[b]Kotori Shirohane - Warakuma Shopping District: Shirohane Flowershop | Wednesday, July 13 2015[/b]

[color=silver]"Kotori?"[/color] Tsubame called out, peeking her head out from the storeroom in the back of the shop. [color=green]"Yes?"[/color] the girl spoken to looked back from the door that the most recent customer had just left through. [color=silver]"When did you say you were meeting up with your friends?"[/color] For a moment, Kotori's expression became puzzled before she shifted her gaze to the clock mounted on the wall - and paled. [color=green]"Ah! I forgot!"[/color] With the summer festival now in full swing, there had been an unusually high number of customers in recent days - and with how Kotori was as nervous as ever when dealing with them, she had completely lost track of the time.

She almost immediately felt guilty when she realised that she'd have to just up and leave her mother to tend the store alone if she wanted to make it in time. But even as Kotori's eyes darted to the door from behind her glasses whilst she deliberated on what to do, she felt the green apron loosen and then get pulled up over her head. Turning around, she was greeted with her mother's wide smile - evidently more than a little bemused by her daughter's antics. [color=silver]"Hop along now. Don't want to keep them waiting, do you?"[/color] She said, making a shooing motion with the apron she now held to speed her along. [color=green]"Ah, r-right, sorry. I mean, thank you,"[/color] Kotori said as she headed up to her room to grab her things. As she did so, she failed to hear the chuckle of a knowing mother reaching to shift a clock back a few minutes.

[b]Kotori Shirohane - Warakuma Central Shrine | Wednesday, July 13 2015[/b]

More than a little out of breath, Kotori managed to make it to the meeting place in time - in fact, she was even a little early, strangely enough. Still, that did at least give her a few moments to catch her breath. Thankfully, at least she didn't have to keep an eye out for shadow creeping around like the last time when Rui had led the latest expedition into the Mirror Realm. Less thankfully, that single stray thought sent Kotori's mind into thoughts of that strange place - and its mysteries that were stranger yet. Absent-mindedly, Kotori shifted her handbag that she had slung over the shoulder of her pale yellow blouse into a more comfortable position.

[i]'Did the places mean something? Were they perhaps one of those strange dungeons that had appeared without fail whenever any of the investigation team had been abandoned to the Mirror Realm? No, there was always someone at the center of them, that couldn't be...'[/i] Kotori's lips made the barest of movement as if to silently articulate her thoughts. Left unchecked, her nervous habit of picking at her skirt - a careful eye might be able to pick out her favourite clothes just by the small marks she'd left at hand height - resurfaced once again. Left alone to her thought that never led anywhere, Kotori was only aware of her surrounding in passing and, as such, only noticed the others arriving when they willingly made themselves known - much to her bewilderment at being snapped out of her musings.