2025-11-16: A Fair Trade
- Log: 2025-11-16 A Fair Trade
- Cast: Yanagi Nagisa, Tamaki Uchida
- Where: Peacock Silk, Shimokitazawa, Tokyo
- OOC Date: November 16, 2025
- IC Date: August 11, 2012
- Summary: Tamaki comes by Peacock Silk to investigate the Homunculus possessing Rin Sasaki's husband, and submits both questions and an order for an accessory to Yanagi.
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
Victory rules the heart of Yanagi Nagisa on this fine day! Did she and Pernelle win the trivia contest? No. Did they get a prize anyway? Yes! That's good enough for her, for this way she got to experience a win and a lose. To someone out to experience as much as possible, that's the best outcome she could have gotten!
But that was the other night. Right now, she sits at her work station as she polishes several tumbled gemstones, humming along with the radio playing classical music nearby. She has an order she's working on, specifically a custom choker; after having settled on a design with Hazuki, she's working on the gems that will decorate it.
The boutique itself is mostly empty, as it often is; the employees of Peacock Silk set their own hours, and therefore there are times where they're all and times where none of them are here and times, like this one, when only one of them is here. It makes doing business here a bit of a gamble, but considering their clientele, they can afford to be erratic. For some, the unreliability is what makes them so desirable.
Today's outfit is a pearlescent pink blouse with puffy sleeves that reach just before the elbow that tucks into a lacy white bodice wrap; a loose, flowing pink skirt drapes down her thin legs, showing off strappy silver sandals. White pearl hair clips decorate her long, wavy hair, pulling back her side locks from her face to keep from interfering with her work. Pearl earrings decorate not her ears but her wrap, hooked in to dangle from her waist at various spots like ornaments from a pink Christmas tree. Her delicately applied make-up is likewise white and pink, and brings some liveliness to her pale skin.
<Pose Tracker> Tamaki Uchida has posed.
Tamaki generally has little reason to travel out to Shimokitazawa like this, but recent events have prompted her visit. There's another Homunculus out there, a client who's depending on her, and despite her own experience in other areas, a lack of general knowledge about this particular kind of cognitive phenomenon.
Plus a tight budget. College tuition, rent, and food are already sizable enough costs on their own, then add on medical supplies, magazine subscriptions, and the occasional visit to fancier dining avenues and aromatherapy boutiques, and it all becomes a bit much to sustain from a part-time job where she's an apprentice who can only take on work that Todoroki subcontracts out to her. All of this cognitive junk is piling up in her coffers, so maybe there's some kind of trade she can work out.
... And honestly, there's a part of her that wants to change. Awakening five years ago was all well and good at the time, but she worries about being stuck in some kind of arrested development.
Dressed in her signature brown-and-beige-striped business suit and rokumonsen choker and with a duffel bag slung over her shoulder, Tamaki steps in through the doors and glances around, taking in the decor. Fashion typically hasn't been her thing, but she could stand to learn. Different possibilities for self-expression drift through her mind as she glances through the other in-progress custom work shown on display throughout the boutique.
Seeing Yanagi, Tamaki gives her a wave and cheerful smile. "Nagisa-san! It's good to see you again. I hope I haven't come at a bad time."
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
Change is valuable! Nothing can stay the same forever without getting left behind. Yanagi believes that firmly--after all, she knows well about when it's time to stop changing and surrender to the eternal stasis.
She doesn't look up when Tamaki walks into the boutique, though she does hear and otherwise sense her. That changes when Tamaki greets her; at that point, she sets down her work and smiles broadly up at her. "No, not at all, Tamaki! I am in the middle of a project, but I always enjoy having company," she replies, gesturing her forward to join her at her station. 'Tamaki,' despite being addressed as 'Nagisa-san'... This is typical for her, though, as Tamaki is no doubt about to learn.
"So what brings you by today?" she wonders, chair swiveling to one side. A polished walking stick hangs from the side of her station, but she doesn't grab it yet; she's content to remain seated for now. She does hook her fingers together and stretch, arms pulled over her head; then she leans back in her seat, brushing her long hair aside. "If you have anything to sell or trade in, or you'd like to request some kind of custom outfit or accessory, I can certainly help you with that. I only deal with accessories, but I can at least put in a request on your behalf to Tsumugi or Saika if it's something I can't make for you myself!"
