(no subject)

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Sitting in a booth today: Some textbooks.

...

Oh, wait, no, hang on, there's a young man there, as well, with a laptop.

He's mostly obscured by books: Textbooks for nearly every subject possible, cookbooks, a few heavy tomes on high-level programming ideas that he doesn't really understand at all, a few local travel books about the wider Tokyo area.

Yamato himself doesn't look like he's slept in a while. This is fine, because he has a full mug of very strong coffee, the scent of which is probably carrying halfway across bar, and that is a viable replacement for sleep.

Comments

[heatherandsteel]

That's a lot of books, Quentin gets a tower of bento boxes from Bar and sets them on Yamato's table,

"Eat and tell me what you're studying for."

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Yamato doesn't look up, but he does shuffle to one side to give Quentin room next to him, and even moves a few of the books.

In response, he digs out his phone and holds up a set of text messages. There's a moment's flicker on the screen as they switch from Japanese to English.

YAMATO: Are you going to be okay juggling school and Digimon stuff?

JYOU: Sure! Definitely!

JYOU: Actually, my grades are horrible and I'm not going to get into a university and I'll have to become a miner and my girlfriend will break up with me and then die because she inhaled coal dust from my clothes and everyone will be like 'oh, that's Jyou Kido, the miner' and I'll die alone in a mine.

YAMATO: Fine. Clear your Saturday evenings, I'll come help you study.

YAMATO: I'll bring some books on mining just in case.

JYOU: Cool! Thank you! Here's a picture of my girlfriend.

[File received.]

JYOU: And another.

[File received.]

JYOU: And a few more.

[File received.]

[File received.]

[File received.]

JYOU: Isn't she great?

YAMATO: I'm switching my phone off, Jyou.

Attached to the conversation are five pictures of a happy boy with black hair and glasses, with a woman who might be about his age, but it's impossible to tell because her face is obscured in every picture: By a passing balloon in the first one, by Jyou's thumb over the lens in the second, and so on, and so forth.

"I figured while I was studying up to help Jyou, I should also see if I can find anything that'll help Koushiro with figuring out the Infection," Yamato says. "And Sora's been asked to cook for her mother's apprentices, so I'm finding a good recipe for her to use."

[heatherandsteel]

"And when did you last sleep?" He leans on Yamato's shoulder because this is too much work.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

"I dunno, twenty hours ago? I haven't spent all that time studying."

That would just be silly.

"Thanks for the food. I think the last thing I ate was -- donuts? About four hours ago?"

[heatherandsteel]

"While I approve of donuts, you need to eat real food. What else have you been doing?"

Quentin looks over the books, maybe there's a subject he knows and can help with.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

"Donuts are real food. They've got carbohydrates and sugar. If you eat them with bacon, you get a complete protein in the deal too."

Yamato did not, in fact, eat his donuts with bacon.

He does catch Quentin looking at the books, though, and slides one towards him. "If you want to help, you could find a recipe. Toshiko Takenouchi is kind of traditionalist, so something traditional, but with a modern flair, that says 'I'm a great daughter' and can feed around eight people. Dessert optional but advised."

Sora hasn't actually asked him to do this, but hey, it makes things easier for her if he has suggestions.

[heatherandsteel]

"I'll try but you're taking a break soon then we're going to take a nap," Its still too early in the day to be awake and he knows that Yamato needs to sleep.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

"Yeah, sure. I'm totally nearly done, I just have to do this, and check Takeru's homework, and maybe look up some stuff to help Mimi adjust to being back in Japan."

[heatherandsteel]

"You can do one of those things and then you're resting. I will sleep on you," That might work.

[feminine_menace]

Fingers suddenly appear between two stacks of textbooks directly in front of Yamato. Said stacks are shoved sideways and apart by the aforementioned fingers (or, rather, the hands to which they are attached), revealing YT sitting on the bench across from Yamato.

"'Sup," she says. Then she frowns. "You look like shit," she observes. "Even more than usual, I mean."

[angry_friendship_wolf]

"'Sup. You also look like shit."

Yamato doesn't look up at all before he says this, so this is an opinion that may need to be taken with a grain of salt.

"I'm fine. I have coffee. Did you know that in 1953, seven percent of Japanese GDP came from military exports? I didn't know that."

[feminine_menace]

YT totally ignores the (lame-ass) insult and factoid. "When's the last time you slept?" YT's eyes dart to the ungodly amount of coffee and then back to Yamato.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

"About twenty hours ago. I'm fine, it's not even a full day," Yamato says, and takes a sip of coffee. "Once I've got all this done, and I've checked Takeru's homework, I'll sleep for a few hours."

It'll be great! Yamato's looking forward to it.

[feminine_menace]

YT scowls at him. "This whole place is a time freeze, dumbass. You can sleep now and not miss any of your crazy self-imposed deadlines. I bet you're so Z-deprived you're not even typing complete sentences." YT darts around to Yamato's side of the table and peers at his laptop screen to confirm her theory.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

They aren't complete sentences, but then, the whole thing is made up of quick, easy-to-memorise notes anyway, with various annotations like 'Jyou has trouble telling Oda Sakunosuke apart from Ango Sakaguchi' and 'Will be on every one of his exams for the next year: Make sure he knows this.'

