the relative cozy warmth.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
*RINGIE DINGIE*

Kyouko startles at the sound of her phone. It's generally a silent companion, and she honestly had forgotten what the notification sound was. Obnoxious, aparently. She hadn't picked it. She equally isn't sure how to change it. There is a little bit of snow, and she's out in said snow in a pair of jeans and a hoodie. Hot food sounds /amazing/. There's a smile as she reads the texts and then a glance around to ensure no one noticed her smile. No witnesses.

TXT to Kyouka: Kay. C U soon

Kyouko was early, she hadn't been all that far away, but she was watching from across the street. Just in case this was.. a trick? A prank? It wasn't. She knew that. But wariness had won out. It wans't until Kyouka came down the street and pushed her way into the warmth of the little stall that she pushes off from the dark corner of the alley she's loitering in. A glance each direction as she crosses the street, heading to follow Kyouka.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
It's not a surprise that a stool or two might already be occupied - hot food is attractive to more than Kyouka. But the sheen of streetlights off the plastic drape did something to disguise one of the people seated. Long white reflections, long white hair, easy to get confused.

Kazuo glances up at Kyouka over his own sunglasses, blinks mildly, and says absolutely not a word about either of their fashion choices.

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    Kyouka pauses as she enters the space. She wasn't really expecting Kyouko to be waiting for her- despite the return text, she still considered it even odds if the girl showed up at all. But she definitely wasn't expecting Kazuo to be there. After all, it's a big city- what are the odds? Maybe better than you'd think, considering the tangled skeins of fate that being magical tends to get you wound up in, like it or not.

    She does not appear startled, more just surprised, greeting the white-haired boy with a quirked brow. "I see you continue to have good taste in ramen." She comments off-handedly, as she takes a stool one removed from him- a small, polite buffer space, as the counter is not full. There's still one stool on the other side of her, too. She's assuming Kyouko would not appreciate being crammed in beside a stranger.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
It's really only a moment later that the plastic parts again, and Kyouko just stops in the entrance way. She was prepared for Kyouka to be there, and some strangers. She's oddly alright with strangers. They leave her alone, she leaves them alone.

But Kazuo isn't entirely a stranger. She's seen him around the school and it's clear that Kyouka knows him.

The debate between free hot food and flight is clear, if brief. She settles her shoulders back a little, adds a touch more deliberate obnoxious to her movements as she steps away from the doorway and towards where the pair of them are seated. "Yo."

Free hot food ftw.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
"And possibly hate myself, given the hour I get up in the morning these days," Kazuo replies amiably to Kyouka. Buffer space, indeed. After all, student, counselor, et cetera. He doesn't seem to be about to pursue conversation -

And then there's a stop in the entrance, and Kazuo glances up, alerted by the chill breeze lasting a moment more than it should. It's only a quick glance. Kyouko's been evaluated in passing at the school, and renewing that evaluation is fast. He inclines his head to her gravely, greeting an equal in defiance of all grade differences. Probably not just because of bad reputations.

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    "It's not that late, Saitou-kun." Kyouka chides the boy for his amiable pessimism, but good-naturedly. At about that moment Kyouko enters the stall, and Kyouka turns her head to regard her. "Hey kid. Have a seat." She leaves it up to Kyouko to sit beside her either between herself and Kazuo, or on the opposite side, adjacent only to Kyouka and the wall.

    The shopkeeper at this point notes the new arrivals and inquires as to their order. "Shoyu-ramen, spicy." She tells him. "And a beer please." She inclines her head to Kyouko, regardless of where the younger redhead has chosen to sit. "Order whatever you want. Like I said, it's on me." She pauses, then adds. "No beer, though." That should be obvious, but it pays to specify. She knows this better than most.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
There's a moment and then Kyouko nods to Kazuo and then slides herself onto the stool next to Kyouka and the wall. Mmmm. Wall.

"I'll have what she's having. Thank you." Kyouko notes to the shopkeeper, and looks ruefully accepting when that does not include the beer. It was relevant to specify.

Kyouko pushes her hood back as the warmth starts to seep in from the steam and the space heater and she gives one of those little shivers that comes as one is starting to warm up after being chilled for quite some time. As if the body is remembering what warm is right now.

"Why do you get up so early?" Kyouko asks of Kazuo, curiosity making a brief peek.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
"Says the one who doesn't know what my alarm is set for," Kazuo teases Kyouka back. Then glances past her to Kyouko. "Morning running partner. Need to stay in shape now that I'm all rehabilitated and everything." ... okay, he might not have stopped teasing Kyouka.

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    Kyouka looks vaguely amused as Kyouko copies her order. She knows the spicy shoyu here is fairly spicy. She prides herself on her ability to handle it- we shall see if Kyouko is up to the task. The bowls are delivered in short order, generously sized and steaming. A glass of beer is added to Kyouka's place. A glass of water for Kyouko.

    Picking up her chopsticks, Kyouka briefly holds them in pressed-together hands above her bowl in a perfunctory blessing before breaking them apart. "You two know each other, then? Good, saves me making introductions. This isn't any kind of trap, Kyouko-san, I didn't know he was going to be here."

