revamped! 23/10/2020
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Tori walks into the restaurant known as Nozu, owned by Mrs. Lee, a popular sushi restaurant that a lot of people from Hollywood Arts come to. Just a few years back, Jade wrote a play and Mrs. Lee offered to help pay for it. However, the only catch was to let her daughter play a character in the play. The last thing they knew was hanging her daughter from the ceiling without ever giving her a cue. And that day was the first time Jade and Tori got along for a brief moment. It made Tori happy knowing that Jade had a soft side to her.
They even hugged.
She wasn't quite sure how she remembered those events so vividly, and it gave a strange feeling inside of her as if she had a power that could make her remember memories just from the touch of her hands.. That memory fluttered throughout Tori as she sat down at the bar, looking around before motioning her hands in her direction of a waiter who stood not too far from her. She thinks for a moment before ordering a green tea with an expression that showcased an emotion she was unable to pinpoint.
The waiter nods in her direction, turning around with his back towards Tori, creating the drink while Tori just sat there with a completely dazed expression. She could feel her own two legs shaking underneath the bar just from how nervous she was, and Jade wasn't even there yet to do anything to her. She tried her best to not appear weak in front of Jade each time they would meet. It would work𑁋most of the time at least𑁋and she hoped that Jade wouldn't think of her as just a weak girl.
She shakes her head, a low groan escaping her lips. A few minutes later, the waiter turns back around and places a glass in front of her, sending a patient smile in her wake. "Iced Green Tea."
"Thanks," Tori says, taking another movement to admire the drink. She quickly takes a sip, entaking the flavour of the tea on her tastebuds, savouring the taste carefully and immediately becoming curious. "Hey, what makes green tea green?"
"Ah, Ancient Japanese Secret." the waiter winks at her, seemingly confident on his answer.
"Aw, come on, you can tell me." Tori begs willingly before the man just plainly stands there, frozen place for a couple of moments.
"I just did," He leans down to grab something from beneath bar, with Tori curiously lifting herself up to see and taking a few sips from her drink. He perks back up and shows her a box, literally saying the brand name Ancient Japanese Secret. The man smirks, "That's the brand of Green Tea we use."
Tori sits back in her chair slowly, nodding slightly in disappointment and taking more anxious sips of her drink as the man walked away from her to tend to the other customers in the restaurant.
She looks around the colourful restaurant nervously, eyes laying on each customer that walked in and out, with families and people of all kind conversing within their own bubble. It made Tori frown slightly as she felt completely strands, and there was this small hope inside of her to see Jade come in from the doorway. However she jumps in her seat, a light screaming leaving her mouth and nearly falling off her chair as another person grabbed her shoulders frantically.
"Boo!" a voice exclaims, Sikowitz' voice.
The scare made Tori spit out her green tea and onto the table. She looks back towards the man and glares daggers in his direction, grabbing a napkin and wiping the drink from on her chin. "I hate when you do that!!"
"I know, everybody does," Sikowitz says proudly, grinning, and looked towards the doorway with eyes growing with surprise. "Ooh, there's Jade! Jade!"
Tori glances up and there was Jade, who wore a black leather jacket and black long-sleeved shirt under with a black skirt flowing to the middle of her thighs and black pantyhose. Heat poured into Tori's cheeks as she watched the girl make brief eye contact in her direction long enough for a slight smile to curve her lips.
"What's this dark little beverage?" Sikowitz asks, picking up a glass of soy sauce curiously without even bothering to read the small words implanted on the bottle. He takes a long sip, an unsure expression on his face from the saltiness.
Tori finishes wiping the remaining spilled green tea on the table without looking back up at Sikowitz. "Soy sauce."
Sikowitz glances at the bottle for a moment before drinking it again, nearly devouring the whole entire glass. Tori could only stare at him with disgust before darting her eyes around to see Jade nearing her table.
When Jade arrives, she briefly brushes her arm against the brunette's, who jumped from the touch and looked around with embarrassment. The dark-haired girl places herself in the only remaining seat which was right next to Tori, flinging her purse onto the table and giving Sikowitz a fake smile. "Okay, I'm here. Why?"
Tori couldn't help herself but stare at the girl for a couple of moments. There's just some aura to her that she couldn't quite understand, a star or the complete universe in her green eyes, and Tori was filled with determinationto break through the barrier between them.
