Finding a Fit

Time Four: Sketchbook Scout Hunt

The next time it happened Taiga had finally started to see a pattern. He and Yoichi were sitting with Hiro, Keitaro and Natsumi in a small restaurant for brunch. In all honesty Taiga had never had brunch before, but nonetheless Yoichi took it upon himself to drag the redhead out saying "that you'd have to be a dumbass to think we're leaving you behind, now shut up and let's go, I want free food."

After the pancake get together, the group had regularly began to go out to different locations like bowling alleys and dining out just like this. Taiga wasn't even sure if he was invited half the time, but Yoichi always made sure that he tagged along no matter the occasion. That, plus the fact that the others had begun to see his appearance as regular and expected him to actiually be there was an amazing feeling, so he wasn't one to complain.

Taiga looked over the table as he sipped his orange juice. In front of him, Keitaro was fiddling with the pot of black coffee at the centre of the table. Beside the brunette

Natsumi was nudging the sugar cubes away from Hiro, who was making a futile attempt to eat them. To Taiga's left, Yoichi was chewing aggressively on his paper straw. The pile beside him indicated that he had gone through quite a few. Taiga let out a long groan.

"Guys, can we please order now? We've been here for ages!"

Hiro huffed in agreement with Taiga.

"Yeah, I'm starving! I'm gonna die if I don't eat something!"

Keitaro eyed his best friend.

"We had to call the waiter over to get us a new bowl of sugar cause you ate it all!"

"The sugar would still be here if we actually ordered something! None of that was my fault."

"We can't order yet because Hunter hasn't arrived yet." Natsumi supplied. "It would be rude to eat without waiting for him."

"Pssh, who cares!" Yoichi grumbled as he crumbled up another straw. "The fucker shouldn't be late anyway. He knows how Torch-Head gets when he's not eating."

"Hey! It's survival if the fittest, Wolfboy. I'm just trying to save myself from dying hunger."

"I'm pretty sure that trying to find out how many sugar cubes you can fit in your mouth isn't a survival tactic."

"We all have our ways of living, mine just includes consuming sugary condiments."

Taiga rolled his eyes.

"Where is Hunter anyway? He's never late whenever we go out somewhere."

Keitaro tapped his chin in thought.

"He did text me saying that he was busy with school. It seems like it's taking up a lot of his time."

Yoichi raised an eyebrow in confusion.

"But it's the weekend! Who the fuck is still doing school shit on a weekend? I don't even get work for the weekend!"

Taiga nodded his head in confirmation. After camp, Yoshinori had taken it upon himself to enrol Yoichi in some online classes. And despite his constant complaints about it, Yoichi confided to him that he actually enjoyed working towards something. That, plus the fact that he didn't have to sit in a real classroom, made the rowdy purple-head boy not throw in the towel.

It seemed that everyone one was busy with their education these days. Keitaro, with his photography degree and journaling side gig, Hiro taking cookery classes and working part time at a restaurant nearby. Natsumi was working on a bachelor's degree in business to become an event planner and Hunter had began to attend the art school he enrolled to in the summer.