Reading Into Things [Rui/Cecil]

Alright...so apparently, Seven Stars had a Literature Club. One that evidently didn't do much to make themselves known.
That was somewhat surprising, with all the clubs currently trying to pull in members and establish themselves during the early days after the academy's grand opening. Even those people trying to make Communism Club a thing put up posters everywhere.
Hopefully they weren't actually serious.

Cecil tentatively stepped through the halls, gradually trawling the area until he found the place where the club was supposed to be situated.
For a moment, he stood awkwardly in front of the door, hesitating to go in, until he felt a pressure in the back of his head that he had come to learn boded ill.
And then...he opened the door, and peered inside. "Hello...?"

The teachers had helpfully informed Rui that he was required to actually recruit members to his club in order to actually get the additional funding he requested.

This was not a problem, of course. Shameless squandering/embezzling of public funds, like most things in life, is funner when you up the number of people involved. But how to attract members?

Rui was busy at work. For some reason, he was wearing a witch's costume, complete with a hat, a red apron, and black latex gloves while stirring a ladle into a large brown goopy jar. Around him were several other sealed-off jars, most but not all with the same brown goopy contents. Most notably, the entire club room smelled like someone crossed a sickly sweet carnivorous plant with vinegar. Or if a really sweaty girl tried to coat her feet in perfume, but it only half-masked the odor.

Rui's stirred to the rhythm of a tune he was humming, Shostakovich's so-called invasion theme, at the very least, acting as if he was not aware of the boy who had just entered the room. Rui had a pretty good idea someone had entered the room (though he wasn't aware of who), but he figured it wasn't a reason to actually stop what he was doing.

There were multiple factors contributing to the way that Cecil's brain crashed out on him as he entered what was SUPPOSED to be the literature club.
First was the sight of Rui, destroyer of store electronics.
Second was the fact that Rui, destroyer of store electronics was now dressed as a witch and operating a cauldron...because he didn't have enough people that dressed up as witches and did insane things in his life, apparently.
Third was the stench that permeated the room, the horrible odour that permeated the place and assaulted his nose with the unspeakable.
...Fourth was just the fact that the walking situation that was Rui was not just limited to utterly implausible accidents.

Why did this have to be real life?
How was this real life?!
What was even up with this guy that in a life full of demons and psychic ghosts that pester you to study at 3am, he was the thing that raised the most questions?!

Cecil stumbled into the room, before finally saying the words that so desperately rattled around in his head at this moment.
"What the fuck are you doing?!"

Rui spun around, finally recognizing the voice. It was the "nii-san" from the local electronics store. He spun around in a way that made the witch costume twirl around.

"Oh hey! So we do go to the same school, after all!"

He struck an absurd pose that he saw from an anime about idols. Or delinquents. He wasn't quite sure which. Probably mixed both of them together.

"Welcome to...the Literature Club!"

He dropped the pose and began speaking more...normally. "Anyways, oh, do you mean this? I'm just getting in-character. Method acting, you know? Except instead of acting, I'm preparing drinks for our recruitment open house.

His face seemed to light up with realization, as if a light-bulb went off. "Oh yeah, by the way. Good timing. Thanks for the help shopping! Feel free to take a piss ju-I mean finished jar home." Rui corrected himself, although not quite in time. He had a tendency of calling all jars with liquid in them "piss jugs" after watching an American comedy show with a trucker character. Way of the road. But he suspected that not everyone would get the joke.

"Anyways, I think this brew came out pretty well. Still packs a punch, but not too sour this time. But still pretty sour. Like in the good way." Rui of course, was talking about the various jars of Kombucha he was making that were still buffering the clubroom with its uniquely vinegary, sour aroma.

As ever with Rui, the things he did defied description, rational thought, and basically anything that relied on reason, sense, and anything that the world at large typically operated.
Thankfully, Cecil had an alternate means of expressing his disbelief at the situation - namely, his impressive vocabulary of choking and gibbering noises. The scope and breadth of the sounds that came from within the boy seemed to know no bounds as his brain struggled to return to working condition.
Eventually, though, words finally returned to him.


Or well, two in particular.

