2026-05-08: A Woman's Weapon
- Log: A Woman's Weapon
- Cast: Yua Ijuuin, Shiryuu Ryouhara
- Where: Aoba - Penthouse
- OOC Date: may 08 2026
- IC Date: Tue Nov 06 2012
- Summary: Yua, overcome by grief, reaches out to Shiryuu -- the one man who might be able to tell whether there was a way out from the trap Kimitake's laid for her. But Shiryuu's solutions frighten her... and they are left in stasis.
- Content warning: Discussion of sexual assault, domestic violence, coercive control.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
On the week's sixth day, Yua excuses herself to the patio, to tend to her flowers. She is shaky; of course she would be, only two days after it happened.
"I remember..." She trails off, as she reaches, with bare hands, to bring a rose between her hand-shears. She takes a moment to steady her grip.
"... I can't... it's too light out, anyway." Snip.
On the dawn of the week's first day, Yua steps out onto the patio, fingers curling around the bars of the balcony. Inside, breakfast is sizzling, almost ready for Miho and Tyrrha to emerge from their home gym, but...
"... it's the wrong day, so..."
Strength failing her, she turns, and goes back inside.
Not until the third day will she gain the strength to step out at dawn and drop a message to the fathoms below; and it is not the appointed time, the method fouled. Perhaps it means no one will catch it; that would be a kinder idea than the Order intercepting her message.
The message itself is innocuous: 'please come to my studio at sunset.'
She can't take it back...
"Yo, mama," Tyrrha waves her hand in front of Yua, who startles with a jump, attention whipping to her. "You good? Seems like you were just standin' there a while... how long you been out here?"
"Not long," Yua smiles to her, as she orients back to normal space. "Breakfast is ready... I was just getting some fresh air."
"Sure, sure," Tyrrha grins, easily. "It's good for ya!"
... Miho she must offer greater assurances, but at least now she can offer them with breakfast.
She's... sometimes been able to do that, by now.
She hasn't quite worked out a return to work, yet; it's been a week, now, but she still isn't feeling well. Kimitake hasn't pressured her to perform, at least... it's nice that he's giving her some space, she thinks.
(She thinks it is kindness, and not ensuring she's presentable for him.)
Yua at least puts some effort into taking Tyrrha out, again; she needs to teach the girl how to interact in society, if she wants to attend school. Rather than her usual leotard, she dresses in a modest blouse, a light cardigan, and a long skirt; she's covering up, a thing made all the more obvious by the scarf tucked loosely around her neck.
This time, they go to the cafe, and... and that's it, because Yua has another of those daymares of hers, those things she's calling flashbacks, and Seiji has to usher her back into the car and home.
Perhaps that makes it reasonable, when she excuses herself from making dinner again; perhaps it's reasonable, when she heads out late in the afternoon to go to her studio. Eiko tries to suggest Tyrrha go with her, but she insists she'd like to be alone... but she promises not to leave the studio until she goes back up the elevator to come home, so they at least will know where she is if she doesn't show up for a while.
(Studio Chura, you see, is on the bottom commercial floors of Pyramid Plaza; Miho's father was generous enough to ensure that Yua's occupation was right by her home.)
And she does... try to dance, but...
... she hurts.
She hurts, so she ends up just sitting on the long bench along the nearest wall to the door, designed for mothers to wait for their children or for ballerinas to take a break between performing at the barre. She's reflected by the mirrors along the other three walls -- all the way up to where the third wall ends partway through, to allow for a door to a cloak room and bathroom.
The sign is flipped to 'closed'. A note, below it, apologetically states that Ijuuin-sensei is taking personal leave and will announce her return through her mailing list, with instructions for how to sign up.
Even so, now the sun's setting, the door's not locked.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Theatricality is an important tool in spycraft. It is a means to shock the superstitious and inspire hope in the devout, and it is oft a lost art amidst the more brutally practical members of the Order.
It takes a certain amount of childlike wonder and imagination to step to the edge of a balcony and entrust a note to heaven. That is why the Order, for all of its ritual pomp and circumstance could never, would never seriously find out the Ryouhara's means and methods. Serious men lack the prerequisite 'imagination' to understand the ways of shinobi, least of all the Ryouhara.
Or at least, such is the leading line of thought.
The day, in this case, was a simple contrivance of superstition. In reality, Shiryuu's will was that the Plaza be kept under constant surveillance -- so it didn't strictly matter when anything happened.
They noticed when her routine changed. And when she sent the note fluttering into the open air, they noticed. As she turned her ttention to other things, long after the note had fluttered out of her immediate sight, a throwing senbon on a string, nearly invisible, was thrown by an expert hand. In the next instant, the note was gone.
There has been a promotional busker troupe in the streets advertising the latest cross promotion with a morning wake-up coffee brand for the past week or two, not too far from the Plaza, a cluster of warmly dressed gentlemen humming in line with muted electronic music around a theatrical trash can with a flame in it. There's been some police trouble, to be sure, about the barrel, but it's supposed to be a big American brand, though, and this sort of performance was popular stateside in the nineties... Well. Most of their paperwork seems to be in order whenever it's checked.
- Everyday we wake up, pour ourselves a CUPS... -
Silken sweet is the boyish voices set over the beat of the music, which is definitely not like any commercial brand recognition anyone's heard of for the brand before. Oh well. The cross-promo with the extreme sports and dance crowd was anticipated by the executives to be -very- lucrative.
"...thanks," a young boy in a thick grey parka and a baseball cap tells the troupe when they finish up for the evening, a set of nods directed his way. The boy, who had been singing only a moment prior right along with the others, stuffs a hand into a pocket as he turns away, towards the pyramid in the distance. Sniffing, he pulls out a few coins, a few bills, and kneels to set them in the hat near his feet. Crisp, clean shoes, still colored autumn colors, lift away from the hat as the boy makes his way out towards the plaza.
Luckily, the sign doesn't mean anything to him. Luckily, the door is unlocked. The last time he was in the studio, he had to all but break the lock to assure it stayed shut. This time, it was a different circumstance. This time, he'll politely shut the door behind him.
... as he strides right past Yua towards the center of the studio. She'll notice that his shoes aren't making noise this time, and he looks very different than he did before, for all intents and purposes looking like a random passerby with his grey hair jammed into the sum of his white ballcap. He's wearing jeans, for goodness' sake. Hands in pockets with a familiar red bundle at his back, a slender length to hang low, almost beneath his hips, as the boy looks around.
"...would have expected you to be stretching," Shiryuu thinks aloud.
He's not facing Yua directly -- but he'd be dense not to notice her, truthfully...
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Why, Yua even brought Tyrrha over to see that troupe promoting their coffee, at one point. A girl -- perhaps in her first year of high school -- with skin just a little too yellowed, shaggy green bangs and hair pulled up in a ponytail, thick eyebrows, a broad nose, strange red eyes and the world's most ferocious resting expression.
(She doesn't sound nearly as pissed off as she looks.)
In a sailor's dress, with sensible brown loafers, she looked normal enough -- but her enthusasic and innocently vicious questions were something else entirely. Yua tried to redirect her, but it's evidently an ongoing process.
Of course, so occupied with ushering her new daughter around, she didn't happen to notice the boy...
That's the power of the shinobi, baby!!!
So, too, now: Shiryuu steps in, in his non-squeaky sneakers and his jeans, and Yua at first says: "Ah, excuse me, we're closed --"
Then he speaks, and her eye widens, as she realises: "Oh! Shishi, it's you!"
... just as she looks so run down under her makeup, so too is her tone brighter than one might expect.
