2026-05-26: Recruting Tomoki
- Log: Recruiting Tomoki
- Cast: Yua Ijuuin, Tyrrha Ijuuin, Tomoki Hasegawa, Miho Ijuuin
- Where: Miho's penthouse, Aoba Ward, Sumaru City
- OOC Date: May 26, 2026
- IC Date: Thu, Nov 15 2012
- Summary: Yua and Miho invite Miho's boyfriend, Tomoki, to dinner so that he can meet Tyrrha... and learn why she's really staying with them, now. The truth invites him in, and Yua tasks him with helping Miho to cope with her own emotions following Yua's assault, recognising that her support of Yua has left her without a place to process her own grief over her inability to protect her and the damage Natari's done. Even if he's not able to help fix their situation, recognising how dangerous it would be to dig into what they're dealing with, he can still offer his support.
Content warning: Discussion of sexual abuse, blackmail, human trafficking.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQKYFUDY_9g Moulin Rouge - The Show Must Go On
Congratulations on getting through another day...
... is the sort of thing which people like Yua and Miho could probably stand to hear more than they do.
Tonight, Yua has put her energies to cooking, something she hasn't yet managed to achieve /consistently;/ nothing too fancy, shredded chicken tossed in rice and broccoli and cauliflower and cucumber, but it's got all the colours of a healthy meal, and everyone /knows/ that things are better for you when they're presentable.
Tonight, they're having a guest...!
And that guest is greeted first by a girl in a white sailor's dress, green hair bunched up high on her head in a ponytail, red eyes just a little unsettling, skin a touch more bronzed than one might expect in Tokyo. "Yo," she says, and she doesn't /sound/ immensely pissed to see him, even though she /looks/ like she hates it.
It is not an impression improved when she remembers who he is, and grins, with an expression one might expect more from a ravenous lion than a girl. "Ey, Hasegawa-saaan, right?"
"Mmhm, mmhm!" That's Yua, bustling up behind her -- slower than her, notably. (We note here that this girl is wearing perfectly normal loafers. Hey, wait, she's inside--!!) "Tomo-kun, hello! This is Tyrrha... Mimi's told you about her, right?" She prompts confirmation, though she knows the answer, a hand on the girl's shoulder. (Tyrrha is /taller/ than Yua, but not so tall that she can't reach.)
"Please, come in," Yua smiles, to him, as Tyrrha laces her hands behind her head and taps a toe to the floor, with a brief aside under breath. ("So, uh, how's dinner work when it's a Thing, anyway...?" "Just follow our lead!")
... Yua doesn't /look/ like she was grievously attacked, but she's wearing long sleeves, now, and a long skirt. Maybe it's just not easy to see when she's covered up.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
It would be nice to hear it.
Miho certainly is more cheerful about food when it's presented well. ...Well, sometimes she isn't, but those are the bad days; on /most/ days it's a bonus for her, much as it is in their society in general. And today is 'most' days in this respect; she's glad to be able to have the conversation they're going to have...
And for Yua seeming more cheerful tonight.
Tomoki Hasegawa--a tall man with dashing good looks and dark hair--arrives holding a bottle of sparkling pomegranate juice. "Hi there," he sys to Tyrrha, undaunted by her /hateful expression/. (He's not sure what's up with that; it's possible she's bothered by what he is and represents, possible she doesn't like strangers, and possible her face is just like that. In any case, he's not going to stress it!)
"Yes," Tomoki answers. "Nice to meet you, Tyrrha-san." He goes with -san because he doesn't have any particular authority over her besides being an adult in general. It should be right.
"Thanks." If he hears that... it's fine!
"This is for you," he says of the juice. He brought it instead of wine!
Miho steps out at this point. "Welcome," Miho tells him. "I'm glad you could make it."
She actually smiles.
And he says, "How are you feeling?" to Yua, and then, "Thanks for the invitation, too."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"Oh!" Yua exclaims, when she's handed over the /juice./ "Thank you! You're very thoughtful to bring juice right now," she smiles, to him, because of course she /can't/ have wine right now, but she's pleased to see a man remember that.
