(Untitled)

[nneverwas]

The room briefly visible on the other side of the Milliways front door is smallish, rectangular, with dark grey walls and a long table down the middle, perpendicular to the door

Comments

[cant_kim]

A skinny boy, wearing clothes that certainly haven't been worn in America in the last hundred and fifty years, brushes by with a muttered "Beg pardon."

And then stops, glancing back at him. The startled, I-need-someplace-to-hide stance is one Kim's intimately familiar with.

[nneverwas]

The contact breaks him out of his trance and he stumbles back another step, one hand out to the wall for balance, awkward and clumsy.

When he registers the clothes, his confusion increases, if possible.

"--I, I'm s-sorry--?"

Somehow Aaron manages to turn the apology into a question covering anything from who the hell are you? to where the hell is this? and all the shades of bewildered ignorance in between.

[cant_kim]

"You new?" she asks, looking him over.

[nneverwas]

"Y-yeah."

Tallish, but he slouches most of it away. Young-- mid-late teens or maybe early twenties; the slack set of his face and the open, wide-eyed expression tend to make him look younger than he would otherwise.

He ducks his head, glancing down at the floor and then back up to Kim again. The motion has all the edges worn away from it by long use.

"Wh-- where, where am I?"

[candied_rabbit]

Momiji knows the look of a new patron, by now! (And this one is even more new-looking than the average one, from the looks of things.)

And, so, even though he's not exactly the best at explaining things, he wanders over, holding a big glass filled with something chocolate-y looking in both hands.

"Hi!" he chirps.

[nneverwas]

"...H-hi."

Aaron tries a smile.

It doesn't work very well.

"What-- wh-what is, is...?"

Okay he's just going to give up and go back to staring blankly now.

[candied_rabbit]

"It's a bar!" Momiji explains brightly, acting as if stammering silence were a completely standard response. (Though, actually, as far as he knows, it isn't, on the whole. But it would make sense, if it were!)

"A magic one, so it pops up in strange places. It's really safe, though! ...Uhm, and you get a free drink, since it's your first time, here."

[nneverwas]

"That sounds-- sounds good."

His second attempt at a smile is much more successful.

"The, the free drink part."

The rest of it...

Awkward, utterly noncomprehending shrug.

[song_tra_bong]

Thanks to the power of millitime, there's a blonde woman at a nearby table who looks up from her notepad when the door clicks shut.

Nobody wears that stunned look like newbies.

"First time?"

[nneverwas]

The words take a second to penetrate his daze, and then he looks up.

"First-- f-first t-time, time, ma'am?"

He runs his fingers nervously through his hair, leaning back against the wall beside the door as though afraid the floor is about to drop out from under him.

Faint, and faintly wry, but mostly faint: "I, I think-- think so, yeah."

[song_tra_bong]

"C'mon."

She pushes a chair out for him at her table.

"Sit down. I'll try and walk you through it."

[nneverwas]

Aaron pushes away from the wall, wobbles once, and makes his way over to the chair.

When he sits down, a little of the tension he picked up along the way drains out of him.

He stares at his hands, twisting together on the table, for a few seconds. Then he glances up at her. Then down again, then up.

Is she going to speak? Because it looks like he won't.

[squeakyhinges]

So a woman wandering up to him holding a spoonful of something blue and liquidy and saying "Here, try this" may not get entirely positive results?

[nneverwas]

...Nnnnnnnnot really.

Unless she likes people looking at her with expressions that sum to ?!, and then backing away slowly, and then bumping into the door and stopping and looking confused all over again.

[squeakyhinges]

Well, she's used to it, at least.

"It's just fruit juice," she assures him. "I think it's too tangy, but I'm not sure."

SHE NEEDS A SECOND OPINION. :D?

[nneverwas]

...what.

And what.

And also what.

Giving her his best quizzical look (it is very quizzical), he nods tentatively and reaches forward to accept the spoon.