2025-10-30: Doing Your Best
- Log: Doing Your Best
- Cast: Eveline Deschamps, Ruzica Crvena, Isabeau Fontaine
- Where: Fleur de Lis, Kagurazaka, Tokyo
- OOC Date: October 30, 2025
- IC Date: August 03, 2012
- Summary: While Eveline tends bar, table cleaning turns competitive for two students. Ruzica and Isabeau have clear tension, and while Eve attempts to mitigate it, she's also curious just what kind of person the latter is.
<Pose Tracker> Eveline Deschamps has posed.
Fleur de Lis is a lively place. A bar and bistro, it has a few features that make it appealing, such as live piano music, classic French bistro fare, and decor that looks straight out of an old French building. Despite the relatively young age, the rich history it conveys gives one the vibe that many intimate meetings and conversations have taken place here. The atmosphere is bright, classical lighting, with woody reds and browns, the dining area on one side and the bar on the other.
Eveline Deschamps, proprietor of the establishment, stands behind the bar this afternoon, polishing a glass like it's some movie, because bartenders actually do that. She's got short blonde hair, green eyes, and a nice chic outfit on, vest and shirt combo that has been tailored for her and looks fitting. She wears square glasses.
The bar-side of the restaurant is all but empty right now, given the time of day, though it'll trickle in soon enough. Yuri, Eve's daughter, has headed home early to do some chores.
<Pose Tracker> Ruzica Crvena has posed.
Ruzica (and she is Ruzica at present, not adopting her guise as Ryuzaki) often spends free time at the Fleur de Lis to... ... help out the business, is the way that they describe it for people. Most of the time, this just means miscellaneous, menial physical labour, which she seems to be perfectly fine doing. She has a simple button-down red shirt with the sleeves rolled up and black pants to go with her sooty apron, and has her black hair in a high ponytail as she wipes tables with a quiet, ferocious intensity, a spritzer in the apron pocket.
She seems to enjoy being physically active and doesn't really ever complain about being asked to do chores. Mopping the floor, wiping the tables, doing dishes... so long as it gets her hands to do something, it seems to be all good.
Ruzica's not particularly tall, average for a Japanese girl -- 156cm -- with a slight build, but the way in which she works would suggest she's a little bit stronger, or at least more experienced in tasks, than how her presence suggests. Like she's been cleaning tables and floors for a long time...
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
As far as looks go, Isabeau has already gotten changed out of her tennis outfit, because, like, sweaty? Gross? She's not going to PRESENT like that?!
Now she's in a pair of black shorts with a modest blue blouse which features the world's puffiest short sleeves, plus a pair of hiking boots (intimidating!). Her honey-blonde princess curls are tied back behind her head in a ponytail, those three curls still quite distinct within it; two bangs drill down at either side of her head, not able to be contained. Right now she's wearing a baseball cap, and that ponytail is coming out through the back, with the straps velcroed together beneath it. (It's the bronze-and-orange emblem of the Tokyo Titans!)
She is notably not an average Japanese girl, at a towering 168 centimetres, with the weight to make that even more domineering than it otherwise would be. (This puts her above the French average, too, but it's the norm for the French average to be this-or-higher rather than this-or-shorter.)
And right now, she... is also wearing an apron! Because despite being a rich bitch, Isabeau appreciates the discipline of the baito, and has plenty of reasons to help Eve out besides.
"`And that's the tables cleared in eight minutes twenty seconds,`" she says, in French, coming up to Ruzica and tapping her watch -- which is also a stopwatch, unfair. "`That's one minute twelve seconds quicker than your time. At least try to keep up.`"
... why is she always like this?!
<Pose Tracker> Eveline Deschamps has posed.
As the one-and-a-half teenagers clear tables, Eve may appear to be just wiping a glass, not really paying attention. This would be a lie. She is paying attention to every speck of her restaurant she can see and hear out of her peripheral senses, including her Resonance sense, tuned and highly sensitive at all times.
