It's been a horribly overwhelming day for poor Madoka Kaname. Starting at a new school after spending so long away would have been difficult for anybody, and sure, she'd been expecting the nerves, the curious looks, the oh-so-demanding schoolwork. But everything's ten times harder than she'd been preparing for -- she can't even figure out how to work the desks properly -- and there's so many new people *everywhere*.
Worse, no matter how hard she tries, she can't get Homura's chilling words out of her mind. Her notes for her last class are a blank page, so preoccupied is she. Not that anything she'd have written down would be useful; the material was at least a year ahead of what she'd covered back in America.
The student resources office gave her a name to track down -- a certain 'Mamoru Chiba' who offered tutoring to other Infinity students. But lunch is already halfway over, the school is so big and full of people, and they're all looking at her like she's a bug under a microscope...
Madoka needs an escape.
The peace of the rooftop is disturbed when the heavy door is thrown open, and a pink-haired girl falls forward with a squeal, nearly losing her balance and completely losing hold of her lunch, which goes flying a few feet before landing on the concrete of the rooftop.
...it had been sticking, so she put all her weight into opening it. Seems like even the doors of Infinity are getting the better of her.
The high schooler who was already up there, silently eating his lunch and reading a book, looks up in alarmed startlement at the banging open of the door. He's not fast enough to catch either her OR her lunch, but the book and the food are put down and he's in motion and then right there all in one swift action, crouched next to Madoka like he came out of nowhere.
He's got a hand on the side of one of the pink-haired girl's shoulders, and the other lightly against her back, and his eyes are wide behind his glasses. "Are you okay? That door is the devil, I swear. Did you get your knees?--?"
Wiry and extremely tall, his eyes are incredibly blue and his face is a fine-lined, almost regal thing, black hair falling disheveled across his forehead. "Do you need a hand up?"
This is just the worst. Dad spent such a long time on that lunch -- he made it special for her first day at school -- and now she's gone and dropped it, the food's probably all messed up--
Madoka feels a hand on her shoulder and starts just the tiniest bit, though she does manage to hold in the accompanying gasp this time. She's not normally so jumpy, really. This day just has her wound up tighter than a loaded spring. A gentle breeze could probably startle her.
As it happens, such a breeze happens to blow by when she looks up and sees the boy who came to her aid. And it does *not* make her jerk and jump, as she has been all morning. Because the blue eyes that meet hers are so kind, looking at her with concern rather than appraisal, rather than monotone detachment. For a moment, the stress and tension of her chaotic morning melt gently away.
Then the wind whips around, blowing her pigtails across her face, and respite fades back into embarrassing reality. She probably just interrupted that boy's study time with her noisy entrance.
"I'm so sorry!" Madoka says, busily tucking the loose hair behind her ears so she can see again. "I didn't mean to interrupt you -- I didn't know the door would be so loud. Just...the cafeteria seemed so full already."
Oh, wait. He's asking her a question. Oops.
"I-I'm alright," she manages, a hint of a blush rising to her cheeks as she rights herself more fully. Sometimes she has a problem with apologizing profusely before she actually understands what's happening. "Thank you for asking, though. I'm new here, so I didn't know about the..."
Her eyes finally find her bento box, laying on its side on the rooftop, most of its contents scattered over the concrete. And her expression falls flat.
"...about the door."
The blue eyes behind the glasses crinkle up with an amusement that can't help itself at the instant round of apologies, and at Madoka's reassurance that she's all right, his hands fall away from her and he gets up from his crouch. Up. And up and up and up. He kind of towers, but he's thin and calm and exudes bookishness, and there's nothing intimidating about his stance.
As she explains about being new here and her face falls, he glances behind him to see the scattered bento, and his dismay is clear to see. "Oh, no!" he says, stepping over and crouching again to see what can be salvaged. "First day in a new school is no time to go lunchless--! Here, the rolls are a wash, but the tempura's okay, and so are the croquettes. And I have a lot left over. I was pretty much done anyway, you can have the rest of mine to fill out what you lost, okay? Stay up here and eat, and I'll walk you back to class and make sure you don't get in trouble for being late."
He holds up the rescued parts of her bento. "Which class are you in?"
He's...he's helping her?
Madoka looks over, astonished, as the (extremely tall) high schooler rushes over to examine her ruined bento -- without her even saying anything about it. Her face must have given it away, she thinks. Hiding emotions has never been her forte, and on days like this, with so much confusion and foreigness and *pressure*, she may as well be wearing her heart embroidered on her sleeve.
