2026-06-23: A Trace on the Trail
- Log: A Trace on the Trail
- Cast: Hyousuke Suzuki, Ichika Kawase
- Where: A hiking trail outside of Tokyo
- OOC Date: 2026-06-23
- IC Date: Thu Nov 29 2012
- Summary: With the normal hiking paths near Sumaru still at risk of harbouring demons, Hyousuke and Ichika choose a different trail. There, they make an unsettling discovery, with no immediate solution in sight.
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
The last days of November were close at hand, and Hyousuke felt it on every inch of bare skin. Every breeze carried with it a stark chill, yet even when the air was still, it nipped at his hands and his cheeks, pricking them like needles. The sun shone through a barely-clouded sky, but the light was cold, its warmth stifled before it could so much as reach past the canopy reaching over the trail. A little heat was trapped by the dense foliage to either side of him, and more was held to his skin by a few thin layers of long-sleeved clothes, but it was nevertheless safe to say that winter was well and truly underway.
For his part, Hyousuke wore nothing out of the ordinary. Ankle-length trousers and a sturdy pair of walking shoes reached below his waist, while above it, he wore some plain - yet eminently breathable - longsleeve shirt. Atop it was a russet-brown jacket, a little loose on his shoulders, but an otherwise good fit. They provided more than just warmth, however. They were, at that time of year, an inconspicuous way of covering the various cuts and scratches and bruises he'd sustained, both from the brawl with Ulala, and with the beast he'd been pursuing.
"What do you think so far?" Hyousuke eventually asked, as he and Ichika made their way up the new trail. "Seems like a nice change of scenery to me. Quiet, not too steep... No demons either." The last part was said with a hushed voice. Not so quiet he could not be heard, but enough that the crunching of dirt and leaves and other foliage underfoot would keep passersby from eavesdroppping.
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
It's definitely a little cold, but Ichika doesn't mind a bit of a chill; she's dressed for it. Jeans for the hike, boots, and a jacket over her tanktop. She doesn't need to cover so many injuries as Hyousuke, but it's still important not to leave too much exposed to the elements (and prickly plants). Besides, it's a good idea to check in with Hyousuke... and she likes a chance to get out into nature.
"Yeah, we're lucky," Ichika says of the demons. "I wasn't sure how far they'd go..."
A pause. "But it's nice, that aside. Good trail. Quiet, but pretty."
"And I haven't been this way before."
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
"I bet it's nice when it's snowing." Hyousuke said offhandedly, sounding more as though he was thinking aloud, rather than making some deep and valued contribution to a conversation. "You'd have to watch the path if it gets too difficult to walk it, but it'd look nice." The bite of a midwinter gust contrasting against the warmth of a thick coat, the crunch of snow underfoot drowning out the rustling of the leafy canopy overhead, the stillness of the air as more and more people were driven away by the cold... Hyousuke imagined it to be a peaceful scene. Calming and remote, far from anyone that might seek to disturb one's reverie.
"Might be nice to take some tea up here. Go to the top, look up at the stars, and just..." Hyousuke mused in an uncharacteristically poetic fashion. Perhaps something about the trail had brought that out in him. Perhaps the recent spate of fights and his lack of proper rest had shaken something loose in his brain. It was difficult to say, and it was unlikely he would have had an answer anyway. That aside, there was something that caught his eye, distracting him the moment that he saw it.
He at first gave it little thought, passing it off as a trick of the light, or some stubborn frost catching the rays at just the right angle. But as the trail wound closer, and he was given a chance to examine it, Hyousuke noticed something off. He paused in place, then crouched down to examine the item. Picking it up, he saw it was no wayward scrap of ice, but a strip of leather. Deep brown in colour, whatever gloss had once adorned it had long since faded, leaving it as little more than a length of cured hide with a dulled tag dangling off the front.
"That's weird..." Hyousuke said, turning the thing over in his hands, while brushing any dirt from it. "What's something like this doing here? And it's torn up real bad too..."
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
Snowing! "I bet," Ichika agrees, taking a moment to look around and imagine it. It does seem nice. Still, "Right." It's a good, peaceful idea. And Ichika doesn't particularly dislike snow; indeed, she's come to appreciate the winter months a lot more in the passt couple of years.
"You and tea," she says, but it's not displeased; it's nice to see Hyousuke so interested in something. But when he trails off, she glances his way and then down to the item.
Leather... With a tag.
"Huh," Ichika says, and steps closer to look down at whatever it is. Still...
"Somebody's pet?" she wonders. "..."
Ichika grimaces. "Well, it was somebody's pet. I guess there are scarier animals out here..."
