2018-12-12 - TIMELINE 1: Making Tradition: It's Time For Crab!
| Title: TIMELINE 1: Making Tradition: It's Time For Crab! | |
|---|---|
| Summary: Endo makes sure to drag Mikoto out for the crab buffet before they leave Hokkaido. | |
| Who: | |
| Where: Hokkaido Snowy Island - Crab Buffet | |
| OOC - IC Date: 2018-12-12 - 2018-12-27 | |
.*********************** Earth - Hokkaido Snowy Island ************************. *+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+* Crab Buffet +*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+* Located on the first floor of the Squirrel Lodge, the hotel restaurant technically serves other types of food, but most people refer to it as a crab buffet. The signature dish of Hokkaido, crab here is both cheap and delicious, and trying it before you leave is all but mandatory. The dining room is elegant but rustic, with honey-colored hardwood and a hollow oval of bark-decorated buffet tables. Lit warmly by vented wooden light panels arranged in a grid on the wall, attended by polite staff in tall white chef hats, the restaurant offers long tables with benches for large groups (such as school trips), and smaller, more private tables for personal dining. The crab is tender, flaky, and hot, and comes in four varieties: the delicately sweet snow crab, the boldly sweet hairy crab, the large (and winter-traditional) king crab, and the luscious, rare Hanasaki crab. *+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+* Players +*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*
<Pose Tracker> Endo Naoki [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.
It's TIME FOR CRAB.
The sister schools trip is almost done, skiing is finished, and all that's left to do is pack and grab those last souvenirs before it's time to head home. Those who are truly smart, however, have decided to carry those souvenirs in their stomachs. Endo has invited Mikoto along for the journey, and after a short wait has claimed one side of a long table from which to launch their assault.
Unsurprisingly, that corner of the table has filled rapidly with plates. All types of crab are scattered around, some waiting to be eaten, others simply scraps from earlier efforts. Normally Endo wouldn't eat quite as much-but crab is healthy (he thinks), and it's one a year, and he needs to ward off the cold, and skiing is card work, and also probably whatever other excuse he can think of at the time.
"Mikoto-chan." He says, midway through scraping the meat out of a particularly large leg of crab, "Did you get anything to take home from the resort?" He's polite enough to give a brief pause as he asks the question, though he's soon chewing again before he awaits the response.
<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.
CRAB TIME CRAB TIME CRAB TIME
Here are THE FACTS: Mikoto loves food. There is UNLIMITED FOOD at the crab buffet. And yet somehow, she has stopped herself from being at the crab buffet every minute of every hour. How is this possible?! Because her friend Endo wanted to attack the buffet with her!
And now it is finally time for crab.
On the other side of the table sits the diminutive girl who is, apparently, powered by a vast and powerful black hole, judging by the shells of crabs past slowly piling up around her. Crab is probably healthy. It's dubious whether Mikoto really cares whether it's healthy or not. She will quite happily get seconds of anything so long as it isn't spicy. And thirds.
Mid-mouthful, she finds herself with a question! Chomp-chomp-swallow, and Mikoto lowers her own claw as she considers. Tap-tap goes the crab's claw as she fiddles with it. "I got presents!" She declares, but realises a moment later that that's probably not what he was asking about.
(Mikoto's gift to Endo was, of course, snacks. Sapphoro has some good senbei - rice crackers - which are able to be wrapped up easily. Shrimp-flavoured! Maybe that's healthy too..? ... probably not.)
With a thoughtful noise, she tilts her head. "... oh!" Mikoto's expression brightens as she remembers. "Found cool rock!" She nods, firmly. It's hers now.
Mikoto Minagi is not very good at souvenirs.
<Pose Tracker> Endo Naoki [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.
"Ahh--presents are good." Endo agrees. His own to Mikoto was of a similarly food-focused nature, a page of a half-dozen buttery pastries for the train ride back. While other friends may have gotten less edible trinkets, Endo knows that eating things is one of the rock solid foundations of a good Mikoto friendship. "I'm glad we got all of them back. I didn't want to do all the shopping again..."