(Can /Tyrrha/ have wine? Well, in Yua's new social strata, supervised alcohol probably isn't /unheard/ of for girls once they reach high school... but /should/ Tyrrha have wine? Maybe it works the same way bioprocessing anything for fuel works...)
"I'm, ah..." The leading pause in Yua's response to Tomoki's /question/ likely says as much as the smile she musters. "I'm all right."
She's glossing over a lot, judging by the exhaustion set into her eye which her makeup can't quite cover. Maybe she's just being polite.
And what he'll note, as they have dinner, is the way Yua's helpfully tutorialising the whole experience for the young woman seated with them -- though she doesn't make it /look/ like that's what she's doing. As far as Tyrrha can tell, it's a totally normal dinner...! And it more or less /is/ -- and she might never realise just how badly it could have gone if she'd been thrown in to figure out how social functions work solo.
Tyrrha, as it happens, is an entirely cheerful and pleasant young lady with a good appetite; she apparently just has a face that scares small children. When she's asked about her efforts, she shares how she's catching up on schoolwork so she can get back to school; apparently, she lived out in rural Okinawa before this, so she needs to fill in some gaps to fit in.
Once dinner's done with -- and /dessert,/ which happens to be a pretty low-brow affair of jelly and canned peaches, but that's the kind of thing which actually agrees with Yua's stomach these days -- Tyrrha's sent off to work on her /homework,/ which of course Yua has already designed for her to get her more used to a city-slickin' education system. (Maaaan, ain't no one can catch a break when their mama's a /teacher./) That leaves the adults to colonise the loungeroom, with that lovely juice Tomoki brought for them poured out into glasses to enjoy.
The glasses, naturally, are fancy.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
"It's nothing," Tomoki politely demurs. He did remember, though. He's a sensitive guy! He didn't even need Miho to suggest it!
He assumes Tyrrha can't have wine, too. That's fine. But his question was clearly indelicate, and she is clearly just being polite, so he accepts it with a smile back and doesn't press any further than that.
Miho helps now and then with the tutorializing, but keeps up light topics overall; Tyrrha's schooling is light enough. Most of her business at work isn't. Tomoki has a few stories from the latest set he was on; this one was just a commercial, but he's hoping to get a bigger project again soon, according to his agent...
He's interested in Tyrrha--after all, he used to be from the country, too--and Miho is glad of the interest.
Dessert is lovely. Don't even worry about it Yua.
But Tomoki, now that he's in the lounge, takes his seat last, after seeing his girlfriend and her (should-be) wife to their seats, despite being the guest. It's a man thing.
"So," he says. "...You had something to talk about."
Miho nods. "We did," she says. "...Yua, would you prefer that I explain, or...?"
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Apparently, 'something happened' which meant that Yua had to adopt Tyrrha suddenly, but whatever it was can't have been good dinner conversation, because Tyrrha isn't entirely sure what to say about it, and Yua moves the topic on before the question weighs too heavily.
Yua, as it happens, kind of needs help to her seat. It isn't even entirely a matter of injuries, which, physically speaking, are more or less completely healed; she's twenty weeks pregnant, by now, and starting to /feel/ that extra weight.
(Weight which she's been fighting to put on; after much concerted effort, she's even at the lower end of her /recommended weight/ for her stage of pregnancy. ... it's made her pretty nervous around scales, though.)
She keeps a hold of Miho's hand, even after she's seated down. "Um..." She starts, looking to her, and she can feel the way she's /squeezing/ that hand of hers. "It would be easier... but... I don't want Tomo-kun to think I didn't wanna tell him or anything, so... just give me a minute?"
They have, of course, already rehearsed what the truth is when it's been sanitised of its roots in the Order; Yua knows /what/ to say, so it's really more a matter of /saying/ it.
Luckily, even the /public/ story is frightening enough that Tomoki must surely realise why some sensitivity around that grace is warranted.
"We... told people I was attacked by Mimi's stalker coming back," she says, finally, ankles crossed over each other and eyeline fixed firmly on her hand in Miho's. "And that he was a man... but... mm, you know what they say about the man in the dark alley...?"
