2026-01-18: Security for Two
- Log: Security for Two
- Cast: Shiryuu Ryouhara, Umie Akabane
- Where: Shibuya, Tokyo
- OOC Date: 2026-01-18
- IC Date: Sep 13 2012
- Summary: After the battle with the mad artist, Shiryuu returns to Shibuya, ostensibly to give a warning. However, it turns out that Umie Akabane is just as hurt and restless as he.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
>> can't come in, srry, friend got sick
>> got what they had
Umie's phone fell into the cushion of the futon from an outstretched hand.
At least her bosses are used to such antics; it's why no one quite seems to trust Umie Akabane's commitment to full-time work.
Whatever the response was, Umie didn't get to read it until several hours later, when she got up to brush her teeth (whoops, shouldn't forget dental hygiene), take a bathroom break, eat something, then... staring at the futon laid out there, bathed in the comforting breeze of the two panda fans, she eventually fell back in.
.... Until a nightmare wakes her up, an hour later, and the air feels so much colder than it should be.
A walk around the block later, she comes back up, sweaty, and dips into the bathtub for a long soak...
.... and nearly falls asleep, waking from another tableau of noxious imagery she can't quite remember.
Her hair is still damp and limp as she crawls into bed, still exhausted. She can't even muster the idea of going into Mementos to allow her Persona to speed up the process; her mind doesn't want to process any further the trappings of something cognitive or supernatural.
So.
By the time the next day came and faded into evening, Umie was still sore, still tired, still waking up, either too hot or too cold, whether from the last wheezes of summer refusing to let go of the temperature, or the fans cooling her a little too much, or something else.
Falling into a similar pattern is Umie's mental state: she doesn't want to talk to anybody. She wants to talk to someone.
She wants to eat something. She's not hungry.
She feels numb. She wants to cry.
She feels fine. She feels angry.
When thunder echoes outside her window, it's like some god finally listened to her pleas.
The apartment closes in like cocoon, with the sounds of distant traffic and voices, the luminous patter of rainfall and rolling bellows of lightning, the sound of occasional voices in the hallway outside.
The vroom of fans.
Her eyes close.
....
And seemingly, in the next moment, though in reality she had slept those last few hours, the Dark Hour comes.
Umie feels the comforting weight of Badb fill her with the necessary readiness and joy; the green environs accented with red a welcoming, unnerving sight.
A contradiction, in every sense.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
But then, was it really like he thought it was?
Shiryuu is a different creature when it comes to addressing problems. Sleeping just enough to realize how much his body hurts. Awake just enough to realize how much his skull aches.
He'd done all the familiar things, Exercise, kata, a bath filled with ice. The boy had nigh exhausted his strips of linen, the passing hours reduced to a pile of bloodied rags in the sprawl of the washroom of the hotel he frequents in the Tokyo region. He pretends as if they're not an ill omen, as he sits in the -- if he were really telling himself the truth, rather uncomfortable -- rolling chair across from the bed.
The bed looked like a bomb had hit it, with comforter torn off and thrown across the room, the sheets rolled all the way up into a haphazard knot-or-rope, hanging over the low footboard. The grey-headed boy was sitting there, listening to the thump of a beatbox synth go through its six note cycle repeatedly, part of some track or another sitting on a brand new laptop.
Sitting in a pile of wool that would, on a bigger person, rightly be called a sweater with a winding of fresh linen around his head and eye, the boy stares morosely at the screen, watching the tracker snap across the beats. He's been looking at it for the past fifteen minutes, with no more salient progress made on the track in front of him today than has been made in the weeks prior. A single dark brown eye focuses on the screen, and the single loop he's successfully placed for the entire day.
It was like the way he thought it was, wasn't it? He was just there for the mission. To protect them. He was strong enough to not need help. Not from Yua, not from her. He was, in fact, the strongest. He definitely didn't care at all when Akabane shouted his name like a gunshot in the dark. He didn't cave when she checked him, his first instinct was not to hold onto her hand tightly.
He clicks the macro to stop playback, rolling the trackball under his fingers in the acidic silence that follows. She threw her arms around him. Or something like that... he won't pretend like he was paying attention. He wasn't. Sentimentality wasn't his strong suit. That wasn't what 'shinobi' were. It doesn't matter. That sick weight still sinks in his gut.
He just needed a minute to think it through.
A shinobi has no value. Not as people... only as ideas.
They're more useful as empty-headed pets.
Unless they run when they're needed.
The boy's head lolls back as he breathes outward into the air. He doesn't even know it when the Dark Hour hits, and his computer screen goes black, leaving him in a room with no sound and no lights.
It was the way he thought it was, right...?
It didn't mean anything to him at all.
A hand drenched in wool tightens against his head, almost pulling out a fistful of grey hair. It all comes out as one tiny muted sound, strangled in his throat until there was nothing left to get out.
He snatches his haori off the back of the chair.
It's not much later when the grey-headed boy arrives in Akabane's apartment, the sudden stir of wind putting him on what passes for the countertop in what would have been a kitchen in any reasonable house. He's perched there, the draping sleeves of his grey haori piled up and trailing between his knees, hiding his hands entirely as he leans forward. Luckily, it's new or at least laundered -- it's not covered in his blood.
He's still not carrying his sword or his shoulder bag.
The great kami Sarutahiko is there somewhere at the back of his mind, but only just so, only grudgingly within his call: Elusive, evasive, omnipresent but never quite within reach.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
In the bathroom, which is aligned right next to the tiny kitchen in the rectangular apartment, Umie carefully pours a bottle of water against her face in lieu of no running water, the red liquid washing the sleep from her eyes.
