As usual, 'Ru had excused herself from class long before the closing bell.  There was a loading dock connected to the back of the cafeteria where many of the more unsavory students tended to hang out to smoke, cut class, or make-out.  Today, that area is filled with the soft echoing twang of an acoustic guitar and a distant, almost hollow female voice providing a haunting accompaniment:<br/><br/><em>We passed upon the stair,<br/>And spoke of was and when<br/>Although I wasn't there,<br/>He said he was my friend<br/>Which came as a surprise,<br/>I spoke into his eyes:<br/>"You must have died alone,<br/>a long, long time ago."<br/><br/>Who knows?  Not me,<br/>I never lost control<br/>You're face-to-face,<br/>With the man who sold the world...</em><br/><br/>There's a brief pause in the music as 'Ru takes a drag off her cigarette.  The intermission is extended when a hand situates itself on her shoulder, first making her tense and bristle, and then deflate with a sigh made visible in a massive puff of exhaled smoke the trails off in wisps pouring out the corners of her mouth.  The teen musician draws the cigarette from her lips and ashes it over the side of the loading dock she's seated at, legs dangling over the parking lot below, and glances aside with a put-upon tone, "Yeah?"<br/><br/>"You weren't in Literature class, Mimi-chan.  You<em>like</em>Literature, right?  C'mon..."<br/><br/>Mimiru sucks down another lungful of smoke and tilts her head straight back to look upside-down at her childhood friend, Tomoe, exhaling it in twin streams out her nostrils like a cartoon bull this time with a devil-may-care grin.  "I remember you specifically said, 'come to homeroom so you don't get counted absent for the day, at least' and that was all!"<br/><br/>Tomoe scowls, knitting her brow in concern.  "'At least' generally comes with an implicit request to do more than what's specified, you know."<br/><br/>"What can I say?" Mimiru grins wolfishly around the cigarette, hefting both shoulders in a helpless shrug.  "You can only leave your audience waiting for so long, you know?"<br/><br/>There's a brief pause as Tomoe glances over the assembled rabble at the loading dock; most of them looked like they were either on something and too gone to care, were too gone to care<em>without</em>being on something (emokids!), or were too into one another to notice the music had even stopped.  There certainly weren't any sounds of agreement or support from their quarter.  Tomoe slowly raised an eyebrow, shaking her head.  "Mimi-chan, I don't think anyone's paying attention..."<br/><br/>"Eh?"  Mimiru turned her gaze on her 'audience', quirking a pierced eyebrow.  Though it was a bit late at this point to claim ignorance of their sad state, she nonetheless put forth a token effort in feigning upset at their condition.  "Fucking hell, you bunch of ingrates!  You're a bunch of uncultured goat-fucking potato-jockeys!  I'd say you wouldn't know music from the inside of your fucking asses, but you've got your head crammed so deep up there you can probably memorize it pretty damn good!  Che!  David Bowie must be spinning in his god-damned grave..."<br/><br/>"Umm, Mimi-chan...  I think David Bowie is alive.  Michael Jackson is the one who died."<br/><br/>The punk rock grrl pauses for a moment, holding her cigarette off to one side limp-wristed like a French debutante with a sour scowl and a slightly inclined eyebrow for all of five or six seconds, then breaks out in a huge shit-eating grin.  Almost immediately she stands up, shouldering her guitar and looping her arm around her friend's shoulders.  "Fuckit.  Let's ditch this shit-hole.  You don't have any gay-ass clubs you have to go to today, right?  Let's do something!"