milliways_bar | (no subject)

Around, and around, and around goes Noriko, turning into a faint blur on her modified skates, face in her tablet and earbuds in her ears. She's taking a motion break in between knitting squares of greys and blue, and ears of the same colors. The tablet plays a video of facepainting, exaggerating the mouth to make it look full of fangs.

Feel free to stop her, James, she has this tendency to make people quite dizzy with this routine.

He watches her with bemusement, eyebrows raised.

"Doesn't that make you dizzy?" he calls over after a while.

"Huh?"

She whirls to a stop in front of him, holding the tablet in the crook of one arm. "Does it... No, not really? I mean, I'm not really looking at where I'm going, I'm watching the tablet. It's like that head thing ballet dancers do."

"I don't know about ballet, but I suppose that makes sense. A fixed point." He smiles up at her. "Good evening, I'm James."

"Noriko," she says, though her feet begin to swivel, fidgeting. "Good...I guess it's evening, we'll go with that. It's a weird little thing dancers do, and it's not easy to explain."

He looks at her feet.

"I'm sorry, I interrupted your - exercise."

"Oh, no, you're good. I just fidget," she says with an easy smile. "Kind of a condition, sorry."

"If you're sure. I could walk around with you if you like, to keep talking."

"Nah, I wouldn't make you do that," Noriko chuckles. "I have to move around, or fidget, or do something pretty much constantly unless I'm smoking something. And I don't do that inside, given the whole kids-around thing."

"Then I won't ask you to sit", he says easily, "unless you prefer to fidget off your feet."

"I dunno, does it make you nervous?" she asks, twirling around with a long tail of bright blue hair flowing behind her.

"Not such that I can't put up with it. And you move very gracefully."

It's the colour and impressive length of her hair that's caught his attention right now, though.

Edited 2015-10-10 01:08 (UTC)

"Well thank you. I try to be as unlike a bull in a china shop as possible," she says.

"So you got a name?"

"James", he says with a note of apology in his voice for the omission. "And may I ask yours?"

Edited 2015-10-10 01:12 (UTC)

"Ashida Noriko, usually known just by Nori," she says with a short bob of her head. "Pleasure to meet you, and yes my hair is real. Since you're staring at it."

"It's very striking." He smiles. "And not something I see at home, either dyed or natural."

"Yeah, the chemical knowledge to bleach hair wasn't really widespread--or sanitary--until the nineteenth century," she says. "This came in a bottle called electric blue, but I use a color slightly different now. And a little purple, too," she notes, tugging on the little braid.

"Do you blend them together yourself?" he asks with interest.

"Oh yeah," Noriko nods. "I bleach it, re-dye it, and all that jazz myself. With as much hair as I have and as vibrant as I want the color to be, it's easier and cheaper to do it myself. I've helped some friends do streaks in theirs."

"That must be a sight to see, the streaks of colour standing out. Does it take very long to complete?"

"For me, doing my whole head, it takes a couple hours. For some streaks, nah. Maybe forty-five minutes all told," Noriko chuckles. "You curious?"

"Very much so." He slants a grin. "Though I fear it would attract even more comment in my world."

"You can do wash-outs," she chuckles. "You'd look good in pink streaks." It's been forever since she did KoolAid wash outs, too.

"Pink?" James raises his eyebrows. "Do you think so?"

"Well, pink, red, green...I suppose blue, but I don't think it'd go with your skin," she laughs. "I've got dark red, if you want to do wash-out ends."