"I'm sorry," she smiles, hands curling in her lap. "Did you need to buy shoes which wouldn't squeak to come here..? Well, they're still very nice... very stylish."
Yua sighs, looking down at her hands. "I know it's kind of an imposition to ask you to come here. Um, I would have just asked you up to home, but... but Eiko-san is listening, up there. She'd tell. I, um..." Her hands lace, in her lap. She knows why she's called him; she hears her voice pressing forward. "There's something I want to check with a third party, but... but it's secret. If I tell you... will you have to tell Mimi? Or Father?" Chichi-ue, she calls him, as the samurai did. "It's -- I haven't wronged them, I just -- it's just a secret, okay?"
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The boy looks up and around. He noticed the new addition to the family. She's treated like a daughter, his shinobi tell him, but... obviously ...
For the moment, Shiryuu doesn't find anyone else in the studio, and is able to determine that part of this was, therefore, the point. It was a suspicion he'd had -- and certainly why it'd be hard pressed for anyone to tell at all that the shihaisha of the Ryouhara clan was meeting with the newest wife of the Ijuuin.
But now that he's a little closer, it's easier to see where his grey hair betrays the tuck of his cap here and there, the unruly mop stranding and tufting out in front of his eyes, back behind his ears, so on and so forth. The last time he dyed, he didn't really do a great job, so...
The shinobi's expression dims exactly where Yua can't see it where she calls him by that pet name. Iih.. Luckily, he takes care to keep his feelings to himself on that front.
Some things are more trouble than they're worth.
She asks him about his shoes. "Ii. Now that I know what I'm up against, there's no problem," the boy replies evenly. You can't take brand new, pristine and unbroken shoes into a highly glossy dancefloor and still expect them to function as sneakers. Of course, Shiryuu admits he didn't buy shoes specifically for the studio -- but he did take a minute to treat the soles with a light scuffing. Of course, they're still the latest -- A dark sea blue running sneaker with mauve laces, the Autumn Monks collection. "...but thank you. There wasn't anything available this season for Halloween, so I pulled strings to pick these up a few weeks early." They weren't even supposed to be out yet!
At the very least, the subdued colors of his shoes match his grey parka rather well, even if it might not be quite cold enough to warrant it just yet. Speaking of, she's dressed differently as well. The boy notices it, when he turns towards her, hands still in his pockets.
"Be careful," he advises her at first.
"You know the weight of secrets. And, between family and lovers..." A hand slides out of his pocket, as the boy clears his throat into his fist in a show of politeness. "secrets can consume a clan... make sure it's one worth keeping."
The boy speaks like he knows a thing or two about it. "As for me..."
He drops his hand, slowly lowering it to his side. Simply put, his 'protection order' is itself a secret. The order didn't extend to secrecy -- there are many Ijuuin whom are simply unaware of the benefits their name buys them in the dark, because of a cost paid by one woman. In fact, secrecy is the subject of another order, given long before this one..
"I don't have to tell anyone anything I don't want to."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
It at least doesn't seem to be a kind of familiarity angled towards disrespect. Chichi-ue, haha-ue... stiff titles like those are unfamiliar to her lips, though she tries her best.
("Aren't I making fun of them if I say it like that...?" She'd wondered to Miho, at one point, when she first started trying to speak so formally. Her worries weren't even unfounded; to most of Japan, that kind of outdated language is so stuffy as to be a joke. ... but the rich do things differently, don't they?)
"Oh!" Yua smiles, when Shiryuu conveys how he has mastered the enemy of the dancefloor. "That's right...! I should have known... nothing gets over you twice, right?"
If there's a little twitch of her lips and brow at the mention of Halloween, it's certainly nothing she tries to call attention to. Rather, she takes a longer to quite deliberately appreciate his sneakers, all blue and mauve. (And why is she in such covering clothing, when she always seems like she's too hot...?) "You must be very well-connected," she appreciates his efforts, though her cheer is more gentle than truly chirpy. "Those colours are lovely... elegant, but subtle, too."
But Shiryuu turns towards her, warns her -- and Yua shakes her head, all too quickly. "T--that's what I'm worried about!", she hastens to say.
(Juuzou offered to make arrangements for his little sister; perhaps he didn't realise that Miho made arrangements of her own...)
"Um..." She starts, looking down, folding one hand over the other, repeating the process a few more times.
"If... if I told Mimi something that made her... attack Kimi-san... that would be bad, right? L--like... like... since she's Father's favourite daughter, and all... a-and he's the child of Father's younger brother, so he's not even his son... but they're still Ijuuins, so they'd get angry, right? They'd want him to make up for that? And -- and they might not believe her if she said why she did it -- but they might not believe me if I told them first, either... and... and everything would fall apart and... and Mimi would be thrown out of the family, and she'd end up resenting me, and... and it'd be all my fault, right?"
It all kind of tumbles out like a waterfall, without clear beginning or end.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
With the nominally quiet Shiryuu, much of his thoughts lay in the margins. The details, and in the smaller ways he moves, what he pays attention to the exact combinations of words that spur him to talk -- or otherwise.
There's the start of it, the small confusion of priorities. His dislike of such wanton informality between the two of them -- laying at cross purpose with the idea that insofar as Yua goes, he also has no preference towards any other address either. Insofar as it goes, Shiryuu is not particularly one to correct her, nor take compliments on his talents. As a result, there is only the slightest discomfort of the boy shown, Ryouhara shifting his weight subconsciously from one hip to the other, settling in a stance predisposed to the opposite side of the studio.
This is not a limitation he seems to have when discussing shoes. "Aaa," he agrees, thinking the smallest change in her demeanor towards Halloween could be from her heritage's faith. "A certain merchant or two has been encouraged to keep my custom." Of course, he doesn't mean it half as ominously as he alludes -- he treats his everyday connections fairly generously, all truth told. Still, the way Shiryuu says anything sounds unnecessarily ominous. It's a real problem sometimes.
Of course, it makes it worse when he's being serious.
"...Yua."
Informality? The name is spoken half with genuine concern, half as warning. He certainly meant it to sound less like an ultimatum and more soothing than anything else, but the words tumble free from her, and the onmitsu is spurred to respond more to her nature than any particular detail. That previous change in her expression could have been from a thought bottled up inside, as well. Halloween can mean different things in many contexts. A hand opens at his hip, and a light brushing motion smooths over the anxious words, instructing a momentary peace.
"As a clan that follows the old ways, a dishonor grievous enough could foresee the stripping of the familial name. But in many circumstances, the secrets of the clan that are vested in a person may preclude even that."
Shiryuu, mercifully, does not mention the obvious corollary.
However, there is a missing element to the situation. The thought of Kimitake being attacked by Miho is a sobering idea, but the question of why arises. Watching the man over some time... then with Yua's all-but-disappearance from the public world, and the fact that she seems much more physically ill than could even be explained by her pregnancy leads the boy to take a step toward her.
"...but you already seem to've guessed that much." The question asked is not why he was summoned. Not really. "We've already noticed a change in your behavior. 'That man...'" He says the words accumulative of his own opinions concerning the officer. His question is far moe incisive as he raises his arms, folding them at his waist as his eyes narrow. 'That man,' the thought repeats.
"... what's he have to do with it?"
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Yua doesn't even realise she's stepping on his toes, really. She offers her praise in good faith; her familiarity, too. Shiryuu shifting to face away from her doesn't strike her as discomfort, either... really, it's a relief to not have to attend to all that eye contact.
So maybe he's just being considerate!
