Let's get the world; let's walk another way
Made it with 2 hours and 7 minutes to spare! ^_^*
Title: The Value of Normalcy
Word Count: ~700
Characters: Inui, Renji. (Honestly not sure whether this is Data Pair or gen. :P)
Notes: Written for their birthdays in 2008. Short and relatively plotless. Years and years down the line, here is one potential happy ending.
Inui keeps two coffeepots in his office. The first is there to hold his own coffee, and the second -- as Renji has said -- is so that from time to time he might make something that normal people could drink as well. It's the latter that clatters and threatens to fall as the girl bows clumsily and shuts the door behind her, still stuttering, "S-see you tomorrow, Hakase."
Renji steadies it with one hand, the other holding a report that the flustered student had ended up handing him, as he had been sitting right by the door. That he waves at his old friend.
"So, what should I do with this, Hakase?"
"Renji," Inui says, from the other side of the small office. His tone carries something of an admonition; Renji had looked a little too amused at the idea of a graduate student developing a crush on the young and newly-established associate professor -- something that Inui would have thought perfectly understandable, and within the bounds of reason, even if it did sometimes cause him mortification. "Suppose that you find yourself in a similar predicament, in time?"
Renji snorts, settles himself back into his habitual chair. He picks up his pen and the printed copy of his thesis that he had been editing by hand.
"Not any time soon -- I will not have my degree until the end of summer. And I highly doubt I would have anything like this" -- he indicates the office -- "right away afterward."
"Mind you, though," he adds, after a brief lull. "I doubt that I would have the same problem, even if I do get settled down like this."
"Oh?"
"It's quite simple. There are barely any graduate students in the literature department here to deal with."
"Only that?" Inui gets up from his computer and stretches, while careful to avoid the half-played game of shogi occupying one corner of his table. "I thought for a moment that you were going to give us due credit for the lab coats. Admit it, Renji, we look dashing in them."
Renji shakes his head, amused. "I’m surprised you have not once gloated to date. About being the first to be 'Hakase', that is."
"It's because I’m older," Inui says.
"Act your age, then."
"I shall. I am about play the part of the gracious host and offer to make you some more coffee. And then proceed to see whether I can persuade you to take a break."
"See if you might graciously avoid the board while doing so," Renji murmurs, before returning to his editing. Inui gives a huff of mock indignation, and -- on the way to the coffee maker -- circles both Renji and the shogi board with a radius of curvature too large not to have been purposefully exaggerated.
He pauses, though, with one hand on the bag of coffee, as he glances over Renji's shoulder and catches sight of the topmost paper in the stack currently in his hands.
"Page twenty-three, I see."
"Yes."
" 'A common theme of the movement was the burden of changing circumstances upon a individual's view of the world,' " Inui recites, slowly and deliberately, as he begins to fill the pot. " 'The concept, in other words, that sincerity inevitably finds itself the victim of social forces beyond one's control, and that only through having loved and lost, are characters and audiences alike rendered aware of having loved in the first place.' "
He turns on the coffee machine, but continues, aware of Renji still listening in.
" '...Against such a backdrop, it is these handful of works that do not culminate in cataclysm, and yet, through detailed descriptions of time's passage and of the value of normalcy, convey a similar message just as poignantly -- ' "
"You’ve memorized it, yes," Renji says wryly. "Could you explain it, though, if someone asked you to?"
Inui sweeps his gaze across the small room. He sees the twin coffeepots, the shogi pieces locked in battle, the cluttered bookshelves lining the walls that have long become a storage place for tomes not entirely his own. He sees the old wooden frame sitting on one of its panels, with its photograph of two boys from a long, long time ago, grinning beneath a cloudless Hawaiian sky.
"Yes," he says finally. "I believe I could."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Notes:
Ahh...I need to stop tweaking this every five minutes. Probably the first time I've done anything this dialogue-intensive, and am still not sure if I have it right.
