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Beacon Academy / Re: Consequences [Private]
« on: April 15, 2018, 03:11:21 PM »
A few moments of hardly bearable silence followed Juno's somewhat ambiguous question with Xanh trying to take in what she came to be a witness of. That feeling deep in her gut that something must be off had been there from the beginning, when she had received that message in such a very un-Juno-like manner. And just taking a quick glance – and sniff – across the room made clear that things were definitely amiss. But only now, after the initial moment of surprise, did she get to take a closer look at her friend cowering on the bed, looking like it was only due to his companion Phi holding him up that he was still able to sit at all – and not just fall over and roll into a pile of sadness.
When the Xanh had first spoken up it was not really more than a slip of her tongue, but seriously, Juno seemed terrible. Not only because he looked like he had rings under his eyes that might as well be worth a week of sleeplessness, sported a voice like he had taken up chewing on sandpaper as a hobby and, of course, was probably the cause for this faint yet distinct smell filling the air with a slightly sour note. It also struck her how utterly deflated he appeared.
His whole posture, the slight shaking of his voice as he uttered his question, the way a pair of defeated eyes was glaring at her. This was about as far away from the typical Juno as Xanh had ever witnessed the usually so determined, steadfast man. Hell, even when she was trapped in the recovery ward together with Caja and he came by to visit his girlfriend who had literally been stabbed he had not been this troubled, instead still trying to find encouraging words to get Xanh off a rather dark train of thoughts. So what in the name of all hell had to have happened for someone like Juno to end up like this? Unable to do much else than ponder this question she simply stood there for a little while, blinking in disbelief a few times.
“You know”, the girl eventually opened up as she found her voice again, somewhat timidly reaching up with her left hand to scratch her head, strands of short black hair quietly rustling as she did so, “when I asked whether you killed someone I wasn't serious”.
Xanh kind of knew that this was not the best start to a conversation the moment the first words crossed her lips, but as it often did her sometimes misplaced approach to serious matters compelled her to go through with it, anyway. Shortly after however she followed up with a faint head shake, as if to invalidate what she had said before, opting for an apologetic if mildly crooked smile.
“Sorry, not the time to joke around, I guess. But...”, the smile vanished as quickly as it appeared, exchanged by a thoughtful, worried and almost somewhat pained expression as she focused on one of the corners of the room for a second, looking for the right words to follow up, presumably.
“I'm not sure how to answer that”. Another moment of awkward silence, becoming part of an ever growing collection of such. “Depends, I guess?”. The sound of Xanh taking a deep breath was about the only noise propagating across the room next, followed up by her finally remembering she had a pair of legs which she should use to do … well, anything but stand in the middle of the room like a child someone had forgotten to pick up. Slowly she walked over to the bed, making a small detour towards one of the desks to the side of the room to grab one of the chairs idly standing around, placing it next to Juno's bed. Accompanied by a muffled thump the girl let herself drop onto the seat.
“What are we talking about, here?”, she asked, preceded by a quiet sigh and her gaze focused more on the ground before her feet than who was sitting on the bed, her voice drained of much of the usual energy and roughness conveyed in it. As her head raised slightly, giving her friend the courtesy of looking at whom she was talking to, Xanh added:
“What happened, Juno?”
When the Xanh had first spoken up it was not really more than a slip of her tongue, but seriously, Juno seemed terrible. Not only because he looked like he had rings under his eyes that might as well be worth a week of sleeplessness, sported a voice like he had taken up chewing on sandpaper as a hobby and, of course, was probably the cause for this faint yet distinct smell filling the air with a slightly sour note. It also struck her how utterly deflated he appeared.
His whole posture, the slight shaking of his voice as he uttered his question, the way a pair of defeated eyes was glaring at her. This was about as far away from the typical Juno as Xanh had ever witnessed the usually so determined, steadfast man. Hell, even when she was trapped in the recovery ward together with Caja and he came by to visit his girlfriend who had literally been stabbed he had not been this troubled, instead still trying to find encouraging words to get Xanh off a rather dark train of thoughts. So what in the name of all hell had to have happened for someone like Juno to end up like this? Unable to do much else than ponder this question she simply stood there for a little while, blinking in disbelief a few times.
“You know”, the girl eventually opened up as she found her voice again, somewhat timidly reaching up with her left hand to scratch her head, strands of short black hair quietly rustling as she did so, “when I asked whether you killed someone I wasn't serious”.
Xanh kind of knew that this was not the best start to a conversation the moment the first words crossed her lips, but as it often did her sometimes misplaced approach to serious matters compelled her to go through with it, anyway. Shortly after however she followed up with a faint head shake, as if to invalidate what she had said before, opting for an apologetic if mildly crooked smile.
“Sorry, not the time to joke around, I guess. But...”, the smile vanished as quickly as it appeared, exchanged by a thoughtful, worried and almost somewhat pained expression as she focused on one of the corners of the room for a second, looking for the right words to follow up, presumably.
“I'm not sure how to answer that”. Another moment of awkward silence, becoming part of an ever growing collection of such. “Depends, I guess?”. The sound of Xanh taking a deep breath was about the only noise propagating across the room next, followed up by her finally remembering she had a pair of legs which she should use to do … well, anything but stand in the middle of the room like a child someone had forgotten to pick up. Slowly she walked over to the bed, making a small detour towards one of the desks to the side of the room to grab one of the chairs idly standing around, placing it next to Juno's bed. Accompanied by a muffled thump the girl let herself drop onto the seat.
“What are we talking about, here?”, she asked, preceded by a quiet sigh and her gaze focused more on the ground before her feet than who was sitting on the bed, her voice drained of much of the usual energy and roughness conveyed in it. As her head raised slightly, giving her friend the courtesy of looking at whom she was talking to, Xanh added:
“What happened, Juno?”