"I'm sure you treat them well!" Yua declares, of his merchants; and if there's a little suggestion there that he ought to, given such an ominous line, well, there are certain things Yua is quite good at treating subtly.
But there, then, is her name; and Yua looks up to him, when she hears it, a hand grasping at her opposite wrist. She tries to explain -- really, she does.
He gestures, though, and her lips close. She swallows; and there, in that motion, is the ghost of a wince. Despair breaks over her eye, the way those lips part again to draw in a long breath.
"I don't want to die," she murmurs, quietly. "Or Mimi..."
She isn't so merciful.
And her expression grows a touch haggard, when he says that they noticed. "I -- but I've been good! I didn't say anything! I blamed it all on her, and, and on the man we made up! I --" there, again, is the way her voice hitching has an edge of pain to it, above and beyond the emotional.
With a little sniffle, she reaches to her bag, and pulls out a little pack of tissues; she's long since learned not to roam without them. "I'm sorry," she says, quietly. "I'm all mixed up... in my head, too... it doesn't make much sense, right? I, um... s-sorry, just give me a moment... I'll explain everything, okay?"
Her ankles cross over each other, beneath the bench, as her hand clasp together too. She looks at them, and not at Shiryuu; her tone grows numb, as she speaks, and her expression distant.
"... the day before my birthday... the Man in the Black Mask broke into our house, and attacked Mimi and I. He forced me to trap Mimi and make her fight the Shadows he'd called there... he was testing us, since we'd failed to kill Sudou-san. Well, we explained it all by saying one of Mimi's stalker fans broke in and attacked her in her home... but when I went to the doctor's to make sure Hiroki was okay, since the Man in the Black Mask even pushed a gun into my belly and, and I was so stressed, Mimi had to call an ambulance when the Dark Hour was over... um, anyway, they told me he was fine, but -- but when they did the ultrasound, they said... they said he really was a boy. And we'd gotten blood tests, but I wasn't sure if I trusted a blood test, so I kept praying... but he really was a boy."
"Well, a few days later, I was supposed to go to a Halloween party with Kimi-san... Mimi got me some cute cat ears, meow..." It would have been cute, in any other context -- but being an observer to her own horrors really makes the whole thing a touch uncanny. "I was excited about the news... so I told him about Hiroki. On the phone, he sounded happy, but..."
...
"But when I got to his home, I realised he'd been drinking. He started... ranting about how important a first born son is, and... and then he told me I should have had a girl. Since -- since I was having a boy -- he said it wasn't fair to him, I guess because he didn't want his firstborn son to be a cuckoo bird, so he was -- he'd make me abort. Of course I said no, it was an argument... b-but he choked me. He told me to listen... he said how Mimi would kill him if she knew he was treating me like this. He said his father would confront Father about that, and... and Mimi would get abandoned, and the family would get ripped apart, and... and I was just a... he said I'd just sold my body to them, so even Mimi would be mad if I tore her family apart."
"He was mad... because I wanted to marry Mimi for real. He said that wasn't how we did things... I was too arrogant. I would've torn everyone apart. He... he said he was willing to die to prove his point, since he had an Ijuuin's courage. He wanted to... teach me humility."
Here, again, a beat of silence.
"He let me go when I said he was hurting me, but when I sat down, he punched the wall over my head. I got really overwhelmed, so I kind of threw a tantrum, but... but it didn't matter. I couldn't do what he wanted even when I calmed down, though... so he said that if I did something for him, he'd let it go."
"He, um... he wanted me to go back to the Blacksite, and... and see what they wanted with me... and to do what they wanted, since I was representing him, and, I couldn't make him look bad."
"I said I'd do it... it was really scary when he drove me there, since he'd been drinking. But... but I didn't know who he was talking to... from there."
Her words slow, and like slow frost, freeze to silence.
She's stopped moving, too.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
It's strange, how someone can sound so happy when...
"It's enough to say that the Ryouhara are capable agents," the boy points out matter-of-factly as Yua's expression falls. It's a little faster than he would have normally liked, but even Shirogarasu could be forgiven for having some small bit of empathy for everything not being said. Even so, the boy continues reasonably. "You wouldn't have been able to hide it from us if you'd wanted to."
The onmitsu's fingertip rises along the line of his bicep. Of course, the contour he traces is nowhere near his actual skin -- layers upon layers of thick wool and silk insulate the boy from the outside world. It's not unlike her...
Layers of defense.
The boy listens distantly, his mind seizing on the details as he speaks, with his line of questioning concerning the branch Ijuuin leading to a grim revelation. That that Ijuuin has a temper is not at all a surprise to him, but that he would go so far so as to raise a hand to someone in such a position....
"...I see."
There are some rumors concerning the types of projects the Order regularly engage with -- one of which being the Kannenka Project itself. But the compartmentalization of the group leaves Shiryuu in relative little light to find his way by. And truthfully, though he will be able to write down the finer details later, he is certainly preoccupied with more immediate matters.
"....Congratulations," the boy starts, simply.
The grey-haired boy removes his hat, letting his grey hair tumble out in every direction as he stretches, finally moving over to the bench. The boy that sits next to her is not a discerning judge of fate, as the shihaisha might be, but a young man who knows far more than is healthy for him.
A sword-long sigh slips the boy's lips, as he pushes his hair back away from his eyes with a shove of his hand through his scalp. "You've done what any real, whole person would have done. For the benefit of the future, you've looked after your own..."
There is a lot to say in that moment; that they don't know who Black Mask is currently, that there is no excuse for such honorless behavior even among the Order. There is the matter of the one that calls her 'mama' still. But Shiryuu, sitting alongside Yua, simply settles on one thing first.
"I'm glad that Hiroki-kun will be."
For the rest, the boy leans back in the bench, pressing his palms flat against the seat, all the way up to the very edge of the wall. His baseball cap is sitting in his lap as he leans his head back, resting it for a time.
And truly, a time does pass. Chasing one thing with another too close to it is ill fortune, and Ryouhara is perfectly happy to let the sentiment breathe in the air, dark eyes half-lidded.
"We're still trying to find out the identity of the man in the black mask," he says quietly, finally and at once. "He was able to kill ..." the boy pauses, and Yua can hear the tiny trip in his voice, the electric arc of a very raw, very real emotion. Shiryuu thinks better of putting it that way. "...I'll face him, in time."
"...but..."
Shiryuu is distantly cognizant of the studio ceiling, and how close it appears if one were to just look. The thought turns over in his head, like a coin. How close is the truth, were he to just look..? ".... That man... if he's gone this far ... his ambitions have run beyond the limits of his 'ability.' Were he not blessed with the name 'Ijuuin,' this would be a simple matter."
And yet there is something there, beyond the word 'Blacksite,' that chills Yua to the core. And Ryouhara is content to leave the air settling around it. He is quiet for a long time thereafter, listening to the buzz of the overhead lights.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Yua nods, mute, when Shiryuu points out how capable his men are.
Still... she has to be more careful, she thinks.
She must get back to her routine, or...
Distantly, she is aware of the movement of his fingers at his arm. She thinks he must be cross; and her first thought is to wonder what he must think of her, until she remembers the disdain with which he refused to say Kimitake's name.
That doesn't make her any less nervous, though.
If something happened... they'd blame Miho.
"Um?" Yua asks, taken aback, when those congratulations reach across the vast chasm of her psyche to find her. It's only a few beats later, that -- "Oh! O-oh... t-thank you." It took her a moment, in all that horror, to register that he would be happy her prayers were answered.
But... he's glad, and Yua smiles, though it's a touch dimmed by that great eclipse passing over her.
