In the countdown to Christmas, I wanted to write 12 Christmas-themed drabbles over the next week and a half. But because I was really sick yesterday, I didn't get around to posting this one, so there will be 2 today. I hope you like them. Inspired by Lex Complex's 'The Twelve Days of SKETmas' which you should check out.
The snow wasn't cold, nippy at most, like someone was scratching at his nose and fingertips with cool metal. It wasn't even really snow if he thought about it. It was a light yellow sludge, clinging to his shoes and slipping under his soles. It was a nuisance if anything. The grit he had asked to be put down had done little more than make the snow more distasteful in colour, and leave the faint smell of salt in the air. He could ask some first years to volunteer in shovelling it away. He checked his mental calendar and made a note. Thursday would work if he skipped lunch.
Tsubaki tucked his hands into his pockets and rubbed them against the cotton inside. He saw gloves as somewhat of a frivolity. Not to mention, they were impractical; they hindered his movements and made holding pens next to impossible. Efficiency was more than enough compensation for icy fingers. He didn't need them regardless. He had very few uses for his hands as he walked home. Organisation was his middle name and he would be damned if he sank to the level of derangement that required him to finish work on his journey. That would be absurd.
But that didn't stop Kiri from bringing him take-away tea every morning, in a flowery cardboard cup with a familiar logo he just couldn't place, insisting it would warm his hands if nothing else. Every morning when Tsubaki left his house, Kiri would wordlessly hand him the cup, and every morning Tsubaki told him it wasn't necessary. The general affairs manager would nod in response, only to show up the next morning with an identical cup. And every morning Kiri's smirk would grow larger, until one morning Tsubaki could almost classify it as a smile.
He was glad Kiri's stubbornness and his annoyance at that amused at least one of them but he didn't need tea. If the beverage exchange must have continued, he would have preferred canned coffee. It was practical, easily storable, and he doubted someone handing him an effortlessly bought can would result in butterflies in his stomach and the warming of his cheeks (and the rest of his body for that matter). Or maybe the tea was just doing its job. He couldn't tell.
Tsubaki looked both ways before crossing the street. His steps were precautious, possibly overly so, but there was no place he would rather slip up than in the middle of a reasonably busy road a mile away from Kaimei's school campus. An impatient driver honked at him before he reached the other pavement and he held back his glare. He was still wearing his uniform, and as president, the school's reputation was of great importance. The students needed to be polite and respectful, so he merely nodded in apology and sped up his pace fractionally. He silently thanked whichever god was listening that Kiri wasn't present. He doubted the car would look very nice with a Shuriken through its windshield. Nor would the driver look very nice with a knife through his skull.