“Uh…. Is that you, Togami-kun?" She peered around the corner of the bookcase, nibbling on her lower lip nervously. She stumbled over a discarded box, yelping in surprise as a book fell off the shelf and onto the dusty floor below. “AAAAAAAaa!! I’m sorry!! So sorry! I—- I didn’t see that there…!”
"Is there something in your ears? I thought I told you to —”
thud. a thin paperback (a work of george orwell, he had skipped over it earlier) fell to the ground. despite the book being light in weight, it still managed to lift a cloud of dust in its wake. scowl etched ‘cross sallow features, he turned his head away from it.
if she had not shrieked, he may have been able to dismiss both the falling book and the louder sound of a stray box being kicked with a simple roll of the eyes. positively raucous and glaringly loud, her squawk shattered any possible attempts at returning to silence and solitude.
“How did someone so inelegant earn the title of 'ultimate swimming pro?’” he hardly waits for an answer. “It doesn’t matter.” his nostrils flare just the slightest bit. “I’m going to repeat myself once and only once more. Leave. Now. You’ve plagued the room with enough stupidity for one day.”
ah, that would be the quiet creak of the library’s door. it seemed he had company. my, what a shame.
“—— Get out.” he spoke tersely, timbres as glacial as the steel of his iris. never once did he pay any mind what they could have entered the room for ; their business was inconsequential to him.
[ Hands clasped at the ribbon of her uniform, slightly taken back. ]
A- ah! I didn’t mean to speak out of turn —
“Stop.” stentorian and powerful, he brusquely cuts her off. “You’re dirtying the air with that filthy mouth of yours.” with a pronounced clap, the dull novel he had been studying a moment prior snaps shut. his nostrils flare in his brief moment of quiet.
Every glance was as if she was turning the page; delving herself with new information, new knowledge. To himself, he was the ultimate enigma. To her, he was just another being, incapable of becoming the mask he created.
Her cold stare turns into a more curious one. She’s aware that he has caught onto her antics.
“Hmmm?” Her eyes avert from him to the book that laid open on her lap.
“You’re thinking too loudly. It’s becoming difficult to concentrate.”
his articulations were curt, each stricken with a force most unnecessary. vexation, gelid and brittle, weighed down on ‘pon his timbre. the animosity lurking there was genuine, candid from every angle. for her gaze was cumbersome, and he could no longer stand it.
her presence left him with the spectral feeling that she was circling him, poking him, prodding him, turning out his pockets, and examining their contents all without ever moving from her seat.
his tongue was callused by ridges of silver; his irises were plated by that of steel. the gears turned round and round within his temples, grating and grinding against each other with heavy thought.
and oh, he was sure she could see them. and my, did he hate the fact that she did.
being held under a microscope, being read like an insipid file…