"Thank you," she says, again, a touch less nervous, and she is content to sit in that silence for a time.
She does, though, hear that skip in Shiryuu's record, as he finally speaks on the Black Mask. "He killed someone important to you, didn't he...?" She feels she's intuited that much, with a compassion ill-suited to their conspiracy. "I'm sorry... he's a terrifying spectre of a man. Please, be careful..."
... her gut twists, as that fear stabs into it again, looking down to the hands Shiryuu could take that matter into.
"Please," she breaks the silence, more quiet. "If Kimi-san was lying about how bad it would get, you would have just told me, right...? And -- and that means -- if you kill him, Mimi will still be in trouble. I-- I'm sorry," her voice breaks, as she tears up again, the words tumbling out again, "I shouldn't have burdened you with such a thing, and it wasn't even the worst thing, I -- I just don't know how the old ways are on the mainland, I thought -- maybe he was tricking me, and it wouldn't be that bad, but maybe I just made it worse --"
She buries her face in her hands, and her breath hitches, behind them.
One question lies unanswered, in her panic.
What was Kimitake's behaviour, if not the worst thing?
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The notion that the man in the black mask killed someone important to him...
"....yeah," Shiryuu replies, the concession given slowly, with his glance skipping away like a firefly in the summer night, away from the ceiling entirely. He doesn't really share more, and plainly leaves the notion unexamined.
Being a 'protector' means some things have to be set aside, for the good of those you watch over. At least the air is cool in the ill omened umbra, far away from the stare of the sun.
Would that he could stare up into the sky until it gave an answer.
"...I will."
After a time, the silence breaks. With two tones of brown eyes half-lidded the boy's expression hardens, his brow furrowing in darker concentration. "...The old ways are unkind, with respect to the modern age."
"Without rule, there can be no order... even with the title of 'shihaisha,' a lord's hands are tied to the honor of the name and those that bear it..."
It's as he said. As long as that man is blessed with the name 'Ijuuin,' the situation is not so easily dealt with.
Shiryuu's expression wanes, what meagre threads remained of his powerful mien dissolving with her broken voice, with the way he leans back over, adjusting the red bundle behind him for space with a tug before he rests his elbows heavily on his knees, hands flexing instinctively in the open air. She said that that wasn't all.
"...Yua," he repeats.
It's like trying to work out a stubborn kink. His hands try to find, to settle into a rhythm in the open air, as what was the ceiling becomes the floor in his eye, grey hair settling heavily over his brow. He settles on the middle distance, his eyes unfocused. Until he glances across the hemline of her new clothing. 'Perhaps the weather,' one of his spies theorized in his report. 'It is quite cold..'
"....sometimes, someone takes something from you, something that you can't get back."
It's a shame, Ryouhara never does find a rhythm to settle into, the tiny click of something at his wrist replacing the pawing motion at the air. A click, then another, a length of something silver pulled from his left wrist, fingertips worrying at the piece of cable that it's attached to. Try as he might, he just can't seem to get ahold of the notion he'd like.
It's like colorless static.
"...but..."
No matter what the barrier, the boy presses onward. "That is why the position of 'shihaisha' exists."
No matter how vast a gulf exists between them, no matter how impossible the situation, the boy honors the single thread of connection between them. "Tell me."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Yua expects no more than that. She's long since grown used to the idea of stoic protectors; Miho is reticient with the details of her worries, too. And while Yua can pry into Miho's deeper thoughts -- that's the privilege she has, as her Queen -- she shares no such relationship with the shihaisha.
But she knows he has someone, so her heart doesn't have to feel so uneasy.
"Thank you," she says, instead, as if his carefulness is a boon offered to her.
Sometimes, after all, that's true.
... the sky, though, has never answered a question in his life.
From behind her hands, she hears Shiryuu speak; and her fingers curl, a little, to let her sighted side peek back over to him. He says the old ways are unkind, but she looks relieved, as she puts the puzzle-pieces of his words together. "So... so you won't hurt him? That's -- that's good, Shishi! I was worried...!"
His weight lurches onto his knees, but she keeps sitting up on the chair; her posture is really very good, despite the seat she's taken, as if those ballerina's lessons never quite leave her. She watches his hands moving, as hers clasp by her chest, thumb rubbing over the side of her fingers.
She sighs, hearing her name yobisute again, and some of that tension manages to leave her shoulders, the firm join of her knees --
-- until he posits, that is.
"Um," Yua starts, one hand grasping at her wrist, her free fingers tracing the edge of her loose scarf. She looks quite ashen.
Some device... some silver device...
Her hands curl, around herself -- about her belly, as if she could shield it, even now.
"There's... a lot I can't say," she starts, delicately. "For my safety, and yours... I shouldn't have said even that much. A 'place which doesn't exist'... must be forgotten. Mm... but... let's say I worked for a place like that... once. A woman... overseeing my psyche..." Her gaze grows dull and glassy, as she looks forward. "She was... perversely obsessed with me. With my relationship... with how I was for Mimi. Well, eventually someone figured it out, she was moved somewhere else... but then I left, and..."
Yua falls silent, for a moment. Two.
Eventually, she takes a breath, and carries on. "... they called me back there... to assign a girl to my care. She's to take my place on the front lines... now I'm so far along. Her name is Tyrrha... she's done no wrong," Yua's voice assures him, with something which was gentle, once. "They made her to be a warrior, but she's a sweet girl... if I can save her, I will be her mother."
She's still tense.
"Just... when she was waking her up... she..." A different 'she', one notes, to Tyrrha, gesturing at the place a person would be. "She'd looped the cameras in her office, you understand, so they wouldn't figure her out." Yua's head is shaken, as she turns her attention to the side. "She -- she said she hadn't touched Tykko. How her assignment was -- terrible for that sort of thing. She said she had children of her own, so... so... she must at least not be that wretched."
"She told me that if I didn't fight, she wouldn't hurt me... so... so when I told Mimi, I told her that, but, but I never told her what Kimi-san did. So -- so she thinks -- she thinks I did fight, and, and that woman strangled me and stuff... but it wasn't like that. She still left a few marks, but... it wasn't like that."
"When I threw up, she let me go..."
She swallows; it still pains whoever owns that throat. Right, she realises, a moment later: that's her throat. She can still feel the burn of the bile.
"So... I told Mimi about her... she'd be able to tell if I lied about everything," Yua insists, looking down at her lap. "But I blamed it all on that woman... I said how Kimi-san was trying to protect me, and I insisted on going, because I realised they were threatening to take him there instead. We, we worked that out, together, when I got taken back to his house..." She closes her eye, and takes another breath. "I yelled at him... I was really mad. But it didn't matter... he said he, had use for my body, even if he didn't want it. Since I agreed to secure his standing... he assured me that if I was worth anything as an Ijuuin, I wouldn't be weak enough to miscarry just from stress like this. Um... he apologised for losing his temper, at least... I guess he's scary when he's been drinking."
It's a good guess, from the information she's been given. A safe guess.
In it is a clear corollary: she's buying his stories, even if she felt bad enough to check one.
Yua takes another breath, and dares to look over, to Shiryuu's space. And now she is bowed, her posture forgotten, bent over at the waist.
"Um," she starts, again, as she looks at that silver thing and its cable. "What is that...?"
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
It's remarkable to note exactly how little Shiryuu moves until discomfited -- how little he tries to betray, and how much of the burden for his pensive attitude is placed on the small movements of his hands, the urge to coax out his thoughts one finger at a time. So occupied is he, he almost misses her reaction -- perhaps he does entirely, and isn't yet aware of it. A reason never comes to him. Only quiet.
