Haruno Sakura (goodwithscalpel) wrote in last_stretch,
@ 2009-10-04 03:35:00

Entry tags:

done!; closed log;
Who: Sakura, Shino, Lit Class full of NPCs
What: The hard science kids hiding in the back of the class while the lit majors pontificate all over the place in the front. Also, there's a spider, and Sakura's geeky past comes to light.
Where: Literature Class, in whatever college we are, Jesus.
When: Friday, October 2nd

She wasn't bored at all, you see. Boredom had nothing to do with why her foot tapped against the floor. It was Friday. Last class of the week. She was already envisioning that warm bath she'd subject herself to, and the cup of tea right before sleeping a bit. To be in time for her first day at Naruto's place. In all honesty, she was nervous about it. By the end of October, she had every intention of telling her parents that she was a big girl who'd take her own decisions and if they didn't like them, they could suck it.

So, the class wasn't at fault at all, it was her mind going at 1000 miles per hours, analysing all possibilities of the nearby future, while still paying attention to what the professor droned out to them. Back at the end of the classroom, it was a question of either straining her ears or buying the book from which the professor took his notes. But Sakura was in a pinch anyway, so straining her ears it was. She was grateful that she at least had a quiet benchmate like Shino. He didn't fall asleep in class and then ask for her notes, at least.

Letting out a small huff, Sakura tapped her pen against her notepad twice before staring to write.

The symbolism in Byron's third piece is--

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goodwithscalpel
2009-10-04 04:19 am UTC (link)

Sakura lifted her head at the same time as her 'neighbour' but with different intentions. She was fully prepared to shush down whoever had shrieked, because she had been close to deschyphering why trees could possibly symbolize death when they were the epitome of long lasting life. And then she saw it.

The spider crawling over her classmate's notes. Agelena opulenta, a really nice speciment too. The sight took her back to her childhood, back when she spent her lonely days in her grandmother's garden, searching for bugs to build her stories with. The reason she knew its name, aside from it being very common in Japan, was the book her mother had given her as a child. First entomology for kids, zoology for children, anatomy when she was fifteen; she'd pretty much remained a fan of anatomy more than anything, but she still knew the names of most bugs and arachnides, simply because of her memory and her curiosity as a child.

She was broken out of her reverie when she saw the 'victim's benchmate roll up a pile of paper, ready to smack it down. "Wait," she spoke before she could help herself, jumping up in her chair. "That's--it's not going to harm you, it's just a web-weaving spider," she explained to the classmate, who by now was giving her looks of 'why don't you just let me kill it'. Since the whole class had stopped because of the girl's hysterics anyway, Sakura didn't feel as guilty when she stepped out of her bench and next to the girl's bench.

"It's called Agelena opulenta," she murmured, putting her hand on the table and holding it out. The spider crawled up on on her forefinger, and Sakura helped it up with her middle finger until it safely ended up in her palm. Fully aware of the stares she was getting from everyone, she went over to the open window, and gently deposited the spider on the outer window sill, before closing the window behind it.

"I'm sorry for the interruption, sensei," she said then, turning around to bow at the class politely, before taking her seat again.

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strongsilentype
2009-10-04 05:27 am UTC (link)

There were a variety of ways to feel about the moment. Running the gamut emotionally was a strange experience for the young man. First there was the brief moment of absolute zen (barely a flicker in the back of his eyes) at seeing the small beautiful creature, then a second of terror (both corners of his lips pulling back just a millimeter) followed by an absolute torrent of rage (the cinching together of his eyebrows) at the off-handed treatment of the innocent funnel-weaver. It was the sort of moment where he was prompted to move with little forethought, to simply lunge forward.

But Sakura seemed perfectly willing to do that for him.

It sent a whole new spiral of emotions fluttering through Shino's already battered system. There was a moment of surprise (a delicate parting of his lips) as the girl threw herself into the situation, a brief flicker of shock (a slightly more noticeable slacking of his lower jaw) as the technical scientific name rolled easily off her tongue, and something that could have been a quiet joy but was likely just a reactionary confusion (the closing of his lips and slight tilt of his head to the left) as the valiant 'knight in shining armour' rescued the 'damsel in distress' of being squished under a pile of notes on Byron.

It felt very literary to have emotions in such rapid succession.

As Sakura slid back into her seat, Shino couldn't help taking the moment of continual stunned silence to examine the girl with a quiet new sense of respect. There was the hint of a smile around the edges of his lips, a sort of relaxing in his shoulder blades as he contemplated the girl's profile over the top of his glasses before his eyes (although not his attention) dropped back to the pages in front of him because staring was really rather rude.

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goodwithscalpel
2009-10-04 05:33 am UTC (link)

She noticed her -- what was Shino, really? Acquaintance? Friend? Classmate? -- she noticed him looking at her from the corner of her eyes as she sat down, and leaned slightly to the side to whisper, once the class was back to its usuall humming of students' pens on paper and the drone of the professor.

"Can't let something innocent die because of the ignorance of some people, can we?" she murmured, high enough for his ears. He'd studied Darwin, he'd studied sciences, he was one of her own; he's get it. "Terrible thing to the ecosystem. No spiders, no silk, and a lot of infested gardens."

