2026-07-14: A Magazine for Two
- Log: A Magazine for Two
- Cast: Shiryuu Ryouhara, Umie Akabane
- Where: Narumi Memorial Hospital, Narumi Ward, Sumaru City
- OOC Date: July 14, 2026
- IC Date: December 09, 2012
- Summary: Recovering after the events of the Mizunagi's disappearance, Umie isn't sure what's worse: the waiting for something to go wrong, or the boredom. Thankfully, she's not the only one there who's in the same boat, nor the only one anxious to see if someone she cares about is okay.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
He spent some time touring the impact site.
Was it the same ship? It's impossible to tell. As far as he could surmise, it didn't seem like it was, or at the very least the ship was active on an axis he couldn't quite detect. The places were different, and what little he could see past the cordoned zone, his weapon did not appear to beon the main deck anymore. Damn.
It puts him in a bit of a predicament.
The boy sighs in annoyance, striding out of the supply room, cinching a spare length of what-used-to-be-linens around his middle in a tumbled knot, securing the hospital byoui more snugly around his waist until it at least resembled something like a keikogi, though the hem on the loose, gauzy trousers was much, much shorter than he would have preferred, and so his calves are wrapped in linen as well to the ankles, as well as the arches of his heels.
The nurse will be most displeased with him when the Dark Hour ends, he thinks, dragging his intravenous stand with him with a little squeal. "It's fine," Shiryuu reasons to no one in particular.
His nurse is an absolute tyrant, and he'll have no more of her meddling. She already took both of his remaining knives and probably reported them to the authorities, which has left him to palm and hide several scalpels through his hospital room, which she then also confiscated. Now Shiryuu is resorted to ransacking the supply room for bone saws and lancets, like a common criminal.
He would call and send for another sword, but the board of education only recognizes Bankasoujin as a legal performance art prop, and his paperwork doesn't cover ... most of what else he could send for.
It's an unconscionable situation, especially considering their predicament concerning Ruin.
Shiryuu looks out the window, at the sickly moon casting the only light. His intravenous stand could be used as a weapon, he supposes. It's really the only reason he's staying here -- they've already wrapped his head in a disgusting amount of gauze and wrap, his left eye completely sealed shut at this point. He wouldn't stick around for further abuse by the abominable Minako, but...
...she did say something about Akabane and Kurou having rooms the next floor down.
The boy with the spray of grey hair looks long-sufferingly at the elevator. Then his gaze tilts slightly, grimly, to the goddamn stairwell next to it. He sighs and starts padding, bare-footed, to the latter. His stand squeaks slightly, audibly as he drags it after him.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
Is the mask truly that necessary? Outside of that congnitive space, it was just a curiosity, earning Umie a raised eyebrow from the staff, but nothing else. (After all, this is hardly the strangest thing they've seen that night.) It was taken off immediately, along with her clothing, as soon as treatment began.
Kurou was correct in terms of triage, however: blood loss, a bullet wound, a fracticed clavicle, and a number of other injuries have left Umie in a terrible state.
.... That state being 'having to deal with having her left arm in a sling', with the other having to serve as her only means of manipulating the TV remote. Alas, that puts her in a bit of a predictament, as she can either let the Mark remain hidden underneath that bit of her sheet, or she can furiously flick through channels like a roaming tiger, restlessly searching for nourishment from the flatscreen TV.
She can't even do origami, or string games. Not to mention, she'd be easy prey for Ruin once the Dark Hour hits.
However, by the time the Dark Hour hits, Umie has become convinced that having Ruin monologue her would be so much better than daytime TV, variety shows, and drama reruns she's only half interested in.
For better or worse, she manages to fall into sleep, leaving her passage into the Dark Hour unremarkable.
Unfortunately, she wakes up soon afterwards out of force of habit, leaving her staring at the green tinted ceiling, thinking about the starless night in the enclosed garden.
.... It is there for her, every night; that still world.
....
"Well, if you're there, you might as well come out and get it over with," she grumpily mumbles. "Spend one day confined to a bed, stuck with daytime TV. You'd be begging for death too, I imagine..."
A bouquet of flowers lies on the table, with a 'Get Well' card.
"... I wouldn't mind a magazine or two, if you're feeling merciful." She frowns. "Or maybe not that. You seem like the sort of guy who'd pick a children's magazine or worse, something adult that'd made the nurse staff wonder what sort of deviant they have in their midst..."
Her eyelids lower. "... Ah, so... you're not there at all, are you? Ruin-san."
Her eyelids fall closed, finally. "So it's just me, talking to myself... well, I'm used to that."
*squeak, squeak*
Umie shoots wide awake in an instant at the approaching sound as Badb finally manifests into the air over her, a comforting blanket against the monsters of the night.
