[IC] A Certain Unique Academy

[Krayzikk]

Rebekah Cross

Rebekah blinked.

Then blinked again. She had absolutely no idea what any of the merchandise the hat-garbed girl was holding actually was, or where it was from. Nor was she any closer to understanding why she was selling it in front of the school. Though... Those prices really were low. Not one of the items she could see was more expensive than ten euros. Most were substantially below that mark. And the merchandise was kind of interesting...

...

The Brit fished around in her bag for her wallet, tugging a single ¥1000 note from her wallet and handing it over. Curiosity had prevailed. "I'll take a plushie, a keychain, and whatever the last two hundred will get me."

"Why are you selling them in front of the school?"

[Crimmy]

ハットちゃん "Hat-chan"

The teenaged girl known only to her compatriots by the moniker of "Hat-chan" smiled.

It was quite an unpronounced smile, one that revealed very little behind the enigmatic blonde (though it was naturally black) girl's motives.

"Do you want mittens?" she asked, handing over a pair to the boy she knew as Karasawa Shinjiro. "They're especially heatproof. Only seventy-fifty yen."

She handed off another pair of plushies of the titular Gekota to a pair of schoolgirls, happily taking away their pocket money. Of course, it was only five hundred yen each, so really, that wasn't too much for some teenagers to spare on toys. They were good-quality merchandise too! The plushies were useful when you didn't have pillow stuffing and only had a empty potato sack to sleep on.

"Have a hairclip," said Hat-chan brightly, breaking away from Karasawa Shinjiro as she handed over a plushie of Pyonko, a keychain of the Gekota character known simply as "Unnamed Tadpole" and a hairclip of the titular Gekota himself to Rebekah in return for that sweet thousand yen note. "They're all the rage these days."

[Krayzikk]

Rebekah Cross

Fascinating. The British teen casually added the clip to her hair, pocketed the keychain, and regarded the Pyonko plushie in her hand with great curiosity. She dimly recalled seeing such a character somewhere before, perhaps at her previous school, but she couldn't say she had ever examined one closely. It was actually kind of cute. Fun to carry around, at the very least.

Seven euros well spent.

"Thank you. ... Why are you selling them in front of the school, though?"

[Suku]

Aria Fabre

Aria sighed as she walked out the school her hair outside of the standard twintails and just blowing in the wind and while she carried her violin case in her left hand what drew many people's attention was that in her right was a carton of Musashino milk. It was a guilty pleasure she admitted but she couldn't help herself with that part. Still as she walked up she saw Kawashiro san and apparently was appeared to be kiosk selling cute frog like plushies. Gekota if she was not mistaken still it was a odd site to say the least. "What exactly are you selling?" Aria asked with a tilt of her head a french accent being heard despite speaking in somewhat fluent japanese.

[HereComesTheSnow]

Shinjiro Karasawa

He waved his hand in the negative, not one to be moved by the idea of heatproof mittens when his body would generate the warmth fine on its own.

Thusly, eliminating the the need for mittens.

"No thanks, not into that stuff. It's aimed at girls and all that, gotta keep my manly image intact." he explained, dropping the mittens back into her box full of merchandise, whereupon they were swiftly snatched up by other, less heat-oriented students of Hybrid Academy. "An' you didn't answer my question." he continued, ignoring a pair of sour glances thrown his way by those who would TOTALLY not stand for somebody slandering Gekota, and would undoubtedly take to Twatter once they bought their matching Gekota phone cases.

"What's the story with this one?"

[Crimmy]

ハットちゃん "Hat-chan"

"I am selling Gekota merchandise to make money."

The hat-wearing teenage girl rattled the small tin where she was storing all her payments with her free hand, allowing for the sound of metal coins to jingle through the air. It was a nice sound, one that was almost musical in its beauty and in what it represented. That being, of course, the pursuit of more money.

She dropped the tin back into her box and took the seven hundred and fifty yen somebody had paid her for those heatproof mittens, allowing the coins to clatter into the tin with an emotion that could almost be described as happiness, but was in fact merely satisfaction.

"Maybe you can get something for your girlfriend, Kara-han."

[Krayzikk]

Rebekah Cross

"That seems a sensible proposition." The Sorceress concluded after a few moments of processing Hat-chan's answer. Watching as students paused to spend their pocket change, she could easily understand why it was such a prime spot. So many potential buyers coming through at the same time. It likely yielded profits in a half hour that were greater than a half hour spent standing anywhere else. And by setting the prices as such, she was ensuring that they would be well within the expendable budget of the average student. "This certainly seems to be a decent spot for such sales."

