Transfer Student [OPEN]

[Lucretia Odovacar]

Lucretia had not been looking forward to this day.  School was bad enough on its own, but going to a fully Japanese school when her grasp on the language wasn't as good as she liked and had a very noticeable accent was not her idea of a good time.  It was a fair distance away too, she was going to be forced to go onto one of those crowded trains just to even get there.  Worst of all, it meant going outside for an extended period of time, and she was pretty sure she couldn't get away with carrying around an umbrella in this weather; it was much too sunny.  

With a sigh, she grabbed her bag and headed out.  As much as she would like to be late, she acknowledged that she shouldn't be.  The ride there was far too long, but otherwise uneventful.  It made it rather boring really.  This was really going to be her daily commute?  And she was really going to have to go to school on Saturdays as well?  All of this was such a pain, how did these people even deal with it?

She had downloaded the floor plan onto her glasses computer, so finding her way around wasn't difficult.  She was able to find her class in a matter of moments, and clearly got there sooner than the homeroom teacher expected.  The teacher just told her to stay at the front until class started and then introduce herself.  Lucretia rubbed her forehead.  With as often as she moved, she was used to doing this, but it never ceased to irritate her.  There was never anything to say and everyone looked just as bored as she did.  It was so awkward.

Soon, the bell rang, and she wrote her name on the board in roman letters: 'Lu'...she caught herself before finishing writing her first name.  This country was weird and did everything backwards for some reason, so the last name always came first.  She erased the Lu with her hand and started again.  'Odovacar Lucretia.'  She turned back to the class to introduce herself, but quickly realized that most of the students were trying to sound that out and had no idea what she just wrote.  With a sigh, she turned back to the board and wrote some letters in katakana beside her name: "odobekaa rukuresha.'  It practically killed her to write it like that, but whatever.  if that's what it took to get these people to understand then so be it.  Sadly, when she turned around, most people still looked like they were having difficulty reading what she wrote because her handwriting was that bad.  This time though, she didn't have the patience to try to fix it. 

"I am Lu-Odovacar Lucretia.  Nice to meet you all," her voice was completely deadpan and somewhat irritated.  She clearly didn't mean a word of it.  "I got nothing else to say.  Can I sit down now?"

The teacher nodded a little awkwardly and pointed to a seat in the middle of the room, near the back.  At least it wasn't next to a window.  She took her seat, slid her bag into the desk, put her elbow on the desk and rested her head on her hand.  She was not pleased right now, and just wanted the lesson to start already.

[Seiji Dalton]

For once in his life, Seiji was actually on time. Sitting in his desk near the back, he managed to finish one of the hardest levels of his current video game before the teacher walked in. All around him, students were talking about some new transfer student. He certainly wasn't going to be the new fish for very long. This school was kind of weird in that some of the home rooms put some second and third year students in the same class. He watched some of the other girls with amusement as they tried to work up the courage to talk to some generic looking guy in a straight-laced button up school uniform. Seiji noted how this fellow seemed totally oblivious to absolutely everything going on around him, least of all the girls. "You should date the redhead." He said to the guy, calling out over the pre-class chatter. The guy regarded him and then turned to the girls. They all ran out of the classroom screaming when he actually noticed them. Japanese schools sure were weird.

It was at about this point that his gaze turned to the front of the class. The girl standing there looked like she had a massive chip on her shoulder. Oh boy. She was white, too. From what he could tell, not many of the other students knew what to make of her. Given how big Tokyo was, he was surprised there weren't more castoffs from other nations in his class. When the bell rang and she began to talk, Seiji realized that he was right in assuming that Japanese wasn't her first language. The accent was foreign. Interesting, too. European? He'd been around Americans for most of his life and she didn't sound like she was from the land of the free and the home of the cheeseburger. "Lucretia." He murmured in a low voice that managed to carry itself over the other people trying to say her name. Unlike them, he spoke it concisely and without stammering over pronunciation. The L's threw these people for a loop. Again, Seiji thanked whatever higher power there was for placing people with Ls in their name in a Japanese environment.

When the teacher directed her to her desk, Seiji briefly felt appreciation for his otherwise dull homeroom teacher. Whatever the teacher's faults, they were smart enough to place this new transfer next to one of the few other people fluent in English. "Our teacher is an uncannily smart fellow, eh? He's smart enough to stick us English speaking people so we can plot together." Seiji sounded and looked like an outsider. His own accent seemed to be the lack of accent. He enunciated his words precisely and spoke without much tone. Indeed, the deadpan Lucretia displayed was matched by Seiji's own. The jacket he wore was a dark blue compared to the black one worn by most of the students. His features were a mingling of soft Asian curves on the edge of his chin and sharp, big American eyes, eyes that observed her. If she turned out to be anything like the last girl he met really was, he'd be in for a hoot and a half. All the girls in this town seemed to be cold. "The name's Seiji Dalton, if you care about names." He spoke in a hushed voice to avoid getting them yelled at.

[Lucretia Odovacar]

Lucretia was still a bit flustered from the whole experience, still blushing slightly and trying to hide it with her hand.  When the person she happened to be sitting next to could not only speak English, but speak it well was an absolute godsend.  He had an obvious accent, but it was the kind that meant he spoke the variant from the other side of the Atlantic.  It would be obvious to him that she learned British English rather than American English, but they were just dialects.  As long as they weren't talking about chips or jelly they should understand each other just fine.

"Plot about what exactly?" she raised an eyebrow.  "I can't say I expect there to be anything particularly interesting happening around here, unless Japanese schools really are that different."

