Cappucino & Narcolepsy

By the time they stopped outside one of the suites, one could hardly blame Natsuki for being caught a little off guard.

"...lemme down," Strawberry murmured, giving her a nudge. Once she was on her feet, the blonde used a key to undo the locks and mosey on in, almost forgetting to let her guest in behind her before she shut the door.

Ironically, despite the lavish state of the building, the penthouse suite that Strawberry lived in was...rather spartan. Rather dull, in fact; the shades were all down and she apparently kept the lights as dim as possible, but even with the sprawling condo being as dimly lit as it was, it was clear that Strawberry hadn't put much effort into decorating it. A couple framed photos sat on the otherwise-bare shelves here and there: an old sepia image of a man flying a biplane, a group of people at the Berlin wall, some men playing basketball, and so on. It was unclear what exactly Strawberry's relation to these people was by looking at the photos - although the keen observer might intuit that she had simply bought some pictures for decoration and then not bothered to replace the stock photos that were in the frames.

This was, of course, exactly what had happened.

There was a baby grande piano in the center of the atrium, flanking a rather drab white leather couch. Strawberry meandered over to it and flopped down on the bench, in the rather overdramatically-exhausted way she did basically everything.

"Thanks for taking me home," she said, resting her chin on her hand and her elbow on the piano (which caused a noise rather like a cat walking across the keys). "....would've probably made it on my own, but........y'know..........ehhhhh..........ambien's kicking in pretty hard........'sall good."

Still a bit dazzled, Natsuki almost got herself shut out at the door, snapping back to her senses just in time to catch it. Compared to the blinding splendor of the building thus far, Strawberry's room looked... well pretty much how Natsuki had expected it would prior to her knowledge of the girl's outrageous wealth, albeit with a lot more empty floor space, which did bring her back down to earth a bit.

"What a splendid room, Miss Strawberry." Natsuki smiled and nodded. Despite the gloomy setting, it still felt much more natural to her than the luxurious palace on the other side of the apartment door. Wandering around a bit, she took notice of the set of framed photos sitting upon some of the shells. Though she had expected some pictures of Strawberry or even her family, they all appeared to be seemingly unrelated artistic photographs. Not that she understood it at all, but it probably meant something. "What refined tastes you have."

The piano was certainly an oddity, not something you'd normally see in someone's house (at least not in middle-class Japan), and so as her blonde host shuffled over towards it, Natsuki would follow shortly after, taking a seat on the couch nearby while Strawberry plopped down on the bench. "As I said, it was my pleasure, Miss Strawberry. I do hope you found our time together enjoyable. We should certainly spend some time with each other again soon."

The The sofa on which Natsuki had chosen to relax had a thick layer of dust on its pale leather surface, broken up by a silhouette shaped suspiciously like a reclining Strawberry.  An MBA certificate (a rather jarring sight, considering whose penthouse this was) in the name of Stephanie Mendez was framed on the wall over it.  This, too, was covered in dust.

Strawberry yawned, stretching her arms over her head, and lolled her head back for a moment.  ".........yeah, I, um......."  At last, startlingly, she smiled.  Just a little, and it was a distinctly slumbery half-smile, but it 1) existed and 2) was directed at Natsuki.  Success!  "....I had fun....I guess.....a lot of the time, people just kinda get mad at me and leave.....but you stuck around."  She took a shot at blowing a bang out of her eyes and finally, after an entire night of attempts, succeeded.  "So thanks for that.  'spretty cool....you know.........and stuff."

This, as Strawberry compliments went, ranked fairly high.

She shifted in place, causing the keys to plink discordantly again, and glanced down with a blink as if surprised. (It was entirely possible she'd forgotten the piano was there.) But after a moment, perhaps inspired by the reasonably-halfway-decent-she-supposed day that she'd had with a new casual acquaintance (or friend, if you really want to get dramatic about it), Strawberry played a thrumming low C chord with a G in the base and promptly launched into a song.

If you want to follow along at home, the chords are G, Bm, C, D7, D7b9, then G, Bm, C, then G, Bm, C, A, then just a D sustained for the last line.

Baby, I'm so hell of classy, yeah
That all the ladies in my town - they know my name (at this point you should probably trill into like, a C/D to Cm/D and back to G for the next line)
All except for this one dime piece down in - in the bad part of town, yeah
For some reason she thinks my name's Gretchen....

There was a brief solo, which was really just a series of lazy pentatonic runs. Strawberry had a surprisingly decent voice, at least.

And I don't even know what the hell kinda name is Gretchen, yeah
Some kinda two-bit nonsense for old-times dudes
But if this ever changing world in which we live in
Makes you give in and cry... (an extra Bb goes here)
Live and let die! (G, C/G, G diminished, G7)
Live and...!

There was a pause.

"Wait a second, something's gone wrong."

Due to the dim lighting, Natsuki was unaware of the dust until it was too late, causing a small cloud to puff up after she landed her rear end just a little too hard. Carrying Strawberry all night, as enjoyable as it was, also was pretty taxing on her stamina, and her arms and shoulders were aching. The Japanese girl coughed a bit from the dust, but rather willfully ignored the urge to say anything about it as she enjoyed her break.

Seeing Strawberry's (half-)smile, naturally, brought back some energy and pep. It's not a lot, but it's the best I've gotten out of her so far. I'll take it!"

