Confinement (Miki's Story) [10/30]

[Elcor]

Very nice start, looking forward to see how this goes.

[Mentlegen]

RIP IN PIECE

[Guest]

I don't think this story is still active, which is a shame because with all the recent pseudo routes being taken up, Miki deserves her fair share too.

nope, its still active, i talked to the writer a few days ago, hes just been really busy with work

[badmanslayer04]

I don't think this story is still active, which is a shame because with all the recent pseudo routes being taken up, Miki deserves her fair share too.

nope, its still active, i talked to the writer a few days ago, hes just been really busy with work

How did you get in contact with him it says on his profile that he hasn't been on since 20th of Jan so it is probably safe to assume that the thread is dead

Scratch that /)^3^(\

[Catgirl Kleptocracy]

A/N: Breathe! Goddammit, you bitch, you never backed away from anything in your life! Now fight!

Ahem. Now that I've saved Mary Mastrantonio from drowning, I can put up the rest of my note. First, I apologize that this chapter was so long in coming. I've always had a problem with getting my priorities right, and for some reason I've been wasting my time working instead of writing this like I should. Like my homie a few posts above said, I'm still working on this - just working elsewhere more. But this story isn't down for the count yet! Again, I'm sorry that it's been several months since an update, and I'll do my best to keep that the (by far) longest gap between chapters. Hope you enjoy! It's open season on errors! Stay rockin'!

Also, if anybody could explain to me how to link directly to certain posts, I'd really appreciate it. Something like when you open the first post, you get links to the following chapters so people don't have to go through the entire topic to get to each section. Thanks!

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Chapter 2: Working Man

Emi was killing me. Somehow she and the nurse convinced me to go running every morning. I was never a bad runner, but months in the hospital and a bad heart left me weak. It took everything I had to run half a mile. Two laps didn’t even give Emi a sweat. She kept pushing me, though, and by the time we finished our routines my chest felt like it would explode. Eventually it probably would. Emi was going to kill me running long before I graduated. I went to the festival with her anyway.

Despite being number one on my list of potential man slaughterers, I liked Emi. She was nice. Her dietary plan wasn’t. When I thought about festivals, I thought of friends and fireworks. Mostly I thought about food. Going to one with Emi was like being institutionalized—even more so than I already was. All I wanted was some teriyaki. She wouldn’t let me have it. We ate healthy instead, and I’d learned at a young age that there was a bold line between ‘healthy’ and ‘tasty’. I’d yet to find a food that I’d call both.

After we ate we decided to find Rin. We knew where she’d be—her mural. Emi and I set off to meet her, but she stopped me before we left the campus commons. “Hey Hisao,” she said, “Isn’t that your class’s stall?”

She was pointing to a booth on the main path. Its sign was red and yellow, and it read ‘Soup’. I’d heard Lilly’s class was selling soup, too. I doubted it was a coincidence. “Yeah, that looks like it.”

“Rin isn’t going anywhere. Want to check it out real quick?”

I didn’t. It wasn’t that I disliked my class. I liked them just fine. It was my muscles. They were sorer than I could remember them ever being, and I had a feeling that if I walked up to our stall I’d be put to work. “Actually I think Rin—”

Emi grabbed my arm and pulled. I found my vote didn’t count for much when I was with her. “Let’s go!”

There was a line at our stall, but it wasn’t very long. It didn’t take more than a few seconds to see why. There was only one person working behind the counter. It was Miki. She was running back and forth between the cooker and the counter trying to grab cups and bowls, and she had to place them down before she could pour the soup in. She could only carry one of them back to the customers at a time. It was like watching a crane game at an arcade. Her arm would go down, it would come up with a bowl, and she’d drop it on the counter to pour. She didn’t drop the soup bowls as much as the crane games dropped stuffed animals, though; in the time we were in line she only lost one bowl.

I thought about stepping in to help, but she didn’t strike me as the kind of person who would want it. If she had, she would have gotten somebody long before she’d started hitting her foot with that hammer when assembling the sign, and she wouldn’t have told me to leave when she was told to repaint it. The aching in my legs probably played a part in my decision making too. Would that have stopped me before my stay in the hospital?