It wouldn't help against Ruin, but it may give her a sense of someone, or something, coming nearby.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Ugh. Discomforts all around.
The problem was less that Shiryuu was unfit to navigate a single flight of stairs -- inconceivable -- and it was more that the anchor he's been ingraciously forced to carry with him is apparently the worst one amongst all of the IV stands in the entire hospital that Oniko could have selected for his convalescence.
He had tried to affirm to her that he didn't need anything other than a bandage and he'd be happy to leave. Obviously not. Blood loss! Bruised ribs. Deep tissue trauma, suspected lacrimal hemorrhage, hyphema. Ugh. The worst was severe dehydration. The malevolent puma must have tacked the last part on purely to embarrass him. He just got out of the flooded compartments of a sunken ship. He's swallowed more water in the last twenty four hours than he's had for the entire month previous, it's impossible.
And yet here he is, an unwilling captive to some diagnostic tests he was sure was just a pretense to get his shirt off, dragging the world's most cumbersome bag of saline down a set of stairs that feel exactly one inch too small per step for the casters, which the boy is additionally convinced were constructed in the late Bakumatsu period, definitely predating the Restoration.
At least Shiryuu was able to throw the coquettishly loose grip socks out the window shortly after being made to put them on. It feels good to rebel against your oppressors.
To his dismay, Shiryuu had to walk to the other side of the floor to find a charge nurse's patient registry book in the appropriate wing, which he promptly commandeers to locate Akabane's room. Based on what he could find out, he strongly suspects Kurou may have been taken for additional testing. The leeches. "Better not be probing him," Shiryuu mutters to himself. Blink.
"...better not probe me either."
Second blink. "...better not be ..."
No, she'd definitely have something to say about that.
Shiryuu becomes annoyed and makes a discomfited face in record time. "N..." why is he even talking. "_Where is she_" the boy grumbles, trying to make sense of the apparently equally diabolical charge nurse's handwriting.
Oh, it's probably the one with chatter coming from it.
And now, a Persona hanging over it.
Shiryuu frowns.
"Iya, iya..." Squeak, squeak. Squeeeak. Squeeeak.
"...ready to tear the place down over a mouse or two," Ryouhara comments, as he labors his way through the door.
"You're a rambunctious one, Akabane."
Despite his predicament, Shiryuu at least passingly manages to put the hospital robe to task as somewhat reasonable clothing with a few wraps of pilfered linen, though the soft pale green and dark green fabrics of the byoui are roughly four inches shorter in every dimension than he'd like them. His jade earrings match his choker, which is apparently something he's worn underneath his turtleneck the whole time, and the soft cordage is still looped around his right wrist, which is now regrettably more exposed as the hand he holds himself up with by the IV stand. Even if the byoui upper has slightly generous sleeves, they still hang down to his forearm when tilted. Luckily, the golding bone saw is tucked in the sash at his back.
".... but what's this about children's books and adult magazines? What are you even *up* to.."
Asking Ruin for dirty magazines, eh? Shiryuu makes sure to cast doubt over the entire matter. And the flowers, for good measure.
The only thing he got in his room was a hard time.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
As Umie feels and recognizes Shiryuu's nearing resonance through Badb's sight, the tension in her body is allowed to deplete, letting out that clenched breath she was holding for far too long.
Instead, it's matched with a sort of giddiness, knowing he was visiting, coming to see her.
Her prince, she mentally quips. But this is not the balcony scene of Romero and Juliet, who were not prince and princess in the fairy tale sense, nor were they known for having a happy ending.
'Iya, iya...' *squeak, squeak*
The Badb dissolves into dark grey feathers and fog over Umie's bed, leaving Umie there, her head turned towards Shiryuu as he enters, squeaking IV pole and all.
"They let you keep those, huh..." Umie remarks, her eyes looking over the jade earrings, choker, and bracelet. "They had to take my earrings out."
It allowed him to carry some of that dignity over, despite the IV drip pole and hospital gown(s). She tries not to look too long, as she considers that, even if her eye is tempted to stay looking, just a little longer.
Even like this... he is still Shiryuu. She can't help but smile, seeing him inching over to her. Her hair is spread out in limp clumps around her, dark brown weaving in at the roots at the top of her head; there's not even a fine ponytail to mark the occasion, much less her usual buns. At least it's clean, having been washed earlier when nurses her prepping her for examination.
"I figured, if Ruin was waiting in the shadows," Umie surmises, "he could at least be helpful. But even a magazine isn't that good when your hands are occupied." One is in that sling: not because it's broken, but because of the fractured clavicle that arm is connected to. Not a serious injury by itself; she could have easily dealt with this at home. The other wrist, while able to move around if she's careful, is still bandaged up, due to the damage that wrist recieved when Ruin slammed into it.