In the quiet, there is enough room and air for Yua to speak. And he is deeply unlucky to be able to connect the fine threads. It is one of the few occasions where he even can -- a creature of uncompromising authority and secrecy, Shiryuu has never been known to be a particularly good judge of nuance, in the small ways people interact. Yet, the boy still looks up and away from his hands, glancing at her under the hide of grey strands without turning his head.
Yet, somehow, he still understands. His jaw tightens, as his grim mien gentles. Eerily, he could almost be said to be smiling, a charming expression, though distant and faraway.
"...how unfortunate."
It's truly the kind of perspective Shiryuu would understand, the sensation of being a third party to your own experience. But these are the sorts of things that don't get to be talked about so freely, even among people who could be considered 'friends.'
No, instead, Shiryuu mouths the words, as if committing to the point. "Tyrrha. A child who's been released to your care to take your place...by..."
His mind drifts away from the trail, his interminable fidgeting miraculously slowing. The word, however, remains unspoken. Instead, he continues his train of thought. "...Assets protecting other assets." It doesn't make rational sense to him, unless one asset is of higher value than the other. The implications are chilling, and in need of his attention.
He thinks on it a moment, temporarily unmoving as he considers what it means to be an asset. And what the difference between them -- even he and her, now. It doesn't feel right to him, the way the word settles on his tongue. But even in the context of Ijuuin and Ryouhara, he doesn't really have a better word. Allies? Hardly. _Are_ they friends?
He sets both notions aside.
"We have not known the Ijuuin," Ryouhara concludes, "to marry slaves."
When she asks, the boy notes the device. With her examination, he shakes his head. "Just my jutsu. Juurishojin, second stage sublunar ko-ryu ninkou." He explains it calmly, pulling the small finger-sized rhombus of metal further from his sleeve. It's bladed now, she can tell, one section shortly followed by another, all attached on that tether. The cable is thin, supple, light enough to disappear in the distance, and the entire thing is capped by something that looks like an arrowhead. "It's a type of small collapsible sword," he explains. "It is difficult to control without use of my ability..."
He turns one section. "But the sections of this blade are like the people in a clan. One long, unbroken chain. When every piece obeys the will of the head, this flying ninkou can snatch the life of an enemy no matter what their defenses."
"...but when a piece of the blade becomes broken, it must be addressed. A piece that is dull can be sharpened. A piece that makes sound can be oiled. But a section that becomes untrue and doesn't seat must be taken out and replaced. First, it cuts against the pieces around it, causing more damage. Then a crack forms, and..."
She'll watch him snap the blade section right off the cable anchorage, the hooked interlock sporting a small defect in the forgework. This sharp little curved rhombus is what he holds up to Yua, in offering.
"You're in a world of wax, Ijuuin-san. Someone is lying. And that man... his intentions are suspect. If you are Ijuuin the same as he, it is not permissible for him to simply do as he pleases with you. Your name now carries the same weight as his. If you keep his secret, it's not hard to think that his half-handed ambitions will doom you both. So, it's a question of whose name is greater. And, if I were shihaisha of Ijuuin.."
The blade snaps tight with a flick of the wrist, hissing back into his sleeve while tractoring on an unseen mechanism. The sound is fast, sharp, final. "Well .. it's not permissible in the Ryouhara to allow those we should watch over to come to harm unanswered."
This time, his smile is watery, not at all moored in any firm feeling or another. It is a wan, sad thing, glimpsed only a moment right before he stands, dusting off his jeans. If she accepts the gift of that fragment, she'll be able to tell that Ryouhara's hands are now bleeding.
"That's why, for as long as you're worried," the boy supposes, "you should definitely never allow me to find out the name of that woman."
No, the boy concludes after thinking on it for awhile. Even so. It's not possible. Those types of bonds.. are far too gossamer for someone with ruthless hands like his.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
When he looks to her, Shiryuu will find a woman frozen; but she is not like him, in this way, was never raised to be statue-stern. Certainly she can try to suppress her movements -- to not act strange -- but by and large she is a perpetual motion machine, always with some minor tap or flap to speak of.
She always inhabited her body.
"Mm," she hums, vague and far-away, as he names her misfortune.
"... I don't like it," Yua says, when he comes to Tyrrha. "But since she's an artificial human... if she's hurt, she can be repaired. I... I'm not so arrogant as to say I am stronger, when my flesh yields so easily. Still, I... I will not send her out alone," she insists, quietly. "Even if I stay hidden away... my powers may aid her."
Her powers -- things worth protecting with something as advanced as a humanoid machine.
What is Yua capable of, for their cause...?
... tellingly, she does not argue being called an asset.
"I think maybe Kimi-san just doesn't like women that much," Yua says, quietly. "If he looks at us all like... um, Para-Mind was telling me about it, when he drove me home? They called him in to do techy things, I guess... but I guess he was one of Kimi-san's partners, too. He's still not very loyal, though," which is a known attribute from the NWO's most terminally online 'data analyst', forced into service after he hacked into a secret government process and apparently constantly occupied with how much he can fuck around before he finds out. "When I asked him not to tell Mimi, he told me what Kimi-san was saying in private... they were really awful things. So I don't even think it's just me... even though I guess he said I was low-born, which I think is a worse thing in his head."
Yua pauses, and adds: "Don't hurt Para-Mind, okay? He -- he knows how to fix Tykko when she gets hurt, so -- so I don't have to go back there to get her help. I don't think he's really working for that woman... he just does what he's told to do."
The sword, though -- the sword. "Er... um..." Yua starts, doubly unsure, as Shiryuu drops a long train of shinobu terminology and sets her head to spinning. She's good at languages, but that's something else!! Luckily, most of it becomes contextually obvious, as he goes on, and she considers the mechanism thoughtfully. It is the first step to calling her back to present day and present time; the next, he will witness as she reaches out a hand to take the rhombus, turning it about.
"It's small," she notices.
But, she thinks, if she's in a world of wax... won't the light of truth melt it all down?
That's always been the thing to lay her low.
"... Sister said the same," and of her older sister she uses the samurai address, too, which must mean she's talking about Miho's sister. "Though I couldn't tell her the truth... or even half the truth. Most people, I tell them Mimi's stalker came back to attack me again..." Yua bites her lip, rubbing at the defect in the chain. "She says stuff like how I have unassailable dignity... like, I deserve to be treated properly, since I'm part of the family. So... so no one's made me feel like I'm lesser, except for... him."
Yua sighs, her shoulders sinking. "But... even if everything goes right, and they're not mad, and it's not ruined... if I tell Mimi, and she takes care of it, Hiroki won't have a father. He'll be looked down on for all his life... bad people might take advantage of him, too, since he won't have the opportunities normal people get. Even if it was okay... it wouldn't be okay." ... she's thought about it. Tellingly, every solution she's thought of ends up with him dead.
"And... that woman... Kimi-san needs a good association with her to get ahead, I guess. So if she died, he'd be angry... and maybe not just him. We already failed to kill Sudou-san... I'm scared of what happens if we do more things wrong."
She looks down, at that piece of a blade made miniscule, and thinks, for a moment...
... but what's the use of holding a weapon she can't use?
Yua takes another heavy breath, as she looks back over to Shiryuu, her brow creasing.
"It's hopeless, anyway... I can't bear to even think her name, let alone say it aloud."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Shiryuu's expression is flat and calm. Another person might be angry, might be raging at the injustice of things. It would certainly be easy to do -- the onmitsu's blood is hot, after all. But he is calmer now than he once was, he'd like to think.
