A Little Midnight Reading (Private)

All this researching was getting quite cubersome, and Sharaku had half the mind to quit, except that he wasn't the one to quit in the middle of doing something. Therefore, of course he actually wouldn't, no matter how much he was going to complain about his predicament internally. Complaining to himself was in fact a very good way of keeping himself sane. Blaming everything you could was oddly satisfying, when you couldn't afford to just stop what you were doing. Anyway, research. He had just gotten back from an early evening outside search, which had apparently taken longer than he had planned, given that it was already past midnight, but he still needed to look some things up. Eh, well nobody would stop him, right? Not like it was illegal to move around school ground in the middle of the night, and he was so not going to sleep right now anyway.

Walking into the library, he'd very quickly be forced to notice he wasn't the only one deciding to read at this late time. It'd be hard not to with a single brighter light illuminating the otherwise dark room. Well, that was no matter. He could do what he wanted to do, alone or not. Guess it wouldn't hurt to be polite though. Boy was that light in the darkness actually straining his eyes however. He couldn't even properly tell who the person was until his eyes adjusted.



"Hey. Hope I'm not interrupting you."

The girl would potentially remember him, although he did look a bit different than that one time they met. His hair was pinned up neatly, and he was wearing quite formal clothing, white shirt, suit pants and all. A difference from his typically more casual appearance. He probably even looked older like this.

He’d blink a couple times, a little surprised, not having expected that he’d be running into someone who knew him. Especially given his typical lack of effort when it came to making acquaintances. Now that he had a moment to get more used to the light though, he did recognize the girl. Well, sort of. It wasn’t like he really knew her. He was pretty sure he hadn’t even caught her name before. Not that he could have, when she hadn’t said it at all.

He’d cough to clear his throat. “I suppose so, yes. You’re…the one from the mass back then, right? I don’t think I’ve heard you mention your name though.” She had been the quietest one on the scene, unless the fact that the vampire guy got himself incapacitated counted against him for that. Not that there had been a lot of talking to do, with it being primarily Fluffy going on and on about her abilities once she wasn’t being hostile.

“I’ll…in a moment. You don’t have to do that though. I was just used to the darkness, that’s all.” He’d adjust to the brightness after a while. It just took a bit after walking though the dark only, and while he didn’t like the light as much as darkness, it wasn’t going to burn his eyes or anything like that. That said, he did need to get the book he wanted to look into first, so he’d walk a bit off to the shelves to find what seemed like the best bet for what he needed. It’d take him maybe three minutes to find a suitable one, before he walked back to the table, giving the girl a questioning glance. “I’m…guessing you’re friends with the vampire guy? Or were you out there at random back then?” He recalled that she had called him by name, so they had to know each other at the very least.

“I do recall having done that, yes.” He was the only one she asked the name of, for some reason. Not that it really mattered to him as to why though. It wasn’t something to lose sleep over. “There’s no need to apologize for that though. I can’t exactly be offended by just not knowing people’s names….” Why should he be? It wasn’t even in his habit to call people by their names at all, unless he had to address them without them knowing it was meant for them specifically, or it was a serious matter and he felt the need to get the intent across with more emphasis.

He’d close his eyes briefly with a thoughtful frown when she spoke about Ozaki, shaking his head with a faint snort afterwards. “He’s….” An insufferable over-emotional dork, more like. “Well, that’d be a complicated conversation to have. I feel he wouldn’t appreciate being discussed however.” Honestly, he wasn’t sure how he felt about the vampire’s ‘niceness’. It was too…how to even put it, a clingy sort of nice? Too wound up about everything, and couldn’t let things go. The guy’s brand of nice wasn’t one he was very comfortable with, to be frank. Especially the whole ‘behind the back’ method of doing it, without actually consulting with the person he was trying to help unless it became unavoidable. It was very easy for niceness to turn into nightmares when nothing was talked out, and thus a wrong step was made…

Anyway, enough of that nonsense for now. “It’s…more of a personal project, you could say.” It was a bit more complex than that, but he didn’t think it was something he needed to be disclosing. That said, if she did take a close enough of a look, she could note the book he had appeared to be about blood constitution and its uses. “Sitting alone in the library at night would have been an unusual way to pass time….that’s actually a good question though. You’re here at this ungodly time as well, why is that?” She didn’t seem like a night creature. He could smell some canine off of her and stuff, but he couldn’t pinpoint what kind exactly it was….

“Hmmm….” The taller of the pair would hum under his breath in thought as he scanned over the table of contents at the beginning of his book, trying to gauge whether this would do for what he was after, or if he would have to go grab more books. He would glance up at his company briefly though as she mentioned not being able to sleep though. “Well, you don’t seem too worried about that. I assume you don’t have classes in the upcoming morning then?” If she did, she’d definitely have to worry about getting enough sleep to be alert enough for school. Then again, he pulled shenanigans like that frequently himself, so it wasn’t impossible for others to perform well even on lack of sleep.

“Classes?” He’d blink a few times, unsure how to answer that question. He doubted she expected him to name each and every class he attended after all. Well, she could be after that, but it would be a rather unusual information to be fishing for. “I’m…well, mostly hunting classes. I guess that is what you were inquiring about?” It was a truthful enough answer either way. Of course, he took some random unrelated classes as well, for the benefit of more credits in case there happened to be a class or two he couldn’t finish for whatever reason. He didn’t think he had seen her in any class before, but he would have to admit that he didn’t always pay a lot of attention to who his classmates were, meaning he couldn’t be absolutely sure in that regard. She looked younger than him, however not all classes were school grade or age restricted either, making anything a possibility. Not a very big one, given how many students attended this school, but it was there nevertheless.

