Disclaimer: I don't own DP.

BGM: "Yowamushi Montblanc" composed by DECO*27, sung by GUMI.

Bitter

It was a warm day at the end of summer, and the crowds were out in full force to soak up as much sunlight as they could. Tucked away on a narrow side street, there was a narrow café popular with the local college students. As the day went on, it would become a convenient, fairly quiet and reasonably priced source of caffeine and study space, but for now it was simply a nice place to stop in for a quick snack on the way to a midday seminar.

Vlad Masters sat at a small table, picking at his pasta. He'd just gotten in some money and decided to splurge, which had turned out to be a mistake. Oh, the coffee had arrived within ten minutes as per usual, but he'd decided to hold off on drinking it until his food arrived. His spaghetti marinara had taken nearly half an hour, and his table-mates had seized their chance to enter into an enthusiastic conversation from which they had quite emphatically excluded his miserable self.

He glanced at the wall clock, a tacky lime green cylinder with a white face and multicolored numbers. To either side, his table-mates were finishing up their conversation, the larger man taking his latte to go. Giving up, he choked down the last few mouthfuls of cold pasta, swallowing hard and washing it down with the dregs of his cold coffee. Grimacing at the taste, he threw the plastic fork, foam plate and cup into a trash can on his way out, flinching at the too-bright sunlight as he left the café.

Muttering dire threats at the sun, he picked his way along the sidewalk, going from shadow to shadow until his eyes adjusted. Blinking away the last few spots, he looked around, checked the landmarks against his mental map of the area, and decided to take the usual shortcut. Behind him, a man cursed when the remains latte was spilled onto the street courtesy of an overenthusiastic and oversized canine. A young woman offered him a tissue to clean up the mess.

Vlad stopped to let his study partners catch up, muttering something uncomplimentary in the general direction of the dog's owner. As they approached him, he stomped off, annoyed with the stupidity of human and animal alike.

They crossed into the campus, past a faded sign that gathered new graffiti at least once a month. Jack always laughed whenever he figured out what the graffiti meant, while Vlad and Maddie would share a bemused look. Somewhere to the left, a rusty gate that hid a narrow walkway that cut through to the dorms. It was Maddie's favorite shortcut, and Jack's, despite how he would always get leaves and twigs and who-knew-what stuck in his hair and on his clothes. It was a very narrow walkway, with lots of overhanging branches and ivy. Personally, Vlad preferred the sterile hallways of the newer buildings to dirt and grime, but each to their own.

A piece of paper smacked him in the face. He snatched it away, biting back a curse, and blinked at the flyer. Rather than the expected Wisconsin Badgers game advertisement, it was a flyer announcing the founding of the University Research Park. He scowled and let it fly away, not appearing to notice the protests of the young woman trying to re-tie a knot in the larger man's shoe.

After what seemed to be an interminable span of time broken only by short bursts of conversation, the little group arrived at the dorms and went their separate ways. Vlad trailed behind the larger man, suddenly exhausted. He hardly noticed when he was left behind as the man continued on past his building. Vlad entered the sturdy brick building, dragging leaden feet up what felt like seventeen flights of stairs. Reaching his room, he fished a brass key out of his pocket, unlocked the door and collapsed over the threshold.

A while later, he finally stirred himself enough to lock the door behind him, hide the key in its usual spot and kick his shoes off. Draping his jacket over the back of a chair, he trudged to his cot and fell into blissful unconsciousness.

He woke what seemed like seconds later to the sound of an air horn going off right in his ear. Glaring at his juvenile roommate, Vlad snatched the horn away and threw it into a corner to collect dust. Vlad shoved his way past the walking waste of nap-time, peeling off his sweat-stained shirt, and he frowned at a somewhat mysterious reddish stain marring the white fabric. Groaning, he made a mental note to pick up some stain remover. Bleach, if all else failed, but the fabric was already wearing thin.

Tuning out his roommate's pointless complaints, he spotted his reflection in the small mirror hanging on the inside of the door, somehow still unbroken after repeated slammings. Raising an eyebrow, he smirked, flexing imagined muscles.

The dam broke, and the room filled with the sound of laughter. Vlad glared at his so-called best friend in the world, Jack Fenton, and wondered if repeated jokes at one's expense qualified as grounds for aggravated assault. Then he remembered that Jack could literally lift him with one hand and mentally grumbled at the unfairness of life, the universe and everything.

He yelped as Jack literally shoved him out of the door, challenging him to a race to the showers. Rolling his eyes, Vlad smiled at his bumbling friend's antics and followed him. One might say he was a coward (among other things) for refusing to go to the showers alone at night. In his defense, "one" must never have been the resident weedy nerd of the dorm. He'd had enough swirlies to last him several lifetimes, thank you very much. Idiot frat boys.

Half an hour later, Vlad yanked the covers over his head and cursed his miserable life. Why, oh why had his wondrous Maddie had to have come by with their research notes just as he'd returned from the facilities and seen his bright pink shower cap?

His roommate said something that was most likely meant to cheer him up, but fell far short of the goal. Vlad closed his eyes, wishing the blankets were better noise reducers, and vowed for the thousandth time that he would confess to Maddie – preferably far away from Jack and his horrible sense of timing.

A/N: Well, this was full of ugh. ...Matsuri is bad at story planning, and is fully aware of this. This chapter came from the tiny bit of college-age Vlad we saw in the flashback scene in Bitter Reunions. He seemed rather cranky.