Not sure how I got to this to be honest. Admittedly I was in another frame of mind. It's another characterization of Kinana than I've been recently showcasing.

Enjoy nevertheless (or maybe try to, haha):


decaffeinated


She sips coffee calmly from her tumbler as the maroon-haired kid strolls up to her, lunch sandwich in his right hand and a cocky grin on his face.

"Yo, how you doing-kina?" he teases, making fun of the way she always ends her sentences.

She doesn't talk very much in school, but whenever she does say something, she has a habit of finishing her thought with the phrase—just something polite that she had learned to do while growing up in her last neighborhood, a suburban part of Magnolia—but after her family's move toward the center of the part of the city, she quickly realized that the urban kids were not typically so soft spoken.

And the rudest and most annoying kid of them all, Erik—the one who called himself Cobra—was the one that decided that he wanted to rattle her around just for that.

"Hey, come on, new kid," he continues, trying to meet her blank eyes. "Are you even listening to me?"

She continues to sip her caffeine, not giving him a single fuck and not showing it on her face.

She knows she has a high tolerance for incessant behavior and an even higher amount of patience. She knows that ignoring the talkative guy is the best approach, so she does just that, just like she does every single time during lunch.

She doesn't mind that he sits himself down next to her, and she honestly doesn't mind that he attempts to talk to her, but she hopes at some point the kid realizes that she really just likes to spend her lunch by herself—especially because she usually by that time, she still didn't usually get to her third cup of coffee for the day yet.

And anyone that knows Kinana knows that she shouldn't say a word until long after her fourth cup of coffee—else her words would come out more bitter than the black in her tumbler.

But Erik doesn't know this yet, and Kinana has a filter set so high that it doesn't even really matter anymore.

"Your name's Kinana, isn't it?" he asks her, taking another bite of his lunch. She can feel him look her up and down for any sign or expression.

What will he comment on today? Maybe about the fact that she had a snake bracelet around her wrist, or maybe that she had purple hair, or maybe even about the oddly maroon-colored tattoo peeking from under the seam of her left sock.

She doesn't say a word, and he nods to the yellow-green clip on her head.

"You have your hair up in a different way today," he observes.

Her silence is so loud that some nearby kids around them notice her ignoring Erik. They cup their mouths and whisper in their friends' ears, adding to the spreading rumors that the maroon-haired boy chattering away in front of her might have just liked her.

She doesn't blame them. She knows there's many reasons why he's talking to her, and the fact that her hair is styled uniquely today is not one of them.

"You don't talk, do you?"

She gives him a look and her eyebrows slightly furrow. Does the kid not understand that she sincerely should not be opening her mouth before she finished her rounds of coffee?

"Hey, come on, Kinana," he half-whines.

She discreetly looks at the time. He's been talking with her—rather, to her—for a straight ten minutes.

He pouts. "I'm just trying to have a conversation with you."

She puts down her tumbler, half slamming it onto the cafeteria table.

"Oh sorry, you've just been talking to yourself the entire time that I just didn't have the heart to interrupt you," she snaps suddenly.

"-kina," she adds drily.

She lifts her tumbler and takes a sip of her coffee. Upon slurping, she suddenly realizes that he's gone quiet.

By his face, it's clear that she's surprised him with her sharp tongue—in fact, it might have just made him fall in love with her just a little bit more.

And while this probably meant he would bother her yet again tomorrow during lunch, she was at least glad for the few seconds of silence he leaves her in his shock.


Always listening to what you want to say,

thir13enth