2026-02-15: Crushed in Starlight
- Log: Crushed in Starlight
- Cast: Umie Akabane, Shiryuu Ryouhara
- Where: Umie's Apartment AGAIN, Shibuya, Tokyo
- OOC Date: February 15, 2026
- IC Date: September 26, 2012
- Summary: Shiryuu's cold ambitions leaves him blindsided by the first of many consequences as he rushes to check on Umie days after the events of Portrait of Nyarlathotep. Nightmares stained by old memories are pushed aside, but the forces, actions, and fears that have shaped the two of them refuse to be ignored for very long.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
The ritual fire blazed in front of her, the reds of the fire outlining the aging figure of a man in a tailored suit, his silver mane of hair casting crisp outlines of white as he turned towards her, slowly.
A wooden shrine existed beyond the ritual bonfire, the pointed tips of what seemed to be a samurai helmet partially hidden behind a translucent screen.
Black insignias in the shape of a star, had text trailing down, which were further encased in the outlines of kites, hung from swaying, hanging banners to the right and left of her. The same symbol, albeit larger, was engraved into the floor: a star encrusted with wings.
The older man had a pleased smile as he turned to her; in the fire's light, she had read it as almost grandfatherly, even if his hand refused hers as she bravely walked behind him, leaving her parents in the waiting rooms behind them. This was a sacred space, after all, and only the pure could come in this far to see the grand sage.
He said something--
F O O T A G E N O T F O U N D
The fire was so hot, was there a voice?
F O cO T A GE N0T F O U dND
Black ripped out, shadows, springing forward screaming is that her throat? her voice, the sea of souls, he smiled, this is a sacred place
F0T A Gc d N CORR uT F Od D
stop looking at her
FCORRTuAGENPOTionFOUND
stop looking at her, she's not here
CORRUPTION
Shrieking, hate, hate, cold, ripping, touching, hands, go away, go away
Can't breathe
help
'We both know more then either of us ever could say and be understood by those in this room.'
The futon is slick with sweat, despite the cold air moving through the room. The windows are open, a lingering notion back when the heat of the day had begun to make the room feel stifling. However, with the fall came the deeper chills of night, making the lighter blanket a poor companion to the chill brought in by rain.
Umie's knuckles are white against the pillow besides her, outlining the black handprint of the Mark on her right wrist.
"... Shit...." Umie hisses against the white pillowcase.
It's in this room. It's in this room.
Don't move.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
He peered through the paintings in the gallery, an eye hardened. Information ran through slowly to him, a fact that the Ryouhara pureblood cursed himself for. His shinobi were spread too thin for him to know, for the information to have reached him in time.
They were busy, with the Ijuuin order, with minding Kouzou. With ...
The grey-haired boy wore a silver-hemmed jacket, hands in pockets as he stood on the other side of the velvet rope. The clan symbol was blazoned across the jacket along the lower left hip this time, mostly hidden underneath the crook of his arm. He didn't pay much attention to the other patrons milling past, avoiding him.
Someone asks him if the midnight-wrapped hilt at his hip was real, if it belonged to a real sword. "No," he had replied absently, not even looking towards the person, not even hearing if they were man or woman. His mouth was set in a thin pressed line, the weapon settling in the crook of his wrist.
"Ara, it's what comes of tender mercies~" Kiria reminded him, her mouth quirked into a wild smile as the derisive arc of his brow. "It will keep happening like this," she purred. "Until you..."
----
It's raining tonight, like it has so many times before. Normally, the boy would have waited until the Dark Hour, normally he would have waited until the moon's light bathed in everything. But there wasn't time for it, and the grey-haired boy almost slams into a pedestrian at sundown as he bursts out of the train station. "S-sorry!" His apology is fast, called out as he slows himself, hopping just enough to look back just before he rounds a corner.
He tells himself his running is the disciplined courier's gait, the one he trained in his entire life as he splashes through the rain puddles.
It isn't. There is more than one police officer summoned in the process, about the young man running through the streets with an illegal sword. Luckily, he is fast -- he is gone by the time they arrive.
She may have been stirred by the sound of running water, he realizes. But his gait is otherwise silent, the silver-haired boy taking care not to wake her as he ran the terrycloth under the tap, as he wrung the excess out in the basin. Wake her, or Kurou for that matter.
The only indicator she'll have of his presence at all, really, is when the boy kneels down beside her, the little muted sound of his sigh as he settles his weight.
He silently curses. It's people like this whom suffer most of all, isn't it. You can't do anything. But..
"Shh," Shiryuu assures her, in her muffled distress.
A hand reaches out, intending to peel a soaked strand of blonde from her temple.
"I'm here."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
In the moments following Sudou's attack, Umie's first instinct was to take control of the situation. She called attention to the fact that the field of supernatural influence will likely dissipate quickly, and that they needed to heal while they still could. She told Tamaki they needed get an idea of where the Old Maid would have taken Jun to. She knows, as Tatsuya Suou has told her, that Jun is the key to his plans, and that, if Jun is pulled into Sudou's delusions...
