It's a love story

Romeo stumbled in from a long, late dinner with some college friends and flopped onto the couch with his eyes closed. The week had been unusually tiring, and the sake and beer with dinner had not helped. He didn't mind his classwork itself, but there were times he'd give his eyeteeth not to be surrounded by business students all of the time.

Of course that was when his phone rang. Romeo glanced at it: Benvolio.

Well, speaking Verona would be a balm to his soul after three hours of Japanese only lightly sprinkled in English. He took the call, though his initial greetings were a bit wary.

Romeo's mood was much improved when he hung up. "I'm to be an uncle," he told Alea. (Okay, technically a cousin once removed, but Romeo saw no reason to quibble over such things. The important part was that Benvolio and Rosaline were having a child.)

The cat ... was not impressed.

[OOC: Open to anybody who wants to talk to him!]

Yurika was working tonight, again, and Romeo had gone out on the general theory he could only read so much about global finances before studying became counterproductive.

A few drinks later, he ended up in a hostess club, making animated conversation with the pretty Ukranian girl who kept trying to convince him to order more expensive drinks. (She succeeded more often than not, Romeo and willpower not having much more than a nodding acquaintance.) Somehow, they started talking about high school.

She discreetly found a way to cut him off when he started telling zombie invasion stories. It seemed like some things were too strange even for paid companionship.

Romeo scowled at his beer. Some nights he really missed Fandom; it would be a relief to be back there at the end of the week.

[OOC: Open to anybody who wants to bother a mildly inebriated Shakesperean. He has his phone and everything.]

Romeo's college required he take a business ethics course. It wasn't such a bad idea, really. In Verona, showing up with a few bodyguards and asking pointed questions about how attached a rival was to his cars was considered a reasonable opening salvo. He flipped through the text with a highlighter in hand, occasionally shooting worried glances at the door.

Yurika wasn't saying anything, but he could tell something at work was troubling her. A friend had died; that was as much as she'd told him, and that was worry enough.

He reread the passage on ethical hiring practices and hoped she'd be home soon.

[OOC: For the hime and calls/emails/texts.]

For some strange reason, this club had large clocks mounted where the mirrors should be over the sinks in the men's room.

For a stranger reason, Romeo actually looked at one long enough to read the time. Time hadn't mattered much, not after the stress of their first dinner with Yurika's parents (and the long, awful waiting afterwards while she and her father fought just within earshot, until she reappeared, wearing a distinctly brittle smile). There'd been odd news from home, of course, but she had promised him Tokyo did not sleep, and so neither did they. Distraction seemed the best they could do in the absence of ghosts or gods to fight.

So when he saw the clock, it took some time for his poor brain, which was half drunk and half hungover, to make the connection to anything he had to do, but when he did he dashed back to the bar to find his girlfriend.

"When did you say we were to find our portal home?" he demanded.
( Dōjima blinked at him blearily... )

[OOC: Preplayed with the lovely and amazing dojima_hime. NFB due to location.]