The raven-haired girl seems to notice her gazed, smirking at the brunette. "Are you done staring at me, Tori?"
Tori snaps her head back towards Sikowitz embarrassingly, trying to shove her attention back onto the man and nearly forgetting that they were both here for a reason, or more like a punishment from Hell. "Right. Sorry."
"Because you two need to learn how to play a husband and wife believably." Sikowitz responds, clasping his hands together.
Some silence between all three of them as Tori looks around the restaurant, trying to put the unrelated clues in her head. "What does that have to do with sushi?!"
Sikowitz sighs, "Listen, I once had to play a man in great pain. So to prepare, I threw myself down a flight of stairs. You wouldn't believe how many times I hit my head."
Jade let out a small laugh. "Yeah, we would."
Sikowitz clears his throat, nearly letting out burp. He gives them a mischevious smile, as if he had been planning this sort of scheme for years and years. Tori didn't know what to expect and so did Jade. It was clear that the look on their faces that they had the opportunity to just tackle Sikowitz to the ground and leave but they knew they couldn't do that.
"Now, to prepare for your roles, you two must date."
The word date causes some shock of anger to shoot up both girls, as they both glare towards Sikowitz in utter disbelief and fury. Dating Jade? This isn't going to end well and Tori knew that very well. She couldn't stand being in the same room as the raven-haired girl for even a few minutes. They both would end up being at each other's throats. And with having no emotional and physical support from both Beck and Andre, they are both doomed. Guess it was already time to see the light of day.
"So, have fun," Sikowitz gets up from his seat and began to march away, hopefully to not suddenly be tackled by Jade like a football as if she would let him get away that easily.
"Wait, with what?" Tori asks, stopping Sikowitz in his tracks.
"Your date," Sikowitz turns around to face them to confirm again, only causing anger to fill into Jade more and more. Tori's palms began to sweat the more she became nervous, and she could already sense the anger boiling up in the girl next to her. And when Jade is angry, there's no going back.
"What date?" Jade asks sternly, wanting to get up and strangle Sikowitz. She couldn't stand staying in the same room sitting next to the brunette next to her and she couldn't even get herself to look at her.
"This one," Sikowitz says and added a smile to his face. He unsleeves his wrist and puts his watch closely towards his face, attempting to read the time on the small device. "It begins now at.. 7'o 12 PM. You two will stay here eat, drink, chat, and giggle, until the restaurant closes at midnight."
Jade doesn't take a moment to think it over and gets up furiously, grabbing her jacket. "Forget it, I'm leaving."
"Yup, me too." Tori agrees and grabs her bag which hung over her chair.
"Ah!" Sikowitz bursts out loudly, stopping both girls in their tracks. He gives them a deadly serious yet threatening look, but neither girl knew to take it completely serious or not. The man's face softens a bit, a thin line at his mouth. "If either of you leave before midnight, you both get an F for the semester."
Tori cringes in frustration. She knew she couldn't fail the semester or her parents would kill her. Literally.
"Sikowitz𑁋" Tori starts but Jade interrupts.
"It's fine, he's not going to know when we leave."
"Oh, yes he gonna!" Sikowitz chims in proudly. "I have two spies watching you." He points toward to a table opposite to where Tori and Jade stood by, a familiar ginger-haired boy sitting in a chair and watching their direction. "Sinjin." Sinjin held a pair of binoculars to his face. Then Sikowitz spun around toward the doorway to the kitchen. "And Burf." Burf emerges from the doorway, biting into another yellow pepper.
Sikowitz faced towards them with a naughty grin.
"Happy dating."
He marchesout of the restaurant quickly, leaving both girls to watch him leave in disbelief. They exchange a momentary, helpless glance, sitting back down in their seats angrily. Jade so badly wanted to get up and throw Sinjin and Burf out of the restaurant and kick their asses, but she can't do it with Tori here. And she didn't want Tori to see that violent side of her, and she surely didn't want to talk with her because she knew that Tori would just ask about her.
She hated it when people asked about her personal life.
"Excuse me," Tori says towards the same waiter who gave her green tea. The man spins around and looks at them. Tori hesitates, attempting to exchange another glance with Jade but she just turned away quickly and looked down at the ground.
"Yeah, my date and I were wondering if you had a flight of stairs we could throw ourselves down."
Jade flinches internally to the word, needing the night to be over.
But at the same time, she didn't exactly want the night to end.