No, it's just more delusions. Either way, Jun needed to be rescued. Accepting the Mark into himself will cause it spread, and with it, the delusion that both Tatsuyas hold will grow, possibly becoming reality.
It's her responsibility, and it's *been* her responsibility, to do what the first one to invite whatever is behind the Mark should've done, and she neglected to do.
The roar of the fire becomes the sound of running tap water.
Something shifts in the flooring by her, quiet footsteps, a sigh as someone kneels down.
Another night Umie would have been quick with a sardonic reply, or made a theater play of how Shiryuu, once again, entered her apartment without knocking.
"... Shiryuu." It's probably the softest he's heard her utter his name, especially so nakedly, without title. Even if he told her that was the way he wished to be addressed...
... it's like she couldn't think of another way to say it.
A brown eye stares ahead, her breath hitching as something draws near.
'Shh.'
She relaxes, as Shiryuu's finger peels away a soaked blonde strand from her temple.
"... It's just a nightmare," she grumbles, mostly to herself than at Shiryuu. "Just a stupid nightmare... You probably get lots of them, too... Just need to breathe..."
She presses her face into the pillow, clutching the sheet closer to her and curling her knees close to her chest.
She stares ahead, still, her breath slowing to a more manageable rhythm. "... Are yours... ever like this, Shiryuu...?"
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The grey-haired boy cannot pretend to know about Jun. He's heard reports, but he's not a part of the same world as she -- truthfully, could never pretend to be. He was someone raised in the rainy doldrums, the neon-lit back alleys and side streets, the claustrophobic and garish side rooms of the underground. Despite every misery, she knew and cared for everyone, good people, he knew, while he...
Mm.
Enough to say that he got on a train as soon as trusted word reached him. That he broke in where we could have waited, that he understood the state she was in. His heartbeat only slowed when he saw she wasn't consumed, that Sudou ...
He felt something then, when he heard her say his name. Was it relief? And if it was... would it even be right? He realizes, with a short, sharp pang, that it doesn't matter in the slightest.
Shiryuu is tense at first, she'll realize -- know, on some level, that he was concerned that touch might be wrong, that it might make everything so much worse. But...
Like so many things that have transpired between them, he had to.
"...It's not stupid," Shiryuu replies in a quiet hush, his expression softening by degrees. Care softens his brow, leaves the young man's hand to loiter near her, briefly unsure as to what to do. 'It's not stupid.' That's what sounds dumb, Shiryuu. What can you, such as you are, even say?
She doesn't chastise him, as he's used to. Instead, she asks him a question. 'Are yours.. ever like this?'
A stone, spattered with blood. A person slides her hands through what he intellectually knew to be his hair, but when he looks up to her past that grey screen, there is no face to be seen on her head at all. The head of a father tumbles through the grass, some paces away. A flash of hair so silver it might as well be white, the lift of a cold iron knife.
'You will burn.'
... that silver-haired boy, he smiles for her, just so.
"Don't think about things like that, right now."
He's only a moment before his reply, quick, hushed, in soothing tones. He seems to remember only then what he was doing a moment before, tucking his hand under her jawline, to lift her eyes from the pillow, tilting his head to a comical degree that he can match her angle. The jade earrings he wears are absolutely not doing well with it. "Let me see," he asks, hushed.
The press of a cool, damp cloth compress to her head will shortly follow.
It will give him time to think, time to feel her heartbeat beneath her jawline. "You do the best you can." he thinks in the moment, "and the rest is left to cruel, meaningless dreams."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
It's stupid, in Umie's mind. Nightmares betray the threads of fear she had laid flat and smoothed over, like baby hairs escaping the pull of a hair bun. They're terrible, errant little thoughts, blown up to be so much larger than they have any right to be.
Just like the prickles of dread that are proven wrong by the gentle touch of a finger to Umie's temple.
Or questions that do not bring up half-remembered memories of past trauma.
'Don't think about things like that, right now.' He smiles one of those smiles at her, ones that aren't the timid, wan things that are unsure of themselves, or the broad, performative ones that show the white of his teeth.
'If you say it like that, then I'll assume the answer is yes,' Umie wants to say to Shiryuu, in the moment.
But the words are forgotten in the touch of his hand to her jawline, so needlessly tender for someone who has shown himself so capable of broad strokes of intentional violence.
(But is she not the same, in many ways?)
Her lips make a soft sound at the press of something cool on her forehead.
Her heartbeat, once a frantic pulse, is slowing to a gradual, gentle pace.
'You do the best you can.'
"... So you do," she says, softly.
She's looking towards him how, her eyes dark in the dim of the room, tracing the craning tilt of his neck, the angle of his earrings, his lips, his eyes.
".... Even you do."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
His eyes are hard, wide and bright things, even in the dark. One could accuse him of having a corvid mannerism -- the tight incline of his neck, the way his jade pendants glitter just so in light, despite every bit of training he's ever had. But the way he looks at her is not normal, not the casual disinterest, nor even the turbulent confusion of his more wan expressions.
Such icy bolts of worry are not a good color on the shihaisha, the boy charged to put everything in order.
