The More Things Change...|OPEN|

The dorm that was usually found to be fairly quiet in the past few weeks or so, the one under the ownership of the student named Miller, was currently undergoing a few changes. Immediately outside the door were a couple of beaten up boxes filled with a lot of junk or so it was viewed by the ordinary eye. They were once treasures to Miller, but not today. What was going to be done with them was uncertain

Finally and surprisingly the figure of Miller himself came stumbling out the door with a box wrapped tightly in his one arm. He dropped the box onto the ground with absolutely no grace. He glared at the box for a moment as he wiped the back of his neck. “Why’d I collect so much junk?” he asked himself as he gazed back into his room. He looked down at his bladed arm once again thinking it to be more of a nuisance than useful. He quickly checked the hall for anyone who might be watching and then went back inside his room leaving the door completely open.

“You’d think I’d leave something around here to help myself carry out things out, but no. No wagons, no nothing” he continued to speak to himself more theatrically than he normally would. His room itself was a bit of a mess too, the bed’s torn up sheets being the main attraction. The curtains were clamped shut as they always were due to his dislike of light. There were also less than satisfying graded tests scattered around the floor. It almost looked like someone ransacked the place.

Though Zakarie was normally found inside of his own room tinkering or studying or otherwise, but he had found himself in need of a break. He was stressed and tired, and the darker than normal bags under his eyes spoke of his lack of a previous night's sleep. He desperately wished for a smoothie and a good conversation, something to pull him out of his practically self-centric mood.

The sight of an open door and boxes outside of it spoke of possibility- perhaps he wouldn't be getting that smoothie, but at least there would be the chance of interaction. He glanced into the open door, thinking it was a new student, but was mildly disappointed to see a familiar face. Miller, was it? Zak didn't pride himself on the fact that he was so bad with the names of the people who lived right down the hall, but considering his current tiredness, he didn't really care.

"Hey, you need any help?" Zak asked quietly, peering his head in and pointing over his shoulder with his thumb, gesturing at the boxes scattered outside. He pulled his fingers through his hair and leaned tiredly on the door frame, taking in the dilapidated state of the room before he once again transfixed his eyes on the other male's face.

((I hope it hasn't been too many days to hop into this c:))

Miller’s deep black eyes darted across the room as he scanned around gripping another roughed up box as he did. He strode over to a nearby table and shoved everything on top of it into the weak container. It wasn’t until all the noise of the items rattling ceased that he heard the person posed against his door frame. His head quirked so that he could see who was speaking to him, though he didn’t recognise him. Though he didn’t know many faces around the school.

“Uh… Yes, I suppose you could help me” he spoke as his eyes wandered around the mess of a room. “I’m just getting rid of all this stuff I got. I just want to start this new school year fresh, so I’m cleaning this whole place and donating all the stuff I don’t need. Waste not, want not, you know” he explained as he bent down to grab the box he had just recently filled. Before he placed a hand on the object he turned back to the person. “Wait, you got two hands! You can help me move this stuff around” he stated as he lightly kicked the box carelessly.

(OOC: nope, I was hoping someone would reply here soon)

Zak let out a light chuckle, the corners of his mouth turning ever so slightly upwards as he removed himself from the doorframe and took a few steps inside the room. It was even messier when standing inside- dark lighting, torn bedsheets, scattered papers- it was kind of sad, in its own way. Plus, Zak was sure only having one normal arm didn't help things much.

"Yep, two good arms, ripe for the helping," Zak nodded, lifting his hands up in front of his face and returning his gaze to the other student. He took a few more steps inside then reached down to pick up the box that Miller had been reaching for. "Sounds like a brilliant idea. I should probably clean out some things in my place- I have a bit of a mess going, myself, and I'm not all so proud of it. A noble cause you have going here." He gave Miller a solid nod along with his typical neutral face, turning halfway towards the door. "So, moving stuff out there? Yeah?"

Once the boy picked up the container he just filled, Miller picked up another rugged box of nearly the same size. He waddle through the papers on the floor until he reached a much large desk that had plenty of drawers and whatnot. He opened the first that came into his sight, but didn’t view any of it since he looked back at his helper when he began to speak. “Yeah, just stack’em up out there for now, I’m gonna get a cart later so that I can take’em all at once” he answered and turned back to the drawer.

His gaze focused in on the very little amount of items that were stored within it. He first grabbed a little journal that he stared at curiously as though it was his first time seeing it. He slipped it away into his pocket which looked as though it wouldn’t fit into it, but it seemed to disappear without leaving an outline on his pant leg. He picked up the next item and turned back to the boy who was helping him. “A lot of this stuff I’m not even sure why I have, like this pair of burnt up goggles. It’s a bunch of junk” he explained as he threw the goggles into the box.

