WITHOUT NOTICE [caitlyn]

[MATTHEW FUYU CHANG]

As far as life goes, Matt couldn't really complain. He's a little overworked, sure, and if this were a Sims game, one of his permanent traits would probably be 'sleep deprived', but on the other hand, they're small things to give up. Sometimes it's hard to convince himself that all the work he's putting into this art degree will be worth it, and with a healthy dose of positive thinking that he'll be able to achieve his dreams, though on other days it gets a little frustrating. He also knows he's not the most popular guy, or that there are people lining out to hang out with him -- not only does he not really have the time for that, but he's never fooled himself into thinking that he is something he very blatantly isn't. He's just a regular guy. It took him almost 20 years to figure that out so he might be slow on the uptake, but better late than never.

But because of his schedule, though, and how utterly fucked he is when it comes to seeing his friends, a lot of times he felt sort of blocked off from civilization. 'Nonsense!' you may think, because Matthew has a pretty cushy life for a guy still in undergrad -- has had his own place for years, good job considering his utter lack of experience, actually enjoying college, pretty great friends, and a cell phone to better manage his time. Eventually, though, it just felt more and more like every day was passing in a blur of motions that he can't remember the next day, and less like him living it up while he's young because there's no time for that once he steps into being an actual adult. At the end of the day, that's just pretty sad.

Still, it helps that he has someone down the hall he can talk to, and no, he's not talking about Dubstep Guy. Dubstep Guy makes his presence known even when all Matthew wants to do is block him out from his entire life, honestly. No, it's nice to have someone to talk to, and while Caitlyn was, at first, kind of spastic and full up to the ears with things to do and activities to see to -- something he could relate to very well -- but...well, not much has changed from all of that, really. Caitlyn is still kind of spastic and still booked up as far as the eye can see so the chances he gets to actually see her are slim to none. He's not entirely sure as to why he decided to stick a piece of paper on her door one day, a message quickly scrawled in a pastel. The message wasn't even all that important, just a stupid joke he thought of about musicians, but there was a piece of paper taped on his door the next morning, discovered by Sandra on her way out the door to the Academy. And then it just...continued like this, letters on each other's doors or mailboxes, and sometimes Matt would stick little doodles on the paper when he was particularly inspired -- mostly of dogs, though penguins have been a popular feature due to the season -- but at the end of the day, these little notes helped him feel more...sane, in a way. Human contact! Who would have thought that in a world so inundated by technology that he would crave social interaction?

Matthew wanders down the hallway -- he's pretty sure Caitlyn's not home because, quite frankly, Caitlyn's never home, but he stops in front of her door and presses the piece of paper in his hands to it, lying it flat, and sticks the piece of tape stuck to his finger on it, firmly attaching it to the door. The message isn't long -- 'Realized I shouldn't use your name to try and get me a point in Scattergories' -- and once it's up he turns and leaves, lest Sandra come back and start the latest round of making fun of him for this weird note exchange thing going on.

[CAITLYN AUBREE SOMMERLOT]

As expected, Caitlyn was in fact not home when a neighbour from down the hall came to stick a note on her door. Actually she hadn't really been at home all day (which was typically the case), having had an early morning class and then piano lessons to teach -- and then she spent the rest of the day at the library, honestly -- and so it wasn't until that evening that she came back to find the note stuck on her door, something about her name and Scattergories. After a long day (which was the usual, really, but this didn't stop Cait from feeling tired or anythin -- she was still human) it kind of made her laugh a lot harder than was necessary, and she wondered vaguely if Matthew would be home. She was feeling pretty exhausted, though, and so she just unstuck the note from the door, folding the tape backwards onto the other side of it so that it wouldn't stick to anything. She left it on top of her piano with the rest of her books and papers and things -- a bit of homework, some music for teaching -- so that she would remember it the next morning.

She didn't have to be up nearly as early the next morning, so it was considerably later that she woke up finally, had breakfast, scrawled Matthew back a note on a giant (and neon pink, because he'd appreciate it) post-it, and wandered down the hallway to stick it on his door in return: Don't tell me someone ELSE wrote Caitlyn. (FYI, someone always takes Matthew.) She actually hadn't played Scattergories in ages but Matthew was a pretty common first name, after all -- her preference would probably be Macarius or something just to keep things interesting. She didn't figure that he would be coming out of his apartment at a weird time like this -- he was either still in for a while, or already out, but she didn't try her luck with knocking. They'd been doing this for a while and she'd yet to ever announce a note being there -- actually, except when she had to in cases like this where their names came up, they never really signed the notes or anything either. For all Cait knew, Dubstep Guy was sending half the notes.

