Across The Universe [Closed]

[Emiko Nakajima]

*--outfit

There’s only so long a person can go without speaking their native language.

Emiko had to speak English almost twenty four seven. She did not have a phone service that would connect her to Japan yet, and she had discovered her second day in that her cell phone was out of service. She’d have to buy a cell phone to use while she was in the states, but in the meantime, her lack of a telephone device meant she was unable to make a call to Japan to speak to her mother, or her siblings, or her nieces or nephews. The idea of not being able to contact her family was enough to make Emiko tear her hair out. She sent an email to her mother from her laptop the other day, but she hadn’t received a reply, and even then, that was written Japanese. She wanted a conversation. She didn’t want to have the one-sided bursts of talking to herself that she had whenever she was cooking rice or reading on the couch.

She needed someone to talk to.

Sitting at her desk in the security office, Emiko finally signed off for the day and stood, gathering her things in a stressed rush. Glancing up to the clock, she noted that it was around five- too early for dinner but too late for a quick bite. She wasn’t hungry anyway, she never enjoyed adhering to the three meals a day diet. Her diet involved light snaking through the whole day. Ergo, she ate only when she was hungry. And people wondered how she stayed to thin? She did take some dried cranberries from her desk drawer and tipped a few into her mouth before disappearing, leaving the empty office with full intent to go home and stew in the sterile environment that lacked any iota of conversation waiting for her. What a boring existence she had, these days. She almost longed to be back on the police force where she always was doing something. Then again, she also was surrounded by like-minded people who were closed off, polite, and not so open and touchy-feely. (Why was everyone insistent on shaking her hand?! It was unsanitary!)

She was halfway off campus when she recalled with a start her first day at Hammel. There was someone who spoke Japanese! She recalled the tall man and his horribly accented yet perfectly grammatical Japanese. Most times she would avoid people like that, but at the moment she would take what she could get. She turned on her heel mid-step and changed her course, heading to where he said he would be when she last saw him: his office, adjacent to the library. He did tell her that if she needed assistance, she could visit. She wondered if need for a decent conversation would count as assistance.

She found the office after a bit of looking and rapped on the door sharply, announcing her arrival before opening the door to look in on him. She wasn’t one for waiting to be let in. “Hello, Morrison-san. Are you busy at the moment?” Even if he was, she was still going to bother him regardless. She was in one of those moods today.

[Eli Morrison]

Eli was never bothered with needing to talk to people. Outside of Mii and Vincent, not too many people took an interest in the quiet genius, outside of the usual tutoring and library requests. For someone so remarkable, he was often very unremarked-upon. Perhaps part of that was his natural ability to avoid the spotlight. He always wore muted colors, and since Mii had been too distracted to be on his case about it, he had reverted to his usual brown cords and an old maroon sweater. With his hair slightly tousled, he looked like a college student who had spent the day trying to study and failing.

At four-thirty, as always, he'd shooed away the last stragglers of students. With the library open all day, and study rooms available in the dorms, it wasn't all that hard to check out the the books to the last of the kids, then kick them out. After that, he went back to his office to do some administrative things, putting out orders for requested books and making sure he had the assistants scheduled to work the later shifts. The next week, they'd be staying until eight-thirty every night, until finals were over, but now he was supposed to be heading home.

That was, until someone knocked on the door to his office. He hadn't been expecting anyone to stop by, particularly not the woman he'd met so briefly a few weeks ago. (Though he was used to people just barging into his office. Between Mii and Vincent and that Sidra girl who had been around a lot more recently, he was starting to wonder why he even bothered closing the door at all.)

Honestly, Eli was a little surprised that someone was coming by the library this late. But he could humor the new security guard, at least for a little while. (Zero was at home and in need of her walk.)

"No, Ms. Nakajima, I am not busy. How may I be of assistance?" As always, his grammar was perfect, and his accent was terrible. At least, to his credit, he knew his accent was bad and tried to correct for it. But knowing how to do everything didn't mean he was actually able to do it.