He holds the cloth there for a long while, eyes meeting eyes in the dark. It's really an impossible situation you've gotten yourself into, he reminds himself.
For some, dreams are cruel and pointless. For others, they are reminders of things that cannot be taken back, costs paid, and things yet to be solved. He wishes he could have a better answer for her. But really ...what use is someone like he to tell her literally anything at all?
All that he can give is that single expression. It's the only thing he has.
It's easy to be lost in that the precise chord of her voice, and it shows in the way the boy breaks eye contact, suddenly self-conscious to a fault. Eyes tracing the shape of her lips as she breathed only a moment ago now are very, very lost in the exact knit of the futon and the weave of the sheets she's currently esconced in. 'So you do,' she says, in so few words, and the boy suddenly finds other things to look at.
'Even you do.'
"...." The onmitsu glances at Akabane once, unwilling to meet her expression for longer than that flash second. Eyes turn up, as he slides from her neckline, satisfied with her heartrate. His touch ghosts away, a thumb lingering fondly against her lower lip before it too, is remembered to be improper.
Instead, the onmitsu settles his knees against the bottom of the futon with only the ghost's impression of a grimace, as he looks up, his own chin settling into his forearm. Arm reaching overhead at that awkward angle still, the boy lifts the damp cloth from her forehead, folding it once, then pressing it down, daubing gently at the stringy mess Umie's become.
"...don't..."
...Ryouhara. What point is there?
Do not take advantage of her as she is now and call it 'honesty.'
That's not good fortune someone like you deserves.
The resistance drains out of the word before it fully leaves him. Ah, but he tries to fix that smile back to his face. He nods once, numbly, as he finds himself fixated on the soft press of cloth to her head, his own gaze messy and occluded by murky grey.
"...ah, don't worry," Shiryuu murmurs, that watery smile affixed tightly to his face. "Your nightmares will have to apologize to me personally, when I'm finished.."
It sounded much better, in his head.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
It's not the first time Umie has wondered if the reason she hasn't been emotionally tortured for her digression by Mai-chan was because the capricious being simply felt that the consequences were the best punishment of all. Umie will never learn if she never feels the sting of the knife in her back, or be hoisted up as the centerpiece of her own pyre.
Her heart belongs to the person who knows her the best, and that person weaves in her laughter at every misstep Umie takes.
It can never belong to the boy who looks at her with such a corvid expression, worry in his eyes.
Her heart is not hers to give, no matter how much she acts like she has agency, or how little anyone truly knows about the creature that haunts her.
It is the lock she can never get around, or find a key for.
Maybe that's why she's drawn to Shiryuu, when that brush of connection makes him draw back, for what it also draws against. ... Even when she further establishes it.
Even Shiryuu has nightmares, and furthermore, *especially* him.
When Umie's supernatural world was one person, it wasn't even worth asking as a question.
The lingering touch of his thumb against her lip brings a shiver, that isn't due to the chill of the night air languidly escaping into the room.
She closes her eyes against the daubing motion of that cloth. ... She'd normally refuse it, not wanting to invite the weakness that could come with letting someone be so kind in such an intimate way.
'.... don't...' An answering beat comes from Shiryuu.
"... What about your dreams, then...? What are those, for a Shiryuu Ryouhara?" Shiryuu may spot the ghost of something mischievous, maybe partially hidden by the angle of his wrist.
These are questions not asked to someone who kidnapped and kept someone under lock and key, physically straining them so they'd be too exhausted to summon their Persona and escape.
Because Umie doesn't realize it, at all. And why would she? Shiryuu would have no reason to believe her to be at all connected to anyone, much less the Phantom Thieves.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
She'd normally refuse it. Perhaps for a moment, Ryouhara can set aside the creeping malignance in his mind to simply exist with a person in the dark. It's that tiny notion, landing as a droplet unbidden in a pool that gives Shiryuu cause to continue.
A small glimpse of 'Ryouhara,' the boy that fastidiously minds her, to trace pale lines with short, confident brushstrokes of his thumbnail along her forehead. The cloth is folded and tucked under two fingers as his wrist moves, parceling out strands of hair, feathering them across her hairline until they fall just so. Rebuilding that invincible young woman from his memory, one strand at a time, with the patience and care of a clockmaker. It's a good thing to obsess over, he would think.
If he were thinking anything at all.
The empty-headed boy blinks, as her voice fades in after a moment, lost seconds dimly working their way back into his memory. "...ah..?"
Oh.. you were being an idiot again, Shiryuu. Now she's asking about ...
The grey-headed boy blinks, two tones of brown eyes with a similar direction -- a gaze, now thoroughly tucked behind the jet black arm of his jacket. For a moment, all of that stops, the confident energy sliding from his hand. A droplet of moisture lands on the pillow beside her as he thinks.
No, there really is no way to know that she would be connected to the people he hurt, not even so much as days ago. But then, he doesn't have to know this to be harshly, painfully aware that there is a black gate between them. For her side, it is a crueler mistress than any he would ever have the displeasure of knowing.
For his, it's a graveyard of children, It's heads, rolling in the grass, cut loose by someone who simply and in every sense of the word, isn't.