That probably wasn't true, though. She would bet good money that Dubstep Guy had chicken scratch that dimly resembled the handwriting of a seven-year-old (and she knew what seven-year-old writing looked like). Besides that, Dubstep Guy had a particularly obnoxious personality that would probably manage to shine through even in short one-sentence messages, and Caitlyn would have stopped replying long ago, had she ever suspected that it was him. Matthew was a perfectly nice guy though, and maybe it was a little weird to look forward to a random note or doodle stuck on the door every so often, especially when they were about really dumb things like board games, but this didn't stop her from getting excited sometimes.

[MATTHEW FUYU CHANG]

True to form, and true to Matthew's expected schedule this semester, he usually spent most of his days out early and back late, with Wednesday being the rare day off. It was, however, not Wednesday, so that meant Matthew had been up at what felt like the crack of dawn and already on the road to school by the time eight o'clock rolled around. It was during the times where he was in the line at Tim's for coffee at 7:50 in the morning that he seriously reconsidered his choice to go to a college at least forty minutes away, but Matthew was nothing if not determined, and was more than committed to sticking it out.

Plus, okay, it was kind of cool to go to a school full of...well, normal people. It kind of made him feel like a superhero, having to hide his power and blend in and stuff of the sort. (He can feel the judging gaze from Sandra and he was sure Sandra was still sleeping at this time in the morning.)

On the agenda for today, though, was a fairly easy day -- lots of breaks due to spread out classes, but college wasn't college without its fair share of weird happenings, like being asked to be a nude model for one of the school's figure drawing classes. Matthew almost laughed in the person's face -- not only was he sure that, quite frankly, no one wanted to see that, but his natural aversion to being naked in a public setting was already making him cringe and recoil just at the thought. So, crisis avoided, Matthew spent the rest of his break doing some homework, but there were other rather strange things going on -- some guy in a llama hat asked him for a cigarette, then the exact same guy called him a loser for not being a smoker, a girl offering him a free cup of coffee since the cafe made her the wrong thing but she didn't want it to go to waste -- all in all, as far as college goes, it was kind of a weird day.

It was pretty late at night by the time he got home, his usual parking spot in front of the building taken by a douchey looking car, which he automatically associated with Dubstep Guy just because. He pulled out his portfolio and lugged it back to his apartment, where there was a bright pink note on his door. 'She knows me so well,' Matthew thought, managing to snag the post-it and stuck it to his portfolio as he unlocked the door, dumping his stuff onto the couch once he was inside. He grabbed a spare post-it from his bag and a pen, scrawling out a quick doodle and message as he chuckled to himself -- thank god Sandra was in her room -- then traversed down the hallway to Caitlyn's door, sticking the post-it on her door.

'...you spell it with a 'y'? No wonder I lost, I spelled it with an 'i'.

[CAITLYN AUBREE SOMMERLOT]

Having gotten home relatively early (by Caitlyn's standards) and shut herself in for pretty much the rest of the night, Cait didn't check the door again until the next morning. There was one point when, sitting in the living room studying, she thought she heard something just very faintly at the door, but she decided that it wasn't worth investigating. Somehow, the idea of it being a note from Matthew compelled her, because for some reason she enjoyed their stupid conversations about... the stupidest things, actually. It was kind of like they were making small talk, but in a very long and drawn-out fashion that took a few days as opposed to a few minutes while standing in line at Tim Hortons. Sometimes small talk was nice -- when it wasn't painfully awkward, but usually Matthew wasn't thaaat awkward.

After a while she had forgotten about this sound from the door, and gone to bed, so that she only remembered the next morning. It was early when she found it -- this morning class was by far the worst time of day for class. She smiled in amusement at the message, however, before shaking her head. Why did everyone think it was an 'I'? Glancing at her watch, she decided that she wasn't running late and so had enough time to just quickly respond, and so she removed the note from her door and went back inside. Where were those post-its...? She found them where she'd left them the last time she'd written back, and in a pink highlighter (not the best writing tool, but it would do) wrote back. She couldn't help but laugh a little at how stupid this was as she left the apartment again, locking her door before heading down the hall to Matthew's apartment, sticking the sticky note (this time a neon green one) on his door.

How long have we known each other?!

Then she turned and left, not knowing what time he'd be out and not wanting to actually run into him if he happened to be there. It wasn't like they both obviously didn't know about the notes, considering they sent them back and forth, but somehow they hadn't yet seen one another actually posting any of them, and for some reason Caitlyn liked it better that way.

[MATTHEW FUYU CHANG]

...it was, decidedly, a strange night.

Tuesdays were his horrid days, days that he was actually up and at Tim's by 7 AM to make it to class at 8 -- why he ever decided making his schedule like that, he had no idea, but he'd have to remember to punch his past self one day because why would you do that, self -- but there had been no note on his door when he left in the morning, which didn't surprise him, though he did feel a little bit disappointed by it. Like it was something he was looking forward to but...didn't really realize that. But by a series of pure chance, Matthew had ended up being ferried to and from campus to places other than Maple Hollow, all for the sake of the greater good -- or something. One of Matthew's classmates had tickets for this REALLY GREAT WONDERFUL ART EXHIBIT a few towns over and had invited him and a few of his other friends to go. And hey, it sounded like fun! The last thing on Matt's agenda was just a bunch of studio time, anyway, so he didn't think there'd be much harm in fucking the night off to check out some art. Except that he forgot that 'a few towns over' in the middle of no where Canada was like two hours, not just twenty minutes, which explained why he was stuck in a tiny car (though it's not like he could judge, really, considering his car was only good for two people) on the interstate, heading further away than he really would have liked.