You really get used to it, partially, after several years. The water is red, like blood. Blood puddles on the floor. When you wipe your face against the towel next to the sink, it'll be stained red as well.
The Dark Hour, by virtue of existing, must always warn one of one's inevitable death.
Umie, with the Badb in her soul, is no exception.
The wind stirs in her apartment, ruffling the stray strands of hair.
Her lips hang open in a slight sigh. A breeze at a time when none should exist, just like the sound of crows at a time when nothing living should call.
Her lips curve, for a slight moment.
....
No, she can't led Invincible-san know how relieved she is to know he's here.
Rubbing her face for good measure, as if to scrub the stupid little smile from her lips, Umie walks out of the bathroom, glances about, and then, towards the hallway, where the kitchen lies.
_And he's just there_. The blonde, dressed in a tank top and shorts, notes the lack of a sword, or bag.
.... What is he planning?
"....." She looks at him, folding her arms, as if waiting for some remark, before letting them fall restlessly to her sides.
Her brain says, 'Are you doing okay? Are you feeling restless too?'
Her mouth says, instead, "You'd be more comfortable in a chair, you know."
A chair she... doesn't currently have, aside from the couch, where the futon is in front of. "..."
She begins the process of rolling up the futon temporarily so that she can at least push it aside, throwing any stray clothes against the small clothing rack that she bought with plans of using it to tame her mess.
(It's just become a frame that clothes are thrown on, with rather impressive accuracy at this moment.)
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The grey-headed boy is ghost-silent for a time.
No, ghosts can be louder.
It really is the smallest sound, the youth's recognition of her presence when Akabane slips from the bathroom across the span of his attention, though certainly not his line of sight.
The linen wrapped haphazardly over his head to stripe across his eye sends his hair haphazardly in every direction, shooting to and fro around the tightly-tied band, whose knot lays towards the back of his head. Even so, the rancorous grey mop knows no barrier that will contain it, and the boy's remaining eye is almost entirely occluded by the angle his chin hangs, close to disappearing into the neck of his sweater, which has mercifully been changed out for something at least a little more form-fit.
The clothing he wears at least betrays his movement somewhat -- it's really the only indicator that he made a sound at all, the soft draw of breath and the pensive energy that leaps, electric, between his shoulder-blades with the crow's presence.
She can feel the subtle change, the way the boy moves from morose to instantly alert and living at her presence. She is less privy to how painfully hyperaware he is of every detail in those moments.
It manifests as a tiny, hard-wrought sigh, fingertips appearing from his sleeves to tap together between his knees. She's the first to say something.
She is also much cooler than he is, and some part of the shihaisha riles about it. He _was_ famous, at one point...
Finally, he manages a single gesture: an index finger pressed to his lips silently, briefly: Shh.
He notes her activity, finally spotting the rack's real purpose. The boy lands on -- she'll notice his shoes have been _fastidiously_ cleaned since the fight and getting cognitive paint on them, which turns out just to be real paint outside the Dark Hour, which is even worse -- the floor with not a single sound, crossing the space in the tiny studio sprawl behind her. He's apparently had enough of that, since the boy leans over quietly, pointedly helping her gather her things. These he folds, specifically, and with care, to place on the rack. Not that he isn't slightly impressed by her aim--he's trying not to stare. And not doing a great job with it.
The process is quiet, and the onmitsu doesn't seem to mind it, as long as there's a certain distance between them. Or at least as long as he doesn't think about it too hard. It's only when he's sufficiently helped her move the futon that he stands in front of her, hands to his sides. The moment that slides between then and imminently is entirely too awkward.
'... I'll be okay. I came because of you.'
The boy's mouth sets itself; a thin, pressed line.
"You'll die cooped up in here," Ryouhara elects to say, instead.
Finally. "You should come to the roof with me."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
Umie's own eyes trace over the linen wrapped over his eye.
".... I can help you wrap it again," she offers, feeling a touch guilty. "Probably'll be a lot easier. Is it doing okay? I've got plenty of bandages."
It's probably bleeding a lot, after that fight; a price tag that exceeds the itch and pull of the Mark, which is most likely merely a product of Umie's own imagination.
After all, she's never used it since that day, years ago. Nothing bad can happen to *her*, no one would even know she had it, if she wasn't so quick now to reveal it.
Because she wants to know if someone will accept it, Umie thinks to herself. Otherwise, she'll linger in that twilight of not knowing how far she can trust someone, or how they'd see her, in light of what acts others have done with the Mark's power.
Shush, his movements say.
Her eyes narrow, her lips falling flat in a straight line. If he wants to be all quiet? Fine, then.
How much did she stain his haori? That white must be a pain to clean, Umie reflects, as she observes the grey-haired boy's shoes touch the floor.
Soon enough, he's helping her clean up, folding up her clothes, being distracted, always trying to keep a certain distance.
..... right. Between the way she broke his personal space in front of Kurou, and then, that awkward hug last night.
(He squeezed her hand, her memory helpfully brings up, which wretchedly makes her heart beat just a little bit faster for a spare moment or two.)
shitshitshitshit, STOP DOING THIS, UMIE. YOU KNOW WANT HAPPENS.
They're just standing there, the two of them.
'You'll die cooped up in here.'
'You should come to the roof with me.'
".... It's locked." With an ease that shows she's been there before, she smirks, moving away to grab her jacket. "The lock's even easier to pick than the one on my door."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
"Iih." For someone who is likely easily capable of blowing out every door in the building with supralunar bass and thunder, Shiryuu is not a terribly loud speaker, especially in his objection. The sound is scarcely louder than the fall of a single black feather, stirring mostly in his chest. Just a fragment of a word, nothing more.
