2025-12-11: An Uncomfortable Accord
- Log: An Uncomfortable Accord
- Cast: Isabeau Fontaine, Yuri Wakamatsu
- Where: Kagurazaka - Tennis Courts
- OOC Date: 2025-12-11
- IC Date: Fri, Aug 24 2012
- Summary: Yuri approaches Isabeau out of concern, only to find her actually trying to be nice to her. Unfortunately, Isabeau just isn't very nice at being nice to people, even if she's decided she ought to look out for them... though Yuri manages to feel some empathy for Isabeau, anyway. Yuri hears a few things which might be illustrative later, too...
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
Isabeau has decided that she is going to be the best at Tennis Club.
Isabeau, thusly, looked up the training schedules of Olympic athletes... and immediately zeroed in on the most extreme ones she found.
They're the best ones, right? The best of the best?
Right.
So anyway, that's why she's been hitting balls spat out by her automatic ball-serving machine all morning. Her blonde drills are up in a ponytail, her eyes shielded from the sun by a tennis visor; her thick legs are sporting a pair of jean shorts, today, and a white blouse with very puffy shoulders to try and make her silhouette a bit less bottom-heavy.
"Hah!" She pants, as she smacks another ball over the net. "Haaah--!!" And of course that kind of vocalisation would be impossibly rude in a real match, but she can't very well distract a ball machine, can she?
<Pose Tracker> Yuri Wakamatsu has posed.
While Olympic athletes *are* the best of the best, there's a little bit of difficulty in going there right from day one...
Yuri isn't involved in tennis. She has nothing to do with tennis club; she is aware of how to play the game in a general sense because, well, gym class exists and it's mildly more interesting than badminton to her, because the ball moves faster. But she isn't on the team, she's never tried to be on the team, and she generally does not run around chasing balls for a hobby.
No, *she* was on her way to practice her sport - kyudo. Which means she is currently juggling a gym bag slung over one shoulder, a *very* long bowcase slung over the other (did you know? a competition bow for someone Yuri's height - five foot three or four - is almost seven feet long) and everything else.
And that would be that except, well, she heard Isabeau before she saw her, and just *had* to go look at what was making that noise.
Yuri is slightly tall by Japanese standards, about average by European, and looks more European than not; her hair is a strawberry blonde with more strawberry than blonde (she's not *quite* a full-on ginger but it's not far off... maybe 'pale ginger') pulled back in a short tail, currently wearing shorts and a less poofy top. She's not going to wear the whole kyudo outfit for practice (or maybe it's in her bag) but it has the same sort of elbow-length sleeve.
"Is, ah, everything all right...?"
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
Isabeau is tall by both French and Japanese standards -- French women only stand around 5'4" on average -- though she's much taller by the latter. Being five-foot-six weighs more when you weigh more, though: Isabeau is not only tall but imposing in that height.
Someone calls out, though -- so Isabeau grabs a remote hanging from a lanyard around her neck and toggles it, turning the ball-serving machine off for the moment.
"I thought that voice sounded familiar," she says, as she heads to the edge of the court -- leaning down to grab a bottle of water as she goes. "Yuri! Off to practice, are you?"
She's speaking French -- with no regard for indicating the foreign language metatextually when she sees no call to bring Japanese into the conversation! -- but even if she wasn't, she wouldn't have used an honourific. She never has.
"Everything's fine," she insists, after a long drag of that water bottle. "I'm just getting in today's practice...!"
<Pose Tracker> Yuri Wakamatsu has posed.
Unlike Isabeau, Yuri doesn't come off as big (or is remembered as particularly large) for two reasons. One, she's not, or at least not as large as Isabeau; she isn't powerfully built or particularly heavy. And two, she's a lot less loud.
'Less loud' does not mean 'quiet', though.
When Yuri replies, it's in the same language. She speaks it just fine, after all, even though she gets more use out of Japanese these days for *obvious reasons*. "Obviously," she says, bouncing the strap of her gym bag on her shoulder. "But I heard the noise and wanted to make sure that you hadn't pulled anything."
