HEY, I JUST MET YOU [sandra]

[NOAH AIDEN KIMURA]

For a really long time, Noah sort of looked at his stupid obsessive compulsions as being pretty negative. It was just...such a hassle, honestly, because oftentimes, he himself knew how ridiculous his actions were and how ridiculous the burning need to keep things organized and sensible was. And there was a period of time where he actively tried to ignore that niggling in his head, telling him that something wasn't right when he purposely left his bed unmade in the morning or tried not to religiously write everything down, but the anxiety always ended up being far stronger than the desire to be somewhat...well, normal. He hadn't kept this way of thinking for too long -- the amped up anxiety meant anxiety meds and he was not about that at all, plus it began to make less sense to keep going with it. Why would he go out of his way to do something that ended up making him feel worse? It meant being weird forever, but soon he got used to it. There's not much else he could do about it at that point.

Finding a job that didn't drive his OCD crazy, though, was another thing entirely when he turned 16, since he had to find something that had him directly dealing with the least amount of people possible, but one look at the general way he carried himself -- easily sociable, stupidly cute face -- usually ended up with him being the first person seen whenever someone walked into the store. And it wasn't that he didn't like people -- he loved people. But he couldn't handle being a host when everyone had their own ways of managing the table blocks and would, oftentimes, scribble things down thinking it'd be okay. He couldn't blame them -- they were minor changes, but god they drove him crazy. He worked at Tim's for exactly two days before deciding that he really didn't want to get an inside look at how his favorite coffee was being made, and the general disorganization drove him nuts. He really wanted to give up the whole job thing, honestly, but then felt bad being even more of a financial burden on his mom -- she never complained about it, but Noah knew being so far from home and needing that support was hard. Plus, he felt like he needed to prove to himself that he could do this -- be a functioning member of society.

Being an avid fan of music meant that Noah was at the record store a lot anyway, so much so that the staff had began to recognize him, even dubbed him the Walking Canvas considering what he wore on a regular basis. He suppose it'd be hard to forget him what with his fluorescent shorts and patterned tights. But he hadn't expected his constant perusal of the store's hip-hop/r&b section to actually have the manager offer him a job -- 'you're here all the time anyway!' -- and actually have it work out for him. There was something oddly therapeutic in constantly stocking and restocking CDs and making sure everything was in alphabetical order, and soon enough, Noah singlehandedly reorganized the entire store. And the most wondrous thing about it, his boss would say, is that he didn't complain about it once and then gave him a half-dollar raise. And that was how Noah knew that this job was probably a keeper.

He usually worked the night shift when he was on schedule, since he had school and whatnot. Like today -- the moment school let out, he biked his way to town and, chaining his bike up to a fence post behind the squat building, then diving into work. Most of the time he really loved his job -- the people were awesome and friendly, and so were the people who came in, but every once in awhile there'd be that One Person that annoyed him, and today it was a girl who, through no probable fault of her own, kept picking CDs up only to return them to the wrong spot. It was like when superstars threw cash out at waiting fans except not nearly as cool and not nearly as profitable and doubly irritating, but Noah dutifully followed her around the store as stealthily as he could, fixing it all. 'Seriously...no concept of self-preservation,' Noah thought, though at least she had decent taste. Carly Rae Jepsen wasn't all that bad. Plus, Canadian.

[SANDRA HARU CHANG]

Sandra was just forgetful enough to neglect to put CDs back where they belonged, and also just oblivious enough not to notice that anyone was following her around the music store. It wasn't like she was stupid -- if she were paying attention she would have probably been able to do things better than usual, but the "paying attention" was the difficult part. There were only about a million other things to pay attention to in a day, and some days she was just not having it. Class seemed to drag on, and she nearly fell down the stairs because she was apparently incapable of putting one foot in front of the other when she was this distracted, and she actually missed her stop while she was sitting on the bus, completely disconnected. Could this have something to do with the fact that she'd stayed up until close to four in the morning, the day earlier? Of course not! That was just all kinds of foolishness!

