On wednesday, Mariko received a small package in the mail. It was delivered by hand, to her one-room dorm apartment she'd owned since last year by a student council member, a bulky third-year with arms like pythons and legs like spaghetti, star of the wheelchair basketball team. She thanked him, and opened the package in the doorway just so he could confirm she hadn't begun a drug smuggling operation in the school yet. She'd tried a joke, and he'd grimaced. The package contained a bunch of papers and a small whiteish piece of plastic designed to be fitted into one ear. Good thing, too, because Mariko had lost her last hearing aid somewhere in Yamaku's leafy grounds.

On friday, during science class with that old geezer who dressed like that alien on the late-night channels on tv, students were expected to split into groups. Mariko glanced at the board and sighed. She recognised those names from last year. Not very well, she'd never exactly been close to either of them, and there was the problem. It was so dang hard to carry on a conversation with either of them. The american girl, Coral, refused to act outside of her rei ayanami impersonation without some kind of puppet on hand, and Yamauchi was worse, with his beady little eyes and uncanny valley mannerisms. It didn't help that he was practically the only student outside of one of the third-years who was taller then her. Bluh. 

Couldn't be helped. At least they weren't people who would actively try to slow down the science project. or just sit and natter about their personal lives while she was trying to work. Mariko scanned the unfamilliar classroom, looking for either of them in the ensuing chaos of chairs and tables being shuffled more thouroughly then a bad medium's tarot cards.

 The sound of heavy wooden floor scraping against metal table legs was an annoying one, and Mariko hunched down somewhat and concentrated on the assignment at hand. Apparantly the assignment was -SCRAPE- ical, so as to -CLONK- the nature of -CREAK- dissolved in a solution of [i]-CRRRR-[/i] by boiling it with a -SCRAPE- and determining the precise -BONK-ature of the solution. Mainly theoretical stuff, She glanced up. Her own table was alone. She righted herself and picked the thing up "[i] see, that wasn't so hard and the excess effort doesn't turn into sound! Picking things up, the saviour of noise pollution everywhere.[/i]" and moved over to her two aquaintances, who as luck would have it, were already together.