And then the exhibit ended up being an impressionism exhibit. Not to say that there's anything wrong with that -- he can appreciate the classics, like Starry Night and Irises, but generally, it wasn't a period of art that particularly fascinated him, which only ended up increasing his overall frustration at the situation. Still, it was nice of his friend to invite him out, so he figured he'd suck it up and just go with it. How long could they possibly stay for, honestly?

...a long time, apparently, as his friend knew the artist, so of course there was a lot of, 'oh you all should come over afterward!' which, again, Matthew wouldn't have minded if it didn't sound like an excuse for them so sit around, drinking wine and being your average hipster art student. Apparently no one became art majors to eventually become a comic book artist. No one but Matthew, anyway. When midnight turned into 1 AM, then 2 AM, then 3 and 4, Matthew seriously began to question his friendships -- okay, not so much, but he seriously began to question if it would be bad form to just take a nap on his spot on the couch because as much as Matthew liked shooting the shit about art, he liked sleep more. A lot more. Needless to say, Matthew didn't make it home until really late or super friggin' early, depending on how you wanted to look at it. Eyes bleary from exhaustion, Matthew clumsily unlocked the door to his apartment and merely dropped himself onto the couch, not even bothering going to his bed proper.

It wasn't until he woke up hours (and hours) later that he noticed the note on the fridge, written in Cait's handwriting. Sandra must have taken it and stuck it on there for him or something, he figured, feeling much more human and infinitely grateful that it was Wednesday and he had no where pressing to be. Despite his lingering exhaustion, Matthew laughed at the note -- touche, missy. It was sort of fair, though. He never really bothered wondering how it was spelt and just assumed it was with an 'i'. Grabbing one of Sandra's star-shaped post-its, he scrawled a message out -- 'I DON'T KNOW YOUR LIFE and seriously, should I start calling you 'Caitlyn with a Y'? -- and stuck it to her doorknob. Just because it looked a little festive. With that done, Matt ambled back to his apartment and made a beeline for his bedroom, where he simply went back to sleep and couldn't be assed with the various texts on his phone.

[CAITLYN AUBREE SOMMERLOT]

She liked to pride herself on being careful and organized and, even though she could be pretty constantly stressed the hell out, on top of things enough that she was able to remember all the things she had to do in a day. There were many of those things, though. It could be hard. Today, she'd managed to remember everything she needed for her two classes of the day -- but, damn it all, not the concert band rehearsal. It wasn't until a friend texted her -- Wanna do lunch today before band? -- that she actually facepalmed in the middle of the hallway where she was walking, causing some people to turn and stare at her like she was absolutely insane. They didn't even understand, okay, not even a little. She quickly replied to said friend, saying something about how she had to run home for a bit, but next week, I promise!!! and then shoved her phone back into her bag, hurrying out to the car. She'd fully intended to just stay at school -- do some homework or something in the library -- instead of being ridiculous and running back and forth to get her things, but unfortunately that didn't seem like a working plan as of right now.

It was close to one when she got back, already a little bit exhausted just from dealing with the first class of the day, but seriously, whoever decided that a three-hour lab should be done that early in the morning was obviously all kinds of horrible and shouldn't be allowed to ever touch class schedules ever again. Caitlyn would survive, however -- she always did! -- and she went upstairs to her apartment only dragging her feet a little. Tired, she actually almost missed the post-it, considering it was stuck to the doorknob and not where she'd normally expect it, but the feeling of some pointy paper poking her hand made her blink down at it. The message made her laugh a little as she walked inside, anyway, and she stuck it on the inside of her door for now so that she wouldn't forget about it later. Today was apparently a day for forgetting things.

It occurred to her that maybe she should eat lunch while she was home anyway, but she went to get her music folder and things, and her saxophone, and waffled over whether to eat for a while, and in the end it turned out that she didn't really have food anyway. There was nothing that would be fast enough that she could make it back to the Academy in time for rehearsal, anyway, so instead she grabbed a muffin, because that was kind of a lunch, right? It wasn't, but she would live, and now she just had to somehow manage carrying her sax, her books, her muffin, and the post-it she'd scribbled a reply on -- and still, uh, maybe possibly lock the door of her apartment and make her way downstairs. She dropped her books at least twice just heading out the door, but fortunately not her lunch, and five minutes later was back in her car, saxophone case safely in the backseat, books next to her, sticky note having been left on Matthew's door back inside.

It's actually 'Caitlyn spelled the normal way'. Try again!