<Pose Tracker> Tamaki Uchida has posed.
Being called by her given name alone does startle Tamaki momentarily, and it shows on her face. Still, Eriko's prone to making the same faux pas for an honestly understandable reason -- and so Tamaki figures, so too must Yanagi.
Tamaki sets her bag on the ground and pulls out an assortment of what may otherwise seem like junk: pyrite, crystals, glass, fragments of unearthly-large beetle carapaces, and some material that she remembers Nagisa herself identifying as 'filum regium' -- thread fit for royalty, judging from the name. "At the very least, I would like this appraised ... and I also came here to seek some information. I'm new to how Ateliers function, they're a wholly new phenomenon to me, but I have reason to fear that there's another Homunculus about."
She points at the sample of filum regium she brought with her. "That substance is valuable to this boutique in particular, right?"
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
Yanagi sees Tamaki's startled look. She is not fazed whatsoever; she continues to smile exactly as she has before. When Tamaki moves on, so too does she, leaning forward in interest to see what she's brought.
"Hmmm, more of the pyrite from Taro's Atelier. Myunghon gave me some chunks of those, too," Yanagi observes. She means nothing by it, but Tamaki might take that to mean it's less valuable; it does at least have a lot of supernatural energy to it, so it's useful as a material. "And yes, filum regium is an excellent material for our business! Depending on what you order, this could pay for whatever you order by itself." She looks with interest at the crystals and beetle carapaces; the glass is less interesting to her. When she's done looking through everything, she names a generous price--if Tamaki takes it on its own, it'll easily pay for her expenses for at least a month, maybe close to two.
After that, she gives Tamaki a serious look. "Now... you were saying something about another Homunculus? What makes you think that--and where did you notice it?" She smiles again. "...Tell me more about that, and that ought to be a fair trade for information on Ateliers themselves, yes?"
<Pose Tracker> Tamaki Uchida has posed.
At hearing the offer, Tamaki's heartbeat quickens and her eyes grow wide. She's utterly taken aback! "Goodness gracious -- if I didn't mishear, that figure's in yen, right?!" Internally, she starts to run the numbers on how many hours of mundane casework that equates to. Or how many rumors from the lucky cat statue that it'd pay for. Little wonder that Hazuki and Tsubasa have been so generous in their lucky cat donations.
But still. That much, for this?
Commissioning a piece does sound interesting, too. Revisiting that topic, she asks, "Accessories are close to what I have in mind. Would ... decorating the hilt of a sword be too outside of your purview?"
Tamaki narrows her eyes at Yanagi, but her expression softens after a moment. "Truth be told, one of our clients at the Agency asked me to investigate someone close to them. I'm not exactly sure how much I'm at liberty to speak of their situation at the moment, and given how poorly they reacted to something I had said, I think the matter is a bit too sensitive to mention the details of without their express permission."
There's a sense of genuine remorse in Tamaki's eyes, and she sadly shakes her head. "I suspect that in order to regain their cooperation, I need to patch things up with them. They also now have the Thread in their possession. While we know where to bring it to, we are not able to do so ourselves. They're also not Awakened, so they're unable to safely deal with the Atelier themselves."
While all of her tale is true -- Rin Sasaki is her client, and her husband, Kenzo Sasaki, is the victim of the Homunculus in question -- Tamaki's keeping her cards close to her chest in order to gauge just how valuable this information is to Peacock Silk and where their priorities truly lie. In Tamaki's own opinion, these are very personal matters which involve the very real sorrow of innocent people -- Rin and Kenzo both -- not some vehicle for personal gain.
She folds her arms and lifts her head as she speaks, looking at Yanagi through half-lidded eyes. "I agree that exchanging this information would be a fair trade, and under different circumstances, I would speak more freely. Just ... if you would please tell me this much so that I may go and properly apologize to my client: just how external and alien is a Homunculus to its host, truly? I said that they find footholds in the places where people are most emotionally vulnerable, and that I think the victim deserves some measure of sympathy. In doing so, however, I fear I may have conflated the victim with the Homunculus itself, and ... I don't know enough about the matter to confidently state one way or the other where the boundary truly lies."
Tamaki gestures a hand at the assorted goods. "I would be willing to offer this as collateral for the time being in exchange for information today, then provided I patch up my working relationship with my client and reobtain the Thread, I can return at a later date with their permission to speak on the details of the Atelier."