But...
"... When I was younger... before all of this," Shiryuu admits slowly, "I dreamt of a woman, standing in a scarlet field. She was young ... too young to have scented so strongly of blood. Sometimes she was surrounded by crows. Sometimes she wore a kimono, with the wrong side tucked over. Her long hair was the purest shade of white, the kind only a dense little boy could imagine..."
Even now, it feels wrong to say, to admit, and the onmitsu shifts uncomfortably in a very ill pause before he continues.
"She was always carrying a stained knife of iron, tucked in her obi. And yet, her hands..." ... he shakes his head, thinking better of it.
"... Well. She would take the mantle from my shoulders, and weigh it in both hands. Then, she would look up at me, with dark red eyes, and..."
By the time he trails away into cold silence, the boy's eyes are closed, as if racking his mind once, twice. ".... mm. Just the reoccurring dreams of a fanciful child," he explains dismissively, before setting his hand into the cushioning of the futon.
It's easy to leave the impression that it was an old dream, that it was something that he'd had long ago. It was, after all. But she did not need to know anything more than that. She didn't need to know how these dreams ended.
Instead, the boy lifts his weight onto the furniture, featherlight shifting his center of gravity closer to her.
If allowed, he'll softly press his lips to her forehead. A single, quiet kiss, meant to soothe her nerves, and in so doing, perhaps even his own. The length overstretches the moment, and even when he softly breaks from her, the heat of him lingers nearer than further. Even in the chill of fall -- the boy dresses very warmly no matter the temperature.
"....do you want tea?"
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
When was the last time she ever allowed someone to do this? To be minded, to trust someone outside of a medical setting, where it was a matter of necessity, rather than choice? (Aside from the time Shiryuu used that particular talent of his to just smooth Umie down to some level of 'decent' that one night they went out to an izakaya stall.)
When was it something other than the cold fingers of a doll-like girl, ultimately a specter of her imagination, rather than true contact?
To live with ghosts is to be marked by them. Their ghosts are different, there on the separate sides of that black gate, but here in the dark, these two crows are able to rest in the shade of each other's company, letting the ghosts of their nightmares fade temporarily further offstage.
The only things that exist here are the words they let into this space, and the attention they give one another.
A woman with pure white hair, standing in a scarlet field, smelling of blood, sometimes surrounded by crows. A kimono, tucked over on the wrong side.
A dense little boy. She wants to pick at that wording, ask why he'd characterize this 'boy' -- 'himself', she'd imagine he means -- as dense.
Like Kazusa Motojima and Isabeau Fontaine, the world is filled with defense mechanisms, and she, Umie Akabane, has her pick of quite a few.
Dark red nails meet his when he pauses. "... I'm listening," she whispers, quietly, her attention squarely on him in this space.
A stained iron knife. Her hands... were what? She'd take a mantle from his shoulders, and weigh it... Her eyes, dark red.
A dense child now becomes a fanciful child, perhaps equally as dismissive in terms of words, but the latter is more positive, in a certain light.
When she's about to open her mouth and ask, his lips reach her forehead, erasing all thought save for the most selfish, where her eyelids flutter closed, and her lips turn upwards, unknowingly, as she drinks in the closeness of him and his warmth.
So this is what it's like, to feel like this...
"... I'd love some, thank you." Her lips let out a soft chuckle. "Kurou-kun has some stashed away in the kitchenette. .... He's got me spoiled, so I can't even touch my cheap stuff anymore."
There's a portion of her thoughts that beg her to reconsider, just so that this small pocket of closeness remains unbroken, but instead, she gives Shiryuu a question.
A woman in a field of red, surrounded by crows... it's dreamlike, in its descriptors.
"Have you ever seen the kanji in my name, Shiryuu?" Has she even seen the kanji in his, for that matter? "... I swear," she adds, with some humor in her lopsided grin, "it's relevant."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The words they let into this space... it would be an idea he'd take to heart, if he were aware of it. For now, the safety of 'that space,' for his part, has to rely on the boy's unwillingness, his instinct not to pollute it.
But the dull ache that causes his heart to skip a beat in the quiet next, that is a sensation that threatens the calm. Eyes still half-lidded, his break leaves them dangerously close in that space, a spun moment in which his fingers instinctively entwine with hers, and leaves the boy acutely, painfully aware of just how close their lips are.
Ryouhara. Focus..
There is a difference between 'wanting' and 'deserving,' the onmitsu reminds himself dutifully, the tiniest scald as he clears his throat softly in the interstitial. Taking a light touch with her as his fingertips regretfully slip away, the boy rests his weight back on his haunches, finding a reason to look up instead of directly at her as he stands.
One shoulder slides out of his jacket. "It's cold," he thinks aloud, sliding off the blazoned black and silver affair. She will note the way he carefully slips out of it, holding the garment by the shoulders. He's wearing enough; a thick, murky teal sweater with a stand collar, though the meaning of the gesture might not be readily apparent until he lays the jacket indiscriminately over Akabane's shoulders, a second blanket to counteract the effects of those accursed sheets.
