2nd floor common room - Morning

[first_guardian]

Ichigo wasn't much of a cook. It had always been one of his sisters who seemed to take the task upon them. He knew how to make breakfast however, enough not to burn the eggs or the bacon. The eggs were sizzling and he was going to have more than one stain on his t-shirt, but the food would be worth it. He might even be convinced to share if anyone

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[notyourpawn]

Alice hesitated; it wasn't her common room, but the scent of freshly-made breakfast was unmistakable.

She dropped a hurried curtsy to the boy who seemed to be cooking. "Is this for anyone?" she asked. "I'm afraid I don't live on this floor."

Better to get that out of the way early.

[first_guardian]

Well initially it hadn't been, but the Anemone had started making pancakes and pancakes beat eggs and bacon (Why yes, Ichigo was assuming he could steal some of those when they were done.)

"Dig in, everyone else is," he replied. "There's coffee too."

[notyourpawn]

"I don't believe I've ever had coffee," Alice mused. "Nor have I introduced myself, and if I'm imposing on your hospitality, that's the least I can do. Alice Liddell, and it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

She dropped him a curtsy at that.

[first_guardian]

Ichigo never had been curtsied and having that happen twice now was just plain weird. "You're way too polite," he decided. "I'm Ichigo Kurosaki. It's nice to meet you, Alice."

[notyourpawn]

"I haven't quite adapted yet," she admitted. "What you call polite, my governess would insist the bare minimum of civility. I assure you, wandering in and inviting myself to join your breakfast was rude indeed. It's refreshing to see that society's not quite so stringent, at least for me. Are you new?"

Alice, as always, managed to talk around in circles without realizing it.

[first_guardian]

"I suppose it would be rude if it wasn't in a common room. Which it is, so I don't think it really was," Ichigo felt the need to reply before he got around to answering her question. "I am new. It's my first semester here."

[notyourpawn]

"It's only my second," she confided. "I'm a century and a half out of place, and starting to think it's going to take me that long again to wrap my mind around it. How are you liking it, thus far?"

She found a plate for herself and began looking over the food. "I would offer to make breakfast for you, in exchange for your kindness, but I think everything would be burnt to a crisp if I tried. I'm a horrible cook, I fear."

[first_guardian]

"There's no need," he assured her. "And it's only pure luck these aren't burned anyway."

He picked up a piece of toast, taking a huge bite as if he might have been stalling an answer. "It's alright. The teachers don't seem too bad. I'm not really out of place, though. Not time wise anyway. You're from the past then?" He asked, making a guess based on the whole curtsying thing. And he couldn't quite believe he just asked that with a straight face.

[notyourpawn]

"Then I'll settle for thanking you," she said, dipping her head slightly. "I am. Oxford, if you've heard of it. This world, supposedly, although I've been told that there are several instances of this world and no one's terribly sure which one this is. All very confusing. And one hundred and thirty years off, which means I'd no idea what anyone was talking about for the first week or so. Radios and musical discs and so on. Where are you from, exactly? And when, I should say."

[first_guardian]

"Huh. That must be weird," Ichigo replied, showing a huge amount of insight in that one remark. "I've heard of Oxford. I'm from Karakura Town in Japan. Just from this time." He paused. "No, that's not true. It was September when I left home.."

[notyourpawn]

"Really?" Alice said, looking over at him as she filled her plate. "That's terribly strange. It was the same day, for myself, just ... several years misplaced. Do you happen to know whether it was last September or next September?"

[first_guardian]

"Next," Ichigo replied calmly, not really seeing how a few months was weirder than several years. "School had just started up for a week, I thought I would be starting my Junior year here."

[notyourpawn]

"So you're in your own past?" Alice asked. "Has your age shifted around at all? I had a friend once who said you could stop aging altogether if you tried hard enough. I've never managed that."

[first_guardian]

"I think your friend is full of it," he said tactfully and he shrugged a shoulder. "How would I know? It's just a few months, it's not like I'd notice the difference."

He did have a birthday coming up in a few days, but it seemed silly to celebrate when it hadn't been a full year yet.

[notyourpawn]

"He might be," Alice said easily. "He never did explain how he meant it. He was strange to start, though I've seen stranger than someone reversing their age. Perhaps it was all a grand metaphor and I missed his point. Of course, he was quite mad."

Well. Not as mad as the Hatter, but rather far gone, to say the least.

[first_guardian]

"Mad as in crazy?" Ichigo asked and maybe the reversing age thing would have been weirder if he hadn't just been told about people being flung back in time by angels.