Fate/School Days - 09

Lunch time.

A cheerful looking boy walked into Class 1-1. After scanning the room briefly, he made a beeline towards a desk at the center of the room and waved. "Oi, Sato!"

Another boy looked up from his bento at the call and lifted an eyebrow. "Yo, Harima. What do you want?" he asked bluntly.

Harima's grin didn't waver, "Information." He dropped in the desk next to his friend and leaned forward. "What can you tell me about Emiya-san?"

Sato froze, chopsticks halfway to his mouth. "Which one?" he asked, suddenly wary.

"There's more than one? Excellent." Harima clapped his hands and rubbed them together excitedly. "The.. redhead?"

The other boy didn't visibly move, but his eating utensils creaked under sudden pressure. "Which... one?"

Harima's smile got even wider, if possible. "Ooh, this should be good. The one with the glasses."

*snap*

"No. No no no no. Nonononononono." Sato stabbed the remains of his chopsticks towards his friend. "You want to stay away from that one. She's crazy."

The smile wavered, just slightly. "That just makes it more interesting, right?"

Sato stared at his lunch with a forlorn expression. He slowly put his chopsticks away and buried his face in his hands. "What brought this on?"

"Well..."

Harima was walking through the hall on the way to art class. Turning the corner, he succumbed to one of the most overused cliches for meeting people.

He bumped into a girl and knocked her down, scattering books and school supplies everywhere.

There was even an outcry. It wasn't anything close to a "Kyaah!" but that's all the boy heard.

"I'm so sorry!" he said, leaning down and reaching out a hand. "Here, let me help you with those."

The girl stared back at him, eyes vibrating in sudden emotion, her face blushing as red as her long hair. Her braids gently floating in the breeze. She stammered something he couldn't hear, obviously flustered, and quickly gathered up her various papers and books back into her arms. She grabbed at one of the papers he'd picked up as she brushed past him.

"Thanks a lot!" she gushed as she ran down the hall.

"She was so cute, so shy. I had to ask another student passing by for her family name." Harima sighed as he rested his head on an upright hand.

Sato's eye twitched. "That... does not sound right."

"So!" Several nearby students jumped as hands slammed down on the desk. "I heard she's in your class. Do you know what she likes? What are her hobbies?"

"You can't be serious."

Harima tilted his head and schooled his face into... some sort of expression. It was probably supposed to look refined. "I'm always serious."

Sato had no words for that.

In the cafeteria, a red-faced redhead slammed her bento box onto the table, making her sisters jump.

Koyuki and Sakuya exchanged glances as they saw their sister's expression. Wordless communication jumped between them in looks and minute gestures, finally Koyuki sighed.

"What is the matter?"

Karin was fuming. "I was using the free period today to do an analysis on the new OS Mom was putting together for next year's tablet PC. I had it finished, had everything nice and collated together, and then some blind idiot knocks me over and scatters it all across the floor!"

"Firstly," Sato said, his head in his hands. "She's not a shy girl. Not. At. All. I really think you're projecting too much."

"Ah, a genki-girl? Even better!"

"..."

"I'd spent the whole class period on that! I was just so furious I was seeing red!" Karin stabbed at her bento viciously. "That son of a-"

"I won't deny she's cute, heck, all of her sisters are."

"Yes... about those sisters..."

Sato's head slipped out of his hands and landed on his desk.

"And then he gets his greasy paws on the circuit diagram I'd been working on too. He rubbed out an entire sector!" Karin groaned and scratched at her head. "Argh, the one time I use a pencil of all things, and he has to smudge the graphite everywhere. Thanks a lot..."

"Four of them all the same age? Quadruplets?"

Sato shuddered at the mental image that formed, unbidden, in his head. Four Karins...

Harima leaned forward, an odd glint in his eye. "Do you think they all share the same interests?" He waggled his eyebrows.

"Oh GOD no!" Sato clutched at his eyes as if to claw them out.

"Was he cute?" Sakuya asked.

Karin lifted her head long enough to give her sister a murderous glare.

Sato sighed, staring at his very oblivious, very doomed friend. "Harima, if you don't listen to anything else I say, just hear this."

Harima leaned forward eagerly.

Sato clapped him on the shoulder. "I will miss you, old friend."

Harima looked confused... but undeterred.

Minutes later, after the still-cheerful boy had left, another classmate walked over to Sato's desk.

"Nobody will blame you," Nameless Minion #1 said as he clapped #4's shoulder. "You tried."