I tried to make Renji's thesis the highlight of the whole thing (as it certainly was the most difficult to write v_V). Hopefully the last bit of it ties in at least a little with what Inui's thinking in the second last to paragraph...? :P
A final happy birthday to these two! May they spend many more together. ^_^*
Title: The Value of Normalcy
Word Count: ~700
Characters: Inui, Renji. (Honestly not sure whether this is Data Pair or gen. :P)
Notes: Written for their birthdays in 2008. Short and relatively plotless. Years and years down the line, here is one potential happy ending.
Inui keeps two coffeepots in his office. The first is there to hold his own coffee, and the second -- as Renji has said -- is so that from time to time he might make something that normal people could drink as well. It's the latter that clatters and threatens to fall as the girl bows clumsily and shuts the door behind her, still stuttering, "S-see you tomorrow, Hakase."
Renji steadies it with one hand, the other holding a report that the flustered student had ended up handing him, as he had been sitting right by the door. That he waves at his old friend.
"So, what should I do with this, Hakase?"
"Renji," Inui says, from the other side of the small office. His tone carries something of an admonition; Renji had looked a little too amused at the idea of a graduate student developing a crush on the young and newly-established associate professor -- something that Inui would have thought perfectly understandable, and within the bounds of reason, even if it did sometimes cause him mortification. "Suppose that you find yourself in a similar predicament, in time?"
Renji snorts, settles himself back into his habitual chair. He picks up his pen and the printed copy of his thesis that he had been editing by hand.
"Not any time soon -- I will not have my degree until the end of summer. And I highly doubt I would have anything like this" -- he indicates the office -- "right away afterward."
"Mind you, though," he adds, after a brief lull. "I doubt that I would have the same problem, even if I do get settled down like this."
"Oh?"
"It's quite simple. There are barely any graduate students in the literature department here to deal with."
"Only that?" Inui gets up from his computer and stretches, while careful to avoid the half-played game of shogi occupying one corner of his table. "I thought for a moment that you were going to give us due credit for the lab coats. Admit it, Renji, we look dashing in them."
Renji shakes his head, amused. "I’m surprised you have not once gloated to date. About being the first to be 'Hakase', that is."
"It's because I’m older," Inui says.
"Act your age, then."
"I shall. I am about play the part of the gracious host and offer to make you some more coffee. And then proceed to see whether I can persuade you to take a break."
"See if you might graciously avoid the board while doing so," Renji murmurs, before returning to his editing. Inui gives a huff of mock indignation, and -- on the way to the coffee maker -- circles both Renji and the shogi board with a radius of curvature too large not to have been purposefully exaggerated.
He pauses, though, with one hand on the bag of coffee, as he glances over Renji's shoulder and catches sight of the topmost paper in the stack currently in his hands.
"Page twenty-three, I see."
"Yes."
" 'A common theme of the movement was the burden of changing circumstances upon a individual's view of the world,' " Inui recites, slowly and deliberately, as he begins to fill the pot. " 'The concept, in other words, that sincerity inevitably finds itself the victim of social forces beyond one's control, and that only through having loved and lost, are characters and audiences alike rendered aware of having loved in the first place.' "
He turns on the coffee machine, but continues, aware of Renji still listening in.
" '...Against such a backdrop, it is these handful of works that do not culminate in cataclysm, and yet, through detailed descriptions of time's passage and of the value of normalcy, convey a similar message just as poignantly -- ' "
"You’ve memorized it, yes," Renji says wryly. "Could you explain it, though, if someone asked you to?"
Inui sweeps his gaze across the small room. He sees the twin coffeepots, the shogi pieces locked in battle, the cluttered bookshelves lining the walls that have long become a storage place for tomes not entirely his own. He sees the old wooden frame sitting on one of its panels, with its photograph of two boys from a long, long time ago, grinning beneath a cloudless Hawaiian sky.
"Yes," he says finally. "I believe I could."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Notes:
Ahh...I need to stop tweaking this every five minutes. Probably the first time I've done anything this dialogue-intensive, and am still not sure if I have it right.
I tried to make Renji's thesis the highlight of the whole thing (as it certainly was the most difficult to write v_V). Hopefully the last bit of it ties in at least a little with what Inui's thinking in the second last to paragraph...? :P
A final happy birthday to these two! May they spend many more together. ^_^*