He tries his best to not let the thought sink in.
Luckily, there are other matters to attend to, and the onmitsu steps away. He is ... comfortably confident in his ability to go through a kitchen in the dark without making too much noise.
After all, Kurou aside, is he _not_ the strongest in his clan?
"Aah. As expected," as he finds the jasmine. At home in a tea ceremony. Right? Unfortunately, that does mean Shiryuu finds a few more implements. Oh. Loose leaf. Is this... an infuser? Right. No, he's done this before. No problem. Now, just to heat some water...
"--ow--!" That's a, er. Hot plate? Why did it get so hot so fast? The electric supply circuit shouldn't even be at the proper voltage to -- oh, here's a kettle. Wait, it plugs in? Well, he wished he knew that. "...I've left quite .. explicit.." the boy trails off, with a muted clatter.
"...mmnh?"
Suddenly, she has his full attention, the onmitsu turned to face her, the tip of his right ring finger in his mouth. Blink. What? Kanji...? Oh. Hmm. Has he seen how her name is written?
Self consciously, Shiryuu thinks to take his finger out of his mouth. "ih..." he breathes, unsteady. "... yes, I have," he's forced to admit.
He notably does not admit how a hospital billing system was down for almost a week due to one of the patient servers going missing. "I'm diligent," it's enough to explain.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
As the fingers of their hands curl against one another, Umie can sense the outline of Shiryuu's eyes, the curve of his lips.
Kiss him. For a moment, the temptation is there.
Just like before. Take this year's apples and taste them, for next year, there may be no crop to taste.
'He'll be your little secret, just like Joker. No one needs to know.'
A knot instantly forms in the pit of Umie's stomach, the bullet of Mai-chan's words well-placed against the entity's silence up til now. To enable is to acknowledge the selfishness, rather than let herself sit as the innocent one.
Her eyes track to the Mark on her wrist, like a third hand rising up to press itself inbetween both their fingers.
She's not innocent at all.
She lets Shiryuu's fingers slip from hers, letting her head sink to the futon's pad with a sore heaviness she hadn't felt several minutes ago. She closes her eyes.
'It's cold.' Umie's eyes open back up, her gaze settling back against Shiryuu. ".... usually you put on more clothing, not take more clothing off," she murmurs, as he takes off his jacket with a single, seamless movement--
The warmth of the garment settles over her shoulders in that moment, and Umie's next response, whatever it is, is for her to go silent, save for what feels like the audible rush of blood to her cheeks.
It feels... warm. ".... How do you keep yourself from just overheating all the time?" Shiryuu may see the pale fingers close over the hem of it, selfishly pulling it close.
The floorboards register his movement to the kitchenette, she lets herself smile, tucking her knees close to her chest, in order to utilize the full potential of the coat's remaining warmth.
All the while, she hears him in the kitchen. "Mmn." Her eyebrow twitches, as he quietly burns himself.
"There's a small light switch over there," she mumbles under the coat. "There's a kettle on the right. You'll have to plug it in."
He stops making noise, and she looks up, almost expecting to see some disaster.
Ah, right. "Those stupid NWO files." She flops her head back down. "Right. Can't let the girl have any mystery, can we..."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
It's almost subconscious, the distracted way Shiryuu's hand twitches by the sword at his hip. With her, he'd almost forgotten it was there. He's distracted, as he stands in the dim light cast from the open windows.
There was something he saw in her eyes, as he caught himself staring at her. That black, curling thing across her hand didn't matter. For that sweet, short time, it was easy to think of it as 'normal,' a natural care that one vests in another in the name of a ...
....then his hand brushed across his sword hilt, and his attention was drawn away from that ephemeral thing.
"... The world is unkind," he explains, looking away. The light from the window reflects strangely in his off-color eye. "It's easier, to be prepared."
That ephemeral thing.
... the thing he thought he could get away with wanting.
None of that's important now. He is careful to slide the saya from his belt, to set the length of his sword propped against the wall with supreme care to abide the noise. There is a tiny sound under his sneaker heel, and she'll see the way the boy notices it almost immediately, the tiny hitch in his step as he focuses on it keenly, now counting from the wall in his head to find out where the floor joists are under his tread to minimize the deflection, the stress on the fibers.
Regrettably, he's distracted by very small things. And every so often...
Moments pass. There is a brief problem in the kitchenette. There is a tiny sound as he pops his finger out of his mouth. He has to explain -- and it doesn't go well. 'There's a kettle.' 'Those stupid NWO files.' She says it, just like that, spelling it out. It's both endearing to him and terrifying.
"... right," Shiryuu remarks ambiguously, quieter than an owl's flight, but far more awkward. He turns away. He doesn't turn on the light -- he doesn't want to disturb. There is the sound of running water, as he fills the kettle.
The tiny sound of a heting element, just barely carrying over the sound of the fans, will confirm that he isn't about to blow the apartment up. He braces his hands on the edge of the counter, bridging his shoulders across the length of it as he eases out of his own mind.
"...it wasn't there where I'd first noticed it," Ryouhara says quietly, as if saying it would take her name off those pages in that manila folder. He shakes his head.
