Yaris 35, 2717 - Midday
Which was why she had made the executive decision to simply not attend her next class. Or the one after that. It was a calculated gamble, this late in the year. Midterms were approaching, and Cerise had studied for them not at all. She very rarely did, of course, until the week before. The idea of sitting and listening to another droning mathematics lecture made her want to break out into hives, however, so out she went. Slipping by those adults who should have been keeping ne'er-do-wells and troublemakers like herself safely contained behind red walls, Cerise disappeared into the maze of the Stacks with a practiced and perhaps troubling degree of ease.
The Stack Book Exchange hadn't been her intended destination when she left the campus proper and delved into the maze of cobbled streets and narrow alleys. She had at first thought to head to a bar, really, and see if she could cajole some poor bartender into giving her something cold and distinctly inappropriate for the hour of the day. The problem she encountered was in fact this: the hour of the day. Too early for most taverns, and anywhere else was entirely too respectable for the sort of mood she was in.
Instead her dark-booted feet had carried her, sweating and grumbling, to the Stack Book Exchange. Cerise had, of course, plenty of books to read in her room. She had just purchased three the week previous, and had yet to start any of them. But one of the chief appeals of the Stack Book Exchange, besides their rather generous trade-in policy for the gently-used book and their student discount, was that earlier than year they had become the proud owners of an electric fan.
One who was interested in such things would have to admit it was a rather handsome model, to boot. Newly-made and shiny, it boasted both concealed wires and a rather attractive cage for the fan blades. More important was that it worked. The soft whirring of the brass blades sent a soft breeze moving through the shop, ruffling the pages of the books closest. The door was propped open with a brick to keep the air moving through the whole of the shop; it also had the rather fortunate effect of disabling the bell. Cerise didn't relish having her arrival announced to the shopkeepers, a rather fussy married couple who sometimes had tried to shoo her out when she appeared in uniform during hours that were undoubtedly meant for classes. It was more difficult when she'd already been standing there without their notice; her rather dark glower didn't make them any more eager.
For a time after she arrived, Cerise had just languished idly in front of the fan itself, letting the breeze generated dry the sweat on her face. Her hair was pulled into what had begun life as a rather neat ponytail high on her head, so as to keep the bulk of it off the back of her neck. Not yet lunchtime and it had already begun to fail her; errant dark curls stuck to her face and throat.
Eventually, however, she did tire of standing passively in front of the fan and decided to look at the actual shelves. It was the least she could do, she thought, for how the wife of the couple kept glancing at her as if she very dearly wished Cerise would leave, but couldn't quite bring herself to say so. It was the field, Cerise thought; she never had quite gotten the trick of keeping it contained, and while it had something of the dasher about it, she was not too humble to think it was strong for someone her age. Or maybe it was the pointed sneer that rested perpetually on her mouth. Either was possible.
Cerise dragged a pale finger along the shelves, eyes skipping over titles. As the knot of her irritation started to loosen in her chest, she stopped on a title she'd not yet read. The author was one she knew, and she quite liked: he wrote exciting stories of fighting the restless undead in fantastical cities on a proposed hidden continent of Vita. They were strange and lyrical, for all that they were action stories. The book she grabbed off the shelf was not one of those, but rather a crime novel from earlier in his career. She wasn't sure if she liked his detective fiction, but resolved to skim and decide if this was one she wanted to try.
Skimming quickly turned into reading, and Cerise's attention was wholly absorbed. A kenser could have come barreling through the store, and the young woman was entirely likely not to notice.