Day 50: Intercom, Evening

[damned_intercom]

As expected, after the allotted amount of time had passed, the nurses started to move through the waiting rooms to inform the visitors that it was time for them to leave, whereas in the Sun Room King Kong was turned off and the staff quickly sprung to action to put the equipment away

Comments

M7

[mitase]

Hanatarou had halfway wished to get a visitor himself, just to see what all the fuss was about, but apparently it wasn't to be. It wasn't surprising, not really-- after all, who would really want to visit him? Oh, well. It wasn't that important, and he'd managed to get something accomplished, even if it was only something small. As usual.

Maybe he couldn't find a way out of here. Maybe he couldn't do anything really helpful to anyone. But at least he could help the medics find supplies, and hopefully find someone to help tonight. Someone who would actually let him help them, too. That was probably a vain hope, but it still lingered.

The healer offered a vague sort of smile at his nurse as she wished him a good evening, then dropped into his chair to examine tonight's dinner. He wasn't really all that hungry; he'd had a decent lunch (or "brunch" as they had called it, whatever that meant) and hadn't been doing a whole lot lately. Still, though, he should eat, so he picked up the fork and started picking at the strips of fried potato

[scintillatingly]

Getting to check up with Ritsuka had been nice, and getting to talk to someone else who'd had to see a good friend had made Sora feel a little better, in a way. It had let him know he wasn't the only one going through it, while also giving him hope that they would all snap their friends out of it someday. It might take time -- Sora had admitted that to himself -- but they would do it

[mitase]

"Hello, Sora-san," Hanatarou replied, glancing up with a small but genuine smile when his roommate arrived. It had become part of the expected routine that, no matter what else happened during the day, he could at least visit with someone nice for dinner. He was even accustomed by now to the fact that Sora was nice all the time (except for that one day, but it seemed to have been a very unusual thing) and didn't bother to question it anymore. Much.

"It was all right. Normal?" He'd spoken to a few people, made plans for the night, not accomplished anything terribly interesting. It was how his days usually went around here. Hanatarou shrugged slightly and turned to start cutting up the piece of meat on his plate. "No, I... didn't watch it. Did you?"

[scintillatingly]

In a way, having a normal day might be the best thing. Sora knew that he usually got bored when things went along too smoothly, but that was probably his own flaw. Hoping for things to happen usually resulted in something bad happening. He still wasn't sure if ending up in Traverse Town that one night counted as good or bad. On the one hand, he'd been given the chance to save worlds and help people, but on the other... Well, he and his friends had been put through a lot of painful things as a result of it

[mitase]

The word 'visitor' caught his attention again, and Hanatarou glanced up with eyes wide and utensils still poised over his dinner. "A visitor?" he echoed, with something approaching eagerness. "Really? I've never had one, but I've heard people mention it before...."

Although what if he didn't want to talk about it? In which case he'd just put his foot in his mouth and maybe Sora would get upset (finally). The healer blinked and glanced back down again, quickly putting a bite of meat into his mouth as though trying to keep himself from saying anything else. "I was in the library instead," he added a minute later, after he'd chewed and swallowed and reconsidered.

[scintillatingly]

Hanatarou had never been visited by someone before? Maybe that was for the best. While Sora had been glad to see Donald again, it had also brought up a lot of conflicted feelings that could be tiring to sort through. He wasn't sure how well his roommate would have dealt with something like that

[mitase]

Oh... good. Sora didn't seem to be upset about the question; it really shouldn't have been all that surprising, but Hanatarou still always halfway expected the friendliness to fade into something a little more like what he usually encountered. Things were weirdly reversed, here, with the people who liked him far outnumbering the rest. Sometimes it made him wish that he could stay here instead of going home, but he always quickly pushed the thought away without entertaining it. Once they had the chance everyone would go home, so there wasn't any point in staying here.

The healer gave himself a mental shake and eyed Sora for a moment, somewhat concerned by that smile and what he was saying, but kept quiet about that for now. "Oh. That sounds... interesting?" he replied, looking thoughtful. What would it be like to have someone he knew show up but not really be that person? It was probably best that he didn't know.

"Ah." Probably best to change the subject, so Hanatarou quickly scrambled for something else. "Did you have any plans for

[scintillatingly]

It didn't look like Hanatarou wanted to discuss the whole visitor thing too much, and Sora couldn't exactly argue with that. He had already gotten into it with Ritsuka a bit, anyway, so going through a repeat would just be draining by now. Besides, if his roommate had never been through it before, then there wasn't too much to say if the boy wasn't particularly curious about it.

"Interesting is a good word for it, I guess," he agreed with a nod as he took another bite of his dinner and then considered Hanatarou's next question. Luckily, he had a solid answer for it. He hated when he didn't have anything to say to something like that, but they'd gotten everything figured out at brunch, thankfully.

"I'm meeting up with Riku and Kairi and we'll be doing something!" he replied. "Not sure what yet, but it might be the basement again. How about you?" Sora always liked to make a point of keeping tabs on his roommate, just in case.

