Loud Mouth - Narancia X Reader

Chapter 11

"Koichi!?"

I'm staring blankly at the boy that stands in front of Giorno's door. His hand is raised mid-air, like he was reaching for the doorknob at the moment that I had decided to open it.

"Y/N? Why are you here!?" He questioned. He seemed just as surprised as me.

Though I was sure in my mind what I had come there to do, his question caught me off guard and the interrogation was at pause.

"...The same reason that you are, I suppose."

Koichi's eyes narrow for a moment, trying to deem whether my answer was credible or not. Eventually, his expression goes back to normal.

"Well then," he coughs, "any luck?"

"He's more stubborn than me," I remark, chuckling despite the situation, "you're welcome to try and crack him, but the phone store is closing soon, and I'll probably be strangled this summer if I don't get back to my parents."

Koichi nods and moves to the side, letting me pass.

"Good luck!" I call with a look behind my shoulder, and he smiles, waving once again.

I'm basically down the flight of stairs when I faintly hear Giorno's door creak open.

I hope he gets his things back.

But I can't think about it for long, because my next order of business is to check on Sophia.

I descend another flight of stairs and navigate the dizzying hallways of the dorm buildings, using the few furnishings on the walls and in the halls as landmarks. At some point, I think that I've gone in a circle, but the familiar smell of overpowering florals and vanilla convince me that I've made it to the girl's hall in one piece.

Now it's a matter of finding Sophia's room, which is the easy part.

I walk down the hall, watching as the engraved nameplates change, looking for her name.

I find it, turning the knob and stepping in.

"Hey, how'd it go-...oh!"

I quickly force my hand over my eyes, a bile forming in the back of my throat.

"Y/N! What the hell!" Sophia shouts, shuffling through her sheets.

"I'm so sorry!!" I exclaim. "I didn't realize that you two were still-- I-I'm gonna go!"

I shuffle for the knob, my hand still over my eyes, and slam it shut with all the grace of a deer on ice skates.

"Bye, Y/N!" a masculine voice shouts from the other side of the door.

I put my hand over my mouth, feeling my face heat up and ears turn bright red. "Ew. Ew, ew, EW!"

That was not something that I wanted to see today.

At least I know that she isn't dead in a canal somewhere. But that might have been less jarring.

With that down, there's only one more place to go.

_ _ _ _ _

"Well, can you fix it?"

I'm sitting at the counter of a small tech repair shop, in the strip mall by the airport that I had only gone to a few days ago. On the other side, a balding man held the disassembled components of my cell phone. He was fiddling with some part with a miniature screwdriver, and to no one's surprise, staring blankly at the label on the back of the lithium battery pack.

"No." the man said, "Here's what we can do: either transfer your SIM card to a new phone, or scrap it all together."

My feet dangled two feet off the ground as I sat in the high-top chair.

"That's better than nothing, I suppose."

He nodded, flipping the phone onto its front and unscrewing a compartment.

"Could you make sure not to throw away that dolphin figure, though? It's more important to me than the whole phone itself."

_ _ _ _ _

I started to rethink my decision as soon as I stepped out of the store with a phone in working condition.

Like clockwork, it started ringing, the default tone blaring from the speaker.

It was my mother.

I quickly accept the call, holding the phone to my ear and throwing out a short greeting.

"Hi, Mama."

"Y/N! I'm so relieved to hear your voice. Your grandma has been ringing my phone off the hook. She said that she's been trying to get a hold of you since... well, last night, for you, but you never got back to her."

"Oh!" I chuckle awkwardly, "About that..."

_ _ _ _ _

Needless to say, I got a verbal beating from the two nicest women I know, consecutively, while I stood on the sidewalk of a strip mall and did anything but homework.

It was already past 7:00 by the time that I left the shop. I plan my day around my singular goal:

To fill my now growling stomach.