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
"Yup!" Yanagi chirps, giggling a bit at Tamaki's goggling. "They aren't mundane materials, after all~! You can make some very special things with these!" (Some of these?)
She tilts her head, one finger tapping her chin at the request. "Hmmm... It depends--what kind of decoration are you thinking of? To be clear, my specialty is jewelry. If you want some kind of cloth or leather decoration, like a strap or a harness, then Tsumugi or Saika would be the ones to ask, but if you want something in metal, then I can do that for you!"
Tamaki explains that this is a matter related to a client of hers that she's not on good terms with at the moment, so therefore the information she can give is limited. Yanagi nods, in particular noting that the clients in question are unawakened. She takes the tale at face value, without assuming that Tamaki is trying to fish for any extra information about her or Peacock Silk in general. People can be difficult and private, and given that Homunculi take over people, Tamaki's client is probably close to whomever's been Homunculized. The question Tamaki asks underscores that assumption for her.
"It's like what you saw with Taro Nakata: the Homunculus takes root in a possibility of a person, but they are not the person themself," Yanagi thus replies. "They're a parasite, basically, and they work their way into an Atelier by cloaking themself in something someone could have been if their life had gone differently or if they'd let themself feel differently about something important. If you have a weak grasp of who you are or your place in the world, then that creates cracks that tempt a Homunculus in.
"I think it's not wrong to be sympathetic to the victim; they are, after all, being victimized. What I mean by that is, if the Homunculus fully takes over, then the original person dies. Their body will still move around, but it's a shell for something else now. If your client wants their original friend back, they'll have to cooperate with you to exterminate the Homunculus." Yanagi rests a hand on her chest. "We'll help you with that, too; we have a lot of experience with it. We won't charge money, either. The materials we can collect are payment enough."
<Pose Tracker> Tamaki Uchida has posed.
Tamaki retrieves her years-old practice sabre from the duffel bag -- while too blunt to cut anything out here, it gains its edge in cognitive spaces. If Yanagi can somehow perceive of it, this is a weapon with history. "I think you're the best fit for what I had in mind, then; would it be outside of the realm of your expertise to affix jewelry to the hilt and pommel here? I was thinking of gemstones symbolically associated with respite and recovery, like amber or rose quartz ..." Tamaki glances up at the ceiling. "Expanding my repertoire, if you will."
Yanagi says 'original friend,' but Tamaki is willing to let on this much: "Spouse," she corrects. Her own face falls in sympathy for Rin. "I hope you'll forgive my reticence to speak openly of the details currently -- and when you discover what the Thread is, I'm near certain you will."
A Homunculus takes root in the possibility of a person. Tamaki nods in understanding. "That does clarify some matters. My own past experiences may have colored my perception. The original has just as much of a right to exist as that other possibility, if not moreso."
She pauses for a beat, then rankles her nose at a recent memory. "Have you ever encountered a Homunculus during the Dark Hour? I ran for it when I encountered the one in question, but I'm curious if I had made the right decision."
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
Yanagi leans forward to take a better look at the sabre. It does look like an ordinary weapon here, and weaponry in general is not her specialty either, but there is a special vibe to it that her senses pick up on.
"Hmmm... Not at all," she says, picking it up carefully and inspecting the hilt and pommel. "I think I can replace the end of the pommel here if you like, and it should be easy to make an overlay for the hilt that you can slide down the blade and affix here. Amber and rose quartz and other stones associated with recovery, you said? Yes, I can do something like that quite easily." She sets the saber down again and gives Tamaki a curious look. "Are you hoping to make yourself more robust, or do you want to be able to heal yourself and others?"
Tamaki corrects one assumption of Yanagi's: not a friend but a spouse. "Ahhh," she breathes, nodding sagely. "No wonder your client is so upset, then. No, I quite understand. It's a good thing to keep your clients' details secret. That's how you gain their trust." Certainly Peacock Silk has a lot of clients who wouldn't necessarily want their details leaked either.
She tilts her head as Tamaki continues, though. "Have you encountered any Homunculi besides Taro Nakata's?"