She greeted us when we stepped up to the counter. Her school uniform had been switched out for a T-shirt and jeans. I wouldn’t have minded seeing her in a dress, but she looked good. The shirt was black, and while it wasn’t skin tight, it clung closer to her body than her uniform. Her shoulders were broader than her usual slouch let on, and she had a bit of muscle on her. Most of the girls I’d known before had been slight, and Iwanako had been skinny as a rail. Miki must have been an exercise nut. I wondered if she was a diet fundamentalist like Emi, but I doubted it. “You want two, or are you going to share?” she asked.

I was about to tell her we weren’t eating when Emi scoffed. “Like I’d eat anything you touched.”

I’d never heard anything mean out of Emi—I hadn’t thought she was capable of it—but she was leaning forward on the counter, and her eyes were narrowed.

Miki rolled her own eyes and shook her head. “Probably a safe move,” she said, matching Emi’s stance. Her hand was resting flat on her hip, but her elbow was cocked back like she was going to throw a punch. “If I knew I was serving it to you I’d spit in it anyway.”

Emi leaned closer. “You would spit. When will you stop being such a little bitch and start swallowing?”

I glanced around to see if there were any customers in earshot. Emi and I were the only two in line. I wasn’t sure what was going on between the two of them, but it needed to stop. I’d never broken up a fight before, but I couldn’t stand by and watch.

Before I could drive a wedge between them, Miki smirked. Then they both laughed. The hand at Miki’s hip made a fist, and Emi bumped it when she put it forward. “What’s up, Emi?” She nodded up in my direction. “Hisao?”

Emi looked at me like she expected me to answer. I was still trying to figure out whether or not I needed to stop a fight. It was clear they weren’t enemies. In fact, they looked like good friends—just shit talkers. Emi was competitive. It was one of the first things I noticed about her. Seeing her butt heads with a friend made sense. But Miki seemed too laid back to talk trash. Then again, she also seemed too mellow to be hitting the gym. Maybe ‘mellow’ and ‘lazy’ weren’t the same. “Not much,” I said, trying not to stammer.

The girls laughed, and Emi patted my shoulder. “Miki’s on the track team,” she said, as if reading my mind. “We like to pretend we’re competitors sometimes. Not really sure why, though. She’s slow as Hell.”

Miki bit her lower lip to hide a smile and shook her head. “Then how come the only time I ever see you during a race is when I look behind me?”

“Because I’m about to lap you.”

Miki gave a shrug that could only say oh, well that makes sense. She turned away when a man and his son stepped up to the booth. They only ordered one bowl. When they left, she leaned back up against the counter in front of us. “Emi tells me she has you running.”

It was another surprise, but a nice one—they’d been talking about me. “Every morning,” I said.

She shuddered. “No way I’d ever get up that early. Especially not to run.”

I couldn’t blame her. The early mornings were agony, and I’d thought about ditching out on them. “It’s not so bad. Once you get moving you start to wake up.”

“That’s what Emi always says. Not sure I trust her on that one.”

“Then why not come sometime and find out yourself?”

Miki stopped to think for a moment before answering. I could see her eyes trace me up and down, as if her answer had been written on my shirt. Then she shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Nice try, Hisao,” Emi said, “but nothing’s going to get her on that track before noon. I take the mornings, she takes the graveyard shift. With the rest of the team running in the middle, we’re keeping that track going from dawn to dusk.”

She was being modest. We were on the track a good deal before dawn, and I imagined Miki didn’t actually run before dusk. “That’s good though,” Miki said. “That she has you running, I mean. Stick with it. She’s a good coach.”

Emi beamed, and while everyone called her the star of the track team, I could tell she didn’t often get straight praise from Miki. It dawned on me that their shit talking wasn’t just fun and games, but a showing of respect. You had to have a high opinion of somebody before telling them you were going to spit in their food or jokes about swallowing became compliments. I couldn’t recall ever having a friend like that. Somehow I felt like I’d missed out. “Yeah, she is.”

