This time, he watched a random couple try to catch their dog, a rowdy Shiba Inu, for almost 15 minutes, before the dog relented and simply stood there, tail wagging, having tired of his game. The owners, who were quite bedraggled by this point, both held the leash (just in case) as they told off the dog, who looked very pleased with himself.

Since he was quite far away, he couldn't hear what they said, but occasionally a word or two floated by on the breeze, things like "ashamed" and "crazy dog". In the end, by the time they had finished lecturing the dog, who had listened attentively the entire time, the previous exclusively cloudy day had revealed a small opening in the clouds, which filtered in a few rays of sun. The couple, who had previously appeared worn, suddenly lit up, both gesturing upwards and laughing. Fascinated, he followed their gaze up, and saw that there was something in the sky. He looked past the eyepieces of the binoculars and looked up.

The late arriving sunshine had made a rainbow. Well done, dog, he thought. Without the dog's antics, they wouldn't have seen a thing. Smiling with satisfaction, he tried to find a new muse. He checked his watch. It was 2:30 PM, and he knew for a fact that his favorite saga, which was currently ongoing, might start again in a few minutes.

Scanning the random students milling about, he tried to find a familiar silhouette: significantly taller than average, short-cropped hair, usually a bulky cardigan or hoodie, sunglasses, and a massive canvas over-the-shoulder khaki bag.

At the moment, he was interested in two ongoing mysteries: Where on earth did he keep going when he skipped class? and Why did he wear sunglasses, but only when skipping class?

Those two things were key plot points. He hadn't told anyone, but once in a while a few characters he met were interesting enough to warrant further inspection. That was because they would be good plot points in the story he was writing (in his head). People were, as a whole, not very interesting, but once in a while, someone really interesting would come along, who was full of plot twists. That made them very fun to keep up with. People would probably take it the wrong way, anyways, thinking he was a stalker or something.

That definitely wasn't it. He considered himself just an appreciator of life; it was advanced people watching. He liked to wonder what other people did in their lives. More often than not, it gave him inspiration for something or other. For example, the other day, he had been sitting on a bench, looking at a crane.

That time it was a bird, he thought loudly, to nobody in particular.

Anyways, he had been looking at the crane, when out of frame he saw something else going on. When he had turned slightly to the left, he had seen that there were two boats, and one seemed to have lost power. Funnily enough, the other boat had been more like a large rowboat; even so, he had watched the rowboat couple tossed a rope to the small speedboat and they all took turns rowing to tow the speedboat to a dock. That had been satisfying. Coincidentally, that day he had been feeling a little bit useless; so seeing the rowboat determinedly pull along the other boat was the— Oh, there was the random volleyball guy again, he thought suddenly, as his sort of haphazard scanning around had landed on a familiar person. That guy jogged around campus most days, usually wearing the same thing: dark grey sweatpants, dark grey hoodie, white t-shirt. Previously he had just had to guess in his head what sport he thought the guy did, since there were technically a lot of sports one could jog around for. Or they could just be a health buff. He had supposed perhaps taekwondo at first, since he was a bit too built to be a runner or a soccer player. Volleyball made sense, though, come to think of it. So it was a good thing he had asked. He swung around his binoculars again to see if he saw any sign of the skipping-class-guy, but no luck. 

Back to the volleyball guy. Definitely too many earrings for a game, he thought. It seemed like a hassle, but then, thinking about it again, he didn't think the volleyball guy would be the volleyball guy if he wasn't wearing them.

Interesting.

Oh, there was also the sky triangles thing— he had seen the volleyball guy looking at the tree, and there had been nothing up in that tree except the in-between-leaf sky-triangles, not even a bird (it wasn't that he didn't look at birds, he did, but it wasn't the point of his missions). So the volleyball guy must have been looking at the sky triangles, too.

Also interesting. Was perception a sort of muscle you could work out? Some people had way better perception than others. He had seen people just mindlessly walk straight by ridiculous or unworldly things that had just popped up next to them.

