2026-02-04: Isabeau Steals Itsuki's Lunch
- Log: Isabeau Steals Itsuki's Lunch
- Cast: Isabeau Fontaine, J. Itsuki Hayashi
- Where: Shujin - Rooftop
- OOC Date: 2026-02-04
- IC Date: Thu, Sep 20 2012
- Summary: But she doesn't just steal his lunch: she actually ends up sharing a surprising amount of personal information with him while she's messing with him! Man, she must just be hungry. Itsuki shares how he was the best in his year back at Gekkoukan, and Isabeau insists they train together... but when Itsuki brings up Isabeau's mother after she praises the work of his own, Isabeau goes from sweet to sour and storms off without another word.
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
Isabeau Fontaine, the Witch of Shujin, is presently...
... being foiled by the school store. "What do you mean," that broad, foreign girl demands, in Japanese which is a little stilted next to its neighbours, "you are out of yaki-soba? You were out yesterday. The day before that, and the day before that! Always you are out! Is your supply chain so bad that you cannot solve simple demand issues?"
"I said, it's out of stock. Now, if you come tomorrow, we'll have Autumn Bread..."
"Unbelievable!" Isabeau throws up her hands, as she stalks away from the growing line.
(They mutter, behind her, with gossip they at least have the sense not to say loud enough for her to hear.)
<Pose Tracker> J. Itsuki Hayashi has posed.
Itsuki isn't behind her in line or anything. He's just hanging outside the school store for completely innocuous reasons, scrolling through his phone with his left thumb when out should walk, and in a fell mood...
Well. He hasn't been at Shujin all that long, comparatively, but he knows who she is. They're both in the tennis club. They've probably exchanged a few basic pleasantries (or whatever that passes for, from Isabeau). Since he's a first year and she's a second, though, outside a few chance encounters in the hallway--
--like this!--
--that's about it.
And since he is similarly 'foreign' that means that instead of backing off or looking the other way...
Itsuki looks up at her and smiles as if indulging in some private joke of his own. "Bad luck, huh? I think they're sold out for the season," he tells her, not entirely certain for himself whether that's true.
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
Isabeau is only in her second year, but she manages to dominate Tennis Club, anyway. Part of that is her domineering personality; part of it is the fact that she actually is very good. (They say she practices two hours every day, and that goes up to four hours on the weekend...) The problem is... she's just...
... well, no one really wants to spend that much time around her. Kanae might not have as many raw practice hours under her belt, but her talent comes with approachability.
"Hmph," Isabeau tosses her curls, all pulled up into a ponytail behind her head. "They should have planned things much better! You, Itsuki," she points at him, and does not use any kind of honourific with his name. "Have you eaten?" It's more of a demand than a question...
<Pose Tracker> J. Itsuki Hayashi has posed.
He's good at it himself. He probably could be better, in fact, since he approaches tennis practice with the same insouciance that he approaches most things in life. Without a reason to strive, though, he's content to be merely 'good' at tennis...
unlike Isabeau, who as some of the whispered rumors from the others in his grade say, practices ten hours a day.
The reality is rather more tame, but still likely to earn a pair of raised eyebrows from her junior student if he learned the truth.
"What can I say? They've got all kinds of stuff available depending on the season," he remarks, shrugging his shoulders. Her use of 'yobisute' is known to him, and, frankly, he finds it kind of refreshing. It's not like it got used back home, except by his grandfather, and even then, only with other Japanese expats. When you live in a foreign land, you tend obey their customs, he'd always said.
"Huh?" he says, finally putting his phone away. It sure is a demand, but he seems to be inclined to let this one slide off his back a little. "Nah, not yet," he says. "I was going to go to the roof, if it's not busy." He regards. "Why? Are you looking for a lunch partner... sempai?"
There may be the sense that, again, he seems to be having a little bit of fun at her expense.
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
Those rumours have a nugget of truth in them, at least: when school holidays were in session, Isabeau was practicing eight hours a day throughout most of it.
She just... can't stay that intense while she's juggling actual school.