But it does not come fast, nor does it come in due time. There is enough space between her offer and his reply for a single thought, before a decision is made. "It's functional enough," Shiryuu explains simply, as if satisfied just to say that. It's only after perusing the thought for a breath that he finds it wanting. "Mugen Setsuna places more stress on the body, due to the saccade-rhythm transportation staccato. If something endangers you, I can still.."
Pause. Shiryuu realizes it's the wrong tack to take, a few seconds too late. He's talking too much. The boy clears his throat, lifting the drape of a sleeve to his mouth, painfully self-aware.
"....it would just be a mess, right now. That's all."
The torrid moment turns. There is a gossamer second in which the boy was able to hold her gaze, was able to face her. There was a moment in which he was invincible. And then it's gone, and he turns away from her, plainly waiting for her to get her jacket under the guise of straightening the clothes on her rack, tiny little tugs playing out here and there. He's really concerned about wrinkles right now.
She might, if she's paying real attention, notice that he steals a glance at her Mark every so often, but only in that strange boyish way where he thinks he might not be detected doing so. Not with fear, not judgment, but with open consternation. Like a question yet to be asked. An answer, yet to be found. And then she goes for her jacket.
'The lock's even easier to pick than the one on my door.' "iih.." he sighs, looking down and to the right, as if contemplating looking over his shoulder. The difficulty of the lock is no problem. "You know I come from a family of technicians, right...?"
Too quiet. Too hard to hear. Shiryuu has no choice but to let Umie do things her way, and helpfully doesn't even use his technique to go to the roof ahead of her. It absolutely has nothing to do with him having a concern about shadows in the hall.
"Just don't trip. It's dark." The pit in his stomach is reminding him of mishandling danger all too readily.
She doesn't seem to have much trouble with the roof access; and he doesn't expect it, watching her from this point many a time previous, which is information he'll also not share. Instead, the shihaisha allows Akabane to lead the way, out into the open air, under the sickly crescent of the moon. Each hand tucked into the opposite's sleeve, the boy follows. It's only when the light actually falls on his mantle that the boy seems to breathe, decompressing ever slightly.
"The sky doesn't feel cramped tonight," Ryouhara observes passively.
"...It's a good night for a conversation," he decides.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
There's something different about Shiryuu's manner, in a way that doesn't seem to be a product of their strangely deepening relationship(?? surely there's a better word!!). Shiryuu's always been a touch on the quiet side, but his tendency to exert his own form of control over a conversation with prideful statements has become a pattern of his.
It leaves her own equally overconfident comments alone, echoing their own insecurities in her ears without something else to bounce them off of.
"It's the Dark Hour. Everything's going to look messy," Umie offers, pausing to itch behind an ear, her gaze equally drawing away from his. "But I'll... take your word for it."
She feels the boy's gaze as she slips her jacket on; the Badb in her wants to drag it along, making each movement smooth and deliberately mysterious, while casting a cheeky gaze back at him in challenge.
It's just that, her heart's just not in it right now, especially as she becomes conscious of his gaze on her Mark, as her right hand pops out of its respective jacket sleeve.
This is how it happens. Even an NWO agent would eventually look on her with questions, especially after last night. What makes her any different from that artist, or Sudou? She's just as cursed; she could just be a late bloomer.
(Or maybe, she just hides it very, very well, until that hard little bud blooms and all the corruption held inside is exposed wide for the world to see.)
As she puts on her sneakers, Shiryuu says something, but it's too faint for her to hear clearly, even in the quiet of the Dark Hour. Umie hesitates, glancing back towards him, then unlocks the door. "Let's go, then."
Going out into the hallway (Umie does lock up after they leave) and up the stairs, Umie pauses at Shiryuu's next words. Maybe it's just concern that's coloring his responses, but he's never been quite like this, before, has he? "Then keep close to me."
A lockpick is dug out of one pocket; Umie makes short work of the simple lock on the door and opens it, letting it sound out a siren of a long, drawn out creak to whatever may await them on the roof itself.
Fortunately, all that's there is the green night sky, the wan smile of a crescent moon, and the dark silhouettes of other buildings around them.
The ease with which she moves suggests it's not the first time she's been here. "Be careful. Shadows can sometimes get up here; it's just less frequent."
It's a good night for a conversation, indeed.
"... Hey." With little time to prepare, Umie's hair is in a simple ponytail, left to hang limply against her shoulders with no dramatic breeze to come and help as she turns to face him, once the door is closed behind them. "That was a tough fight, last night, in a way neither of us would have been used to."
Silent concern glints in those eyes as she looks Shiryuu over, pupils colored dark by the dim lighting.
"Are you doing okay? I mean, I had to skip out on work and just spent the entire day like I was sick, so... you can be honest." She gestures with her right hand casually, not even being mindful of the Mark that's there.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Yes. The air is cleaner here. The onmitsu doesn't take his hands out of his sleeves, silent as she moves out into the open air. He doesn't have the same level of caution she does, the warning she gives about the shadows passing with far too little discretion in the quiet boy's mind.
He could have argued about the mess, but didn't. It's true, where there once was a rash of aggression and confidence ('it's not _overconfidence,_ Akabane,' he would have reminded her in any other situation..) there remains a mood as flat as the river plains south of Nagano. There's something less aggressive about it, something harshly vacant as the boy steps forward. Polite, not severe. Gentle, if one were pressed to a single word.
... "Do you think the bride realized it was you?" he asks simply, absently, idly, the moment that there's space enough to do so. The way the words are casually thrown. He uses their chosen colloquialisms -- the so-called 'secret identities' that his contemporaries are so fond of. For awhile, his back is facing her -- much of the tense, listless energy in his shoulders lost and muffled in the layers he wears but still bleeding out slow.