(What they say is that violence by and large does not come from him, that opportunistic stranger striking from the blue.)
"... the people who took me," she starts, after a lengthy pause. (Aren't they /all/ pregnant, by matter of association?) And there, after she says it, is another; space for Yua to look to the hall, to make sure no young ears are listening. (Wait, does Tyrrha have bat hearing? Is that how robots work? No, she can't worry about that, she's already in the middle of all this.) "They're still, um... active. We... we wanted to help, um... other people like me. You know? But -- but, um -- I got a lead about a girl, and -- and -- it was a trap," she says, quietly, her shoulders sinking. "I really did find Tykko, but... one of the women who did those things to us, she..."
This pause is longer.
"That woman," and Yua can't even indirectly speak of her directly, her pronouns gesturing with impeccable /vagueness,/ "she was... obsessed with me, back then, before." And they have had enough dinners together that Tomoki might even be able to identify that language as how Yua generally /refers/ to that period when she was trafficked, when she's not pushing herself to speak of it. "She knew I'd come to save Tykko, so... so, she..." Here, she tears up; her voice wavers, a little. "I knew it was blackmail," and it's more truthful than they know, "but I couldn't leave a girl in that situation. So, I... debased myself, so... she let her go, but... it's a complicated situation," she says, and the quiet of her voice is one which has been hollowed out. "I might have to... well, if I keep her happy, she won't make me disappear again, but..."
This time, it's a pause she doesn't fill at all.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Miho keeps her hand in Yua's, curling about the other woman's fingers as Yua squeezes. Don't worry about it. "All right," Miho answers, and Tomoki nods.
He waits.
Then, the story as it is... Tomoki remembers the story they told, of course. And the man in the dark alley.
"That he doesn't tend to be from the dark alley?" Tomoki confirms. Then--
Pregnancy of pauses aside, Miho continues to stay with Yua, trying to support her with expressions and presence if nothing else. But Tomoki listens about it. They're still active...
Tomoki is disturbed; he's good at keeping things out of his expression, but not so good as to hide /that/ in this situation.
"I see..."
"And not even the police can help," he recognizes, because if they could, Yua would have relied on her husband.
"...I'm sorry, Yua-san. That's terrible."
Miho nods. "So you see," she says, "It's... something we've had to deal with, lately. We're looking for a better solution," she says, because of course they have to be, "But until then..."
Tomoki frowns. "I see..."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"Mm... Kimi-san wants to help me, but..." Yua still can't quite look at either of them, though perhaps it's entirely understandable why she'd look /ashamed./ "Since it's blackmail, even if the police knew enough about their operations to respond, they could do a lot of damage before anything happened. I... I have to think of everyone's reputations."
And hers. It's much easier to feel sympathy for a woman who was attacked by a disturbed man who just met her than a woman tricked by known malicious actors and assaulted by /another woman./
"But that's why Tykko seems so out of touch... it's not just that she's country, um... she was kept from society for a long time." Yua squeezes Miho's hand, taking a breath. "I promised I'd protect her... um... s-she doesn't know about the things I did to get her out. Please... don't tell her, um... she's carrying enough heavy secrets."
Including hers, Yua thinks, written in the cracks of the smile she tries to put on. It wavers, and fails; but she tries again, and manages to get somewhere, the second time, as she looks up to Tomoki. "I'm sorry to tell you an awful thing like that, but... but when I heard it was hard for Mimi to talk about her feelings, um... I... I didn't want to make her pretend. It's... it's a dangerous situation, um... those people, they carry guns, you know?" Never mind that 'those people' who handle guns so easily could describe the woman shielding her right now. "S--so, if there's still anything that sounds a little vague... I'm sorry," she says, again. "I just... I really don't want you to get targeted, Tomo-kun. It's not that I don't trust you, I just... I'm... really scared, you know?"
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Miho understands it. She doesn't like it, but she understands it. And he gets, "Right... Since you don't want that to get out. 'The cure is poison', some would say. ...That's an awful position to be in, knowing that 'justice' would hurt you. And other people." He understands reputation, anyway. He doesn't like it much either, though. he's just not so naive as to tell Yua that doesn't matter.