Miki smirked, and when I looked at Emi I saw why. She was blushing. After taking a moment to try to recover (and failing), she looked away from the stand. “Well, we’ve seen your stand, Hisao, but I don’t think I can stand talking to this girl any longer. Let’s go find Rin.”

I’d almost forgotten about Rin. As much as I’d wanted to avoid visiting my class stand, my feet were planted hard on the ground in front of it. They felt heavy. I wanted to stay. “Yeah,” I said. It sounded like defeat. I hoped neither of them could hear it in my voice. “We probably should.”

Miki nodded. “See you later then, Emi.”

Emi waved with the back of her hand. “Catch you later. You still good for that movie tomorrow?”

“My room, five thirty?”

Emi nodded, and started walking away. I stepped backwards to follow, but still kept my eyes locked on Miki. “I’ll see you later,” I said.

She shook her head. “No you won’t.”

I stopped. “I’m sorry?”

“You’re not going anywhere. I said goodbye to Emi, not you.” She looked around the inside of the booth as if she expected something about it to have changed. It was still the same as when Emi and I had walked up to it. “You see anybody else around here? Expect me to run this thing by myself? I sure as Hell don’t. Get your ass behind the counter.”

I groaned, and I didn’t care who heard it. Emi laughed behind me. “I’ll tell Rin you said hi,” she said.

When Emi said we were leaving I thought I would have done anything to stay. Miki was easy to talk to. She was pretty, too. The men’s uniform didn’t do her justice. As I began stepping around the counter, I knew I’d thought wrong. Every muscle in my body felt like failing. Why were my arms sore? I’d been running, not lifting weights. I’d have done anything to stay except work. “Thanks,” I said. “Do that.”

Miki set me up by the cooker. She didn’t need two hands to interact with customers, but pouring hot soup could get dangerous. She’d attract more customers anyway. Maybe that’s why she decided not to wear the school uniform. “Have you really been working this place all by yourself?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Aren’t there more people scheduled?”

She laughed, and joined me over by the cooker. The festival was crowded, but our booth wasn’t getting a lot of business, even with Miki running the counter. Either the sign really was too jarring, or it had been a bad decision to set up another soup booth. “Molly’s scheduled to be working now. She left to go to the bathroom.”

Emi and I hadn’t been talking to Miki long, but from the way she was talking she’d been running the booth solo for some time. “How long ago was that?”

“Forty minutes.” She laughed again, and leaned back against the table. Miki was beautiful when she stood straight, but she slouched every chance she got. Her posture was pitiful. “She probably got lost at a festival booth or five. Lazy fuck.”

The jab didn’t sound like the compliment it would have had it been aimed at Emi. “I’m sorry.”

“You got nothing to apologize for. This one’s on Molly.” She sighed, and tilted her head back. “It hasn’t been so bad, really. I got a rush of people maybe every ten minutes, but we’re not making a whole lot of bank here. It’s been nice and quiet.”

She probably could have relaxed anywhere. Quiet wasn’t the word I would have used to describe the festival. The noise could have been heard from every corner of campus. At least our stall wasn’t busy. It meant less work for me, and more time to chat. “So you’re catching a movie?”

“With Emi? Yeah. Hitting the theater in town tomorrow night. You have a chance to check out town yet?”

“Not really.” I was still getting used to the school. Everything was so different there. The town would have been too much.

“You should have Emi take you around then. She’s a good guide, too.”

“Maybe I will. Did she show you around when you first got here?”

Miki nodded. “When I enrolled I joined the track team. She took me by the hand and showed me the ropes. Got me set up and all. It’s a rough change, first starting here. Still is.”

I’d been at Yamaku for days, but it still felt like everything I knew about it had come from somebody else’s experience. It was like reading an advertisement. It tells you what the place is, shows you some pictures, and claims an easy transition. I lived there now. I still felt like I’d never actually set foot on campus. If Miki was any indication, it didn’t seem that was going to change any time soon. “She didn’t tell me you guys were close.”