"... At least we're both a mess. " Umie gestures with her chin. "Go on, have a seat."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Prince. Shiryuu has no concept of the idea, and doesn't feel anything like it. 'They let you keep those, huh...'
"They didn't," Shiryuu grouses in annoyance, stalking down the hall. "I'm still looking for my shoes." Yes, the implication is that the only reason Shiryuu hasn't come sooner is because he was busy in all out war with the nursing staff, locked in a perpetual cycle of theft and confiscation. Luckily, they weren't very concerned about ear infections, so the earrings seemed to be a low risk keep.
It doesn't satiate him at all -- he's still being held in a fascist regime.
It's likely that ardent lack of satisfaction that draws Shiryuu to Akabane; like a moth to a particularly bright flame. The boy stalks across the cool tile floor on the balls of his bare feet, barely supported by the linen wrapping his arches. It takes him more than a moment -- as he appears to fight with the IV stand, the source of all of his current annoyance, looping the line back around the pole so it doesn't get caught in its penchant to twist, as he drags it over.
It's actually quite clear that his staff gave him a terrible IV stand so he could be heard trying to sneak around.
"Mmm." He stops off at the table nearby, gathering a copy of a home magazine on his way, possibly also salvaged from the same castle that the IV stand's caster wheel came from in 1864. "I'm only a mess because my clothes are being held hostage by unfeeling tyrants," Shiryuu points out annoyedly, with a flat expression. Following the direction of her glance, the boy elects instead to lean at the edge of her bed, doing his absolute best to keep his IV in while he balances the magazine on a propped leg, awkwardly opening it until it drapes over his thigh. He at first looks at it with fierce determination.
Then he realizes Umie is watching him.
"...iito...ahem." Suddenly exceedingly self-conscious, Shiryuu flips a page with the crisp studied dexterity of a practiced academic. Then he tries to smile charmingly. Fails. Manages something kind of like it. Realizes he's doing that. Then realizes he's staring at her hair. Suddenly Shiryuu is very grim and staring into the magazine with redoubled resolve.
"Don't worry about that man," Shiryuu reasons, coldly. "If he decided to try again, he would have already, and would have had to face me directly." Shiryuu finds a page.
"... I'll find your earrings," he says, without looking up.
"What is a ... 'honey fermented charoset?'" Shiryuu wonders, looking at the page with a big two page spread of what looks like apple cinnamon oatmeal without the oats. Just ... apple cinnamon meal. "'This is a great recipe for the cold winter times,'" he reads to her. "'If your family is anything like mine, you can enjoy this warm richly spiced meal right by the fireside...'" ...he frowns. "This text is complete fluff. What is it, where is -- oh. I guess it's apples. Mmm. I guess I'll continue, this would be fine for you. Is -- mm. It's definitely not an _adult_ magazine, but if there's more apples, it should be okay."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
'They didn't.' Umie blinks, her head lifting slightly off the pillow to look towards his feet, as if she needed confirmation they were bare.
Then, she cackles. "I should've known... the shihaisha, forced to wear something he didn't want to wear, *and* forced to give up his jewelry? Those nurses were born a hundred years too early~"
As her head hits back against the pillow with a 'poff', Umie watches Shiryuu there with an amused gaze and matching grin, filtered through lowering eyelashes.
"And they gave you a squeaky IV pole on top of it... truly, you are tormented."
She's beaming at him. If that smile's just a little too sharp or a little too crooked, Shiryuu will have to forgive her; she's just that much more happy to see him here. And she's happy to watch him, in his best element: a little surly, a little awkward, dignified like an exotic breed of cat that has to waggle one of its paws due to stepping in a puddle.
It is like catnip to Umie, in every way, to watch him try to settle on the edge of her hospital bed with the grace befitting the shirogarasu (or what Umie imagines is customary).
With a magazine in hand, no less, which surprises Umie. There was one there, but it was a dusty.... home... magazine...
nevermind let the boy cook
With every smile, this Dark Hour is looking to be better and better.
She realizes he's looking at her hair. "Yeah," Umie looks upwards. "Could use some conditioner, but that's always the case. Locks this pale don't get that way without some sacrifice." He... *does* know she's not a natural blonde, right
well that's okay, either way
Shiryuu assures her that the bad bad assassin man won't come after her, because he would have already (and he'd have to face Shiryuu, which is an important modifier to that first statement).
He'll find her earrings. "They're with my stuff. It's fine." She shakes her head. "Just spend some time with me. I'd rather have that."
... especially because the silver-haired boy is serving some mighty good food, yessss "I don't know," Umie admits, grinning. "Read on and see."