She noted another of the teenager's less potential customers just to her left, head swiveling to fix the other student with a curious look. "Why would the franchise hire her directly? I doubt the profits of a single student would be enough for them to be interested."

[HereComesTheSnow]

Shinjiro Karasawa

He glanced sideways.

"Yo, Aria." the young man said in passing, before his purple oculars returned to the girl known by the moniker of "Hat-chan", green Gekota merch playing off her golden hair and eyes as well as any Packers fan could dream.

And narrowed, questioning for a moment whether her last statement had been a jab at him, before deciding no, that wasn't in Hat-chan's style of doing things. So with that being the case, he answered truthfully.

"Haven't had one since before I moved here," he replied, still a stone wall to her attempts at coercing money out of him. "We were smart enough to break it off when I left home, and we were like, seven. I'm not dealing with shipping fees for someone I keep up with about once a month."

Being addressed directly by a female, slightly anglophonic voice to his right, he turned to meet the mage's curious gaze and offered a shrug.

"Academy City's a weird place. You never know what you'll see here as a part-time job. Could be plenty like her across this district, let alone the whole city."

[Crimmy]

ハットちゃん "Hat-chan"

"Maybe you can find one," said the hat-wearing girl. "You're in the prime of your youth."

She dropped the now-empty box to the ground, quickly grabbing the can of money before it fell with the rest of the cardboard. In a surprisingly smooth motion, the girl known only to her compatriots by the moniker of "Hat-chan" ducked down into a crouch, swivelling her entire body around to grab another box from underneath her badly-written sign. With a sound that could be interpreted as slightly triumphant, she grabbed it and hung it onto her body like the previous box had been, before returning to her selling position with nary a fuss.

"Would you like some Gekota scrunchies for your hair?" she immediately asked, switching some of her attentions towards Aria Fabre.

[Krayzikk]

Rebekah Cross

"It still seems an odd proposition. Perhaps setting up a stand of some kind would be sensible, but I doubt the profit margins on individual school age sellers is high enough to be worth it. Especially given the need to pay wages." She fell quiet for a few moments, pondering the issue. It was hard to tell, by the end of it, if she was still completely addressing Shinjiro. "Hm. Something to ponder."

"I don't believe I've seen either of you outside of class. Or on the first day. Espers?"

[HereComesTheSnow]

Shinjiro Karasawa

"Yeah. Mage?" he replied succinctly, casually. "Don't you sit pretty close to me?"

He'd not really begun the socializing aspect that typically came with the first week of school, nor had most of the others in class. Simply sticking to the acquaintances he'd made during the system scan had been enough to tide him over while he adjusted to Hybrid Academy's unique methods of teaching and structure and all that.

"We'll see, Hat-chan. We'll see." he replied after a beat, registering her words of encouragement a second later than normal.

[Krayzikk]

Rebekah Cross

"I believe I do." The British teen causally held out a hand. The opposite hand hung onto her Pyonko plushie, keeping it at her side. "Rebekah Cross. Rank 4 Sorceress."

[HereComesTheSnow]

Shinjiro Karasawa

The purple-haired esper smirked, encasing her hand with his own in a good, firm shake. The kind that wasn't limp-wristed, but wasn't intended to try and squeeze the life out of someone else's hand like some fucknugget.

"Shinjiro Karasawa, Level 4 Esper. Burning Blood. Didn't know you guys had ranks like that too."

[Crimmy]

ハットちゃん "Hat-chan"

"Do you want to go on a date then?" she asked off-handedly to Karasawa Shinjiro, her attentions now also focused on handing over some Gekota-themed underwear to a nearby student who was unashamed of buying such things in public. Of course, beyond costing a thousand yen, it would probably cost said student their reputation, and in the first week too!

Nobody really bought the underwear because of that. Well, in public at least.

They were a hundred percent cotton, however.

[HereComesTheSnow]

Shinjiro Karasawa

...

"-what-" he said in plain English, giving the salesgirl a look that spoke volumes of utter confusion mid-handshake.

You gotta be kidding me, no way I heard that one right. Quit bustin' my balls, Hat-chan. I'm tryin' ta introduce myself here.

