Orange-Rie Kumigaya from ToraDora!.Normal Ages: Kaoru Chiharu 14, Sai 16, Natsuko 17, Kazuki 20
"It's cold in here!" Chiharu whined from the door, shifting her weight anxiously between her feet. The gymnasium was always an abomination of frozen air, in all seasons, and it sucked even more in the cold winter months. She had a sweatshirt on, but it hardly helped. "Can you hurry up?"
"Could you be a little patient?" Came the snarky reply.
The young dark-haired girl was leaning over her left leg, nose pressing into her knee, sprawled on the floor near the entrance to the gym. Her best friend, the blonde with her hands on her hips, looked positively miffed, but said nothing to the rebuke.
Touya Kaoru was pulling sweats on, plucking ear buds out of her ear. She took her hair out if its pony tail before they entered the varying temperatures of the school, walking along side her friend, who didn't seem to be able to sit still. As usual, Chiharu was an enigma of pure energy, bouncing on her toes. Her hair was done up in pigtails, and her brother's hockey sweatshirt seemed a dozen sizes to big for her. Kaoru made no comment, however. Chiharu was no doubt trying out another fahsion genre. Cute younger sisters, maybe? She'd been into hipsters and indie for a couple years now, and Kaoru was almost a little glad for the change from big belts and massive sunglasses, mini dresses and hippie headbands.
"So I've got some pretty bad news." The blonde began conversationally, as they twisted through hallways where people mingled.
Chiharu was a known truth-stretcher, so Kaoru only listened with half an ear, the other part of her examining the Go Club signs posted on the tiled hallways. A warped part of her almost stretched to them, while another part was greatly perturbed by the sudden sick fascination. "Go on," She said aloud absentmindedly.
The blonde in pigtails-her hair curled unnaturally and spinning around her face-frowned and waved her hands. "This weekend, you know, the weekend we had planned out, like, years in an advance for Harujuku? Remember?"
Indulging in fashion wasn't her thing, so no, she didn't, but she nodded anyway.
"Well, apparently its also the Autumn Leaves Tournament." Chiharu released her anger with a quick jab of her fist to the air. It almost accidentally hit a walking boy in the face. "The one where-
"I know of it, yes." She interrupted bitingly. "The annual one where we all go to that one hotel for four days and pretty much do nothing while our parents play go. Yes, Chiharu, its on the same weekend every year."
Her cheeks puffed. "B-But it's still not fair! I have our whole weekend planned out! It's not everyday we have four days to do what we like!"
Touya only rolled her eyes, and exited the building. For autumn, the weather was a pleasant equilibrium between scathing hot and unpredictable frost. Chihiaru bounded out of the building, leaping over a couple puddles and finding her way to the curb, where the parking lot was mostly deserted. Kaoru followed, more subdued, and more concerned with her sudden interest in a subject that had hardly every fascinated her before. Go, was not just a game for her-and she supposed, her entirely family at that-it was an essential way of life that, even if she didn't play it, she could understand at a depth most people couldn't. Her friends from school and gymnastics thought it was crazy. A crazy occupation, considering their office-box bound parents with their typical and predictable work schedules. Her father was almost always playing Go, somewhere, and if he wasn't playing Go he was reading about Go, or talking about Go, or watching Go. To most people, it would seem sort of ridiculous to be so intrigued by the same thing everyday.
Hah, not so.
One could be intrigued by the same thing, everyday, for a lfetime.
Just look at her grandfather.
"N-Natsuko-chan?" Chiharu gaped, as if it was the unsacred holy name of the devil.
A sleek red Mazda pulled into the drive. It was old, probably a classic now, but still retained its prior beauty from the days that Chiharu's father used to tell her horror stories about Ogata Juudan and his sports car. Her dad said Ogata was fucking crazy, and she'd do well to stay away from him at any given point in her life. She wondered if that same warning applied to the Juudan's spiteful, bitchy daughter. She supposed it really did, but Hikaru was too enamored by the fact that there was a girl who understood his backwards Go-induced schedule and would still babysit his tyrant kids regardless, and therefore overlooked the fact that her genetics were precariously close to a certain former nightmare of his.
Aside from the fact that Chiharu had known Natsuko since before she was five didn't move the fact that Natsuko was scary.
"What are you doing here?" The young Shindou backed away slowly, before leaping behind Kaoru.
Natsuko rolled her eyes, and fluffed out her smooth blonde hair, looking appreciatively at the rear view mirror, where she was no doubt checking herself out. Chiharu scowled, Kaoru blinked. The older blonde tilted down her sunglasses. "I'm picking you up." The 'duh' was almost audible in her words.
"For what?" Kaoru asked.
"The Tournament, of course." Ogata deadpanned. She shifted out of park. "Are you coming in, or not? We have to stop by your houses and get your stuff, I suppose."
Chiharu uneasily got into the sports car, slinking into the back and glowering like a cornered cat. Kaoru followed the motion with less dramatic effect, and pulled the door shut after her. "We're going with you?"
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