It really has nothing to do with what he's thinking about.
... "It wasn't a hard fight at all," the onmitsu insists, his voice distant and faraway, as if spurred to say it by reflex alone. She asks him if he's okay, but her explanation drags more attention than the question itself. She mentions that she had to skip out of work. This gets the dragon's share of his attention immediately, and the boy turns, one brown eye lost in the Hour as he looks her ov --
Shiryuu finds himself staring right in her eyes, with the exact same look of concern.
She'd said 'stay close to her,' and he...
A blink, sharp -- and the boy looks up, immediately breaking eye contact to shoot a look to be lost entirely in the sky. A low, dark sigh slithers from his chest. Unlike her, the boy is almost always dressed in -far- too many layers to make any reasonable determination of his wellbeing, other than the little rattle at the very end of his breath. It's the one thing he isn't trained to hide.
"... It's not right, for you to care," he tells her, pointedly.
"In that situation... it would have been catastrophic for that boy to fight the Bride." There is a subtext there. "I would have been bound to cut him in half."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
"... eh?" Umie looks at Shiryuu, eyes blinking in a short melody of complete and utter cluelessness. "She's... got navigation-type abilities. I guess I... just assumed. I mean, she's seen me summon Badb before so I just..." She hesitates a moment. "... It.... worked...?"
It's been so easy to pierce that veil that she had assumed it only worked at first, with a sharply dropping rate of success as someone got to know her. "It... worked..."
Her wonder over this revelation is spoiled the moment Shiryuu claims the fight, contrary to Umie's belief, *wasn't* hard. "Bullshiiittt," Umie mutters underneath her breath, lips twitching as she tries to keep herself from smiling; thankfully, with Shiryuu turning to face away from her, she doesn't have to try too hard.
(Is he just doing that because he has trouble looking her in the eyes? And why is she having trouble, as well?)
Which necessitates the question if Shiryuu's okay himself, with that added bit of explanation, trying to show her hand in a bid to get the onmitsu to show his own.
... With that risk she takes, they're gazing at each other. The dim light reveals little that he didn't already see in the apartment, now with the added complication of the jacket hanging over Umie's body. Some bruises, a stiff ache in her walk that she doesn't bother to hide, but thankfully, Badb's presence adds a buffer of resilience her normal self wouldn't have.
The eyes, however, betray that weary, worried glimmer. Her lips, open to speak, but the eye contact is broken, Shiryuu casting his gaze upwards.
Her sigh, a touch frustrated, follows Shiryuu's, as Umie sits down, crossing her legs and propping herself on the palms of her hands, giving her body the necessary angle to look towards the sky herself without craning her neck.
She'll play this game.
"I'll care about who I want," she murmurs, softly. "..."
That exposed her a little too much, in the negative space it leaves behind.
"The boy... the one that came in later, you mean?" She shakes her head again. "... Wait, no, nevermind that. Why are you mentioning that? I have no love for the Order myself, but even I was telling him to not go after them."
'I would have been bound to cut him in half.'
She cast her eyes down from the heavens, her chin sinking. "... Because you're part of them." Her eyes lower. Her lips grimace, slightly. "I get it. This is about that, right... You were there to protect them, and there I went--" She tries to dredge up that same anger she felt, in order to thrust it at Shiryuu, but every handful she manages to wrestle from herself simply slips from her hands.
"What, did you get in trouble? Because you're not playing by the rules?" A tense bitterness creeps into her voice. "Or... maybe you're beginning to see me the way that boy would likely look at me if *he* knew. If I used my Mark, after all, I'd feel the same way as the Old Maid to everyone. I suppose that'd get that boy's attention really quick, wouldn't it, eh?"
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
"There may be a benefit," Shiryuu supposes while deliberately attempting not to sound bemused with her, "to not being able to decide on a mask."
The intense heat of his blood hopefully never reaches his face. Truthfully, it takes every ounce of Shiryuu's power to keep his heartbeat from skyrocketing past the borderlines of good sense. Were he of a less respectable physicality, he might have fainted attempting to do so. Ah, luckily..
What was that she said? Shiryuu didn't hear it. He almost becomes prophylactically offended, just to be safe.
Instead, his hands itch. Not in the physical sense, but Shiryuu becomes aware of the sensation while tracking bruises he might not have noticed immediately while being distracted in her apartment, working back through what he knows of her gait and breathing patterns to determine anomalies he might have to address. The onmitsu's hands slide out of his sleeves, the little twitch of his fingertips revealed in that moment, though good sense leaves Ryouhara nothing to do with them but hang his wrists at his sides in tense exasperation with himself.
Don't crack, Shiryuu. It's not like that at all..
She sits unceremoniously, and Shiryuu is briefly extremely alarmed, trying not to look and failing miserably. Did she faint? No, it's .. Shiryuu is even more off-put by this sudden change, and doubly so when she speaks. 'I'll care about who I want.'
"Ih--" Shiryuu starts to say something, starts to step towards her, starts to open a hand, only to find himself completely unable to approach for want of simply knowing exactly what to do.
'...Because you're part of them.' Therein lay the problem, the young man's head lowering as she puts the words to the air. It's not something he denies, and the boy remains aloof until she continues.
"... I wasn't there to protect 'them,'" he replies, solemn. "You were there as well."
When the young man lowers beside her, it's to sit in perfect seiza, his calves underneath him, and his knees curled up beneath his sleeves. The concession to her is slow, and every bit the practiced ceremony learned when he was too young to remember, to the point that it's simply instinct now. His fingertips are visible at his knees, as he thinks, as his lips part slightly, the perfect answer resting there.
Or that's what he wished.