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Tori quietly scoops some of her soup into her spoon, loudly slurping into her mouth as if the sounds were loud enough to drown her nervous and racing thoughts. To the side, Jade grimaces to the sound but continued to eat some sushi.
Again, Tori loudly slurps again causing annoyance to fill the raven-haired girl's body.
And again.
"NO!" Jade yells towards Tori who looked surprised by her sudden explosion and placed her bowl back onto the table disappointingly, cowering her face down towards the floor. Jade shakes her head, fiddling with the rice in her bowl with her pink chopsticks with the urge to just squeeze the life out of something with her own fists. She hated getting those types of thoughts and urges, but she couldn't help herself. "Worst night ever."
"Well, you think I'm having fun on this 'date'? 'Cause I'm not." Tori mumbles under her breath in the direction of Jade, releasing a nervous breath.
"Well, that's surprising!" Jade snaps back, nearly flinging her chopsticks out of sight. The iciness of anger stung at her, making her pull back from going any further with it. Attempting to hold in her emotions was hard. "So then let's not talk."
"Fine!"
The girls manages to stay silent for just a few short moments. And after those precious moments of silence to Jade, Tori couldn't help but talk to Jade. She wanted Jade to talk to her. There are so many things that Tori wanted to know about Jade.
"You know𑁋"
"UGH!" Jade groans loudly and buries her head in her arms.
Tori rolls her eyes at the sight. "There is no good reason that we shouldn't be able to sit together and have a conversation."
"I got a good reason."
"Which is?"
"I don't like you." Jade lashes back towards Tori and for a second something inside of her jumped, like her stomach did a somersault at her own words. She quickly shakes it off, but for some reason, the feeling stays just a minute too longer.
Tori lifts a brow, intaking the words as if an arrow shot through her heart, not knowing what to say. Her voice seemed stuck in her throat, but the unbearing confidence just seemed to find its way back. And at the same time, she didn't want to argue with Jade. "Really? You can't think of one thing you like about me?"
Jade bites her lip, trying to push away all her thoughts. She needed to stay into her defensive persona and not become vulnerable in front of Tori Vega of all people. Tori Vega, a girl who had only been labeled as nothing but her enemy according to everyone around the school, or just a little puppet of torture to Jade ever since the very beginning of their... friendship, or frenemies, or whatever the hell you call them.
It wasn't true though, and Jade never means to hurt Tori's feelings even if it was by an accident. It was just her, her head, that gave her those intentions. Jade has a heart or some sort of soft spot, somewhere in there, struggling to come out of its shell, but not knowing how to.
So, she said the only thing she really enjoyed: seeing people suffer, "I like when you're sad."
Jade had made so many people suffer throughout her life, even her closest friends, her own family, and she enjoyed it very much. The reason? She can't control it, because she made the people go through the suffer that she went through, they just don't know anything about that, about her.
Tori looked hurt, hoping she would have said something else, however regained her sanity into a smile.
"Okay," Tori faces her again and they both met eyes once again. Jade squints a bit and noticed a spark in the brunette's dark eyes and she snapps her eyes shut briefly to hopefully not to see it again.
"Try again. Reach deep down into your twisted bitter soul, and see if you can find anything nice to say about me."
Jade cocks her head to the side curiously, trying once more to push away her thoughts to the back of her head which seemed to be more of a challenge than usual.
"Um," She thought long and hard, glancing curiously towards Tori and taking a good look at her features: the cheekbones, the glint in her dark eyes, that smile that she's been giving, trying to show some gratitude to her. Her eyes briefly trace the outline of the brunette's lips, an idea lighting up in her head. "Your singing isn't awful."
Since the beginning at Hollywood Arts, Jade had been quite jealous of how much talent that Tori had, and that had been one of the reasons why she went after her often𑁋jealously, an evil feeling yet an uncontrollable one. But deeply, Jade loved hearing the beautiful voice that Tori had𑁋the breathiness of her technique, the way she sang the notes with passion. She nervously swallows the lump in her throat as she continued to stare at Tori.
Tori smiles slightly, feeling proud and surprised by Jade's words.
Was she getting somewhere with Jade?
"Thanks so much." she says, trying to hide a creeping blush on her face.
Jade glances at her testingly, now wanting more. "Now let's hear you say something nice about me."
