2026-05-04: Prying
- Log: Prying
- Cast: Yua Ijuuin, Tyrrha Ijuuin, Ichika Kawase
- Where: Aoba Park, Aoba Ward, Sumaru City
- OOC Date: May 4, 2026
- IC Date: Sun, Nov 04, 2012
- Summary: Yua and Tyrrha go to the park, where they run into Ichika! Not literally, though it's a near thing. Ichika doesn't entirely mind her own business. CW: Implications of intimate partner violence, discussion of violence.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z77H_WVAzPE Halsey - Girl is a Gun
"Yumama, this way!"
The girl who's urging someone behind her on is a little taller than the norm, at 5'4"; her skin is yellowed enough to be notable, with green hair done up in a ponytail and shaggy side-bangs. She does not, notably, have claws for feet; she has /perfectly sensible loafers./
(Para-Mind got those extra attachments to them.)
And, as it happens, the woman coming up the path as they enter Aoba Park is /Yua Ijuuin/ -- the teacher who's been absent for most of this week, ever since Halloween. Her hair is done up in that usual bun of hers, but rather than the leotard which must be her /uniform,/ she's wearing a jacket over a modest maternity dress which hangs to her ankles. She even has a cute scarf wrapped around her neck, but that's not so strange -- the weather's turning chilly.
And /windy,/ at that. Yua's bun is tight enough to escape the turbulence, but the girl ahead of her -- is she a first-year? -- is getting hair in her red eyes /constantly./
"Don't bound ahead so energetically," Yua calls to her. "You'll run into --"
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
It's a park! That's nice. Ichika is here, too. She wanted to get out among the flowers... and keep an eye on that weird crowd, too. But that was earlier; now, she's with the flowers again. And as she is, she turns a corner and--
"Whoa," Ichika says, sidestepping the girl with some surprise. She's speedy like that--one might say /proficient/.
"Careful there," she advises, and starts down the way again to see--
"Oh hey, sensei. Been a while."
Her own hair is bleached-blonde and set to whipping about by the wind. SHe deals with it.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
IN ONE TIMETIME: Ichika collides head-first with a metal girl
IN THE OTHER TIMELINE: Ichika pulls a sick dodge /effortlessly,/ despite her only experience in combat being play-fighting with the other Kasugayama students
WHICH WILL WIN?
The one where Ichika's apparently gotten /good/ from that playfighting, apparently.
And so, the girl in a white sailor's dress /screeeeeches/ to a halt as she narrowly avoids oblivion, turning to face the taller girl on the path. "Sorry, sorry!" Tyrrha grins, and all those Kasugayama instincts surely insist that it's an expression of aggression, because it's /all teeth,/ even though her tone seems entirely laid back. She laces her hands behind her head, tapping a loafer's toe to the path. "I haven't gotten out in a while!"
"Ah, I tried to tell you..." Yua sighs, as she bustles along the path to catch up, only to realise -- "Oh! Kawase-kun, hello!"
Now she's close enough for a conversation... she looks kind of tired, huh? It's not obvious -- but her makeup's laid on a little thicker, and her eyes look a touch dull. Even so, her tone doesn't quite fit her expression, either; she sounds quite warm and pleased to see her. "Ah, you'll excuse me... I know I missed your class last Friday, but..."
She places a hand at the girl's shoulder, smiling to her. "This is Tyrrha," she introduces her, as if in explanation for where she's /been./ "Something difficult happened, so she had to move to Sumaru for good, and we've taken her in... I'll be her mother from now on. She's a couple of years younger than you!" And to Tyrrha, she gestures, to Ichika. "This is Ichika Kawase," she introduces her, in turn. "She's a third-year at Kasugayama, and one of my best students!"
"Yo," Tyrrha turns that unsettlingly toothy grin on Ichika. "You're /big./ Are you an athlete, too?"
not every tall girl got there by working out, tyrrha...
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
That other timeline might've been bad... But it's fine; Ichika at least saw her coming, and is dressed to move; a black tanktop with a white skull on and green cargo pants with sneakers. She's wearing spikes! Mahiro doesn't have a monopoly on spikes.
But she stops short and steps back at that /toothy/ grin, only to relax as she registers the easygoing tone. "Oh, yeah?"
Ichika can spot tired when she sees it. "It's fine," the tall girl says of missing class. But then...
"Oh, wow. Then, it's nice to meet you, Tyrrha-san."
A daughter this old...?
"I used to be," she says, "But not so much now. I'm just tall." She /is/ pretty big, though. "I'd say 'eat your veggies and get tall like me'... But we're both a little old for that, huh?"
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"We are?" Tyrrha asks, tilting her head, as her hair whips about.
"You are," Yua assures her, patiently.
"Aww, man... well, I guess that's okay?" Tyrrha wonders, head canting the other way. "Yumama told me I can't hunt /nothin'/ out here, like, even the /plants/ belong to people... though I guess if it's veggies, that makes sense for kids? You don't need no licence to hunt carrots, right?"
"Nope!" Yua smiles, her expression veiled behind the fingers she lifts to hide it. "But Kawase-kun is a city girl, Tykko... if you talk like that, you're going to confuse her."
"Right, right," Tyrrha grins, her tone easy. And then, to Ichika: "I like ya spikes! That's gotta up your combat efficiency by, like, what? Twenty percent?" It's a question she poses entirely friendly.
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
They are! ...Right?
"Yeah uh... Hunting in the city is more like, raiding convenience stores..." Oh no. Ichika continues though, "Carrots are pretty good though. You can do a lot with them. Pretty versatile."
She /is/ a city girl though. So it is a little confusing. Is that why?
"They do," Ichika agrees. "Bam! You don't want to get too close, because spikes!"
Pause. "Uh, not that I'm... fighting, or anything. Obviously." She glances dubiously to her teacher. "And I'm no good at percents..."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"Whoa!" Tyrrha gasps, hearing Ichika clarify. "You're into /raiding?/ Cool! How many have you burned down? Do you steal the women first, or do you just, like, grab 'em when they're runnin' from the violence? Do you really not --"
"Tykko, Tykko, it's a figure of speech," Yua assures her, lifting her hands for calm. "Kawase-kun isn't a Viking!"
"But," Tyrrha looks puzzled, "she said her kinda huntin' was raidin', and she's got all those spikes..."
"Like she said," Yua assures her new daughter, "it's just like... looking fierce!"
"Oh," Tyrrha blinks, looking back up to Ichika. "So I guess you don't got no cool boat, neither."
"She has a very cool /van,/" Yua assures her, before she turns back to Ichika. "Have you gone on any interesting trips, late-- oh, no!"
Yua's attempts to redirect the conversation away from her apparently airheaded daughter's misunderstandings is cut short with a stern gust of wind. Yua stumbles forward a step, but what's worse -- her lovely yellow scarf unravels from where it was loosely tied about her neck, and sails up into the air!
Tyrrha sees her reaching for it, though, and chirps: "No worries, mama! I'll get it!"
With that, she leaps forward...
... and her palms impact the ground, as, /on all fours,/ she bounds deeper into the park to retrieve that scarf.
"Don't --" Yua starts, but her hand lowers, and so does her tone. "... don't run off..."
... that scarf was covering up bruises, around her neck.
There's really only one way to get markings like that.
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
Raiding! Ichika grins, because obviously Tyrrha's playing. She laughs a moment later--and then realizes she was serious when Yua has to /explain/.
"Oh yeah uh, Vikings are like... white people," Ichika is pretty sure. "Blonde and stuff. I'd be more of a bandit."
Pause. "It is a cool van--"
Gust of wind! "Oh--"
Tyrrha goes for the scarf, but Ichika goes for Yua. "Whoa there--"
She /catches/ her teacher, strong enough to support her without letting her fall.
"Sensei," she says. "You O..."
The bruises. Ichika's eyes widen.
"Sensei..."
Something in her gut twists.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"You're not blonde?" Tyrrha asks, having never apparently heard of hair dye.
Or maybe she's just /really/ easily fooled.
Yua, let's be fair, isn't so difficult to catch; through great effort, she's managed to put on a few kilos, but she's still underweight for her present situation. She's a full seven inches /shorter/ than Ichika, too. All that to say: it's not suspicious at all that Ichika stops her from being defeated by a stiff breeze!
Even with the one eye, though, Yua sees the shift in Ichika's expression; she straightens up, murmuring, "thank you," as she tugs at her jacket to turn the collar up in an effort to veil her neck.
Rather than acknowledge that, though -- and without quite /looking/ at Ichika -- Yua says, "I know she's a strange girl, but she means well, truly... don't judge her imagination too harshly, all right? She had a much different life before she came here..."
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
"Oh, uh. I mean natural blonde. I dyed mine..." The roots!
Ichika is big and strong!! ...But mostly Yua is way too light, yes.
Yua obviously doesn't want to talk about it--and Ichika allows her that for at least a moment while she figures out what to even say, because she gets it. She wouldn't want to talk about it either.
"...It's cool," Ichika says. "She's cute. Kinda fun. I like her imagination."
Pause. "...Sensei," she says more seriously, quietly. "You want to sit down?"
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Tyrrha learned something! She'll tell the tree she's presently climbing up like some kind of goddamn monkey. WHAT'S WITH THAT KID
... but this isn't something Yua wants Ichika to have to deal with, anyway.
A high school girl... shouldn't be burdened with an adult's problems.
"She is very fun," Yua smiles, and she /is/ clearly fond of her. "There's no one like her in all the world... I'm sure she'll do great things."
There, though -- Yua hears the burden. And her first instinct is to tell Ichika to mind her own /business,/ but... she knows why it would be cruel, in her case. She saw the wedding preparations...
So she knows it's dangerous, too.
But -- in the end -- aside from the embarrassment of being seen, her feet /hurt./ So she sighs, and smiles, to Ichika. "All right," she assents. "Just a little while."
Luckily, Aoba has plenty of benches. Yua grasps the handrail, lowering herself down slowly, gingerly.
Perhaps she's just tired, and not in pain.
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
Tyrrha is pretty impressive. Ichika can see why she needs a mom, even one as young as Yua. (And Ichika at least is more aware that early 20s isn't /that/ old...)
"Yeah," Ichika answers, looking back Tyrrha's way a moment. "She seems special."
But Yua assents to sitting down, and Ichika walks with her until she does, taking a seat next to her. She debates how to approach it; with the arrogance of youth, it isn't in question that she /will/ approach it, though.
"...Just one question," she says quietly. "Then I'll mind my own business. But I gotta know, because I can't let it slide if it is."
"...Was it him?"
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
She expects it.
There is no other question Ichika could ask.
Even so, Yua closes her eye, her painted lips thinning against each other. Blink, and you'll miss it, but that little flinch comes /before/ shaking her head. "Don't be absurd," she says, and it sounds, for all the world, like it just took her a moment to figure out how to reply to such an inaccurate guess. "Kimi-san is a good and honourable man! He would never!"
With a puff of a sigh, Yua looks to Ichika. "You really shouldn't pry into adult's business," she frowns, though it's an expression with as much concern as irritaiton. "But I understand why your own imagination might run away with you, so I'll tell you, all right? I... I was staying over at my best friend's house, you see," she settles on describing it, her hands folding in her lap. "Since she's an Olympic athlete, unfortunately, she has some stalkers amidst all her fans... one of them broke into her penthouse, but since I was with her, she defended me from him. Well, I suppose he got it into his head that I was the reason she wouldn't see reason and greet him warmly..." Yua's gaze lowers, to her hands, as she admits, "he tracked me down a few days later, and assaulted me."
It's a lie on a lie on a lie.
"So, you see... it wasn't anyone I knew. This time, it really was a man in the bushes... it does happen, sometimes."
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
"Cool," Ichika says, when Yua says don't be absurd. She catches the flinch--but even so, Yua seems so insistent that even if it /were/ him, it would be a bad idea to press. But he's a good and honorable man...
"I know," Ichika says of prying. But her imagination would indeed run away with her. She listens to the story...
"I see," Ichika says with a frown. "Sorry, sensei. That's terrible. Fame shouldn't make people do stuff like that..."
