2025-12-30: Our Forgotten Summer Sines
- Log: Our Forgotten Summer Sines
- Cast: Minato Arisato, Suzume Fukura
- Where: Iwatodai - Dormitories
- OOC Date: December 30, 2025
- IC Date: Sun, Sep 02, 2012
- Summary: Minato and Suzume rush through the last of their summer vacation, on the last day of school. (Junpei gets caught in Wilduck Burger on a snack run the whole time.)
<Pose Tracker> Minato Arisato has posed.
Minato has a big problem:
It's Sunday, and he still has Summer homework left undone.
That's why he's out here today with Suzume, pouring over his notes. Junpei WAS with them -- he's just as hopeless as Minato was these holidays -- but after they realised they were starving, he went out for a Wilduck run. God willing, he will be back with burgers to make this less of a disaster... soon.
Eventually.
Hopefully.
"I should have spent less time playing video games," Minato bemoans his fate, as he looks over an algebra problem. "I carried the holy sword up the mountain, but now... carrying the 'X'..."
He shakes his head. "... how are you going?" He asks, looking over at Suzume's spread of homework.
<Pose Tracker> Suzume Fukura has posed.
Suzume actually did quite a bit of her homework on the first week of summer vacation.
Then she went 'oh, I've already done a lot of it, there's just a bit, I can have fun for a while'.
That lasted for, oh, the rest of summer vacation, until she realized that she was running out of days to delay it to, whereupon she too had a moment of panic and rampaged through her room digging out all the schoolbooks from wherever they'd been buried.
(As a result, her room currently looks like a very small tornado hit it, but don't worry about that; nobody is going to see it but her. Probably.)
Suzume actually suggested breaking to go to Wilduck, but sending Junpei out was probably the smarter play anyway, because Suzume's idea of saving money is to try to do the Wilduck challenge and that usually takes her out for the rest of the night. (She hasn't ever beaten it. She DOES have the first tier badge from Big Bang Burger around somewhere, though.)
"Which ones did you play?" Suzume asks, because of course it's 'ones', Minato's not going to be just on one for the whole summer. You can get through so many!
Unfortunately for Suzume, she hates math, and so a lot of what she put off is math. She has been struggling dolefully through trigonometry review. "I don't want to see any more triangles," she groans, leaning back in her seat enough to tilt it onto two legs with her head dangling over the back, so that she looks up at the ceiling. She's got a haircut since Yakushima, at least, but it didn't leave it that much less shaggy. "Triangles are a cursed shape."
<Pose Tracker> Minato Arisato has posed.
Honestly, that's probably the same trap Minato fell into.
The last 20% of the work always feels small enough that you can put it off until tomorrow...
"I'm big on Innocent Sin Online," Minato says, a flash of interest across his mild expression. "And I've been playing through the old Drake Adventure games... I have the cartridges, but I've just been playing them on my computer, since I don't have a funcom any more." Minato! That's a GAME CRIME! "Plus, I've been playing a lot of Groove On Fight... and Super Bash Bros."
But Suzume, it seems, is defeated by Triangles. "It's too bad this isn't the Epic of Zerta," Minato says, as he looks over at the trigonometry. "There's a Triangular Force in that game which really redeems the whole shape... you know, with the Angle of Knowledge, the Angle of Strength, and the Angle of Bravery? Huh... maybe they first meant for that to be a trigonometry game."
He frowns. "Sine... isn't that opposite over hypotenuse? So that's... the vertical line and the diagonal line. And you don't know the vertical, the opposite, but they gave you an angle, so... I think you need to put in the angle, then hit the sine key... it's 'sin' on here, though."
Minato pauses. "Well, they're right about that. Maths is a sin." And then, after another pause -- "Hey, Fukura-san... did you get a hair cut?"
He finally noticed...
<Pose Tracker> Suzume Fukura has posed.
Truly, procrastination is the same everywhere. It's always the last bit that gets you... which always seems to be the part you want to do least.
Someone better at scheduling might have done the worst part first, but not Suzume.
"My computer barely runs Innocent Sin Online," Suzume grumps. It's an older game, but, well... her laptop isn't very good. Minato may have seen it since she brings it down sometimes when she has something better off typed, and it's both out of date and wasn't top of the line even when it was new. It's actually not THAT bad at Innocent Sin Online, but if she ever tries the new game, it's just not going to work.