"I'm not the someone who gets in trouble," Shiryuu points out. "But .. I have to do the things I say I will. And those things that I need to do..."
Shiryuu stops, for a moment. A head bounces across the ground, in his mind's eye. He blinks it away, and the rest of the words die in his throat. "...I'm not the person you think I am," Shiryuu points out, his eye closing.
"I'm the person that it's dangerous to admit knowing."
There is a tinge of venom he detects in her. Of pain. A more important person would be able to explain it all much easier than he, empty-headed thing that he is.
"...how I'm beginning to see you," Shiryuu echoes her, on the edge of misery and incredulousness.
Almost absent his own good judgment, the boy reaches for her hand, to take it up between his own, until her painted nails disappear entirely in the anonymizing swath of white sleeves. If she doesn't fight him, if she doesn't pull away, Shiryuu will let her feel his heartbeat between his palms, setting her hand between his in his lap.
His heartbeat slows. It's even, strong, calm right now.
Is it because he's reached out to her?
"It's enough," he tells her, calm, dark, soothing.
"You aren't the sum of what's been done to you," Shiryuu says quietly.
It's very little, he reminds himself. But it's what he can do.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
"... If it gets better, I could..." Umie wonders aloud, quietly. "Well, the mask isn't strictly necessary, it just... made sense. So I *guess* that makes it necessary, but it's not like I've actively *tried*, but--"
That rare moment of excitement remains there, Umie's eyes remaining cast towards the concrete flooring of the roof in hushed amusement.
Unexpected victory comes so rarely that Umie can't hold it back, which likely makes Shiryuu's struggle that much more difficult.
But, alas, like a cloud passes the moon, it leaves, and Umie's sitting cross-legged, leaving Shiryuu to worry if Umie had collapsed.
Her chin tilts slightly as she senses the step Shiryuu makes towards her; the line of her back and the loose hang of her jacket leaving her exposed. A single strike to take her down.
The first and second times they had met, with would have never happened. The third, she flaunted it, when he changed course to take her to get shoes. The fourth, she didn't seem to care at all. The fifth--
And so on.
She knows he's there. It's not even a matter of her not caring anymore; she's comfortable with his presence. And also, she...
How did she get in this situation, she wonders. A simple act of kindness or two, and she develops feelings? What is this nonsense...
'I'll care about who I want.'
It's said so childishly, in Umie's ears, and when she shoots those next few words, it feels more childish still.
'You were there as well.' His wording draws a surprised flush of heat to her cheeks. He's come to her aid before, disguising it with the bluster of wanting to ensure their future fight was preserved.
She feels the deliberate weight of Shiryuu's movements, lowering into a seiza pose that contrasts with hers, the flow of her body a mix of casual and conflicted. Her blush is still there, deepening; it'd be hard for Shiryuu to miss it.
"I didn't intend to..." Umie's words start and stop in her throat in a hiss, her eyes grimacing.
"Demons are easier to know than humans," she says instead, closing her eyes, as if trying to avoid the conflict in Shiryuu's next statements. "They'll love you, hurt you, hate you. You can expect them to trick you. You can always count on them to flip on you for doing something wrong. So you look to the phases of the moon, you trick them back, you ply them with trinkets. You can reveal a little about yourself, but they will never, ever care about you. You do not matter to them. You don't have to *be* anything to them."
"Humans-- people, are dangerous. You can't know them completely, and if they know enough about you, they'll definitely reject you. Having one foot in the supernatural world, and one in the normal, and never acknowledging one or the other..."
Mai-chan may have been the reason she didn't crack, and that is the most painful part of all; especially the times when she left Umie to flail on her own, content to laugh until Umie begged for her to come back. (Because no one knows her heart better.)
"...!" Shiryuu takes Umie's hand, and it shocks her; her face flushes red as ever.
Still, like a hand holding a trusting sparrow, she keeps her hand still, letting Shiryuu direct it while watching it disappear into the white sleeves of his haori.
"...." His heartbeat... is relaxed. Her hand curls, slightly, in his grip.
People with Personas are the most dangerous of all.
".... You aren't either, Shiryuu." Her words drop softly, like the first drops of a recurrent rain.
How else would he continually fail to do as he bids himself to do, if he didn't understand?
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
It is still intensely hard for Shiryuu not to be endeared, when she's like 'that.' But there are a great many things that stir Ryouhara to entertain Akabane's moods, from suspicious to sweet, and it's only when he's absolutely sure that she's not about to die and he doesn't need to do anything about it that he's even able to approach calm.
But then he is, and then she is. And she's telling him everything she can, his eyes looking down as he sits, prim, proper, miserable in a fashion he can't quite put to a word. She tells him of demons, she tells him of people, and the boy's eye searches the ground for answers, finding none.
"We are dangerous," he agrees. "But demons..."
It's not something he likes to say. But is it not what he just asserted? "...Meddling with demons was considered restricted, when I was younger. They were the ones regarded as dangerous. We only know their 'hate.' They were regarded as only tools, and ..."
The boy pauses thoughtfully, trailing off.
"... I think of those people, those they say are better off as 'empty-headed pets.' They lie, they kill, they steal, they judge. They live in a shroud of secrets, and they too, are useful as only tools. And ... if it's thought about that way ... aren't they like demons too?"
Can a human be no better than a demon, Shiryuu muses, grim.
'You aren't either.' She shows him the mirror, and he wants to scream across the gulf.
But then he realizes her hand is so curled in his, and Shiryuu's expression seems less gloomy than it rightfully should be.
Instead, what would have been a scream comes out as a slow tilt of the head, the press of his lips hard and neutral, stifling any remaining childish wants or wills. Tired and broken, fingers twine slowly with hers, the hard wear and little cuts that made up the history of the battle the day before, and Shiryuu counts every one absently in the back of his mind.
