It's that groggy nearly half-gone state of empty wasteful thought he shook me out of when I sat down. I get that a lot. That feeling of being asleep but moving, casting oblong glances as the shadows nipping at ankles, dragging the shredded soles of worn brown flip-flops across the pavement. It's that lack of emotion that even awake there's some level of higher functioning missing form some inescapable force pulling backwards. In observations at late I think I've noticed less and less people trying to pull themselves out of the wet cardboard box of a sleepwalking existence, and I'm not sure if that's a consequence of my own morbid fascination with this place or perhaps a sign of resentment. Maybe it's just the rain.

The rain just didn't seem to stop and neither did life; it just trudged on in a relentless stream from the heavens, which, for all its wonder in a sunny setting, couldn't muster a smile upon its grey face. Five days had passed since the rain started pouring, and it wasn't much consolation that as winter set in over the campus, my fingers turned a blistered pink and I could see my breathe twist in snakes beneath my nose before fading away in a puff of escaping warmth in front of my eyes.

We were on a bench, even through the rain faded to a more dismal sleet as the afternoon wore well on into evening. I sat on my hands but didn't pick my eyes up from my knees; after all it wasn't exactly necessary. My neighbors buzzed in chattered whispers, but I didn't exactly see why when we were the only ones out here. As if we didn't look suspicious enough, chatting in a November ice storm. But after all, Jeremie had insisted and Einstein gets what Einstein wants.

I shifted in my seat, sliding my hands to absorb heat from another part of my legs, since in their current position they had already wasted it. I couldn't tell if it was making me colder or warmer to bunch up my extremities, but in the end the remaining heat in my body had already begun to dissipate into my soggy black shirt. I thought about how this sitting outside business wouldn't exactly be necessary if Jeremie wasn't such a stickler about secretiveness. I thought about how this wouldn't be necessary if he had a shred more patience when it came to materializing Aelita. I thought about how my hands might not be so freezing if maybe he'd just…

"Yumi"

But then I stopped myself from lingering over worthless daydreams, running in circles in my mind. When Ulrich sat down next to me, I woke out of my last daydream just long enough to sputter back into a self-diminished splurge of existentialism.

"…..Yumi?"

And now I sounded stupid. God, even in my own mind I can't find myself a niche where Ulrich might notice me…

"YUMI!"

I jumped. I guess maybe he had noticed me.

"Are you alright? You didn't hear a word I just said did you…" Jeremie chided. I wish he'd shut his blonde trap, I was miserable and his computer blabbering wasn't helping the cause.

"Jeremie we're just burning up out here," Ulrich's voice dripped with honey. Well maybe it was sarcasm but same difference when it was falling off his lips. "It'd be easier to concentrate if we were, you know, not braving the elements."

"You know why we can't talk about this inside! If someone were to hear about Lyoko then we might loose Ae—"

"Yeah Princess this Princess that. We're running in circles worse than Sissi's brain reading a nutrition label Eistein cut us some slack. I think it's break time," Odd was stuffing his face with… Five chocolate strawberry candy bars? I can't imagine how Ulrich deals with such a pig... I don't know how I can deal with such a pig.

I saw Ulrich glance over at my hands imprisoned under my legs. "Besides it's already four. Yumi and I are already over due for sparing," Ulrich said. "Coming Yumes?"