[center][h1][color=black]T[/color]OTSUKA [color=black]R[/color]YUSEI
[color=black]戸[/color]塚 [color=black]竜[/color]星[/h1][/center]
[hr][right][color=gray]nothing matters any more. the darkness is all there is.
i try to count the seconds. i've forgotten what they are.[/color][/right][hr]

[indent][color=c0c0c0]"Nah, I don't do it to all of them. Just the pretty ones."[/color]

It was easy enough to come up with some smart ass response to Shiori's seemingly boundless irritation. He supposed that was what he liked about their little verbal spars—for what she lacked in conversational motivation, she made up for by being fun to poke at. In the way it was fun to see how much you could poke a wasp's nest before you got stung, at least. Luckily enough, he hadn't been on the receiving end of much more than some angry buzzing, elbow to the ribs aside. Hopefully it would be at least a little while longer before she got fed up with him. Utsubyo sucked, but having somebody to fuck around with made the sucking a little less severe. 

A sigh escaped Ryusei's lips as he kicked off the mulch littered turf below, rocking back and forth on his suspended seat, his legs too long to truly leave the ground with such little force. The gentle motion helped break up the monotony that was this little outing; he hadn't ever been all that social. People tended to steer clear of him once they picked up on his reputation, and aside from his fellow scumbags back home, he didn't go out of his way to correct that. The hell could he even talk about? He had known Himawari Shiori for all of five days, most of which were spent either snarking back and forth at one another or smoking in silence. Part of him felt the urge to just let her bear the burden of steering the conversation. They were here for her, after all. But the obstinate part of him didn't like ceding control that easily.

[color=c0c0c0]"Shitty park,"[/color] He eventually declared, letting the first thought in his mind carry them forward, [color=c0c0c0]"How many people in this town even have kids? Certainly seems like a shit place to raise a family."[/color]

He was being a little harsh. It wasn't that bad, honestly. Sure, the equipment looked like shit, the grass needed to be taken care of, but there was a serenity to its emptiness. With the sky above nice and overcast and nobody around but his nicotine addled classmate, it was almost kind of relaxing. He caught himself before he got too relaxed though—he had come dangerously close to dropping the tension he had been carrying for most of the week while pondering how he enjoyed his chats with Shiori, and he wasn't about to give her the satisfaction of thinking he was comfortable around her just because she picked a decent place to unwind.

[color=c0c0c0]"You come here often? Seems like a pretty lonely place, but you seem kinda lonely most of the time anyway, so I guess it'd fit. Don't have any friends?"[/color] Yeah, he was definitely being harsh. Hypocritical, too, considering his own lack of a social life, but at least he had an excuse. He hadn't seen the redhead hanging around anybody but himself and the other new transfer, and he had at least a working theory that the two of them had prior history, just based on the bouncy brunette's over familiarity. Not exactly indicative of Shiori's popularity with Utsubyo High's preexisting student body. [/indent]