It's not a noble thing to taint the gravity of a confession with an unleashed heart. Ryouhara's hardly the type.
Reason is of more use to a boy like him. "...Para-Mind." The name sounds familiar, though Shiryuu, not possessed of an encyclopedic knowledge of every name and face in the secretive Order's sprawling organization, could be scarcely pressed as to why.
Even so, she says enough for Shiryuu to understand the child as artificial, and the Order operator as her service technician. Shiryuu internally chides himself, a small sound passing his lips. He was too focused on verifying the reports from his spies. He should have known immediately, from the way the child moved. Yua might notice exactly how intense Shiryuu becomes in the moment, taking one hand into the other as he walks away, as he forces his mind from the matter.
The boy approaches the mirrors along one edge of the wall, soundless on those new shoes of his -- but despite being able to still talk face-to-face with Yua's reflection, Ryouhara's eyes cannot be seen at all as he looks down.
"There was once a boy who lived as the hope of an entire generation," he begins. "Peerless in power, and unassailable in conviction, he was a genius beyond compare. His father had invested every effort in guiding him, molding him and giving him every advantage. But ... he did not see the boy as anything but an extension of his own influence."
It's not quite a recitation, the way Shiryuu says it. He's not repeating a fable, or a legend. He is reciting something far more familiar, as familiar as his hands, that he lifts up, running a thumb across the wound where Juurishojin's errant blade cut into his palm. It's shallow, but it still bleeds. It wasn't the blade's fault. Not then, not really.
"Over time," the young man continues, "that boy became disillusioned with the weight of expectation. It's not an easy burden, you know, carrying the hopes and dreams of everyone who came before you. So, when the boy found he could no longer perform as expected...that he was no longer of use to anyone around him, when he looked behind him, his father wasn't there anymore. And the boy disappeared, never to be heard from again."
With new eyes, the boy looks back over his shoulder.
"... no matter who they are to me or mine ... I wouldn't put my trust in men who confuse responsibility for opportunity."
A droplet of blood spatters on the ground, not too far from his sneakers. Looking down, the boy frowns, crouching down to wipe it up with a kerchief, to produce a roll of gauze from somewhere inside his jacket, and wrap both his hands.
"A child should have the opportunity to live a full life supported by loved ones with merit, and a name can be of more use than the father who originally bore it," Shiryuu opines, scrubbing at the blood on the glossy floor with the edge of the powder blue kerchief, vigorous now that his hands are safely wrapped. He pauses in his temporary obsession, as he looks up, as a pang of something indescribable to Yua strikes him. The thought is enough to unmoor the onmitsu, however slight, looking up to finally meet eyes with his reflection. His stare is harder and further than he'd like, but... it doesn't matter, not now.
"...Ambition without 'synthesis' is a poison," the boy resolves at once. "I've seen that man. A person who's lived life for as long as him... who relies on women and children as his means to acquire standing ..."
Shiryuu breathes, elbows back on his knees. He's not satisified, even though the floor is clearly clean. He wrestles with the tiny thread of aggression towards the floor.
".. it's the behavior of talentless losers."
Shiryuu's not the type to give up on a thought, and he's back to scrubbing in only a second or two. He's using his thumbnail in short order, wrapped in the kerchief. Perhaps if he had a cleanser, it'd release the protein from the grain.. "A loser's secrets aren't worth keeping. This is a conversation for the shijou oyakata of Ijuuin. There is a breathless risk in holding a direct audience with Takashi-dono, it's true," Ryouhara scrubs pointedly. He uses strange forms of address for the head of Ijuuin -- it's uncommon, even by historical standards.
It's to be expected from the shihaisha of the Ryouhara clan, whom follow an entirely different familial structure than other families.
"But enabling a man like that to do things as he'd like ... could be a reprehensible embarrassment for a clan," Ryouhara thinks as he straightens. "If I'm right..."
He pauses, thinking on it... and then waves it away. "...sorry, I'm just thinking aloud," he decides, in an easier mien. "There are means," he thinks. "Even with the Order. Not as hopeless as one would think."
Then, without specifying, the boy tucks the handkerchief into his back pocket, as if that alone would finish the thought.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"Oh, um, Para-Mind helps tell me how stuff works... like, what teachers are expected to do, and stuff. I never learned for real, so I don't know about filling out forms, or stuff like that... and he brings me new Cartridges when they make them. Stuff like that. He says he's a lover, not a fighter... but he's very good with computer things?" Yua does her best to explain the troll's whole deal, though she's surely glossing a dozen details. "He told me once that most of what he does is moving money for people so they can say they were hacked... if they were attacked, there's different scrutiny, I guess."
She does notice, though, the way Shiryuu stands. "...?" She asks, wordlessly, tilting her head. A moment later, she finds the words: "Shishi...?"
One word, anyway.
What he might miss, if he's not taking care to observe her despite that intensity building up in his bones, is the way Yua quite deliberately avoids looking in the mirror. ... she's been avoiding it the whole time, if one considers that looking at something isn't the same as looking at something.
She can listen to someone without making eye contact, though. She's really very good at that.
People as power...
It would be a powerful fable, surely, but it is too detailed to be one of Aesop's; it matches too closely to things Shiryuu's owned before. No, Yua realises: this isn't a mere case of theatrics.
Gaze shifted away from the mirrors, she misses just why Shiryuu's leaning down; she thinks that perhaps he dropped something, and wonders just how heavy the weight he's carrying is, right now, that he might fumble. "Mm," she hums, looking down at her hands.
Responsibility... it's something he has far too much experience with for his age, she thinks. Is that why he can't get up...?
"... but," she hesitates, despite hearing such a terrible tale, "if I caused Kimi-san to die, his father would surely not tolerate his name being given to my son." There's an implication, there; she dare not look it in the eye.
Her hands ball into her skirt, shaking her head, her tone rising in her distress. "Father was the one who arranged the marriage... if he heard what he was really like, it would reflect badly on him! And -- and they wouldn't believe me, anyway! Everyone loves Kimi-san! You don't understand... other people don't see the cruel Kimi-san. I didn't see the cruel Kimi-san, either... and even when he began treating me unkindly, I..." Tears well at her eye, and she doesn't have to say that she feels stupid; it's carried in her frustrated tone. "I didn't really see it!"
She sniffles, dabbing at her eye with that tissue, again. "I-I'm sorry," she says, quiet again. "It's awful to yell at you when you've done nothing but try to help... oh..." She takes a breath, and tries to focus in on what's occupying Shiryuu, down there. "... what's the matter, Shishi? Is there a stain...?"
... it can't have been too important, if he eventually stands up.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Shiryuu doesn't speak any more of that boy and his father, with his point apparently made. His attention lingers on the floorboards instead, the little kick at the spot that apparently seized his attention so quickly. It takes a moment for his mind to catch up with his pretenses, his preoccupations.
While it is true that the boy carries many, many more weapons, trinkets and preparations than may be immediately evident from the lonely red bag slung low horizontally across his backside, he doesn't seem to be paying attention to the burden in the slightest, so caught up in his musing.
Truthfully, it's only when Yua actually starts crying that Shiryuu, a look of visible alarm and distress crossing his face as he looks up. For a moment, he reaches back to his pocket for the -- no, that's filthy. Damn.
A hand is finally held up, asking patience. "....-chiih.."
It's a wordless sound, halfway between 'wait a minute,' 'no' and a long sigh, and probably somewhere in the center of all three at once. He doesn't come much closer -- or rather to say, Yua recovers before he does. A tiny sigh follows the first, and the boy's lip sets in a firm line as he lowers his hand, tucking both into his pockets.