The girl stands silently by as he rattles off what still looks good and what is a lost cause in her poor lunch, unable to think of a single word to say. Despite his kindness, and despite much of the lunch still being good to eat, a familiar pressure stings at the back of her eyes. The anxiety and stress she'd dammed up behind her smiling face is crashing against her defenses like a tidal wave. It's a silly thing, to cry over a lost lunch. She knows this.
But seeing her favorite little sausages, curled up into octopi by her father, covered in dirt on the ground...it's a bit more than the girl can handle right now.
By the time he's walked back over to her, with the remains of the lunchbox, Madoka's hands are balled up into fists, and her gaze is turned to the floor, embarrassed.
"Class Eigh -- C-Class," she stutters, throat tense with the effort of not crying in front of this upperclassman. Her voice quivers and wobbles, despite those efforts. "Class 8-A."
Oh no. Oh no oh no oh shit, she's going to cry. She's totally gonna cry. Mamoru's face goes a little tight, but he makes a monumental effort to smooth it out, relax it before she looks up, IF she looks up. "Um," he says helplessly, "we can wash some of it off-- not the sticky rice, but... some of it? If you want?"
This upperclassman's well of cope for crying girls is very, very shallow. He glances around, as if there's someone else there who's better at dealing with this sort of thing, but of course there isn't. So he pushes his glasses up on his nose and makes a snap decision.
Concentrating fiercely on Madoka's upset, on her fragile facade of all-right, on her lostness and overwhelmed tiredness, Mamoru reaches down to take one of her balled-up hands and tugs her lightly to follow him over to the wall, where his book and his lunch are--
--it really is peaceful up on the roof. It's quiet and sunny, and the sunshine's not hot, it's warming and relaxing. The breeze smells unaccountably of roses and greenery, of cool refreshing springs deep in dark green forests; the sounds of the city are muted, and the world holds its breath. Everything really might be okay, everything really will work out, it just has to do its own sorting in its own time. The mountains wait and the rivers keep running. There's peace between moments, always, just under the surface.
"Class 8-A," the high-schooler repeats, his voice low and kind as he directs her to sit down against the wall, where he'd been not five minutes ago. "Got it. I'm in 11-B. My name's Chiba Mamoru, what's yours?"
Madoka doesn't look up to see Mamoru's brief discomfort. She knows how awkward some people find it, to be around a crying person -- worse, a crying stranger, in this instance. Every ounce of her will is centered on not letting the older boy see her tears, even as she blinks and two of them roll down her face.
How will she ever face Infinity if one morning of classes and a spilled lunch are all it takes to drive her to tears?
"It's o-okay," she says at the boy's offer to help fix her lunch, still not looking up at him. She sniffles, wiping at the tear trails with the back of her sleeve, as though she could still convince him that she's not crying. "I've taken up enough of your time already. I'm sorry for interrupt -- !!"
The pink-haired girl had half-turned towards the cursed door when she finds one of her hands clasped firmly in his; oddly enough, not the first time today such a thing has happened. She looks up now, watery eyes glistening in the rooftop's sunlight. Not that he'd see, of course. He's leading her over to the wall, where his book and his own lunch still sit.
And...suddenly, the tidal wave that broke the dam inside her is subsiding, the tension in her body loosening as the all-powerful *need* to cry evaporates like a morning mist. For the first time since coming up to the roof, she really sees the view.
It's breathtaking.
Maybe things aren't quite as bad as she thought?
Madoka sits down beside the boy, as directed, letting her eyes take in the view, letting her soul wallow in the unexpected respite she's found up here. "Mamoru Chiba...?" she repeats, then snaps to attention as she realizes who she's sitting next to. "Oh! That's so funny, I was actually looking for you before I came up here." A small smile lights up her face, though she's still wiping at her eyes. She's not crying anymore, but tears are persistent things. "The office told me you tutored sometimes? I had such a difficult time in class today. The material's so much harder than my old school."
Eep, she forgot to introduce herself!
"Ah, right. My name's Madoka Kaname. It's good to meet you, Chiba-san." She smiles again, and this time it's warm, genuine.
The last of her tears rolls down her cheek and splashes on the stone between them.
Without comment, Mamoru hands over his water bottle and a clean handkerchief, then slides the rest of his lunch over to join Madoka's in front of her. His expression is warm, affectionately amused; he settles back. The bell will ring in a few minutes, but he can get away with lateness and he's already promised to get Madoka to class scot-free, so he's not worried. He takes a deep breath of the quiet air and leans his head back against the wall, watching Madoka as she's talking; he seems like a generally quiet and unruffled person.