"Nonono, nono, no! How are you getting away with this?!" He walks over to one of the jars, grabs it, and holds it in front of Rui. "WHY are you doing this in a CLUB ROOM?!"
After a moment of staring at Rui in disbelief, he places the jug in his hand down hard and starts hunting down and opening every window he possibly could. "Dear god, the smell is not going to go away, it's not going to go away..."

Rui consistently found the older boy a very strange person. He was always so excitable. Prone to outbursts. Was this normal for young teens in his age, brimming with hormones, emotions, and anxiety? Rui had been recently reading a lot of shoujo manga that suggested as such. Of course, Rui also had quite the dramatic tendency and playful flair, so he wondered how he would have been if he was young, filled with hormones, and possessing a real beating heart.

So as a result, Rui gave the boy a quizzical look when he asked why Rui was doing this here. "...huh? Well duh. It would make my own house smell weird, right?"

Something dawned on Rui, as part of Cecil's agitation seemed to make more sense. "Oh, no, no. They're not like literal piss jugs. I just call them that because they look like pee. And maybe taste a little like, but only if I really screw up! Anyways, I don't have any real jars of pee!"

He couldn't resist teasing the older boy a little though, "Well, um, you know, unless you're like into that." He triggered a fake blush reaction on his cheeks and consciously acted as if he were sheepishly looking away and silently mouthing "pervie."

"That's why there's a problem! This is a SCHOOL. Not your house. This isn't your place to stink up! How do you not realise that?!"
He pauses.
"Wait a minute. You live in the dorms."
He turns around, giving Rui a flat, 'what the hell are you thinking' stare. "Not only do you live in the school - and no, that does not make this alright, this STILL isn't your place to do things like this to - they know exactly where to find you for complaint. You don't regularly do stuff like this, do you?"
...who was he kidding?
"...I don't know what'll happen first if you keep this up, but it won't be pretty for you."

He starts going back to opening the windows - only to get a twitch in his eye and wheel around to point at Rui. "Don't. You. Dare. Dealing with my family was a special kind of hell after what happened at the music store. I am not in the mood for a repeat."

Rui seemed a little confused again as he tilted his head, "The dorms? Yes, that's right. Though I meant my house. Though yes, you're right, that's like totally a terribad idea!"

Rui coughed, "Anyways, that's the point. The customer's always right! Which means while I can't stink up tenants, but here, I'm a valued consumer." Rui patted himself on the chest to emphasize the point.

He gave off an awfully devious smile, "Anyways, don't worry, the school rules let us freely cook and make tea. Thanks to our friends in the Cookies and Tea Ceremony Club."

Rui gave off a giggly smile, "Teehee~ Very sweet of you to worry though. Anyways, I'm only doing this to skirt school rules. Don't misunderestimate me too much!" Rui of course, left out the smelly elephant in tbe room - why he needed to skirt school regulations.

Rui, in his new form, actually kind of missed pungent bad smells. His body had a tendency of...shielding him from disgusting smells. It actually kind of made him slightly nostalgic. Not to mention something just appeared, necessitating a maneuver, "Plus it's not that bad of a smell, right? It's sour, but also really sweet. Like there's a cute girl, or maybe a cute boy, who has really sweaty feet and they're embarrassed, so they cover it with perfume. But you're forcing them to step all over your face and it's making them more embarrassed so they're sweating even more, overpowering the perfume, which has been half-licked off." Rui immediately finished with a blank stare towards Cecil. Before immediately hiding his feet behind the counter, as if he were hiding it from Cecil.

A valued cons- "A school is not a-!"

Cecil cut himself off with another choking noise as his objections were cut off by further...utterly, depraved speech.
It was perhaps a good thing that he hadn't noticed Rui hide his feet, otherwise he might have gone catatonic right then and there.
"...Rui, why is THAT the example you went for?" His eye was twitching. He wanted to sob in despair. He'd only narrowly avoided being kept up all night by the asshole inside his head. "I..." He let his arm drop, just looking at him with an incredibly pained expression. "I just came to check out an actual goddamn Literature Club. Read some books and stuff, maybe talk about it." He shook his head, at a loss. "Finding the guy who somehow wiped the digital catalogue by trying to use it normally stirring up god knows what in a witch's outfit was not on the agenda."
Looking at him again, something hit him as his voice came out in a pitiful whine. "It's not even the same one you bought...why, oh WHY did you need more?" It had to be witches. Why did it have to be witches?