Also, something something only progressing so far when she's practicing against a serving machine...
(Isabeau won't take advice from many people, but, well, she'll listen to an Olympian, apparently.)
"That will do," she decides, scrutinising him for a moment. Senpai... 'senior'. Technically, it's the right word to use, but her jealousy-green eyes linger on him for a long moment before she turns and gestures sharply. "Come. We go."
I--is she stealing his lunch?!
<Pose Tracker> J. Itsuki Hayashi has posed.
Of course, there's one problem with having fun at someone else's expense, and that's when--
He wrinkles his forehead. Well, this is familiar. Most of the kids in Japan seem to have only two modes when it comes to bullying, but this one is downright...
...homey.
He has three older siblings, two of them his older brothers. He also used to get shook down for his lunch when he was a lot smaller (yes, compared to how small he is now) by larger boys. It's almost nostalgic.
It's entirely possible he could lose his lunch here (if for... different reasons than that turn of phrase usually implies). Still, this is probably the most interesting thing that's happened to him all day.
"Hmm. Fontaine-sempai, do you like ham?"
Hopefully, it's not one with the good cheese. He'd be actually upset about losing all of his sandwich with the good cheese. It's hard to get good cheese in Japan, for some reason.
But there's the possibility he might be able to barter at least some of his lunch back from Isabeau, so he'll take it as a challenge.
"Fine, fine," he says, fidgeting a moment with his glasses before following as she indicates.
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
"Of course I like ham," Isabeau says, "particularly prosciutto, but anything dry cured will do."
Oh. Oh, of course. Isabeau is quite a wealthy girl, it's said; her father is a professor. Of COURSE she'd be snobby about her hams.
Itsuki's chances of losing his sandwich with the good cheese just went up tenfold... this is going to be a dangerous boss encounter...!!
The roof, of course, is off limits. Isabeau sniffs, haughtily, as she pushes past the sign -- she can read, but she's slow to do so, and that sign wouldn't stop her regardless -- and opens up the door to the roof.
"You are brave," she reflects, as she sits herself down on an old desk stashed up here. "Most would not follow me. They think I will curse them. That I will challenge them to a game of balance on top the roof, and I will send them to their deaths." She pauses.
"You would not die," she adds, "unless you fell very wrong. They should know this. They saw that girl fall here. Still, they talk."
<Pose Tracker> J. Itsuki Hayashi has posed.
"Prosciutto?"
Isabeau has done the seemingly impossible: in one remark, she's left Itsuki feeling utterly unmoored. Isn't that... kind of the pricier stuff?
"...Huh," he says, as if he's had to to consider that a moment. While let it not be said that his family is poor or even struggling there are some things that don't happen in a family of eight, where only one party earns a full-time paycheck. ...Well, more like six now, with both of his older brothers far from here but...
He'd known she was sort of wealthy, but she's that kind of wealthy. Huh.
The roof is off-limits, but it hasn't stopped him before (much; he has his boundaries for the degrees of trouble he's willing to engage in these days). It definitely doesn't stop him now--
"I come up here sometimes," he says, shrugging his shoulders. "It has a good view." He pauses, regarding the ledge.
"But you don't do that. Right?" Ever so slightly, doubt has crept into the room with him, pawing open the door with little feet. "...Didn't that girl jump?"
He wasn't here for that. But he did hear the story.
Itsuki shakes his head. "Don't worry. I'm not jumping off roofs."
Among other things, suicide is said to be a sin.
"But never mind that. I'll share my lunch if you, if you like ham. Mom made a Beirute." He pauses, then explains, "Brazilian sandwich. Ham, and cheese, and whatever else she could find. Cheese around here is usually pretty bad, huh?"
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
What Isabeau isn't telling Itsuki, of course, is that she's not the kind of rich that can have prosciutto whenever she wants. Having it occasionally, of course, is still pretty...
Well, no one can blame her for being attentive to finer things in life. Her father is quite picky; she needs to be just as discerning, if she wants to make him proud.