"... can you tell me anyway," Shiryuu asks, his words tied tight.
"..I want to hear what your name means .. in your voice."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
A black handprint, the hilt of a sword.
Without them, they'd just be two young people trying to awkwardly navigate a relationship.
They'd also be completely different people, not formed by the trials, responsibilities, and triumphs that have shaped both. What is an Umie Akabane, without the Badb and the green moon? What is Shiryuu Ryouhara, without the mantle and the sword?
They'd be a crow and a dragon in name, without the added things that stringed them together, in a slightly kinder world.
What a terrible thing.
It's endearing, watching Shiryuu's movements in the dim light, remembering her similar challenges during her excursions. "... It does that. There's another squeak, further in the hallway. Second floorboard, past the closet area. Third one is by the craft table."
(... So she's not the only one, who is paranoid of things like that.)
The heat and carelessness of the moment carried Umie through that damn agency's name, leaving her stranded on the other end of it wincing, like she had been the one to place her finger on that burner.
".... Oh," Umie says, a touch awkward.
Where else would he have seen it?
"Let's see," she quietly continues, a tilt of playful affection. "Was it my criminal record? ... Ah, that may exist, given how corrupt the police department has gotten... or was it my hospital records..."
... She remembers, just then, how he placed his fingers against the indent of her throat, feeling her pulse that one night.
...... Ah.
It nearly becomes her next quip at Shiryuu's expense, until he asks her something that has no business being said so directly, so quietly. Is that strain, in his voice?
"The first symbol is for crow, or raven. The second, truth, reality, seed, nut. The third, branch."
.....
"... Now... tell me yours, Shiryuu."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
"...."
There is a lot, that Shiryuu could say. About the careful method of stride of the ninja; exactly how much training he had to do as a child to make sure he wasn't heard, and how many lashes it was if his instructor did. There's a lot that Shiryuu could argue in that moment.
But he tilts his head downward, pausing instead as he works on tea.
He does, in fact, avoid all three. Well, all but the last -- it's very near where he propped his sword, and arguably the one that set off this entire affair.
It's something easy not to notice, as the boy seems focused on the infusers now, tightening the screws just so as he tests out the small ladle shaped device, opening and closing it twice with two clicks. Click click. It's easy to misplace the way he pauses, when she nettles him just so, the soft little annoyed sound that slips past his lips as her words cause him to adjust an almost entirely imaginary tension overmuch.
There's a lot Shiryuu could do to argue.
Instead, his expression softens, reaching just the right tension of the screw. A small smile, just as well hidden in the dark.
In fact, Shiryuu only moves slower when she recounts it to him, the meaning of the individual kanji that make up 'Umie.' The building blocks of a name, laid out so neatly by a voice that sounds so sure of herself in that moment.
It's something Shiryuu quietly wonders at.
"...The perch of a crow's truth," Shiryuu remarks, his voice wandering along the meaning like fingertips feeling along the fine grains of wood. That, and her family name... it's an implication enough to give the shihaisha pause.
"Could it be .. synthesis .." he thinks, trailing off.
It takes him a moment to quell the notion, replacing it with a search for cups. One is produced by the time the kettle is ready, with the infuser set inside, the leaves portioned out into the mesh chamber, the kettle lifted -- miraculously without burning himself, and she will see where he almost instinctively reaches for a draping sleeve that isn't there -- to pour gently the steaming water over the infuser. Fold the flavors in just so, encouraging the leaves to swell in the basket.
"Ah, I wish mine were as pretty," he says, with a certain weight to his voice as he goes. "The Ryouhara clan were fishermen, originally. It's the sort of name the daimyo picks from a book. Perhaps the Sanada. 'Origin,' 'fishing.' Nagano's waterways are on a flat plane, so...." One of the meanings of the 'hara' kanji is 'plains,' but he doesn't actually explain that.
He thinks of it differently, in an unromantic way, preferring instead to explain circumstances, rather than speculate on the meaning. He lets the tea steep -- not too long, not too short, just a few minutes. "Ah--ch!" Ah yes, this is what happens when you try to carry tea without a saucer, Ryouhara. Your lust for pain is neverending. Oh, luckily, there were saucers, weren't there?
"Hhh. As for 'Shiryuu.'"
He brings her the tea -- on the saucer -- with now-silent steps. Tasks help him focus, apparently, and he kneels closer to her, choosing to sit on the very edge of the futon, before offering her the single cup, in both hands, as he is wont to do. He's only resting just there, on the edge, clearly intending to fetch whatever else is needed.
"... I don't really know. As written, it's very trite. Aspirations of a dragon, or something..." he says, a little colorless about the whole matter, right up until the very end of his thought.
"...I'm told my mother gave it to me."
A small blink banishes the thought. Replaced, neatly.
"Sugar?" Is she the type who likes cream?
You'd think he'd think to ask these things before he brought the tea to her. He absolutely did not.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
A crucial difference, in how an Umie and a Shiryuu did, earlier in their lives. Shiryuu had been born a shinobi, while Umie, had been born a normal girl, with no reason to think about shinobi. Then, in an inner shrine painted red from firelight, a link was made.