She eyes the ball launcher, then Isabeau... and her water bottle, which is often a good way to tell how long someone's been going. "Been at it for a while already? I didn't catch you at the end, did I...?" She doesn't object to losing the honourifics. They don't go in French! Well, except like mademoiselle, and that'd be weird.
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
"Don't be ridiculous," Isabeau gestures with her water bottle, a hand to her hip. "I'm not so weak that I'd be brought down by some petty sprain or strain! It's all about intimidation, Yuri." SHE'S NOT FIGHTING ANYONE RIGHT NOW THOUGH --
She takes another drag of water. "Let's see, it's..." She checks her watch -- it's a very nice watch, her father got it for her -- "this late in the morning already...? That'll make it almost three hours by now," Isabeau nods, firmly. "So I'll probably have a break for lunch, then get the rest done this afternoon..." The rest?!
"It's good to see you're out to practice, too," she smiles, to her. "You're certainly not lazy. Say..." Isabeau pauses, for a moment, as she weighs up whether she ought to ask. "... have things been fine at home, since Ruzica moved in?"
It hasn't escaped her, through her perspective, that she's kind of doomed Eve's child to get eaten by the fey monster who hasn't changed her face for eleven years after scaring her out of her father's house. ... and as much as Isabeau won't apologise for claiming her own space, she does feel a little responsible.
(Especially since she's a year below her...)
<Pose Tracker> Yuri Wakamatsu has posed.
"You're going to intimidate the ball launcher?"
For better or worse, Isabeau certainly isn't intimidating Yuri right now. Though part of that *may* be the physical distance between them. It's not like Isabeau is right up in her face or anything...
...wait. Three hours? "Three hours?" Yuri blurts out. "That's a long session, isn't it? I think you can *probably* get away without doing it this afternoon, unless you're trying to burn your arms out!" Can you burn arms out? Yuri isn't a medical doctor. Or any kind of doctor.
"But obviously I'm going to practice, taikais happen in the summer." She's already had her tournament this month. She didn't do that badly - for someone who's only started kyudo this year she's actually doing pretty well, but she *is* a first year, after all. "And when we get back to school I don't exactly want to look like I haven't done any work!"
Have things been fine since Ruzica moved in?
Yuri was not expecting that question from Isabeau. Not that Isabeau isn't involved, but just that she didn't think Isabeau would *ask* her. She looks at the other student for a moment, her expression failing to hide her surprise for a moment. "It's fine," she says. "It's not like I don't know her or anything... It'd be weirder if it was a stranger."
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
"It's practice, okay, shut up." Isabeau huffs. Obviously she's not intimidating the ball machine!!
... even though she could if she wanted to.
"Really, it's pretty short," Isabeau shakes her head. "The best tennis players have an eight hour practice schedule, did you know that? And since it's summer, I have the time to devote to it! Thanks to me, we dominated our meet, you know," she tosses her drills over her shoulder, with a haughty little sniff. "That wretch Kanae's just lucky I was picking up her slack -- let alone everyone else being so far behind me it's not even worth remembering their names..."
She gestures, with a hand. "... but don't worry," she adds, "I looked up their recovery schedules, too. I have rest days! And I've been going to this place in Sumaru to get massages to make sure I don't get too wound up -- down in Kameya Alley, Tominaga Chiropractic? He's very good."
Isabeau nods, though, when Yuri says she's obviously going to practice. "Good work! If you keep at it, you'll be the star player for kyudo club. You shouldn't aim for anything less!" Isabeau is... trying to be supportive, certainly. This is Isabeau being nice.
She's not so self-absorbed that she doesn't get why it would be surprising to hear that kind of thing, though. "Okay," she nods. "But if you start feeling unusually run-down, or you get two shadows, or your image starts fading out of mirrors, let me know right away. She's definitely too physical to be a ghost, but..." Isabeau throws up a hand, in a loose gesture. "The point is -- I'll believe you!"
<Pose Tracker> Yuri Wakamatsu has posed.
Are you the best tennis player?? ...is what Yuri *wants* to ask.
> You don't have enough Guts...
"Well, just so long as you take the breaks," Yuri says, a little uncertainly. She doesn't know Kanae as anything beyond 'another student', so she has nothing to say about *her*. "All the way down to Sumaru, though? It's a bit of a trip, isn't it, just for a massage?"