Either way, she wound up passing by her stop, and so by the time Sandra started paying enough attention to realize this, she had long passed it. Luckily she knew the way back, but it was probably around another hour for the bus to get back there, and so instead she just hopped off at the next stop, deciding that while she was here already she might as well see what was going on. The music store caught her attention and she entered more than happily -- not looking for anything in particular, but just browsing. It was nice, being able to actually buy things instead of relying on her parents to send her money -- waitressing wasn't such a bad gig, she didn't think. She hummed along to whatever was playing in the store as she wandered the aisles, never paying enough attention to realize that all the CDs she picked up were being placed back in the most definitely wrong places. Oops. She also didn't pay enough attention to the brightly-dressed teenager following her inconspicuously (as inconspicuously as he could, dressed like that) around.

She had just replaced something by Carly Rae Jepsen -- well, "replaced", but she didn't know that it was in the wrong spot after all -- and stepped a few feet away to look at something else when something caught her eye and she turned, CD already in hand -- and walked right into someone. Sandra's eyes widened. "Ahhhh!" she said, panicking a little, because sometimes people were scary and crazy, okay, she didn't know if this particular person was about to start yelling at her or something. "Sorry! Sorry, sorry, sorry. Are you okay?" she asked, realizing that she had kind of sort of stabbed him with the corner of the CD case in her hand, which could actually be very hard and pointy and painful. Sandra didn't even realize that he was probably standing there anyway as a result of having to follow her around the store, but she hurriedly put the CD back where she'd found it -- or, at least, where she thought she'd found it. It was, of course, wrong again. "Yeah, sorry, I was just... Um... I dunno, actually. But I'm really sorry!" She blinked, giving him a very sheepish, apologetic smile. It didn't matter that it probably hadn't actually hurt, but hey, bumping into someone was not a good way to meet a person.

[NOAH AIDEN KIMURA]

Though Noah had been trailing after her, putting things back, his mild irritation had begun to ebb and was slowly being replaced with something akin to apathy, which wasn't exactly bad. He supposed he couldn't expect everyone to be as conscientious as he was about keeping things orderly. He also couldn't expect everyone to bow to his whims because that was silly and it's not like he could expect random strangers to know that he was a bit of a neatfreak. Really, though, if he was getting paid for his time there, he might as well put it to good use.

This was, of course, before the girl he had been tailing decided to whirl around and bump right into him. In a way, again, he couldn't blame her, really -- he wasn't supposed to be obvious about following customers, and he usually kept a pretty safe distance, but he must have slipped and unknowingly crept closer as he thought about other things, like his stack of homework he needs to do after he's done with both work and dance practice. He was still doing his job -- too anal retentive to let the job slip away from him, after all, but then again, how difficult was it to put things back where they belonged? But then again, it apparently was really hard as Noah wrote off the slight pain from the corner of the CD case digging into his arm and the girl put the CD back on the rack. Arbitrarily. Again. As usual. All right, it wasn't the end of the world -- the situation was easy enough to rectify -- but all in all, Noah's emotions went from irritation to stunned surprise to irritation again then, miraculously, some laughter. Maybe it was the way the girl was babbling and rapid firing 'sorry's at him. Actually, that was probably it more than anything else.

"It's cool, don't worry about it. War casualty,"

[/color] Noah shook his head, letting the bump go. It could have been worse. At least the CD hadn't stabbed him in the eye or something. He almost said that out loud, too, except he stopped at the last moment because really, that was kind of an awkward thing to say to someone you didn't know. Actual injury to his arm aside and all that. "Along with these,"[/color] Noah opted for instead, waving around the small pile of CD's in his hands, from his adventures following the girl around and picking up misplaced CDs. He almost felt bad doing it, but the awful tick in his fingers wouldn't go away as he reached around her and picked up the CD she had misplaced just seconds prior. "Sorry, I usually don't follow so closely. Not that I don't trust you, but..."[/color] Noah trailed off -- it was hard (and probably more than a little weird) to be bringing up his ridiculous OCD tick to a stranger, but what was worse, openly insinuating that they look mad sketch and are worthy of being followed, or telling someone you were following them because your need to clean was running rampant?

...neither. Because telling her any of that would just make him seem completely crazy.[/blockquote][/blockquote][/justify]