James' asshole was on fire. He knew it had to be the Papa Johns. There were no other irregularities, nothing else that he hadn't eaten before and been fine with, although he supposed the same thing could be said of Papa Johns. Still, it was the only thing he had eaten recently that he thought might have done this to him. First bad service and now this? He made a mental note that no matter how good the food might be he would try to avoid the temptations of late-night garlic butter delight whenever he could manage it. Beside, it was just too expensive.
It wasn't really in the same vein as what he was experiencing now, but pain had become somewhat of a regularity for him recently. Ever since that night where he had been mugged and beaten to a pulp about three weeks ago, he'd been feeling a bit under the weather in one way or another. He had re-aggravated his back, something that had been wrong with him for a long time. He had never quite figured out what it was but this time it hadn't lasted long so he was more than willing to overlook it. His wrist had also been hurting him lately, which he thought was odd. He hadn't felt this kind of pain since he had sprained his wrist trying to do handstands in middle school.
Someone else walked in to the bathroom and settled down in the stall next to James. Whoever it was signaled their intentions with a short, staccato expulsion of gas that sounded like an out-of-tune trumpet. Not wanting to stick around for any duration of time, James quickly finished his business, washed his hands, and splashed some water on his dehydrated face. Having to splash himself with water every couple of hours was becoming a weary task, and he hoped whatever was causing the dehydration would resolve itself soon. Once he had finished, he started to walk toward Phillips Hall. He figured he would eat real quickly, jet over to the fitness center to clock in, and then run down Emerson Field to ref the soccer game he had signed up for.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Roseanna, Erin, and A.J. were eating lunch together in the Campus Center dining hall. They were tucked away in a corner, talking about Quinn. He was a frequent topic of conversation amongst them.
"I just don't understand how he can be so calm," Roseanna started. "I mean," she began again before lowering her voice and taking a quick peak at the surrounding people, "We have seen three Hollows now. Every time we see one all I want to do it cuddle into a little ball and hide."
"And he just dispatches them without breaking a sweat," A.J. said, finishing Roseanna's unspoken thought for her.
"I don't know," Erin began, "it's not he's even done anything special. Really though, he hasn't even released his shikai yet. I know the Hollows have been kind of big, but I don't think anything we've seen isn't anything we couldn't overcome as a team."
"You would say that, Erin," Roseanna answered her, "you're really good at this. I can even make smoke when I try to use kidou, and you've used White Lightning. That's level four," Roseanna added despairingly, sinking her head into her chest.
Erin blushed a little bit and dipped her head. "I'm just saying," she continued, this time a little bit more subdued, "I don't see what's so great about him. I think he's a bit of an asshole."
"What about you, Iris?" A.J. asked as the smaller girl as she returned to the table with a salad.
"What about what?" she queried.
"Quinn," Erin said, filling her in.
"I think he's hot."
Roseanna looked at Iris like she had shot her in the face with a packet of ketchup. "Eww, gross! Not what we were talking about. Besides, he smokes. Like, all the time. I don't find him attractive at all."
"I don't know," A.J. countered, "I can see it. I mean, I don't find him attractive myself, but he's got that roguish daredevil persona, so I suppose I can understand where Iris is coming from."
All three of them looked at Erin, expecting her to pass the final judgment. Erin, who had gone back to her food, was twiddling with her salad for a few seconds before she realized everyone was looking at her. "What?"
In unison the other three heaved an exasperated sigh and each went back to their food. "Weren't you paying attention at all?" Roseanna admonished her, albeit in only a semi-serious manner. "You know what, forget it, I don't even want to talk about it."
After a few moments silence, Roseanna thought she felt the tiniest tingle of reitsu shoot out from a boy a few tables down from them. "Guys, did any of you feel that?"
"Feel what?" A.J. asked.
"Never mind, it's just that I could've sworn I felt someone release a tiny bit of spirit energy just now…" Her voice trailed off as she looked a little bit harder at the boy. He had longish blond hair and was wearing some sort of red soccer jersey. He was kind of cute, she thought to herself. She let her gaze drift off into space as she tried to recollect the exact moment of the spirit energy flare. It happened… right as he took his first bite of food? She looked at his plate to see if there was anything unique on it, but was disappointed. She wasn't sure what she was expecting but hotdogs and potato chips surely weren't it.
Roseanna gave Erin a little nudge in the ribs with her elbow. "Erin. Wave at that guy, the one in red. See if you can get him to come over here."
"Me? If you want him over here that badly you do it!"
"No, you're the attractive one, he'll be more likely to come if you do it!"
"That's not true, but fine." Erin waited until the boy looked away from the dining hall's relatively large television playing re-runs of ESPN's SportsCenter© before throwing him a tiny wave.
"Did he see it?" Roseanna asked anxiously.
"I think so. He looked like he was going to wave back but then got embarrassed or thought I was waving at someone else."
"Let's just wait. Maybe I was wrong." Roseanna told them, now genuinely doubting whether she had actually felt a reitsu flare, as none of the others had.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
James had settled down with his food, two hotdogs, a handful of potato chips, and a glass of root beer, just something to be snarfed down fairly quickly before work, when he thought he saw a girl in the corner wave to him when he looked her way.