"...Umie."
"It's fine if the situation is not the same between us," he tells her, without looking directly at her. In a moment, his peace is tied up in a knot. His grip worries lightly, pensive, snug, restrained, mindful of the sparrow between his hands. "There is something 'between' us... a gulf. A child cannot be accountable for their situation, for the miseries visited upon them. But the weight of our burden changes as we take charge of the next generation ourselves."
"... I guess.. if it comes to it, you should fight me. To hold a grudge. To hate me, if needed. I'll give you my permission. But .. you have to keep yourself safe."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
It's not as if Umie didn't feel the same, that time she yelled his name. It's this that will land her in danger, she realizes, and what may be what plagues Shiryuu.
It was one thing when they touched hands, or when she crudely teased and poked at him in the safety of the cab, arguing like they were two normal young adults unable to let each other have the last word. It made it easy to not acknowledge the gulf between them, and what fueled the savage nature of their first and the muted threat of their second meetings.
He is as dangerous as the agent who came to visit her that night, and even moreso, for how her body relaxes close to his.
He could destroy her so completely, and let her days as a problem come to an end, she thinks.
But her thoughts only imagine what Shiryuu was as a child, instead. To live in a family that considered demons as real, and realer still their 'hate'. What would that even be like?
"Don't tell me that's what you think of yourself," Umie comments, a flat tone touching her words. "If that's what you're getting at."
But then, her own relationship with demons is stranger still.
"The only time I used my Mark," she remarks, as if giving something small in return, "Mai--..." She corrects herself mid-sentence. "I found out I could use it to summon demons, about a year later. I summoned one: a Mothman. He didn't have a name to call himself, so I gave him the name Taro-kun." She smiles softly at the memory. "He had a chubby little belly, and would let me scratch his head. When I slept, he'd lay on top and drape his wings over me. It was a short time, but..." Her voice breaks. "It could have gone so badly, but it didn't. Just a lot of noise and me taking the blame for a lot of things breaking or missing."
Silence marks the conversation after Umie holds that mirror, like a version of the Eight Ata Mirror revealing the gulf that exists, despite the warmth of Umie's hand, intertwining with his.
She can feel each cut and roughness, and feel the ones on her own reflected in that touch.
It's that easy, isn't it, to play the victim, and he the cold assassin.
A child should not be blameless.
"... Does it make it easier for you if I hated you? Or that you think I haven't done things, on my own? Mistakes, even."
Her free hand clasps on top of his, her thumb traveling over the knuckles of his topmost hand if he doesn't jerk them away.
"The reason I was so angry with Okaga-san... Each time you open a coffin, there is a chance something very terrible happens. He's been incredibly lucky." Her whisper is a rattle, almost bitter. "People come out confused, terrified, and vulnerable to the full pressure of the Dark Hour. An innocent man..." Her words crash into one another, concepts and meanings scattering as her resolve fails her. "... I was old enough that I should have figured... It's a fate worse than death, and I just... ran away."
Tears drip onto her fingers, intertwined with his.
".... It'll never be enough, no matter what I do. His family'll never know."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The conversation does warm to the moment. In comparison to the woman sitting not so far from him, Shiryuu has completely forgotten the killing ache in his hands, no matter how many cuts and bruises they share. The number is an academic abstraction, a sequence of details for Shiryuu to mull over. A kyoketsu shoge leaves a telltale mark here, because of the reversed distribution of weight from a katana, and so much and so many kata will cause this rough spot.
In that moment, Ryouhara has completely forgotten how to do anything at all. For a moment, she might as well be speaking Greek -- the boy is simply not listening.
He will be able to recall with eerie specificity exactly how many marks, cuts and tender spots are on her hands months later, however.
The onmitsu shihaisha blinks, as he's struck from his reverie by her flat voice of disapproval. "Ah?" he asks. He almost forgot what he was saying. Oh... right. He smiles, the rarest of all expressions for the boy.
"Of course not," he tells her. "Who would ever think that of themselves," he points out. "I'm too strong for that sort of thing," he assures, and thinks nothing of it at all.
Or such is the point.
Shiryuu's touch becomes less worrisome while she is talking, she'll note, when he can simply listen. It's warm beneath his haori's sleeves, though not at all uncomfortable, even in the warm air of the waning summer. It offers the smallest explanation as to why he can wear so many layers, but there's still the matter of the layers of soft wool, whose fringes she can still detect overlapping his wrists. He wears two bracelets tucked far under his sleeves, and from the slope of his lap's angle, their edges rest deep against the back notch of his thumbs, such that they can be felt. The one at his left is curling and endless and made of uncomfortable ridged metal. The other, his right, is a simple braided silk cord, affixed with a clasp.
"It sounded like the opposite could have been true," Shiryuu remarks quietly. "A demon could be like a human as well.."
How many peaches did it take for the man to become an immortal? Shiryuu cannot recall.
The moment settles ill, after Shiryuu gives his consent. The boy doesn't look directly at her, the morose consignment and trepidation both manifesting in his grasp, the furtive stroke of his thumb over hers. By now, the notion that he's trying at all to soothe her is lost, and he's now hand-in-hand with her because he doesn't know anyway else to be, and so..
'Does it make it easier for you?' When she meets his own touch, finding her way beneath his layers to run touch across the bridge of his knuckles, the boy's head drops quickly -- suddenly, starkly, painfully aware of what was actually happening right then, right now, in that moment.
His eye flicks fast, to her and back and then across the city skyline, until his implant aches in his head behind the bandages, tired of following. Literally the only thing that keeps him from breaking the contact there and then is the raw strain in her voice as she makes an admission of her own secret to him.