The genuine smile's met with an honest reflection of it. "It's nice to meet you, too, Kaname-san. And I'm a little full on my schedule, but I do have a study group you're more than welcome to join, and I do a group sort-of tutoring thing once a week-- you're welcome to come to that, too, as long as you don't spread it around. I don't really want anyone here finding out about it and making it a big deal. It's not at Infinity, it's at another school-- but they're all in different grades anyway."
He stretches his legs out in front of him, then reaches up to take his glasses off and drop them in his shirt pocket at the same time as he's picking up his book and jamming it in his jacket pocket. His movements are unhurried, relaxed. "I think you'd like the people in my study group, too. They're all really nice. One of them is really shy, and I think it's very brave of her to come study. One of them is very bubbly and fierce, and another is very determined and kind, and another is so very polite and reasonable. They're all good people to get to know in a new city."
Madoka gratefully takes the handkerchief, dabbing at her eyes more gently than she could with her sleeve, though there isn't as great a need for it now. Wordlessly, she takes out the packed chopsticks from her own bento and begins to eat, listening to Mamoru's explanation of the study group. That does sound nice, studying with several other people instead of one on one. Of course, she still has Hitomi and Sayaka around, and this isn't so much a *new* city as it is an unfamiliar one, with so much time passed. But the girl always loves making new friends -- it's practically her purpose in life.
She nods, cheerful. "I think that sounds wonderful, Chiba-senpai. Thanks for inviting me. When does the group meet?" Madoka's not exactly a busy girl, with no clubs to attend, so she's betting any day he mentions will be fine.
At his mention of a 'new city', her smile becomes somewhat smaller, her eyes dropping to the ground. She doesn't look sad, per se; nostalgic, perhaps? Wistful? "Actually, Tokyo isn't new for me. I went to this school, back when it was Mitakihara. But then my mom had to work overseas for three years, and she took us along too. And, well..." Her pink eyes look over the city skyline again.
"It seems like things are a bit different now."
The rest of lunch passes in relative silence, with Madoka having to eat an entire lunch's worth of food in a few minutes. She never wolfs anything down -- like a certain other eighth grader Mamoru knows might -- but now that her minor breakdown has passed, her stomach is rather insistent about getting fed, and it'll be hard to concentrate on anything if she's only focused on how hungry she is during class. So she's sure to quickly eat the non-dirtied parts of her own lunch, dipping into Mamoru's only the slightest bit, accompanied by profuse apologies for her clumsiness.
The bell rings, and Madoka hastily wraps up her bento box so the two of them can make it to class on time. A few birds have already come to peck at the spilled rice, and the rooftop door sticks *again*. Mamoru really wasn't kidding when he said it was the devil.
"Sorry...I hope I'm not making you late for class," she says as they walk back downstairs, a note of that fluster returning to her voice now that she's descending back into the lion's den, as it were. "I'd hate for you to get in trouble on my account, Chiba-senpai."
"Ostensibly Tuesdays," Mamoru answers the first question with a little laugh, "but it changes up some depending on weekly factors." He takes a notepad and pen out of his other jacket pocket and scribbles his number on it, then tears out the sheet and sticks it in Madoka's lunch bag. "Shoot me a text later so I have your number to give you updates on it."
'It seems like things are a bit different now'-- the upperclassman leans against the wall again, closing his eyes. "It's probably not much consolation right now, but-- things changing, becoming different? It proves you're still alive in this world. Sometimes it hurts, sometimes the change is not for the better, but you can always use it to prove you're alive. And while you're alive, you can still decide to change things yourself."
Mamoru offers Madoka a little smile, crooked and wistful, and somehow it's clear he's speaking directly from his own heart, his own experience. "Things will work out, even if sometimes you have to make them."
The silence on the high-schooler's part is companionable, and he watches the afternoon sky, clouds scudding across it while Madoka delicately scarfs her food. When the bell rings, he does get up, but he takes his time, and it's definitely a walk, not a run.
"I'll be fine," he reassures the pink-haired girl. "I'm never late for class without good reason, and I turn everything in on time, so they're pretty understanding. And don't worry so much, you'll get a belly ache after eating so fast. Just take things slow, one at a time. I know you can do it, Kaname-san."
Once they reach her classroom-- and they are late-- he opens the door for the eighth-grader to let her in, then gestures for her teacher to come over. No one can hear what he says when the teacher goes to talk with him, and it's brief, and she glances back at Madoka once and then nods to Mamoru -- and then she smiles and nods to him before he withdraws, closing the door.
She just gets on with the class from there, no fuss or extra attention (though the whispers about Madoka and Mamoru Chiba!! start immediately and notes begin to be passed in earnest). (Someone actually audibly says 'hey, I ship it'.) The rest of the day will no doubt be long, but hopefully? Not too bad.