Flesh and Bone

Chapter 11: And Never the Twain Shall Meet

This is taking a while... Isen thought, awkwardly stuffing his hands into his pants pockets whilst they walked together. When she'd said that they'd be going out to the courtyard, Cecile decided that it was still too public for their talk. So, instead, she led him out into the open field that the school used for gym activities and sports. The field was a large clearing with trees lining the border between the school and the perimeter wall, and it resided next to the black fenced-off ball courts.

On this field was a section portioned out for public spectator events, and as such had a whole line of silver metal bleachers that rose up in one long, unified line. When she pointed to them as the place that she wanted them to go to next, Isen felt himself get chills as he wondered to himself, Am I about to get mugged here?

Nevertheless, he decided that at the very least she was trustworthy enough to not pull something like that on him in this current state of affairs. Getting behind the bleachers was easy; there wasn't any side paneling on either end of the row, meaning anyone could get under there and into the crawl-space between the seats and the wall.

And from the looks of it, anyone did indeed do just that. Discarded food wrappers, dented cans from drinks alcoholic and not, trampled paper and more littered the grass-less dirty beneath the bleachers. Seeing no one there besides Cecile, whom strode right on in with little regard for the trash set around them, Isen let out a nervous chuckle. "I guess this really would be the only place you'd be comfortable with talking with me now at days, huh?" Well, here and me tied up in an alleyway like that other time, I guess.

She didn't say anything but a 'mmh.', acknowledging the joke but not reacting to it implicitly. Looking around a bit at the refuse and deciding that he was probably pretty close to the mark anyway, she settled on it. "All right." Cecile said, turning around by stomping and then replacing her cane as she moved. Meeting him eye to eye, she began their long-awaited reunion. "Well, Isen."

"Y-Yeah?" He said, standing up a bit straighter now.

Noticing this, she bit her tongue a bit to avoid criticizing his nervous behavior. "Otis told me that you wanted to talk, and he made it sound like it was really important. Well, here I am." She rested both her hands on the cane as she stared at him expectantly.

Jumping at the opportunity, he started off with an uncertain energy as he thought, Smile! Put her and yourself at ease! "Yeah, I heard you got back last week, and what happened was— you see, it's been a while since we last saw each other, right? And, uh, I, uh—" Isen stopped with a sigh, face-palming himself after closing his eyes. Total train-wreck, complete disaster of a sentence and a half. All these bottled up things in him shoving to get out first.

Calm down. Don't gush, and don't sound pathetic. Isen reprimanded himself. Then again, trying to sort through these scatter-shot emotions was what this was supposed to be about, or at the very least it was one of his goals. "Okay, listen. What I was trying to say was that it's been a while since we last spoke. When you had your... incident, I don't know what— I was worried about what happened. It's been a month since then, so I was hoping to see if you were doing all right now."

She raised her head, just an inch, as she judged his opening gambit a bit. Sure, he was acting as dorky as he'd ever been before, but at the very least he was visibly trying to level with her. It was, in her eyes, admirable. Dare she say, uncharacteristically mature for Isen? "I'm feeling better. I was in the hospital for a few days, but I rested up at my parents' house." She skimmed the truth quite a bit from her story, still a bit leery of the third year's intentions. "As you can probably tell, I'm still recovering a bit."

There was a flash, some kind of instant of emotion that came across Isen's face as he listened to her. What was that look just now? For a second, she could have sworn it was recognition if not for him dropping it as soon as it came across, being replaced with a reconciliatory tone. "Sorry to hear that. It must be rough for you to get around like this."