Whatever floats your fireflies

An Nam Il

There was, to put it simply, no bad time for ice cream and Nam Il hadn't had any in a few weeks. Valentine's Day festivities were starting to wrap up but he doubted that he would stop seeing all of the pink and heart-shaped decorations until the middle of March. Everywhere, he could see discounts off of Valentine's Day gifts and even though he was still very firmly a loner, Nam Il took the opportunity to pile up on as much on sale sweets as he could hold in his hands. He would have taken more but actually holding them like that made him conscious of just how much he was buying. The stuff was good quality, too, so it was still worth a good amount despite being cheaper than usual. With a little more money left over than he had expected, he decided to head down to one of those old fashioned ice-cream parlors that still existed on the island.

With a bit of a spring him his step, he pushed the door of the parlor open. A bell ringed above his head and the bag of chocolates hanging on his arm knocked into the door frame but that was fine. A quick check over reassured him that the chocolates hadn't been damaged in anyway.

There were a few people already milling about in the shop. The surprisingly, there was a good number of couples who had taken up the booths and talking intensely about various subjects. The line itself for the ice cream was rather short but the person who was next up seemed to be having a hard time deciding what to order. That was fine, too. Nam Il took the time to glance idly at the menu posted across the wall behind the register. What especially stood out to him were the floats. Searching his brain, he found that he actually hadn't ever had one of those before. It was ice and soda, he knew, which was weird. But then again, Manta Carlos was kind of a weird place, too, so he might as well go all the way in.

"I'll have the orange ice cream float," he said when it was his turn, raising a tentative two fingers towards the printed name.

An Nam Il

After placing his order, Nam Il didn't pay too much attention to the other people behind him in the line. Instead, he peeked over the counter curiously as the person there made his drink. The man behind the counter dished out two scoops of orange ice cream into a tall, glass cup that kind of looked like a flower before filling it with orange soda from a classic-looking soda fountain. He stuck a pile of whipped cream and a cherry on it, which Nam Il approved of.

"Oh, I can just take it," he said, when a server went to grab it. "I don't know where I'm sitting anyways." Speaking of that, there didn't seem to really be anymore open tables anyways. There were some empty ones outside but it was still a bit too cold to be having ice cream outside, in his opinion.

Eventually, his eyes fell on a girl sitting alone at a table. Figuring that she might not mind him as much as a girlfriend and boyfriend pair might, he walked over to her. "Hi, do you mind if I sit here? The place is a bit too crowded right now and I can't find anywhere else."

An Nam Il

Feeling a bit awkward, Nam Il got into the empty seat across from the girl. She looked pretty serious, which was intimidating, but she didn't sound like she was annoyed with him, at least. He counted it as a small victory but decided to finish his drink quickly so that she wouldn't feel like she needed to put up with him.

A server came to deliver her drink and that was when she introduced herself first, which was surprising but he appreciated the gesture all the same. He relaxed, slumping slightly in his seat before his shoulders went right back up in attentiveness. "Oh, your name's Alessa? It's nice to meet you. I'm Nam Il." The smile felt crooked on his face. He hoped that it really didn't look like that.

His drink already looked like it was melting so he leaned in and took a sip. It was sweet but not overly so as he had thought. It tasted like orange cream soda which seemed logical enough to him. There was something else to it, too, however. Nam Il frowned at the glass. Cherry? There was a cherry on top. Maybe lime? He licked his lips to try and get more of a feel of that flavor.

"So, you're a student at the Academy, too, right?"

An Nam Il

One moment, Alessa was giving a simple answer to his simple question and the next, Nam Il simply felt weird, like a balloon had inflated and deflated inside of his skull. He winced a little and put a hand to his head but ultimately, he couldn't say that it had hurt at all. It was just strange. He felt strange. But he also felt something familiar, too, that he couldn't quite put a name to.

Oh, it tastes like apples, the boy decided the very next moment, as the flavor began to dominant all else. I like apples.

"I'm in the high school," Nam Il told her, beginning to feel warm despite everything. He took more sips from his drink, taking longer and longer as an incurable thirst began to come over him. "I know I don't look like it," he said suddenly, a soft need for this girl's approval prodding at his priorities, "but I'm really a junior. They let me skip a little but, well."

The boy flushed, unable to keep his usual bashfulness from surfacing. "I don't really like school that much. It might have been nice to have time to decide what I actually like. Um, what about you?"

An Nam Il

He grinned. "Well, to be honest, grades don't mean too much at all," the boy said before reddening a little as he thought over what exactly he had just said. "Meaning what you get on paper and the grade that you're in, um, I mean. You're a definitely smart, though, I can tell!" Even as he was trying to pay a genuine compliment, Nam Il's brain was chanting Awkward, Awkward, Awkward!

"Er, what I'm trying to say is that school is kind of a bad indicator of stuff," he said. "It's mainly personality and how you do in a nonstandard situation." Was that good enough? Was he messing up? "Sorry, um, maybe I'll just stop talking now."