The Order

God, he was so noisy.

She clutched the blanket she laid under closer to her face and shuffled. As she tried to sleep, it seemed like he just came in here on purpose just to spite her and keep her awake. It was bad enough she had to stay in his house while her parents were snowed in at a relatives, but the fact that he was doing anything he could to make her stay horrible pissed her off!

Actually, he did nothing, and while she knew this, it was just as bad, if not worse. The click clacking of his keyboard on his little laptop made it difficult for her to sleep, not to mention the glare of light from the computer screen. The lights where out and he sat at his desk with the only source of light coming from the hallway.

She didn’t want to be here and she knew he didn’t want her here. He hadn’t said a single word to her since she had arrived and any time she tried to talk to him, he brushed her off. In his defense she frequently pointed out how clumsy he was, slipping on the wooden floors in his socks and how messy his room was compared to hers, even though it wasn’t that messy. He wanted her to leave and that much was obvious. Good riddance is what he had probably planned to say directly to her face before she left, if they hadn’t been left behind by her parents. Fucking ungrateful bastard.

She grumbled and got under the covers a little more.

She stared at his back while he committed nonsense with his laptop, under two layers of covers, cross legged on his chair. He made no sound. To his right were three empty things of frozen dinners that he had inhaled in less than ten minutes. The smell was all over the room, too. Didn’t he know how to take them in to the kitchen?

When they were little she would always have to clean his room for him. It was no wonder it was in such disrepair now. Without her he was hopeless. She smirked. Yeah… that was it. Hopeless. She twitched a little, her mind forcing her to choke out something she didn’t really comprehend, but she wasn’t able to hold it back.

“You’ve said that like seven times already, I get it.” He snapped at her, but not really. To her he did, and that’s what mattered. She scowled. “What the hell is your problem? What’d I do to have you snap at me?” She felt insulted when he didn’t answer her. “Answer me you dumbass!”

He shrugged his covers over himself and then flung them backward. Rising from his chair, he rolled his eyes. “I didn’t snap at you.” His eyes didn’t linger on her as he turned to the door and began to walk out. In the distance she could hear a knock at the door. She huffed. “W-Whatever.” Her arms crossed and her eyes closed with an indignant pout while she waited for him to reply. After a few seconds she hesitantly looked at him only to find the door open and the patter of footsteps leaving the vicinity.

She grits her teeth. Asshole.

It was then that she noticed that the source of light were a plethora of white Christmas lights, shining their golden gleam every which way, giving the hallway an ethereal look. A tingle ran down her spine at the sight and she shook her head. With that sour bastard to try to bask in the wonderful atmosphere of Christmas was more than difficult.

Before long her eyes drafted over to his computer screen, causing her to roll her eyes. The big five red letters, FAKKU, where planted on the desktop. Even during the holidays he couldn’t hold off his perverseness, how pathetic. In tandem with her judgment, she figured she’d be doing the world a favor by teaching him a lesson and changing the background to something half decent.

She went through a couple of folders and pulled up an old photo with a smirk. He was obsessed with her, why else would he have a picture of her on his computer? Oh the things he probably did with it… dumb pervert. He probably had much more, too. She frowned when it asked her to give a password to change it. Damn.

She noticed many windows were open and tilted her head at the site of notes.
Mainly about torrenting some group’s called Team Vanilla’s stuff, she didn’t bother to give them a second glance as it was perverted. What did catch her attention though was a browser window open. Firefox. Safari was way better. If he bothered to ask she would have given him a few pointers on which browsers to choose.

In the seconds that followed she would stare at the page, dumbstruck. It was an online store… and the words, †˜Already Shipped, estimated delivery-†˜ were cut off as the page hadn’t loaded all the way yet. She looked to the top of the page and her breath hitched, but she shook her head. It was probably something stupid.

“Merry Christmas to you too.” She heard him say and then the door shut in the front of the house. As quick as lightening she minimized the window and everything else, and ducked under the covers just as he came into the room. Her eyes trailed after him as he sat down, clutching something to his stomach.

Not knowing what to say, she uttered, “Uhm…”

He shut the laptop down, ignoring her, and left the room without another word. When the light disappeared in front of him, sighed. “Don’t look at my stuff again. You don’t like perverted things, remember?” She turned crimson as he smiled a little. “Spoils the surprise…” He would mutter, but she never caught it.

“Merry Christmas, Takaoka.”

“Y-You too… pervert.” He left the room, snorting. “Same old Takaoka.”