"Sure," Tori says, placing her drink back down onto the table. It hard to look at Jade straight in the eye, but it wasn't hard for her to say something that she did somehow admire about the girl. "Hm, I admire how you're never afraid to say what you think."
Jade knew that wasn't true no matter had real it seemed to the people around her. She had many things she was afraid to say to the group, and even Tori. Jade shakes her head nervously to relieve the tension between them and between her and herself.
"That's stupid." she says defensively.
"See?" Tori's face brightens, as if she was testing some sort of theory on Jade. "Now it's your turn again."
"Okay," Jade grips her chopsticks tightly and played around with the rice in her bowl. She takes a couple of long moments to think, her eyes gazing anywhere but on Tori's symmetrical face. But before she knew it, she says something she totally regretted, "I guess some people might say that, from certain angles..." Jade's voice trails off unknowingly as the girl locked on Tori, eyes hovering over her chocolate hair and tan skin.
How can someone just be so𑁋
"...you're pretty."
However she just realised what she had just said and took it back quickly. "Wait I𑁋"
A surprised look forms on Tori's face, the shock giving her an internal explosion of feelings in her stomach. Her lips slowly curled into a wide smile. It was a statement Tori never expected for Jade to say, even if she didn't mean it. Tori felt her cheeks turning pink again as she tries to hide her face away. "You think I'm pretty?"
"I..." Jade looks away, avoiding the question. "How about this, you could say I'm pretty, and we'll call it even and forget about this."
Tori faces her with serious eyes and a smirk on her face. She had to say it, she just had to. She tried not to let her thoughts takeover, instead letting them out. Jade was beautiful in Tori's eyes, she was different in a way to Tori and she absolutely adored it.
"You are pretty."
The awkward tension between them grows absurdly. They both face away from each other, slowly taking a bite from their food. Tori didn't expect how the whole situation turned out. Were Jade and her actually get along? Was Jade serious about calling her pretty? The whole thing made her stomach into a knot. And she just wanted to know more and more about her.
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The girls manages to continue to eat in silence for a while but for some reason, it felt like a short time, like barely any time had passed between their exchange of a conversation just a short time ago. It stuck to Tori like gorilla glue, and it wouldn't come off. And as she was near finishing up her food, she could feel the presence of people behind her𑁋close𑁋before turning around to see two boys standing behind her, with the other one beside Jade.
"Uh-oh, babe sandwich! Woahhh!" The two boys lean close to squish Tori and Jade together, sandwiching their bodies into each other with the two boys on either side exchanging smiles that looked like victory to them. The touch causes Tori and Jade to twitch uncontrollably away from each other and to shrug off the boys next to them.
"And this night actually gets worse." Jade stiffens and pushed the boy off of her, letting out a long sigh.
Tori faces towards the other boy next to her and glances to the other one next to Jade. "Guys, we really wanna hang out alone."
"We are alone." the boy next to Tori points out, trying to rewire the circuits in her words.
"Just the four of us." the other one chips in eagerly.
"BADOINK!" The two boys click their hands together causing both girls to stiffen up and cringe to the moment.
Tori shakes her head quickly, wanting to pounce on their heads. This was the one time that they both got along𑁋even for just a few moments𑁋and Tori wanted for that to continue. It was like a once of a lifetime occurrence. But of course, to every challenge, there's always an obstacle. She needed to find a way around them so she can have Jade and her alone again, but how?
"Oh, my God." Tori and Jade mutter out in unison just to the utter annoyance of the two idiots standing next to them.
"So, Doctor Chad, how's the patient looking?" the boy next to Jade asks the other one, whose name is Chad obviously.
"Woah!" Chad looks at Tori, scanning her face with his eyes. "Look like she's got a Chad-infection."
"Hah! Ain't no cure for a Chad-infection." the other boy swung an arm around Jade uncomfortably, who joyfully responded by pushing the boy off rather overly aggressively. People touching Jade is one of her pet-peeves, so people all around Hollywood Arts try to not interfere at all with the girl, and she was glad to have her dominant persona.
"Guess you're stuck with me." Chad winks at Tori, causing her to squirm.in her seat.
"BADOINK!" the two clicked their hands together once again.
Tori just had the absolute urge to slam their heads against the table, and from the looks of Jade's actions, she was thinking the same thought as well. The only time Jade and her were getting along was interrupted by two annoying boys. She wanted Jade and her to be alone, and she knew exactly how she would do that.
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