Laughing, Miki scratched her head, and then sunk even deeper onto the counter. She was leaning so far back with her elbows resting on its surface that her wrists were nearly cradled in her armpits. Her hand fell limp on the right side of her chest. It was tough not to notice. “We’re not close,” she said, “we’re tight.” I nodded as if I understood the difference. “I mean, we’re not BFF or anything, but we get each other. I can’t say that about most of the other students around here. We hang from time to time. Do girly shit. It’s fun.”

After hearing them swear each other out, it was tough to picture them painting nails. Did they bark while they were watching chick flicks, too? I didn’t have time to mull it over. A group of students lined up at our booth. There were five of them, and they looked like they came from another school in town. Miki chatted them up while I poured the soup. It would have taken her five trips. I could do it in two.

While I was pouring the fourth bowl, I noticed Miki’s notebook on the table. It was open, and I could see a chart that I remembered from our science class. It didn’t look straight, and the handwriting on the page was God-awful. I couldn’t read a word of it. If she was so terrible writing with her right hand, why didn’t she type her notes?

The chart wasn’t the only drawing on the page. The margins were covered in scribbles. They were mostly random lines and squiggles, but one of them caught my attention and wouldn’t let go. It looked like a cylinder of some sort, and it seemed to be her only attempt at actually drawing anything. That wasn’t what was special about it. Everything on the page was scribbled in blue ink. The cylinder was red. I thought she didn’t like red. She’d gone so far as to try changing our class’s sign because she didn’t like the colors.

After handing over the last bowl of soup and waving the customers off, Miki and I fell back into our spots. It was almost like we hadn’t left. “Studying for Muto’s practice exam?” I asked, gesturing to her notebook.

Her eyes widened slightly. I could see she was surprised, but she laughed to hide it. It didn’t seem strange to me that a student would be studying for a test while working a festival booth, and I wondered if she was kicking herself because I’d caught her in the act or because I’d seen her notebook. She was probably just embarrassed about her handwriting. “Yeah.” She walked over and closed her notebook. Then she put it under the table, next to her bag. “Can’t believe he scheduled something so close to the festival. That’s the problem with science teachers, you know? They’re so caught up in their equations and stuff that they forget about people.”

I didn’t know about that. I loved science. It was one of my best subjects. Still, the scheduling seemed negligent. Muto didn’t seem like the kind of teacher who would go out of his way to screw a class over. He should have known better. “It really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Everything always piles on at once.” Love confessions, heart attacks, the hospital, a school for cripples, morning runs, a festival, and a science test. The weight was crushing. “There’s still time, though. The test isn’t for another few days. If you’ve started now you’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” she said, muted. I’d heard the tone from her before. It was the same she’d used as I walked out of the art room. “Sure.”

It wasn’t confidence, and it wasn’t her standard devil may care style. I wanted to ask her about it. She started telling me about Taro’s girlfriend before I could. We spent the next fifteen minutes talking about Misha’s hair and how Natsume had tried out for pole-vaulting. None of it mattered to either of us. It was one of the best conversations I’d had.

Miki didn’t chew Molly out when she returned. Molly looked like she’d expected it, and the front of her uniform had a food stain on it. She’d been ditching. Miki just shrugged, and nodded. Then she turned to me. “Looks like you’ve been paroled, sport.”

I pushed myself off of the table, but my feet were planted again. Working with Miki wasn’t so bad. I wanted to stay. Could I make up my mind about anything? “Sure you don’t need me here?”

“Only takes two to run a soup stand,” she said. “Besides, you leave now you still might be able to catch Rin.”

That was right. I still hadn’t seen her mural. “Good call.” I walked around the booth and back out in front of the counter. Molly took my spot. She apologized, and thanked me for covering her while she was gone. I almost thanked her instead. She deserved it. I gave Miki a last wave before I left. “See you later.”

She smiled. “Yeah.” Miki was standing up straight. She needed to do that more often. “I’ll make sure you do.”

