Chapter Text
Futaba stared blankly at the flashing screen before her.
Never mind that the laptop in front of her had to be at least ten years out of date. Never mind that the monitor and the keyboard seemed to be barely held together with tape (painted over in extravagant patterns, of course). Never mind that the OS was something more fit to being in a computer science museum. All things considered, Futaba was more surprised that the laptop at her fingertips wasn’t falling apart and running on a nonexistent dial-up connection.
No, what trumped that all was all of the viruses that had popped up.
She had been forced to magic up a half-assed anti-virus program to work on Yusuke’s relic of a computer in the first place, but the redhead hadn’t expected to be faced with what had to be somewhere around one hundred computer viruses. The artist had been prodding her all month to do a check up on his computer because he was afraid something was wrong with it—right about now, Futaba was seriously regretting giving into his constant pushing.
“Inari.” She finally said. The blue haired teen jerked up from his stiff cross-legged position on his dorm bed. “How in the world did you get this many computer viruses?”
“Oh, so my computer is infected then?”
“INFECT—Is it infected?! Are you kidding me?!” Futaba exploded, spinning around on the computer chair. Slapping her hand on her outstretched bare leg, teeth grinding together and glasses askew, she fixed the tall teen with what could only be called a look of pure malice. “You call this infected?! This isn’t infected! This is more like a hospital graveyard! You have around 110 separate viruses on your computer, not even counting the repeat instances floating around your hard drive!”
“I was afraid of that.”
“You gotta be kidding me. This has gotta be some elaborate prank…you’ve gotta be trolling.” Futaba rolled her backwards to let her head fall against the keyboard, hands gripping tightly against the armrests of the desk. “How did you manage to DO this? AND keep your computer from shutting down at the same time? This thing shouldn’t even running with how badly it’s infected.”
“I’ve downloaded some programs.” Yusuke said unhelpfully. When met with Futaba’s frustrated glare, he shakily continued. “For digital art. One of my teachers loaned me a modern tablet to experiment with but I didn’t have a good program to use. So I tried a few download sites to get some programs.”
“Which programs and what sites?”
“Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator…and one that a fellow student recommended to me, SAI. She’s an extremely talented girl so I figured I should give this program of hers a try.” Yusuke beamed like he was proud of his idiocy. Futaba felt an odd stabbing in her stomach listening to the Inari pile praise onto this weird unknown classmate of his. She couldn’t be THAT special. “But I couldn’t find very many that didn’t require, what was it called…? A ‘crack’? So I was forced to download several separate instances of the program from many different sites. My classmate emailed me a copy of this ‘SAI’ program later on. It was nice, though I much prefer my brush.”
“Oh my godddddd, Inaaaaari, are you kidding me…” Futaba groaned, massaging her eyelids with her hands under her glasses. “No wonder you have so many viruses, you probably got them from the Adobe illegal downloads. You have adware and spyware up the butt on this stupid thing.”
“Adware? Spyware?” Yusuke seemed genuinely confused as to what she was talking about and she let out a long sigh.
“Nevermind. I’m just gonna have to go full extreme here.” With a spin, the redhead faced back to the computer and lifted up her hands in almost predatory motion. A pink tongue whipped across her lips quickly as she pulled a hard drive out of her bag and began typing wildly. Yusuke attempted to peak over her shoulder but was only met with a smack in the side of the face. It wasn’t as if he could understand the loading files and progress bars anyhow. Slowly he found himself bored, lying against the wall and picking at a clean brush from his easel.
“And done.”
“Huh?” Yusuke jerked up at the sound of Futaba’s pleased voice. She was holding up a thin black hard drive, reflecting brightly in the afternoon sun that poured through the dorm room window shades. He cocked his head to the side, unsure of what was going on…until with a defiant smash, Futaba kicked his laptop off the desk. It went flying into the wall; the already fragile frame shattered under the pressure. Its owner looked on in horror and shock at the smug girl balancing on his desk with one foot deftly held out in the direction of the debris.
“W-WHAT WAS THAT?! That was my only computer, all my personal files are on there! My scholarship applications…!” Yusuke was almost wailing. Futaba clicked her tongue and shook her head, shaking the thin black cassette in her hand again.
“All that is right here. I can’t have one of my own kind working with a junker like THAT, even if you ARE poor and jobless.” She lowered her glasses, looking over to Yusuke with an almost devilish grin—as if she had intended to shock the boy out of his normally stoic and calm mannerisms. Knowing her, she probably had. “I have a few backup laptops in my room that I don’t use anymore. I’ll clear them out and put your files it. It’ll all be back by tomorrow so stop bellyaching.”
“T-that…I…” Yusuke stuttered. Her actions had been extreme, and brutish, but her intentions…were surprisingly righteous. A voice in the back of his mind told him that really, he wouldn’t have it any other way no matter how much he bantered with the girl. She wouldn’t be nearly as fun and surprising if she was PREDICTABLE. There wasn’t a chance in hell he was going to let her know that, but…well. “Thank you, Futaba.”
“Hey, no problem, Inari.” Futaba hopped down from the desk to check her phone. “Akira’s gonna be picking me up soon so I’ll see you tomorrow. And, uh, one more good computer safety tip?”
“Hmm…what?” Yusuke said, almost afraid of her answer.
“Yeah, eheh, RedSex is a pretty virus laden hellhole. Get your porn somewhere else next time, okay?”
He nearly passed out from the blood rushing to his face as the redhead girl laughed her way out the door.