The sweet, sweet OJ was really helping the empty feeling in her stomach. She would have liked to guzzle it down as fast as possible, but the faster she finished, the faster she'd be expected to talk. It was a bit unnerving how Juli was eyeing her down.
"So is my brother two timing you or something?"
Almost as awkward as that question. Hitomi gagged so hard she almost swallowed her straw. She was caught choking for a few seconds while Juli grinned. "That a yes, then?"
"N-no! Wh-why would you think that?" Hitomi asked, shocked.
Juli shrugged at her and leaned back against the wall. "I dunno. Kinda stuff happens, doesn't it? So you saying you got another reason to pin all that on?"
"N-no! Not at all!"
"Dang," Juli snapped her fingers in dissatisfaction, "that would have been good blackmail."
Hitomi struggled to understand what Juli was talking about with that. Sibling relations were another unexplored area for her.
Luckily Juli was chugging forward with the whole talking thing, which Hitomi would have been quite well enough with it ending already.
"Alright, so how do you know James then?"
"Uhhh," Hitomi was finally relieved to have a question that wasn't implicating. "We just have a class together. That's all, I swear, we've never even really talked or anything, I barely know him."
"Oh yeah, is that right?" Juli looked down hard at the bed. "Well that's lame."
"Y-yeah, t-there's nothing special behind it." That wasn't so bad. Maybe this wouldn't be-
"So why do you have him all over your history then?" Juli asked, eyes drooping and a suspecting grin taking her over.
"W-wha?" Hitomi stammered. Juli stuck her arm out and pointed down to the bed, where she'd tossed the phone before leaving. Hitomi tracked down automatically, and realization struck her. It was her phone sitting there, which meant… "Y-you went through my phone?!"
"Wasn't much else to do." Juli shrugged.
"T-that's an invasion of privacy!" Hitomi declared, snatching up her device and cradling it defensively.
"Sure, whatever." Juli shrugged as she grabbed and turned to face the bed, taking a seat facing Hitomi head on. "And you look like you're stalking my brother. That's pretty metal for someone like you, right? Why?"
There was no conceivable route of escape that Hitomi could think of. Most of the room was hidden behind curtains so she had no idea whether it had windows or not. The orange juice had helped, but this girl looked like she could beat her to the door on a good day, let alone today. Which meant all she could do was come up with some kind of excus-
"Hey!" Juli snapped her fingers in Hitomi's face, making her jump out of her whirlwind flight response. "Don't faint on me again. Just lay the juice on me, I won't tell anyone."
"W-wha?" Hitomi was flattened by the insistence and triviality Juli had shown in one move.
"I said, I. Won't. Tell. That get through for you? Looky here." Juli raised a hand up in the air. "I swear I don't even care what you're doing, I just wanna know why. Seems like it might be funny."
It took a little time for Hitomi to process what she'd just heard. She didn't have enough experience to be a very good judge of character, but luckily ignorance is bliss. "Funny?"
"Yeah. Look, you seem like you might be a danger to yourself, so I figure you'd be pretty incompetent at anything dangerous. So why?"
That… that was a compliment in a way, at least it seemed like she hadn't made Hitomi out to be a bad character. "You… won't tell him anything?"
"I might, if I'm bored."
"B-but you just said-"
"Jeez, alright fine. We don't talk much anyways. It better be a good reason at least."
"Uhh," Hitomi poked her fingers together, working up the courage. "It… it's for a game."
If crickets were allowed in the hospital, this would be where they'd be hanging out. Really it wasn't that long, but Juli broke the silence before it drove Hitomi crazy again. "A game? What, I thought you said you didn't know him, but you're doing voyeur stuff together?"
"N-no! H-he's not, w-we're not, I-I said I didn't know him!" Hitomi explained at a rapid pace. "It's a… an AR game, Alternate Reality, where you, uh, collect points by capturing locations and stuff! H-he got logged a-as a… a VIP target, so I… I was just… in the area, and, and…"
"Alright, so you were stalking him." Juli said with a gotcha grin. Hitomi looked away and kind of nodded, mostly sighed. "So you're playing some stalking game. That sounds weird. How do you even sign up for that?" Hitomi kept looking away and shrugged. "Cool. You want any help?"
"W-wha?" Hitomi's head shot back to Juli.
"I said, do you want any help? It sounds like one of those assassin games. I was in one of those once, it was weird. I could get my brother somewhere for you."
Hitomi gapped. Was this girl serious? Hitomi had had her misgivings the entire time and she just volunteered to be a part of a game she didn't know anything about, with a girl she had never heard of before. Either Hitomi had never really known what normal was, or this girl was a special kind of dangerous.
"Uh, well, I think I missed my chance to get any, uh, points from him. The, the mission was already almost over."
"Bummer. Well, better luck next time." Juli blew at a hair that had fallen into her face, keeping up the casual feeling from her side of the room. "So, how'd ya get into something like that?"
"W-well…" Hitomi figured it wouldn't be too bad to tell some of the truth. The part where she was just randomly selected and didn't know too much about it. She started to explain some of the little things, but something caught her off guard. Midway through, she could swear she caught a glimmer in Juli's eyes.
A glimmer of purple.