"Think nothing of it, my dear Strawberry! I'm delighted to hear that you enjoyed yourself as well." Natsuki scratched her nose a bit and chuckled. While the blonde was sitting at a piano, the Japanese girl hadn't expected at all for her to start playing and jumped a bit when the music started playing out of nowhere. However, she quickly settled down and found herself entranced not only by the melody, but Strawberry's surprisingly impressive voice (and her ability to actually string together a full sentence without pausing, much less an entire song.

The music stopped about as suddenly as it came, but the moment she was free of the spell, she burst into applause. "I'm amazed, Miss Strawberry! Not only a masterful wrestler but a skilled musician as well!" She had long since gotten used to the blonde stopping mid sentence, so the stop mid-song didn't even really faze her.

".....man, I think I, like.....I might have trailed off into Wings there......Iunno...."

Strawberry squinted, heedless of her applauding guest, and leaned a little harder than necessary on a d-sustained chord.

".....thanks," she finally said.  "Is this even my piano?  I'm like.....man.....I am flying right now.  I have no idea where I am."  After a moment of puzzled staring, she shook her head briskly.  "Um.....glad you liked it.......I kinda plink around on it sometimes.......had a few lessons back in the day."

She had, at the insistence of her overbearing parents, had almost twenty years of lessons, in fact.  Despite her perpetually drowsy, apathetic state, it was hard to get something like that out once it'd been drilled into your head. It was just kinda....there, forever, no matter how much you tried to drown it out.

"Do you, um..."  There was probably a better way to start that address, but she'd forgotten Natsuki's name.  ".....do you play anything?"  The blonde nodded towards the piano, acknowledging that her ability to make small talk was, well, not great.  ".....not just this stuff, I guess, but like....Iunno.....games or whatever, or.......sports?  Man, I am not good at words."

Natsuki did slightly twitch an eyebrow at Strawberry's drug-addled statement, but quickly decided to play it off. It only made sense that someone who could afford a place in a building like this was probably well-off to have been able to afford piano lessons these days. Learning to play was a pretty pricey and time-consuming endeavor.

"Ah, no no, I sadly haven't had the time to learn an instrument while I was young. I was actually more of athletic type, though there wasn't any real sport in particular that interested me back then." Actually the school wrestling club was greatly appealing to her, but her 'habits' got her kicked out even faster than she did from any of the school's other athletic clubs. In fact, it was pretty safe to say that her only real hobby was flirting. It just wasn't safe to say that out loud. "Oh, but... I mean, I am a wrestler now, I suppose. Haha!"

"Oh." Strawberry flipped her hair again. ".......yeah............I guess so."

It wasn't meant to seem like a backhanded compliment, that was just the way she phrased basically everything.

There was a long and awkward pause, despite this, and then the phone began ringing on the other side of the living room. Its ringtone was a weird jangly ragtime version of "The Entertainer". Strawberry completely ignored it, opting instead to shift on the piano bench and nod thoughtfully (although it mainly looked like she was steadily falling asleep) at Natsuki's words.

"It's good to do things," she said, rather spacily. ".....I guess. Iunno, sometimes it seems like way--" A yawn. "--more effort than I'm....willing to..........man, is it warm in here, or.....?"

Her head drooped slightly. It appeared she was in fact nodding off.

A rather awkward silence passed between the two, as Natsuki found herself in the rare situation where she had no idea what to say to keep the conversation going.  Before it got too uncomfortable for her, however, across the room a phone suddenly rang out with some song unfamiliar to her.  The Japanese girl looked to her host, legitimately expecting her to make some kind of movement toward answering the call, though Strawberry didn't seem to even acknowledge it, and instead reminded Natsuki of exactly the kind of person that she was.

"Ah...  I'll...  Allow me to get that for you."  Standing back up, Natsuki strode across the barren room to the source of the woobly ringtone.  She wasn't sure if she was surprised or not that the phone also had a fine layer of dust settled over it, but quickly tried to brush it away and pick up the receiver before whoever was on the other end gave up.

"Oh god please don't be her parents."

"Hello, you've reached the... um... Meringue residence.  Miss Strawberry is...  busy.  Yes, busy at the moment, may I take a message for you?"

What answered her, ironically (or expectantly) enough, was another awkward silence.

"Uh. ...Hello?"

At the front desk, a receptionist stood with his hand over the receiver and a bemused expression on his face, raising an eyebrow at the lithe girl across the counter. On the other side of the desk was a young blonde woman with a face so red one might have thought she was covered in paint, frantically looking back and forth with both hands covering her mouth.

"Ma'am, I have to tell them something," the receptionist deadpanned as he waited for a reply.

"B-but I... you don't have to... I mean... um..." the blonde girl squeaked at a nearly inaudible volume.

The Receptionist waited a few moments longer before deciding to conclude things himself. "Miss, you have a visitor at the front desk. Have a nice day," he added curtly before hanging up and returning to his duties with a sigh.

As soon as he did, though, the girl let out a soft "Eep!" before pulling her sweater halfway up her face and ducking behind the counter. If this did anything to hide her from anyone coming in the opposite direction, it only looked stranger to the passersby on her side.

"O-oh. Yes. Thank you." Natsuki stuttered a bit, honestly not expecting it to have been one of the apartment staff calling. The receptionist hung up before much was elaborated, which did leave the Japanese girl feeling somewhat uneasy.

"Oh god please don't be her parents."

Returning to where Strawberry was still laying, Natsuki knelt down next to the bench near her. "Miss Strawberry, it seems you have a guest here to see you. Were you expecting company tonight? If it's important family business I can just see myself out..." Irregardless of how her blonde friend was, Natsuki just couldn't shake the mental image of the girl's parents being incredibly intimidating...