<div class="floatleft">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/4/4a/Iris_Heart_-_Hyperdimension_Neptunia_-_2x3_portrait_-_mischeivous.png)</div><strong>Name:</strong>Natsuki Akuzawa<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Booth in a diner<br/><strong>Time:</strong>Second day, afternoon<br/><strong>Wearing:</strong>School uniform, without panties<br/><strong>With:</strong>Biscuit, Tatsuo (m), Aoi (m), Fairy April (m)<br/><br/>Natsuki smiled warmly.<strong>“Ben-san,”</strong>she said, softly.<strong>“I spent half of my life ‘lost’, locked up away from the world. I don’t want to disappear anymore. I want to <em>live</em>. I want to go places. I want to do things. I want to have experiences.”</strong><br/><br/><strong>“And most importantly,”</strong>she held up a finger.<strong>“I want to do all those things with friends. So if it’s alright with you, I won’t be calling you to get lost.”</strong>She smiled again.<strong>“I will be calling you to have <em>fun</em>.”</strong><br/><br/>She clammed up quickly when the waitress reappeared, studiously avoiding the woman’s eyes. She knew the woman had seen them getting… rather close to each other. She didn’t dare speculate on what the woman thought, but she knew it would be embarrassing. Picking up the menu to look intently at it gave her an excuse to avoid the inevitable eye contact.<br/><br/>But then Biscuit starting asking very intense questions about the menu. Natsuki was at a loss – having spent much of her life in the institution, she was hardly up on foreign cuisine. Indeed, pretty much all she knew about food was the cheap stuff – that was generally all her father could afford. She could prattle on for hours about how to find a decent<em>tachigui</em>stall, but anything much beyond that price range was out of her league. She could certainly point out cheap fare, as she had when she had recommended Ootoya to Biscuit earlier, but that was the upper limit of her experience. She had already embarrassed herself at her misunderstanding of the nature of Tatsuo’s café (though, luckily, he hadn’t noticed… yet). She’d studied a lot, due to having little to do but read in the institution, which was why she could quote from obscure Aesop fables like the viper who was nourished in the bosom of the farmer… but it hadn’t occurred to her to study<em>food</em>. (Probably because that would just have made isolation that much more difficult.)<br/><br/><strong>“<em>Kone... bread... muffin</em>?”</strong>she tried repeating, her tongue tormenting the unfamiliar English phonemes. She knew what bread and muffins were… but “kone”?<br/><br/>Nevertheless, it was her turn to order, so, she decided to throw caution to the wind.<strong>“I will also have can-tree style steak with cone bread muffins,”</strong>she said, cheerfully and confidently.<br/><br/>Thankfully the waitress was smart enough to figure out what she wanted, and headed off to get their orders.<br/><br/><strong>“Yes, we really do have a very good rock band at the school,”</strong>she confirmed proudly, pleased that she could be an expert on at least one small thing.<strong>“They are called Fairy April, and they practice in the music room. You could go see them any time you like, I suppose… though I should warn you,”</strong>she added, with a wry smirk:<strong>“They are all <em>very</em> cute boys… and they have a <em>lot</em> of female fans. You should not underestimate their ferocity. Treat them as you would a pack of rabid lions.”</strong>She did not elaborate on why she was so wary of Fairy April’s fangirls, but her tone indicated that she was speaking from experience.<br/><br/><strong>“I am their acoustic specialist,”</strong>she added, grinning whimsically. Once again, she didn’t explain the joke, or even that it<em>was</em>a joke.<strong>“So I’d be happy to introduce you.”</strong>