I couldn’t get a pin on Miki. She seemed like two different people at the drop of a hat. One moment she didn’t care about anything. Assigned to hammer in nails with one hand? No problem. Run a festival stand by herself? Fuck it, let’s party. But take a look at her science notes? She was spineless. I refused to believe a practice test would have her tucking her tail between her legs. There was something more.

That didn’t matter. At least not right then. I’d been sore as Hell, and she’d still managed to make working the booth fun. And she said she’d make sure I saw her again. I had a new start. It wasn’t a good one, but it was fresh. My old friends were gone. It sucked, but I needed to accept that. I needed new friends, now. I had Misha, Shizune, Emi, and Rin. Maybe I wanted a friend like Miki, too. I smiled.

I was still grinning long after I’d left the campus commons.

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Next Chapter

[Sperance]

IT'S ALIVE! ALIVE! MAWHAWHAWHAWHAW!!

Now on a serious note, I'm glad to see this getting picked up again. Like before, this chapter was really good. Looking forward to the future!

[Total Destruction]

Resurrection. We approve.

Also, you have the single best handle on the forums.

[Guest]

A(nother) wild Miki route appears. May the best cripple win.

[nemz]

Laughing, Miki scratched her head, and then sunk even deeper onto the counter. She was leaning so far back with her elbows resting on its surface that her wrists were nearly cradled in her armpits. Her hands fell limp on either side of her chest. It was tough not to notice.

Bit of a problem there, don't you think?

Also Hisao fails for not making the obvious offer to study with her.

[Bagheera]

Also Hisao fails for not making the obvious offer to study with her.

It's the middle of the festival, give him time.

[Mirage_GSM]

Laughing, Miki scratched her head, and then sunk even deeper onto the counter. She was leaning so far back with her elbows resting on its surface that her wrists were nearly cradled in her armpits. Her hands fell limp on either side of her chest. It was tough not to notice.

Bit of a problem there, don't you think?.

Well, she still has two wrists, but I agree on the second one

Regarding links...

Code: Select all

[url=www.xyz.com]Chapter 1[/url]

For the correct url, you can copy it from your browser. The last number in the url is the number of the post in the thread.
I.e. The url of the second page of a thread ends with "start=15". If you want a link to the third post on the secon page, just replace that with "start=17".
For examples just hit quote on a post that contains links.

Oh, and nice to see this is continued... Or better to see you posting again

[Doomish]

You can also click on the title of the post (here it would be the Re: Confinement (Miki's Route) at the top) and it will put the direct link to the post in your address bar. You can then copy it and put it in whatever links you want to go directly to the top of the post from wherever your table of contents is.

Also, I don't have enough popcorn to eat while reading all these delicious Miki routes!

[Catgirl Kleptocracy]

Laughing, Miki scratched her head, and then sunk even deeper onto the counter. She was leaning so far back with her elbows resting on its surface that her wrists were nearly cradled in her armpits. Her hands fell limp on either side of her chest. It was tough not to notice.

Bit of a problem there, don't you think?

Wow that was stupid of me. I can't believe I missed that. But you're right - I didn't go into nearly as much detail about her chest as I should have. I'll go back and fix... Oh, wait, the hands! Thanks for pointing that out. I'd even read that section over several times more than the rest of the chapter during my edits to make sure the description made sense. Somehow that slipped right under my radar. Guess I was so focused on making sure the writing made sense there that I completely forgot about the context. Edited. Thanks a tonne for noting that.

And huge thanks to Mirage and Doom for helping me out there with the links. Got it working. You guys are life savers. Your next round of popcorn is on me.

Oh, and nice to see this is continued... Or better to see you posting again

Thanks! I'll be around. I figure the best way to keep myself accountable is to post around the forum. There look to be a lot of stories I'll need to catch up on. Can't wait to start reading.

Also, you have the single best handle on the forums.

You sure know how to make a grown man blush

[Leaty]

This is my favorite Miki story so far. I was hoping I'd see it continued.

I look forward to the next installment.

[Hoitash]

Very nice, glad to see it it continued. You must have a good cleric in your party.