The crisp air of the night bit her skin soothingly as if eliminating her fatigue from the rigorous day of training. She inserted cash in the vending machine before her, forefinger clicking some numbers on the keypad as she waited for her carton of matcha tea, the neon glow from the light within reflecting in her catlike eyes.
She crouched down once she heard her drink tumbling down the pickup box. Juvia leaned her back against the bright vending machine, thrusting the straw in her favorite tea. Bringing it to her lips, the sweet and vegetal flavor burst inside her mouth prompting her heavy eyelids to close due to her physical and mental exhaustion. The sound of footsteps clicking against the bricks engaged her to open her jaded orbs, and she found Gray, eyes fixated on his phone as he head towards the vending machines.
Adrenaline coursing in the blue-haired lady's veins, her boot-clad foot thumped against the hard machine, eliciting a groan from her peach-painted lips which brought Gray out of his fixation on his phone, recognition flashing in his hooded eyes at the sight of her.
Using the agility that she had gained from exercises and sports, she hid on the side of the vending machine that she was once leaning to which was futile since he had seen her already, yet she doesn't dare to face him for unknown reasons.
Guilt gnawed his entire being as he watched how she reacted at the sight of him. Halting in front of the drinks machine where she was hiding by the left side, his troubled eyes stared at her loose waves resting against her back. He gulped, sliding his cash on the machine before he spoke to break the silence, "Juvia," he began, "Are you perhaps, avoiding me?"
Her heart-shaped lips couldn't let out not even a single phrase as she pretended that she wasn't there, because a part of herself truly wasn't.
With no reply from her, Gray's pools darkened upon realizing that she was truly avoiding him. His eyes concentrated on the products behind the thin screen, deciding that an electrolyte drink could do. "Did I make you feel uncomfortable earlier?" he asked once again, gaining nothing but silence which prompt him to shut up, as Lucy Heartfilia wrote in the whiteboard — men are at their bests when they shut the fuck up.
Dreadful, uncomfortable silence engulfed their space until it was broken down by the clang of his drink sliding down the pickup box. Juvia turned her head to look at the raven-haired hockey player, dark pupils enlarging as she gazes at him keeping his head low on the glow of the vending machine which illuminated his gorgeous features.
Acting swiftly, the blue-haired swim captain averted her gaze from him as she clutch her thumping chest. She heard his heavy footsteps walking away from the area, gaze trailing towards him as he head towards the bonfire.
Her soul despises the idea that he's making her feel these unfamiliar feelings surging within her, her dazed orbs gaze at the embers dancing around the burning flames from the bonfire that ignites the camp; a feeling of dread embraced her as she watched the moths get drawn to the mesmerizing fire of bright red and ginger, without the slightest idea that its beauty is luring them to their torturous deaths.