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Hyousuke's lips tightened into a frown at the thought of something savaging whatever the collar had once belonged to. He went quiet for a moment, clearly thinking on the idea, before shaking his head a little.
"This close to the city? I don't know... It'd have to be a pretty small dog to get got by anything that lives this close to a place as big as Tokyo, and the collar looks way too big for that." He showed it to her to demonstrate his point, and held it between them while he explained his findings further.
"Tag's scratched to hell too. I can't figure out a thing it says. You getting anything?" Hyousuke held it out towards Ichika, but he suspected she'd have no better luck than he. The tag had clearly been engraved, but most of the characters had been scratched over by something. The elements, claws, teeth - it was hard to place the onus on any one thing, but the end result was the same. They had no name, no contact information, and no animal. "Shit... It's probably been here a few days too. Someone's probably getting real worried right about now."
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
It's Ichika's first thought, anyway. But the way Hyousuke counters the idea... "Oh, good," she says. "Wasn't a really happy thought, you know?" she says, though it's not really a question. "OK, hm..."
Ichika looks to the tag--but she doesn't see anything, either. "Nope," she says. "Not a thing."
no name, no contact..
"Yeah..."
She thinks of Lance, and how worried she'd be.
"I don't know what we can do, though."
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
"Suppose we could take a detour if you want to go looking for it." Hyousuke suggested, though the tone with which he said it made it quite clear he didn't put much stock in the idea. Whatever doubt may have lingered, he made sure to clear up a moment later when he looked around the wooded areas to either side of them. "But it's a big place, and just the two of us aren't going to cover much ground. And that's assuming it's not just gonna get scared and run off while we try and help."
"Poor thing." Hyousuke eventually said, shaking his head a little and sighing quietly. "It's probably scared as hell and all alone out there." He paused for a moment, tight-lipped and quiet. For second - and only a second - his gaze went blank. He looked forward, but his mind was somewhere else, as though he saw something far different to the trail before them. "I don't like it, but I don't think there's anything we can do. Can't talk to its owners with the tag like this, and the cops probably wouldn't take any of this seriously."
Another pause, this time with a tapping foot, and no more distant looks.
"Think Uchida-san'd take the case? I need to ask her about something anyway."
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
"...Mm." Ichika doesn't see any more possibility than Hyousuke seems to about it, shaking her head. "Right. Which it would; we don't have anything familiar or anything to reassure it..."
She sighs, too. "Yeah," Ichika says. She notices that blankness, but... "Yeah. Sometimes there's not much to do..." But--
Hm.
"Maybe," Ichika says of Tamaki. "I'm not sure what she'd do, but... I gues it's worth asking? Here, sec."
Ichika pulls out her phone. "Let me take some pictures so we can identify where we are later. It might help."
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
"Send 'em over when you can." Hyousuke said, while crouching back down to sift through various mounds of dirt and fallen leaves, in the hopes of finding something that would help him - or, rather, Tamaki - put a case together. "I don't know what I'm hoping for. Maybe she can see something on the tag that we can't, or figure something out with it." He didn't sound particularly hopeful about the idea. His tone leaned more towards desperation, like he was grasping at any lifelines he could get. Searching for further clues had already yielded nothing, after all, and that meant one less lead to go on.
"Its owner's probably worried sick about it. Losing someone that close to you... I don't know if I could sleep, knowing that my friend was out there." Another distant gaze, though it lingered a little longer than it had before. "Far from home, all alone... I couldn't stand knowing it was going through that without me." If one were to listen closely, they might have heard something faint in his otherwise restrained tone - bitterness. Small, but lingering, like poison in the veins. He shook it off a moment later though, and turned to face Ichika. "I don't think there's anything else we can do right now. At least we know where it went missing..."
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
"Will do." Ichika takes a few photographs; the place they found the collar, the horizon here, the trees around. Then, she takes a moment to figure where they are relative to the rest...
"I don't know either," she admits. "There might be nothing she can do."
But...
"It sucks," Ichika agrees. "But there's stories about that, you know? Pets who find their way to their owners even after long separations. ...I don't know if that's something that's going to happen here, but... It's not totally hopeless."
She hears it.
"Yeah. Let's get up what we can and send it to her. Whether it pans out or not... At least we'll know someone tried."
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
There was silence between them. Not a lull in the conversation, but a heavy, thoughtful, pause. Rather than interrupt it, the breeze that meandered through only served to highlight it, until Hyousuke nodded firmly.
"Yeah. At least someone tried to help." He paused, and his lips moved, as if he had more to say on the matter. But that thoughtful quiet reigned again, ended only when he turned his gaze further up the trail, and squinted. "Still got plenty of day left, if you want to go further up. I think we can make it."