2025-11-18: Boys II Snailz
- Log: Boys II Snailz
- Cast: Ryuzaki Kurama, Kurou Ryouhara
- Where:
- OOC Date: November 18, 2025
- IC Date: August 12, 2012
- Summary: Ryuzaki chances upon an encounter with Kurou Ryouhara and a bond is formed over snail facts.
<Pose Tracker> Ryuzaki Kurama has posed.
Ruzica is in Sumaru City again... she really needs to come visit the Kuzunoha Detective Agency, where it appears that a number of the rumours around rumour demons and hunting them are centred around. She has some time, however, and the park looks particularly nice. And...
He feels like being Ryuzaki today, even though this is technically Ruzica's business. And thus, it's Ryuzaki Kurama that is spending some time in Aoba Park. He's a small boy at 156cm, with a very slight build. He's wearing a black denim jacket with a white undershirt, with black skinny denim jeans as well, along with a black baker's boy casquette with a fat chicken pin.
He also has big, cold golden eyes peeking out from underneath his jet-black bangs.
And currently he's...
....
He's spent the last fifteen minutes gazing at a particularly wonderful and colourful snail perched ontop of a leaf in one part of the park, absolutely transfixed at this beautiful specimen.
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
Aoba Park is filled with wonders. There's a number of different flowering plants kept here on purpose, and a number of different weeds that, if you're quick, you can enjoy, observe -- maybe even collect -- before the gardeners weed them. There's all manner of insects, some considered pets, some consider pollinators, and then there are, of course...
... snails. Kurou stops, seeing the colorful shell before he seeds the monochrome boy in a charming hat. Snails are not a specimen that require stealth, but Kurou never does anything by halves. He approaches in utter silence beside Ryuzaki, and one pair of golden eyes becomes four.
Several minutes could well pass like this, with nothing but Kurou's eyes moving to trail after that snail's slow, slimy path.
But only a few do before Kurou pulls out his phone with its cracked screen, trying to get a connection to hold so he can identify exactly what kind of snail this creature is.
<Pose Tracker> Ryuzaki Kurama has posed.
Ryuzaki does seem so entranced by the snail that he doesn't immediately react to someone else joining in on their snail-watching. It just seems... correct, whoever this person is, like they understand, on some level beyond speech or gesture, that they have a similar fascination with the snail that's currently just very slowly chowing down on the leaf they're on.
"... this is a kobeso-maimai," Ryuzaki softly says, barely above sotto voce. "Or a satsuma myomphala. But it's a lot more colourful than others of the same kind..."
As if in response, Ryuzaki pulls out a rather old manual camera, with a long lens in front of it. It looks weathered and worn, but well-cared for, a tool that could date back from the 70s. He spends some time turning the lens and lining up his shot, and then... snap!
After he's content taking his pictures, he finally quietly turns toward Kurou, expressionless and yet a little shy in body language. "... do you... like snails too?"
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
Kurou pauses in his failed attempts at finding the right keywords when fate provides the answer. There is no surprise in realizing someone else was already here, or for how long. It seems correct because it is correct.
"Kobeso-maimai," he repeats, his voice matching Ryuzaki's delicate volume while his eyes return to the snail. Only from the periphery does he see how Ryuzaki captures the snail's likeness in photography, but he only needs the periphery to know how old fashioned, and thus well maintained, his tool of the trade must be.
But eyes open him get a gentle shift in his gaze to meet them.
"... Yes. Invertebrates are... overlooked. But I do not know a lot about them."
Not the way Ryuzaki seems to.
"Why is this one so vivid...?"
<Pose Tracker> Ryuzaki Kurama has posed.
Why is this one so vivid, when others are less so?
"I'm... not sure," Ryuzaki does admit, knowing that shells are an organic thing that has a large degree of variance between snail species, and yet this one seems so vivid and unusual it feels like it's in defiance of the other kobeso-maimai. "They each grow their shells from within them... maybe... it's a mask from within that they wear, to express something to the world."
They shift very gently, still in that effortless squatting pose of theirs, and takes another shot.