Ah, he judges this suitable, because it has apples in it. "Nothing too spicy; my health is very delicate right now," she teases. "You might have to censor some parts, like where they talk about peeling the apples... or add spices like cinnamon..."
oh that smile is WAY TOO SHARP RIGHT NOW
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Shiryuu is not impressed by word one of the unbunned's pleasures at his plight. "Iih," the one-eyed boy objects at first, more sound than word around an annoyed glare into the history of charoset. "You don't have to sound so excited about it," he morosely objects after a minute, making an excellent show of flipping the page with the book precariously balanced still. He's pretending to see how long the article is.
Oh, it's very long, Ryouhara.
"The security here is poor," he explains, "so they're trying to use substandard equipment to keep me from enacting my will."
The boy looks ahead, this time at the dark television. "They won't win over me that easily. That charge nurse's days on unit 4E are done." His gaze burns with martial determination.
Thus invited, Shiryuu is only put off of his temporary rivalry by Umie's attention, joining her in looking up at her hair. "Ii--" He stares some more. One would guess that Shiryuu doesn't actually know she's not a natural blonde, from the way his voice drifts off from feudal-era commitment. Is he not familiar with the concept of hair dye?
No, that's silly. Remember that Shiryuu's subordinates are Kiria and Kurou. A disturbing number of Ryouhara clan members dye their hair, so it would make no sense for him to be unfamiliar with the idea. It's more that...
'Just spend some time with me.... read on.'
"Um." She might as well had been talking to a cloud for all Shiryuu was listening. "... right."
He flips the page back, trying to find out where he last left off. "Ah, let's see. Oh. Here. 'Charoset is a type of ambrosia,'" he reads, "'typically enjoyed by Jews as a symbol during Passover.' Hm. I guess it's something you would give a powerful Yudayajin to gain their favor and talent..." He studies further. "'The lovely firm texture of this affair can be understood to represent the mortar associated with slavery in the time of Moses. It's a richly fermented spread,' -- oh, like natto? Hmm.. -- 'of dates, figs, and apricots, which pair in a mesmerizingly spiced mix with honey, sweet crisp apples, cloves and cardamom to create the unforgettable aroma. It is traditionally enjoyed with diced nuts and a piece of --' mattozah? Mm?"
Though his reading is immaculate, that word does strain his pronunciation a bit, because he's too stubborn not to recognize when a word is spelled out in katakana for a reason. It gets worse from there. "...matzah," he decides. "'It is traditionally enjoyed with diced nuts and a piece of -' matzah, '- along with bitters like fermented horseradi--' --- iie? wait, what? Horseradish and apples?? What sort of devil food is this??"
Incredulous, Shiryuu looks to Umie -- once, twice!! -- for support, as if she were involved in this somehow and could put a stop to it. Unsurprisingly, the level of support he receives is 'none.'
She's talking about getting spicy with the apples! Shiryuu makes a flat face at her, holding the book half closed. "Th, this isn't that type of book, you succubus!!" Upended for the moment from his distress about sweet apples and horseradish, the boy finally takes matters into his own hands. "You're not helping!!" he complains, "you need to take care of your health."
As if to prove his point (or exercise his spite), Shiryuu shoots out, sliding his hand -all- the way into the rambunctious Umie's hair while it's loose, fingertips feathering over her brow before he checks her hair all the way to the back, scritching through her roots with a firm, investigative hand. "Hrrn," the ninja mulls, teasing at her scalp.
"All things considered, your hair is fine," the boy decides. "Tangled, but soft enough." Strands rolled experimentally between a thumb and forefinger, before surfacing to smooth the whole mess back behind her ears so it doesn't get all over the place on her pillow.
No, that takes longer than expected, as the boy thumbs a strand across her temple and along her ear.
"If you get yourself too kicked up into a devillish lather," Shiryuu tells her, his attention span fully occupied now, "your healing won't go as well, and I'll send you back to Rikuto...right?"
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
"They underestimated you." Umie's right hands shifts in reaction to that, responding to her wish to raise her hand up and sell her (not actual) shock of Shiryuu's bravado over his newest rival. "My nurses have been pretty decent, considering," she continues, her tone shifting to a more casual mein. "It can be a crapshoot once they see my Mark, but this time, I could skip some awkward looks since my wrist had to be bandaged this time around. Lucky me, I guess~"
Shiryuu may as well not be listening, judging by how he's looking at her fried, soft locks. "Ehh... keep staring like that and you'll make a girl self-conscious," she lightly quips. "Or are you so taken in by my delicate innocent beauty that you'll give me white roses as well, in hopes the wan candle of my life isn't snuffed out by the cruelty of life...?"
She does wear white, but white roses...
.... They do not suit her, despite that being the color of the bouquet by the window.
She stays appropriately quiet for Shiryuu's story time, trying her best to keep from smiling as the shihaisha stumbles over concepts beyond his understanding. "Maybe it's the combination of sweet and sour." That's all the help Shiryuu is getting, unfortunately.