The mention of a Homunculus during the Dark Hour prompts a laugh. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh; it's not funny. But they do get a bit nasty during the Dark Hour, don't they?" she replies, smiling. "Whether you made the 'right' decision or not depends on your goal. If you want to restore your client's husband, I would say you did. A Homunculus can only be safely exterminated from inside an Atelier. During the Dark Hour, they're still puppeteering their original's body. Kill them there, and you'll also kill the original."
<Pose Tracker> Tamaki Uchida has posed.
Yanagi's question prompts Tamaki to sheepishly avoid her gaze as she averts her eyes to the ceiling, then the other displayed projects, then the floor, then finally back to Yanagi. "Others. To be honest, working in a larger team as we did at Taro's is a change for me, albeit a welcome one. I would have answered the other way if you had asked me years ago, but I was mostly on my own back then." She chuckles, then brings out a skill card hidden up her sleeve with a grin. "It isn't something that comes naturally to me, but hey, a substitute's good enough in a pinch, right?"
Tamaki nods gratefully. "Thank you for understanding. Like I said, I would speak more openly if I felt like I was able to."
Any other Homunculi besides Taro's? Tamaki shakes her head. "Oh -- none aside from my client's spouse, no, but there are other analogous concepts in other kinds of cognitive phenomena. Most of those do truly originate from someone, however, ah ..."
She pauses as she considers any number of examples to draw from -- though many of those stories aren't hers to tell. Tamaki isn't aware of what Maki had told Yanagi before, though that does come to her mind.
Instead, she admits something from her own past. "... in particular, among any other number of trials, I had to accept my jealousy and acknowledge that it was a part of me. I had to admit it and make my peace with it. I wouldn't have been able to proceed further if I didn't."
That's not all of it, though: "And ... most of my adversaries in the past have simply been human. One was someone who society had been unfairly cruel towards and who felt they had no other recourse aside from lashing out. Their actions were ... inappropriately excessive, to vastly understate it, but they were a symptom of the problem, not the root cause of it."
"So Homunculi strike me as a deviation from that pattern -- provided that what you say is true. Rather than reuniting two halves of a larger whole, or righting a wrong by extending someone the compassion that they deserved, they're ... something else entirely. You can perhaps see the origins of where I had stumbled."
Tamaki's face looks flatly unimpressed as Yanagi laughs, and she frostily replies, "They do get nasty, yes." Hearing the rest of her explanation does mollify her, however. "Sounds like my course of action was correct, then. I did not know the last part, so that's certainly good to know."
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
"Oh, certainly. Thank you! Now that I know what you have in mind, I have just the thing in mind," Yanagi says confidently, setting the saber down. "Let me take some measurements. We can work out the price after that, and debit it from the value of the materials you're dropping off. Leave your phone number and I'll text you designs so you can pick what you like best."
She smiles--or, rather, continues to smile. "You're welcome! Please, don't worry about it. When your client understands the situation fully, she'll understand she doesn't have time to be angry at you for being insensitive. Or she won't! But Peacock Silk will go after the Homunculus in her spouse anyway."
Tamaki starts in on an example, pausing until an appropriate one comes to her. Yanagi's expression soften, and she nods. "I understand what you mean. A Homunculus isn't you, but it takes on the guise of someone who could have been you. It's still a difficult confrontation to make--seeing something like what you could have been."
There's more to it than that, though, and Yanagi blinks as Tamaki goes on. She shrugs a bit when Tamaki insinuates she might be wrong and/or lying--or at least, that's how it sounds to her. In Yanagi's view, she's confident she's correct, and if Tamaki doesn't believe her, she'll learn for herself in time. "A Homunculus is most certainly not human, but they're just as certainly good at imitating one. When you put it like that, I do see how you could've stumbled."
She smiles again when Tamaki gets frosty. "Aw, did it scare you? It's a real shock when they leave their own coffin like that!" she wonders, and while it might seem otherwise, there's no intentional mockery or malice in her demeanor. She gives her a supportive nod. "Don't worry, now you know what to look for!"
She reaches for her measurement tools then to inspect the saber at that point. As she does so, she adds, "Do you have any other questions for now?"
<Pose Tracker> Tamaki Uchida has posed.
Tamaki pulls out her own cell phone. "That sounds good, and I can set you up as a contact beforehand, too. Here, it's ..." Presumably, numbers are exchanged -- or at least Tamaki gives hers.
