Holy Grounds was everything a struggling college student could need. The tips were great, the atmosphere was lovely (especially the scents and visuals, coffee and sweets were always appealing), and the people were… well, he could deal with them.
“Good job today, coworker!” He cheered at the blond who’d helped hold down the fort nicely while taking off his own apron and folding it neatly over his arm.

“Now we can split whatever is left over - we don’t reuse food here - and I’ll show you how to clean up before we lock up!”
“I don’t really care for my housemates.” Hogwarts AU @ichinyatsv
Oh boy, that was… quite the statement. Kyouhei drew back into himself, hands clenched under his Hufflepuff robes and heart throbbing with unmistakable hurt.
“Is… is that so?” Mentally, he went over the statement again, trying to figure out if it was an okay thing to be upset over… yeah, it sounded like it included him, and… ah, there were the tears.

“I-I can’t… tell you who to like and who not to… but you don’t have to hang out with me if you don’t care for my company…!”
Seafolk/Mer AU w. @theshadowjjang
Kyouhei was primarily a Midnight sea zone swimmer. The dark sand, the quiet, a number of creatures willing to let a lonesome Eel be just that - lonesome - was pleasing.
He couldn’t find everything he needed in the darker parts of the ocean blue, however, and it was only a matter of time until he slunk out of his rock formation safe-havens and skulked around the parts of the water the sun touched.

Humming gently, the sound not carrying in the ocean blue, Kyouhei slipped over and under rocks and coral, diving at things that moved under the sand with feline-esque grace, venturing into the sunlight zone at his own chosen pace….
And then he spotted his first danger of the day. Or maybe it (he?) had spotted him? He couldn’t be sure, but one thing was for certain….
They were way too close. Not even a foot away. Had Kyouhei been that caught up in his mini-adventure? All the bouncing around and catching and releasing, as if he himself was a pet… how embarrassing…!

“What do you want.” His ego spoke up before his common sense had a chance to assess the situation, the flaps on his pointed ears bristling up as if daring the unknown person to attack him.
Definitely a bad idea, but nothing much could be done at this point. He pressed his lips into a thin line and crossed his arms over his bare chest, slimy tail folding under him in the sand, waiting for a reply - any reply, or anything to work off of. Waiting for something to set off his fight or flight.
Never let it be said that Kyouhei was a half-assed student - as much as he complained and grouched over the fine details of chemistry and physics as a whole he did the work: and that included the practical work.
Such as experiments that made him feel like a real scientist.
Dolled up in glasses and a lab coat with his hair just barely held back by some mousse and some hair clips, he was carefully organizing, heating and mixing chemicals for the results marked down in his study guide.

The process was so mechanical that it was soothing, and Kyouhei found himself humming softly while he working, even going as far as to sing a few lines out loud - there was no one around so it was fine.
[accepting memes!]
What? Did he really look that bad? Kyouhei smiled sheepishly before checking that the mentioned bucket was actually there, then waving weakly to make sure he still had the speaker’s attention.

“Thanks for showing me, but it’s not really that bad… promise.” Shortly after speaking, what he saw caught up to him and he looked back at the old-looking bucket, in shock. “Why is that even here…?”
[accepting memes!]
It took a while for Kyouhei to realize the statement was directed at him - he didn’t feel that bad! It was just a flash fever, he had them all the time as a kid, he could power through this!

“More or less? I just look pale because of the fever - and because of the lack of sleep. It’ll get over itself soon, no worries!”
[accepting memes!]
Alarmed, Kyouhei quickly made note of who had talked, forehead slightly scrunched in a frown as he tucked a pencil behind his ear and approached with a worried smile.

“Well, it could be the heat - or stress - or a lot of things, but!” He stopped a reasonable distance away - close enough that if the lady who’d spoke stumbled or collapsed he could act quickly. “Why not sit down a moment with me while we figure it out?”
Kyouhei hadn’t taken Bellevue to be a ‘spontanious weather’ kind of place - or maybe it hadn’t really been spontaneous and he’d merely been caught up in his class notes and hadn’t noticed the storm rolling in.
Either way, he was now fairly soaked and dodging back and forth looking for a reasonable place to hide from the downpour, which appeared to be satisfied with its current location, to his dismay.

“Fwuh, what a terrible storm…” He hissed, finally taking shelter under a tree that more or less did what he wanted it to do. Turning to assess his situation, he realized there was already someone hiding there, and grinned apologetically. “Sorry, did I get any water on you?”
One thing Kyouhei never had to deal with as an only-child in a fairly wealthy family was shopping. He could count the instances that he’d gone out shopping for food or supplies on his hands. It couldn’t be too difficult, though, right?
Wrong. There were five different brands of everything on the shelves, and he couldn’t recognize any of them. He really should’ve looked some stuff up beforehand, there was no doubt some handy-dandy website somewhere.

“I’m almost ready to go home without buying anything…” The brunet muttered and adjusted his cap with a sigh.
In a last-ditch attempt to find something, Kyouhei backed up so he could see the labels on the higher shelves better, but all he ended up doing was bumping into someone.
“Oh, whoops!” He turned to properly address whoever he knocked into with a grin. “My bad, there, wasn’t paying attention. You’re okay, right?”
So what if it was a weird request. Honestly, there were probably weirder out there - some browsing on Craigslist would back him up, surely - so asking someone to toughen him up couldn’t be… horrible.
What was horrible was that he was going to be late to his own assigned time - although he’d almost forgotten where’d he asked that the person to go so it could’ve been even worse.
Honestly, this was not Kyouhei’s day.
It didn’t appear to be all hopeless, though, because the place on-campus he’d directed whoever was interested in meeting up at had a person already there - which meant they were probably there to give Kyou’s request a shot.

“Excuse me! Hello! My apologies for being late!” The brunet called out, cheerfully, as he sprinted to their side, grinning widely but with an otherwise apologetic expression on his face. He hoped they weren’t too mad.