Vanilla

Thirty

A/N: The usual 5k chapter is here!! Phew, I managed to finish this before my battery ran out. I left my charger in the office and uwAaaa I was worried I wouldn't be able to finish on time. But! Here it is. 

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[Vanilla]

Standing idly in front of a train station, cold, alone, and drowning in the muffler picked out by my godaunt wasn't the most romantic thing to be doing on a Saturday morning and yet, my poor heart had to be racing at awful speeds for such wee hours all because it knew I would be spending the rest of the day with a certain someone.

This person I refer to does not have the luxury of a flexible schedule in which would have made our lives significantly easier by easing the time spent apart. Apparently, being in the same school as your significant other did not necessarily mean frequent meetings or lunches. The last time we'd spent some private time together was on Tuesday at his residence lodge after a brief discussion regarding the cross-year reports. Si Yin and the others weren't exactly the most focused group of people when it came to reading papers and documents, but we'd somehow established a fair tie between Chen's team and ours. The only thing left for us to deliberate on were the remaining two reports, and because everyone else seemed increasingly disinterested in the mystery I'd been so invested in, I had decided to call it a night. Leroy had walked me to the bus stop after that, promising to sate my curiosity by obtaining the reports before arranging a time and place for us to meet on Saturday morning.

That was four days ago. Now, standing idly outside the train station in an old fashioned, navy blue duffel coat, was me wondering if I was guilty of overdressing—a crime often committed by the overenthusiastic, try-hard social novice on a first date.

The bouquet of pink carnations I'd gathered and styled the night before were starting to look a little out of place next to the four hard-boiled eggs I'd prepared mere minutes before leaving the house, transferring them into a Ziplock bag for easy consumption. Admittedly and most unfortunately, I was never the prime example of a healthy human being—unexpectedly so—and therefore often found myself skipping the meal undeserving of its title of importance, whatever it is nutritionists dub it as. Breakfast was simply impractical, strictly speaking. It required the additional effort of time, effort and energy, which could so obviously be spent on things like solving the 'challenge yourself' problem sums on the last page of each mathematical textbook or reading a book about romantic relationships and how one should be treating their partner. The second option only became applicable to myself as of recent.

Either way, the reason I'd decided to whip up a couple of hard-boiled eggs was primarily due to my reading of the abovementioned. It took me less than a second to deduce a certain idiot's disinclination to waking up early to do something that required additional effort. Not to mention, his lodgemates had been oddly surprised by his making of breakfast back then, which further proved my point.

And with several premises to support the conclusion I thought absolutely concrete, the eggs were due; two for Leroy and two for myself—to be had on the train to see his mother.

"Hey."

He'd appeared as though on cue, hands in the pockets of his down parka that featured a hood lined with faux fur. "I like your..." an index finger loosely followed his gaze, lowered to my clothes, "everything."

Strangely flustered, I forcefully handed him the eggs. "I don't know what you're talking about. Here. I timed them perfectly so they should be just about the right consistency in the center."