>>warning: mutually-exclusive event 02
 

    Today had been nightmarish.
    Grades from the last exams had been emailed, and Koushiro's mother had seen it before he had. And while they were not bad, so to speak, it was not what he should have been getting. Not if he wanted to get into university, anyway.
    He'd recently discussed university woes with Sanjuro, where the American was alarmed to discover someone as bright as Koushiro could have so much to worry for. He'd noted, too, that getting into higher-level institutions in the United States was almost embarrassingly easy. Most low-end colleges took you if you had a pulse.
    So when he had met up with Masumi that afternoon after getting out of computer club, of course he had mentioned going to the U.S. for schooling. She had hardly been paying attention to his end of the conversation up until that point, seeming more preoccupied with wondering whether he noticed her hair (she had bleached and spiked it in the effort to further resemble her game persona, as if sensing this would pique his interest), but apparently the thought of "losing" him was absolutely horrifying. She stressed her extreme disapproval, guilting him for well in excess of half an hour while the other cafe patrons stared, and didn't even let him kiss her before she left.
    He was as confused as ever about his feelings for Masumi, but it was that dizzying brand of confusion, that kind that you know can't be worked out, just plowed through without caring. So yes, of course he had started dating her. It was bound to be a lot less uncomfortable than dating some random girl at school. And at least with Masumi's university schedule and the significant distance they had to travel to see each other anyway, she was blessedly low-maintenance for most of the time. Those other times like, say, when they were together, she was anything but, and every meeting seemed to induce Koushiro into a drunken haze, warm and wet and senseless. But somehow painful, too, particularly when it was over. Or, like today, when it hadn't even begun.
    Upon exiting the cafe he checked the messages on his cell phone to discover a text message from his little brother, informing him his mother expected him to stop by the grocer's on the way home, because he might as well get used to being an errand boy his whole life at this rate.
    Koushiro's mother was always like that. He considered it one of her more endearing qualities.
    There was a line at the grocer's. Most markets were automated now, with all their product stored in shelves and freezers behind a solid wall, items acquired through voice command and paid for strictly with plastic, with the purchased objects coming through pre-bagged out of a slot on an adjacent wall. Because they were still relatively new commodities, lines were typically rowdy and frustrating to be in, particularly following school dismissal when a lot of kids came in to purchase late lunches, and Koushiro was reminded of how well-mannered he and his brother were by contrast to the norm.
    Today the line he landed himself in was especially loud, and long, and slow. The person in front of him smelled terribly and wore a shirt far too small for him of some strange anime character, and the person behind him was some short, sickly kid with a cold coming on, not the sniffling kind but constant coughing. It wasn't so much disgusting as agonizing to listen to; the poor kid sounded like he was tearing up his lungs into shreds.
    Between this trauma and the putrid stench of the man in front of him --which Koushiro half-suspected was at least partially responsible for the kid's cough in the first place--, Koushiro was nursing a terrible headache by the time it was his turn up at the mic. He read off his brother's text message the items requested, simple items he was sure his mother could have taken care of on her own time quite easily and probably would have normally, and paid for off his own debit too.
    To top it all off, the bagging systems were still glitchy, so after his order came through Koushiro exasperatedly set his bags on the narrow counter near the mic and began resorting the contents to something manageable. He heard the boy that had stood behind him muffling a coughing fit with a hankerchief, and struggle to speak into the microphone, voice scratchy and strained. The speaker overhead kindly told him to repeat louder for the recorders to detect, and the boy, frustrated, struggled again, but the effort seemed mostly in vain. He was obviously weak-chested and didn't have much of a voice to start with, and the cold and the noise of the market was just compacting this disability.
    It was mostly exasperation, but a small hint of compassion as well, that had Koushiro abandon his groceries for a second and approach the boy, who wore spectacles and a black mandarin-collared grammar school uniform, and crouched down so to be even-leveled with him.
    "Tell it to me and I'll enter it for you," he offered.
    The boy regarded him for a moment, partially out of suspicion but mostly, Koushiro sensed, out of doubt that the person addressing him was even serious, but he nevertheless inclined his head slightly and leaned close to Koushiro's ear that he could list the items without difficulty of being heard. Koushiro dutifully repeated these into the mic, and the speaker chimed, permitting the boy to step forward and swipe his card.
    His little cub scout good deed done for the day, Koushiro gathered up his bags still left on the counter and began heading toward the exit, nodding to the little boy only once. Walking back, he wondered suddenly what had compelled him to empathize with the kid, but reasoned, well, he knew someone else with a weak set of lungs, didn't he, even about the same age as that kid, heck, in the same city, even...
    Koushiro stopped.
    ...wait...
    No. Can't be.
    But...
    Slowly, Koushiro looked over his shoulder. Only to find that the young boy was doing the same, eyes going wide.
 

                                                         "...It's not like you'll run into me at the local market or whatever..."

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