InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "is it supposed to do that?"

Toru Ishinomori [石乃森都丸] (2dbeauty) wrote in disappear_rpg,
@ 2010-06-15 19:30:00

Entry tags:

kozue, toru

WHO: Toru and Kozue
WHAT: Necessary confrontation
WHEN: The next day after Kirikothread and Yoshimithread
WHERE: Class 1-B
WHY: Toru seriously has some 'splainin' to do.

Perhaps it was fate. Or just plain old bad luck. Either way, Toru found himself assigned to group work with Kozue in class, not two days after she called him out on his personal philosophy in Paradise. They hadn't spoken (or made eye contact) since, which made the already unbearably awkward atmosphere even heavier with tension. He tried to focus on translating the sentences given, but continued to allow his eyes to wander and his mind to slack off. A combination of his worst subject and an extremely awkward situation was potent like that.

He wondered, looking at Kozue where she sat, if he could get assigned to a different partner. Knowing my luck, though, it'd probably be Kiriko or Reizo... Either way, he said nothing.

(Post a new comment)

anthesphoria
2010-06-16 12:08 am UTC (link)

It wasn't like Kozue was doing the work, anyway. She was occasionally scribbling a word or two, but mostly twirling her pencil around two fingers and watching Toru when she didn't think he was looking at her. Part of her thought that, really, he deserved the awkwardness. He'd been terrible. It probably was karmic if he squirmed for a while; she studiously looked away whenever she saw him move as if to look up at her, and pretended to be doing work.

It wasn't going very well; she had missed the lesson while she was off school, and it wasn't as if being present for the lesson would have helped much anyway. She stared down at her page for a good long while, as Toru watched her, before giving up. The knowledge wasn't going to just magically float into her head; this was more than pointless. So she looked up at fixed him with a stare, instead.

And, after a brief paused, asked, "What have you got for number one?"

(Reply to this) (Thread)

2dbeauty
2010-06-16 12:24 am UTC (link)

Toru looked up to meet Kozue's glance, and awkwardly sputtered. Oh, right. Partners were supposed to communicate. Right. Unless they'd gotten into a fight in a magical otherworld over the psychological traumas of one of their upperclassmen.

"I got As for her her grandfather's It had gone; of Wednesday. D-does that sound right?" Before she could respond, Toru looked back down to his paper, and away from Kozue. His nerves were beginning to show- in a twitching hand and slight cold sweat, but he couldn't say anything to her.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

anthesphoria
2010-06-16 12:40 am UTC (link)

"How the heck would I know?" She sighed, twirling her pencil a little more and watching him (she presumed) squirm. "I wasn't even in school for this part. And I hate past tense." She squinted a little at the English on the page, and then sighed. "That dotty thing doesn't look right though." She pointed. Pointed, noticed that Toru wasn't looking at her anymore, and rolled her eyes.

"Is that all you're going to say? The whole time?"

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

2dbeauty
2010-06-16 12:49 am UTC (link)

"Oh..." Toru erased the errant semicolon and tried in vain to replace it. After each and every word, no less. Once he'd gone through each permutation, he tried a second time. Unfortunately, he could not for the life of him figure out which was right. With a sense of dread, he looked up from the paper, but not at Kozue.

"...I don't really... I-I don't see the point. We're just working. Y-you'd just try to lecture me again, I bet..."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

anthesphoria
2010-06-16 01:01 am UTC (link)

"The work is really boring," she offered, still twirling her pencil; she let the pause hang for a moment, trying to gather her thoughts and decide whether or not she wanted to lecture him again. Certainly, part of her thought that he deserved it; but lectures weren't really her style. Neither of communication nor of vengeance.

"And we're not just working. I mean, right now, until I start texting my brother for right answers, yeah. But... Ishinomori-san, I'm sorry I yelled at you, but seriously…" She trailed off, trying to figure out how to follow that up. But seriously, what's your damage? No. What is wrong with your brain? Right out. "Well, I just don't get it."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

2dbeauty
2010-06-16 01:14 am UTC (link)

He put his chin in his hands, and stared off into the distance. "You've got me there... I don't know how to do this, nor do I want to." This was punctuated with a sigh.

"Thanks for apologizing... er, y-you didn't need to, of course." Toru looked more sheepish than he did to Kiriko the previous day. "You... I guess you had a right to be angry. It's... it's just..."

This time, he almost looked her in the eyes, but instead ended up focusing on her forehead. "The things that her shadow said... about how she wished that she was never beautiful? It... it hit me in a bad place. Because I've been ugly my whole life. She said what she did so carelessly, with no knowledge of what it's actually like. And that pissed me off. Wouldn't you be upset, if the very thing that had made your shadow appeared was treated so carelessly? Like it didn't mean anything?"

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

anthesphoria
2010-06-16 01:21 am UTC (link)

It was awkward to have Ishinomori staring at her forehead, Kozue decided after a moment, and fumbled in her desk for her phone, so she could begin tacitly texting her brother about how this nonsense was translated. His English had always been twenty times better than hers, after all. After a moment, she shrugged a little (and tried to push away stray hair from her forehead when it wasn't really there, mostly because she was getting worried with Toru's glance fixed there).

"I would, I guess. But… I've been places before, where I've felt like I'm the only one who feels…" She took a breath, and, in an even lower voice than before, "Remember Kiriko's place? What everyone said, there, and before it. And after it." Arranged marriages are stupid. How could anyone ever want that for their child, much less themselves? Arranged marriages are a barbaric custom—all that, all that she would have called up but didn't want to risk Kiriko hearing. "…It's not entirely the same, but… What I meant, was, it hurt me back then, and I guess this hurt you, but to save others pain, there are some hurts you need to let go of." Or choke down.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

2dbeauty
2010-06-16 01:35 am UTC (link)

Toru listened, without once looking Kozue in the eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose in a gesture of quiet frustration. She had gone through the same thing? It had never been mentioned to him, that was certain.