And the help she gives beyond that doesn't fare much better, as she leans further into the identity of the wan sickly princess. (Tomorrow, she will regret this, when Akechi reveals the rumors that have fermented on the Dark Side boards like jarred horseradish (themely!).)
But today, her punishment is in Shiryuu slipping his fingers through her locks, drawing the grinning goblin to a complete stop as he teases his hand in. He might notice how her cheeks have gone apple red (also themely!), though how she bows her head forward (helpfully?!) it may be hard to make out.
"A-ah..." She is mercifully quiet, defeated with a masterful stroke of the shirogarasu's hand.
He'd of course see where the darker roots are beginning to come in, an advancing front of nature reasserting her true colors that will have no end.
"... ii...." The blonde attempts to stammer out, to Shiryuu's assessment. Let's right that again... "I-it's not the softness, it's the... uh... thinness."
He takes his time with those strands, thumbing it across her temple and along her ear. Her eyes are down, cheeks red. ".... I didn't mind Rikuto-san that much," she says, softly, self-conscious only how much she enjoys his touch, despite all the times (and examples) she's had to get used to it, and has even pursued it. Despite all of that, he always manages to find those ways to draw her to a quiet, red-faced girl all over again. "He was gruff, but he has to deal with an entire clan full of shinobi, right...? Anyone'd be grumpy from that..."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The course of the moment changes rapidly over the tumble of just a few seconds. The first, Shiryuu is characteristically aggressive, spurred like a horse by her rambunctious nature to lean across her bed and accost the self-described 'delicate innocent beauty' with a lightning blitz. Likely, in that moment, he's handled bloodthirsty Shadows slower than he does Akabane.
But then, as things tend to with them, Shiryuu is compelled to be kinder.
Losing all sense of the impropriety of the moment while in her scent, the grey-haired boy's IV stand squeaks pensively as if in caution as he leans closer, balancing the suddenly forgotten magazine across his propped knee in the silence.
She stammers a failed reply at him. He's not paying attention.
He is far more delicate with her hair than his, the wandering graze of thumb and forefinger to parcel out little wayward strands across her brow, to soothe a recently-embattled scalp by coaxing her hair in order. Shiryuu's sole unwrapped eye is not actually meeting hers, so he isn't at all aware of the flush in her cheeks, or the unease in her voice, fervently examining Akabane's hair.
He seems only distantly aware that she's saying something's wrong with it. It does not inspire him to take her at her word.
The boy makes a soft, unamused sound, a low trickle of bassline vibrant noise born somewhere deep in his chest well before it ever slips past his lips. It's completely unconscionable that the nurses have left her in this state. "...don't they know you like to have your hair up," the boy murmurs quietly, more judgmental and to himself than Umie.
Folding the magazine open neatly to keep the page and setting it to the side to free a hand, the onmitsu pats his makeshift sash in annoyance, as if failing to predict this exact moment and not stealing a comb was an oversight he could curse himself for. Finally producing a thin butterfly needle pack from his sash, the boy breaks it open with his teeth, popping the tubule off of the back end of the needle and spitting it off to the side to parts unknown.
Keeping the needle in its sterile sleeve, Shiryuu grows a touch more purposeful with her. He uses both the little soft nip of the plastic wing and the rounded end of the sheath to slowly, systematically draw her hair into plaits, running his fingertips through. "...hold still," he thinks aloud at her, taking her jawline just under hand to hold her in just the right position.
For awhile, he doesn't even notice the darkened roots coming in, the featherlight of her hair with his short, purposeful movements. It's really only when it catches in the weird moonlight from the window as it shifts, bands of sickly light crawling across the bed with the passage of the clouds.
A thumbtip muses at the ink-dark strands sorted around the plastic green wing, where the color changes to blonde. In a roundabout way, one could think that things always go back to the way they're supposed to be, in time. Shiryuu doesn't care, not in the aesthetic way, but ...
The boy's expression wanes with the fade of his determined mien, a half-lidded eye downcast, his gaze breaking across the bed to the nightstand, to the exit, checking as if he'd heard a noise, and staying there.
Is ... the natural order of things really so hard to chase away?
"... it's just ... it was just tangled up, that's all," Shiryuu replies without looking, as an afterthought, after a whole forever, enough so to lay entirely out of context to the point of what she said. It sticks out like a sore thumb, and Shiryuu's eager to move on.
A tiny sniff of the air, and the boy sets back to his work. Lifting his wrists, he carefully reaches deeply, behind her as he turns her hair between his hands into a loose tail. The weight of the bed shifts towards him as he leans in, closely enough that she can feel the warmth of his breath distantly laced along her shoulder. He's using touch to navigate the nape of Akabane's neck, to gather up loose strands in the hook of the wing.