"You wanna run that one by me one more time, Hat-chan? I don't think I caught it." he replied, returning to fluent Japanese even as some of the female students around them tittered excitedly amongst each other that she just asked him out Oh Em Gee! Consummately ignored, he broke the handshake awkwardly even as she continued to make sales as if she'd just said "Hey, Kara-han, how's the weather?"

[Crimmy]

ハットちゃん "Hat-chan"

"Do you want to go on a date?" she repeated in her usual patient manner, as if it wasn't anything special to be asking a teenaged boy in front of the schoolyard while selling merchandise from a franchise of frogs. "There's a girl I know who had a bad break-up and she really wants to move on from that."

The girl known only to her compatriots by the moniker of "Hat-chan" dropped five hundred yen in coins into her can, money obtained from selling off a few Gekota stickerbooks.

"She's a nice person. You would like her."

[Suku]

Aria sighed and shook her head it looked like it was better off not to ask yet she couldn't help but just stand there watching the interaction between Hat-chan and Karasawa. Deciding that she might be here for awhile Aria decided to shift her violin case to rest on her shoulder while she was glad that she got a large carton of musashino milk as she continued to watch the two her red eyes silently switching between the two wondering if there was some subtext she was missing.

[HereComesTheSnow]

Shinjiro Karasawa

This all seemed to take a little while to properly process in Karasawa's young, teenaged mind. While Hat-chan had turned out to not directly be asking him on a date, she was indeed propositioning that she set him up with someone out in public, in broad daylight, amongst a crowd of others.

Needless to say, this was a weird situation!

And not to mention, he was being asked to be the rebound... Not the highest thing on the food chain.

...Will I be busy any time soon?

He racked his mind, searching for any activities that would possibly provide evidence in the affirmative.

None. And would it be just of him to leave some person suffering and downcast simply because helping out would be weird?

No. If that were the case, he wouldn't have stopped half the muggings he did by chasing the perps down with a literal full head of steam. He didn't know if he could be a good rebound guy for Hat-chan's friend to get with...

Buuuuut maybe I can try and do that 'talk her through it' stuff, if nothing else.

Help her get over it.

Yeah. Do that girl some justice.

...

the fuck am i saying

"Uh... Fuck it. Sure. Grab life by the horns and all that. I'll give it a shot." he finally replied.

[Crimmy]

ハットちゃん "Hat-chan"

"Awesome."

Her eyes snapped towards the milk-drinking girl standing nearby, the one that had been playing that sad violin during the testing all those days ago.

"Do you want a pair of Gekota scrunchies for your hair?" she asked, returning to business mode. She gestured at the twintails that the other teenaged girl was wearing with a hand filled with said scrunchies. "I think the green goes nice with that shade."

The scrunchies were cheap for their quality as well. Only six hundred yen for eight.

---

@Suku

[DELETED7282737]

Saya

Saya was as ussual walking home from her long tiring day at school again. The smile on the brown haired girl still remained on her puffy face despites herself being sleepy and stiff. After she had grabbed everything and was about to head out school from the one and only exit of the school her eye caught onto something remarkable. Royal gold from the richests families of England. The golden hairs of the small hat-chan lingered in the wind awaiting for the arrival of the sweet caring Saya. Saya her smile quickly turned into a grinn when her visors had locked onto the target. She hasn't seen the teenager known as hat-chan for over the past days so her life hasn't been so fun as the day they met. Saya as quickly as possible made her way over to the group of students that were standing around something that her mind hadn't processed yet as the distance grew smaller between the two.

Once Saya had been close enough she jumped onto hat-chan and gave her a big hug "Hat-chan" she loudly mummured in a sweet tone while her face snuggled up against the rose colored cheek of the girl. Saya let the girl go from her grip again so that she could continue on with the acticities she was doing before. The blonde seemed quite busy for someone that was still at school. She angled her head slightly in confusion and looked over the box that was in front of hat-chan "What are you doing? Is this some sort of s-... Gekota!" Her voice sweetly sounded. Her mouth opened in awe as her smile only grew bigger. She looked through the various Gekota merch with her head hanging close to the various items to look at them all individually. She had come to the conclusion that this was the blonde her store and that it was a big hit with most of the students. The prices weren't expensive either so Saya felt almost forced to buy something. Saya her head turned up towards the blonde and tilted once again "Why are you selling these? Are they yours?" Her expressiong became a little less extravagant but still warm and kind.