Once More With Feeling

Chapter 6: Design

Ichiraku's is always crowded this early in the morning. Mostly it's the theater kids on their way to rehearsal, or whatever. It's the only diner nearby that doesn't overcharge on waffles, and it's a block from campus, so KPAA kids are always in and out. Lugging easels and instrument cases, there are so many people here, you kind of just blend in after awhile.

The Java Bean is a lot more subdued, a lot quieter, a lot less busy. More private, but then again, you're a lot easier to notice in an empty room. And me, I attract enough attention as it is. If I can avoid it, I will.

So I'm sitting here at a two-person table in the corner with a coffee in my hands, paper cup since Styrofoam makes my teeth grind, just another nameless KPAA student in a sea of KPAA students, and I'm waiting for a girl without a real reason why.

Sakura should be irrelevant to me, but she's not.

I don't know why it matters to me that she broke the fuck down at Ink and Iron last night, but it does.

I don't know why I feel the need to talk to her, argue with her, grill her for information but I do.

So here I am. Trusting my instincts, I guess.

It's 9:34. She's late. That's annoying to me. Like nearly everything else about her, that's annoying to me.

Maybe most annoying of all, though, is the fact that I fucking understand her.

I sneer into my coffee at the sheer absurdity of it all, but that's that shitty irony, isn't it? That I spent my whole life trying to cultivate my own identity, watering a garden, so to speak, of what I thought was individuality. Carved myself a niche as the brooding, misunderstood, underappreciated younger brother of a dying star. No one like me in the world. Alone. Original. Individual.

And then this girl comes along, literally dancing into my life with a pink ponytail and little ballet slippers and a vacuum that's half almost as tall as she is, and we're polar opposites, and we've got nothing in common besides our alma mater, and we barely know shit about each other, and she winds up being someone I completely just fucking get. I'm not alone. I'm not original. I'm not even an individual.

I'm some guy who met some girl, and we're alike even if we're completely different, and that matters now, for reasons I don't even want to try to understand.

But here I am, nonetheless. Drinking shitty coffee out of a paper cup and waiting for some dumb little dancer girl to show up, so I can have a conversation about shit I'm not ready to discuss.

And there she is, 9:41. Looks a damn sight better than she did last night, screaming and crying and carrying on and messy-haired. Must've showered after she woke up. Again. On the lumpy red sofa of a tattoo parlor. Looks around a few times, that fucking ponytail swinging back and forth, tries to find me. Eventually does.

She's got a gym bag slung across one shoulder as she excuses herself through the crowd of other customers to reach my table, a heavy one by the look of it, and in her arms is a black leather jacket. Mine. She smiles beautifully at me, a practiced smile, and sits down at the empty chair across from mine.

"Hey," she says airily. Like nothing happened before. Like she didn't fall asleep on the same couch as me, our legs touching. Like she didn't scream at me all the anger she's kept inside of her for years and years. Like she's not some image-obsessed headcase even when I know she fucking is. "Here's your jacket back. Thank you."

I take it without a word. I keep staring at her instead. It's not my fault. I've got an artist's eye.

Her hair's yanked back into a ponytail, like it almost always is when I see her around campus, tight and smooth, no bumps or flyaways. Bangs pinned back off her forehead, makeup minimal. Concentrated mostly around her eyes. She's got an eye for color, I'll give her that; knows just how to doll herself up with a minimalist pallette to enhance that fucking flawless beauty I just don't buy into. She's wearing loose dancer's clothes and a smile I don't buy into, either.