He doesn't do it as tightly as she does. She'll notice his hesitation to hurt her, when he pulls her hair into a low, messy bun at the back of her head, folding and tying her hair around itself for the last moment, only just snug enough that it won't itch and not a scintilla more.
It's hard for him not to frame her jawline as he pulls away from her. He only then becomes aware of exactly how warm her cheeks are.
"...ah..." Shiryuu finds his balance a little awkwardly as he starts to lean back, sighing. "I'm not very good with hair," he explains, truthfully. "So ... it probably won't last very long," the boy guesses, a note of something lost in his voice.
"I'll have to break out of my unit to come and fix it tomorrow, probably. But.."
"....just don't do silly things," he changes the subject. Hopefully she doesn't not-mind Rikuto that much, at least. Or really. He pulls the magazine back into his lap, sighing slowly at the recipe blazoned across his thigh now. It's taken on a more diabolical bent, now that Shiryuu knows people eat it with horseradish. It feels better to look at something. To look at her, maybe, and then remind himself of what he was doing a moment or two before.
".... if you're good," Shiryuu remarks coolly, imperiously, "we can make this and take it to Rikuto together."
It feels like the right thing to say.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
There are people Umie is this way with: unique people, who have dodged Umie's need to either push or impress them: charm, or harm, in other words. There are the people she wants to impress: the Jokers, the Akechis (how the heck did those two end up in the same example so close together), the Katsuyas, many, many others. There are the ones Umie tries to push away, despite how they reach out to her: the Bride and her Groom.
But where does that put people like Kurou, or those like Yoko? Or people like Tamaki?
"Ah, my delicate head~!" And where does Shiryuu sit, firmly pushed away at first, then, when his touch turned gentle, when it traced the outline of her Mark as asked her if it *hurt*...
They were still harsh on each other, even then, as the sides were drawn, and the two tried to find some conclusion to something that shouldm't be.
Then, just like now, they were compelled to be kinder, and the teasing narrows to blushes and a need to touch back. The fingers of her right hand jerk, even if she knows she shouldn't move them. She can, just like she could move her left arm, but it would be like moving a sprained ankle, or a strained muscle that is still very tender.
He's close. Even through the smell of the hospital, cleaning materials, and disinfectant, there's still the scent of rain and citrus coming from him. (And with her, the smell of night air and low-hanging mist.)
His fingers are gentle, his voice deep in his chest.
She could have lost this, so easily. If she hadn't acted at all, he would have been...
Would she have known? Would Ruin have known the way to taunt him, as he died?
The terrible thought isn't allowed to bloom, remaining in its hard bud as Umie tilts her head at the package of thin butterfly needles. "Ah?" An eyebrow raises as he opens the package with his teeth, but she says no more, as he tells her to hold still.
Her heartbeat quickens as his intent is clarified by action, his manner laid in his meticulous attention to each detail. "... I haven't had a chance to... retouch my roots." Her words are incidental, an unneeded apology as Shiryuu.
That isn't the reason why Shiryuu is browsing a thumbtip there. Only her eyes move as Shiryuu moves his attention towards the exit.
If a shadow or demons is there... she will surely decimate it for daring to come here.
Let her have this.
Hasn't she behaved?
Hasn't she been good?
Let her have this peace.
His attention returns, to that tangled mess, bringing it into order. The feel of his breath on her shoulder sends a shiver down her spine; he may feel it, depending on where his fingers lay against skin and hair.
He's not very good with hair, he says. So.. it probably won't last very long, he says.
'Just don't do silly things.'
'.... if you're good, we can make this and take it to Rikuto together.'
"What sorts of silly things," she whispers, lifting her IV-fed right arm to politely hook a finger into his hospital gown, trying to lead him back, close to her, and her lips, as she raises to try to close that distance.
"Ones like this?" She leans in, ignoring the sting of shifting needles, as she brings her lips against Shiryuu's own.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Infuriating. Shiryuu will have none of her protest -- the nurses have clearly been devoting too much time to keeping him contained and not enough time looking after their other, more important patients. The only reason Shiryuu is even allowing himself to be poked and prodded at by sublunar tyrants is to make sure Akabane gets quality care while still remaining in his zone of absolute security.
And now look, she's being left in a terrible state...
(...but then, is this all not his responsibility, anyway?)
The moment is harshly, sharply unrequited. It would be naive to think that some part of him isn't hyperaware of her, his blood fluttering in tender veins as his skin warms in her proximity, the fine tick of his wrists betraying both his movements and his heartbeat as he gathers up her locks along the nape of her neck. It'd be naive to think that the utilitarianism of their proximity, the reality of those stolen touches to remind himself that she's still alive didn't bear an entirely different subtext.