"I got into it for a bit, but it chugs too much to do the raids... not that many people are doing them anymore. So I generally stick to other things. An old American one, 'cause some people set up unofficial servers for those..." That is ALSO a GAME CRIME. "...but I'm in the wrong time zone to do a lot with other people in it."
She shrugs, letting a forward lean tilt her chair forward again until it lands square, all four feet on the ground again with a thump. "You don't have a Funcom anymore?" She suddenly grins. "Didn't know you were interested - I've got a Super. I mean, here. Upstairs." Suzume tilts her head toward the stairs. "Got the remake of Three, and actual copies of Five and Six..." Those are as old as they are. "...but I figured nobody else cared about games that old. Plus some others. I've played Groove-On." She doesn't have anything that runs Bash Bros.
Suzume has played Zerta too, apparently: "It had better NOT have been a math game, it never would have taken off if it was." Minato does have actual trigonometry advice, though, and - "Huh," she says. "I guess that was it. ...Thanks."
A beat, then: "Wait, hair? Yeah," she says, bringing up her hand to tug at her hair. "I hate it when it gets too long. It's too heavy and when it gets humid I look like I've got a puffball on my head. You have, like... normal hair, that behaves. Mine doesn't." They actually have it about the same length, but Suzume's has a lot of extra volume to it. "Why?"
...She doesn't get it.
<Pose Tracker> Minato Arisato has posed.
"Oh, yeah, your computer..." There's the desktop in the corner for anyone to use, of course, but it's hard to play games on that long-term. "I wonder how long it would take to save up the money we get from Tartarus to buy a laptop...?" Probably a while. If only Minato were better at maths, he could probably calculate that!
"Time zones are tough," he agrees. "... we do pretty well with people in Australia, though." They're only a few hours ahead of them! "Do you speak English all right?"
Minato is interested in the Funcom, which is weird, because Minato is usually so dissociated he doesn't look engaged in anything. "Whoa." His deadpan delivery is still deadpan as hell, but that doesn't mean he isn't impressed. "Cool. I love the classics. Can I come play sometime?" 'No Boys Except By Invitation' explicitly has an invitation clause carved in!!
"Yeah, I guess the timeless story of heroism doesn't really have a calculator in it..." Still, Minato has to wonder. He at least knows enough about triangles to solve Suzume's problem! Is this the magic of video games?!
He considers Suzume's hair, some more. "I just noticed it was shorter," he says. "Less puff. But now I think about it, you're not the first girl I've heard saying her hair does that... so maybe it's a guy thing? Man, guys get hair that behaves better, too... that's unfair."
He does need to comb his into submission every morning, but, like, he kind of figures that the wrestling he does and the wrestling Suzume does are in entirely different weight classes. He's heard enough stories abut girls having it tougher that he just kind of figures that's how it works now??
"Well, I like the bangs," he nods, firmly. "Everyone should have bangs which can shadow their face at dramatic moments." Is... is that why Minato has... minato
<Pose Tracker> Suzume Fukura has posed.
Suzume has 'borrowed' the corner computer once in a while, but it's true - it's not something you can steal to play games on, at least not for more than an hour or two once in a while. Other people need that computer too! Plus, certain people (Mitsuru) might ask why she's playing a game all day...
"Yeah, but there's no servers in Australia," Suzume says. "I mean, some of the new games have them, but most of the older ones don't... I speak English all right." Suzume does not speak English as well as she generally claims she does - her accent is strong, and she especially can't handle it being spoken at her quickly, she has had to ask Tyler or Sadakazu to slow down or she gets frustrated trying to keep up - but she *writes* English better than she speaks it and she can get by on the Internet, where voice chat is not always available anyway.
Probably because the Internet is the only place she practices it outside of school...
It surprises Suzume that she's found another one of Minato's interests, but she seems pleased by it, at least - it's rare that she finds someone she can share her interests in, but Minato has never given her any guff for what she likes. She was a little uncertain about where they sat right after Babe Hunt, but either she's forgotten about the pickup lines or she's decided to move past it.
Can Minato come and play them? "Hell yes," she says, starting to rise, before she drops back down in her seat, defeated. "But maybe not tonight." She gives a baleful look at her textbook, still open to the questions.
(This, too, is for the best. Junpei might have some *questions* if the two of them vanished into Suzume's bedroom when he was out.)