Their eyes meet. Ryuzaki's eyes feel cold, inquisitive -- some could say unsettling and piercing. They're in strong contrast to the darkness in his hair. Yet, there's something... gentle, curious, soft inside of them too. Ryuzaki seems to have taken some interest in Kurou in turn, perhaps naturally drawn to the similarity in their irises.
"Do you want... to know more about snails?" A pause. "I'm Ryuzaki Kurama..."
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
So it is ultimately a mystery, even to one who knows snails... Kurou's pupils are a little bigger as he looks back at satsuma myomphala. Something unique for its kind.
"I wonder if it is lonely," he says. Perhaps it is a foolish question. This has nothing to do with knowledge of snails as a whole.
But they meet eyes, and where Ryuzaki's are cold, Kurou's have a strange emptiness to them. His gaze is relentless in its way, and unwavering, but in the same way the void simply is without effort. Yet despite there, where Kurou's freckled face does not offer much in the way of communication, there is still the smallest glimmer of life that would differentiate him from a corpse.
"... Kurou Ryouhara," Kurou offers in kind. And then, without blinking:
"Yes."
</poem>
<Pose Tracker> Ryuzaki Kurama has posed.
"... it might be, but..."
Ryuzaki pauses to contemplate snail for another full minute, as it seemingly just goes about with leaf-chowing. Perhaps there is a similarity, he finds, in how lonely people can be and yet they continue to chow down on burger. That's why they pursue... the burger, in pursuit of that contradiction.
"It's... with us, today."
They look forlorn for a moment, but there was something within Kurou's gaze he finds appealing. That emptiness, as if he was being drawn into a void, the way Ryuzaki feels like both their eyes can express more than they could ever with their faces. There's a little shine in there, a little glimmer of life.
They're both people that can be easily written off as expressionless, phlegmatic, distant... but there's something familiar there.
"Kurou Ryouhara..." Ryuzaki whispers, like he's obtained something rather precious today.
"The kobeso-maimai is named for their tiny 'belly button', the oheso... here..." Ryuzaki points out, at the hole that forms at the backside of its shell spiral. "They can stretch really far out... snails feel through their shells. Despite it looking like a protective organ, they can't survive without it... a terrestrial mollusc such as this one breathes through gills known as the ctendia because of their comb-like shape--"
/_!_\ Boys Are Learning About Snails, Please Wait Warmly... /_!_\ <Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
It might be lonely, but... they watch, as the snail eats. The snail lives. It is lonely, but it is here, and so are they. A quiet, profound moment that Kurou experiences without impatience and without urgency.
He nods, very slowly, with Ryuzaki's conclusion. Today is different.
Maybe that's life, too. One day can be different. So you eat. And you live. And maybe you find that day.
And today, Kurou and Ryuzaki have met. Kurou's head tilts, only slightly, like anything more might frighten a snail... but snails are much more stalwart than that. Ryuzaki has a demeanor familiar to his own... but there's mysteries there, too. Like a vivid snail shell inside, even if the outside is monochrome.
As Ryuzaki begins to explain, Kurou's eyes make a subtle shift. The glimmer is a little brighter, and his attention more intense. Every now and then, he looks where Ryuzaki leads, and he repeats the unfamiliar terms like "Oheso..." and, "Ctendia..." so he can better etch them into his memory.
There is so much to know about snails. A whole entire world for snails he did not fully appreciate until today...
Maybe that is the most precious knowledge of all.
<Pose Tracker> Ryuzaki Kurama has posed.
Some time passes as Ryuzaki explains snail facts. He's still fairly stolid about it, and doesn't really hurry at all as he moves from one fact to another as if he were recalling it from a database of sorts, but... it's nice, like this. A lot of people usually get exasperated and make motions like they have to go when it turns out Ryuzaki is infodumping. He doesn't get that feeling here.
But eventually, the snail moves on too. "Oh... ...bye bye, wonderful snail," as it moves a little deeper into the tree.
Ryuzaki quietly rises to his not terribly impressive height, placing his hands behind his back and shifting quietly. He does wonder what mysteries Kurou holds behind those eyes that convey the void -- and yet, also, that glimmer in contrast against the void, like his very being holds an appealing contradiction in its entirety.