Yuri has never had a massage. She doesn't know how much it's worth going to get the good stuff, as opposed to the cut-rate kind.
Isabeau is trying to be supportive, but honestly, Yuri is a little taken aback by how hard she's coming on. She can handle a bit more direct than a lot of her classmates without taking offense, but Isabeau doesn't appear to have any kind of throttle down. "Thanks," she says, reflexively. "I mean, I'm not top yet! Maybe in second or third year. This year is still learning." At least she is doing well enough to actually *compete*, even if they put her in with the other novices.
(Kyudo isn't something done at middle school - because of the size of the bow it's real hard if you're not at least most of your adult height - so 'the other novices' are mostly other first-year high schoolers, too.)
"I'm pretty sure I don't have to worry about ghost stories," Yuri says, either intentionally or deliberately glossing over the part that even *she* knows - Ruzica doesn't change much. There's been excuses, explanations, but even she can't have missed that something's weird, can she?
...well, she's not talking about it. "But, uh, thanks." I think? is her mental addition. She doesn't have the guts to say that part either.
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
Obviously Isabeau is the best tennis player! ... in tennis club, anyway. She's not quite Olympic level, she'll admit that much. BUT SHE COULD BE IF SHE WANTED TO!
"He's very good," is what Isabeau assures Yuri, when she's surprised to hear Isabeau going all the way to Sumaru. What, does he have some kind of magic fingers or something??
(Nah. He has the gold finger.)
"It's important to learn," Isabeau nods. "Besides, you couldn't have started much sooner, could you? I looked it up," she adds, to explain how she knows that. "Since the bows are so large, they make you wait until high school, right? Just remember to be strict about your habits -- a bad habit learned in your first year will stay with you for the next five! I started playing tennis when I was ten, you know? When I first started, I thought that overhitting my shots would help me to win, but it really just made half my serves fall out of bounds. I didn't solve that one until I started highschool, myself!"
... of course, she's not mentioning her bad habit of getting frustrated easily, which she definitely hasn't solved and which still costs her games far too easily. She can kind of compensate for this flaw with her massive ego, but it's really just a band-aid.
"It's the people who say they don't have to worry about them who end up haunted!" Isabeau -- who is a known and notorious ghost hunter, she even has those little machines which detect electromagnetic signals or whatever -- insists. "Still..." She sighs, flipping her drill-bangs with a hand. "Don't worry about it. You're Eve's daughter... I ought to be looking out for you now I'm here."
(Because she just kind of APPEARED, a few months ago, declaring herself to be Eve's friend Laurent's daughter and disrupting the entire social fabric.)
<Pose Tracker> Yuri Wakamatsu has posed.
Is the gold finger a magic finger? The world may never know...
"I'll take your word for it," Yuri says, sounding a little doubtful. Massages always seemed like they hurt a little bit to her - which may be part of the point but it's not something she's particularly eager to do. Especially if it's a man using his magic fingers. That just seems a little... well, not for her.
But she agrees, "No, not really. I only started once I came to Shujin. My arms wouldn't have been long enough before." She jostles the (long) bow case on her shoulder as if to demonstrate. She already has trouble maneuvering that through doors when she's trying to handle it *and* her gym bag *and* the door itself.
She doesn't think she really needs Isabeau's advice, precisely, but once again she feels kind of like she's being bulldozed by Isabeau's...Isabeau-ness, like she can't find a space to interject. She tries, once, but ends up waiting politely *anyway*, so... it doesn't do much.
"Tennis is a bit more head to head though," Yuri finally manages to wedge in. "It's not like I'm shooting AT someone else! It's all about self-improvement and the whole flow, the judges are looking at your technical precision and the rest of the flow too. It's a whole different thing!" There's nothing like overhitting your shots in a game because you want to crush the opposition. And if Yuri gets frustrated, it'll be at herself.
Isabeau might be a ghost hunter, but Yuri is - at this stage of her life - feeling a little too grown-up to entirely believe in ghosts and spooky stories. She thinks Isabeau's machines are probably a waste of money. But, well... "If I get haunted you'll be the first to know." Pause. "Second. I'd be first."