She was starting to feel a bit less flustered now that there was someone that could actually understand her here, so she rested her arms on her desk.  Between her posture and general demeanor, it made her look even more stiff than before, but she really was feeling much better.

"I believe you've already caught my name.  If you haven't you really need to pay more attention."

[Seiji Dalton]

Lucretia's accent was kind of cute. He'd never heard someone talk like that in person before. Again, he mused about how this city seemed to attract people of all stripes and colors. Even people whiter than whitebread. "Oh, it really is different. There might be a pocket dimension filled to the brim with monsters around every corner or something." He spoke in that perfectly cold voice while he said it. He got a kick out of saying audacious things. This audacious thing just happened to be true. She probably wouldn't know that. "Nah. It's prettymuch the same around here." The teacher was talking about something irrelevant to him. Then he started talking about things that Seiji already knew. It left him open to having a conversation in his hushed voice.

"Mother Nippon is big on imitating American stuff after Dubya Dubya Two so it's not so different if you're used to an American environment. There's formalities and weird nuances. You been in the country long?" Look at him, talking like an old veteran when he hadn't been there very long himself. "That's a nice name by the way, Lucretia. I'm sure someone put a lot of thought into naming you that." Ah how he loved adding something awkward into his conversations to see how people would react. He pronounced the name perfectly. His own posture there in the chair was relaxed. One of his legs were raised and crossed over the other one's knee. His hands were in his lap. Despite being in a school environment, he looked almost ready to pass out.

It was hard not to be sleepy given his nighttime activities.

[Lucretia Odovacar]

Lucretia was listening to the teacher a little more than she was the other student, but that was only because she acknowledged that she should probably know at least a little about what's going on and what will be going on.  She wasn't very happy with how her first impression to the rest of the students went, and didn't want to continue on that trend just because didn't hear something important.

That said, it's not like she wasn't listening to the other student.  So, when he said something rather unexpected her neck snapped in his direction, and she was suddenly looking directly at him instead of at the front of the classroom.  Was he being serious, or was he just saying random words?  She couldn't tell.  She was always terrible at reading these kinds of things.  For a moment, she just stared at him, her confusion written all over her face.  At least until he revealed that he was kidding.  Lucretia was a little disappointed that he was just an idiot.  Her expression went flat, much like it was before and how it almost always is.  She stared at him for a moment longer before turning back to the front of the classroom.  The rest of his words were at least more conversational, and less absurd.   The teacher wasn't talking about anything that needed her full attention, so there was no reason not to answer back.

"A couple of years.  However, I spent most of it on a military base where everyone spoke either Italian or English, and only left occasionally.  Not enough that I'd say I'm really u--excuse me?"

She looked back in his direction at his last comment, though her head didn't turn as quickly as last time.  Her expression was just as flat as before.  What kind of comment was that?  That was almost as bad as saying her hair smelt nice or something.  She leaned away slightly, and didn't turn her face back to the front of the classroom.  And here she thought Japanese people were usually reserved to say such things.  Granted, he did have an English last name and spoke the language fluently, so perhaps she shouldn't be making such assumptions about where he grew up.

[Seiji Dalton]

It wasn't unexpected when she paid more attention to the teacher than him. It was her first day and all that. There were things the teacher was saying that she needed to know. Honestly, he was being a very bad influence by distracting her from what she actually needed to hear. Plus, alienating someone he could actually speak in his mother tongue with wasn't the wisest idea. Oh well. The fact that they could have a decent conversation without rolling their tongue in awful ways would probably keep him around. And that confusion, what looked to Seiji almost to be shock, that surprised him. There was no point in saying anything though. If she knew about that place then perhaps they could talk about it later. Not now, though.

He had to pull a save out of his rear or risk being weirded out forever. "It's a lot less bland than Seiji Dalton. That's all I meant." Not his best work, but it was candid and forthright. "You were raised on a military base as well? My dad was a marine stationed on Okinawa. Still not quite sure how I ended up here, but I suppose that's how things go." That was the only thing he'd said to her that was an outright lie. He knew exactly why he was here. There was no point in bothering Lucretia with all that, though. "So, if you don't mind me bothering you so much with questions, are you joining any clubs or anything like that? I just joined the Kendo team, myself."

He was actually good at Kendo, too. It kept his senses sharp so that he wasn't totally caught off guard when whatever was out there in the dark green yonder decided to knock on his door and demand him and his brother kick some ass. He was still curious about her and how she reacted when he vaguely hinted at the dark hour. It was still probably just nothing.

[Lucretia Odovacar]

She blinked, "My first name is fairly common.  Lucretia was a semi-legendary figure in ancient Rome.  I thought it was common at one point even overseas, however I have not actually verified this claim."

Lucretia was less annoyed and more unnerved, though perhaps not for the reasons he thought.  She wasn't always very good at reading people, so his less serious manner of speaking actually made her feel a bit awkward.  Plus, with that last comment, she couldn't tell if he was trying to flirt with her or something, and that was still just weird.  Her situation here was already a little awkward, so any more just made it worse than it would have been normally.  When he claimed to have a similar situation, all she could do was wonder if he was being honest, or if he was just making up something to 'connect' with her better.  Some people did that sometimes, though she could never figure out why.

"On several actually.  My father never stayed in the same place for more than a few years at a time.  I never asked for the specifics.  I can't say I really cared."

To his next inquiry she just gave a flat, "No."  Just thinking about club activities made her a little disgruntled because she knew that her mother was going to bother her about it the second she got home.  "I don't have time for such things personally."  She paused for a moment.  "Though I am surprised there is a kendo team here.  I wouldn't have expected a school to have what is essentially fighting training.  In most countries I've been you would have go to a private company, and likely pay quite a bit of money."