Since then, she has been finding ways to make herself smaller, noticeable, louder, less noticable, switching a dial back and forth as needed, in order to remain in control. All that mattered is the first strike; whether it was made to a demon's back or by valiantly drawing attention to her in order to point a nail and mutter a curse, it brought it all under Umie's control.
It was her choice, one that Shiryuu never had.
She sits there on the futon like a smug housecat, curled up in the warmth of the coat. Nightmares may have colored her night, but the sounds and workings of someone she's grown close to are a dream by themselves.
Just let this night never end, and she'll be fine.
"... You make it sound so poetic," she says softly, in the dark. "I didn't like it much, when I was really little. It wasn't really as cute as 'rabbit', or as pretty as 'ocean'. But now... I can't see myself as being anything else. And Akabane, well... 'Red wing'."
'Could it be .. synthesis?' "... Synthesis...?" Hadn't she heard him mention that world before?
Umie's head props itself on the pillow, hair splayed out as she glances up towards Shiryuu with curious, dark eyes. "There's a lot of mythology tied up with fishermen," she says, softly. "And the origin of the shinobi..." Ah, but did Shiryuu need her to comfort him that way?
He makes a pained sound. "... the saucers are in the cupboard to the left. Kurou got some nice ones." She had some, of course, but they were the cheap kind, the sort one would naturally have when starting out so suddenly.
As Shiryuu kneels, Umie sits up, his coat draping over her shoulders, strands of blonde spilling over it. ".... Thank you." She takes the cup from him, and sips.
The warmth of the cup pinkens the edges of her fingertips; Umie's smile is small, but warm, the white of the teacup reflected in her eyes as she glances down at it.
"It's fine just the way it is."
A cup of tea, that someone made for her, after she woke from a nightmare. A mask, showing the cracks of a person placed back together. A presence in an apartment that felt cold, those first few April nights. Kurou said it was warm place.
Is she a warm person?
Is this what it's like, to have...?
".... Aspirations of a dragon." The corners of her lips curl. "I think it fits," Umie says, almost teasing in the way her eyes light up.
'I'm told my mother gave it to me.' Of course, Shiryuu would have a mother. Why does he not seem to remark on her? Does he not care for her at all? The words imply he doesn't seem to know, one way or another.
"Do you remember her, at all?" she asks, quietly, before taking another sip. "... if you... don't mind me asking."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
It's a nice saucer. The warm scent of jasmine blossoms fill the air, with the tea carrying the delicate, natural sweetness of the green tea used. The scent is strong, Ryouhara remarks in a thought -- Kurou's choices in tea are infuriatingly top notch, especially considering his contractors are still trying to sort out what sort of state the electrical service is in his apartment.
Shiryuu himself has very little command of these things, often entrusting it to subordinates, a fact he reminds himself by furtively rubbing at a flush mark on his hand absently, between his thumb and forefinger.
But, he was successful. His elbows slide to his knees as he looks down, thinking as she reflects on it.
'It's fine just the way it is.' If it didn't drain from his shoulders then and there, it would have been hard to realize exactly how much tension the onmitsu was carrying over it.
A smile, satisfied and furtive, flashes across his face for an instant.
"...I'm glad."
But then.. what is there in a name? The little way she needles at him earns her a tilted expression from the grey-headed boy, somewhere between scandalized and amused, and there is a moment in which he simply doesn't know which is which. It takes him a second to realize other things were said.
"...ah, I'm sorry."
He was too tied up in .. thinking, he hopes, and not hoping to think. They were talking about shinobi. "I'm not being a very good conversationalist, I fear... but, yes. Such as it is, our clan has come a long way. But, it's safe to say that there were no river gods looking out for us in Sengoku," he says, with a ruefully soft laugh.
"...just crows," he thinks aloud, stealing a glance of her.
He mentions nothing, notably, of 'synthesis.'
Instead, the shinobi moves very slightly to settle into the tiny amount of real estate he's claimed on that futon, just enough that he can turn and mind her directly, taking the time to lean over carefully. As if to re-affirm it, he fastens his jacket more snugly around her shoulders, to better capture the warmth and keep it from slipping while she drinks.
"It's fine." This time, he is not paying as much attention, as he is busy talking.
"... just what I've been told," is what he says, busying himself with the moment. ".. nothing interesting, certainly," the silver-haired boy remarks, with a pretty little smile that seems to last forever.
"But, a name can be enough, I hope. Maybe I'll grow into it...?"
The subject smoothly is replaced with his worrying over her. Shiryuu's taste has always been in the sensation of things. The bite of his dark jacket is soft, the silk lining trapping a layer of warm air close to the skin. The drape of a hood adds extra warmth about the neck, and it carries his scent, somewhere between the fresh rain and a warm citrus.
He was out in the rain earlier, after all.
But then, the scent isn't unfamiliar, is it?
The onmitsu's hands hold there, at her shoulders, unwilling to fall away.