Is she waving at me? he thought to himself. He looked behind him to see if there way anyone else there before he started to return the wave, but his inhibitions got the best of him and he snatched his hand out of the air and just went to work on his hotdog. Really, there's no point in going over there since I only have about 10 minutes to eat anyway. And what if I'm wrong? I'll look like an overbearing dumbass. So James stayed put, finished his hotdog, and then ran off the work.
In truth James' reaction was probably overly critical of himself, but he had never been the most sociable person. Besides, going over to talk to four girls when he didn't know any of them might be a little intimidating for anyone. And then he might actually look like a jackass if he went over only to leave in five minutes to go work…
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
James came back into the room after the soccer game to find Andrew lying on his bed, talking to a girl from back home, trying to get her to come to Ithaca.
"No, Kirstin, really, Stony Brook is an awful university. The only kids that go there are ones who didn't get in to any of their top choice schools." There was a moments pause as she answered his banter before he responded: "You know what, I hope you don't get accepted in Stony Brook or any of your other schools so that you have to come to Ithaca. James, isn't Stony Brook not a good school?" he asked his roommate as he walked in.
"Actually I know a guy who's going there on a lacrosse scholarship and a lot of my class went there. It's a good school."
"Whatever Kirstin, you didn't hear that. Besides, James has no clue what he's talking about. He's just saying that because I'm the one asking him."
Chuckling inwardly, James threw his official's shirt into his laundry basket and grabbed a towel and some toiletries. He slid out of his socks and into his sandals and sauntered slowly in the bathroom to take a shower.
"Oh!" Andrew yelled after him, "Will and Levi are coming over in a minute, okay?"
"Whatever," James called back over his shoulder. He liked Will a bit, but Levi smoked too much for his liking. That wouldn't be a problem while they were in the building, so James let it go.
James entered the bathroom and threw his towel over the shower door. He pulled the dividing curtain that separated the showers from the bathroom closed and then stepped into the shower. He closed the shower door, undressed, and twisted the dial, sending a stream of scalding water onto his back.
"Holy shit!" he cursed, twisting violently away from the showerhead and rotating the dial to a cooler setting. "What the fuck!"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Meanwhile, on the campus quad, Roseanna had been playing Frisbee with some friends from her dorm when she felt another sharp spike in spirit energy. "Second time today," she said absentmindedly to herself, while looking of in the direction of the lower quad, where the burst had come from.
"Roseanna, heads!" someone cried from across the green, drawing Roseanna's attention just in time for her to turn into the oncoming Frisbee and take a firm whack on the nose. She crumpled awkwardly into a heap, her long, bronzed legs splayed out on the grass as she put her hand tentatively to her nose. When she withdrew it there was blood there.
"Oh my God, Roseanna, I'm so sorry, I thought you were paying attention, are you okay?" a girl named Kelly said, running over to Roseanna to help her up.
"It's okay, I'm fine." She put her hand back up to her nose to staunch the bleeding. "I'll just run to the bathroom and clean up."
"Do you want me to go with you?"
"No, I'm fine, really." Roseanna said quickly. Maybe a little too quickly, she thought to herself. "I appreciate the offer, Kelly, but it's fine. I'll be out in a minute," she told the other girl, her voice sounding funny to her through her pinched nose. Truthfully, while she didn't really dislike Kelly, she found the other girl to be a bit too hyperactive. Besides, she needed to call Erin and tell her to about this…
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"You're sure?" Erin asked over her Razr©.
"Yeah, it's Landon. Second floor, as in not the ground floor but the one above that; room 215," Roseanna informed her. "I just want to see if the guy from the first Hollow scene is the same guy we saw in the dining hall."
"Alright, what do you want, the guy's name?"
"Yeah, I just called Quinn and he said that was the room but he couldn't be bothered to look up the guy's name. He's convinced he's a nobody, but I'm not sure. If you do this, I'll owe you big."
"Okay, but you owe me really big."
"Thanks, Erin. I knew I could count on you," Roseanna said before she hung up the phone. Normally Roseanna wouldn't ask something like this of someone else but she was trying to clean up her nose at the moment. Furthermore, she'd been feeling this reitsu flares for a while, almost since the first incident with the girl in front of Park. It had been happening enough that Roseanna thought it was worth investigating, and in the dining hall had been the first time she had been able to pinpoint the flare with a person. The boy from the dining hall looked a little bit like the first guy from Landon and with these kinds of things Roseanna had learned that there weren't many coincidences...
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Erin wasn't sure what Roseanna saw in this guy, because she had most definitely not sensed anything in the dining hall or just now, but Roseanna seemed the most in-tune with the spiritual world out of all of them. She might not have harnessed her energy to the same extent that Erin had, but Roseanna had been seeing spirits since she was really young, a lot younger than Erin had started seeing them. Erin didn't know if that was an indication of talent or ability, but she trusted Roseanna.
