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Post by Shotaro Yasuda on Sept 11, 2012 18:40:10 GMT -5
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• temporary happiness •
IS LIKE WAITING FOR THE KNIFE
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -The hustle and bustle of the streets was waning away with the passage of time. It was getting dark out. With autumn moving in the air had gotten crisp these last few days. The days were warm, sure, but the mornings and nights were quite uncomfortable. Even for Shotaro. That however didn't stop him from staying out with his friends. The sun was setting. Most people were retiring to their homes for the night. That had made it the best time to stir up trouble in the streets.
His height made him look a bit older than he was. Nobody really questioned when they saw the male light up the cigarette with his coat shielding the chilling wind from his flame. He entered the park first. His friends were usually late, but Shotaro didn't mind that too much. He liked to be alone. It gave him some time to sit quietly and think about things that had gone on in his past. He lifted his gaze to the sky as he walked, had he been looking before him he would have noticed the fabric that was out before him and caused him to stumble in it. The discarded scarf tangled against his feet as the wind forced it around. The boy caught himself, looking to the scarf with disgust. Shotaro kicked it off of his feet and picked it off of the ground before dumping it into the trash. Oh well to that scarf. The owner probably didn't even care about it anyway.
Shotaro found his way to the far end of the park. It was where he and his friends usually met up. A run down wall. A slide that was old and nearly fallen apart. Graffiti lined just about anything possible. This part of the park was forgotten by many. Not safe for kids. But also the most beautiful. It was all just an outlet for the group of young men who gathered there. Where nobody cared what they did.
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Post by Erica Maus on Sept 11, 2012 19:01:12 GMT -5
A chilly fall day found a small blonde girl strolling through the local park with a tiny dog that remained fairly close to her side. Erica had been out for a while, and she had already lost something. Two things, actually. Somehow her scarf and one of her mittens had gone missing, likely taken away by the wind or fallen from her jacket pocket. The knowledge of the absence of these items were apparent from the look on her face, like always.
Erica was scouring the park for some sign of the missing articles when she stumbled upon a familiar face. Literally. "Es tut mir leid, ich war nicht zu beobachten, wohin ich...1" she shook her head and looked up, "oh! It's you again. I'm sorry, I wasn't...hey, you haven't seen a scarf anywhere, have you? It's blue with white stripes." The small yorkshire terrier at her side sat where it was and inspected the tall male with intelligent eyes.
1German: I'm sorry, I wasn't watching where I was...
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Post by Shotaro Yasuda on Sept 11, 2012 19:51:30 GMT -5
If she had just apologized to him, he had missed it completely. Even something as simple as a bump from a stranger was enough to set Shotaro in the mood to fight. This girl shouldn't have been here anyway. Not a girl from school. His rich and pampered school. “You're in Japan, so it would do you well to speak in japanese,” he sneered. He had seen the girl before. She was the one that lost her phone. He should have smashed it when he had the chance. “Lose something again did you? You must be horrible at keeping track of your belongings. I am amazed that your little doggie has stayed with you. If I were him, I would have just run away.” He had avoided the question completely, but seeing her reaction when he would reveal to her that the scarf was now in the trash was tempting. Maybe he could dig it out without her knowing and have her wear it back home. She would do that too. He smirked at the thought of it, leaning upon the wall. “You're not lost too are you? Not very often somebody like you comes to this end of the park.” [/blockquote] |
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Post by Erica Maus on Sept 11, 2012 20:22:30 GMT -5
Erica frowned for a moment...but the expression quickly melted away into a smile. She giggled. "You're funny. But yes, I do tend to lose things a lot." She glanced down at her dog, who wagged his short stub of a tail at her, "the good thing about Schnitzel is that he'll follow me anywhere, so I don't have to keep track of him. If only my other belongings had legs. Things would be so much easier." She had shaken off his apparent rudeness and responded with the grace and charm of a Hostess; comments like his didn't really bother her.
"Do I seem lost?" she asked him, looking genuinely worried and glancing around. "I don't mean to worry you; it's just...when I lose things, I get a little...concerned?" she wondered if that was the right word. "I come to this park all the time to walk my dog. I don't live very far away, you see," she waved one mitten-less hand towards the direction from which she had come, then seemed to remember something else. "Oh, I dropped one of my mittens, too, though I'm not sure where..."