As for girls' hair versus boy's, Suzume is a little uncertain; it's not like she's ever had occasion to compare. Her hair has always done this. She doesn't really style it so much as brush it and hope it sits more or less where it's supposed to, though, so she doesn't really understand how much time some other people spend with it... it's wrestling to make it work, but at least it's fast wrestling.
She does kind of look at Minato in vague disbelief. "I don't know if I can do the dramatic shadowing," she says, after a long pause. "I never tried. Like one of those cool guys in a movie..."
Now she's thinking about it. Great.
<Pose Tracker> Minato Arisato has posed.
Mitsuru has definitely asked Minato why he's playing computer games all evening before.
"Cool," Minato nods. "I get by all right, too." Writing is definitely easier than speaking, though. "Not that many people playing Innocent Sin Online speak English... I don't think that game was released in the West."
Minato, as it happens, is a huge nerd. He's just quiet about being a nerd, because he's reserved in general, unlike his far more emotive sister. (... though, are they both hiding something in the depths?) His pick-up lines during Babe Hunt were a touch agonising, but...
But maybe it would have been worse if he was great at them?!
(In the depths, someone else learned that he needs to improve his pick up lines, too...)
Minato perks up, for a moment, before Suzume crashes back to earth... and he looks back down at his maths. "You're right," he says, with just a ghost of a hint of disappointment. "We should be responsible and finish this tonight. But another night," he nods, firmly. "Those old games are great."
(Smash cut to Junpei, who is presently stuck in a long, winding line at Wilduck, crammed between every single student who decided that for their last night of freedom they wanted a burger. He pleads for mercy, and the heavens do not heed him. Ganbatte, Junpei...)
"Of course you can do the dramatic shadowing with bangs like that," Minato encourages her. "It's all in the angle. You just need to tilt your head down. Like this," his head tilts down, and his eyes seem to disappear behind his magnificent emo bangs, face shadowed by his hair.
... though it looks a lot less dramatic when he looks up and says: "See?"
<Pose Tracker> Suzume Fukura has posed.
So far, Suzume has never been asked by Mitsuru why she has been playing video games all night, because her comings and goings tend to be pretty low-key and she generally does it where nobody can see. (Plus, she gets out often enough that people tend to *assume* she's not wasting her time on electronics...)
"Pretty sure no American is going to know anything about the districts of Tokyo," Suzume agrees with Minato on Innocent Sin Online not having been released in the West. "They'd never find anything. Though I guess I wouldn't be any better in New York, there's... what, Manhattan obviously, and Central Park..." A long pause. "...and... Brooklyn?"
Yeah she's out of ideas. She didn't even get the one the New York Yankees play in and she has a Yankees shirt. (The cheap shop she goes to sometimes gets extra American things that haven't sold, probably by way of Hong Kong.)
Suzume has no idea what she would have done if she couldn't laugh at Minato's pickup line. She actually *did* second-guess herself about Junpei's, and has been resolutely pretending it didn't happen because she's not sure if she *would* want to date him. They're friends, right? Maybe that's all it is. She doesn't feel a spark, but is that a real thing, or just literary?
Easier to not worry about it at all. Worry about schoolwork. And about burgers. Sorry, Junpei. You are trapped in the burger dimension, and not the fun one where they're free.
Easier to talk about video games, too. "I'll have to get you up for some of them," she agrees. "I've got some good ones. You'll like 'em... if you haven't played them before, you might have." The advantage of the older games is that they tend to be cheap, but the disadvantage is that Minato might have played them already, either via COMPUTER CRIME or simply because, well. He grew up with one. (But that's not entirely a problem either, given Suzume likes a fair number of competitive ones to go with her single-player marathons.)
"Huh," Suzume says, thoughtfully bouncing the back of her pencil off her chin for a moment. Then she runs her hand through her hair once to mostly get things straighter and leans forward. Her bangs *do* shadow her face, though it takes proper lighting to make it look menacing or dramatic rather than that she didn't brush it quite the right way or has been caught in the wind. Her eyes never quite vanish either, though one of the longer strands threatens to flop over her right eye, and probably would have before she trimmed it.
"...I don't think so," she says regretfully as she straightens back up. "Maybe it only works for you. I think I'm too..." Exciteable? Enthusiastic? Prone to grins and scowls and wearing her heart on her sleeve, or at least her face? "...loud for it."
<Pose Tracker> Minato Arisato has posed.
Minato... plays a lot of edutainment games that wouldn't necessarily fit on his laptop down here. You know, things like Typin' Ghoul. Luckily, that means he can tell anyone who asks that he's actually studying.