Though, this is also making her think a little harder. Is Isabeau trying to signal something? ...nah. Or maybe she's just bored, or this is the way she looks for friends...
"...though, maybe I should come and look at your machines some day?" There, that's friendly.
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
"At least someone will," Isabeau huffs, when Yuri takes her word for it. "You wouldn't believe the amount of people who ignore all my advice and warnings just because they think I take up too much space." That's a bit more honest than she meant to be, though, so Isabeau hides her scowl behind another gulp of water for a second.
When Yuri demonstrates the unwieldiness of her bags, though, Isabeau exclaims: "No kidding!"
She does fill any room she enters, though. (Is the outside a room? Does the 'room' count as the tennis court right now? These are philosophical questions for philosophers, whomst she is not.) When Yuri gets a word in edgewise, though, Isabeau does tilt her head to listen to her. "Well, of course the bad habits won't be the same from sport to sport," she explains, still doing her best -- in her own way -- to be nice about it. "You ought to know the bad habits of kyudo better than me, so just make sure to use the proper form, and you'll do great!"
Isabeau is a fiercely independent young woman; it's kind of bizarre, looking at how responsible and diligent (to a fault, THIS IS TOO MUCH TENNIS PRACTICE) she is, that she'd have such a fervent belief in ghosts. But she's always insisted that ghosts are real and she can find them; her belief creeps out some of the kids at school, but there are certainly other youth who call her a 'Witch' because they're making fun of her bizarre ideas.
So she just says: "Good! Don't worry, I'll know what to do. And of course you're welcome to! I'm still trying to track down my night vision goggles after that girl stole them," she adds, with a sigh, "but you're quite welcome to familiarise yourself with everything else."
(That's the problem, though, with being looked out for by Isabeau: Isabeau is deeply unpopular. She's not exactly someone who you get social points for associating with, particularly given how bullying tends to happen in this country.)
<Pose Tracker> Yuri Wakamatsu has posed.
This IS way too much tennis practice! Unfortunately, Yuri's attempt to convince Isabeau to maybe tone it down a little has failed and she didn't have the guts to give it another go. Maybe another time...
Isabeau is very good at filling the room (or the tennis court). Yuri actually understands Isabeau's complaint - OK, she's not Isabeau's size or volume, and she's much less likely to steamroll over someone else - but she's heard the jokes about big foreigners, too. Even though she's not a foreigner! Or, at least, she doesn't really consider herself one.
"That's the idea," she says, with a slight sigh, as she hikes the case back up so it doesn't slip. She really is trying to do her best. She takes kyudo seriously! Yuri takes a lot of things seriously, honestly; she tends to put her whole heart into what she decides to do, which is both a plus and a minus sometimes...
And though right now she's not *really* trying to make friends with Isabeau, deliberately, it seems to be sort-of kind-of happening anyway, and she's not the sort of person to push Isabeau away because she's unpopular. Sure, Isabeau mixed her life up by showing up and... well, things changed. But it's not her f -
Okay, it IS her fault. But even so.
Either way, Yuri finishes it with a kind of awkward, "Well. Okay. Great." A pause. "Wait, who stole your goggles? Do the police know?"
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
Isabeau could teach Yuri a thing or two about having maximum Guts. Step one: dump your Understanding. Understanding doesn't affect anything, so there's no negative side-effects to using it as a dumpstat. Look at this conversation! It's going great and no one is uncomfortable!
Isabeau doesn't know about the plights of the hafu first-hand, though she certainly learned a lot looking at how Kanae was treated, back then; she's entirely a foreigner, and doesn't make any attempt to pretend she even wanted to be here like the good transfer students. And that explains why those students don't tend to be friends with her: she's making them all look bad.
She nods, firmly, when Yuri says that not forming bad habits is the idea. She can tell that Yuri's serious about it; she approves of an attitude like that! Whether she secretly thinks that Yuri just needs to work her way up to overdoing it like Isabeau does is a mystery (not that big a mystery) for the ages (seriously, it's not subtle), but even Isabeau isn't such a hardass that she won't cut someone a break for just starting out.