"Iih... no .. your name is better," he opines, tersely. That winning smile, if it ever truly was there, is gone. "It's... the right one, I think. It's not so easy, to live life for those around you. To take shattered futures, and put them back together."
He thinks of Kurou, and the look she gave him, that day, telling him how worse off his subordinate was.
"It sounds like someone who stands for broken things..."
He thinks of those broken masks, and that battle at the beach.
He nods, once, the decision already made ages ago.
"'Umie Akabane.' That's the name I like the most."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
When did it happen?
When did the young man who threatened her in that darkened part of the undergound mall become such a tender presence in her life?
An agent she had tried to hurt, who tried to hurt her, who threatened her, who she threatened (albeit not as well).
Now, she sees those fluttering smiles, evasive like smoke, and feels happy to have witnessed them at all- not because she sought them out, but because they happened naturally.
She wouldn't tell him the tea was good just to see a smile. How would he know, otherwise, how she's taken to certain types of tastes?
Just like she wouldn't assure him that, no, actually, he was an excellent conversationalist. "I don't recall stating a preference for the kind of person I wanted to come to me, after I had a nightmare," she remarks. The mild threat of a quiet apartment seems too sharp, then, at the memory of it, even if she's preferred it, on other nights.
"Nothing wrong with crows," she laughs.
His hands on her shoulders, pressing the jacket against her shirt. It can be enough to let the way he lets the mention of his mother float away, like the cold of the room.
The scent of rain, and citrus: the former she is always a fan of, and the latter, a taste of something to draw it out.
She closes her eyes, letting herself seep in the moment, like the tea leaves in water.
"Shiryuu is a good name." She means it.
'To take shattered futures, and put them back together.'
... I'm a coward who hides in shadows, she wants to say.
This is just to make me not feel it when you slip the knife into my back, she also wants to say.
Is she, really, this person that Kurou and Shiryuu believe her to be? Or is she only that way, when the winds benefit her?
Umie Akabane is the name of a coward who stands for nothing but herself, when it's convenient for her.
"... Could you..." Her gaze slips down, as her fingers wander over the white of the tea cup. ".... stay with me, tonight? Your sleep's probably not been great, but... at least, then, you don't have to worry about the trip back, until tomorrow morning."
To be this shy is embarrassing, but there was a different mood to his touch and voice, when he came to her.
To lean on someone like this is...
Dangerous.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
A slow blink, as she responds, with a little laugh that genuinely confuses him. Aaa, Ryouhara finally realizes exactly the discrepancy. Shiryuu, you're messing things up again..
"Ii-- ... sorry."
Gone is the meandering thought of a moment ago, the orator in him vacant and abandoned pride of place, as is too oft easy when it's her. "In our family ... crows are protectors. They watched over us, when no one else did."
Some think that crows are ill omens, blackbirds that foretell only despair and death. It's not the case, and in that context ... it makes things different. Makes them feel right.
And, it feels more right than most things he could think of, to be here like this, keeping an important person warm. It's easy to get lost there, in the way his hands lower, to cup her forearms snug, the overlap of his sweater over his palms cushioning and warranting further against the over-chilled brisk.
Somewhere past that warmth, he finally realizes.
Somewhere, somewhen, a thought occurred to him that she could be cold and hurt in the rain, and, even if it's only him, even if it's only the miserable reach of the dark... it couldn't be allowed.
'Shiryuu is a good name.'
A tiny droplet of confusion wreaks havoc on the boy's carefully moderated neutral expression, the thin line of his lips becoming a little less sure. "...thank you," he says.
Under his hand, he had assured the name had become cursed. He spent a lot of time enforcing the power of his way in the world. She would not had been any exception. And now ... even if he prided himself on his word, the calculus changes, and now he's not so sure what he needs to do anymore.
It's easy to tell himself that it'll be alright if he's here. Even if it's only him. A child that spent her life so alone shouldn't be ...
Shaded grey lashes raise as he tracks when she looks away. He is more attentive when she's not speaking. When she's not nettling him, in her way -- and she's not saying all of the thousand things she says every waking minute to turn his mind mirrored -- he can notice.
Like just now, it seemed like doubt in her eyes...
Caution and concern wander the grey haired boy's brown eyes as he watches her for a long time, his glance chancing across the way she slides a finger across the rim of that cup. The way she asks him to stay.
A sharper part of him recognizes the vulnerability.
Another part breaks entirely for her.
Even if he doesn't deserve it...
"... aa."
He sounds ... happy.
His hands slide the length of her arms, finding way to hers, over the teacup. One single squeeze, before he nods.
The motion is slow, intent, as his touch falls away. Instead of leaving, the boy settles primly in place alongside her. One hand folds over the other in his lap, covering his hands with the dense wool of his sleeves. A slow breath escapes his chest.
"... I suppose I can clean up in the morning," he reasons.
Even for all of his informed power, and all of his training, he still can't say something brave, like her. Something cool, like she might. Instead, a glance lets him peer at her in increment, a flash of the imperious shihaisha as he comforts himself right there. There is a ghost of something serious in his voice, even as he breaks the lightest, surest confidence.
"... I'll find these nightmares of yours, and crush them in the starlight."