Even luckier, no one asked him to explain Virtual Diet.
He nods, studiously, when Suzume talks about the West. "I think there's a Cheesecake," he says, on New York.
(That's a dessert, Minato. You're thinking of food. Please hurry, Junpei...)
Luckily, Minato doesn't have to think too hard about pickup lines. Having realised through the world's most indirect conversation(?!) that Yukari's open to hearing another one if he's serious, he's proceeded to... not use any of them on other girls!
He can still hang out with girls, though. Some girls are his friends, and if there's a space between 'girl' and 'friend' that's all fine and normal. Besides, Suzume's just like one of the boys?? Even if she was making sure Operation: Babe Hunt stayed above-board instead of joining in...
... then again, why would she join in, she's a girl???
"Cool," Minato nods. "I like playing a lot of those old ones over again, too... most of them are short enough that they can get replayed without eating the entire semester. Some of them are really worth replaying, too... there are a lot of details I didn't always catch when I was younger." Which must mean he's been playing video games since he was pretty young, huh?
Minato considers Suzume's attempts to BROOD, thoughtfully. Maybe the lighting is wrong in here, he thinks. It's been optimised to let them read their homework instead of look cool... hmm.
"... that could be it," he nods, when Suzume analyses why she didn't quite feel dramatic the same way. "... but I bet Minako-chan would have better advice for you. She's loud like that, too... so she'd know the tricks to looking cool like that."
Minato... Minato, buddy... you're the Cool Twin. That's the whole point behind her being the hot-blooded twin.
<Pose Tracker> Suzume Fukura has posed.
Suzume is, admittedly, just not a very good brooder. Some people just aren't... and while Minato can be cool and reserved, she runs hot and whatever the opposite of reserved is. She has a good scowling face at least, even if *some people* say she has too cute a face to really manage it.
(Saying that is a good way to see the scowling face.)
As Suzume has never dieted in her life, she doesn't have any questions about Virtual Diet except, perhaps, 'why'; she has an active teenager's metabolism and has never tried to be as fashionably thin as some of the girls in her grade (which is good, because she couldn't do it). She has more to say about cheesecake: "Now I want a piece of cheesecake," she grumbles, though more good-natured than seriously complaining. "Chocolate. Or one of the berry ones."
Suzume's relationship with Yukari is... fraught. They did not get along when Suzume first came to the dorm at all; even Minato would have been able to tell that. Then they got into what amounted to a truce, where both of them just left the other alone. Recently things have slightly improved - she did duck out to talk to her after rescuing Amada at the shrine - but that may not be immediately obvious... especially since Suzume has been trapped in homework hell instead of doing what she wanted.
But she's not going to get in between Minato and Yukari. Nope, no way. If she knew. Which she doesn't. Suzume is just as oblivious as she looks on the matter. Though even she realizes it's a good thing that Operation: Babe Hunt never ran into Yukari at the time.
And of course Suzume didn't join in! She is a girl, as Minato pointed out. (Even if Koh didn't seem to realize, really, until he saw her then...)
Suzume catches Minato's meaning; he's been playing a while. "We had these growing up," Suzume says; she almost moves to point at them, realizes that they are not in the room and she cannot, and lowers her arm back to the table a little awkwardly. She doesn't want to admit that her family didn't really have the money to keep up to date, so: "I like to explore the retro shops when I can. There's a few good ones." Some of them are just second-hand stores in general, though she *does* know a couple that specialize in electronics. "You can find some interesting stuff there, and it actually costs something you can buy on Tartarus funds."
Tartarus funds are most of her spending money. What? It's not like she has a fusion compendium eating up the costs.
"I haven't talked to Minako-chan as much as I'd like," Suzume admits. "We just keep having busy days on the same day." Obviously she *knows* her, they're in the same dorm and while they're not in the same class (Suzume is in the same class as Fuuka) they do at least see each other at school. "Never about something like - like *that*. I dunno, though, is the way she acts really my style...?"
Closer than Minato, certainly!
<Pose Tracker> Minato Arisato has posed.
"I like the chocolate bavarian ones," is Minato's very intelligent comment on cheesecake. "Maybe we can find the freezer space to keep one..." They can buy them at the grocery store, after all! They're not the really nice ones, but, like, they're teenagers. Minato, for one, isn't gonna notice the difference.
Minato, too, is deeply glad that Operation: Babe Hunt did not fall on Yukari. Bullet: dodged.