Well, not unless she's being an asshole on purpose, which is something she sure does do a lot. Not with Yuri, though: this isn't even the first time Isabeau's been nice (tried to be nice) to the girl under Eve's roof who isn't an undying fey creature deep in her personal uncanny valley.
... she hasn't said anything weird about Ruzica while Eve is in earshot, though, for some reason. (Also not a mystery, Isabeau.)
"This girl who answered my advertisement to go to the Eifuji Manor!" Isabeau huffs, gesturing outwards. "Don't be fooled by her looks, going to the gym every day can't absolve her! Unfortunately," Isabeau huffs, "I never got her name... she has pink hair, though. Pink! And all these piercings in her ears, too... she must be one of those punk girls, even though she wasn't wearing anything too wild back then... like some kind of undercover punk!"
<Pose Tracker> Yuri Wakamatsu has posed.
Yuri's tendency to push through uncomfortable situations by just enduring them is getting a bit of a workout. It's not that she doesn't *like* Isabeau, but...
...look, the whole situation's confusing. In multiple ways. She's just glad they *can* have a conversation and it *hasn't* turned into anything awkward. More awkward. Nobody's yelling at each other, anyway. From some of the things she's heard around school about Isabeau, that might have been an option.
(She isn't sure how much of those rumours were just... well, mean rumours, though. You have to take these things with a grain of salt, if not the whole shaker.)
Maybe it is a mistake to be friendly with Isabeau - Yuri, after all, *does* get the hafu treatment, even if she's lived here most of her life - but, well. If Isabeau is lonely, somehow a bunch of things make sense. She's not quite sure how close she can *get*, though... they don't have a lot in common, outside of some parts of history.
(And Ruzica. Who if Yuri has any suspicions about, she has not shared with anyone.)
"Oh," is Yuri's response - she thought maybe it was another Shujin student, but if it happened when Isabeau was out doing a public ghost hunt it could be *anybody*. Though if she spends that much time at the gyn, maybe Isabeau expects to run into her there. Thoughtfully: "I think the whole point of being punk is *not* to be undercover, though...?"
Look, it's not her scene, okay.
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
Oh, yelling is definitely an option when Isabeau's around... though some of that is mean rumours, too. She's way more likely to be haughty and snooty than outright screaming!!
Though it is pretty notable how Isabeau hasn't bothered navigating out of the tennis court. There's still that mesh-protected fence separating one of them from the other, and while apparently Isabeau can scale fences way too easily... she isn't doing that, right now.
"Well, I suppose not," Isabeau muses, tapping the lid of her water bottle to her lip. "That's kind of weird, now you mention it... but it's fine!" She declares, smiling. "Eve's on the case, so she won't be able to hide from me for long!" ... is Eve particularly good at finding undercover punks? Is Eve part of the garage band scene?!
Any questions Isabeau could answer about that, though, are soundly cut off by the way she tips her water bottle up to take another drag... only to find it empty. "Ugh, these things are always too small," she huffs, crinkling it in a hand. "I'll let you get to practice, Yuri... work hard, and you'll be top of your club, too!"
With that, she starts walking off towards the hub of the courts -- where, presumably, she can secure more water.
<Pose Tracker> Yuri Wakamatsu has posed.
Yuri, too, can climb a fence. (Probably? Has she ever done it where someone could watch??) But she hasn't. A casual chat through it suits her just fine!
Eve's on the case... that Eve is a PI is extremely not a surprise to Yuri, of course. That Eve is looking into something for Isabeau is slightly more surprising, though it's not like night vision goggles are *cheap*... still, she'd expect it to be the police and not Eve.
Wait, are night vision goggles illegal? Is Isabeau supposed to have those? Yuri doesn't *think* so, but...
"I'll see you again at school," Yuri agrees, as Isabeau starts to head out. She will; they're not in the same year, but really, is there any escape? (no) "Just remember to take a break when you need to!" she calls after her, as she starts to head toward the hub, while Yuri starts to walk past, heading toward her own practice - and picking up speed, now that she's later than she meant to be.
And she will, at least, get some good work in. It gives her some time to think about that meeting. It'll slip her mind later, but...
...it's got her thinking, a little bit.