'It's a fate worse than death, and I just.. ran away.'
Shiryuu's one brown eye rises at her, a tiny shimmer of recognition in his eye shooting like a star across the small space between them. Far and away from terrified to meet her eyes anymore, the boy can no longer -see- them, as teardrops wet bare skin.
...he does break the contact, after all. His topmost hand slides out from under hers, as if in a solemn rejection. It lasts only seconds, before the boy takes each of her hands in his, quietly, nimbly folding them both, one on one, equally, against his lap.
He doesn't hold her, as he might like. As he might want. Instead, the boy leans forward into her 'space.' He takes her chin against his shoulder, and rests her entirety against the mantle of him -- a soft press of seemingly endless wool, silk, and his heartbeat, transmitted through his hands to hers.
This close, the onmitsu's breathing is slow, steady, solemn.
There's something slow, sad, knowing in him when he says it:
"...it's okay," Shiryuu says, as if he could say it and make it real. As if he knew anything else to say. As if he could do anything else. "I'll know that for you."
"..rest against me awhile...okay?"
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
A wiser person would wear gloves, but many surfaces Umie crosses need that sense of touch to be able to register how much pressure can be used, what grip is needed, and what amount of force is required to hoist her body up, or to manipulate the length of the kyoketsu-shoge. To touch is to provide a story where eyes can't always look, and in touching, the hands are slowly changed to reflect it, providing a map another can read. Like reading someone's Persona, and understanding why and where the person begins and the story ends. Why does Badb look like she does? Where is Umie, in it? Where is Shiryuu, in these hands?
What Umie's fingers feel on Shiryuu's own is strangely familiar, recognizing those similarities she's felt in her own. She's never handled a katana herself, so it's a new story; this must be where a hand grips it, distributes its weight against the rest of the body. Dedication to his craft. And beyond his thumbs she feels something hanging on each wrist. Funny, how she never noticed, before...
(That braid she feels... is that...?)
Not everything Shiryuu says is just blustering for the sake of it, but Umie laughs, her lower eyelids crinkling over amused eyes as Shiryuu gives that rare smile. "Really."
The story of the girl who summoned a Mothman for a precious length of time is a sweet one, but also misleading. Umie can't let it stay without giving her own disclaimer. "A summoned demon feels an obligation to the summoner, as far as I can tell. If I had told Taro-kun to do even worse, he'd likely do so. A demon can enable the worse in a person; if I was a different sort of kid, the story wouldn't have been so sweet. If I really wanted to, I could summon demons to protect me, or do my bidding."
The words could be delivered in a playful, coy way, as if veiling their threat. She could summon the power of demons, at any time, if she chose to.
Her expression, and the angle of her lips, bear the rest of the story: nothing comes without a cost, and something that she gained with no word of its ultimate cost would also apply the same to its powers.
What drives the Mark? What drives Gozen? Who even is Gozen? What is the person, who grows up with the Mark, who speaks, navigates, and associates with demons, who bears the whispers of something beyond?
And what is in the eye of the onmitsu, recognizing those threads and the parts that ring familiar and true to him? The gulf is there, but the pain may come from those connections, like sutures attempting to bridge a distance that shouldn't be crossed.
After all, Umie is not an assassin; she cut herself from familial ties with distance and lack of contact just to get away from any instance of the NWO. Shiryuu was, himself, the first human being she had ever fought, and now, they share this space, closer than they have a right to be, one side sharing secrets that could very well be used against her.
He could devastate her with words, or with a quiet action; such is this act of trust, that even those seconds, where Umie feels those hands pull away, feel like she was suspended in mid-air.
.... and felt the grip of hands reaching out to hold hers.
"...!" The silver-haired boy leans forward, and Umie lets out a brief inhale, her chin feeling the layers of cloth draped over his shoulder. "..."
At first, the blonde's body has to let go, decreasing the natural tension of holding itself up. But, like a chord following a beat, she acquiesces, relaxing, closing her eyes.
'I'll know that for you.' Shiryuu'd feel the warmth of Umie's exhale against his shoulder, like something calcified finally freed. Shinjiro is the only other soul who even knows this, not counting people who suspect as such, from Umie's own actions and admissions.
Her head turns such, that she's resting against Shiryuu's shoulder fully.
".... Your shoulder's warm."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
These are all questions whose answers were demanded in blood, in Ryouhara's world. The nature of that Mark, no matter how well entrenched he and his were in the culture of the underworld, remained a mystery, upsetting now more than ever. Those who meddle with those powers, who foist them off on others are reprehensible people. It begged the question: Who, really, in this treacherous world, gained their power consensually?
And what happens if 'that Mark' ...
All of these trepidations are scarcely reflected in the boy's face, that lightly quirked smile broken like glass, mended for a breath, and left to soften on its own. 'Really,' she says. "Aa," he confirms, solemn once more. "The very strongest."
He squeezes her hands lightly. The cold knot in his belly is pressed down, further. It's not important, not when he's being called so clearly.
"If you were a different sort of child," he repeats, though he uses a different word for it. His point made, he almost doesn't see a need to say anything else, his wandering eye betraying his diffidence, and his touch is soothing to reflect his intent, even when he thinks on what she says a little more.
"...I'm not afraid of you."
At first it's meant to be humorous. And he tries to smile again. This time, he manages to just look confused, as his mind wanders off with the idea. Is it really okay to say it like that? Will they have to fight? Is he ready to face Akabane right now? He's not even really healed from the prior battle.. but does she know that? He is very good at hiding his injuries. What happens if she wins? Inconceivable, Shiryuu.
If she could kill him, will she feel better?
His hands worry, just a touch.