    Thus saying, she gives Kazuo a glance at his statement. "Rehabilitated from what? You know what, don't answer that. Around here we let the past be the past." None of the three of them are likely to object to that proposition. She digs into her bowl, slurping up some noodles.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
"Not really." Kyouko protests on the 'knowing each other'. She picks up her chopsticks, and if there's a blessing over her food, it isn't one that is public enough to be noted. "He hangs around with the other magical kids."

Stated with such a simple declaration and from a ruffled teen, what the veil doesn't care about, the shop keeper's natural level of ignoring rumpled teens will take care of the rest of secrecy.

"You run early in the morning.. on purpose?" Kyouko asks of Kazuo with a level of disbelief and skeptism that is palpable.

And then she's clearly surprised at her first bite of ramen. There's spicy and then there's.. well she's going to be warm! There's a puff of a breath at the actual spicy, but she's hardly going to let either of her companions /see/ her surprise.

Kyouko reaches for her glass of water.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
... the possibility that Kyouko's first impression of Kazuo was with Wako's fox sitting on him, wearing his sunglasses, occurs to Kazuo only now, and he keeps all but the barest flicker of chagrin off his face.

"Nothing of any importance, obviously," Kazuo says cheerfully to Kyouka. Why fight people in parks when you can fight ... emus ... in ... nevermind. Past is past. In theory.

Then he lets his eyebrows twitch upward at Kyouko. "It's either get it done and get cleaned up before school, or wait till evening, and not be able to do anything better with the evening. Besides, thinking about the people lurking to try to ambush me in the evenings getting mad because I keep not showing up? Endless entertainment." A grin's given her way. "Kazuo Saitou. Sorry, I'll shut up." And let her eat. Which is far more important. And let himself eat, too, though Kyouko's likely to be done before he is even though he has a head start.

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    "Kazuo Saitou-kun," Kyouka says, to Kyouko, "Is a fine young man who pretends to be a ruffian. I suppose he is in fine company here with us." She slurps some more of her noodles. She does not appear to be affected by the spiciness- untrue, but she's been coming here, eating this ramen, for years. You get used to it. It's actually very nice on a chilly night like this one.

    "How's Mamoru doing?" Kyouka asks Kazuo idly. "Not to mention.. the rest of 'em. Everybody keeping it together?" No details provided, out of deference for the fact that Kyouko is here and likely isn't up on all that sort of thing.

    Regardless of the answer, she then says to Kyouko, "Some people run for fun. Personally, I find it a bit bizarre.. I'd rather fight for fun. I try not to run away often enough to need practice at it." She grins, clearly taking the piss rather than being earnest, though the fact that she'd rather train by fighting or sparring than running is undeniable.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
"I would WAAY rather fight for fun. Running is mostly a 'by necessity' sort of thing." Kyouko agrees readily. She isn't quite so put off by the noodles that she isn't going to go back for another good slurp.. and it IS warming, that's for sure. She's just a little more unexpectedly on fire than she fully expected.

It's kinda nice. In a burny sort of way.

"Kyouko Sakura." Kyouko provides her own name in the same sort of matter of fact that Kauzo did. She simply is who she is. Ruffian, apparently.

She might be chatting, in as much as this is a lot of chatting for her, especially without having snarked at anyone! (yet), and the ramen is quite possibly the spiciest thing Kyouko has injested in her life, but that does not stop it from going away with alacrity.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
"You yelled at me for fighting for fun," Kazuo says to Kyouka, less than completely accurately. "So I had to find something, right? Besides, this way if I need to fight, I can get to the fight faster."

Noodles are good. Either he opted for a less spicy version, or he's reasonably acclimatized from something else. Or he is, like Kyouko, trying not to lose face. One of the three. Some may be more likely than others.

"Mamoru's doing all right. Lending Sakai a hand after the breakin at her grandfather's place. The others... well. It'll take some adjustment, but that was expected."

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    "Right?" Kyouka agrees with Kyouko's statement that running is 'by necessity'. When Kazuo points out that this is a way to get to the fight faster, his logic is greeted by a careless shrug. "That's what the bike is for." One could argue that not everyone has access to a high-speed motorcycle or the license to drive one, but that's beside the point of the banter.

    "I yelled at you for fighting for fun outside of accepted fun-fighting times and locations." Kyouka corrects Kazuo. "That is what we adults do, make up arbitrary rules and then yell at you for violating them. Anyway, saving a kid from bullies doesn't count as 'for fun'. That's a practical application." Does that count as praise? It may.

    She nods her head to the news about Mamoru and the others. "Expected." She echoes, and seems satisfied with that, not pursuing the topic further. Her own bowl is rapidly depleting, perhaps even more rapidly than Kyouko's if only due to the fact that she wasn't taken by surprise by the heat.

