Encore

1

"Excuse me, is this seat taken?"

Oh, if only he had known then that those simple words, connected to form such an undemanding message, would turn into something that rushed into his life like a train and turned it upside down. If only he had known, would he had reacted differently? But of course, he didn't know. He couldn't possibly have known.

The unknowing Itachi wasn't particularly pleased with the question. See, if a person asks if the seat next to you in the lecture theatre is taken, that usually means they intend to sit there, if the answer is "no" that is (although Itachi wasn't entirely sure, seeing it was his first day at the university). And the answer was most certainly "no". Itachi looked around him, perceptive to anything that could turn the answer from a "no" to a "yes, actually, this seat is taken". Of course he couldn't find any. Realising he had been quiet for an uncomfortable amount of time, he said "No." and carefully shuffled away a bit to make more space for the person who had asked the question.

Itachi had purposefully taken a seat in the front of the lecture theatre for his first introductory lecture, thinking most students would choose a seat further back. He had been right in this, as the theatre had filled up with more and more people, none of which chose a front rows. But this person apparently didn't mind. Itachi glanced through the side of his long side fringe at the person. He was tall, taller than Itachi who wasn't short himself, and stockily built with quite well-defined arms that made Itachi feel a little intimidated. He had black, unruly, almost curly hair and dark eyes. He was fair-skinned but a bit tanned, and he seemed to have a natural small smile to his face, even when it was resting. The inner corner of his eyes were decorated with small tear-lines, the outer corners with long eyelashes. He was running his hands through his backpack that he had put on the floor and was unpacking what to Itachi looked like an entire picnic. Itachi let his slender fingers hover over the keyboard of his laptop, but couldn't help but watch the guy with interest. An apple, a banana, chips, a protein bar (really? How predictable) and a thermos of what smelled like coffee. He took a bite of his apple.

"Oh, showwy!" he suddenly exclaimed, holding his apple in his mouth but not entirely biting down so he could continue his forage through his backpack. "Aaah ww Shhshhui."

"I'm sorry, what?"

He took his hands out of the backpack, took the apple in one hand, bit his first half-bitten bite off, chewed, swallowed and offered his other hand for Itachi to shake.

"I'm Shisui", he said with a large grin. "Want a banana?" He pointed to his other fruit. "Don't worry, I have, like, five of them in my backpack." I'm sure you do...

"I'm Itachi. And no, thank you." He took his hand and shook. Shisui's hand was big, warm and bone-crushingly strong. Itachi's hand, in comparison, was pale and slender and feminine and tiny. He became very aware of himself.

"Nice to meet you, Itachi!" Still that grin. "What are you going to study?"

"Mathematical engineering."

"Oh, cool cool. We will have some lectures together, then." Itachi didn't know if this should make him feel glad or terrified. He settled on a little bit of both. At least he would know someone, even if that someone was excruciatingly chatty. "I'm in IT and programming", he said before Itachi had the chance to ask.

Itachi didn't know what to say, so he just smiled a little.

The introductory lecture began, and Itachi took care to listen, writing down notes on his laptop when necessary, screenshooting graphs and explanatory charts from the PDF he'd downloaded from the university webpage. He saw Shisui took notes with an ordinary ink pen in a notebook. His handwriting was a bit like he was; large and strong with bold letters. Although Itachi worried that he might not be able to read what it said once the lecture was over.