Requited Love

"Taka-"

Binary code fed through the CPU in the background, reading onto the screen as a electrical blue. Art, the program forced the resolution to format more pixels than it had ever rendered. Impossible blue eyes scanned data without a 1 or 0 missed.

File names. Folders, video files. Picture .jpegs. Compressed .zip files. Porn of varying vulgarity passed through Ene's scans without issue, occasionally putting a corrupted file in quarantine. Video game files, program files, zombie game save files passed unhindered, once things that would have made her pause and frown.

"Takane-"

In the physical sense, she had no mouth to smile with unless her facsimile of a cyber girl was taken into account. She had no mental concept of anything, her coding, although genius, being only a mockery of the human mind.

Blue light filled half the bedroom, flickering with Ene's graphics as a teen slept in a burrow of blankets in the dark half. The computer gave a soft hum, the speakers disconnected and unplugged in a last ditch attempt to keep a surprise early alarm from waking him and his mother. His soft, slow breathing of sleep slipped under the humming in a healthy pattern. It hitched , and shuddered, then returned to the waves of REM sleep. The nightmare wasn't bad tonight.

"Takane, wake up."

Ene divided her focus, the scan slowing and basic computer settings running as the RAM memory processed the new audio file that had slipped through the firewall. Extra scans showed nothing malicious, and its origin appeared to have cleared itself from the computer history. She pressed play.

Bump. Bump, bump. "Takane, it's time to wake up."

A different result. Curiosity peeked, the computer intelligence had to investigate and learn. The scientific method had four basic steps: Observe. Hypothesis. Test. Revise hypothesis as necessary.

Observation, done. Two plays had two different results, so onto hypothesis: if she played the file again, it would play something entirely different, unless it only had two options. The coding followed different rules than any coding language she could understand, and could not figure out the programming behind it.

Play.

"Takaneeee." Bump. Bump. "You have to wake up, you know it's going to rain!"

The name at the beginning struck a chord with her, but the voice remained a puzzle. Ene pulled up the forecast for the day, and found that the day was predicted to have little chance of rain.

"I'm not asleep, and it's not going to rain," Ene replied with a pout, speaking as how she would communicate to Shintaro, seeing as the file had addressed her. With the speakers disconnected, no sound came from the computer, as expected. To her surprise, the file played again, this time with a line of male giggling.

The screen dimmed and Ene's form sunk to the taskbar as if sleeping, the icon for iTunes as her pillow. The hum slowed and stopped, all processes settling into sleep mode for the remainder of the night.

The solid desk felt cold against her cheek, which had gone numb and no doubt red. Takane clenched her hands, finding a pencil hanging limply from one of them. She moaned, curling her legs under the chair, instinctively curling up for more comfort.

She budged her head, unsticking her eyelids to pry them open at the giggling. She moaned again in annoyance.

"You're awake now," Haruka pointed out, and gently shook her shoulder again. "C'mon, I forgot my umbrella. You remembered yours, right?"

"Yeah," Takane yawned, stretching in her chair as she shook herself fully awake. She rubbed her eyes. "I fell asleep? What did I sleep through this time?"

"Sensei left right before you fell asleep. I didn't want to wake you, so I worked on homework." Takane watched as Haruka already had his bag all ready to leave, a shoulder bag for his laptop and a few papers; as for textbooks, he used the ones in classrooms, having a separate set at home. He knelt to get her worksheet, which had apparently slipped off her desk during her nap.

She stuttered out a meek "thanks" as he put it back up to her, peeking at her from his spot on the floor. "Here ya go. It's pretty easy, actually."

Of course he would say that. He was the smart one, even with their conditions turning their minds into difficult fogs to navigate. She huffed and blushed, shoving it into her bag, not bothering to put it in a proper folder. "Get off the floor, then, if you want to share my umbrella."

He smiled sheepishly. "About that..."

He didn't finish his sentence, and Takane pulled a face. "C'mon. You went to all that trouble to wake me up, and you're not even up to walking?"

"But Takaneeeeeeee," he whined. "Walking is haaaaaaard!"

Still, she didn't offer help. "We have to walk to get to the bus!"

Haruka frowned. After a long moment, Takane tensed, sucking in a breath at sudden realization. She scrambled out of her seat, getting down to the floor to help him up to him feet. "Dumbass, you should've just out and told me! Why'd you even get that paper if you knew this would happen!"

"It's- it's not that bad, Takane," Haruka claimed, his leg muscles barely obeying him. He started to slip down again, taking his classmate with him, and he grappled for the desk, trying to use it to help pull himself up. "I like helping you, that's all."

"Idiot." Takane scowled. They managed to get him collapsed in her seat, Haruka rubbing his legs. "You could have left without me."

"I didn't want you to stay here until Sensai found you," he replied quietly. "I thought it was the rain making you tired."

The rain. A light sprinkle beat on the windows in the repurposed lab room, but the heavy dark clouds promised a heavier downpour. Few students still remained at the school, spinning out umbrellas and taking shelter under trees or their bags in desperation. Some didn't care for getting wet at all, not even bothering to pull over the hood of the sweater they'd donned.

Takane sighed, rubbing a hand over her face. "You're the human barometer. I can't tell with that shit."

Haruka's apologetic smile, however, seemed to melt away all the troubles and make her relax. She huffed, her hands on her hips. "You know I'm not waiting for you," she told him sternly, putting up a front.

"-ne?"

"I'm up, I'm up!" Haruka stood up to prove that fact to her, and his expression changed to shock in an instant. His arms went up to balance himself, and he breathed a sigh as he managed to avoid falling. "See?" he chirped, grinning. "Just fine. C'mon, before anyone else steals-"

"Ene? Are you asleep?"

"-the elevator and we have to wait longer for it."

Takane rolled her eyes, and hefted her bag again over her shoulder. "Let's go, then," she said, heading out ahead of him, and heard his steps follow soon after. They turned on their normal path to the elevator, and both did a double take at hearing the ping before they even got there.

"Hey!" Takane snapped, running forward as another student slipped through the metal doors. "What do you think you're doing?! That's for disability resources only!"

"Hey, you little jinx, wake up."

"Takene, it's not-"

"No! It's not okay!" Her fist banged on the elevator doors, too late to stop them from closing. She clicked the button on the side a couple times to call back the elevator, but the old piece of machinery refused to open. "That asshole just stole the-"

"-elevator!"

"...you were dreaming about elevators? I didn't know it was possible for you to even sleep," Shintaro muttered, checking the forums for updates on another screen, having left one empty to give her some semblance of peace. "You're always burning up the screen in the early hours of the morning."

Author's Notes

Huzzah.