“What do you think of Hope's Peak, Chiaki?”
Natsumi Kuzuryu is looking at her with a juice straw bitten between her teeth. It would be a cigarette, except the smoke makes Chiaki cough; she has asthma. Chiaki glances and swears she can still smell smoke, though. Almost see it, but that might be the cold that leaves them flushed; might be their breath, intertwining with one another. “Eh,” She says.
Natsumi snorts. “Yeah, sounds about right.”
She glances out at the school, distant and imposing, with bitter eyes and frown lines. Chiaki stares at her, the defeated slouch of her back arch, and for a moment, ephemeral and ethereal, she hates.
Lowered lashes, she looks away, the image painful. Back to the school: a figure far away but tall, in ways neither of them can measure up.
“We should burn it down one day,” Natsumi mutters, “Just- strike a match and watch it burn.”
But her green eyes never look away. Chiaki hums. “Can't,” she denies, “I'm asthmatic.”