The Ultimate Stride | Prince of Stride Fanfiction |

• Takeru •

Seven years afterwards...

~ ~ ~ | {Kyouko's P.O.V.} |

I was furiously typing away at the keys of my laptop when the sound of my office door swinging open caught my attention.

The movement barely made any noise at all, but I'd become attuned to the infinitesimal things that filled my surroundings ever since moving into my new work space at the beginning of the year.

Over-observing had become a gloriously boring habit of mine. Whenever I wasn't tending to patients or going over appointment charts, I was either listening to the creaks and distant murmurs of the building or sending passive-aggressive emails that pleaded for my brothers to quit spamming my inbox with silly pictures of themselves.

Don't get me wrong. I loved my job more than you could probably fathom, but things weren't always fun and exciting. Some days the clinic would be totally packed and I'd be running around like a chicken with its head cut off, and other times the waiting room would be empty and I'd be forced to deal with the mountain of health documents that were diligently looming on the corner of my desk, forever haunting me.

And things were never as interesting whenever my next-door-office-neighbor wasn't on the clock. When he was there, busy day or not, I always found sitting at my desk to be rather fun.

It's a shame he isn't here right now. I'm bored out of my mind...

"Ms. Johnson?"

I looked over the rim of my glasses only to find Yuna standing in the doorway. She was one of the ladies that helped patients go through their paperwork at the front desk. I considered her a good friend of mine, but I didn't know why she'd made her way to my part of the building that day. She usually swung by during her lunch breaks to chat with me if I wasn't busy with other matters, but it was only eight o'clock in the morning and I was up to my neck in filling out progress reports.

"Hey, Yuna," I cleared my throat when I realized how groggy it felt. "Is there something you need from me?"

"I came to fulfill a request made by one of our co-workers," she tried to conceal a grin as she strolled past my sea of filing cabinets. She stopped in front of my desk, and I came to the revelation that she was hiding something behind her back. She was being way too obvious. I could've read her intentions from a mile away if I had wanted to.

I squinted up at her. "What is it?"

"It's this," she smiled before revealing an item I hadn't expected to see.

    A potted plant was resting in the palm of Yuna's hand.

    The pot itself was a ceramic one. Instead of being a ruddy-brown, the color of it was a delicate shade of blue. The flower resting within it's miniature depths was one I'd never seen before. The flower as a whole was formed in the shape of a drooping bulb, and its petals were a stark shade of white that threatened to blind me.

    Its very cute... but who on my work panel would give me something like this?

    I already had a name in mind, but I feigned ignorance as I peered up at Yuna with my eyebrows raised.

    "What is that supposed to be?" I asked evenly. She giggled, her eyes shimmering.

    "It's a white orchid! I used to keep one on the front desk, but they're pretty difficult to take care of," she placed the pot down on the only area of my desk that wasn't covered with documents. "It was intended to stay here in your office, but I recommend that you take it back to your apartment where you can keep a close eye on it. It'd be a shame if it died."