'But Peacock Silk will go after the Homunculus in her spouse anyway.' Tamaki nods. "I figured as much, which is why I thought you'd be interested."
After listening to Yanagi's reply to her own prior examples, she nods again. "And again, thank you very much for making the distinctions more clear. The downside of experience is that it becomes more difficult to adapt to different circumstances -- what you learn in one situation doesn't necessarily apply to others."
When asked if it scared her, Tamaki clears her throat behind a hand. "I was expecting an easier task after I had already been through the veritable gauntlet that week. Or -- at least for morale's sake, I was hoping for an easy win to bounce back from a string of setbacks and failures."
As for any further questions ... "Just one: How'd you come to know about what happens to the host if you kill a Homunculus in the Dark Hour?"
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
"All right!" Contacts are exchanged--an important thing for a business commission! Yanagi smiles at her when they're done and Tamaki remarks on why she thought they'd be interested. "Well spotted, then!"
What you learn in one situation... "That's true. I only have about half a year of experience as a Persona User, and most of that has to do with Ateliers," Yanagi muses. "I'm sure there's lots of things you know about that I don't." She smiles. "We can have a wonderful business relationship with information too!"
Yanagi gives her a sympathetic nod. "And then it turned out tougher than you thought, hm? It must've been embarrassing as well as frightening."
...She's still not making fun, right? Well, she's still acting the same as before... She finishes up her measurements soon, at least. There's not much on the saber to measure.
"Hmmm... When you put it like that, I suppose it's just an educated guess," Yanagi admits. "The Homunculus is only separate from the host in an Atelier, you see. The Dark Hour is a supernatural space, but you still deal with flesh-and-blood bodies there--you haven't pulled the Homunculus out of the host. If you kill it while it's controlling its host's body, then you also kill the host body, and therefore you also kill the host. You see?"
She taps a finger to her cheek as she considers this. "If there's a way to kill a Homunculus without killing the host too, I don't know it. Aside, of course, from going into the infected Atelier."
<Pose Tracker> Tamaki Uchida has posed.
Only half a year, huh? "I Awakened five years ago -- the sabre there's the same one I had used then. After that, I was at ground zero for another incident three years ago. I wasn't directly involved in events for that second incident, all I did was hole up with some classmates to protect them. SEBEC had something to do with it, from what I hear." She shakes her head again. "I still don't know all the details, myself, but even if I did, it's definitely not my story to tell in full."
"These days, where I work at is involved in the Rumor business up in Sumaru City, so we can certainly trade information." Tamaki snaps her fingers and points at Yanagi with a grin. "If you ever need something to be true in that region, come to us and we can spread the word! Or we can work something out if you hear something especially interesting."
More quietly, more meekly, more sincerely, she adds, "Thank you for the information you've given me today. It'll certainly be useful."
Tougher than she thought -- "It certainly was all three of those things." Tamaki grimaces for a moment, but bolts upright again. "But I DID come out of it alive and with the Thread! I got my win, it just wasn't as easy as I had anticipated."
An educated guess. Relieved, Tamaki laughs boisterously. "Well, that's better than the alternative! I was worried that you had found out the hard way, yourself."
Grinning, she takes her sabre back. "Alright. I think that about does it for what I had in mind today. This was a very fruitful visit, Nagisa-san, and thank you for having me." Barring anything else, it seems like that'll conclude her business here.
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
"Five years?! Oh my! I'm impressed!" Yanagi declares, splaying a hand over her mouth. She listens in fascinating as Tamaki gives a basic timeline of her adventures, then nods vigorously. "You'll have to tell me all about it sometime--whatever stories you can share, at least!" She grins back at the fingerguns and the offer to spread rumors on her behalf. "Wonderful! I'd love that!"
Of course, Tsumugi and Saika are likely already familiar with Kuzunoha Detective Agency, what with the rumors they've spread on Yanagi's behalf before--but that doesn't mean Yanagi's ever been by there personally. It'll be fun to drop by another part of Sumaru, anyway!
"You're very welcome," she replies. She nods at Tamaki's grimace. "Yes, as long as you got the Thread, that's an important step in taking care of it." She smiles back as Tamaki laughs. "Thank you for coming by, Tamaki! I'll be in touch~" she lilts waving to her as she leaves. Then back to her stone-polishing she goes!