But this close the subtext didn't really matter, and the boy traipses on with her, that fleet of small, bold together and accord.
It doesn't chase away the sharp nock of a thought in him; the thing that causes his expression to change, to tighten when seeing her like this, the thought that brought them there.
The boy with the grey hair leans back away from her, lingering only for as long as a thief might brave, returning to the page and its demon fermentation as he might to normalcy, a soft, awkward sound from his throat as he clears it. He can compose himself, openly pretending to flip the page as if he'd literally cared at all what was on the other side. "Ahem..now where was I," he thinks, rationally structuring the situation.
"...I mean," he remarks quietly, "that y-- ...hey, what're you, you're going to..."
Intravenous lines cross, the plastic lines sagging against one another as she politely pulls the two of them back together.
The muted squeak of an unoiled caster sounds like a gunshot in the Dark, a moment to censor the soft breath and the sotto voce sound of a small, sweet kiss. Instinctively, the boy's singular eye shutters as he tilts into her demand, the scent of morning mist at firstlight threading into his senses.
"...ah? ... mm.."
She'll feel him there, hands bunching up tightly in her gown, in her blankets. His grip on her has been far more direct in the past, and the spiral bunch of fabric is tells at exactly how much the boy feels. His first kiss is gentle, fitful, a single breath spared between them. The second -- deeper, a longer, darker course. His eye shut far more tightly in that moment.
Third... fourth... the edges blur, as he leans in closer, as the magazine drops with a papery flutter to the tile beneath his feet.
"Nn.."
Hands slowly climb her blankets, her clothes, settling at her mantle. The heat of his kiss brightens, sharpens. Another second, another moment, his arms would be around her, satiating days of --
*paf*
Ryouhara breaks off the kiss. In a moment he's breathing slowly, a stringline of wild hair down his eyes as he firmly pushes them apart -- him in some form of upright, and her back into her pillow, pinning her there gently.
"....we're going to pull out your line," Shiryuu manages, breathlessly. "You... just like that," he tries to say exactly how and why doing all as they please is bad, especially now. His first try is not at all intelligible.
".... couldn't handle it if you got hurt,"
It's an admission that carries more weight to him than the moment, but his hands keep her at bay for anything more. No, even in the way he touches her, even in the way his thumbs graze past the line of her own gown and along her collarbone, bare skin stroked fondly.
He still hasn't fully caught up with his breathing.
"just... you need to get better, okay?"
She needs to be as far away from that bullet as possible, he says without saying, hands on her shoulders still and loathe to lift them. She can feel the way he thinks of lifting from her, to put any kind of space between them for safety.
He never does.
It'd be naive to think that this too, wasn't born of desperate need.
But sometimes, Shiryuu can be naive.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
They had watched each other nearly die, and came to each other's aid many times.
Just this moment of closeness feels like a miracle, a rebellion against the established narrative, like someone forgot to write in the part where both of them were tragically torn apart. Everyone loves a tragic love story, right? It adds that salt to the sweetness, makes it feel like something that could happen, because life is never fair.
Love stories never include the awkward moments, where one of them uses the other as a bid to get some complementary choco, or the other insists on throwing out a fan because they had gotten better ones, with little panda faces on them.
Or how a perfectly good bath was allowed to go lukewarm because its occupant was too busy making out on the flooring of the kitchenette. The injuries, the awkward posturing, the inability to be direct with your feelings, until one side is worn down.
Maybe they do, nowadays? Because those are the best moments, Umie finds. The mighty shihaisha is flawed, young, and unfortunately, very, very awkward, and she loves it all.
The blood that rises to his skin beats brightly against hers, still diminished from blood loss, but quickly rising back to health with every moment she has Badb at her side, and outside of that, medical care and youth, thin blood and metal heart valves be damned.
'Ahem.. now where was I,' he begins, drawing away from her.
Nope, Umie is not having any of it. Screw that magazine, it didn't nearly die on her, no matter what the 'Letters to the Editor' section may say. This is the poor, poor person who must deal with the fullest amount of what Umie is like at her worst, no manners, no inclination to impress or push him away, just her, Umie Akabane.
God help this poor, poor shinobi, as his willingness expresses itself so clearly by that second kiss. By the third, she manages to laugh into his own breath, the sound of blood overshadowing the sound of the magazine to the ground. How thoughtless, after all that magazine has done in entertaining a decade or three's worth of bored, desparate patients!
No, it is Shiryuu who comes to his senses, breathlessly leaning back as Umie does likewise, feeling the pressure of his hand pushing her against the pillow, and him away.
Some hairs have come undone, as he had predicted, laying over rosy cheeks and an open, and then closing mouth.
"... Y-yeah," she agrees. One second passes. Two. Three.
That's all that's needed for that openmouthed red line of a smile to blossom, as if she had been caught red-handed.