    "This is nice," She says, rather abruptly. "I used to come here and eat with my friends when we were teenagers. Haven't had much chance to actually eat here with actual company in recent years." The shopkeeper, who while not elderly is clearly old enough to have been here for ten or more years and thus is likely the same shopkeeper, makes a noncommittal grunt upon overhearing the statement. Perhaps his memories of the rowdy teens dining at his stall at slightly less nice.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
Kyouko looks at Kyouka when Kazuo provides that 'scathing' retort about getting yelled at for recreational assault and battery, and there's a little snicker at Kyouka's correction. Including a little more context. She nods approvingly, as if her approval means anything at all, as she slurps up more soup.

As if she isn't sometimes the bully in that situation.

Kyouko just listens as they ask after Mamoru. She doesn't recognize that name, to her he is Hematite. Another slurp of noodles, before lifting her bowl to get the last bit of soup from the bottom. Her face is flushed, she might be dying a little, but she's determined not to admit that.

"This doesn't suck." Kyouko allows.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
"Because you've trained the bike to follow you around, so you can always have it. Pet motorcycle." Kazuo grins shamelessly at Kyouka, easy and unworried. "And thank you for clarifying what adults do. So the big secret about school is, we all have adulthood down pat by the time we're six, and the rest of it's just busywork. Good to know that Sakura and I are treating it with all the dignity and close attention it deserves."

Apparently they're a team now, Kyouko. Against the Adult, anyway. Or at least the school. Isn't it good to be aware of these things as they happen? Possibly 'this doesn't suck' was spoken too soon.

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    "Magic can do wonderful things." Kyouka says archly to Kazuo upon his comment on her motorcycle, implying that she has a magical motorcycle she can summon at will. She does not. It would be frickin' sweet if she did, though. Add it to the wishlist. She doesn't even bother to correct his snark about adults just being six-year-olds with a lot of busywork under their belts. Because he's really not very wrong.

    The shopkeep comes over and asks if there's anything else, and Kyouka shakes her head. "Nah, just the bill. I'll cover both of these jokers." She says, including Kazuo in her head gesture. He didn't come here at her invitation and probably doesn't need her generosity the way Kyouko does, but she is the Adult, and a bowl of ramen is well within her means to provide a wayward student.

    "Being an adult also means having a paycheck." She adds, with way more smugness than her rather meager compensation for being a fake school counselor warrants.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
"It /is/ pretty spiff." Kyouko can't argue on the fact that magic is pretty amazing. It keeps her alive, after all.

Immaterial of the fact that without magic, she'd be a very very different person.

Kyouko snorts in vague amusement as she and Kazuo become part of a delinquent team against The Man! It still doesn't suck. She hasn't had to do anything that she's not already doing. Skip school, eat ramen that someone else has bought, and get into fights. She is on top of that.

"You can work around a lack of paycheques." Kyouko points out, perhaps a little ominously. At least this shopkeeper is getting paid by the respectable one of the trio.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
Next holiday, Kyouka is getting a tiny plastic motorcycle pendant. Or possibly a Lego motorcycle keychain. Just so that she can claim it's her real one, shrunk down by magic. Kazuo has so mentally noted. (A surprising number of his mental notes this week involve trolling Kyouka. He is carefully not thinking about either 'why Kyouka' or whether this means that he is in fact his mother's child.)

-- having a paycheck. Kazuo mocks theatrical dismay, leaning back a little on his stool with the back of one hand lifted almost to brush against his bangs. "Ah! Cut to the bone. To the fast? I can't remember the English idiom, but bone is close enough. It's true. Being an adult means having a paycheck more than just occasionally." ... which suggests he can also work around a lack of paycheques. But in a way more likely to make the shopkeeper think they're both joking, and thus more likely to get them fed if they turn up here again. He's looking out for Kyouko. Really.

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    Kyouka collects the check and pulls some coins and rumpled bills out of her pocket. A wallet? Who's ever heard of such a thing. Counting out the right amount (it's really quite reasonable, as most yatai are) she plunks the money down on the counter before leaning back, her bowl empty in front of her.

    She does not attempt to correct Kazuo's english idiom, as she is as previously noted a fake teacher and has very little notion of literary references, english, Japanese or otherwise. "I mean, as long as you have a job." She points out reasonably. Being an adult does not come with an automatic paycheck. You actually have to work for them, more's the pity.

    She stands up from her stool, glancing over to note Kyouko's bowl was empty as well and nodding in appreciation. Buying food for someone is more rewarding when it's obvious they have enjoyed it (dying inside or not). "Thanks for keeping me company, kid." This to Kyouko specifically, who was the one who came here at her request. "Unlike Saitou-kun here, us old folks don't have the stamina to stay up past bedtime very often, so I'm gonna go crash."

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
"Hopefully not on the motorcycle," Kazuo says, and gives Kyouka a brief casual salute by way of thank-you.

(The actual thanks will be coming for her. Soon.)

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
"Thanks for the food." Kyouko wasn't wholly raised in a barn. She can remember to say thank you when someone feeds her.

She considers the pair of them and there's a little up nod to them both. "That didn't suck."

Still high praise as she pulls up her hoodie that isn't enough for the weather, and moves to head out.