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strongsilentype
2009-10-04 06:44 am UTC (link)

Sakura wasn't someone he spoke with on a regular basis, apart from off-handed communications about assignments for biology classes and the occasional polite little conversations in passing. The class period also wasn't a time when he typically spoke in almost any sort of capacity--he rarely offered to speak or present and was almost never tempted to speak in sidebar with any of his classmates.

For once, in this moment of quiet bonding, this absolute extension of obvious friendship (because who else in this room could truly appreciate what the Haruno girl had just done? there weren't even other biology majors that he could see to understand the quiet magnitude of the moment), Shino wanted to say something. All that came to mind was to tilt his head in just a little more, to let his face stay soft and receptive as she spoke to him. When she finished, his lips parted in a purely human reaction, the desire to reply, to give back, to connect over something with another warm-blooded mammal.

Instead of something witty, he flashed a quiet smile and offered in his typical monotone, "...they can't all be ladybugs."

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goodwithscalpel
2009-10-04 11:59 am UTC (link)

She grinned at that before ducking her head and returning to her notes. The professor continued droning on about Byron, and Sakura continued to write on about the symbolism of trees.

Five minutes later, she clucked her tongue, and because for some reason her stunt with the spider-saving seemed to have won an ally in Shino (who'd never really talked to her beyong tea preferences or what chapter they were on), she saw it fit to clue him in on her frustration.

She ripped out a piece of paper, and wrote: How can trees symbolize death? They live more than we do, and without trees WE'd be dead, and isn't green the colour of LIFE?

She hadn't passed notes during class in ages, but there was a sort of giddiness to this moment, as she slid the piece of paper over to his desk.

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strongsilentype
2009-10-04 03:35 pm UTC (link)

Next on the list of things Shino had never done was pass notes in class. So it was a little jarring, really, to have a piece of the notes of the girl next to him suddenly slide into his personal space, boldly cluttering the clean line of the edge of his books. He took a minute to process it before he could even begin to read the note, a slow and hesitant process as he continued to strain himself to bend his mind around both deciphering the cryptology of the professor's vocabulary and the mythology of whatever it was Byron meant to be saying with the trees of death.

In the slow methodical fashion that he did many things, with a much more bemused expression on his face than the habitual blank slate, the young Aburame shifted his hand away from his notes briefly to print in his tiny neat handwriting just beneath Sakura's note.

If it's not chlorophyll, I think it's meant to symbolize sickness. Our textbook has a green cover.

Point hopefully well-made, he reasoned quietly as he slid the piece of paper back to his benchmate.

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	goodwithscalpel 2009-10-04 03:41 pm UTC (link)
	Sakura read the note quickly, and couldn't help the snort from coming out. She wrote her reply quickly and tossed it back over. Am I to understand this class makes you sick? Or just Byron? As she waited for replies, she returned to taking notes from the professor's lecture. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

$Aburame Shino: ... 8\$

strongsilentype
2009-10-04 04:09 pm UTC (link)

Were snorts good? Watching the professor, trying to get at the tiniest hint of meaning out of the bland way the man was holding his face, meant that it was nearly impossible to spare a glance to study Sakura's face while she made the brief sound. A glance down at the paper again shoved across into his space hopefully indicated that the noise had been a good one.

It took a moment longer, but between tiny scribbled notes in pristine lines along the edge of his notebook he managed to jot out a quick response. It's simply an interesting correlation. If things correlate in literature.

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goodwithscalpel
2009-10-04 04:19 pm UTC (link)

She let out a soft laugh, and put the note in her literature book for safe keeping. That would be a legendary note, five years from this moment. Proof that Aburame Shino had passed notes in class.

With a smile on her lips, she went back to analysing the rest of the text as the professor explained how the reasoning behind Byron's obscure verses were intimately tied with his relationships in general. It was interesting, yes, but she much prefered the Russians to the British when it came to literature. In the brief moment during which the professor questioned one student for his opinion, Sakura's eyes diverted from her notebook and towards the window.

In the glint of sun light, she saw it. The spider had already made it's web in a high corner of the window, between the frame and the outer wall. Smart girl, that side of the window never gets opened.

Needing to share the information with someone, or simply because she was bored by listening to the opinions of her classmates on the meaning of red, she tore another piece of paper, and passed it on to him.

Look at the window.

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strongsilentype
2009-10-04 09:57 pm UTC (link)

The momentary distraction of having to multitask understanding both Byron's trees and his fellow biology majors fell easily to the side as Sakura filed the note away with an exhale like a laugh. Without missing a beat, Shino was back into the class, leaning forward slightly as though the knowledge trickling from the front of the room would be more easily absorbed by bringing himself physically closer to the source.

As the class dragged on and he became more and more entrenched in the mire of colour theory and amorphous symbolism (he could have written an essay about trees, if only that had been acceptable, something nice about the evolution of deciduous forests that didn't mean anything because they were trees and trees simply were), he nearly missed the note that once again slipped onto his side of the desk space.

