Inside Your Mind

82 - Shinsou

Feels like summer's just begun

Kaori was running late and she was so, so tired. She had gone to bed at 6.30 in the morning after sorting through paperwork the entire night. She had woken up around 9, together with Shouta and had some slow and lazy morning sex. By the time she was ready to fall asleep again, it was already past 10 and there was no point even trying to fall asleep, as she was supposed to meet her friends at 12.

The place where they were going for brunch was a small enough coffee shop, the only one in the area, that wasn't a full blown restaurant, too, and offered a great brunch deal. Kaori would even get the bottomless prosecco offer sometimes, but only when she had no work or any other plans later. Downing a whole bottle of prosecco at 11 in the morning was something she could vibe with.

But not today. She had to be at work at 2 in the afternoon, so she really only had an hour and a half for brunch. She was also late and saw them all already sitting inside. Kaori sighed. She hadn't really seen them since the whole summer camp thing happened, they were all busy with something over the summer break and after the incident with packing up all their stuff and moving.

Sure, they had been texting and they had seen each other in the dorms and on campus, but there wasn't really a whole lot of time to actually hang out. Kaori just hoped it wouldn't be weird. She knew they were bound to ask questions - about the summer camp, the press conference... about everything. And Kaori was sure that Uehara would spot the hickeys on her neck.

She took a deep breath and opened the door, heading to the table that her friends were occupying. Takami and Kawano were currently occupied with something that looked suspiciously like Maths. Uehara was looking at something on her phone. Knowing her, she was probably about to text her and ask where she was. With a smirk, she snuck up behind her, bringing her face close to her ear.

"No need to text me, when I'm right here." Kaori said, which prompted Uehara to let out a shrill scream.

"Kao-chan! Fuck! You scared me." she cursed, once she had somewhat calmed down. Kaori just grinned at her. It was too easy to scare Uehara. She sat down next to her, putting her bag down between her legs.

"Oh, hey, Shinsou. How's it going?" Takami asked, without even looking up from his calculations. Kawano did look up and mustered her with raised eyebrows. Something about him seemed off.

"You going to work later or something?" he wanted to know.

"Yeah, they surprisingly didn't fire me." Kaori muttered. She had almost suspected Kawano to be the one asking the awkward questions. And here he was, asking all the stuff she didn't want to answer.

"I'm more surprised they didn't fire Aizawa, to be honest." Kawano replied. Ouch. That stung a good bit.

"Oh my God, Kawano, stop making it sound like it was their fault that they got attacked by literal terrorists!" Uehara chimed in, rolling her eyes. Kawano sighed and put his hands up defensively.

"I didn't mean it like that. Just that... you know... the situation could've been handled better." he said.

"And how would you have handled the situation?" Takami wanted to know, still not looking up from whatever he was working on.

"I don't know, I wasn't there!" Kawano answered.

"Yeah. Exactly. Just stop talking shit, Kawano. We all love you, but you know you're being dumb right now." Takami told him and looked up at Kaori, giving her a big smile. She sighed and shook her head.