She walked down to Landon from upper quad and then waited outside Landon pretending to talk on her cell phone and fiddle for her keys until someone came along and let her in. Really, she thought, security is so lax around here. She made her way up the flight of stairs and then through the door to the odd-numbered wing. She found room 215 and to her mild surprise it was open. Inside were three guys playing Call of Duty 4. She recognized it because her old boyfriend had played it quite a bit before they broke up. She had mostly gotten over him but her face was still looked a bit somber when she poked her head into the door and cleared her throat to draw their attention. One of them, a big guy, paused the game, and they all turned around to look at her.
She looked back at them, inspecting each of them in turn, before the bigger one asked her, "Are you looking for James?"
Not seeing anyone who looked like her quarry among them, she decided to gamble on it. "Yeah, can you tell me where he is?"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Andrew was surprised to see the girl in the doorframe but pleasantly surprised because she was kind of cute. She had a hoodie on so it was hard to tell exactly what she looked like, but she was definitely fit. He asked if she was looking for James in the hope of striking up a conversation, since James had never had any girls over to the room. Andrew knew James didn't know anyone up at Ithaca so he figured it was unlikely she was looking for him. Her yes took him by surprise just a bit but he recovered adroitly and told her James was in the shower and that she was welcome to stay and talk with them until he finished.
"No, that's alright, I'll come by later," she told him before spinning out of sight.
"Who should I say came looking for him?" Andrew yelled after her, in a last fleeting attempt to get her name, but there was no response. "Damn, James, you lucky bastard…" he intoned under his breath, before looking at Will and Levi, shaking his head and shrugging.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Erin went around to the other side of the wing to convince the trio of boys she had actually left before darting into the bathroom from the other side. She was sure there were some rules against something like this but there were always double standards.
There was only one shower going. There was a pair of jeans and a towel swung over the opaque door that enclosed the bather.
Erin grabbed the towel and leaned back against the wall just outside the shower to wait for the boy to notice.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
James was rinsing shampoo out of his hair when he looked up to realize his towel had been swiped.
"What the fuck…" he mulled over his possible options before decided on an approach. "Hey, put my towel back," he called over the door, hoping that perhaps is was an honest mistake, but not really expecting anyone to be there.
"Not until you tell me your name!" a voice responded. He thought it might have been a girl's voice but the din of the shower made it difficult to tell.
"Alright, seriously, I'm going to count to three," he said, his voice changing from surprised to resigned, "If my towel is not back by the third count, I'm going to step out of this shower, naked or otherwise, and kick your ass!" he finished, his voice crescendoing back up to an irate half-yell.
Nothing happened immediately, so James' started counting, feeling like an idiot but too incensed to stop now. "One. Two…"
James decided to get the jump on whoever it was and he opened the door before the third count and stuck his head out, right into the face of the waving girl from the dining hall.
"You!" he proclaimed, startled a bit since she had been right in his face as soon as he opened the door.
She looked equally rattled and took a quick step back, before holding his towel out tauntingly. It's probably the same guy, Erin thought to herself. His hair looked a light brown on account of being drenched, not that dissimilar from her own, and it seemed shorter, although the water might have been playing a part in that as well.
"Name, then towel," she said, grinning wickedly, "or do you feel like exposing yourself to me?"
James, concealed behind the opaque shower door, was a little bit of at a loss for words. He thought about making a lunge for the towel but decided against it.
"Alright," he began, his blood settling down and his voice dropping. "I tell you my name. You give me the towel. You tell me your name, and then you tell me why you're doing this."
"One and two, yes, three maybe, four no," she responded playfully, obviously enjoying his discomfort.
James cocked his head quizzically to the side and regarded her for a few seconds. If he was trying to make her uncomfortable he failed, and so he agreed to her terms. "James Meredith."
She started to hand him the towel before pulling it back. "Middle name?"
"Not part of the deal. You would have to specify something like that."
It was Erin's turn to evaluate her opponent, and she locked gazes with his baby-blue eyes before throwing him the towel. "I'm Erin. You get the last name later, if things pan out perhaps."
"What things? What are you talking about?" James asked as he snagged the towel out of the air. He reached back into the shower to turn off the water. "No answer, huh?" He wrapped the towel around his waist and stepped out of the shower only to find the girl had taken off.
"Erin, huh?" he said to himself, before retreating to the shower and toweling off. "I swear I've seen her before today…"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
So it is the same guy, Erin thought to herself as she walked away from Landon. It was his eyes that reminded her. She had been the one to see if he was okay that night… That's the third time, she thought to herself. First the first Hollow, then the dining hall, and now this shower incident. Once, chance; two, coincidence; three, pattern, she thought to herself as she dug into her pocket for her phone.
She flipped open the cell phone, hit 4 and the pressed sending, calling Roseanna.
"Did you find him?" the other girl asked before Erin could say anything.
"Yeah."
"And…?"
"It's the same guy from the first Hollow. But he's got no spirit energy. He's utterly unremarkable, at least in terms of spirit energy."
"But I know I felt something!" Roseanna responded despairingly.
"And I believe you," Erin crooned gently, not wanting to upset the other girl, "I'm just saying Quinn probably won't buy it."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -