2026-04-05: A Cup for Two
- Log: A Cup for Two
- Cast: Shiryuu Ryouhara, Umie Akabane
- Where: Hotel Indigo Rooftop, Shibuya
- OOC Date: 2026-04-05
- IC Date: Oct 20 2012
- Summary: After an idyllic meeting with Kurou, Ren and Umie, Ryouhara returns more properly to his empty room at the Indigo. Later that night he meets the latter at the rooftop cafe atop the hotel, to answer for acts far less warmly resolved.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The Hotel Indigo isn't particularly far from her apartment, just on the other side of the crossing. It seems almost obvious that the proximity is the point, a closer space to monitor Kurou's comings and goings, even if not Umie's directly. So it makes a fair bit of sense that Shiryuu would choose it for a meeting.
She said she needed to figure things out with him..
Unlike a lot of other places in the Shibuya skyline, the Indigo actually has an upscale rooftop terrace area named for the art gallery the building hosts on its eleventh floor, so there is very little lockpicking required this time to gain rooftop access. Just someone asking to see if she's on the reservation list. Interestingly, she is.
The elegant tumble of torches, lanterns, patio furniture and gazebos forms a sprawling thicket over the carpeted terrace in the evening. The sun is just now beneath the horizon, leaving pinkish traces and the dull moon in a fattening crescent, a giant smoky scythe shape hung just over the cityscape itself, poised to shortly follow the sunset as well. The air is still damp and crisp from the rain earlier, and if one strained their ears, they could still hear echoing patters from the condensation of buildings dripping into alleyways far below.
The onmitsu is not sitting with any of the other scattered socialites in the middle of the terrace proper. He's managed to get over one of the glass barriers in an out of the way section of the roof, just past a little copse of cultivated potted juniper trees. Hardly immediately visible, which is likely why nobody's asked him to come down yet.
That, and he is known as a very generous guest who likes to be left to his own devices.
The fall chill is inspiring, despite the air distortion cast by the outdoor heaters and torches for lighting. The boy has changed out his haori for a full black and blue color-blocked jacket, thick and layered with an overbuilt collar likely doubling as an attachment point for a zip-on hood. Somewhat predictably, it is blazoned with the three leaves symbol in a tiny stamp in the middle of the shoulderblades.
The boy's sitting there on the edge, watching the horizon in silence. At his knees, fingertips tap together pensively.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
"Ah, reservation... Umie Akabane."
At the question of whether Umie has a reservation, Umie barely gets to think of some explanation/white lie before she is told that she's already on the list.
.... Oh. Well. That makes things easier.
Walking out into the brisk fall chill, Umie's thankful for the outdoor heaters, which reduce the colder temperature from the higher altitude to being on par with what it'd be closer to the ground.
It's the sky that draws Umie's consideration the most, however, once she tears her eyes away from the glitter of socialites.
Now, where would an onmitsu be?
.... somewhere else, most likely. If limited to this roof, he must be... over there, past those glass barriers.
Her senses confirm it, sensing that familiar resonance of his, a rhythm like a heartbeat in one's ears, easily ignored until someone looks for it.
Even without the use of her Persona, there's a way to become ignored; one merely needs to seem like they belong there, and past that, not gawk at the sky like it's your first time up here. Be ignorable. Be a blackbird.
Soon enough, with a bit of waiting, she's on the other side, quietly leaving the warmth of the heaters to Shiryuu, there on the edge. "Hey," she says, kneeling down into a crossed leg position near him.
As much as she'd skip through the night from certain heights, she needs the embrace of the Badb to even feel like it was worth the risk.
"Did I keep you waiting?"
Her coat is pink, her usual grey too light, and a burnt mess besides. As it is, even this temporary replacement feels too thin, against the chill up here.
But the view makes it worth some chill alone.
"It's a beautiful sight," she says, keeping her volume low.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Tap tap tap. The boy's hands never seem to sit quite still. Subconsciously, the tapping rhythm matches that subconscious beat in his energy, the thing all but invisible to the spiritually insensate. It is a feat that she can pick up on it all -- shinobi are not well known for easily detectable resonance.
Ah, but she is so very familiar with his, and his reaches so far for her. The onmitsu's resonance has always been slightly more magnified than most shinobi, moreso lately than usual.
But above a whisper is still sotto voce, and so he's not entirely surprised for her to find him. To the contrary, the grey-haired boy's expression changes when he sees her, the silent song of his darkened mien lifting in tenor by a key.
Fingertips stop, for a second, two.
'It's a beautiful sight.' "It is," Shiryuu agrees distantly, looking at her directly for a long, mystified second, before a spate of self-awareness rises, and the boy is forced to look away again.
He blinks twice, as if just now becoming aware of the skyline he's been staring at for the past hour.
"....iih. You didn't keep me waiting," Ryouhara says quietly, the space between his fingertips opening like a gate to all available thought. Hands hover there in space, a moment, as he looks, again. Just a quick glance, this time.
He doesn't know if her jacket is thick enough for the weather right now. But the boy luckily manages to keep his concerns to a dull roar inside of his own head for the moment. It's taken out on his fingertips, wide open palms tapping together again.
He breathes out. "...but.."
That resonance dims, ever slightly.
"... a bird's told me that we have things to figure out."
For good or ill, he wants to add.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
Being a veteran brings certain perks, when it comes to looking, and sensing other resonances. There are people who already dwarf her in terms of ability, but for Umie, with experience comes the honed ability to sometimes pick up on the more subtle beats.
Especially when she's fallen asleep being aware of them, and finding comfort in them.
He agrees, that it's a beautiful sight.... while looking at her, for a long, dazed second.
On another person, Umie would find it frustrating. On him, it's charming. Adorable, one could say.
Her mouth snakes in a sideways smirk. "... The sunset."
It's hard to believe, in these moments, that this could be the same person that kidnapped a Phantom Thief. However, she knows better.
"Mmn, a bird certainly did," Umie says, her expression caught between a pixie's smile and a frown.
One never forgets their first, as Shiryuu once said to her, upon a time.
The first person she's ever fought with a Persona, and the first person she's ever seriously felt so strongly about.
"I talked with Phoenix-san, finally," she says, "I needed to understand what was going on, especially as..."
No, don't talk about people questioning you, Umie thinks.
"I finally understand the reasoning, though likely not the parts you'd likely want me to," she admits. "A Phantom Thief would be able to slip away quite easily. Assuming this was a supernatural area, since Ryouhara-kun and the Phantom Thieves were able to summon their Personas... you'd had to mentally exhaust someone, in order to keep them from summoning their Persona straight away."
She looks over the sunset.
"You charged them with a heavy task, one I won't speak of freely here. You gave them a jade locket, and after five songs are done, you'd kill everyone they loved, as well as them."
She breathes in a sigh. "Do you understand... how this would likely end up with the Phantom Thieves being destroyed. They'll take Phoenix-san's burden as all their own. It's the only way that group can survive, cut off as they are. Their hidden identities is their strength, but it's also very easily going to cause them to fall if they misstep."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
It feels like an eternity ago, those scant months between then and now.
Shiryuu's open concern about her comforts are mercifully wrangled for now, and the way she specifies exactly what it is she's talking about is enough to break his concentration of any other lingering distractions.
"....ah," the boy replies, somewhat awkwardly, his mouth partly open as he considers the barren landscape of his own thought.
Truthfully, it's more her than him that builds his mindspace. Patiently, a brick at a time, as the little crow tells the grey-headed boy everything that she's found out. A tiny, the smallest quirk of pensive distress reaches his lip, somewhere between a genuine sadness, and an acid annoyance.
"... you shouldn't be involved," he remarks.
It's not a stain that should be on her hands.
And he does notice when she fails to bring up a complication. He looks at her very closely, during that moment. It's only when he can produce nothing of use for his perspicacity that he relents, slow.
"To wear the mask of a shinobi ... is to be subject to the rules of the world of night."
Slowly, the grey-haired boy's admission causes him to interlace his fingertips. Gone is the nervous energy, the anxiety. It's dulled, numbed, by something in the back of his throat. There is steel in his voice, but somewhere beyond that..
"...It's not a place where a person can get away with half-measures," he continues. "It is a cruel world, a brutal world. A world that doesn't obey laws or limits."
He looks up, to the far distance, tracking her line of attention.
"...In that occult night, outside those protective moors of order, the shape of a thief and a killer are the same. There, ambition will easily doom you. There is no disguise you can clutch. No curse you can shout, that will keep you safe. These ideas are only pretty 'maboroshi,' waiting for the sunset."
It hurts, to hear her repeat it. Which is why he listens closely. The crime is his, and he assumes it as needed. There is no point to regretting anything for what is already done. For once, the interminable colorlessness is a benefit.
"I'm not a 'good' person. There is no limit to what I will do to protect those whom I'm responsible for. These children fight, and they rile against the natural order. But they will learn to protect their own with the same resolve, so that they never have to..."
...The boy blinks.
"...I will bring them all under my protection, in the end," he decides.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
It may be difficult, for Shiryuu, to fully forget his earlier assessment of Umie's coat, as time goes by.
Namely, because of how closer she keeps getting as the minutes tick by, like an oncoming cold front slowly inching across a radar screen, not even conscious of how she's drawing closer the the nearest source of heat here.
He still has time to escape, at this point, but not for long...
'You shouldn't be involved.' Therein lies where Umie can see where that belief occurs: when someone works alone, it'd be natural to expect that all costs would begin and end with one's self.
It's how she's operated, in the dark, with only demons knowing what she did, night by night.
A lonely existence, that exists without bonds.
Shiryuu can no longer afford to pretend he exists outside of them, if he wants that connection to the world, and... neither does she.
"Phoenix-san... is not someone who sees things in shades of grey. They're liable to see enemies in everyone. They may tear everything down around them in order to appease that paranoia." Like that nurse, at the Sanitarium. Phoenix didn't see someone who was stuck, defenseless, likely doing the best they could. Maybe, they were as terrible as Phoenix thought. There was no way of knowing, and that's why, as someone who existed in the grey, Umie stepped in, her own manner of looking at things causing both parties to find her the one that was wrong. Maybe, that nurse was as terrible as Phoenix thought.
No wonder Phoenix and Tsubasa are friends; they likely find peace in each other like she and Shiryuu do, in their own similarities.
"Shiryuu." She's an inch closer than she was before, drawn to Shiryuu's warmth like an oblivious moth to one of the torches set up several feet away.
"... What about those, who had something taken from them, because they were seen?"
She's not sure how to make it make sense, as she finds herself turning the topic to herself, selfishly.
"On the zeppelin, the Black Mask was there. He was the one to make sure the Old Maid was dead and gone. I even have a fragment of the weird bullet he used. He could have killed Sudou cleanly, but he didn't. He wanted everyone to know it was him, and how everyone was in danger, from him specifically. Them, and their loved ones."
She holds her knees to her chest. "The only people he couldn't threaten were the Mask-sans. He could only threaten them directly."
Wait.
She looks at Shiryuu. ".... You... wouldn't know either, would you? Who to target."
Red-brown eyes, so close now that Shiryuu can see how they're tinted by the sunset, blink.
Is this... just a ploy? "Phoenix-san is taking you seriously... just what are you aiming for, Shiryuu?"
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
"Paranoia..." Ryouhara echoes, somewhere in the midst of a thought.
"Mmm."
The sound is short, sharp, unsurprised. There's no doubt that Shiryuu picks up on the subtleties of it, the connection between 'bonds' and a price that falls outside where it should for the crime of 'what must be done.'
He breathes out, sword-long and slow, his eyes down over the precipice, and into the chasmal void and the pretty end below. Every so often, his eyes flick, beneath the veiling shroud of his hair. His attention dances, from the streets below to the boundary of the little ledge they've absconded to. There would be a 'guilt' about him, but the struggle in the boy is less that, and more the sharp eyes and intense thought of being presented a problem. Thought occurs like distant cracks of lightning over the city, the impulse driving him.
"The idea of paranoia is 'maboroshi,'" he finally says.
"The idea of an objective, incontrovertible black and white, 'maboroshi.'"
"The idea that one could know everything against them, that if they persecute endlessly, that they'll keep a safe life ... 'maboroshi.'"
The boy raises a hand, pushing a whole handful of dingy grey back over his hairline wearily. It never quite lasts, but it eases his own pensive nerves. Now more than it has recently, though he's hardly aware of the reason why just yet, so tied up in his thought. "Pretty, fanciful dreams, all of it. Entertaining those fantasies, for a young X charged with our future, will simply get them killed. If they're lucky, it will be them. If not... it will be someone else. They're doomed, the moment they run up against something ... someone, real."
"....like the Black Mask."
Shiryuu is passingly familiar with the name, and the dark message he sent did not escape his notice, when she tells him exactly how much of a threat was posed. That she admits to having a fragment of the bullet is only the beginning of his sudden shift to an alert mien, the idle verveless pitch of his spine replaced with a discomfited straightening.
The boy presses his hands into the knees of his pants, as if trying to evict the other feeling, the burning notion of 'the Old Maid is dead' scalding something very deep.
"....be careful of that fragment," he says instead of anything else, pressing the feeling at the back of his throat down and away. "They're not safe to handle for long periods, my shokunin tell me."
'...You wouldn't know either, would you? Who to target.'
"...that's n--" He almost disabuses her of the notion. But it's at that exact moment, looking into her reddish eyes, that he realizes exactly how close she is. The boy's own eyes widen in faint alarm. When did...?
Her eyes almost gild with gold in this light, he notices.
"....mnnh."
Two-tone eyes shutter, half-lidding. The boy starts with a smooth touch along the pink of her jacket absently, thoughtless instinct to interrogate the make, the depth of it. A wandering touch, the same as his thought, minding her lapels, the closures. A tiny, small tug at the neckline, to touch bared skin with the back of his fingers. A thought, before the boy leans over.
"...are you _freezing,_ Akabane?"
It's something that would be confused for a kiss -- were it not that he's done the very same before. Instead of affection, the boy presses his lips unbidden against her collarline, letting the intimate warmth of him -- intense warmth -- settle, as he feels the temperature of her skin against his.
'Just what are you aiming for?'
"...synthesis," he explains against her, returning to his prior thought.
As if it explained anything. It does not.
Absolutely not, the boy decides. Ryouhara worms himself out of his massive jacket, a shoulder at a time. "..ih--" as the air hits him, fended off only by his extraordinarily dense and omnipresent sweater.
This he drops on her shoulders unceremoniously. The jacket is *heavy*. It's almost assuredly has a bunch of things in the pockets. "I'll be merciless, ruthless, a terrible oni, if needed," he thinks, hands setting onto Akabane's shoulders, making sure his jacket sits just right.
"...but I will break those maboroshi, and show every last one of them what it means to protect something important."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
"... How is that any different than someone like me, so does similar things?" Umie quietly debates. "Phoenix-san likely only Awakened recently; that, or they've been hiding like I've been." She glances out towards the landscape of skyscrapers. "Not everyone is like me, or you. I have the advantage of experience, and... my parents weren't... extremely rich, but they're more well-off than many." Thanks to their connections through the NWO, anyway.
The setting sun produces harsh angles in the lines of Umie's face, as she lightly scowls at the thought.
All the better to avoid looking at Shiryuu herself, and the way his face is lit, his grey hair taking on muted tones of sunset. The way his eyes focus on the buildings below, like a hawk, deep in thought.
Umie's bias is implicit in the way she treats Shiryuu, versus someone like Hyousuke. Their thinking can fall along the same black and white, of 'right' and 'wrong', though Shiryuu's framing is very different.
Shiryuu, however, is not spared the fury of Umie's supposition; in fact, he may even recieve the worst of it, being that Umie feels no need to draw back her punches.
Shiryuu has made it clear, after all, that he could take it. This, too, is what it means to have a 'bond': a way to be shown the world, and those connections that come with it.
"Wouldn't the legacies of families like yours have started out as something classified the same way? As fanciful dreams, up until the people behind them proved they weren't."
.... Could that be Shiryuu's point, Umie wonders? If so, he's woefully behind on considering just how such tests can go far, far off. "Someone like Phoenix-san will not learn this way. You're assuming they'll draw the same conclusions as you, or even me, or fail by the same measures you'd judge yourself by."
Like the Black Mask, a challenge Shiryuu himself seemed uncomfortable with, when she brought up the fragment. Umie's expression flattens; she brings up an index finger, playfully wagging a pink-orange nail in Shiryuu's direction with a wink. "Tsk tsk. By your logic, it would behoove me to investigate. To believe that something so dangerous could be ignored? Ma-bo-ro-shi~" (.... by her logic, as well, but Umie's not about to share that.)
She's about to take out her fragment when she feels the touch of Shiryuu's fingers against her jacket. "... Ah?" She stops, one end of her lips quirking in a smile. "Cold? Oh, I'll be fine, I'm just..." Her words still as he leans in, as if going for a kiss.
... for what Umie *hoped* was a kiss.
It's like revenge, for all the times she's made him go mute, or worse, made him unable to think at all. His lips are right there, on the exposed skin of her collarbone, and Umie just stops there, still shocked at the tickle of grey hair against her chin, and the feel of lips against the rise of her collarbone. It's new, but furiously welcomed; her hand could, at any point slap him away, but no urge comes to Umie to do anything other than bring her fingers to make a stupefied trail against the back of Shiryuu's head.
"Sh.... S...." It could sound like Umie is freezing, from the way she's trying to say his name. He feels as warm as she had subconsciously hoped, as she positioned herself closer and closer to him.
Her eyes flutter closed. She fails at doing anything more, more dazed than he's likely seen her, when he backs away.
"S-urely you're going to get cold!" she then interjects back, when he pulls away from her, taking off his jacket.
*whup* Shiryuu's own jacket hangs heavy around her shoulders.
A merciless, terrible oni... who worries over things like coats and how prepared for the cold she is.
What was he saying, when he spoke against her?
.... Synthesis. Right...
"Not everything has to exist in the day or night," Umie says, with some humor, as she tries to regain her control. Her eyes are cast aside, her cheeks, still red. "Somethings can only exist in the inbetween. I also refused to align myself to your rules."
Her point would be better, if she wasn't lost in Shiryuu's jacket.
"Am I not also maboroshi...?"
She pauses. "Get close to me at the very least!" Like a hen waiting for a much larger chick to join her under her wing, Umie holds up the side of the jacket closest to him. "Come on!"
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Now, what kind of oni would Ryouhara be, if he were to do something devillish like 'kiss Akabane to win an argument?' Of course he wouldn't do anything that untoward or dishonorable.
Jogashima Park doesn't count.
"Mmm," he thinks, far too close to her. Even if he enjoys her touch along the back of his head, the grey-haired boy is listening, truthfully. In fact, Shiryuu is (comparably) much less interested in the kiss, or exactly where he might be kissing than the regrettable abdication of her jacket's responsibilities. A jacket is supposed to keep you warm, and clearly, it's not doing well for her. As someone who he would call his 'bond,' it's not acceptable. 'Absolutely not,' in other words.
'Surely you're going to get too cold!' Not relevant.
Shiryuu's jacket, like literally everything he wears, is much heavier, and intensely warm. It also, paradoxically, breathes well. It is, in fact, the latest technology.
Once his jacket is gifted, once his hands lift from her shoulders, the onmitsu does lean back, giving her just a bit of room to breathe, to further oppose him if need be. It's not like the point is lost on him; that the differences in their upbringing make very, very different people. That her well to-do bearing and his own ... exemplary, peerless and without weakness ... life meant that they came to certain conclusions on their own that no one else would.
A person's belief is molded by their preconceptions. And those observations and preconceptions are what their world is built on. Mmm. The boy's lips part with his sigh, setting his hands against his knees and straightening his elbows.
He finds himself thinking instead about the way Akabane wagged his finger at him just then, the gesture far too close for his comfort. The color of her nails, the way her lips quirked around his word, 'maboroshi.'
...it really is cold, isn't it?
His eyes closed, grimly satisfied that she's taken care of for now. "It is the responsibility of the strong to care for those who will inherit the future. If we are really so much better off, it is up to us to show them the way. They deserve the chance to make the choice for themselves, with full understanding, before the world ..."
The boy's eyes are hard and faraway, as he struggles with the idea inside of his own head. She's seen him do this before; when too many thoughts are rattling around in his head at once.
"...it can't be left to just chance," the boy says, determined. "Even for what it means I have to be, it just can't," he repeats. It's almost more to himself than anything.
He tangles up in his own thoughts. As a result, he is completely and mercifully unaware of the flush of her cheeks and her entire loss for words. It's a miserable situation, to not be paying attention at all when you have the upper hand on your rival. It's only until he hears the crack of his own jacket being raised like some grand wing that his attention is drug away.
"...." He sighs, any hopes of holding his train of thought entirely defeated.
She said that some things can be between night and day, but...
With an aloof, imperious discretion, the grey-haired boy relents, lifting his hips just enough to slide across the ledge to hers, until a tiny -bump- erases any pretense of there being space between them. The difference in their height becomes painfully obvious, this close, as the boy has to become very, very small to fit under the same jacket as her. One arm loops with hers, wrist to wrist, a quiet, spartan ask for a hand to thoughtfully entwine his with. "I don't know.."
".. you don't _feel_ like 'maboroshi,'" the shihaisha thinks aloud.
The moment turns on its own. Shiryuu is left to mull on what's been said, and the mild humor caught in his voice does decant the stress, the tension, most of the thoughts rolling around in his head, the boy's alert visibly easing as he relaxes around her. He blinks. The moment wants to last forever.
"... this is a very inefficient use of my jacket, Akabane."
It doesn't.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
Jogashima Park absolutely counts, Umie would say. (And it was great and she'd occasionally find herself daydreaming about it. She'd love for it to happen again.)
And it's not like Umie hasn't enjoyed her own methods of distraction when it came to Shiryuu. She deployed a few, just now. Was it intentional, or just idle flirting?
.... Was Shiryuu kissing her on the collarbone, or checking her temperature?
It is something to note in how, Umie, so used to being the one who came from a well-to-do background (at least, for the last half of her life), still pales in comparison to Shiryuu. She still had an allowance, and things weren't to be frivolously wasted just because.
There were no luxurious hotels with high rises, for one; her parents were far too married to their work to think of things like 'family vacations' once Umie was older. So much of the oxygen that would go towards what seemed like a normal family life felt siphoned entirely to the Order and its grander, photogenic whims, and the pursuit of betterment.
Even a simple jacket feels like something so much more lavish than the coats she had, well over a year ago. Something nicely made, rather than just priced because of fashion or taste.... hardly the thing Umie would ever consider wearing so openly.
"... Who gave us that right, to decide for others what the right way is?" Umie says, her eyes looking away from Shiryuu's own, before she's tempted to look longer, at how his face follows that familiar manner of his, caught deep in thought, hovering on a tightrope over uncertainty and chaos.
She reaches out, to brush a hand over his cheek, studying the play of shadows her fingers draw across it.
.... She was going to say something, but her voice lies still, her thoughts aligning with the arc of her thumb against his jaw.
So much of this is simple infatuation; the lure of something new and just forbidden enough to draw out the blackbird in her soul. Danger, but also, a person who dances on the same fields as her, who understands what it means to think and ponder the same thoughts and questions, whether or not he draws different conclusions.
His cheek feels cool. No, this will not do, thinks Umie Akabane. Absolutely not.
She urges Shiryuu underneath his own coat, and only thinks about how it feels to be sharing the same jacket as him when the sides of their bodies touch.
It is absolutely ridiculous, and Shiryuu may definitely spot the way her face is trying to look downward, in order to hide that selfish little gremlin grin, that greedy glint in her eyes as she soaks in that closeness.
'You don't _feel_ like 'maboroshi',' he says. Umie cranes her head up towards him, lips curving in a mischievous smile as she leans a touch closer, her fingers entwining around his.
"Then what am I?" She has a few ideas on what his answers will be, as she playfully tests his limits.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Inexorably, the soft lines of the silhouettes between them eclipse, despite all reservations of the shirogarasu to the contrary. Certainly, there's a part of him that mulls over the safety and practicality of it. There is a lump that is almost assuredly a sheathed knife in his leftmost inner pocket. Another suspicious hard spot that feels entirely too much like an incendiary device. Mm. Perhaps he should have considered that.
It seems less important now. Most of Shiryuu's attention is lost to thoughts of her, all but swallowed up in the drape of his coat -- large for him, and likely all but a cloak for the grinning blackbird. Between the two of them there is enough room, but only just so, and only just so for the boy's taste in oversized clothing.
Almost like he leaves just enough room for someone else.
"--! ...ihh..."
There is much lost in the delineations between 'what he thinks' and 'the words he says.' For all of the talent that exists between them, they are still handicapped by a lack of synchronicity, he is painfully aware. The little awkward moments, the tiny bits of indiscretion, when it shamefully takes him a second to even remember what it was that was so important.
His skin was cool to the touch then, even with the way he almost fell off the building in raw escape instinct in reaction. It takes him a long time and a lot of self-recrimination before he can relax in that way. Before he can share that space with her honestly.
What was it he was saying? A stronger person would be better at this.
"... it's not a right," Shiryuu finds the words, quietly.
"If fate finds it in her heart to gift you something, it is not without a cost. You're obligated not to waste it. Not even for a second."
He spent far too long idle, is the unspoken thought.
It's shameful, how long it takes him to slide his fingers between hers, the sure, and easy way she claims him as hers not at all reciprocated in the smooth, silken way he'd like. Ryouhara is painfully aware of every second, the hidden softness of that wild creature, and the feel of her hand wound up in his. The way he relaxes with her is almost a fought instinct, little electric charges of tension winding him up for every small concession.
'Then.. what am I?'
She looks up at him, with that easy blackbird smile of hers, and the young man does his best with being brave, with being calm. As if nothing cost anything.
Perhaps, if he holds onto her hand with both of his, he can hold that second tight. His forehead lowers to meet hers, the cool press of skin to skin, three different shades of brown mixing in the way he looks at her. First down along the contour of her lips, then up, to meet her eyes. Grey hair feathers into blonde in the proximity.
She can tell which of his irises is fake, the slightly lighter shade, the normally indistinguishable wire buried in the striations, in the whites. He is close enough for her to track every saccade, and the neutral, firm press of his lips, the way they break into a flicker of a smile, watery and brief. An infatuation, distracted and awkward.
He wants to kiss her. Arguably, he already has. But .. the tumble of thought means he takes Akabane's question entirely too seriously.
"... you're someone who is going to be important to the entire world," he says, after a thought plucks away every other middling answer.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
To her credit, when Shiryuu reacts, Umie's first instinct isn't to poke fun or roll her eyes at him. Her eyes soften, and she holds her hand in place, giving Shiryuu a chance to move away, or get used to her touch. "Sometimes I forget." Just how much touch can draw a different reaction from him, if she acts without remembering his own comfort. "... Just how quick you are."
... It's a dressed up way of saying 'she's sorry she almost made you fall off a building'.
"... Then... it's your duty to see if your methods are hampering your message." She can't argue Shiryuu out of this, nor does she find it her duty to plunge into the same depths of black and white. Her loyalty is sound to those she gives it to, sometimes to a fault, but how she expresses it is another matter. Phoenix *does* need to understand how their actions affect others, especially when the key to the Phantom Thieves' downfall could be any weak link. She disagrees with Shiryuu's methods, however, and feels the bonds Pheonix has with the Phantom Thieves is a stronger teacher.
Unless... "... You want to be their enemy," Umie summarizes, using a few words to convey what Shiryuu had spent many to communicate to her. (Who is meant by 'they' is.... another matter.)
"I will warn you-- my disagreement with your methods may mean we'll fight, in the future. I've made it clear to Kurou that it's okay if this happens, and that he's to fight me like he did the Phantom Thieves."
There it is: Shiryuu's own private little blackbird's smile, cutting and sweet, like a citrus fruit biting against the tongue. "And if that day comes, I'll fight you." A promise, that Umie is certain Shiryuu'd want to hear.
What is she?
.... If Umie wasn't enjoying the closeness of their foreheads together, the way she can clearly see which eye of his is which, and the strands of hair haphazardly pressed together... She would have had trouble forming a thought between the startling grandness of his words, and the secret, selfish glee, not to mention the curiosity in just how he means it.
She closes her eyes, instead, a smile threatening against her lips, despite how she tries to tamp it down.
"... The only world I'm interested in is just yours." As if there was anything in Shiryuu that could be regarded as 'just'... except for all the things he tries to hide. The flicker of smiles, the troubling dreams, the way he feels he needs to leave, even when his company is wanted.
.... even when he himself wants the company, and especially when it's something he wants.
.....
Ah. There it is. The black mixing in with the grey and blonde. The coy giggle.
The sensation of being watched, and percieved.
'Go on, Umie-chan. Kiss him. Tell him you're his entire world, and him yours. Betray all your creeds, because you love pretty little words telling you how special you are.'
Umie reaches into her jacket with her free hand, pressing her hands about a certain fragment.
Silence.
She gives a nervous, bewildered little giggle, her eyes staring past Shiryuu entirely.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
"... it's okay."
It borders on painful, the sharp, sudden realization that he's running away from something he really shouldn't. Instinct and reflexes lay raw and chastised, lost in the comfort he takes from Umie, the blackbird's touch, and her all-but-apologia.
The thought does occur to him she might be humoring his nature, a thought that burns a little more than he thought it would when he finally relents into her, giving in just slightly. Just enough for the world to drain from his shoulders. Even if only for now.
".... aa.."
The consent comes quietly, thoughtfully. As if expected, certainly -- the shihaisha Shiryuu Ryouhara has never met a responsibility he didn't like, and the charge is no different. But the boy doesn't seem at all unmoored by her dissent. This close, the only evidence that she'd said anything disagreeable at all would be the slow incline of his stare away from her eyes, the slow, deliberate blink. The smallest of consents, even when that foxfire smile disappears in the black.
He isn't looking for a subordinate. Not with Umie.
'... You want to be their enemy.'
"Everyone's," Shiryuu clarifies. She's always been better than him at the simple things. "Fate has been kind to me." For what I've squandered. "...even now."
There is a cost to this, too.
I'll fight you. "With everything you have," he tells her, in no uncertain terms. A thought warms the neutrality of his tight, uneasy expression. The radiance finds its way to his eyes, but never more than a kindling flame.
"...we're cruel, to make fate choose between us, you know."
The grey-headed boy waits for Umie there in that drift, letting the times settle overlong, at the very end of the conversation. 'His world.' His heart beats faster, the subconscious rhythm permeating his life moves faster. It's hard for him to focus on just that much.
"...I'd like to show you, someday," he breathes.
A genuine want, though he never explains further.
Instead, the boy finds himself distracted. His eyes are fast, and attention that is all too easily cowed by even a glance from her is loosed like an arrow the moment her concentration breaks. He picks up on her unease, the hapless sound of laughter in a cant he's never quite placed before.
'Sometimes you're somewhere I can't follow.'
Shiryuu lowers himself to her, shifting his weight slightly, the drag of his grey strands snaking across her hairline, down her forehead. He'll give her a single, brief kiss. An infinitely small one, less to give in to any want but to remind her that the drop beneath their feet is not so far that he wouldn't catch her. She could stop him easily.
Is it fine if he kisses her like this? It's an open question.
"... Hey, come back.."
'Are you okay?'
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
Is it okay?
It'll take a while, most likely, and may not completely leave Shiryuu at all, that sharply tense nature.
That's fine.
Just like it's okay, when Shiryuu glances away from Umie's challenge.
An acceptance that they'll come to blows, and it didn't change how they feel, about each other.
Where in one moonlit night, Umie would have refused, in another, she may rise to Shiryuu's challenge.
'Everyone's.'
"Then I'll have to be extra hard on you." Dark eyelashes lower halfway, complimenting a smile hat eclipses all but a thin line of teeth. "So I know you'll survive." She'll have her stopping point.
What will Shiryuu's be?
'... we're cruel, to make fate choose between us, you know.'
As Umie looks up at Shiryuu, her eyes may seem a shade further into that of devil's red, aided by the brilliant dying light of sunset.
"Then let's be villains to fate," she quips, carelessly. "And make it realize there can be more than one." If someone tries hard enough to pick that final lock.
No wonder, then, that Maihime's imposter would play her own joke, reminding Umie how much further she has before she could claim any kind of victory.
In a fairy tale, a kiss would be all it takes, if it would be given the correct way.
It brings awareness to Umie through the sensation of touch, reminding her of where and when her body is, and how the fragment in her hand stings, a ready contrast to the way the boy's lips felt on hers, simple, short. A reminder.
"When I hold it, I don't hear her," she quietly says, plainly, but with full trust in the grey-haired boy to understand at least enough.
She brings out the strange object, holding it in a half covered palm for Shiryuu to see. He'd know what it is, she knows; Kurou must have grabbed a fragment of his own.
"It made Him go away for Sudou, as well."
A pause, and Umie says, ".... I'm here. Don't worry."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
'Then I'll have to be extra hard on you.'
You really would think that Shiryuu would be pleased by this, but there is a moment where the shinobi absolutely forgets every part of his plan and every musing he's had right up until this point, where the boy takes her absolutely seriously in the way she lowers her lashes and leans _far too much_ into the idea. "Hey, wait, why does it seem like..."
O--oh.
The onmitsu tilts his chin up reflexively. "Yes, that's right." Fight as hard as you want, you bunned beast, you won't be able to destroy the invincible Shirogarasu of Ryouhara. Ih-- mm..
'Then, let's be villains to fate.'
... even Shiryuu Ryouhara has to admit that was fairly cool. "...ugh," he manages, purposefully looking up and away from Akabane. Even wanting as he does, the boy is simply unwilling to betray even a scintilla of exactly how well the devil got him in that moment, his mouth a very tight, pressed line pointed in an arrowshot straight over the horizon. "J-- just..."
"... iihh. You're completely incorrigible."
It's only when he actually becomes concerned for her, and only when every intense obsession is broken that Ryouhara returns to the now, the moment, the second, where she reveals that tiny fragment.
There isn't a second he doesn't think of kissing her again, but the notion is overridden by his carefully metered alarm. Of course, she brings it along. They're all going to die, if Nahara's estimation is any guess.
It's really not, Nahara has a habit of being overly excited by things.
But every so often she is distressingly right. That's the part that Shiryuu is concerned by. The boy is absolutely brave enough to patiently close a hand over hers, quelling the sight of it from them, as if it could hear. He is halfway through thinking of something to say when she explains.
That she could no longer hear 'her.' That it made 'Him' go away.
His lips part lightly. There's something there, something nestled deep in Kouzou's ravings, deep in a Ryouhara safehouse, and all of her ill-omened vagaries, that forms the basis of the boy's nod, his understanding.
It might be reckless, but ...
"... just be careful with it," Shiryuu warns. "It's made of something ancient, something that the clan is calling an Original Material. It has the same basis as our jutsu. ...that means it could be dangerous beyond measure. If something happened to you..."
...Ryouhara shakes his head.
"...just be careful," he repeats.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
What does it seem like, from Shiryuu's perspective?
Umie's not going to give him any clues, merely a glint in her eyes as he comes to his own sort of understanding. "Mmhm." She murmurs a soft laugh, mouth closed.
Oh, that comment definitely hit its mark, didn't it? Umie can tell, and the Badb in her wants to relentlessly pursue at the sight of first blood.
Or... whatever it'd actually be, in this case.
But it's not meant to last, as Umie's fate had long been sealed since the moment she saw that firelit shrine.