Miho nods. "Right... If I thought calling them out would help, I'd be the first to do it. As it stands..."
Tomoki at least can start to get another reason this is difficult for Miho, in addition to her loved one having such a terrible set of problems. But, "Sure," Tomoki says. "Won't say a thing. ...It's not the sort of thing you want to tell a young girl anyway, right?"
Still, "Hey, you don't have to be sorry; you didn't do anything wrong. ...No, not even the stuff you got coerced into, by my mark--when you don't have any other choice..." He shakes his head. "Thank you. For your thought for me, though."
"And for me," Miho says quietly. "I wouldn't have asked Yua to share something so difficult if I didn't think it was important."
However...
"Right. Dangerous. And if I know all the details, I become a liability to you both," he grimaces. "All right. I won't press. ...Not really my place, anyway. But I will say..."
"If you think of anything I /can/ do to help, let me know, all right? I don't have the level of contacts she has, but..." 'She' being Miho, of course.
Miho says, "Thank you for understanding," she says. "...If I could tell you the details safely... I would want to tell you more."
She turns to Yua, then. "...I appreciate it. But we don't have to continue any further, if you aren't up for it. I think he gets the idea."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Does she really have nothing to apologise for...?
"... did you know that poison is something you have to eat?" Yua asks, and perhaps it sounds like a tangent, as she looks away. "Poisonous frogs, and poisonous fishes, and poisonous plants, and poisonous sea cucumbers... they only hurt you if you try to eat them. It's funny, isn't it? Poison sounds so scary, but it only helps if you're a victim... it's venom which is used to attack."
It's not really a tangent, inside Yua's head.
She thinks about that kind of thing a lot.
Snakes are nice... they're her favourite type of animal.
(Tiger, of course, is her favourite /specific/ animal.)
"Mimi would tell if it wouldn't be worse," Yua affirms, underlining Miho's conviction. "But... it's too much to ask her to carry the heavy secret with everyone. I mean, we told our immediate family... you know, Papa, Father and Mother, and Mimi's siblings?" One of these things is /not/ like the others, and it's the fact that Yua doesn't talk about /her/ father like an old samurai drama. "Mama's not well, and Yume-chan's just a year older than we think Tyrrha is, so they don't know... and the rest of our family doesn't really know, either." Notably missing in that roundup is /Kimitake's/ parents or siblings. It's fine.
"So... it's not like we're lying to /everyone/ everyone, but... it's hard to rely on someone you can't talk to, right? Mimi's working really hard to help me... and her work's being really mean to her because she took time off, too, so... I was worried," Yua settles on, small. "Mimi deserves help, too. So... maybe lunch can help more, now?"
(Yua knows that Tomoki's been making time to see Miho at lunch while her schedule's so busy with these horrors, of course. That's why she realised there was a problem at all!)
She looks to Miho, then. "You know about being safe better than any of us," she says, to her, squeezing her hand. "So... you can decide if it's stuff you can talk about, okay? And I mean, like... your feelings, too, Mimi! I know it's hard when I'm all broken and taped up," never mind that someone living in a house like this ought to have no occasion to /tape something up/ when it could be repaired /properly,/ "but that doesn't mean you stop feeling feelings, okay?"
Yua's idea of help, evidently, isn't just about /fixing the problem./
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Poison is something you have to eat. Tomoki hadn't considered that perspective, but it isn't a tangent at all. He can see that much. "...Mm," he answers, and nods. "I see... So poison is more indirect, that way. You have to arrange for someone to take it. You can't just attack with it."
Tomoki's cool with snakes. He's no Wyoming Jones!!
They told immediate family, but not a lot of others. Tomoki notices the difference in the titles, of course, but he doesn't comment on it. "Well then doubly, I appreciate your trust."
"Does it feel like lying?" He wonders. "...Sorry, if that's difficult to answer. I just don't usually hear people keeping private business private thinking of it as lying. ...Perhaps I've said too much."
But he has opinions on what you Have to share, and what you Don't Have to share.