Which might make her response to Isabeau's antics a small surprise for anyone who doesn't know her well, coming suddenly but not strongly without as much as a turn of her head or a sudden movement of the hand. "`Good work, Ruzica, Isabeau.`" Did she say it in that order on purpose, French even and clear? Who knows. It could have been her trying to give Ruzica some support. Her knocking Isabeau back a peg. Or, most likely, she's curious how the latter will react, to better gauge her friend's daughter's reactions each time they meet. At the least, her peers know she rarely says something without considering the ramifications of saying it.
"Why don't you come take a break?" she returns to Japanese, so that customers don't get odd feelings about it. She places the clean glass with the others, straightening up at the bar. "Your times were good."
<Pose Tracker> Ruzica Crvena has posed.
Ruzica pulls up from where she's half-cleaning the table when Isabeau declares her time.
8 minutes, 20 seconds.
That's-- one minute and twelve seconds faster than the record, yes. And Ruzica never cuts corners. That would be unsporting. The purity of getting the tables clean means you get those damn things spotless even if it means it's slower overall, but she's still slower than Isabeau.
She stops for a moment to stare at the princess-curled young woman, and her Tokyo Titans cap.
There's no emotion evident in her face, a pure and perfect phlegmatic face, stolid as it ever was.
BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHsf02WOsTw
But Ruzica conveys a lot through her eyes, her big, golden eyes, whether one can read them or not, and there's something enraged and frustrated and upset, like she's about to reach for an excuse that she didn't even want to compete, that this is Eve's bar, they shouldn't even be making a competition out of it, that actually, she's perfectly fine taking her time, I didn't even want to stay with Laurent actually--
Those excuses all SUCK!
...
...
...
Eveline fortunately breaks Ruzica out of it, saying that they should take a break. Ruzica considers petulantly saying that she has rubbish to take care of, and they'll inevitably get into who throws out the trash faster, but the compliment does pacify her enough that she nods slowly, thinking of the customers. It's always about the customers.
"Okay," she answers, voice barely above sotto voce. She levels Isabeau one last glance, and then quietly moves to the bar to take a sit on one of the high stools, eyes closed.
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
Isabeau, in turn, glares at the fae girl who hasn't aged a day since she met her when she was six. A girl frozen in time who has everything she's ever wanted; as if she'd just let that stand. (She must be an only child, so hostile is she to sharing.) She hasn't cut any corners either, because that would be cheating. Of course, Ruzica had an extra table to clear off in that time which Isabeau isn't mentioning, but she can hardly be blamed for their competition not being to tournament standards! It's a bar!!
(Her eyes are brilliant, but they are green; nothing like those otherworldly eyes she's glaring at.)
"`Hmph,`" Isabeau tosses her bangs with a hand. A touch petulant -- she has only been in this world for seventeen years -- she insists: "`They could have been better.`" She noticed being placed second -- and would never show enough weakness to indicate how much it stings.
Fine! She'll just halve her times tomorrow. She'll hold their feet to the fire and make them accept her, she thinks, bitterly.
"I have earned it," she sniffs, and her Japanese is more stilted -- more formal, more exacting, more saying-the-entire-phrase-instead-of-cutting-it-down, which here is translated in her lack of contractions.
"And do not sulk," she reprimands Ruzica, as she sits on a stool of her own. "If you are unhappy with your time, improve it. I do not slow down to let the slow keep up."
<Pose Tracker> Eveline Deschamps has posed.
As Eve beckons Ruzica to come over to take a seat with that frustration in the teen's eyes (Eve can read eyes very well), she is considering her response to any potential rejections. Luckily, she doesn't need to make any, because they both come over. "Would you like something to drink?" she asks the two, getting glasses ready if they confirm.
"Are you both keeping busy while school's out? How was your club?" she asks Isabeau the latter half, feeding her some attention as a more positive feedback.
Even as she moves to sort out drinks, she's keeping her eye on both of them. Ruzica's unlikely to lash out, but she might still get more upset, and she wants to mitigate that, especially inside her bar.
<Pose Tracker> Ruzica Crvena has posed.