"Thank you for... listening to snail facts," Ryuzaki admits, just the slightest bit more bashful with that body language. "Some people... don't seem to like it."
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
To get such a feeling here would be an inaccuracy. Kurou is a sponge, and his main concern is that he will not be spongy enough to absorb everything Ryuzaki is explaining. His voice is nice, too. Quiet, and one that speaks with fondness for the subject. The circumstances are not built for boredom.
But... oh. Even at a snail's pace, their specimen is able to move on, away from them into the brush. Kurou's eyes widen a fraction, and then his expression drops. It has not changed from its default state, but the sudden shift might approximate something like passing disappointment.
Alas, the snail, too, must decide its fate. Kurou lifts his hand to wave.
Goodbye, snail...
Kurou waits a moment moment, as if there were anything to see in the darkness of the brush, and then rises himself. He stands taller by almost fifteen centimeters... though he may have seen about the same size, or even smaller, when he was crouched to observe.
"Thank you for sharing your knowledge." Kurou is silent when Ryuzaki seems shier. People don't seem to...? "... How strange," he says with a blink. Why wouldn't... people like it...??
<Pose Tracker> Ryuzaki Kurama has posed.
Ryuzaki is perhaps even more diminuitive, the way he puts his hands behind his back, a gesture that naturally has his shoulders shrinking forward. His golden eyes look upwards to Kurou, no less inquisitive and curious than before. "... I was happy to," he briefly expresses, tone not any more particularly expressive -- but there's the faint impression like it was a pleasurable experience.
Why would people not like it?
"I don't... fully understand myself. Humans are..." Ryuzaki pauses, as he realises that he's phrased things awkwardly. He's made his bed, though, so he works through it, something coming out a little more forlornly than before: "... ... a lot of times, when they smile, they're hiding displeasure behind it."
A pause, and as if not willing to leave it on that down note, they add: "... but... I will come to understand it."
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
It is good to know Ryuzaki did not end up troubled to spend so much time sharing knowledge with Kurou... He did not realize how much had passed until the snail had left their line of sight. They are not particularly swift animals. But that's the trick... by moving so slowly, one can obscure they are moving at all.
Invertebrates are overlooked, he said himself, but even after the conversation he is finding more to appreciate about the snail. No. Because of it?
Ryuzaki admits to not understanding people, and Kurou's gaze dips thoughtfully. "... I see. I never realized..." But it's an easy truth to see now that it's been pointed out. Smiles to hide other emotions... "That seems like a waste of a smile."
Kurou looks back up. "Then... I wish you luck, in understanding more of the world. But know I do not have any displeasure about snails to hide."
That is all he can truly confirm on the matter.
<Pose Tracker> Ryuzaki Kurama has posed.
It's a daily struggle, to understand what things are being said that people mean, and what words actually mean the opposite. Ryuzaki hasn't cracked the secret code yet, but one must exist. "It is..." he finds himself agreeing with Kurou rather readily, on wasted smiles.
But somehow, with Kurou, he feels some kind of certainty that what Kurou says is what he means. ... there are few people that he feels this way with, and especially after just meeting him. What is it about this other boy?
"... would you mind if we... traded phone numbers?" Ryuzaki does request, pulling out an old phone of his own. The screen isn't cracked, but it isn't a smartphone -- it's a few years back easily.
There's another cute, fat chicken soft keychain on it.
"I had a good time... today, watching snails, Kurou Ryouhara."
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
Kurou has largely navigated this deeply confusing world by simply plowing ahead with every misunderstanding. There may be a blessing in ignorance to that... But Ryuzaki... he says what he means, upfront, and with little need for interpretation. And he does not waste smiles.
With the question, Kurou gets his phone back. It may not have helped him with snails, but this is a task it is better suited for. Another older tool... Yet one that, too, serves its function.
"I do not mind," he says, getting his number to display for Ryuzaki to take.
A chicken keychain is another important function, Kurou thinks: the same kind of function putting smiley-faced food stickers on his better test scores serves.
"As did I, Ryuzaki Kurama. I want to remember everything you said about them."