[mitase]

The basement sounded like a dangerous thing, but Sora had definitely been around long enough to know that, so any warnings Hanatarou might have made would likely be redundant. And unnecessary. But he still couldn't help being a little worried, and silently hoped that Sora would be okay-- if he hadn't already had plans Hanatarou might have volunteered to come along, but hopefully he could find someone else who needed his help. And hopefully Sora wouldn't need it, either.

"Oh, I was going to... wait, ah. Kairi?" He'd met a Kairi on the way back from town the day before, but could that have been the same Kairi? Maybe. Possibly. It didn't seem like a very common name. But she hadn't said anything about knowing Sora. "I, um, met someone named Kairi. Yesterday. She said, she knew Rukia-san, and Renji-san."

[scintillatingly]

So Kairi had gotten to talk to Hanatarou at some point, too? That was weird! First Neku, now Hanatarou... It seemed like the girl had been running into a lot of his friends. Which was good, because if he was friends with them, then he clearly approved of her also getting to know them

[mitase]

Well, that was an interesting coincidence, wasn't it? And it was a much better reaction than Hanatarou's earlier question about visitors, so it cheered him up a little. "Really? I.. she was really nice." Surprisingly nice, but if she was a friend of Sora's then maybe not so surprising after all.

He glanced down at his half-eaten food again, then decided he was tired of it and just pushed the tray away. Instead, he moved over to the closet and started rummaging about in the supplies he'd shoved into it. If someone was coming over to look at what he had then he should probably get it into some semblance of order, so to begin with he pulled out one of the stuffed pillowcases and carried it over to the bed. Maybe if he dumped it out there it would be easier to sort.

[scintillatingly]

Sora wasn't surprised to hear that Kairi had been nice to the shinigami. There was a reason that they were friends, after all! He nodded and smiled, making a mental note to ask Kairi about that meeting when he saw her later on. He'd like to hear about what the girl's opinion of his roommate was.

A little surprised when Hanatarou stood up (was it that late already?), Sora watched him start digging through his closet in search of what turned out to be a pillowcase that looked full to the brim with... something. Turning to watch the other boy dump it onto the bed, Sora continued with his dinner as he kept an eye on him. "What are you doing?" he asked. "What's in there?" The rattling noise sounded kind of familiar, but Sora couldn't immediately place it.

[mitase]

Hanatarou carefully upended the pillowcase onto the bed, shaking it one extra time to make sure that there wasn't anything left before he glanced over his shoulder toward his roommate. "Ah? This?" It wasn't anything special, was it? Although Sora probably hadn't really seen it before, so maybe he was just curious.

He turned back to the small pile on his bed, reaching down to spread it out over the covers. "It's... stuff I found upstairs, in the pharmacy, a while ago. Medicines and... well, I don't really, ah, know all of what it is. It's not like what we had at home."

[scintillatingly]

As Hanatarou explained, Sora continued to eat his dinner, chewing his steak thoroughly before swallowing each time. It was one thing that his mother had always be on his case about when he'd been younger; she'd been worried that his habit of eating fast would just lead to him choking someday. When that had almost happened one time, he'd learned that it was best to listen to her.

Besides, for the moment he was in no rush, and so he sat up a little in his seat to better see the pill bottles that were now scattered across his roommate's bed. "Oh, that's a good idea! I mean... I guess that's more useful if you're sick, but there's also stuff that helps with pain, right?" He'd seen the nurses hand out pills like that before. "But..." He paused in his eating and peered curiously at Hanatarou. "Why do you need that stuff? You can already heal really well on your own!" Was the other boy putting himself down again, thinking he wasn't good enough on his own? That was no good!

[mitase]

"Huh?" Hanatarou blinked at Sora in vague confusion. Maybe it was nice of his roommate to think that he was better than he really was, but... back at home he wasn't very helpful, and her he couldn't do very much here at all. He was practically useless-- any of the other healers could probably do more, even with the limitations they all had here. If he said anything of the sort, though, Sora would probably try to make him feel better or something, so Hanatarou supposed it would be best to save him the trouble.

He shook his head and turned back to the scattered medicines, gesturing at them vaguely with one hand. "Not everyone is a healer, and... well, people with those abilities can't do as much here. Anything that helps can, you know, be useful." He considered a moment, then shrugged and moved back to the closet, this time to fetch his clothing. "The other people from the, ah, paramedic group might find it useful."

[scintillatingly]

Explaining it that way, Sora could see why Hanatarou had gone to the trouble of finding the pills, but it still seemed like a job that was better left to people who needed to use them because they didn't have the power to heal on their own. Then again, Sora had often collected metal for other people even though he already had his Keyblade, so it wasn't like he could really question his roommate for doing that. Collecting useful items was always a good thing.

"It was nice of you to get it for them, then," the boy said with a smile as he pushed his dinner tray away and stood up to get dressed. If Hanatarou was doing it, then that probably meant that it was about time that he changed as well, especially since it took a while. Part of him realized that he was just wasting time by switching clothes every night, but these were his clothes and he wasn't just going to let them hang in the closet unused. "I hope that paramedic thing is still going strong?" he half-asked, half-stated as he pulled his clothes out.