He makes some consideration of the claim that comes after, before deciding: "Maybe you can make it into an ornament." Hopefully it's not a very big cool rock, or that idea might not pan out.
There's some time spared to take a few more bites of crab before he asks: "What are you going to do for the rest of the break, when we get back? Do they do anything at Ohtori?" Mikoto, as the few Ohtori student he really knows, is Endo's number one source for all Ohtori information. She's only more credible for the fact that she's not like an Ohtori student at all, so she obviously has no (non-Tokiha) related biases.
<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.
"Yup!" Mikoto chirps, happily, on the subject of presents. She is, of course, happy to go shopping... but she hasn't quite mastered the art of spending appropriately yet. Capitalism is new to her! At least by now she's learned that she can't just take things she likes, thanks to Yumi's careful tutoring.
But things cost money? And some things cost more money than other things and it doesn't always make sense, like, a big flat television costs WAY more than a slab of beef even though the TV slab can only be made to play back moving pictures. That's just not logical. Beef is much more valuable. Money is hard, and surely Endo has witnessed these difficulties as Mikoto miscounts her yen. (Maths: also troublesome.) "Shopping's hard," she agrees, instead of going into any of these details which are frankly self-evident.
Mikoto fills the space of Endo's thought with eating more crab, and so when he suggests an ornament, she just nods vigorously with a wordless affirmative noise. How hard could it be? It's a cool shiny rock. There must be some way to transform it from rock to fashion statement.
Except...
... Mikoto's not very good at fashion.
She'll just have to ask Nori!
Nomph-nomph-nomph and then Endo asks another question, and Mikoto remembers to swallow before answering. "Umm... I dunno!" She says, smiling despite the confusion. "I'm still new!" But she tilts her head and thinks a little harder, tapping a finger against crab-armor. "Think 'Buki's gonna try and get pets adopted again, Shizuka's kittens are gonna leave soon, Kasagami's probably gonna do something loud..." 'Something loud' describes most of her efforts on behalf of the Student Council, as far as Mikoto is concerned.
(Shizuka, of course, is the cat who had kittens under Mikoto's watchful eye recently, which Ohtori is definitely not supposed to know about and whose secret Mikoto has been terrible at keeping from her human friends. She remained a cat fugitive for a while in Ohtori, but she's living with the Kanames while everyone is on a school trip. Mikoto took custody of a kitten she called Katsu, and all her tales to Endo seem to involve him sitting on her head like a big kitten pancake.)
"And someone delivered gold leafs to everyone before trip..." Mikoto scrunches up the side of her lip as she thinks. "... but that's just Ohtori, I think." Sometimes strange things happen in Ohtori. Sometimes Mikoto is the strange thing which happens! "School's weird," she dismisses that thought. "What about Juuban?" Which is, at least, not nearly as strange.
<Pose Tracker> Endo Naoki [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.
"Kasagami-san always does loud things." Endo agrees. "When we were skiing, I kept waiting for her to cause an avalanche." It's more of a joke than a malicious statement, as can be judged by faint laughter around another mouthful of crab. He hasn't spent much time with the student that would be king, but a few runs on the ski slope is enough.
"We have a few cats around the apartment complex." Endo notes absently. This is not particularly new, as he happens to live in Japan, land of free-roaming cats. "Maybe we should put blankets out for them."
He seems briefly puzzled by Mikoto's mention of gold leaves, but it doesn't seem to have any significance to him personally. Ohtori really is weird!
"Juuban we don't really do anything special. Besides this trip, we have a tree. It's big." Endo extends two (and crab legs) outward to give an example of just how big said tree is. "But-I'll probably be a home for most of the break. I'm going to try and work a little more while I can." He's told Mikoto by now that he takes shifts at the konbini, though not many fine-grained details besides that. Likely because capitalism is very boring and all that really matters is he can buy more snacks.
<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.
"Skiing speech..." Mikoto tilts her head and trails off with a tone of wonder as she considers it. She can absolutely imagine Kasagami making brave declarations on her skiis. She wonders if she remembered to actually skii in the process. Mikoto, herself, has largely stayed off the skii range, for... mysterious... reasons.
