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Shibuya station marks the halfway point of her commute. One would think at first she was on her way to school一 she had her backpack on, after all一 but no. Her living on campus was her solution to avoid arising at the ungodly hours of the early morning to drag herself out to her first classes. No, she was heading out to obtain rare limited EleStra merchandise, something she would never dare miss.
Next, she had to leave the station and catch a bus that began upon the bright, populated surface, an escape from the also bright and populated, but also claustrophobic underground. Nagi wouldn’t consider herself to be claustrophobic, but she would also be among the first to admit her unwillingness to be trapped alongside so many individuals.
A people person, she is decidedly not.
The journey goes smoothly for she had mapped out and memorized the precise path she was to persevere through in order for her to reach her destination hours before the event started. The early bird would indeed catch the bird. She would never again go through the same heartbreak she had been forced to endure upon her first participation in an EleStra event.
It’s when she’s in the midst of replaying her most favorite chapter featuring her beloved Lord Tomonami’s beautiful and handsome face that she crashes into someone in front of her.
“Ah一” the man she must’ve unknowingly unbalanced yelps. Her phone crashes to the ground in the process.
“Gwagh! We collided?” She muses to herself.
“Terribly sorry,” the man, well teenager now that she had a better look at him, says. He was more than likely a year or two her junior. “Is this phone yours?”
She swipes her phone out of his hand and inspects the screen. Lord Tomonami’s disapproving glare is staring her in the face. Despite it being his most common expression, she can’t help but feel like it’s directed at her through fiction into reality. “My apologies, Your Radiance,” she sighs, caressing Lord Tomonami’s anime cheek. “‘Tis most fortunate that you have not been harmed in this incident.”
“My apologies?” The teenager says.
Oh. Oh, how dare he. How dare he interrupt a private conversation between her and her beloved, as fictional as she would admit him being. This plebeian thought he was one and the same as the most perfect being to ever exist? He would be lucky if she gave him a sliver of the light of the day.
“I do not believe I was speaking to you,” she snaps. The teenager’s eye twitches.
A purely fake smile rises on his face, and when next he speaks, his voice is pitched up higher. A snake, that one. “You’re in middle school, correct? I would’ve thought you’d been taught to treat your elders with respect by now.”
Middle school? MIDDLE SCHOOL!?
“I imagine the same can be said for you,” Nagi huffs. She’s trying and failing to contain her own rising fury . “You appear to be seventeen years old. You’re in your final year of high school, aren’t you?”
“I’m eighteen.”
“Then I should be the one saying that to you, considering that you are my junior.”
“Really,” he says in the most unconvincing way possible. Overly done sarcasm in that sickenly-sweet tone of his. “How so?”
“Just because I am merely four feet and three inches tall does not mean that I am young. I am nineteen years of age. I shall provide my ID if you require further convincing.”
“Fake IDs are not so hard to create in this day and age.”
Nagi refutes his argument by handing him her school ID. Having a fake government-issued ID or driver’s license was one thing, a school ID was another.
University identification cards are not usable for the same features proper IDs are. All they are good for is briefly unlocking a building on campus or spending your meal points at the few dining establishments there. You can’t use them for such things as applying for jobs or showing them to a bouncer outside of a club (though, if you were to present a student ID to a bouncer, you were no doubt to be laughed away from the door).
All that was highly likely the source of the satisfaction on Nagi’s face seeing the boy in front so utterly defeated.
He hands the card back to her.
“M-My apologies, Usui-san. I didn’t mean to, um, judge you so.” Normally, she would insist on using a lack of formality to address her, but she would revel in the pleasure this gave her. So long as he didn’t use any god-forbidden name puns she would leave him alone now.
Nagi huffs and readjusts her glasses. “All is forgiven, for this incident was truly an accident and I am on a tight schedule.” She straightens out her shirt and gives what she hopes is her calmest look. “I duly hope that we never meet again.”
She continues on her path, staring back down at Lord Tomonami’s truly radiant face. He’s grinning at her now, she must’ve picked a line of dialogue to say to him while she wasn’t looking.
Lord Tomonami looks proud of her, and that does help soften what would be a terrible day.
“Did you see that? She bumped into Akechi .”
“What? The Akechi!? The Prince Detective himself?
“Yeah! It totally looked like she reprimanded him!”
“ Dude . She’s got balls for a middle schooler.”
Nagi sighs to herself. It would appear that she sullied her reputation for engaging with a celebrity as such. In hindsight, had she known she had been speaking to Goro Akechi of all people, she would have minded her tongue a bit more.
No doubt he was the type to retaliate mercilessly. His kind act is nothing more than a facade he put forward for the public eye, she could easily see through that. She wasn’t pursuing a degree in psychology for nothing. Deep down, he seemed the cruel sort. His body language and his eagerness to seemingly catch her in the act of something proved that.
She would have to be mindful of her online presence from now on. She had heard horror stories about his hardcore fangirls attacking those who so much as breathed any negative air towards him.
Seems today was turning out to be unequivocally the worst. Hopefully getting her hands on the new EleStra merch would remedy that.