Momentary Reprieve (Ran)

some coincidences are deliberate

totally didn't post this in the wrong area, nope, not me

Holy. Hot. DAMN. 


That was one of the few lines of thought she managed to squeeze out of her head for now. It was jumbled. It didn't make a lot of sense. She was way past the point of even entertaining the thought of caring. There was a very stark line drawn in the sand, a limit to how much stimulus she could stand, and she was getting dangerously close to toeing over that line.

Her head was pounding. A sort of white-hot sensation overall, with a dull throbbing at the base of her skull. With just how acutely aware she was of the blood pumping under her skin, she wouldn't be surprised if her blood pressure was some outrageous number - of course that would require her to direct energy towards that thought, and that was too much to ask of herself right now. Feeling simultaneously sluggish and high-strung, gritting her teeth together, she trudged off after her last class of the afternoon with a dour look on her face and her sunglasses glinting in the light. A pretty drastic change, considering how she normally tried to keep her face void of most expressions. She couldn't feasibly keep from listening to others chatter usually, but the pressure she was feeling right now reduced all of that to a low buzz.

Peopletalkingeverywhereloudcan'tthinkshutupshutpshutupshutup-

Now would've been the time to eat lunch, but she didn't have anything prepared and she wasn't about to visit the cafeteria in this state. The library was an option that she quickly shot down; it was nice and quiet, but she had too much respect for the place and whoever the librarian was (she'd never actually spoken to them) to barge in and try to 'untangle' in a space that was supposed to be used for quiet study. Not right now. And her dorm, while being another valid option, was also out of the question. She needed somewhere where the chance of someone coming across her was practically, if not outright, zero.

But then the spot she'd settled on, a spare classroom in the main building, turned out to be locked.

...finefinefineFINEI'LLJUST-JUST-

Fuming. Literally fuming. If it was humanly possible she'd have steam coming out of her ears.

Doubling back, she took a few shuddering breaths before touching her hand to the entrance of the school's library. This hadn't been her first choice, but what little bit of conscientiousness she had right now forced her to try to calm down as much as possible before she entered. No slamming doors or throwing her bag around. Calm. Control.

Somehow managing to do that, she quickly made her way to a small table back in one of the corners, pulling out a chair more roughly than she'd intended before flopping down onto it and slipping her bag off of her shoulder. Situating it between her feet under the table, she fumbled around in the bag - being mindful to not just rip open the velcro straps - for a few things; her laptop, the voice recorder she was currently using, a pair of earbuds. Her hand brushed against a thermos (still slightly warm) before the tiny bit of hope was crushed. She'd quickly finished whatever coffee was in there in the middle of class.

A corner of her mouth drawn in and fighting the urge to chew on her bottom lip, she went to open the laptop before hesitating with her hands on the corners. She had an accessible music notation program that she'd found, and she still had more work to do on that project, but if she didn't give herself some time away from that right now, she might scream. So instead she carefully slid the laptop over, popping the earbuds into the recorder and both buds in her ears, before adjusting the volume on it and hitting play. The first of today's lessons started in her ear, at a volume that didn't make her want to wring her own neck, and she slowly lowered her head down onto her crossed arms as she listened back to it. There was the chance that she'd been so stressed out that some of it had gone in one ear and out the other.

One hand turned up to catch her sunglasses, folding them up and placing them next to her on the table as her heavy eyelids shut. They felt like they were burning. She slumped in the chair as she tried to get comfortable, eyelids raising and lowering as the recording played on.

I've got time. Deep breaths. Force myself to slow down. Just gonna...take...a second...

She hadn't planned on it, but before too long she'd finally drifted into a light sleep.

CODED BY DUCKIE OF GS

❊ life is beautiful ❊

Clicking could be heard. It wasn’t a normal clicking sound though. The sound was one of heels hitting the floor. It was calming to Ran, hearing her black pumps hit the ground with every step she took. Her heels had always made such a sound, so she had never thought of it as one to be annoyed with. Currently, the woman, a large book in hand, was making her way down the hallway of the school, one location in mind: the library. She had checked out a book about flowers, as she had begun to take an interest in them, despite their knack for attracting her least favorite creatures in the world, bugs. Even as she walked, she cringed, visibly shuddering.