Cecil slumps against the wall, a broken man. "And why the fuck would you be making reeking gunk to get around the rules anyway...? What are you even trying to do? What kind of crazy scheme is this?"

Rui waited to answer. That was because the increasingly disturbed schoolteacher and disciplinary committee girl standing behind Cecil in the doorway, finally began to make a noise, "Oh, ergh, um, sorry to disturb you!" Rui actually recognized the committee girl as one of the girls who he had previously seen at the shopping mall, due to the fact that she seemed more weirdly happy than weirded out. The teacher then closed the door as the two walked away from the club room.

They probably came to investigate the club room due to complaints about the smell, heard screaming in the club room about "PISS", and entered the room just as Rui saw them and began his speech about sweaty feet stepping on Cecil.

Now that the risk was dispelled, Rui gave a relieved sigh, "Thanks for the assist!" Anyways, now that we're in the clear...

Cecil seemed rather calm right now, so Rui figured it was a good time to explain, "Well, as you know, the Literature Club needs to hold an open house to attract students." Tragic, but true.

"Anyways, we need drinks. But the club advisor told me I wasn't allowed to bring in vodka, beer, or wine the last three times I tried."

Rui remembered the exact provision of the school rules that prohibited bringing in those specific products, "But ahah, the school rules specifically exclude any teas brewed on campus from pesky rules. So I'm trying to ferment tea until it's like a champagne. A really vinegary champagne."

Rui looked rather impressed with himself, "Anyways, the Lit Club is going to have the most lit party on campus! Speaking of costumes, do you think there's a way to get a stripper on campus? Part of the reason I got this was because it was advertised as a 'Stripper Witch' costume - and seriously, you've gotta be curious as to what a Stripper Witch is. I certainly was."

Rui coughed, less exuberant, "Apparently, it's just a Witch with a costume that falls apart really quickly." To demonstrate this, he rapidly swiveled his shoulders in a way that made his witch-cloak and apron fall off, revealing a black corset with a heart shaped hole in the chest, which currently looked more like a deformed cat because Rui didn't have the bust that most intended customers had.

It was at this moment that the door reopened, as the earlier disciplinary committee girl almost chose to walk in, before witnessing the scene in front of her, closing the door, and storming away for good.

Cecil was not calm. He was not calm at all.
He was actually catatonic at this point. Staring blankly at the door as it all played out around him, barely hearing anything going on around him.
"...Rui...how strong is that tea you've been working on...?"

Rui, still wearing his bizarre stripper-witch corset, seemed like he was pondering the math.

"Well, I've been using a champagne yeast on the second fermentation of the tea. Probably...around 11 to 12% alcohol if it's fizzy. So a bit weak for a wine. But each piss jug should be around a gallon, so that's around 3.8 liters? So off the top of my head, each jug should have the alcohol content of around...three bottles of wine, I guess?"

He immediately drifted off, as he began the calculation for exactly how many students of Seven Stars Academy the Literature Club could intoxicate before he ran out of jugs.

Nodding slowly, and pushing off the wall, stumbles toward the nearest jar with the gait of the walking dead...and starts making to chug as much of it down as was physically possible.
He wouldn't do this. He really wouldn't normally do this. It tasted far, far, far too much like vinegar to be anything he could normally stand anyway.
He found himself unable to care, even as his subconscious voice screamed protest.

Rui frowned. He had perhaps mistaken Cecil as a teetoler. Instead, Cecil was really trying out the jug that Rui had gifted him. At first, Rui was tempted to tell him to drink it a little more slowly. However, a thought floated to his head, "Hm, maybe I should see how a student actually reacts to it." After all, he had tested it on himself, but for a variety of reasons, he was biologically aberrant. So it was probably good to get a Cecil-shaped guinea pig.

"So uh... drink up, but how does it taste...?"

He wasn't even listening. He kept chugging and chugging and chugging, slowing down gradually as the bile rose in his throat but not actually stopping. Just a little after getting down half, he slumped to the ground with the jug...and promptly started vomiting back into it, horrible, tortured retching noises filling the room as everything he'd just swallowed down went back into the receptacle it came from. He could feel his gut heave and his perception of the world dull as it all went down, breathing heavily as the world span around him and he just continued vomiting.

The sad thing was, this felt better than dealing with Rui right now.