(Mikoto is a picture of parkouring grace, except when you attach two long planks to her legs, at which point she becomes a clumsy kitten who falls over constantly. It's hilarious.)
But then the subject turns to actual cats instead of metaphorical cats, and Mikoto nods, with an affirmative noise. "Yup! Cats like warm!" This is why they move around with the sunbeams. Perhaps it's also why Mikoto, living space heater, always manages to attract cats to her side when she's napping in the neighbourhood. This could be the detail which unlocks the greatest mystery known to Tokyo..!
Unfortunately, the answer remains veiled, because Mikoto doesn't share her secrets and Endo moves on to sharing Juuban's instead. Her big yellow eyes get e v e n w i d e r as he describes just how large the tree is. "Wow!" She says, sufficiently impressed.
... ... ... ... ... she wants to climb it immediately.
Luckily for Juuban, Ohtori's resident demon cat is distracted from the temptation of a giant Christmas tree by the introduction of a Mai-adjacent fact. "Oh! Like Mai!" Is Mikoto's response to the ongoing grind of capitalism, as predictable as clockwork. It's a fundamental law of the universe: if Mikoto can relate something back to Mai, her roommate is going to come up. "Mai's gonna work lots more now there's no school..."
She scrunches up a corner of her mouth, humming through closed lips. "But not too much, okay? It's break!"
<Pose Tracker> Endo Naoki [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.
"Cats like warm things." Endo agrees. He knows that much about cats, even if the only family pet he's ever had is a roomba.
"Well, kind of like Mai, I guess." He's well aware of Mikoto's roommate, and only by virtue of Mikoto talking about her. "She works at a restaurant though. It's a little different." He's not sure if it's better or worse, but it is a tiny bit different.
There's a short nod at Mikoto's insistence about taking it easy. "I won't work all the time." He assures her. "Just a little bit extra." He considers, adding, "There's still lots of stuff to do over the break. I want to walk around and look at all the lights...I wish it'd snow too, but that never happens. And I have to make time for monsters, too..." There's a brief frown, Endo tapping his skewer pensively to his plate. "Maybe they'll be busy with monster christmas..."
<Pose Tracker> Endo Naoki [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.
"Maybe he did." Endo proposes. "If there is one. I don't really know how that whole thing worked. But now Christmas is back. Are there different kinds of Christmas?" This is something to give some consideration to. At least, until Endo gets distracted with nibbling on crab.
"I think...I'm getting full." It only took a dozen plates or so. "You can keep going, though." Endo doesn't have anywhere to be. I mean in theory they should go home at some point, so he decides to just have to hope Mikoto is capable of the state of fullness. Or that at some point she'll decide she wants to do something different. Either way, he's happy to sit and keep her company.
"It's no wonder you're so strong, if you eat all that." Again, this seems to be something Endo finds quite amusing. "I hope we come back and hear here next year too, right?"
<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (9)] has posed.
"Maybe... monsters don't got Christmas," Mikoto wonders, "and that's why they're mad." It is a matter of empathy which would be earth-shattering in different circumstances, but here it is just one more reflection of the lessons Mikoto is learning from the friends she fights beside.
She cants her head as Endo says he's full, only to smile brightly as he encourages her to keep going. "'Kay!" She says, eagerly tearing into another crab's leg. She cheerfully allows him to abdicate; it's not a competition, after all. They're friends! (And if he's not eating, there's more for her...)
Mikoto nods, firmly, as he remarks on her strength. Chew-swallow, "yup! Gotta eat!" Endo has surely, by now, seen what happens when she doesn't. It's very dramatic. She simply can't go on when she's hungry. She's a goner. She cannot possibly survive.
(She makes a remarkable recovery as soon as she's given something to eat.)
"Let's eat every year!" She insists, because if traditions can be yelling clocks, traditions can be crab buffet, too. And in the way Mikoto has, there's something heartwarming hidden in the hunger: that she hopes their friendship will persist for so many more buffet tables.
It's good to have friends, and it's good to share crab time with them.
