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Minato awoke with a start, heart pounding in his chest.
Where...?
He sat up, blinking. Above him, seagulls squawked, tides rising to soak his shoes. The sun beat down on the sand surrounding him--he looked around, thoroughly confused. Though he'd always wanted to visit one, Minato didn't live anywhere near a beach. Actually, now that he was trying to remember, wasn't he supposed to be at his new school...?
The boy swallowed. Well. Not going to find out anything just sitting here, am I?
Pushing himself to his feet, Minato took a breath of the fresh air and dusted what sand he could off his clothes. On the bright side, the beach was beautiful--he had never seen such a sight outside of photos, so being able to look in person was quite an opportunity. Hopefully, his family had just decided to take a vacation to the oceanside and he fell asleep in the sand, somehow forgetting all about it.
Then again, that didn't make much sense, considering he wasn't exactly in beach attire.
Speaking of... I'm probably going to end up sweating in this. He pulled his jacket off, neatly folding it over his arm. He glanced around, biting his lip. Not far off, he saw something--another person, shifting in the sand. Hoping they'd know where they were, Minato made his way over to the male, taking a deep breath.
"Excuse me," he said, slowly, "but do you know where we are?"
"Mmm?"
The boy covered his eyes, presumably from the sun. His long black hair fell behind him and over his shoulders, the rest of him--similarly to Minato--covered in sand. With a bit of a groan, he sat up, stretching. Though he didn't seem to be wearing swimwear, his attire was at least a little more suited to swimming than Minato's. (Personally, though, Minato never saw the appeal of swimming in a t-shirt.)
He moved his hair out of his face, looking Minato up and down. "...No idea. Who're you?"
He doesn't know? Minato took another deep breath, suddenly nervous.
"I'm Yamada Minato," he said. "Do you--do you remember anything?"
The boy took a moment to respond. He scratched the back of his head, looking around. "Not...really. I remember Hope's Peak, then I just blank. Dude, do you know what's going on? This is kinda trippy."
Minato shook his head. "Not a clue. You're a student of Hope's Peak, too?"
"Saito Takuya," he greeted. "Ultimate Masseur."
Minato offered a hand to help him up. Saito took it--unsurprisingly, 'helping him up' turned more into 'trying not to be dragged down.' The Ultimate Masseur was far more well-built than Minato was, and it wasn't too far off to assume Minato was half his weight in muscle mass.
"Ultimate Charity Fundraiser," Minato greeted in return. "Nice to meet you."
Saito patted Minato on the back. "You too. Wanna explore?"
Minato blinked. "Explore?"
"Well, yeah." He grabbed Minato's wrist, pulling him further up the beach. "That's what you do when you don't know a place, right? There's gotta be someone here who knows what's going on. Other students, maybe."
Minato nearly tripped over the sand, attempting to keep up with Saito. "If--if you say so. We should try to be careful, though, since we don't know what's going on."
"What's the worst that could happen? We're fine," he said. He began to chew on his hair. "I mean sure, there's a chance we've been drugged and violated, or kidnapped and dumped onto a stranded island and left to rot, or I dunno, something even worse than that. Won't know unless we go around and find out."
Minato let out a nervous chuckle. "I'm sure that's not the case, there's...there's a reasonable explanation for this."