"Uh…"

Kumiko leaped back, letting out a strangled sound that fits somewhere between a snort and a scream. A parrot flew into her house in a panic, slamming into the door on its way out of Kumiko's room.
The brunette herself slid back to where the two roofs connected, nearly falling off the edge but catching herself before she could slip. Kumiko held a hand to her heart, frantically scrambling up to sit and to look at the person that just spoke. A girl with black hair and purple eyes was eyeing her with an incredulous expression. Kumiko laughed awkwardly, desperately trying to explain the situation.

"Oh, I have a reason to be on your roof and right outside your window, I swear…"

Just thirty minutes ago, Kumiko came home to an opened and empty cage, with her parrot nowhere to be found. She had stood there for a few minutes before going into a Craig (that's her parrot's name, which her idiot of a friend, Shuichi, had given) induced panic and flipping out.

After nearly breaking a few chairs and crashing into a door, Kumiko found Craig sitting teasingly on top of her neighbor's roof, just out of her reach. Her neighbor's roof was luckily connected to her own, which jutted out just under her window.

At first, Kumiko tried coaxing the parrot to come back inside with some treats in her palm, which did not work at all. Apparently, the first thing that Craig decided to do when he escaped his cage was to rip open the giant bag of bird food and eat half of it which lead to it being as full as it was now. Then, she attempted to trick the parrot into walking onto her arm but realized that sticking her hand out wasn't going to do anything to the sedentary parrot. Craig tended to not move much after he ate, even if there was something as tempting as more treats in front of him.

Now, Kumiko resorted to the last option she could think of before Craig decided to fly away and never come back again; climbing onto her neighbor's roof. The thing was, Kumiko had to do it extremely quietly, for she had never once talked to her neighbor before. She was an absolute introvert, and the only people she had and would ever talk to were her friends Hazuki, Midori, Natsuki, and Shuichi, which was quite a small group. Kumiko didn't want to interact with her neighbor at all and would've very much preferred to silently grab her parrot and leave, but her (surprisingly) beautiful neighbor just had to catch her at the wrong time.

"I would certainly like to know your reasons for… crawling onto my roof from your room," her neighbor said, still fixing her with a perplexed frown. Kumiko laughed awkwardly and rubbed the back of her neck, still sitting between the two roofs.

"Er, you did see that parrot that just flew into my window, right?" Kumiko paused. After seeing the black-haired girl nod, she continued, "That's actually my very, very, disobedient pet. Somehow it got out of its cage and flew to your roof, then flew back in when I tried to get it. I originally wanted to catch it without disturbing you, but it seems like I couldn't do that."

The girl in front of Kumiko blinked twice before letting out a loud, airy chuckle. She started into a huge laughing fit that made Kumiko's heart flutter.

She's… she's so cute.

"I-I'm glad you think that," the purple-eyed girl stuttered out, desperately trying to compose herself.

"Ah-I didn't mean for you to hear that."

"Your brain doesn't really go the same speed as your mouth, huh?"

Kumiko halfheartedly let out a chuckle, looking at her feet in embarrassment. "I guess, sometimes."

The girl gave Kumiko a wry smile, craning her neck to look past her. She motioned for Kumiko to close her window so that the parrot wouldn't fly out again. Then, she turned back towards the brunette.

"You might as well come in. You're already on my roof, anyway." the girl proposed, catching Kumiko by complete surprise. She started stuttering and making random noises before she could get an intelligible response out of her seemingly defective mouth.

"I think it's-er-too sudden, I mean, kind of informal to just go in without introduction," Kumiko finally spluttered out, turning a little pink as her tongue-tied around itself.

The girl kept silent for a few seconds. "I'm Reina Kousaka."

"Huh?"

"You said you wanted an introduction, no?"

"O-oh! In that case, I'm Kumiko Oumae," the brunette responded, her slowness getting the best of her. Reina smiled again, a simple quirk of the mouth that seemed to condense Kumiko's heartbeats.

The black-haired girl left their conversation at that and opened her window up a little more, waiting for Kumiko to move, which she made no intention to do. Sighing, the purple-eyed girl reached out and tugged on Kumiko's arm, dragging her along until she climbed in by herself.

"I was wondering when you were going to come in," Reina commented, closing up her window and pointing at Craig on Kumiko's windowsill, "Because I think your parrot locked you out."

why did i choose the name craig? i have no idea.