After Summer

Rin bursts out coughing into her elbow as she fans her other hand in the odorous air. She hopes the foul smell would wear off soon, despite how she was expecting this to happen. It was times like these when she wished she wasn't able to predict the future. Whenever Rin accepted Len's offer of showing her an experiment, she knew something would turn bad. Bad smell, weird color, something that instantly made her react on instinct... Even if it was supposed to happen, she still expected it from the very beginning.

"So now that you've got that down..." Len leans in close to the beaker, "you just add the chlorine."

He picks up a container with a light yellow liquid. He brings it above the beaker and tips the glass; the yellow fluid mixes together with the rest of the solution. A small purple puff is released from the mixture and dissipates.

"See? A plain and simple experiment. How'd you like it?" Len places his hand to his hip.

"It was okay--" she coughs. "But did it have to smell that bad?"

"One of the many things chemists have to deal with. And the smell wasn't the worst part. Be glad you and I are wearing goggles, the chemicals could've gotten into our eyes. They're extremely dangerous."

"Pfft," a tealette snickers behind them. "Ahh, yes, Len. And yet you had her suffer through all that just to see a purple cloud from your beaker. Priceless."

She resumes scrawling on her notebook while shaking her head in disapproval. She has long pigtails tied from her teal hair and crystal blue eyes that are staring down at her paper and pencil.

"Oh, give Len a break, Miku. You can't blame him for getting excited over his little nerd experiment," a blue-haired boy speaks up.

Miku sighs, "Kaito..."

"You know how Len can get over-excited about science."

"I know, I know. It was just a joke." She shrugs without removing her gaze from her notebook.

The four leisurely spent their time in the school's biology classroom. It was conference night so each of them were dragged along into coming. They didn't see how this couldn't have been an excuse to hang out after classes. Science equipment was everywhere to be seen in the classroom that Len had immediately laid a handful of test tubes, beakers, and chemicals out on the rows of black tables.

Meanwhile, Miku stuck to her usual habit of whipping out her handy notebook and writing utensil, Kaito was the last to arrive in their small group, staring out of the freshly cleaned windows while he daydreamed, and Rin on the other hand was practically pestered into watching Len's experiment that she had no time to react.

"Well, honestly Kaito's not wrong here," Len reveals a friendly smile then embarrassingly averts his gaze. "I do get a tad hyper when I'm putting up with something science related."

"Thank you, Len." Kaito crosses his arms and gives Miku a prideful glare.

She happily rolls her eyes in response.

Rin dismisses their conversation and blows a strand of blond hair away from her face. She removes her goggles and situates them next to the beakers.

"Whatcha got here? Finishing up the book or what?" Rin pulls up a chair next to Miku.

The tealette looks at her, smiling back. "Nah, just finishing up the twelfth chapter. Six more to go."

"Yay." Rin shakes her hands in the air, which causes her plastic bracelets to jingle. She drops her arms to the table, grinning. "And how long you've been at it? Four months?"

"Three and a half." Miku's fist, clenched with her pencil, is placed under her cheek. To which she turns her attention to Rin and smirks. "Nonstop."