She comes back to him, a terrible, rude little blackbird princess, and she studies him, as Shiryuu thinks his thoughts in silence.
In that silence, Umie can hear the distant, muffled chatter of the socialites, the soft melody of some background music, inconsequential as a sprig of parsley on a dinner plate.
Then there's the beat of Shiryuu's own resonance, pitching and falling with whatever moods manage to outpace his usual neutral nature. The beat of her heart. The beat of his, as he closes a hand over hers, closing off the sight of that strange material.
If the wrongness of that fragment against her skin didn't make her feel uncomfortable, she'd likely kiss him right now, like she always feels like doing in these moments.
Instead. "What? I'm not going to eat it or anything," she objects, with a sideways grin. "I definitely don't feel lucky holding it, either."
No, the two nestling crows will never allow themselves their feelings, if they can help it.
"When you came by, earlier today..." He had a red bag on him, didn't he? "... Was there... a reason? Or you just wanted to see my cute face?"
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Luckily, Shiryuu's offense is short lived, his tolerance for the rambunctious Akabane-sama apparently having a high water mark. The boy's blue blood showing for only a second, he remains stubbornly fixated on the Shibuya skyline at the dawn of night. It doesn't even matter if it's pretty, or the way he imagines the final fading rays of sunset playing off of her hair.
No matter how cool she's being, absolutely do not let her win.
It's only in the following quiet that he gentles, that his heart has a chance to catch up with the moment. In that, the resonant curve of his inner frequency gentles, a rolling sine that prickles in receding urgency until it settles along the curves of Umie's own. She'll feel it as the slowing of his heartbeat until it comes to quarrel, and eventually match with her own.
It's the only counterpoint to that polite chatter he can't hear at all.
The boy, close as he is, doesn't seem overly thrilled with the presence of that fragment, but neither does he seem to pay it much attention, or at the very least, less than the feel of her wrist under his fingertips. One hand in one, one hand entwined with the other. It's almost a tragedy that Shiryuu returns both to her, reluctantly lingering in that featherlight touch for as long as possible. He's barely given the chance to box his shoulders, to lean back just slightly.
'What? I'm not going to eat it or anything.'
The slow burn, the asymmetrical, severe, narrow-eyed look Shiryuu fixes her with is the very definition of the raw ideation of suspicion itself. That sideways grin is not going to save her. "You absolutely thought about it, didn't you," he infers damningly.
He knew it. It's just like a Ryouhara's fate to be cursed with feelings for a wild tengu straight from the mountains.
Ryouhara breathes outward, a short, sharp puff that sends strands of muddy grey everywhere. It's only when she asks him what happened not but a few hours earlier that his attention goes anywhere else.
"...ehh. I just ..."
Now words come far less surely. Shiryuu looks down, with a far harder gaze than should be appropriate. "I was heading back to Sumaru for the day to attend to ... some important obligations," the boy says, quietly. His hands are now set to his sides, on the rooftop beneath them, in the space between their knees.
"After you sent me that text. After the fire. After the Joker Killer... I was making sure you were ... going to be okay."
Now, a few hours later, he is not wearing that red bag -- the long, narrow cloth that is simply the polite way to carry a sheathed sword in public.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
Don't ever let Umie win. No matter how the setting sun lights her face, or how she's looking at you, seeing how those same rays fall on his own.
How is this the same person she fought on Ebisu Beach?
She'll likely have to fight him again, but not now, as they settle into each other.
Part of her is sharply disturbed by the touch of that fragment, the other, an exact opposite, even if Shiryuu is quite capable of producing just as much alarm.
The two moments balance out, the pendulum of Umie's mind moving in languid pushes back and forth, until that hand leaves hers, lingering like a ghost.
The idea that is Umie Akabane is likewise, shifting to and fro, the woman who leans into his body and his touch, and the wild tengu who cackles at his indignation.
It's the latter who smiles up at him now, a line of white teeth peeking from the top half of that crow's grin as she leans back with him. A cold breeze riles the strands of blonde as she gives a quiet huff of laughter. She doesn't want to make the guests notice them, just yet. "You think it'd taste like rock candy...?"
Ah, but it's nothing to joke about, really. It's a piece of a bullet that pierced through a man's heart, leaving him to slowly bleed out while they watched.
"...."
It's just as well that Shiryuu's mind goes to similarly grim thoughts.
She finally puts away that damned fragment, slipping it into a hidden pocket inside her jacket, and zipping it up.
He wanted to see if she was okay.
"... I don't know why, but it was... really sweet. We were all packed in there like sardines, but I finally understood then what Kyouhara-kun meant, when he said my place felt warm. Watching Amamiya-kun and Kurou study, and you prepare tea..."
She gazes out towards the skyline. "... I never thought I'd feel happy like that."
....
".... It's okay, for you to stay in those moments, Shiryuu. You have every right, because there's people who want you there. Don't give them up because you feel you have to."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
That dangerous fragment strikes a vein in him, one in which Shiryuu is deeply conscious of. Reasonably, he knows why that ominous sense leaps from his wrist and down his bones, sending a cold chill down his spine. It makes his eye ache to think about it overlong, even here, even far from the borders of Sumaru.
He knows, logically, what the Original Material is, and why to be concerned by it, what his artisans have told him. But that boy ... is determined not to turn away from it, even as she tucks it away.
She cracks a joke, an annoying one that forces him to purse his lips at her, nettled at the way her serrated grin and collarline catches the wan light of the torches just beyond the garden juniper when she leans back.
But she isn't afraid, and neither, he resolves, is he.
"Th..." Shiryuu starts to reply. Then he settles on making another face at her.
IT's enough to provide cover to his own little scintilla of worry, the worry that she might have been the next victim of one of those reaper bullets, or that he could only be so close in the moment. It's why it comes as a surprise to him, a quick blink almost betraying him as she shares what it felt like to be there with them all. Even the accursed part-timer.
It was hard for him to understand what it felt like, even for himself, even in that moment.
'I never thought I'd feel happy like that.'
The boy's broken smile flashes, painfully awkward. "I'm glad."
It's the kind of world he'd prefer Kurou live in, if even given the slightest chance.