"...'that man' is doomed," the boy finally says.
"It doesn't really matter what you do. The opinions of people are weak-rooted and fickle, subject to their own preconceived notions, and prone to change at whim. That preoccupation with facades will attempt to lead them. If he's close enough to our world to find a need to do as he did with you," Shiryuu points out, "it's only a matter of time before he finds his own fate."
The boy's brow furrows.
"...but it's not unimaginable that he would try to make you go first."
The onmitsu shakes his head, as if the thought was rejected from possibility out of hand. "It's not an acceptable situation," he thinks, as he considers the stain on the floorboards, as she brings it up. It's not really visible, not at all -- to the point where one would really ask whether it was ever there. But he looks at it all the same. She asks him what happened.
"It's nothing," the grey-haired boy replies, distracted.
And yet, it's with that same faraway thought that holds the shinobi's tone, his glance almost as evasive as Yua's own, though he certainly notices. "...It's a person's natural instinct to believe what they're told," he explains. "Suspicion is a matter of experience. A matter of endurance, and patience, to be aware that an objective truth even exists, whatever it is. And... no matter what his blood... Hiroki is the future of Ijuuin. When he is born, he will carry that name, because you are Miho's wife. That is the objective truth, not the lie we were told to tell. For anyone else, there is only one person who's consent matters in the affair."
The boy's head inclines coldly. "So. Do you think that man, supposedly beloved and charming Kimitake Ijuuin, is stronger or smarter than I, Shiryuu, Shirogarasu of the Ryouhara clan?"
"...and if that's not the case..."
Sharp eyes lock to Yua finally and at once. "..what makes you imagine that man to be more powerful and more cunning than the eldest master himself, the name my spymasters have acknowledged as Shijou Oyakata, peerless Takashi of Ijuuin?"
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
A dozen weapons, and he would surely have one subtle enough for --
Don't think like that, Yua chides herself.
She does calm, in time, hearing his request; calm enough to listen, anyway. He is alarmed by her tears; he cares that she is crying. He says that Kimitake is doomed, and...
And Yua frowns.
"If he disappears, they'll blame me... if I don't protect him, I'll have let him die. Whether it's unacceptable or not, I... there are things that are expected of me."
He says it's nothing, though, and Yua pulls her bag into her lap, searching through it for a moment. "Mm..." She hums, a touch distracted as she searches.
"His blood is fine," Yua insists, glancing back up. "He really is Mimi's baby... I mean, he came from Mimi's egg, and I'm his mother because I'm carrying him."
So caught up is she in the fact of the matter that she is caught entirely off-guard by his piercing question -- and then another. "I --" She starts, and falters, and she is a deer in headlights.
"..."
Shame floods her expression, as she looks back down. "No matter what I do," she says, "I'm doomed... just by marrying, I'll tear our family apart. If I keep his secret, I'll be just as guilty... if I tell the truth, I'll expose what they didn't know about him... no matter what I do, I'll bring turmoil. No matter what I do... I really am the Whore of Babylon!"
She does not wish to weep; she can do nothing but. "Of course you're stronger than him! Of course Father is! B--but I'm not! I'm just -- small and -- and stupid and -- I'm going to ruin Mimi's life again, just like last time! I'm always -- getting trapped and -- and she pays for it! It's not fair! I just take, and take, and take--!"
Her breath comes ragged; she pulls out another tissue, scrubbing at her eye. Her makeup smears, and when she realises it, she takes out a pad to remove her sharply-winged eyeliner rather than let it streak miserably.
In those moments, she remembers what Shiryuu was so occupied by; wordlessly, and still a touch teary, she picks herself up and makes her way to that point in the floor, lowering herself to her knees to inspect it. Knowing where the stain is needs as much memory as visual acucity, with how subtle it is in reality; but in her bag, she has those little tricks, pads designed to remove makeup and little bottles to fix up spotting.
She's more equipped to clean things up.
Maybe that's a statement.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
"And who decided that...?"
It's silent. He finds himself again in the mirror. The so-called invincible Ryouhara is quiet for a time, as Yua breaks slowly under the weight of her plight, under the weight of his examination. The matter of Hiroki's blood is temporarily forgotten -- even Ryouhara is not so well equipped so as to determine the bloodline of a child outside of his own clan reasonlessly, and to date he'd had no reason to consider it.
Ironically, it was his elders who were the ones so concerned with bloodlines.
It would be a simple thing, for anyone else, to soothe the expectant mother. He might even empathize on the matter of powerlessness, one of a thousand ideas flickering through the grey-haired boy's head, one idea taking precedence. It's not like you're good at these sorts of things. How did it go, again...
Just a pretty, empty-headed pet.
The boy's eyes narrow, as he shoves the thought away, straightening as she calms, as she approaches, with his apparent lack of interest in saying anything at all in reply to her confession filling that mutually shameful silence.
That is when Shiryuu finds himself saying something absent any real premeditation at all.
'...and who decided that?'
It's not something usual, the powerful words that Shiryuu Ryouhara is well trained to speak, not the ruthless bloodsoaked kanabo of demand in subordination to the shihaisha that has been a gruesome necessity ever since he came south. There is heat in his voice, but it is smaller, tighter.
"...sorry," he continues. "But... I'll never be the one to understand tears. I can't. I'm... not like that.."
'The boy who never cries,' he'd spat.
Shiryuu shakes his head slowly at the idea, taking the hand out of his pocket to rubbing the side of his head in frustration, barely doing anything to tame his mop.
"I'm ... a heartless person like that, I suppose, the one who has to make demands of everyone... I guess every lord needs to be that way, or else someone innocent could get really hurt or lost."
"But... it does mean that my word is law." And the boy absolutely means that much. "And I don't recall saying that. Saying that a man who hides behind a woman is stronger than the woman herself. That doesn't sound like something I'd say, anyway..."
There is a beat. "...what I would say is, it's your duty to protect Miho's legacy. Nothing else. Takashi-dono would agree with me. Anything else is... nonsense." After struggling with the exact word, he literally just says it like that. 'NANSENSU da.'
Finally, as Yua bends down and cleans at the spot, a ghostlike impression of something that likely used to be blood, she'll feel the boy's hand on her shoulder.
"..listen," Shiryuu says, more simply. "Aren't we the masters of the dark? Isn't the night our birthright, more than any dumb, cow-eyed stuffed shirt, placing limp-wristed phone calls in some dull office somewhere? Aren't you the one that ushers souls into the dark, even moreso than myself...?"
"...yeah," he decides. "Doom fears people like us."
"Besides." Imagine. "There are a hundred ways we know off the top of our heads for one of those boring losers to die and never even have to disappear at all. Ja--"
Now, Shiryuu leans down with a theatrically heavy, stiff 'uuugh,' getting onto a knee to take Yua's hands from the stain on the ground, capturing one gloved hand between two. Give him that. "Don't you think," Ryouhara does anyway, "that this sort of thing is beneath you, now? I'll send someone." Probably the shinobi who got a free vacation to Okinawa. Even if it's almost absolutely clear that Shiryuu isn't entirely talking about the bloodspot. Well. Kind of clear. He's certainly thinking it, at least.
Ryouhara pats her hand, before letting go.
"In the end, it shouldn't be too hard to think that that man should be happy, and that his father would thank you for giving a no-account loser the final gift of an exemplary child. Like that, instead of the other way around, right?"