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Post by Shotaro Yasuda on Sept 11, 2012 22:45:55 GMT -5
He frowned at her laugh. Nothing she had said was funny. Nor should what he had said be taken as a joke either. Maybe he should ask a friend to pull it out of the trash, but Shotaro hadn't taken notice of a mitten that was laying around. All he had seen was the scarf. “You better hurry and try to find things. It's going to be getting dark soon. Not only will it be too dark for you to see anything, but it would think that it would be dangerous for you to be out here alone. You never know the type of people that could be hanging around.” Not that he cared what happened to her. If one of his friends wanted to have their way with her, he wouldn't stop them. Their problems were not his own. And why should he bother to make this girls problems his. He didn't care in the slightest about this.
“It worked so well last time,” he began, with a roll of his eyes. “Go retrace your steps. If your dog had any sort of use, make him sniff out your belongings. That's all they are good for. That size especially.” If she had more sense she would just come back in the morning when it was brighter out, or even have a maid or driver come look for it. He had found out last time that this girl had no common sense. |
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Post by Erica Maus on Sept 18, 2012 21:36:33 GMT -5
Erica's lips parted to reply, but her thoughts were soon focused elsewhere as the dog by her side yipped and tugged at its leash. She looked up just in time to see a white cat pass right in front of them with a very familiar looking mitten hanging from its mouth. "Hey!" she called, sounding a bit startled. The cat stared at her for a second and trotted away, around the corner of a building and out of sight.
"...There goes my mitten," she sighed hopelessly. There was no use in chasing cats; they were far too elusive. She didn't mind all that much; it could easily be replaced, anyway. She began to reason that perhaps the cat would need the mitten more than she would; it could be a mama and have a litter that needs soft things like mittens and scarves to keep the baby kittens sheltered from the cold. Oh, well...
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Post by Shotaro Yasuda on Sept 18, 2012 22:14:34 GMT -5
Cats were just as replulsive as other animals were. There was nothing to like about them. But this cat, was working with him in messing with this girl. It might have been done unintentionally, but the act of rubbing the lost mitten in the face of this girl had Shotaro grinning from ear to ear. "You don't want to get it back?" He questioned her. If that was the case, shouldn't she have been leaving now? "People really shouldn't leave their crap out in the open. A cat might have it now, but think about where it might end up." Shotaro spent a lot of time around this area. He didn't want it looking like crap. The graffiti on the walls wasn't what he considered crap either.
And he really needed her gone before his friends showed up. It would cause too many problems. The male sighed and rested his head upon the wall that was behind him. There was just no way to win this. "If I help you get your crap back, will you get the hell out of here? A few of my friends like to partake in some of the more... riskier activities." And Shotaro would join them. Because it was at times like that, where he felt his happiest. "I am sure we can surround the cat or corner him." And when this was over, he would dig the scraf out of the garbage and throw it at her face. |
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Post by Erica Maus on Sept 22, 2012 21:36:06 GMT -5
Erica turned her head to gaze at the boy with her large blue eyes for a while as he spoke. At his offer to help, her face lit up and she nodded. "As soon as I have my mitten back, I'll leave," she promised, though a question burned brightly in her eyes: why did he want her to leave before his friends showed up? Was he embarrassed by being around a girl...or was he concerned about her safety because they were 'partaking in riskier activities'? What kind of 'risky activities' did he mean, anyway?
She pushed the thoughts aside as she and the boy made their way after the cat. It hadn't gone far. They found it in a small alleyway in a tipped-over, beat-up cardboard box that contained more soft (and likely stolen or discarded) items. The animal didn't hiss, didn't even make a sound when Erica knelt to reach in and retrieve her mitten. It just stared at her for a moment and let its head flop to the side, breathing heavily.
"Hey..." Erica looked up at the boy with a worried expression, then back to the cat. "Something's wrong." She hadn't noticed it before, but this cat was...unusually fat for a stray. Maybe her previous musings about the cat having kittens wasn't too far off, after all. Schnitzel whined and fidgeted and pawed at Erica's arm. "Go sit," she told the dog, pointing off to the side. He did as he was told, though didn't seem happy about it.