Anyways, if it was, it seemed like the volleyball guy also worked that muscle out, judging by th—

He had swung around his binoculars again and only saw a flash of black hair, then a patch of grey, then another patch of grey, then an ear. Peering over the rim of the binoculars, he saw that the volleyball guy was standing a few meters away, apparently waiting for him to finish looking at whatever he was looking at.

He couldn't think of a single thing to say, except, "Do you really wear that every time you go jogging?"

"What? This?" The volleyball captain held up a single hoodie string as if he was picking up a cooked noodle.

"Yeah."

"I have several pairs of the same thing," he replied. Though he replied normally, as soon as he was done talking, he briefly looked off to the side, scrunching up his nose. He looked a bit like a small animal momentarily. Chinchilla?

"I wasn't sure if you just did the laundry every single night or if you had multiple sets," he answered, shrugging.

"I didn't think it was that interesting."

"Things don't have to be classically interesting to make up people's characters," he pointed out. "Anyways, you looked originally like you had something you wanted to say."

"Yeah.. it's not really.. this is a bit random, but do you happen to want to join a club?"

"People find me really boring in those sort of situations," he said. "No thanks."

"You can't even imagine what club it is," the volleyball team captain said.

"Are you going to explain?" he asked somewhat sourly, looking through the binoculars again. It was hard to see much with the other student standing there.

"Honestly, I don't know what to say about it," laughed the volleyball player. "Did you see any birds just now?"

"Yeah, one with lots of muscles," he grumbled back. "I feel like I'm going to get jumped."

"Why, do you think I desperately need a pair of new binoculars?" said the volleyball captain brightly.

"You can't have mine," he warned, immediately shooting his head up so his eyes could look directly at the other student.

"The club is more like.. just people who are all weird talking to each other," said the volleyball captain.

"And you're telling me this because you think I'm weird?" he responded, looking at the other student, a single eyebrow sharply raised.

The volleyball guy suddenly got very apologetic. "No, no, that's not what I meant," he said. "I meant it like we're all weird when we're together, which is what's fun."

"It's fun because you're weird?" he replied, "What, exactly, is weird about it?"

"Nobody is how you expect," said the volleyball guy. "That's what I meant. Not weird. They're normal. They're just unexpected, that's the key point." He gave a short laugh and scrunched up his nose again.

"Why are you doing that?" he asked.

"Why am I doing what?" The volleyball guy looked vaguely surprised.

"The scrunchy nose thing," he said. "I keep thinking you are going to sneeze."

"It's my usual expression," he said, protesting. "What, do you think I'm weird?"

"I don't know. You're not very boring, though," he said, somewhat distractedly. "Why do you keep talking to me anyways?"

"That was one time," said the volleyball guy, nearly whining. "I was just wondering about the birds. I always saw you so I was curious."

"Are you obsessed with birds or something?"

"They're nice, but I just like looking at interesting stuff," he shrugged, pushing his hair back from his face with the back of his hand. It was getting hotter since the sun had come out.

He hesitated a bit. "I saw a dog.. get told off.. today." he said, gauging a reaction.

The volleyball team captain actually giggled. "Did he do something wrong?"

"He was bored," he started to explain. "So he was trying to mix it up with his owners, you know? He showed them a rainbow."

"How'd he get their attention?" asked the volleyball guy, surprisingly invested in this mediocre drama.

"Well he didn't show them directly," he clarified. "If he barked he probably would get yelled at again."

"Come to the club," the volleyball captain asked. "I want to hear more drama."

"Drama." he stated. He laughed, in spite of himself. His mom always said that when he laughed, his eyes looked like the little triangle symbols people often put in texts.

"Quick question," he said. "If I laugh, do my eyes look like the little triangle emojis?" He made an exaggerated laughing face.

The volleyball player took one look at him and broke into another scrunched-up grin. "Yeah." he said. "You're like the little face on the emoji keyboard."

He returned his face to its normal serious expression. "Aha," he said simply.

"Come to the club," insisted the volleyball player.

He raised his binoculars again and looked at the guy's eyebrow.