[center][img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/617914243760783381/866258589646323732/thumbnail_yuuya.png[/img][/center][i]"She's just another first-year, ain't she? They're[/i] all [i]tiny, but ..."[/i]

And before he could finish his thought, Ri Mai arrived, and although probably not in the way she wanted, she stole his breath from his lungs.

Yūya could've puked right then and there.

She stepped out onto the roof all coiled up, brimming with childlike enthusiasm and momentum. It may as well have been her first day at school, or her first date to the skating rink with a boy: clutching something to her chest, steadying her breathing, ... flitting her eyes about in some expectant way. Yūya couldn't decide whether she searched for something in particular (except, perhaps, her apparent friend in Yonaka) or merely awaited her reception as her attention nuzzled up to each one of them for a time; a newborn gazelle, still wet from the womb, watching the grass for lions. And that tiny, shivering thing? She was lion food. She knew it.

Obviously it was someone else. This "Ri Mai" didn't have braided pigtails, and she wasn't knobby enough in the knees and elbows; too cherubic. Obviously she wasn't wearing a helmet, and instead of a [i]randoseru[/i] she carried a charcoal-grey bookbag, same as the rest of them. No doubt about it: hanging on a hook somewhere, or maybe tossed haphazardly into a washing machine, she had a Sarayashiki uniform. But for a second—just one—Yūya saw another young girl walking through that rusted access door.

Finally Ri's curiosity fell upon him, and in that same moment he learned, for some esoteric reason, one he didn't fully understand, that he couldn't stand to look her in the eye. So he hurried his scrutiny somewhere else, feigning interest in the iron knotworks of the HVAC unit on the other side of the roof. With a snarl and a drag from his cigarette, Yūya suppressed some kind of a wince welling in his chest. He reached for the beer on the shelf, not because he needed the alcohol that badly, but to give his hands something to meddle with, and his attention something else to fixate upon which wasn't her.

[i]What the hell are you thinking, Yonaka-chan?[/i] he wondered, a question which wrung his insides until the first sting of sweat welled up to the surface, flushing his skin with an itchy, nervous heat. Was Ri just chum for the waters? Or someone's new toy? And Ishida ... had he allowed this? Even sanctioned it?