A nod. "OK. Like I said, I won't pry any further. I just... You know my history. Even if it's an adult, I won't let someone face that alone."
Pause. "...If it had been someone you know," Ichika says quietly, "Then I could tell you... You remember Eiji Kamiya, in the news?"
"...it wasn't the police who got him, not really. It was the Phantom Thieves."
"...But since it was just some guy, I'll just..." Hm. "I won't get in the way. Since your husband's police... maybe they'll be able to help you."
"Anyway, since you don't want to talk about that..."
"You really got some girl, there. She's pretty adorable. Kinda toothy, though. Didn't skimp on brushing her teeth, huh?"
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Yua is quite quiet -- though she nods, still, to give Ichika that social feedback she needs -- as she works through whether she believes her or not.
The Phantom Thieves --
Does she believe her, or not? That's the question Yua's most anxious about, even as she's duty-bound to file that piece of information away.
But there, she suggests her /husband/ help her, and Yua can't quite suppress a little sigh of relief as Ichika decides to let it go. She relaxes, despite herself, hearing her move on to Tyrrha.
"That's right," Yua smiles, as if her heart weren't full of ice, looking to Ichika again. "That side of the family has always looked a little grumpy... but they're all such sweethearts!" Hey, look! Her portrait can still sparkle! (Even if her eye is still tired...)
"She's had a difficult time... but we're hoping that once she settles into city life, we can enrol her in school. I just hope Yume-chan isn't too unsettled... I know it's strange to adopt a girl only a year younger than my little sister, but she needed help, you know? She's lost her memories of a lot of things... but she remembered that I was family." Yua shakes her head, again, with a gentler smile. "She's really such an easygoing girl... she has a big heart."
Metaphorically, anyway. Yua isn't entirely sure there's anything in Tyrrha's chassis that's /literally/ a heart...
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
Ichika can just take Yua's word for it--she... mostly believes her. There's a doubt in her mind. After all, Eiji was a good and honorable boy. But there's little more she can do if it's that, and Yua's story makes sense to her.
...Maybe the Phantom Thieves can give her hope, too, if it turns out it /is/ 'someone' she knows.
Ichika nods back to Yua. "Is that how it is?" she asks. "Heheh. Yeah, some people just look grumpy."
School... "It is a little weird," Ichika admits. "But you help people. That's a good thing. Especially family."
A big heart...
"Well, I hope things are good with her. I'll be nice, OK?"
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
She believes her. She believes her.
Yua repeats it, in her head, mantra, reassurance, prayer. She believes her. She's /convincing./
She can't let this poor girl get wrapped up in anything else -- when she already had to let the police have her once.
"If she wore spikes, I'm sure she'd give everyone a fright!" Yua giggles, smiling kindly.
"And... I like to help where I can," she adds, looking out over the trees. "Even if... there are some things a teacher like me can't really help with."
Gang fights, one presumes, those things Yua is supposed to not know about.
"Thank you," she adds, with a warm smile. "You're her senpai, even if you'll likely be from different schools... I'm sure she'll be able to look to you."
Just then -- "YOOO, MAMA!" -- there's a hail, from the treeline...
... as Tyrrha bounds back, twigs in her hair, dirt on her dress, scarf firmly clenched in her teeth as she runs like some kind of beast.
She leaps--!!
-- and lands right in front of Yua, taking her scarf with a flourish and tucking it around her neck. "Aaaall better!" She chirps, brightly. "Now no one can tell you tied your choker too tight, mama!"
Is that what she told her...?
(No, that's just the plausible lie Tyrrha came up with.)
"Thank you, Tykko," Yua smiles, grasping her hand. "Will you help me up...?" And so she does, as the pregnant woman leans on that girl, for a moment. (Tyrrha, too, can cope with her weight just fine. "It's been lovely chatting with you," she smiles, to Ichika. "But I promised I'd show her the concert hall... don't worry, I'll get back to teaching very soon!"
"Nice t'meetcha!" Tyrrha adds, cheerfully.
She's a strange girl... but Yua's a little strange, anyway, so perhaps they'll make a good family.