"If I sleep, I lose momentum. If I get this all done now, then it's all done and I don't have to think about it any more."

[feminine_menace]

"I'm interrupting you, so you already lost momentum," YT points out. "Also, is this whole workaholic masochism shit a Nipponese cultural thing or, like, just a you thing?"

[angry_friendship_wolf]

"It's a me thing, and that's kind of racist," Yamato says, without looking up. "And my momentum feels pretty unbroken, despite you interrupting me. You're going to have to up your game."

[iprotectyou]

Textbooks? That's new. Paper is rare where Baze is from, and books even more so as a natural consequence.

The coffee, however, is a somewhat familiar scent, and the teen slumped behind the books, staring at them, is definitely a familiar sight. Baze is loathe to break his concentration, so he waits until the boy looks up before initiating a conversation.

He doesn't mind waiting.

Okays, that's a dirty, filthy lie. Without Chirrut around, Baze gets bored fast. "What are you studying?" he says, raising his hand in a greeting. "Hi. I'm Baze Malbus."

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Yamato looks up a little abruptly at the greeting, as if he'd completely forgotten that there was a world beyond his booth.

"Oh, er. Modern literature, Japanese history circa 1950, integral and differential calculus, probability, physics, and English," he rattles off.

Jyou didn't specify what subjects he needed help in, so Yamato's just assumed 'everything that isn't biology or chemistry.'

"Yamato Ishida. These textbooks aren't really for me. Someone I know is worried that he's going to crash and burn and become a penniless miner."

[iprotectyou]

Baze's eyes light up with interest at Yamato's ramble. "Modern literature? What does 'modern' mean to you? I assume you're from Earth, like everyone else?" he says, placing a hand on the back of a chair in an unspoken question to sit. "I'm sure your friend wouldn't end up as a penniless miner. But if he did, there's honor in hard work."

[angry_friendship_wolf]

"There aren't even any mines where we live, so he'd have to work pretty hard just to find somewhere to be a miner in. But he's wanted to be a doctor since he was twelve, so anything other than that is a worst case scenario as far as he's concerned."

Unlike Yamato, who has almost no sense of direction in his life, and thus neatly avoids these concerns.

He gives a quick nod in response to Baze's unspoken question, and clears some of the books to one side.

"In this instance, 'modern' is defined as 'within the last hundred years.' Most of it focuses on just three writers, though: The Decadent School, who mostly wrote about aimlessness and cultural identity after a major war, and things like that."

[iprotectyou]

"That's a big dream. I hope he makes it," Baze says, settling his armored bulk into the chair. He hails a rat, and orders hot chocolate with tang bark, indicating that the rat should stay for Yamato's order. "Did you want anything from the rat?"

He frowns a little, his brow creasing. "Aimlessness after a war, huh? There's a lot of material there, I imagine," Baze says, folding his arms. He tries not to imagine too hard, though the end of a war would be nice. "So what's your favorite subject to study? You seem like quite the scholar already."

[angry_friendship_wolf]

"I think I have enough coffee to last me," Yamato says, giving the rat a quick nod. "Shouldn't need anything more for a while."

Baze gets a quick, assessing once over as he sits. Part of it is to assess if he's a threat, most of it is to just get a general idea of what he's like. Yamato doesn't even try to hide it.

"Probably engineering. I'm competent enough at it, and it's probably what I'll go on to study after this."

[iprotectyou]

Baze didn't expect to be given the once-over by a teenager--maybe he should have, he doesn't know how dangerous Earth is to its teens, after all--but he does appreciate that Yamato doesn't try to hide his analysis. Baze is thick, and armored, and clearly used to handling his bulk in a fight with grace, if Yamato can tell that sort of thing. He's also remarkably open, not bothering to hide anything about what he feels--and that's largely joy. He has deep laugh lines and few other wrinkles. He's also armed with a heavy plasma cannon and an ammo backpack, which may give Yamato a hint of how much of a threat he can be, if he chooses.

Baze assesses him in turn.

"Yes, but do you like it?" the larger man says, raising a brow. "I know very little about engineering as a study, and especially not engineering from someone else's universe, but if it's anything like ours, that's a hard field to get into especially if you don't like it."

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Yamato does wonder, somewhat, what the plasma cannon is (well, apart from 'a gun') and how it works. It looks like it'd be interesting to take apart, but he's not going to ask if he can. That'd just be rude.

He does briefly file away a few observations, though. A warrior of some kind, happy, probably not inclined to be a threat. That last, at least, is fortunate: With Gabumon still in quarantine, Yamato's functionally unprotected.

Yamato is not especially threatening to look at. He's on the tall end of average, a little gangly, dressed in clothes that are not in any way made for battle, or anything more strenuous than city living. Even sitting down and exhausted, though, he carries himself with a sense of utter, self-assured, even military-oid authority.

"I like it enough that I keep finding myself doing it in my free time. That's probably a good indicator."

Good enough for Yamato, at least. "What about you? You don't look like you're from any of the universes I've encountered in-bar so far."