<div class="floatleft">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/a/ac/Taro03.jpg)</div><strong>Name:</strong>Taro Ikeda (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=257738.msg12730054#msg12730054)<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Cafeteria<br/><strong>Time:</strong>Flashback - a few days before school starts, breakfast time<br/><strong>With:</strong>Shizuma + Open<br/><hr/>Taro could just stare at her when Shizuma looked into his eyes across the cup in her hands. This was not the Shizuma he had met at the field and track. He didn't know what to make of her now. And maybe it was nothing. Maybe he had provoked it by almost feeding her that piece of apple. That had not been all that typical for him either.<br/><br/>And then she looked at him again and suddenly reminded him of a shy middleschooler far more than a young, playful, maybe mischievous woman. For heaven's sake, he was nineteen years old, almost a man. Shouldn't he be able to decipher a girl's behavior? "Ah, yes... the tea, ah, isn't bad. Right." He scratched the back of his head for a moment, looking at Shizuma from the corner of his eyes, instead of facing her directly. Suddenly he felt he was in over his head, without a clue what exactly he was in.<br/><br/>"That's good to know." Science came to his rescue, and Taro turned his attention completely back to the girl sitting across the cafeteria table. "I am better at languages and social sciences than hard sciences. Guess now I have someone I can ask for help, if I need it."<br/><br/>He reached for his cup and forced himself not to look at it too closely. It wasn't really important which side of it he drank from. Not after what had happened a minute ago.<br/><br/>"And yes, I suppose the science club won't be hard to find. Only that I have no clue who runs that club, or if they will still run it this year. A lot of people drop some of their club activity in their third year, to have more time to prepare for finals."<br/><br/>Taro finally took another sip of tea, before he realized something. "Oh. I haven't asked yet, but which year will you be in? First or second?" Taro had been a year ahead of her, but he had missed a year, thanks to his travels. She could have caught up with him by now, but he had no idea how well, or ill, the institution Shizuma had attended had prepared her for a transition into the normal school system.