Cappucino & Narcolepsy

"Man, modeling sounds exhausting."

To be honest, just about anything sounded exhausting as far as Strawberry was concerned. Except tearing into this monster of an ice cream sundae. Hell yeah. She was eating it remarkably fast (by Strawberry standards, which meant she was eating it at a moderate pace), expertly working her way around the massive pile of dessert and digging an odd corkscrew pattern around it with her spoon. For maximum caramel-per-spoonful ratio, of course.

Like most people who had things like 'motivation' and 'a near-certainty that their attempts to get out of bed in the morning aren't just a calculated bluff', Natsuki was a mystery to the lazy blonde. The idea of wanting to get into something exciting seemed sort of alien...or was it? She vaguely recalled feeling sort of like that, once, but it was hazy, like trying to make out details through a fogged-up car window on a winter night.

".......ummmmmmmmmmmm.........."

Strawberry took a long, pensive bite of the sundae. Chocolate and caramel crunched as she chewed, her one visible eye narrowing with obvious effort.

At last: "........I don't really remember." She shrugged, or made a motion kind of like shrugging, which was basically just a hair flip. ".....I mean, like....my parents are both attorneys and my sister, um..........does...........something respectable, I guess...."

She blinked thoughtfully.

"....ehhhh......maybe I just wanted to break the trend...or something....Iunno......"

A pause.

"....ohhhhhh......brain freeze."

Natsuki waited patiently, interested to hear what Strawberry's answer was. (To be fair, anyone would be curious as to how someone like her even got here) However, even her unflappable composure shook slightly when the blonde gave a slightly ridiculous response.

"O-oh... I see..." she stuttered a bit, honestly baffled as to how to respond to the face that Strawberry didn't even know why she was here. "Well, it's no surprise to me that such a beautiful woman comes from a distinguished family." she nodded, instead just trying to change the subject.

"Oh dear!" she suddenly exclaimed, hearing of how Strawberry was now suffering from brain freeze (even though it was kind of hard to tell by looking at her). Well, not as though she really knew what to do when that happened anyway. "Are you okay, Miss Strawberry? Is there anything I can do for you?

"...yeah..."

There was some vague memory, somewhere in the back of her mind, about how all this had begun, but it was difficult to bring to the forefront of Strawberry's brain, and the harder she thought about it the more difficult it became. Perhaps that unusual spike in brain activity had made her more susceptible to the terrible fury of the ice cream.

It was difficult to tell the amount of discomfort she was in, given that her reaction was to narrow her eye slightly and sigh. And sigh.

..........And sigh.

"...............................nah," Strawberry finally decided. "I'm okay........I guess...........no worries.......it's an occupational ice cream hazard........or something."

Her eyelid twitched almost imperceptibly.

"I guess I should probably have some...." She managed to yawn despite her suffering. "......impulse control....or something....Iunno...." A moment went by in silence. "....that sounds like a lot of work. How do you do all this stuff without getting exhausted, ummm....???"

She had forgotten Natsuki's name, sabotaging the attempt to properly address her suitor. Thankfully, as spacey as Strawberry was, it seemed more like she'd just zoned out mid-question.

Natsuki began to feel as if the world was moving in slow motion as she listened to Strawberry talk. Perhaps from trying too hard to adjust herself to the girl's pace? "Or perhaps I am just entranced by her lovely beauty?"

"Oh... Do not worry Miss Strawberry... T'was impulse that lead us to this... romantic encounter..." the dark-haired girl didn't realize her own speech was slowing down considerably. "All I need... Is to see a single, pretty smile... And I feel like I can do anything...!"

Natsuki took a long sip of her coffee, but even that seemed to have no effect on the lethargic feeling creeping up on her. "Oh dear... Maybe that match was a little more strenuous than I thought... C'mon... Keep it together Natsuki...!"

Smile-powered energy sounded, if nothing else, really good for the environment. It probably wasn't for her, Strawberry reflected; she barely even noticed when people were smiling, and when they were, it certainly didn't do anything to snap her out of her perpetual haze.

"....I guess that makes sense," she decided, tentatively taking another bite of the sundae from her flopped position - the brain freeze was still going on, but she was banking on her enjoyment of the dessert overpowering that sensation. It did not work, and another twinge of discomfort raced from the roof of her mouth into her very sluggish frontal lobes. Another sigh escaped her. "....man, I really rushed into this one...the sundae's only half done and I'm all.......shook up, man........hghhhh....."

There was a thwack as her head dropped back down onto the table. Strawberry was clearly in the throes of despair, having hastily hung herself with her own delicious frozen rope.

".....just roll me out into the gutter or something," she muttered glumly. "I'll uber back home after a few days......or something.......I guess......I dunno.....mrgh....."

Truly, these were the times that tried girls' souls.

"OH!" Natsuki was jolted out of her encroaching stupor by the sound of Strawberry's head hitting the table. "Are... Are you okay?" she asked with a worried expression on her face, rather concerned about what brought that about, as well as how loud of a noise that made.

"Don't despair, my sweet Strawberry! A gutter is no place for a blooming flower such as yourself! I have already promised you I would escort you home, and escort you I shall!"