Miller didn’t turn back just yet, he investigated the face of his helpful neighbor from a distance and was still not quite sure who it was. “I don’t believe we’ve met before, have we?” he asked curiously as if he couldn’t even recall if they might’ve in the past.

With a quick nod, Zak walked the box outside and placed it gently near all the others, pushing it in next to one of the containers already there when he decided that he was dissatisfied with the original placement. He then returned to the door and leaned on it once more, watching the other male as he shifted through the drawer. He had quite the collection of things.

"Yeah, I've seen you around but I don't think we've ever formally introduced. I'm Zakarie Crowe. Call me Zak." He leaned his head forward and set it on the inside of the frame, his hair sticking upwards as he slid his head down the post. He looked around the room for a second time, this time wondering how someone could acquire so much stuff. Then again, he reminded himself, he had a tendency to hoard weird objects, too. With this reminder, he added, "Oh, hey, if you find any little technical gadgets you don't want, could I have them? Or any cogs or nails or tools? I like to mess around with them."

Miller investigated the next few drawers and found nothing much else of importance, so he ripped them out of their sockets, dumped them into the next box, and forced them back into place. He was sure he didn’t break it, but there was a possibility that he might be wrong. The drawers seemed to slide in and out fine though.

Miller’s attention immediately snapped back to Zak as he mentioned that he’d seen him around. His one brow quirked slightly “You have?” Miller wasn’t sure when he might have seen him, but given his appearance he was probably the kind of face that no one can really forget. “My name’s Miller, I don’t have a last name” he stated as he returned to his searching. He threw a couple of things from the top of his desk into the box he half-filled earlier and shoved it toward the boy with his foot. “Filled another one. At this rate we might have ten or so boxes of crap before we’re done” he stated with a sense of longing in his voice =, not doubt because he was quickly getting fed up with the cleaning.

“Yeah, I suppose you can take some of the small things. I probably won’t need half of these boxes and the less I have to bring with me the better” he stated while searching the room with his eyes briefly. “I’m not sure how much stuff will be of interest to you, but there’s a box out there with jars of coins and pins. Don’t ask, I don’t even know why.”

"Yeah, I notice a lot of things. If I see a face it's hard for me to forget... Plus, you know, I live right down the hall. Even if I don't talk to half the people here, I still get used to the faces," Zak informed, reaching down and picking up the next box. He moved back out to the hall and set it down, and as he was about to return to the room, he paused and decided to look through some of the boxes. He had permission- why not?

Zak unpiled the boxes and, one by one, opened them up and took a quick look through them. After a while, with a few small things pocketed, he called into the doorway, "You have an eclectic assortment of things here, Miller. Where do you even get all this junk? I thought that I had some weird things in my room." He picked up a few objects and flashed them to him. "A broken porcelain chip, with nothing else to match? A single beater from a mixer? Three euros, soldered together?" He returned the objects to their respective boxes, closed the tops and stood back up, wiping off his jeans. "Do you habitually hoard or something?"

When Miller decided to start cleaning his room, he thought he would find a lot more… useful things underneath all his junk, but that apparently wasn’t the case. The junk was piled on top of garbage which was piled upon useless knick knacks. He couldn’t believe some of the things he found that he assumed his past-self thought might be useful. He shoved whatever was left on top of the desk into one last box and pushed it toward the door with his foot again.

Zak as well found some odd combinations of objects that he found when searching through Miller’s stuff. He observed them and with an odd expression since he didn’t even remember packing any of them, though his method of packing didn’t give him a chance to investigate any of it well. “To be honest with you, I have no clue what I was thinking when I collected all of this shit” he expressed with an annoyed tone, again signifying how fed up he was with the task.

“Okay, I think all of this will be good enough. I’ll just torch up the rest of the crap in my room and call it a day” he stated with a sigh of relief as his head lowered. It shot back up as he looked back toward Zak “do you know where I would be able to get a cart or something of that caliber?”

As Miller kicked off the last of the boxes, Zak picked it up and carefully placed it with all the rest. After it had been placed, he looked at the huge pile of Miller's things and clapped his hands together as if dusting them off, exhaling deeply. "Well, at least we can say it's all done now."

At the mention of carts, Zak had to stop and think for a moment. He remembered seeing something that might work, but he couldn't recollect where. "I don't know," he sighed finally, "maybe we can look in a janitor's closet or something? I've seen those moving carts around somewhere, the ones with two wheels, but I don't remember where. Maybe if we just look around we'll find something?"