Ruzica doesn't seem to take much into the order in which Eve calls the names out, unlike Isabeau. The results spoke for themselves, even if she had one more table to clean. She doesn't protest about that either, because to have another table... clearly speaks to the challenge in which one is assigned to in order to excel, even if that results in one losing the match. To thrive under adversity is the hallmark of a Hunter -- it's how Hunters are *born*, in the darkest hour of their life, preyed upon by a seemingly invincible beast.
Isabeau points her out at sulking, and Ruzica's... face doesn't change at all, though their eyes do soften. The Fontaine leaves a parting comment that if she's unhappy with her time... then improve it. Someone in better touch with their emotions might acknowledge it. That a loss is a loss, and one should strive for continual improvements, making gains to their personal best.
Ruzica shuts quietly down instead, wondering why she's still here, harranguing her to contests, when she already seemingly relented to what she'd want most -- living in Laurent's house on her own. Just like that, Eve can see the fire starved out of her, which is unhealthy in its own way.
"Just water, please. I have... a night shift at Ore no Beko in Shibuya," Ruzica shares to Eve, her voice slow, soft and methodical as always. "They get really busy at night."
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
"Yes," Isabeau nods, still a touch prim. "I would like some orange juice." Not soda, despite what many girls at Shujin insist her preferences must be when they think she's not looking.
... because of what many girls at Shujin insist her preferences must be.
"I am!" She insists, to Eve's question, quite bold. "I will have to perform well for them, they are amateurs and not ready for the meet at all. Hmph, though Kanae has at least practiced..." Yobisute address! Isabeau refuses to use honourifics; it's the one point of rebellion she has against Japanese.
Why is Isabeau here? She's here because she wants to fit in, wants to be a part of the group her father made, wants to belong; but she is too prideful to beg and bow, too untrusting to open up, and so she ends up annoying everyone.
Just... insisting she belongs.
"Serving beef bowls will improve your time," she sniffs, glancing to Ruzica. "You need excellent time management to survive a job like that. I have other ways to improve myself, personally."
Translation: having to remember all the Japanese orders shouted at her over the din of the restaurant which means she only understands half of the words in the best case scenario and having to keep all that in her head while doing all the demanding physical tasks is too much for her to handle.
... she'd never admit that.
<Pose Tracker> Eveline Deschamps has posed.
Ruzica's shutting down. Eve fills up a glass of water first, before reaching under the bar to pull out a bottle of orange juice, a pour spout on top, and pouring it into the other glass. She hands both out simultaneously preferring to not show favoritism there, and then considers how to deal with that problem.
"Don't work yourself too hard," is all Eve says, though they both know she needs the money for rent, and isn't going to complain about her taking multiple jobs at all. "How's your photography going? Any interesting subjects lately?"
Her head turns over to Isabeau a few moments later, to answer the tennis subject. "Most high schoolers are amateurs, no? It was the same for myself in gymnastics.." Back in her day... she shakes her head. "Well, it seems that she may become a rival for you, if she's practicing. Are you confident?" She knows the answer. She's still going to ask.
<Pose Tracker> Ruzica Crvena has posed.
Ruzica's quiet, but she's not unobservant. She's seen it, as Ryuzaki and the way some of the girls treat *him* differently as Ryuzaki; suddenly what drink he picks up from the vending machine becomes a subject of great interest for one of them. To choose a different name, a different hairstyle, and to reinvent oneself... and people treat you very differently. The way in which their body shapes affect their judgements so viciously, even though -- yes, Ruzica can acknowledge Isabeau as skilled, quick and methodical.
But it's the name Isabeau speaks out that interests her.
"Kanae Fuyuki..." Ruzica remarks with a rare interest in her voice, remembering their time in the Foraine where they engaged with the Quarry, the Carbuncle, and the intriguing way in which Kanae chose to deal with the situation, in a way that didn't rely on Laurent Fontaine, the way they'd all been doing so.
Eve hands her water, and she takes a long gulp from it, while Isabeau points out that beef bowls can improve her time. Time management, hmm...? That seems to stimulate her mind a little -- for instance, you ideally should leave the cleaning fluid sprayed on the table for at least ten seconds to kill bacteria, and if you sprayed two tables at once, you could cut down on the time...
