"Hey, Nagato."

"What is it?" There it was again. Same words. You know, Nagato, it wouldn't kill you to slip a couple of new phrases into your repertoire? Honestly Nagato…No offense, but sometimes you sound like a broken record. That is if the record's even playing at all. (Clue: It's not.)

I should probably explain what exactly is going on at this moment. Nagato and I are once again together in the club room; just the two of us. Koizumi had "something" to show Haruhi, and Haruhi being, you know, Haruhi, decided that it was best to drag along Miss Asahina for the ride. Don't ask me why she decided that, because I don't know. I would've gone along with them as well had it not been for that silly project Taniguchi bullied me into helping him with after school. Come to think of it, I really need to stop helping so many people with their zany tasks…

"Wait, Haruhi didn't try to drag you along with them?"

"She did not," she pinched a lock of her lavender hair between her fingers and moved it to the left. Something I noticed at this point about Nagato's fingers and hands: They looked so supple, soft and perfectly manicured. Does she spend time using moisturizers and the like? A very, very strange thought indeed. …Let's move on.

"Oh, well, that's kind of rude don't you think?" I decided not to sit at the table and instead sat on Haruhi's 'brigade leader desk'. Though with all the work I do at it, you'd think it was my desk.

"I do not."

"Well, yeah I wouldn't exactly call it punishment…" I chuckled uncomfortably. It's hard to feel complacent laughing around Nagato because she is never, and may I reiterate for emphasis, never doing the same.

"Not punishment," was it just me or did she sound a heck of a lot more robotic than usual? Something going on in your head, Nagato? Probably nothing that I could understand.

"Anyway, I was thinking," I started. For some (dumb) reason, I thought she would interject or something. I must have been off a bit that day, after all, I was feeling a bit bushed from that silly project Taniguchi made me help him out with.

Needless to say, Nagato just sat there. Big gold eyes reading lines of text at probably several hundred words a minute.

"You're…only three years old, right?" I was surprised too see that she gave me the honor of direct eye contact this time.

"…I am over one-thousand-"

"Woah woah! What! You're over a thousand years old!" you definitely could color me surprised. Little did I know…

"…Days. Over one-thousand days old," that I had just embarrassed myself for nothing. You would think will all her ridiculous, smart, robot-like intelligence, she would be a little more clear about how long she's been alive. Who says their age in days? And on top of that, she wasn't even exact about it!

"…Oh," I grinned sheepishly and tried to shrug it off. I could not. Why should I have been worrying about embarrassing myself in front of Nagato? I didn't even know if she could understand how stupid what I'd just done was. My eyes darted around the room awkwardly. There was a spider crawling around the top right corner of the room. I remember hoping that it didn't make a web and start living here, but ultimately I never took care of it. It's amazing what your mind starts thinking about when you're trying to avoid what's going on in front of you. Even if it's just hoping not to be judged by Nagato. Yeah, there was something off with me for sure.

"…Interesting human," her eyes went back down to her book.

"Oh yeah?" I rolled my hand matter-of-factly, recovering from the awkwardness with the greatest of ease. "Well, you're an interesting…uh…inter…face…da-"

She loudly flipped a page with those slender fingers of hers, interrupting me. "Humanoid interface designed for contact with organic life forms."

I rubbed my temples, "…Yeah, that."

"..."

Was it best to give up on the conversation at that point?

Yes, yes it was.