“Is that…so.” He’d flip over a page in the book absentmindedly. “I’ve always found researching to be a little boring all by itself. It’s a useful component of figuring out the course of action to take, but the amount of patience studying something tends to take…” He’d shake his head slightly at that. He was far too restless sometimes to just sit back and do the information gathering tasks without at the very least getting to use the results of it for something. If he ever did anything in that field, it was typically a research on something he personally found useful or important to whatever he was currently doing.

He’d scan over a couple paragraphs, briefly considering the irony. He wouldn’t be that bad of a scholar, were he to actually be interested in the job. With his memorization skills thanks to his talent, he could very well excel at gathering information in as short a time as it was possible, as he had little need for wasting his time on making sure he would not forget any of it. No notes or any of that chaotic nonsense. Except that he simply felt like he’d eventually die of boredom from the lack of action, or he’d find himself losing interest once he’s heard or dug up enough to get the big picture of the matter. He had little interest towards artifacts and other random historical pieces too. There was no reason for him to want to know about that…

“…hm?” His little moment of mental concentration was broken rather quickly as the somewhat unexpected line of questioning came. It wasn’t every day that he was asked such a thing directly. Only two people knew exactly what he was at the moment rather than just guessing him as a vampire, and to be fair, neither of them did so because they’ve flat out asked. Ozaki knew because of the blood drive and the fact that he had to fill out the information on the form, and Nyx had simply seen him shift forms and figured out what his other half was from seeing him as a wolf.

He’d wave a hand dismissively once he processed the situation. “I don’t really mind being asked.” It could be seen as a personal question for some perhaps, but he didn’t consider himself to be sentimental over something as simple as that. He was what he was after all, and that was not going to change whether he told people or hid it from them. Though he admitted sometimes being mysterious made it more interesting. He liked seeing whether people could figure it out without him stating it outright. He’d give her a brief smirk, showing his fangs. “You’re not wrong however. I am a vampire. It’s just that I’m…only half of one.” It ought to be a fairly simple deduction anyway. Hybrids in general were not that rare, even though his combination in particular was not a very pleasing one.

Golden eyes blinked a couple times in mild surprise, before he was leaning back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other with an amused huff. “Had I wanted you to shut up, I would have told you so.” As a matter of fact, it would have been perfectly easy to just not approach her and sit down at a different table, or even grab a book to borrow back to his room instead of staying around to read in the library. Had he been against the idea of getting interrupted by talking, he would not have agreed to this in the first place. For tonight though, he wasn’t in a whole lot of rush, which was why he decided it wasn’t going to hurt him.

“At any rate…I suppose it’s to each their own. I’ve never quite cared about those types of discoveries. Why dig back into the past that is long gone when we have a future we ought to forge a path into? Knowing what language an ancient civilization spoke doesn’t really further anyone’s life. I guess it could be a hobby but…” He’d shrug lightly. “It never grabbed my interest enough.” If he needed to know, he’d figure it out, but to discover trivial details like that only for the sake of exploration…? He’d have to be very interested in that particular topic to commit himself to it, or have someone drag him into it at the very least.

Hm. “A fire bird? I guess that’s not the part of you making you stay up at night, eh?” To be fair, he did not know a lot about phoenixes, but they were certainly creatures that preferred the sun, as far as he could remember. It was only a casual inquiry however, as much as he was somewhat interested, given that he hardly knew any hybrids around here personally. While they weren’t too uncommon, he hadn’t had the luck of getting acquainted with any that he knew of. Which was arguably not surprising given his track record of not making many friends, but still.

“I don’t have much of an appreciation for liars. In lieu of that, it wouldn’t be right of me to be one myself.” He’d snort faintly. While he could handle the more harmless white lies if there was a good enough motive behind them, generally speaking, he had a distaste for fakers. Especially those who hid things and played pretend while also expecting others to think well of them for it by default. If you have to be a liar, at least accept that you’re kind of being a piece of shit by doing so.

“Mistakes…?” He’d frown down at his book briefly. “Don’t we already have answers to most of the mistakes people typically commit? We can look back and see how a war or any other bad decision tends to go wrong based on past happenings, but that’s already common sense these days, is it not? And to be honest, I would say that the trend is that the people who could use the knowledge the most are the ones who are unwilling to listen to it anyway.” Most of what they had now was naturally already a lot better than what could be found by examining the past. Given that they knew how to work with the more advanced stuff, it was unlikely they’d be so stumped by the occasional remains of the old times that they just would not be able to understand without further research into the civilizations that created it. Technically, they have already improved on those currently forgotten concepts once before in the past before they were lost to time. That was how they eventually got here, right…? Did they truly need to rediscover them again…? Well, that was probably a rather subjective question to answer…

When she spoke about not being sure what caused her wakefulness, he’d give her a bit of a confused look at first. In all fairness, he wasn’t able to tell how old she was just based on her looks, but wasn’t it strange for someone who he doubted was a little kid still to not know how their own species influenced them? “You…don’t know? How’s that happen? I would have thought figuring out how being what you are affects your life is one of the first things a person would want to be sure of. Especially so for one who’s a mix.” It could be dangerous to be unaware, depending on what species you happened to be.