With all the overseriousness of one who's now wholeheartedly been swept by table-cleaning into a professional sport:
"I'll keep that in mind... Isabeau Fontaine."
Perhaps it's an implicit acknowledgement of the rivalry, without having to acknowledge it. Because she does have some complicated feelings, about the child she urged to ask her mother who her father is -- but she left, to go on another foolish quest. But some days she does wonder where they would all be if she'd been more forceful on making Laurent turn around and follow up with Fleur.
Oh, and Ruzica has the habit of sometimes using full names, like it's difficult for her to cut faces and identities down to only first names.
Eve asks how her photography is going, though, and that perks her up a little. "I went to Lime-sha in West Shinjuku and found several lenses to replace the ones that broke. It was half my allowance, but..." Because of Shadows. "I'm going to the theatre after this to have the newest roll developed. I found a trapdoor snail with an extremely colourful cockle."
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
Don't work yourself too hard. Of course that's the kind of thing people would tell Ruzica, Isabeau thinks; she's weak. Meek! Not like her.
Isabeau could work as hard as ten Ruzicas, she's pretty sure. She might, in fact, be the hardest-working girl in the universe.
"They should apply themselves more," Isabeau protests, sternly, as she grasps her glass of orange juice. "They say they do not want tennis club to be a joke, and then they scoff at the schedule I provide them! This is not so demanding. An eight hour day is a modest time at work." YOU'RE IN HIGH SCHOOL, ISABEAU! "They should have plenty of time now the holidays have come, and yet they insist they will just 'do their best'. This is the banner of cowards under which hides men who do not want to excel." She specifically looked into how to express words like that, of course. They're vital to her vocabulary.
"I will not 'do my best'," she insists, haughtily. "I will be the best. I know this, so I am very confident. Kanae... she might not get in my way as much as some of them."
Isabeau sips her orange juice, quietly furious that Kanae is the one keeping up with her. Why can't she just forget about her?!
... somehow, she's even madder hearing Ruzica's interest in her name, and she'll get right around to examining that in approximately never.
(Still. It's at least satisfying to hear Ruzica acknowledge her as a Fontaine, even she just kind of glances over and nods about it.)
"This is an acceptable result," she adds, with regards to the lenses. "Equipment may fail you if you are pushing to its limits. You should not be caged by this. It is better not to restrain yourself for fears of equipment fragility." Which is apparently just her life philosophy in general.
<Pose Tracker> Eveline Deschamps has posed.
Eve doesn't talk about work in daylight hours (or her house, for Yuri's sake) most times, so she doesn't say what she's thinking about Kanae and Isabeau: how curious it is that they both became young Hunters at the same time yet are such fierce rivals. It might just upset Isabeau, anyways. Instead, she turns to Ruzica, as she mentions snails. A light, friendly smile. "You'll have to show me it." As much as it's awkward to see that passion inside Ruzica...
Isabeau, instead, gets a reply to her point about the tennis students. "Well, you're a Fontaine, so you will certainly do excellently if you're enough like your father." Which she definitely has noticed in the way she speaks about her clubmates.
She looks around, before pouring herself some water and nursing it. "Remember to vary your practice, though. Tennis alone isn't the only thing you have to be prepared for." A pause. "That goes for you as well, Ruzica."
<Pose Tracker> Ruzica Crvena has posed.
Ruzica's eyes flit to Isabeau again, like she's able to ascertain some of the thoughts going on in the girl's head. No, she's not a mind reader; worse, she's just inventing what sort of manner in which she's next looking down at her, emotionally poisoning herself without even needing a prompt. As Isabeau speaks of her high expectations of the standards of Tennis team, she thinks a little of Kamoshida and how he, as Ryuzaki, did nothing... it wasn't worth doing anything -- cruelty within schools was also a facet of humanity that he had to observe.
She finishes the drink of water, noticing the way in which Isabeau develops an irritation in hearing her interest in Kanae. Her eyes drop to three-quarters lid, perhaps not even consciously realising she's found the wedge in which to press Laurent's daughter further.