Quickly chugging the rest of her coffee, (clearing off the rest of her lethargy), Natsuki turned to the waitress, who was already rushing over after the loud sound of Strawberry's skull whacking the table followed by the Japanese girl's frantic shouting.

"Eh- excuse me, i-is ev-"

"The check! Please, my dear." Natsuki commanded with a completely unnecessary dramatic flourish. "My companion is feeling poorly, and must be returned home!"

".....man, we probably look ridiculous."

They did, frankly.  It was like the cover of some bored undergraduate's parody of a shoujo manga.  But at least Strawberry wasn't getting rolled into the gutter.  Small favors here and there went a long way.

"....ehhhhh...." she muttered as their waitress returned with the bill.  "I've got it, just, um....uh, look in my back pocket, I'll pick up the bill...."

She was, if nothing else, in a position to have her pockets rifled through, and so it only took a moment of rummaging before the beleaguered girl returned from Strawberry's hoodie with - in a sight that caused her to do a swift double-take - a black AmEx Centurion card.

"Holy shit," the waitress blurted.  "I mean, um.  R-right away, ma'am, let me just run this through."

Strawberry sighed in response.

It took a minute, but all the necessary billing was taken care of, and with many hasty obeisances to send them on their way, the two girls were released into the streets.  The blonde blew at her hair, trying to get it out of her eye, and when that failed, decided that tossing her head was probably not worth the effort, especially since it'd probably unbalance Natsuki.

".....so the good news is I'm not actually that far off," she muttered, somehow managing to sigh at the same time.  "....Ehhhh....you know the Zen Garden Highrises?  I've got a....a thing over there....and stuff..............no worries..............just a whole living situation type thing.................you know how it is."  The yawn that followed cut off halfway when Strawberry remembered she had a brain freeze, and turned into sort of a wince.

"Oh no no, please allow me to- huh?" Natsuki rose up to start digging her wallet out, but was briefly taken aback by the waitresses short burst of profanity and sudden departure.  She hadn't gotten a good look at the card that Strawberry had, but apparently there was something shocking about it.

"Hmm...  'Strawberry' is an alias of course, but I wonder if she's hiding her name for a reason?  What if she's really a princess!?  Or like some really famous foreign celebrity in disguise!?"

Natsuki's rampant imagination got cut short as the waitress quickly returned, completing their payment.  Biting back the insatiable urge to peak at the card, the Japanese girl sat patiently until Strawberry looked ready to leave, at which point she moved over to once again scoop her up and leave the cafe.

"Oh yes, of course, I know the place. Leave it to me and-"

"Wait. Isn't that... the super rich place!? I know I was about to say escort her back to her castle but I didn't think..."

"R-right!" Natsuki proclaimed, quickly regaining composure. "Let us be off, my princess!"

".........whoo."

As she was carried off, Strawberry did not sound particularly thrilled with the notion, but this was misleading; she was totally okay with it (it's just that she didn't sound particularly thrilled with anything, ever). Being in the gutter, while she wasn't led to care about it much, would've probably not been that great. What if she got a cramp from the concrete? It'd have taken a lot of effort to roll over.

".....thanks, I guess....." she said as they roamed the downtown streets, in the interest of being polite. "You're pretty cool....and stuff.....if that makes any sense....yeah." This was perhaps the highest praise bestowed in many years of Strawberry Meringue's inexplicable career.

Natsuki's suspicions were shortly confirmed as they arrived at a highrise four blocks away from Tokyo's financial district, where a wave from the blonde's hand unlocked the lobby doors. The interior was a mess of crystal chandeliers and marble architecture, with a fountain big enough to be an indoor pool.

Strawberry didn't realize until they were halfway into the lobby that it probably looked strange for her to wave the doors open. "You're supposed to use a card with a thing in it that signals....something...." she explained. "....but....man....that's so much to keep track of........I ended up just getting microchipped......" She flopped her head back and sighed hard enough to make her spine tingle. ".......I think people usually do that for their......Iunno.......cats or something........it's pretty good."

The elevator was surprisingly chilly, with walls shiny enough that Natsuki probably could've done her makeup in them.

"....um...." Strawberry squinted, as if trying to remember something. ".......twenty-nine, please."

Upon reaching their destination, Natsuki barely stifled a nervous gulp, staring up at the impossibly tall building before her. Still carrying her blonde liege in her arms, the Japanese girl barely registered the fact the doors opened almost magically before them, rendered speechless by the excessive extravagance of the building's lobby.

"I... I see..." Natsuki nodded half-attentively, mouth hanging slightly agape as she was still trying to process the location before her. While her family had been pretty well off, it was still a tremendous shock to her that such blinding grandeur was even a real thing and not some kind of cartoonish over-exaggeration. All the snobby rich kids back at her preppy high school with their iPads and what not probably had absolutely nothing on this. The decorations, the walls, even the floor were all so shiny that she felt as though she had to squint through her non-bangs-covered eye to see.

Not even the sharp chill in the elevator caught her notice, as Natsuki continued on in an almost sleepwalking-like state, as her brain struggled to catch up to her reality.
"...'kay." she stated in a dazed manner, leaning in towards the panel, still managing to shift her body around and tap the button without even putting Strawberry down.