As things began to wind down, it caught his attention, his gaze finally slipping from the tenth page of tiny scribbled notes on why a bare branch represented barrenness apart from the times when it didn't. His eyebrows twitched slightly, again cinching toward the middle of his face in a barely noticeable gesture of confusion at the four words scratched across the piece of paper.

He glanced at his benchmate, then glanced at the window, squinting in confusion for a moment through his glasses before glancing uneasily back at the front of the room. Either he'd missed it or he'd have to ask about it later--it was probably a sign that he needed to get his eyes rechecked, really.

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	goodwithscalpel 2009-10-04 10:09 pm UTC (link)
	Sakura saw his confusion, and checked to see if the professor was paying attention. He wasn't. So she leaned accross her bench and scribbled an addendum to her note. Upper corner. Agelena's smart. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

strongsilentype
2009-10-04 10:23 pm UTC (link)

Shino glanced at the addendum, then back at the front of the class. Then he glanced at the note again. It didn't make sense. A quick flick of his eyes toward the upper corner of the window, however, did in fact reveal what was likely at this point a very confused spider busily fussing about its new home.

He almost made a sound. The sound, of course, would have been a word, but the strangeness of wanting to make a sound during a class period quickly arrested the attempt. A tiny urgent part of him wanted to simply get up and go watch the tiny creature, to explain to the girl next to him that this was highly abnormal behaviour for a funnel weaver and to bring the poor confused thing down to a cool grassy area.

Instead, he simply glanced down at his watch, lips parted as though he was on the verge of saying something. In a few minutes, the lecture would end. He was good at silence. He could make it a few minutes.

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goodwithscalpel
2009-10-04 10:31 pm UTC (link)

She shook her head and went back to taking notes. From what she had picked up, Shino was studying entomology, so she figured he would've liked to see what had happened to the spider.

The last ten minutes passed amazingly fast, since the professor started to pick up his pace and dictate about a page's worth of notes, to make up for lost time; so Sakura's mind concentrated on the notes, rather than the wild life.

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strongsilentype
2009-10-04 10:49 pm UTC (link)

As the last words left the professor's lips and the last words were printed onto the sheets of paper in his notebook, the young Aburame nearly reached over for his benchmate. He still wasn't a fan particularly of physical human interaction, but he did manage to catch the edge of the girl's sleeve in what was distinctly a little pluck requesting attention.

Without further indication of his intentions or desire for her attention, he was up with the rest of the class, waiting politely a moment before the silence broke and the general hum of students moving took over the classroom. With a quick but somehow neat little motion, he swept all his books back into his satchel and leaned around his smaller classmate to peer properly at the small arachnid.

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goodwithscalpel
2009-10-04 11:06 pm UTC (link)

Sakura was just noting down the last bit of homework for the following week, when she noted that tug of her sleeve, which made her lift her head to look at him. Just in time to watch him rise with the rest of their classmates.

Her eyes still on him, Sakura packed all her things into her backpack, her head slightly tilted to the side, as if she was analysing something very, very peculiar. Little Sakura, or what still remained of Little Sakura in Sakura's mind (that girl that loved everything that got her clothes dirty, like climbing trees and making mudpies and picking up worms), felt her curiosity pique at this weird boy--young man--in front of her.

He was peculiar. Very peculiar. Very reserved, and yet at the same time, there was something really cool about him. Calming. As if she was Little Sakura again, she observed him, like she'd observed the first bug she found really interesting.

Obviously, it came as a surpise when he leaned around her, but she realized what she was looking at, so she sat up from her seat and stood beside him, peering up.

"You're studying entomology, right?"

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strongsilentype
2009-10-05 04:35 am UTC (link)

Leaning up toward the corner of the window, almost off the balls of his feet despite his height because of his slightly awkward angle of approach, the young entomologist found himself caught between scrunching his nose to look through his glasses and un-scrunching it to look over the top. In the end, he opted for tugging them off entirely for the moment as he studied the little spider curled up in its new corner.

It meant that glancing over his shoulder when the girl spoke up again resulted in a slightly hazy view of her pink-framed face, but that hardly mattered. He could see the Agelena opulenta clearly, and that was the much more fascinating thing at the moment.

{Although, his mind admitted quietly to itself, it was vaguely fascinating that there was a girl in the universe who fit snugly into the diverse categories of (1) being someone he could talk to, (2) being someone who saved insects rather than squishing them, and (3) being someone really rather aesthetically appealing of the opposite gender. That, however, could be set aside until he'd unraveled the mystery of the possibly more appealing 8-legged beauty in the corner of the window.)

"...when I can," he replied quietly, turning back to rest his forehead slightly against the window pane, squinting up at the fussy little web. "...they don't usually do this."

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goodwithscalpel
2009-10-05 01:05 pm UTC (link)

"Don't they? Because I've seen so many of them at my grandmother's place when I was young..." she mused, lifting up her hand and brushing one finger over the window, right where the spider was.

"I never learned farther than that Bugs for Kids book mom gave me when I was seven, though, so you're the expert. What do we do?"

It was kind of exciting, really. Like an adventure.

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