Still...
Miho also deserves help. "But I see... Yeah, her job's pretty rough, huh?" Miho grimaces.
"All right. You leave that to me, then."
Miho pets Yua's hand with her spare. "All right," she says. "I suppose that's true... I'm the most security-minded of us."
Tomoki assumes taped up is athletic metaphor. Right? Of course. Right.
"I don't," she says. "...Sometimes I forget that."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"Mmhm," Yua hums, affirmatively. "Even using poison as a human, it's something you need to trick people into... it's indirect. That's why some people call it a woman's weapon... though if they say it like that, they usually think it's a bad thing." Yua frowns. "I think those people are just angry because they're not good at planning. It's reactive, but it's not an accident or anything, either... you need to be really clever for poison to help you out."
Thankfully, Yua seems to at least have the social insight not to state out loud /why/ she's so protective of poisoners. She can figure out that it might take Miho some explaining to assure Tomoki he wasn't in danger of an olden-day /divorce./
(Murder. Back in the old days, you dealt with a husband you couldn't live through by murder. Why would Yua think of such a thing? No reason.)
... on the other hand, Yua does /not/ have the insight to realise that normal people would listen to what she's saying and wonder whether /she/ might be dangerous. The fact that being comfortable with discussing weapons as strategies implies certain things about her attitude just goes /completely/ over her head and she /does not catch it./
Hopefully, it's something which can be forgiven in the context of the unthinkable situation she came from.
"Um... I don't really know how people with money handle it," Yua admits, embarrassed for a much more normal reason, now. (Are lies of omission normal, for rich people? Is she being weird? Questions for later.) "But it bothers me... lying is lying, even if it's just lying by not saying anything. I mean, I do it all the time, but... it's still misleading people, and it still gets in the way, you know?"
But Miho is discreet! And if Yua thought of Miho taping her hands up to strike a punching bag, her day would certainly improve. Instead, she thinks of Miho's feelings, and her expression softens when Miho admits forgetting hers.
She needs to be brave... for Miho too, right?
"Like... like, there's stuff we can't tell family as much, right?" Yua adds, a touch insistently. "The way I was attacked... my daymares keep getting in the way." That's what she's taken to calling her flashbacks; the only way she can make sense of them is as nightmares which intrude into the waking world. She turns to Tomoki, as she explains: "Sometimes I lose my mabui -- my soul -- but Mimi knows how to do mabui-gumi, so I'm okay... but it still makes it hard." Reciting mabuya, mabuya and anchoring Yua to her habitual nature interrupts a great many things, after all; luckily, Yua doesn't lose track of her soul as much as she did, when she first escaped.
"And... um... we're really not used to... we're physical people, you know? I've been trying, but it's not that easy... it's not easy for Mimi, either. Right?" She adds, looking to her, again. "But it's hard to talk about it, since you don't want to pressure me, either, right? So you can't say stuff like how you're stressed about how that woman hurt us both like that, or how you're worried how things will get better, or whether maybe it's just changed forever... but I think you are stressed, right? Um, maybe not about exactly that," where Yua's looking says as much about her worries as Miho's, "but... like that, right?"
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
"A lot of 'women's things' are spoken of with derision," Miho comments darkly, and Tomoki glances between the two of them. "I guess that's true. Spooky stuff." He doesn't seem /too/ spooked, though.
Tomoki figures Yua's been through Some Shit at this point.
However...
Yua is embarrassed! Tomoki didn't mean for /that/. Lying is lying, hm? "Hmm." Tomoki decides again that Yua is a very literal sort of person. "It's not bad to be honest by inclination," he settles on instead.
Miho is discreet. And--
Stuff they can't tell family... Mm. "Ah?" he asks. The mabui-gumi, losing her soul. He might just dismiss it as some superstition... but in light of /this/ kind of revelation, it seems a little more plausible. "Glad she can help. ...It would be hard."
But Yua mentions being physical people, and Miho doesn't talk about that part at first. Instead she says, "Well, no, I don't want to pressure you..."
Worried. Is she stressed?