It's easy to forget with what he says hand-in-hand with her. The cool touch warming in his well-blanketed grasp is the very best he can manage without soothing his anxious nerves. But, if he were to think on it, if he were to really think on it...
"Don't worry," he thinks, picking his words, and reinforcing them with will. "No matter what happens, I'll bear the things that would harm you. There's no one else in this world more po..."
...The light drape of her weight, as she relaxes into the soft bearing of his entirely proper stance, gives the onmitsu a peace he cannot quite explain. If he were to think on it -- and he does -- he would only come away with more questions. And he does. They just don't feel as relevant to him with the sound of her breath against his mantle, the sound of her voice in his ear.
The rhythm of her heartbeat, settling into him.
What was he really thinking to say..?
"...." A low, charged sigh, arcing with the electric, burning sensation at the back of his neck that he's not making the right things known, fighting against the feeling of every other one of his tensions draining out of his bones. Ryouhara. Shut up.
"....yes," he finally acknowledges her, accepting Akabane at her word. It's certainly because he's wearing excellent wool. He lifts her hands, and presses them to his chest, demonstratively. Squish. That is a dense knit.
"...it's the latest technology," he offers, helplessly.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
It's unfortunate that everyone that's found out the true nature and price of the Mark seems unable to talk, for some reason or another.
'The very strongest.' ".... Invincible, even?" She smirks, teeth flashing as she chuckles.
'I'm not afraid of you.' "Is that a challenge?" There's that tease of a smile again: lop-sided, terrible, only emphasized further by the way her head angles, blonde bangs scattering across her forehead.
"I'm not afraid of you, either, so we're even." A slanted smile that could only happen from someone who grew up in a world where there were 25 hours in a day, and on that 25th, a green moon appeared that no one acknowledged. "Otherwise... why would I want you to spar with me, sometime?"
It's been harder than it should be to find someone, mostly because of Umie's own quirks.
'No matter what happens, I'll bear the things that would harm you.' "... I've done just fine. Besides, if you did, and the Order picked up on it..." It's not quite a rejection; it's a reflection of the worn parts of Umie's hands, the spots that would normally be soft. ".... But."
Green outlines Umie's face, as she gazes back at Shiryuu with a single bit of acquiescence. ".... I don't mind a little help, now and then." That moment they helped one another was smoother than Umie could have ever planned; yet, it was in the space of the moment, when she looked outside her circling thoughts of relentless self-reliance, and he answered.
If he hadn't, would she have been able to complete her task? Would that be enough, to free the artist from the curse?
Such thoughts fade against the shape they make, Shiryuu's proper stance providing something for Umie to lay against and settle, eyelashes drifting closed.
'.... it's the latest technology.'
Umie giggles into his shoulder, her fingers curling against the fabric of his sweater.
It's not the sweater she's feeling there, for a moment, but the pulse of his heart, underneath the layers.
"It is," she agrees, finally, giving him the satisfaction of actually agreeing.
This may be one of the few moments in the history of the Dark Hour that someone as ever selfishly wanted it to keep going, for as long as it took for her to rest in that closeness.
"..... Could we..."
"... stay like this, for just a little longer," she says, her voice fainter, relaxed.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
"Aa?!" The sound catches in Shiryuu's throat in response to that smirk, the boy's mouth slack in objection. Being invincible is no joke, and to have his challenge accepted at a time like this, they're really going to have to fight? The only weapons he has aren't even designed for anything other than grievous injury! How is he even going to --
With agonizing slowness, Shiryuu picks up on the fact that Umie might not entirely be serious. "..... iih." The shihaisha purses his lips, nettled.
He will later instruct Kurou to give her a gold star, then immediately remove it.
The note is less settled in his mind than his eye -- cursed as it is to have one -- does make note of the way she smiles against him, and the way her hair drapes across her face as the other side of her smile comes into play, untame but sharp as ever. If one were of an accusatory bent, one could fault the young man for staring overlong, tilting the entirety of his head to fix one russet eye on the very uncivil trickster. He doesn't say .. anything at all, for a time.
Two of his fingertips move absent themselves, as his eyeline traces along a feathery strand of blonde straying across her forehead.
The spell is only broken when the name of the Order is brought up, the perfidious 'they,' and she can feel the boy shift beneath her in that disciplined seiza, bridled firmly but spurred to unrest. "I'll take care of them," he breathes inward, as if to summon strength, sudden, sharp, fast, until --
'But. I don't mind a little help, now and then.'
The notion sends his train of thought hard to another angle entirely. The moment of muted terror, worry, misery, fear that it would all go wrong if he did nothing. He could not help but respond to that call. Something in her spurred him to channel his Persona so directly, the ability to will her the path, to reach beyond 'rhythm.' Her bravery..
Was that ... what 'synthesis' was?
So deep is the boy in his mind that he is almost not cognizant of her accepting his reasoned explanation. He is stirred from his reverie by felicity alone, her tiny laugh against him spurring the boy to blink, his pupil returning to the proper size against the moonlight. She agrees with him, and she can feel how he doesn't notice her feeling at his heartbeat, a steady, eager drumline beneath her painted nails.
If his smile can be seen, it's hidden quickly in the way the young man dips his head, waves of unkempt grey shading his eyes as he temporarily forgets about the next day, or the day after that.
This is fine enough to be here, when she asks if they can just be. He'll have to stay vigilant against this mad green hour, but..
"...Aa," he repeats. The same sound from earlier, in an entirely different tone and context. The onmitsu shifts in place as she relaxes, drawing the notorious person 'Umie Akabane' just a little closer to him.
Affirmed. He's fine with being vigilant forever, if it lasted that long.
"...I'd like that."