It would be easy to say what he's supposed to say. 'A shinobi doesn't belong.' 'Those moments must be protected from afar.' 'It's not for a shihaisha to engage in.' 'Shirogarasu does not have these luxuries.'
It would be easy to say it.
To discharge his obligation, and be done with it.
He tries to pretend as if he didn't see the look in his subordinate's eyes.
The colorlessness of all of those summer nights in Sendai ache in his head. The scar in his memory burns, as that empty-headed boy wonders if that man would have known what to say any better, the confident, aloof creature that was all but unapproachable. The flawless performer, the one from whom rhythm flowed like a river. What changed, he thinks, between then and now? It would be easy, for someone strong like him. It should be easy, to say the things he's supposed to say.
It's not, somehow, not when it's her.
"I.. ... when.. .. I just.. I can't find a way there." It's almost impossible to even find that many words.
What does it mean? There's a hundred ways he could try to explain what it felt like. Maybe it had something to do with knowing what the evening would bring. Maybe it had to do with his station. Maybe his presence alone was too awkward not to ruin it. Thinking about it is enough to give the grey-haired boy pause, a tiny sniff given as he leans into that infuriating crow's weight, snaking an arm around her middle, to pull her close.
Really, all he can do is soothe her away from the idea that he belongs. But the notion sits cold and dead with him, his discomfort obvious. For a second, the quiet is searing.
"...Hey, so... um, stay with me, tonight...?"
He can always go back to Sumaru in the morning.
"It turns out... I need your warmth," the boy in the dense sweater admits. "...really is getting sorta cold out..."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
A flash of a smile, an awkward glance.
Even with Sudou gone, whatever he did to Shiryuu can't be undone.
Phoenix is right, in that Umie feels some blame for that.
It's not like she knows just what was taken, or if it would even relate to their situation now. Was it that part of him being cut away that made him able to see Umie the way he does now? If he ever regained it, would he lose his affection for her?
It draws a cold chill down Umie's spine, to consider it, and how she could lose something so fleeting as the love of someone meant to not be here, in this role.
He's glad for her, but what about him? What about Kurou?
When he displays that vulnerability, Umie reaches over, curling a pink-orange nail over a curtain of those grey bangs, tucking them aside.
".... It's okay," she says, softly.
"... I couldn't give you back what he took from you. I'm sorry." And she means it, even if she dreads him becoming cold and indifferent to her if he does, somehow, gain it back.
A tiny sniff, an arm around her waist, and she's already leaning herself into him, the coat piled back around them.
Stay with him. A request, much like she had made to him, several nights ago.
It takes everything to keep herself from just kissing him right then and there, with no preamble, no quip, no ironic comment.
No, she has to dress it up at least *a little*.
She leans in. "I should check, to see just how cold you are..." Umie says, before she tests her lips on his.
It felt like a cool thing to say, before kissing your ninja boyfriend (they *are* boyfriend and girlfriend, right??).
However, like a web, that initial touch of her lips on his creates another trap, and another, which she keeps failing at, whether or not Shiryuu is assisting in that.
"........ we should... maybe, ah... go.. uh... room..." No, nevermind, that good effort to stop herself from making out on a cold-ass rooftop is just thrown out the window (figuratively speaking) as she's just continuing to test how cold Shiryuu is, with her lips on his.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The words are absolute acid to say, each one burning in the back of his head as the most awkward, thin way to admit something you shouldn't be admitting at all. Self-recrimination is something that comes *fast* for Shiryuu, especially in matters like this. A drive for be endlessly, peerlessly perfect means that for every success, you also fall violently, fiercely short.
"...eh--" that touch locks the boy in place, the warm proximity that close to his face breaking his concentration, and the recursive cycle of doubt replaced by surprise and -- finally, the smallest relent. Eyes blown wide in shock half-lid with the tickle of her peach-tangerine nails along his temple. Soothed only just so, the boy's glance does not meet her eyes when she apologizes.
'It's okay.' That, even alone, means something.
"...not your fault," he says, firmly.
It's the closest he'll come to admitting anything was taken from him at all.
Instead of elaborating any further, the boy's feelings are made crystalline in the tight cinch of her to him, snug and secure -- even in the struggle of everything else, there's very little doubt in what and who he wants close to him, to fill in the blanks drawn so agonizingly rampant. Warmth, of a type that's far beyond what the so-called 'latest technology' can muster.
The pause is enough to make Shiryuu reconsider his choice of words, his boldness. Perhaps he should take her back to her apartment? Maybe it's improper. Maybe it's wrong..
'I should test to see just how cold you are..'
"...ih?" Ryouhara is confused very briefly, his eyes narrowing suspiciously in that dimmed, wan expression of his as she leans closer. And closer.
_Oh._ The truth dawns on him, just as every fiber of his being pulls drawstring-tight at the back of his less rational mind. "...damn," Shiryuu whispers, leaning into her intent, tilting his head just slightly in what is deeply clear consent, all the while trying to think of anything to say other than trying to find a reason as to exactly why his hands find their way to her waist to pull her with him as he slowly loses all sense of where he is. "that's..."
Damn, he repeats in his mind, heavily distracted.
"th...mnh..that was really cool.." is about all he manages to concede, halfway and undecided where to be between vexed and charmed before he hits the glass barrier, His shoulderblades raise, his want being the wily crow slid all but into his lap, wrapping up with her as their lips meet a second time. This time, Shiryuu's insistence draws out the kiss far longer than a test, and the unmoored shinobi ultimately finds his way to his back, the two all but swallowed up in the messy drape of his coat.
A dark and wanton little array of 'testing' sounds come from the two over the next twisting moments, a tryst vividly dangerous only in retrospect.
She says something about going back to his room.
"... yeah.." Sounds like a good idea. "...nn..." then it doesn't. "...hhhnn-" desperation, or frustration? Shiryuu finds a second to breathe. "--in, in a minute.."
He doesn't want to have to think anymore. "... just be with me ..."
For the record, Shiryuu's lips are very cool to the touch.
Not for very long. The boy warms up, in time.