"...I'm stressed," she allows, "Though not just over it how it impacts me, obviously."
"Anybody would be," Tomoki offers. "...You're really considerate, Yua-san. I have a feeling it's not /just/ because you love her--but because you're that kind of person when you're given the chance."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"Mmhm," Yua hums, supporting Miho's derision. She happens to hold Miho's womanly arts in high regard...
... though she's still not sure whether she needs to ask her to share.
"I wish I could be," is what she says, of honesty. "But I guess that's what you said, right? Inclination's not an action... just the preferred action."
And she is a woman of a great many superstitions; or at least, that's what people tend to /say,/ unfamiliar with her religion. Sharing those beliefs with mainlanders, of course, is another thing entirely, but Miho might have to tell him how he's been privileged there herself, because Yua thinks it's one of those things that's /obvious./
"That's obvious, Mimi," Yua says, for much the same reason, when Miho adds her own /obviously./ "What's not obvious is how it affects you! That's why I need to pull it out, I think. Since I was hurt, so I need help, but everyone can see how I'd be hurt, and how you're hurting is hidden, since it's our private life, so it's private..."
Yua pouts, and reverts back to, "mouuuuuuuuu," because she doesn't want to upset the woman who should by all rights be her wife, but she /knows something is wrong!!/
Still... Tomoki supposes she'd like to be considerate when she's given the /chance,/ and her smile, this time, is a little easier, not so /performative./ "I want to be," she says, quietly. "I'm... really happy you can see that, Tomo-kun. You're really a kind man... that's why I'd trust you to ask to help Mimi with her feelings, too. She keeps them all armoured up, so they're really precious, okay?"
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Miho's arts go unshared. At least, those. For now.
But she wishes she could be... "Right," Tomoki answers. "It's still what you'd rather do, even if you can't this time."
Tomoki at least knows it is better to call Yua /religious/, and while he doesn't know all the details, he knows better than to poke fun. ...Not that he's inclined to anyway; it'd be mean-spirited to little purpose. Miho will tell him the relevant part later.
But obvious... Hmmm. Mouuu, Yua says...
"I... that's true," Miho allows. "Well, all right. Yes, I'm troubled that we can't have more... physicality. I do miss it. But I don't think that's as important as your needs, so I'm reluctant to trouble you with it. ...I'm also troubled that I can't /protect/ you from this, moreso than the other matter. ...So I can share, all right?"
And then Tomoki says, "...Thanks."
Armored up...
"Yeah. I've seen," he says. "I'll do my best."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
What she'd rather do...
Right now, Yua would rather take care of Miho, just like Miho's taking care of her. It's frustrating to her that she can't help her with all those difficult feelings herself, in a gentle mirror to Miho's frustrations over her inability to shield Yua from her slings and arrows; but if she could be everything to the woman she loves, their family wouldn't matter, would it?
That's the sort of wisdom Miho passed on to her herself, months ago, as Yua struggled with the injuries to her /connections./ That nothing comes down to one person; that everyone is a mosaic of the people they depend on and who depend on them.
For all she's suffering, right now, perhaps there's a little solace in realising that she's not the only thing in existence, blinded and deafened to the world that is and drowned by their beating hearts, presence made an assault and an insult.
(That's not a metaphor.)
"It's hard," Yua agrees, leaning against Miho, as if to assure her that she is /still/ her rock despite the way those people keep subverting her. "You've always tried so hard to protect me... if it was fair, they'd never have a chance. And now the attack's in my head, and you can't get in my head to protect me from that... but I'm still really happy you're with me, Mimi. Even if I'm in danger... it's easier when I'm with you. And we're stronger together, right?" She asks, looking up to her.
"That means... let's be nice to Mimi, too! Okay? Be nice to Mimi, she's done more for me than anyone else could ever do." Yua might /sound/ like she's talking /about/ Miho, but she is, in fact, looking straight at Miho as she says it. She's telling Miho to be nice to Miho...
... and once she's done that, she looks to Tomoki, again. "I'm recruiting you to be my special helper, okay? Let's work together to make sure Mimi's nice to Mimi!"