He's going to stand up now, before it gets too awkward. No matter how limber, the boy missed his stretches today, and after standing in the same spot busking for a few hours, his knees are going to lock up at this rate. Shiryuu gives out a tiny puff of breath. He really isn't good at this kind of thing, honestly. "..someone ... needs to strip him of ... much easier! .. hmf .." Shiryuu says under his breath, moodily. Ehh--
Better not say it too loudly, else Yua might hear. Shiryuu's getting sensitive to that, he suddenly realizes. "Ah...well, that's what I'd say, anyway."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"The Powers that Be," Yua answers, simply.
The Organisation. The Order. The Hand that Feeds. Call it by any euphemism you like: it is the unfeeling hand grasping every leash, at the end of the end of the end.
"I--it's-- it's all right," Yua hitches out, shaking her head, hearing the tension wound around his apology. "Leave those things to the mother... you don't need to do it all."
Yua can believe it -- the weight of a 'lord'.
She's seen something close enough, sinking over Miho's shoulders.
"I'm sorry," she says, quietly, when he points out he didn't say that; she does not have the will to point out that it's not the sort of thing she hears in his voice.
"... I know," she affirms, a moment later. What her responsibility is, she means. And then, as she crouches down, she offers: "Here... let me fix that."
She's trying to... do something, to make up for...
(And it is another statement entirely, the way she feels she has something to make up for.)
But as she tries to use her makeup remover to remove a different stain entirely, she feels a hand at her shoulder; she pauses, the pad held between her fingers, looking up to him.
"I am chthonic," she answers him, without missing a beat, "inhumed in my immurement, where I drag their souls to keep. But I am sorry," she adds, with a wan smile, "doom does not flee from my path. It is closer to me than my skin, all its sorry tales known to me. To doom I am a mother... in this world, though not another."
She doesn't miss a beat, and in doing so, she tells him something he doesn't know.
Is it cowardly to couch it in metaphor...?
Yua sighs, with a small smile unbefitting of the conversation. "I did think... you know, in the old days, harsh husbands would often fall ill and die of heart troubles they hadn't known, all because he left his wife to tend the garden. Mimi's always had an interest in plants like that... I did think, seeing to the plants..."
... but that smile falls from her face, as her gaze casts down. "... it's all just a fantasy," she dismisses the idea. "If he dies before Hiroki's born... they'll definitely make life harder for him."
'Before', she says, again.
She's so distracted, though, that it's easy for Shiryuu to take her makeup pad from her hands; she blinks, looking to him. "Um..." She starts, and glances aside. "I thought I ought to help, and... um... w-well, it's what wives do in most households... I guess I'm not really used to being nobility," she admits, a touch embarrassed.
Still, thinking of it like that...
"Maybe..."
Yua reaches up, for Shiryuu's hand, before she finishes her thought; and she does so quite unthinkingly, just presuming that he will help her upright. Her hands fold, in front of her, once she's steadied." ... maybe... things will be different when Hiroki's born," Yua says, slowly. "Once... once the paperwork's done... it won't be so easy to change, will it? So -- so I can go to Father, and -- and I won't need to do anything rash, or leave Mimi to fix it..."
She still looks quite meek and nervous, but she is at least thinking. "... maybe," she qualifies it, again.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The boy gives a flat expression. "...is that right."
From the derision in his tone, Shiryuu doesn't really sound at all swayed by a single iota of that simple answer. One does not get far in the Order by ill minding the reach of their shadows, but..
"Only a simpleton would put a craven over a queen."
And .. if Shiryuu had to tell Yua outright about what he would think of a simpleton having any authority over him, he'd be cross. That much, at the least, is left unsaid.
There's also no multimillion dollar asset following that man around... but that part is, perhaps wisely, left unsaid. Perhaps wisely, or perhaps because Ryouhara is distracted.
"Mmm.... that can't be really necessary.." the boy grouses, with even his perspicacious mind struggling with what he instinctively recognizes as the neo-dogma of the Sinless World. He's gained some insight into her theatrical cant from Kasugayama, but it still doesn't mean he has a perfect command of what's being said.
Or perhaps that he doesn't want to realize what's being said.
Normally, he'd remain silent, write it down to mull over as a cipher -- were it anyone else, he'd simply remand the transcription to his spymasters. With Yua, he settles on something far more organic.
"Che," the boy finally decides.
If doom is following her around...
"Then... doom should step twice as lightly around me."
She was under the name of the Doomed Bride. It puts the Shirogarasu, who stands for the synthesis of all things, at cross-purposes. The preoccupation with doom is something typical of them. Even with Kouzou. All of the Marked were like that, he's starting to realize. Even...
...no, he'll definitely put a stop to it. With them all.
An uneasy thought drags against the back of the grey haired boy's mind, a notion not easily banished until the boy has to get back to his feet, until he can preoccupy himself with shooing the expectant mother away from the smallness of the everyday and remind her of her nobility. And her condition -- the boy will help her to her feet.
Even the boy has to smile, just a touch, as he listens to her muse. "There is always room for a water garden," the boy points out, cryptically. "It's not quite the right time for the lotuses to bloom in the Nagano highlands, but....maybe after Hiroki is born, ne?"
The boy laughs, and the short, sharp thing is just a bit like music, the grey-haired boy politely excusing himself from the thought with an open hand to cover his mouth. "...Until that time, it would be good to enjoy existence, I think. Take care of your body... don't you have that cute maid?" he asks.
For the rest, it'll sort itself out .... even if denying a name were simpler than it is, it wouldn't be in the best interest of anyone to deny the Ijuuin a legacy... now would it?"
By this time, Shiryuu's already moved towards the door, a hand in pocket. Picking up his hat along the way in his other hand, it rests on the doorlatch, the ball cap hang from two fingers. He's waiting.
His head turns slightly. ".... let's get you upstairs."
At least, this one time, it'll be fine.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"They do not see me as Mimi does," Yua says, sadly, when Shiryuu offers the worth of cravens against queens. "Though... she'd be happy to hear you say it," she advances, and manages a small smile, looking to him. "I am, too."
How would Miho feel about the things Shiryuu has to say?
Perhaps that's a question for later...
Such as the question of just how much Tyrrha cost. Why Yua? Is it just to protect a greater asset...?
... Yua, at least, isn't the sort to question that.
"It is," she assures him, with an overture of sadness, when he questions what Yua would call the True World. (To hear her say it, of course it is a world with sin; and yet it is how things should be.) "But please don't worry... I won't be leaving today, I think, or even tomorrow."
Leaving for the True World?
Leaving this mortal coil.
"I will instruct it to be mindful," Yua offers him another of those little smiles, hearing Shiryuu demand doom tread lightly.
Of course, she's not thinking of her Eye, when she thinks of the timer tick, tick, ticking away above her head. Rather... rather, the terrible habits Gretchen has, when she's late to her medicine...
... she does not know she is doomed twice over.
Perhaps then, she would be less certain of tomorow.
Today, though -- today, Yua cannot be expected to lower herself to the drudgery of housework.
"Lotuses are beautiful," Yua smiles, and whether she's still speaking in metaphor is really an open question. "Oh, I'll speak to Mimi! We could set up a pond... there's room on the balcony... I wonder if we could have some koi, or would Tiger terrorise them...? But maybe they'd be too big for Tiger to eat..."
It's at least something to occupy her, to let her smile a little easier. "Eiko-san is a lifesaver," she agrees, gently. "And we still have the nursery to finish..."
She places a hand at her belly, as she promises: "I won't let anyone hurt Hiroki!"
Even the man on his birth certificate.
Especially the man on his birth certificate.
It's just an elevator ride up to the penthouse, but Yua's glad to have a hand from Shiryuu, anyway.
The evening will be better, now she can dream up a pond...