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Post by Shotaro Yasuda on Sept 23, 2012 20:54:37 GMT -5
It was funny seeing how such a little animal could hoard so many items for itself. Obviously, somebody liked living the life of luxury. Maybe he had some rich owner before he was thrown onto the streets like he had been. “It's a wild animal. Just leave it alone. For all you know, it could be rabid and having an attack. There was no way in hell that Shotaro was going to go touch the beast. If she wanted to go and worry about the stupid animal, she could very well go and get bitten by it. As soon as the cat's head flopped to the side, it had reanimated itself once again and was cleaning itself heavily. Cats. Shotaro would never be able to understand them. With very little interest, he watched the cat until something else caught his attention. The cat was bleeding. His flank moved up and down with heavy breathing. And with loud yowls and purrs, there had to have been more going on with the cat. And then Shotaro saw it. Chills hit Shotaro's back and worked their way up his spine. This cat... he, no she, was giving birth.
Pulling his coat off, he placed it beside the cat. A time like this, he really regretted throwing that girl's scarf into the trash. “Perhaps I have misjudged her.” Because any mother was a saint to Shotaro. He didn't know much about how animals gave birth, he assumed that most of it would be instinctual, but he did believe that both the mother and her kittens deserved to be born into a warm world on this particularly cold night. He would be fine without his coat. “Hey,” he directed to the girl, “Your scarf is in the trashcan by the fountain. Would you mind getting it for me?” |
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Post by Erica Maus on Sept 30, 2012 18:34:46 GMT -5
The male didn't seem interested at all, at first...but realization must have sunk in, and Erica moved aside as he pulled off his coat and joined her on the ground. There was some good in this boy, it just took some time to get it to come out.
She didn't think to question how he knew her scarf was in the trash can, nor why he hadn't told her where it was in the first place. The small girl rose to her feet, pointed to her dog and ordered, "bleiben1," and departed from the scene to retrieve the mentioned article. It was just where he said it would be, nevermind the odd looks she received from whoever was still lingering in the park when she reached into the can.
Erica returned shortly to the alleyway and settled upon the ground beside the boy whose name she still didn't know. The sight of the animal giving birth didn't startle her a bit; she knew enough about nature to not be unsettled by what was going on. Birth was a miraculous phenomenon.
Time passed, and soon enough, the four tiny kittens were out of their mother's womb and had found their way, with some help, to their first meal. The temperature had dropped considerably, and Erica was shivering lightly from the cold. "I hope they're going to be okay," she said thoughtfully, looking up at the darkening sky. She wished she could take them home with her to keep them out of the cold, but she'd promised her father not to bring home any animals...he didn't like it when she did things like that. Not at all...
1German: stay
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Post by Shotaro Yasuda on Sept 30, 2012 22:20:22 GMT -5
A bit through the birth, Shotaro had taken a seat nearby and rested his body against the wall. He didn't know all that much about birth, but from the sights of things it looked as though it was going well. The mother did seem to be doing what she was supposed to and each of the kittens moved as freely as they could in their attempts to squirm over to where their mother had been. His breath was visible in the air when he released a long exhale. It was getting colder and that girl was right to show some concern for them.
The wind carried the voices of his friends. They were asking about him. Their concerns didn't last too long before they figured he would not be showing up that night. Shotaro had something much more important to tend to. He had something that he did not want to get wrapped up in. But the second he passed his coat off to the cat, he had already gotten a bit deeper than he would have liked. For a while, he gave the cats a long, hard calculating look. How much trouble could they be? The cats would be fine in the pound once they were old enough. The mother on the other hand, was a bit out of luck. Nobody wanted an old queen.
“Stupid cats dirtied my coat,” he muttered. And he was freezing too. “I want it back damn it,” he told Erica as he rose to his feet once again and approached the box. Very carefully, he scooped the cats into the box and flipped it up so they rested in it. “I'm not about to go and touch it now either. You there help me move this to my house. I can't go dropping this junk all over the park.” |
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