Hoshi barely made it through the doorway before the bell rang, and she felt herself being nearly withered to death by Señorita Huarte's glare.
"Lo siento!" Hoshi apologized, quickly taking her seat. Señorita smiled, in a miraculously good mood, replying with a cheery exoneration: "De nada, chica. Sacan los libros, por favor, a la pagina noventa y ocho." Hoshi dove for her Spanish instructional PADD, somehow managing to knock heads with the kid next to her.
"Otra vez," she muttered. Once again... "Lo siento!" She looked to see who she'd hit, and her eyes met with those of Robert Collins. Hoshi hadn't ever gotten to know Robert very well, but he'd been in her physics class four years ago. In fact, the only thing she happened to remember about him was that he had purposely sabotaged her team's chances in the class's final science bowl. His gaze was suspiciously unwavering, and she looked away quickly. She didn't even give it a second thought when he asked to see some of her notes on the subjunctive. After all, she was known for her succinct but effective grammatical note taking, not to mention her unswerving willingness to help others out... She even smiled as he returned her data PADD, replying to his "thank you" with a friendly "any time." After all, poor Robert Collins didn't seem to interact much with other kids, and if she could impart any small human kindness on him, that might encourage him to break through some of that shell and interact with people; he could build some friendships, and....
Spanish, Hoshi, Spanish! This isn't a philanthropy class! But she still couldn't shake the self-satisfied feeling she had that she had done a good deed.
The rest of her classes poked by at a reasonable rate, punctuated by a rather amusing linguistic fumble in Vulcan class over "lapuramano," asparagus, and "la-kuramano," honorable ambassador. Lunch, as expected, had revived her considerably, even though she had to listen to Mishal detail Mark's sparkling eyes, his beautiful smile, and his flawless titrating technique. Oh well, Mishal was finally communicating her feelings, at any rate, and Hoshi supposed it was kind of cute. Eventually, the conversation had evolved into something a little more substantial, so it hadn't been completely mind-deadening. She'd walked home, done some reading, gone to dance class... it was shaping up to be a decent, if somewhat boring, day. But when she walked in the front door, both of her parents were sitting at the kitchen table, waiting in seeming apprehension for her arrival.
"Oh no," was Hoshi's first reaction, "it's Grandma Nakamura, isn't it?" The floral shop flowers sitting on the table seemed to confirm this, and Hoshi stopped dead in the middle of the kitchen.
"Oh, no, Hoshi," her mother repeated, struggling to take control of her facial expression. "It's not that at all. You've... had a visitor."
"What?" Hoshi misjudged her mother's expression as that of a person fighting back tears, and she fielded another guess. "Katsu came home and didn't bother staying long enough to say hello to his little sister?"
"Um, actually, do you know a Robert Collins?" her father cut straight to the point.
A wave of realization hit Hoshi as the pieces began to fall into place. "Ohhhh nooooo!" she groaned, grimacing vaguely. "You're kidding, right?"
Kioko Nakamura finally lost it, shaking her head through peals of laughter. "Oh no... we're not kidding."
"How does he even know where I live?" Hoshi lapsed into her chair, cradling her head in her hands. "And who does he think he is, coming to my house without even warning me? Without ever having been invited?"
"Well..." Yasuo Sato interjected. "He didn't exactly come unannounced. He videophoned about six times beforehand."
"Six?! For god's sake... what did he say?" Hoshi rubbed her temples, feeling a headache coming on.
"Every time he just asked for you... after he'd finished stammering, anyway. Each time I'd answer and tell him you weren't home, he'd get flustered and hang up."
"Unhhhhhh," Hoshi moaned. "This just keeps getting worse and worse. Are those flowers...?" she didn't even dare finish her sentence.
"For you," her mother's eyes sparkled in teasing delight. "Aren't you going to read the little message it came with?"
Hoshi glowered chidingly at her mother, sighing as she moved to take the little white envelope. "To Hoshi -- These flowers sit in your presence now, if I asked you to the dance would you have a cow? I hope you won't scream in fright and put up a fight. Give me your answer by tomorrow night -- Robert Collins." Hoshi nearly vomited at his lack of poetic skill. Instead, she moaned some more, lamenting the direness of the state of affairs. Why her? All she'd wanted to do was to treat him like a human being, and he'd gone and taken it the wrong way. It would have been an entirely different situation had he not impaired their science bowl team and she'd felt some sort of sense of obligation to him... if they'd even spoken since that physics class... but as it was, Hoshi felt there was no way she could find it in her heart to accept him. She'd be leading him on, and that was the last thing she wanted to do. She sighed in anguish, knowing there was no true good solution to this problem. How could she avoid going with him while sparing his feelings? She could tell him she was busy. She was horrible at lying, but she could try anyway. She could play dumb... "What dance?" Or there was the possibility of saying she'd already decided to go with someone else... she racked her brain for options, deciding she'd call Mishal for reinforcement.
"Mishaaaaaal," she moaned in frustration as soon as she'd finished relating the whole horrible tale, "what do I do now? I don't want to hurt his feelings, but at the same time...."
Mishal shrugged sympathetically. "Just say you have a boyfriend in Honduras... a seven-foot-tall weightlifting boyfriend."
Hoshi winced. "But I'm horrible at direct lying. I can play dumb, but I can't say something completely untrue and keep a straight face."
A little invisible light bulb went off above Mishal's head. "Ooh, you could tell him you can't go 'cause you're going to that Starfleet applicant meeting thing. Then you could always ease your conscience by actually going. An hour being bored by alumni should beat 3 hours trying to come up with new ways to ward off Robert Collins."
Hoshi bounced happily. "You're brilliant, Mishal, absolutely brilliant." This way, she could retain her sanity while pushing Robert Collins away as gently as possible. "I was looking at Starfleet anyway, and it would be nice if the Stone Age graduates could eliminate that possibility from the list of options. It's getting longer when it should be getting shorter." Hoshi recognized the expression of weariness that flitted through Mishal's eyes. "It's hard, this choosing thing, isn't it? I'm so used to keeping my options open... you know, expanding my horizons and investigating every direction. Now that I have to take all that outward expansion and compile it internally, I don't know what to do with myself. Where did all that time go, Mishal? I was supposed to have time to get organized and figure out who exactly I am and what exactly I want to do. I never had problems deciding anything before, but now... I mean, what if I make the wrong choice?"
Mishal sat quietly at her end of the videophone, her expression conveying miles' and hours' worth. "I know," was all she said, but in that 'I know' lay thousands of unspoken frustrations and fears. "Good night, Hoshi. I'll see you tomorrow."
"'Night." Hoshi tapped the videophone's console and the screen went black. She sighed as she shuffled to her bedroom, not even bothering to change into her pajamas before she fell into bed.