Spotting the door to the library, Ran slowed in her steps, her previously flowing white dress resting against her body and her white lab coat also finding its way down from the air. She had been walking rather quickly, as she shouldn’t be away from her office for too long. Despite the fact that it was technically her lunch break, Ran didn’t like to leave her office, lest a student need immediate attention.

Reaching the door, the older woman opened it up with gentle care. She didn’t want to slam it open. Oh no. This was a library. You have to respect silence. Quickly, she padded over to the desk to return her book. Plopping the book onto the desk in the ‘return books here’ area, Ran sighed. And with that, she was free of her weight and was on her way back to her office. However, as she looked around the library, she spotted a student, assumed student that is, sleeping. Obviously, it would be rude to wake the child up, but for all Ran knew, it could have been a child that was sick and in need of help, wasting away in the library. There had been occasions of such things before. Students were too prideful and didn’t want to go to the nurses and ended up fainting and being carried to her office. So, it was Ran’s duty, as the nurse, to check up on the student. Hopefully, it was just a tired student. In which case, she would suggest a day at the hot springs to relieve stress.

Slowly making her way towards the girl, Ran tried to get a good look at her. She looked familiar, maybe she had been to Ran’s office before? Regardless, she would check on the girl. Now standing next to the girl, she took a seat next to her and tapped on her shoulder lightly. “Wakey wakey~.” A grin was on her face. After all, a smile would help the girl warm up to her. Ran didn’t want to be hated, now did she? If the girl truly was sick, Ran would throw on her worried face and take care of it, but for now, she’s going to appear pleasant.

WORDS: 491 TAGS: Marie Reisender NOTES: nurse to the rescue!

SHIN OF GS + ADOX

some coincidences are deliberate

@ran | I have this icon tagged as "not amused", but I think it works for "groggy" just as well

For a change of pace, this time Marie didn’t really dream about much at all. Sort of like a void. She kind of felt like she did the other day at the hot spring, limbs kind of weightless, not really getting caught up on much as things drifted in and out of her head. At one point or another she envisioned a clock floating by, inexorably ticking along. A clock? Where did that come from? Evidently she couldn’t escape all of her anxieties in her sleep.

Light sleeper as she was, she was aware on some level that someone was now next to her. The nudge on her shoulder, the voice that cut somewhat through the fog - they didn’t show an immediate result, per se, but they did start a reaction. At first all she did was utter a low groan as she started to come out of it a little bit more; she wasn’t a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, and that definitely applied here. She felt like a puppet with its strings cut, really, although much more acutely aware of her own discomfort than any wooden thing.

All of a sudden a spark of realization shot through her, and she tensed up as her heartbeat kicked into high gear. Her eyes cracked open briefly, but she quickly screwed them shut again with a furrowed brow as she was unprepared for the light that hit them. She couldn’t rightly tell if it was fluorescent or natural lighting.

WhereamIwhoisthathowlongdidIsleepwhat-

With one hand slipping on her sunglasses, the other patted down her pockets for the familiar shape of her retracted cane. Reassured by its presence, she visibly relaxed a little bit, shoulders sagging as she sat up and switched her recorder off. rolling up the pair of earbuds afterwards.

Right. Library. Fell asleep.

The voice that had called out to her sounded vaguely familiar, but in her befuddled state of mind it would take a miracle for her to try and puzzle out who it was based off sound alone. Her throat felt dry - she hadn’t really said anything all day, so it was probably to be expected.

Sinking a bit closer to the table surface, she sounded a lot more hoarse than she usually did, with some words slurred as she struggled to get her head on straight. ” ‘m fine. Just...fell asleep. ‘m sorry.” One of her hands reached up to massage one of her temples, vainly wishing that the headache she’d felt earlier wasn’t coming back in a bigger way. She decided to take a guess that this person could have been the librarian - after all, she was a student who crashed in here. It only made sense. ”How long ‘ave I been out…?”

In the back of her mind, there was still that tiny voice telling her that she didn’t have enough free time to waste it like this.

CODED BY DUCKIE OF GS