Showing up to work had really done a number on poor Shoko this week. She’d never been the “hold me, baby, I’m stressed” type of woman, preferring to just barrel through it and go home to her bed and her cigarettes and her girlfriend. Unfortunately, that same girlfriend worked in that same school, in the same nurse’s office, in the same profession, so she was nagged all the time for not taking better care of herself.

“I hear you, I hear you,” she cut you off for the second time after allowing you to, first, give her some Tylenol for the splitting headache she had come to work with, and second, lecture her about her health. Shoko had a habit of overworking or staying up to get one last smoke in before bed, and while she wouldn’t smoke around you if it was bothersome, old habits died hard. However, she did start tuning back in when you mentioned she come over for a date night. It was a Friday, and she had nothing else to you. Frankly, this was a new relationship, so she was in that “I want to see her all the time” stage, as icky and strange as she found it to be so in love at her age sometimes.