"Kanae Fuyuki is interesting. We've talked about photography together as well," Ruzica shares to Eve, though the target of the sentences clearly lie elsewhere.
And, as if she's not done, she channels what Eve is thinking: "Don't forget that you are a Hunter too. Anything less than your best is death on the mission," taking advantage of the topics that she does have more experience over.
But does Ruzica have the pettiness to deny Isabeau's Fontaine-ness? Did she initially?
...
Ruzica didn't. Because, while she has never examined this, if she truly reflected to back then, she'd probably discover that meeting the young Isabeau and finding out about the circumstances in which Fleur and Laurent met was the first time Ruzica... majorly *disagreed* with Laurent. That, on its own, is already a discomforting thing. But she didn't disagree hard enough to make a difference. And that means...
Something.
Ruzica climbs down from her high stool, taking her apron off and folding it up neatly. "I will," she says of snail pix. She's so full of snail facts. "... I'm going to take a shower before work, mom," she quietly says, then those gold eyes flit to Isabeau again.
"Next time," is all she says, because inevitably Isabeau will find another topic in which they'll turn into a competition. ... it's so annoying. If only she'd only leave her alone. What else does she want from her?
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
"I am certainly enough like `my father!`" Isabeau didn't even know who Laurent WAS until a few months ago. This hasn't stopped her from copying several of his habits as soon as she picked them up, though.
(She's speaking about him to a third party, so it's mon père, but Eve has certainly heard her address him directly with the more affectionate mon papa before.)
"The only interesting thing about Kanae is the amount of her failures," Isabeau insists, prickly, even though Ruzica was clearly talking to Eve. "A foolish girl who will make you weak to speak with her. Who does she think she is? Who she is, you see, is childish!" Why would Isabeau get so heated over that...?
(She REALLY doesn't want to admit she's wrong.)
"You should be glad, then, that I am here," she sniffs, haughtly, to Ruzica, "because surely I will be the best. I am, of course, more interesting than simply tennis," she adds, looking back to Eveline. "I have my lessons with Bamba, too." Guen Bamba -- also known by her stage name, Bambarina -- is Isabeau's grizzled, embittered voice coach, who insists that she has absolutely no hope of making it with her personality.
Isabeau has naturally taken her denial of her dreams personally, and is now working twice as hard at her singing lessons.
"I have also found a new haunting to investigate!" She adds, her boasting tone here covering for excitement. "The fools will not let me book the building myself, though, so I have been forced to consult the internet. I hope that at least some of these students are not cowards." Why not ask her friends to come with her? Ha ha, funny joke. Isabeau doesn't need friends.
(Read: she doesn't have any.)
"I have late-night practice, too, before you will accuse me of lacking focus," she adds, and doesn't directly implicate the Dark Hour; they know what she's talking about. "This is not a thing I neglect." But does that mean she's running off on her own to fight Shadows?!
... yeah, she's always doing that.
And in that same manner, Isabeau slips off of the stool, too. "I will see you when it is then," she says, still quite prim, to Ruzica. "I must now attend to a personal project, however. You will excuse me."
That 'personal project' is something she snapped at Ruzica for even trying to peek at -- and conflicts over keeping her away from her sculpture-work may well have helped make the environment unpleasant for her. She just doesn't want anyone to see!
... she doesn't want anyone to see the wood she's carving for Laurent until she's satisfied with it.
If they see it when it's in progress, they'll know how long it takes her... and the mistakes she makes.
<Pose Tracker> Eveline Deschamps has posed.
"That's good. It seems the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, then, Isabeau." For good and ill.
Ruzica and Isabeau start duelling verbally again. Eve picks up what Ruzica says, what Isabeau says back. She doesn't know their innermost thoughts and feelings, but she's perceptive enough. They don't like each other.
(A rock could tell her that, admittedly.)
Instead, she nods to the two of them. "Alright. Good luck with your activities, both of you. Ruzica, if you're back late for any reason, dinner will be in the fridge." A nod, and also a subtle reminder to not come back too late, so that she can have hot food!