<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/>Natsuki was not exactly in a great mood by that point.<br/><br/>Signing up for clubs had gone on far longer than she thought it would. That was not a problem in and of itself, but she had hoped to go into town after school to buy at least<em>some</em>clothes. At the moment, all she had were her school uniforms, and some outfits from the institution… which, of course, were all prominently labelled as such. She had no intention walking around her first school dressed like a convict, so unless she wanted to wear the school uniform 24/7, she needed some other clothes.<br/><br/>So the plan was to go into town after school and grab just a few things – a more complete shopping trip could wait for later. But club sign-up had taken too long, then she had just missed one of the town buses – meaning she had almost an hour to wait for the next one – then when she finally got into town, everything was either closed or closing. She did manage to grab a few essentials, but no clothes.<br/><br/>Then when she finally gave up and started to make her way home, it happened again: she<em>just</em>missed a bus, meaning she had<em>another</em>hour to wait.<br/><br/>The best way to kill time seemed to be grab a meal, and her choice of beef bowl was less about a desire to get an authentic taste and more about the economics. But even that hadn’t gone all that well. The interested glances when she had entered in her school uniform were not pleasant. But that was nothing compared to the looks she got when she pulled out her red card to pay.<br/><br/>By the time Biscuit walked in, things had degraded to a kind wordlessly agreed-upon cold war between her and the other patrons:<em>Look, you don’t like me, and I don’t like you either. You want me to leave, and that’s fine; I want to get out of here, too. So if you just let me eat this food in peace, I’ll keep quiet and not cause a scene. Then we can part ways peacefully, and that will be that.</em><br/><br/>So tense was the situation, that Natsuki literally jumped when Biscuit put his hand on her shoulder.<br/><br/>For a moment she thought she might be in real trouble – that some local had summoned up the courage to pick a fight with an Abnormal, and things were about to get ugly. So it took a moment for her to parse Biscuit’s words over the pounding of her heart.<br/><br/><strong>“Eh?”</strong>she said blankly. Belatedly she looked at where he was indicating. The empty seat next to her. She looked around, and realized it was just about the only empty seat in the place. She looked back at the newcomer. He was quite large… but he didn’t seem to be the least bit threatening.<br/><br/><strong>“Ah, yes,”</strong>she stammered. She relaxed, realizing that she had actually tensed up. She took a deep breath and repeated herself, just in case the foreigner didn’t quite grasp what she had meant.<strong>“Yes, the seat is empty,”</strong>she said.<strong>“You may have it.”</strong><br/><br/>Subtly she looked the newcomer over, partly out of self-preservation, partly out of curiosity. It was hard to tell with an American, but he<em>seemed</em>to be about school age. The odds were that he was either a drifter, or an exchange student. Drifter was possible, but his Japanese didn’t seem quite good enough to risk touring through Japan on his own – and he didn’t seem to be with anyone. Denai was hardly a noteworthy tourist destination either. That meant that if her guess about his age was right, and he was school age, then he was probably a student at Denai Academy.<br/><br/>It was worth a shot to ask. In any case, he hadn’t seen her flash her red card, and he didn’t seem to have the language skills to pick up on the hint from the murmurs and glares. Whether he as a student or not, nobody here would dare make trouble with her if they thought she was with<em>him</em>.<br/><br/><strong>“Excuse me,”</strong>she said. She tugged on the lapel of her school uniform jacket.<strong>“You are a student at Denai Academy as well?”</strong>