And Minato, mysteriously... never really had money troubles growing up. Well, aside from all the troubles having money promised to him caused. Still, he appreciates second-hand stores! "There's a really good second-hand book store by the station, too," he notes. "... not that the Kitamuras sell games."
He does imagine it, for a second, though.
"You're both energetic," he points out, tilting his head. "That's not really my style... I'm more laid back." Which explains why he's friends with Junpei -- who is, as they speak, trying to get home with their burger stash. "Even though we're twins, we're pretty different people... well, I guess that makes sense, since I had to move away when I was younger. That's when I really started to appreciate single-player games."
He sighs, as he looks down at his maths homework. "Two-V minus seven equals minus one... ugh. Okay, so that's... add seven, that's two-V equals six... okay... so if 'V' is doubled, that means 'one-V' must just be 'three', right? I think that's right..."
<Pose Tracker> Suzume Fukura has posed.
"Have you tried to get anything in that freezer lately?" is Suzume's response to *that*. "I have enough trouble getting, like, one drink in the downstairs fridge. If there's going to be this many of us we really need a bigger fridge and freezer. Or, like... two of them."
Unlike Minato, her room fridge actually works. But it doesn't have a freezer, and she mostly uses it to stash drinks and the occasional leftover. She is unsure how long a cheesecake would last in it.
(If only because she'd eat it.)
"Book store, huh?" Suzume isn't quite as big into books as she is into games, but it's not like she actively dislikes them either. "I don't think I've gone into that one lately." 'Lately', because Suzume has lived on Port Island all her life - she has a pretty good idea of where all the shops are, at least the ones that are that close to a station she's at on a regular basis.
Minato is pretty laid-back, she'd agree. He takes everything in stride, or seems to - even things he probably shouldn't. Maybe he's just saving up his responses for later.
But something he says gets her to tense up, at least for a moment. She keeps it off her face, mostly, but not her body language, which means that she thinks it's subtle but her intensity is pretty obvious. "I don't see why you have to be like your sibling at all," she says. "Twin or not. Whether you grow up together or not. Anyone who expects you to be just - I dunno, a guy version of her - that's bullshit. Or the other way around."
She lets out a breath, which unfortunately means that she now has the opportunity to focus on math... "I think that has to be right," she decides, a moment later. "Three and three is six, minus seven is negative one... so it checks out. At least they're not sticking you with any fractions in that one." Well, besides 62. That's not a fraction, though, that's division!
<Pose Tracker> Minato Arisato has posed.
"I mostly just get other people's stuff back into the freezer when we're done cooking," Minato admits. "It's just like playing Tetraitis..." You know, the game where you need to connect four blocks in a line? The one where the creator named it when realising he was feverishly playing an early version of his own game so much he almost never finished it?
Though, it might be interesting to know that Minato's always helping other people cook their meals instead of doing anything of his own. Is that his sacred calling as Leader...?
HEYYYY, is Minato just using that as an excuse to get to eat everyone's food?!
"Minako-chan and I became friends with the old couple that runs Bookworms," Minato says. "They're nice people... even when I don't find a book, I end up leaving with a snack."
He blinks, though, when Suzume heats up. "I guess so," he allows, mildly; he's not the kind of guy to grow in intensity to match her.
Though... it is something he files away. Does Suzume have a sibling? That's something he had better not ask so directly right now, because he doesn't want to scupper her efforts to finish this homework.
"Fractions are a problem," Minato agrees. "Especially when they start invoking two-sevenths, or five-eighteenths... that's just ridiculous. I don't know when I'm ever going to have to know about five-eighteenth of a yen." That's, like, so little money he feels like he's getting into imaginary money. "Whenever maths mentions fractions, I always think about music, anyway... you know, metres and stuff."
If only Minato knew a liiiittle more about maths, he'd know that isn't as much of a coincidence as he thinks it is...
... but his Academics level is only 3!
Luckily for everyone, Junpei has a high enough Guts level to boldly throw the door open at this moment, declaring: "Ta-daa! Junpei has come to be your salvation!!"
Over Junpei's arm is draped a bag with burgers. So many burgers.
"We're saved," Minato remarks, as mild as he's ever been. "All right, team... let's re-fuel, then we can continue work on the mission."
Minato's just giving orders so confidently because he's hungry, isn't he...
Luckily, that final twenty percent of their homework goes by much quicker once their brains have actually been fed.