And that might explain why she answers, haughtily: "I suppose you are using wet-cured hams? Well, it can-not be helped. That is, generally, what you find in the supermarket."
(Isabeau's talking a real tough game, and it's all because Itsuki can't possibly fact-check her. Even people with money shop at the supermarket... they just don't shop at the dollar store.)
She looks out, over the rooftop. "... it does," she says, and her tone even softens, for a moment. "It would be a fine challenge. But..."
Isabeau puffs out her cheeks in a sigh, as she straightens up onto her feet again. "Would you believe me," she asks, looking into his eyes -- and she can actually do that, she's even an inch taller than him -- "if I said I did not? It was not by my hand she was cursed... but I have heard a few girls talking. They say Kamoshida offended me, when he approached me to join his team... they say it must have been me who brought that ruin upon him."
She shakes her head. "... the rumour has not spread. The school believe his confession. I will tell you he was a hungry man. I suppose that is why they say it now... they think it will hurt me more, to lay the blame at my feet."
Isabeau tilts her head, thoughtfully. "I wonder why I am telling you this? It could be because you will not tell anyone, I suppose." She lets that hang in the air, for a moment...
... before she holds her hand out. "Or because I am too hungry to guard my tongue. I will try your 'Beirute'," and she actually has quite good pronunciation on that, really; perhaps it's because she speaks a Romance language natively? "I hope the cheese on this is less disappointing than some slices I have eaten."
<Pose Tracker> J. Itsuki Hayashi has posed.
"Well, sure," he says, in this particular moment stifling the short burst of irritation that comes to him. He fancies himself a pretty easy-going dude, but this one cuts a little close to home, so to speak. His mother does her best!
She's pretty tall for a girl. ...He's pretty short for a guy.
"I'm okay with challenges," he says, eyeing the ledge. "But there's 'challenge' and then there's..." He shrugs and when he smiles, it's tight. He spreads his arms. "Look, I'm not a coward. I'm game for a lot of stuff. But that's a long way down. One slip, and I'll miss the fall festival," he explains.
"That guy?" he says, about Kamoshida. "I wasn't here at the time." He shrugs, but frowns. "It's weird, the way some of the kids talk about him sometimes, like was a hero. Back home, if they found someone doing things like that..." He thinks on it a moment. "Well... maybe."
Maybe there's not so much difference here and there as he likes to think.
"But it's still wrong," he summarizes. "Good thing you turned him down." He smiles, lopsidedly. "It's my luck I wasn't here for any of that. I get the feeling I would have ended up as his enemy, and while I give as good as I get..." he says, shaking his head. It's a different story when you're talking about making an enemy of an adult.
"Anyway, don't worry about it. If anyone brought ruin on him, it was himself. Some girls like to hear themselves talk."
As promised, he breaks out his lunch, which includes the aforementioned Brazilian-style sandwich. He inspects the contents critically.
"Hey, you're in luck. Mom got the cheese that's kind of decent for a change. Dad must have just gotten paid," he says, handing her over her half. "It's kind of funny, huh? There's a lot of good food in this country, but the cheese sucks. How do you mess up cheese?"
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
"Most would think this way," Isabeau supposes. "Myself, I am determining how I may climb the Moonlight Bridge without being stopped by police. I will go late at night, I think... it is just a long way home on the night bus."
If she's thinking about getting home afterwards, she probably isn't planning on sinning... but what kind of girl looks at a bridge and decides she want to climb it?!
Still... Itsuki supposes he would have been Kamoshida's enemy. "I was... not interested in playing sports at school," she insists, because of course it's far too delicate to admit she was afraid of that man who looked at foreign girls like cuts of meat. "Kanae had to beg me to join the team, you know. I would have made my own way perfectly happily, but I took pity on them... hmph."
She's huffing, but she does regard him a little more positively, hearing he would have fought Kamoshida directly. ... even if part of her is embarrassed, too. It's not that she was scared of him! (She was.) She just didn't care to fix Japanese problems! (She couldn't.)
