<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>Beef bowl shop in town<br/><strong>Time:</strong>First day, night<br/><strong>Wearing:</strong>School uniform, with a few shopping bags<br/><strong>With:</strong>Biscuit<br/><br/><strong>“Ah!”</strong>Natsuki said quickly.<strong>“It’s nothing! It’s nothing.”</strong>As emphatically as he was apologizing for startling her, she was doing the same for being startled.<br/><br/>She focused her attention back on her own beef bowl, mildly embarrassed for being so startled by his sudden appearance. As a gesture of apology, once the chef turned away after hearing Biscuit’s order, she leaned a little closer to Biscuit and spoke softly, so the chef would not hear.<strong>“<em>Tsuyu-daku</em>,”</strong>she suggested.<strong>“If you ask for your order <em>tsuyu-daku</em>, you get extra sauce for free. <em>Tsuyu-daku-daku</em> means even more sauce.”</strong><br/><br/>She returned to her original position, so as not to be caught giving tips to Biscuit. She didn’t want the chef to assume they were together – if he were anti-Abnormal, he might be inclined to deliberately ruin Biscuit’s dish just out of spite.<br/><br/>When he introduced himself, she stared at his hand for a moment, bemused, before she realized he wanted to shake hands. The idea amused her, in all its foreignness, and she smiled broadly as she – somewhat awkwardly – too his hand and shook it; her grip was too loose, and the shaking was too vigorous, but at least the attempt was honest.<br/><br/><strong>“Natsuki Akuzawa,”</strong>she introduced herself.<strong>“‘Bii-su-kiit-toe’,”</strong>she repeated, with a grin, her lips and tongue stumbling somewhat over the unfamiliar phonology, unconsciously ‘Japanese-ifying’ the name.<strong>“That is an interesting name! Like the cookie, no?”</strong><br/><br/><strong>“You may call me Natsuki,”</strong>she said with a smile. The offer was not meant to be sarcastic, of course; technically, as a stranger, Biscuit would normally be expected to only refer to Natsuki by her last name – Akuzawa-<em>san</em>, even. Encouraging him to refer to her by her first name was a gesture of friendship. It was also a bit of a whim on Natsuki’s part – she knew foreigners and Americans in particular used the first name as a matter of course, and she was intrigued by the exoticism of it.<br/><br/><strong>“You live in the city?”</strong>she asked curiously. It was a conundrum she was trying to figure out: an exchange student would almost certainly be living on-campus… but here Biscuit was, fairly late in the evening, and wearing street clothes. It was possible he just had a craving for beef bowl and changed before busing it into town… but it was more likely that he lived in town, and had gone home as he normally would after the school day, changed, then decided to go out and grab a meal.<strong>“I live in the dorms,”</strong>she offered.<strong>“I only came into town to do some shopping.”</strong>She indicated the scant collection of shopping bags beside her.<strong>“I came too late, though,”</strong>she added ruefully.<strong>“Everything was closed.”</strong>