"...I guess that's the same thing. Can you see where I'm coming from, then? You must've been hurting in there. You didn't deserve that. A-and... just letting it go would've made me hurt worse. I had to say something."

He then placed his face on the desk, like he was going to sleep mid-assignment. "Not that... n-no, that isn't right. I'm sorry. I'm not making any sense."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

anthesphoria
2010-06-16 01:40 am UTC (link)

"Ishinomori-san, don't put your head down, the teacher is gonna see," Kozue hissed, suddenly alarmed. "And then she'll... like... check our work! Come on, for the team!" She would have reached out to shake him, but stopped herself a few moments away from the gesture. So she began studiously fake working to make up for it, and was silent for a little, waiting for Toru to shape up and not get them into Teacher Attention Hell.

"... But did you mean to make it better for yourself, or to hurt Seiko-chan even worse than she was already hurting?" She had had time to reflect on that, while she drew squiggly lines on her own worksheet.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

2dbeauty
2010-06-16 03:05 am UTC (link)

"Oh-" Toru lifted his head again. "I wasn't thinking. S-sorry." He ended up settling for resting his chin on his hand and staring at Kozue's right cheek, rather than her eyes. Still too awkward.

"I... don't know. I-I just said it because she was so wrong... and I wanted her to know why she was. B-because she was hurting me."

He began to idly doodle on his worksheet, mimicking Kozue. "I was hurt and confused, and I just wanted her to stop. I didn't care about... how she felt, or anything like that."

His expression immediately afterward indicated his realization of how messed up the previous statement had been. His eyes became even more downcast, and he bit his lip.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

anthesphoria
2010-06-16 03:17 am UTC (link)

"Okay," Kozue said, turning her face to the side a little. It had to be the blue eyes, he didn't want to look at the blue eyes. They were unnerving. She bit back a snappy retort, the thought of those stupid contacts suddenly looming immense in her mind. Maybe they were in the U-Bend somewhere. She should have stuck with the brown...

"Oh. God."

She sounded very small, perhaps as if someone had just kicked over her sand castle or stepped on her favorite doll. Her eyes found the bright pink bobbing thing at the front of the classroom that was Aoi Misaki. Aoi Misaki with her blue contacts, those blue contacts covering brown eyes that had caused Kozue so much envy and sick, ugly hatred for months now.

"I'm sorry it hurt you like that," she followed, after a moment, feeling entirely sick of herself. She'd chewed him out for doing more or less what she would have liked to do, given the opportunity. "And really, I'm sorry I yelled at you." It was, after all, a sudden shock of hypocrisy—and yet Kozue had the sense that she was more correct now than she had been in that shoe store over the summer.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

2dbeauty
2010-06-16 04:33 pm UTC (link)

Toru was really getting into the whole "staring-at-my-desk-in-abject-guilt" thing, and thus barely noticed what Kozue was actually doing. Looking at somebody at the front of the class? Saying something? He was occupied with feeling confused and stupid and hypocritical. The girl was probably ignoring him out of the same sort of disdain that Kiriko had in spades, right?

This lasted until she spoke to him. "...sorry? Y-you are?" Toru's eyes went wide with surprise and confusion.

"I-it's... no, you don't need to feel bad because I'm a teammate or anything! Y-you had every right to be angry at me, Kondo-san. I was a jerk, to Yukizaki, no less, and..." He found himself opening and closing his mouth like some apologetic fish, perplexed out of his mind by Kozue's sudden apology.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

anthesphoria
2010-06-16 08:40 pm UTC (link)

Kozue tried to interject somewhere in Toru's garbled, guilty response, but she could not think of something to say; on the one hand, she felt distinctly that yes, he'd been awful to Seiko of all people, and that was wrong and bordering on simply ridiculous. On the other hand, she was still running over her interactions with Aoi over the last few months, trying to figure out if she'd ever been outwardly bitchy enough to warrant an apology. Or if she could quietly go about her life and resolve to treat the other girl a little better and call that a success.

She wasn't sure. She needed to ask someone, but Toru, given his recent track record, probably wasn't the person. Meanwhile, he'd finished speaking, and Kozue shook her head slightly; she looked back at him, and forced herself to look slightly less appalled.

"So what are you going to do about it?" She asked, watching him; the mouth opening and closing was actually kind of amusing, and, again, well-deserved. She moved her wrist some, inside her desk, and went back to texting her older brother.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

2dbeauty
2010-06-16 08:47 pm UTC (link)

He slumped back in his seat, now gazing up at the ceiling. "I... don't really know." Earning forgiveness wasn't going to be easy, if it was at all possible... and he was still upset with Seiko, to a degree.

"I guess I should apologize, right? I owe way more than I'm owed...." Toru then sighed a little. "But we're still both upset at each other. I don't even know if this is the right time for it."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

anthesphoria
2010-06-16 09:39 pm UTC (link)

"Buy her stuff," Kozue suggested, finishing her message and putting her phone down; she turned to watch Toru once again, thoughtful and only mildly fidgety. "That always makes me feel better, getting stuff."

That sounded bad, she reflected, after just a moment; bad and entirely like her Shadow. She swallowed; "Or. Uh. Maybe she's not shallow like me, who knows. Flowers always go a long way in an I'm Sorry." She nudged her phone, waiting for a return in a far-too-short turnaround period. "... Maybe it's not the right time, but there's a time limit on this kind of thing. When you wait too long, it becomes permanent. It's not as long as the getting a number to calling limit, but it's maybe... a bit shorter than the non-hookup rebound period."

(Reply to this) (Parent)