"You are correct on this," she concludes, when Itsuki declares that Kamoshida ruined himself. "Though at times I wonder... no, do not mind it."
(She wonders what the Phantom Thieves did -- and whether it was the right thing to do. Would her father approve of that rumoured 'Change of Heart'...? It isn't how they do things...)
She takes half the sandwich, and considers it, for a moment. (She's decided to let him keep his half; he has suitably impressed her.) "Some food is all right, but the chopsticks are a ridiculous, tool." She forgot the word for 'utensil'... "Who has heard of rice for breakfast, in any case? A baguette, coffee, yogurt and fruit... breakfast is not that difficult."
With that complaint done, she chomps into the sandwich. Munch, munch...
"This is quite good," she decides, once her mouth is clear again. "Your mother is skilled. You are fortunate."
<Pose Tracker> J. Itsuki Hayashi has posed.
Climb the... Moonlight Bridge?
Itsuki kind of stares at her for a moment. Wow. Yeah, she probably means 'climb up it and then climb back down'. Damn. 'What kind of girl', indeed! "Good luck with that," he tells her, and he means it, because--
Well, more power to her if she can pull it off. It's not the kind of thing he's interested in attempting. Even if he likes a challenge and even more than that, likes the appropriate moment to show off, well, he supposes he has his limits after all.
He doesn't think his mother would appreciate it, anyway...
"So that's how it happened," he says, about her joining the tennis team. She doesn't seem exactly like a team player. "Made you an offer you couldn't refuse, eh? I was in the Gekkoukan club," for tennis, of course, "and I was the best in my grade there, so it was only natural. Maybe I'll branch out. Or maybe not. I'll see what catches my eye."
He's thinking about football, anyway. He's often thinking about football, to be honest.
"But I'm also thinking I've got a fair shot at being the best tennis player for my grade here. So maybe I'll focus on that instead." He says, as if it didn't really matter to him where he chose to excel. Like, in contrast to Isabeau, it's all more of a game.
"Really?" he says, about chopsticks. "We usually used them at grandpa's, growing up. It's not so bad once you get some practice with them. You can use a rubber band if you're rusty." Like she's... a child, might be the undercurrent. "And rice is pretty good in the morning. We used to have it sometimes when I was young, so it's not that much of a difference. The cheese, though..." He shakes his head. "Luckily, there's some Brazilians around here, at least there's some familiar stuff."
She's pleased about and praises his mother, which in turn makes him feel a touch pleased. "Of course! She's the best at it," he says, more than happy to sing her praises too.
But something occurs to him. "What about your mom?"
...it doesn't seem that her mother made her a lunch...
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
"I do not need 'luck'," Isabeau replies. "I have skill."
She 'hmms,' thoughtfully, hearing how Itsuki was the best in his grade. "You will practice with me, then," she says, as she pulls a notepad from her bag and writes down a number. (The name is written in the Alphabet, thank you.) This, she shoves into his hand. "You will ring me when you will not be interrupted for some time. It is best to improve against a human opponent. The Olympian Miho Ijuuin told me that." She's a fencer, if Itsuki was watching the games!
Isabeau does watch other sports sometimes, you know. Athletes are her people.
Her lip curls, when Itsuki suggests a rubber band. "I would prefer tools which work." Oh, does she... not know that's childish...? She might not realise that's seen as childish. "We French live in Kagurazaka, very much... though there are also some around Iwatodai. It is good your people are also here. It is... isolating, to be around only the Japanese," she adds, as she remembers Inaba. "They do not want the visitor."
She nods, when Itsuki praises his mother. "Good." He ought to. But then --
Her mother.
Something in Isabeau's expression closes off, as she chomps down the last of that sandwich.
"You will never speak of her." This, she issues as steel edict, pushing past him, towards the door. "Her name is too good for your mouth." Why does she sound so -- angry? It's anger, isn't it? Or is it --
There's no doubling back to figure it out: she's already slammed the door shut behind her.
Well... Isabeau's temper usually cools off after a while, right...?