Miller went into a deep ponder as he tried to figure out what the name of the two wheeled carts. “I can’t remember what those things are called for the life of me but I know exactly what you’re talking about” he explained with his large black eyes wide open displaying that the name escaping him was bothering him a little bit. “It doesn’t matter what they’re called anyway. Where’s the nearest janitor closet?” he asked as he searched down the hallways looking for a door that appeared different than an ordinary dorm room door.

He paced outside the doorway as he starred at the junk filled boxes. “Wait, the janitors tend to lock their closets. Unless we want to be charged with destruction of school property, that’s not the greatest of ideas. Hmm, I might be able to make a few calls and get some people over here to pick it up.” as he finished he reminded himself that calling them in would probably not be the best or subtlest of ideas. “Um, never mind. I can’t call those people. Hrm, maybe we could set up a mattress outside and throw the boxes out the window, that would be faster, but a much crazier idea” and added the next sentence more so as an afterthought “oh and it’s still bright outside, so I can’t do that.”

Miller stopped in his steps as he just recently remembered that he had a partner to think his ideas over with. He turned to Zak once again “Oh yeah, what are your thoughts?”

Zak nodded, following Miller around as he thought things out. "Well, we could just call a janitor to bring us something... Where do you intend to take all this, anyway? If all else fails, we can just carry things one at a time wherever they need to be the old fashioned way." Zak thought for a minute, then pondered the "bright outside" statement. "You can't be out in the light? We could just wait until dark to deal with it, if you prefer. I barely sleep, anyway." He rubbed at his eyes at the thought and made a close-mouthed yawn.

He thought to anything he might have in his room that would help- sure, he had a lot of small tools, but nothing big enough to move such a large number of things. If they had the time he could build something, or maybe take a few lockpicking lessons or something, but this wasn't something to sit and waste over. It was just boxes.

"Hey," he thought, "Have you ever tried carrying stuff on top of your, uh, other arm? Having someone place things on it and removing them at the destination?" His eyes widened a bit and he coughed as he realised he might take an idea offensively- he didn't really know Miller enough to determine what was appropriate. "I-I'm just asking because it looks like a decent surface, and you look fairly strong."

Zak bombarded Miller a load of questions, but at the moment he was able to process them fairly quickly and come up with an answer to him in no time. “I have to bring them over to the port, which would be an incredibly long walk to begin with. I don’t want to carry an arm full, come back and do that all over again. Way too much work for this shit.”

Miller’s largely pupil eyes stared directly at Zak as he answered him again. “See how big my pupils are. Super sensitive to light, I can’t go out in the daylight without burning my retinas. I’m not waiting for night either, that’ll be hours from now.” His jaw fell agape slightly for a second or two as he came to a realization. “…I guess I don’t really have much of a choice then actually.”

At the mention of his left arm, Miller raised the blade and held it in his other hand gazing at its structure. “That could work for two to three boxes, but after that I’d become a walking balancing act. No thanks. There also a factor that I would have to keep it the blade steady with my other hand and if there is so much as a minor slip up, I’d cut my hand” he stated very matter-of-factly. He wasn’t as offended at the comment as Zak might have thought since finding a use for it besides self defense was always something he wanted to learn.

“I suppose we should just call the janitor and wait until night then, it seems to be the best idea so far” Miller accepted after a large sigh.

Zak sighed along with him, running a hand through his hair and suddenly deciding to sit on the floor. "Well, I guess we'll have time, then..." He thought for a moment, then jumped up and ran to his room, searching through drawers and containers.

After a minute or so, he ran back to Miller with a thick suede glove. "This is a falconry glove. I was just thinking, in case you ever do need to hold your, uh, blade with your other hand, it probably can't cut through this easily." He held it out to him. "Go ahead, try it on. I have one or two more sitting around somewhere." Although it wouldn't help much with the current situation, Zak figured it could help with one thing or another in the long run.

As Zak left for his room for whatever reason, Miler’s focus went back to the stack of boxes. He displayed fairly sullen expression as he did. His eyes detracted for a second as he pondered something and glanced down the hall to where the boy had entered his room. “No, he’d probably be back before I could do that” she completed his thought aloud, though without reference to what he was thinking at the moment it probably didn’t make much sense.

When Zak returned, Miller’s face also returned the state it was in before the boy had left. He handed him a glove and Miller’s eyelids lowered. He looked at his blade arm then back at the glove displaying a little bit of a frown as the boy told him to try it on. “Uh, okay I’ll try” he answered as he investigated the opening of it. He placed the glove into the armpit opposite to his only hand. He then shoved his hand into the glove, which actually worked better than he originally expected. He quickly pulled it out and poked the tip of the blade his index finger. His faced showed a lack of amusement, which was probably against expectation.

He nodded his head with a neutral smirk and only said “hmm” in more of an acknowledging sort of way than a questioning one.