"Well, Ruin-san is definitely not here. I'm sure he'd hate for anyone to be enjoying themselves in front of him." shut up Umie, you were scared shitless earlier today
Five. Six. Seven-- Ah, there we go. Pain's back. Ow. Ow. Ow. Owowowowowowo
Her left shoulderblade and her right wrist hurt from her raising them, the latter smarting from the way she grips at Shiryuu's back, red chipped nails careless over his hospital gown. Also, yeah, the IV lines are not exactly positioned to allow for passionate makeouts.
Umie's lips cleave into a line against the prickles of pain. "It'll be fine," she assures, and shall assure more than one person, over the course of the next few days. "... But... y-yeah, probably shouldn't. Monitors are going to start screaming when the Dark Hour ends, otherwise..." that is not the most important reason, Umie!!!
The reason for any of this, is... ".... I nearly lost you. If I hadn't come... I would have lost you. Even with everyone there, we still barely escaped."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
She's dangerous, he reminds himself, a thought to be lost somewhere in the back of his mind. Shiryuu keeps the space between them enforced for far longer than is strictly necessary, for far longer than it takes for them to catch their breath and even still long after he's fairly sure Umie won't try to get them into a situation again.
Not dangerous to him. Not in the slightest. Exactly the opposite, really.
His fingertips grazing her lightly as he leans back, it takes a long time for the boy to take his hands off of her. Even so, he threads her hair behind her ear with a quiet sigh, reminded only of the scruffy mess his linen-wrapped mop has become, and flicking his own out of his eyes as if reminded, composing himself.
It seems a little bit more scandalous after the kiss, honestly. Shiryuu looks away, pointedly, purposefully avoiding doing anything untoward, like climbing in the bed with her.
"S--stop joking around," Ryouhara insists lamely. It's at the raw end of that little wave of pain, Shiryuu managing to speak only after his frisson of open alarm passes, after he's done checking her over to make sure her wound didn't reopen, after her hands drop away, only for one to be trapped squarely between his. By that time, the gild of troubled aggression in his voice has been exhausted, and his objection only has as its buttress a mildly vexed look. The look is only half as effective, but twice as potent when he shoots it at Umie.
The so-called runaway and that stupid, cool little smile of hers.
'Monitors are going to start screaming when the Dark Hour ends, otherwise..' the boy with the grey hair bites his lip and sighs heavily, entirely through his nose.
"....yeah," he manages.
He is delicate with her, the spaces between the bones of her fingers kneaded lightly under both of his thumbs in a soothing stroke. It's not long, truthfully, between this touch and that -- it doesn't take Shiryuu any time at all to keep contact with her, now that the magazine is somewhere underneath the bed and forgotten.
She has the whole of his attention when that pensive expression breaks into a watery attempt to smile, for an instant breaking his severe, worried mien. For an instant.
"...I'm not.."
The smile is gone, replaced by a thin, determined line. She can feel it in his hands, the tension that would have led to a squeeze in any other circumstance.
"How'd you even find out where we were," he thinks aloud, a hundred thoughts flickering through his mind, and none of them lining up right. It shows, in the way he picks along his words. "...You shouldn't be bearing a bullet for me, Umie. I'm not ... it's not right."
It's hardly the powerful thing he wants to say, the combination of words that would restore everything to its rightful place. All of those words taste sour on his tongue. He breathes out, short and sharp, pushing the details aside.
The memory of what it felt like to have the barrel of a gun pressed against the back of his neck goes with them. It doesn't matter.
"I'll have to kill him, now."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
It's a heady, but bittersweet moment to remind Umie that the two of them are terribly, unfortunately, maliciously a 'bond', and what that entails when it's not cute moments where one of them is bothering the other, or invading the other's peaceful, orderly life.
You know, like when Umie went wandering around a Ryouhara safehouse, listening in on conversations and lurking around prison cells, where people there are there for a reason. How long did it take for Kouzou to calm down, after she had left him? And Kouhei... what will he try next, now that Shiryuu survived?
.... How would Kouhei think, when he and they find out about Umie being a distant relative?
It'll only be a matter of time before that little so-called runaway's luck, as badly placed as it is, runs woefully out, leaving moments like these to a past of 'what-ifs'.
Edges of flaked red and pale fingertips peek from between Shiryuu's hands from where he leaned over to check her wounds. "It's fine," she assures. "It was the needles and that fracture. I'd have to try a lot harder to reopen the gunshot wound."
... Speaking of wounds... Shiryuu's confidence begs the question of whether he's actually as healed up as he seems to be, now that she's closed in on him. "... Will your right eye heal up okay, after everything?" she asks, the muscles of her fingers closing against the soothing touch of his thumbs.
She regrets asking it, as the fleeing hare that is his smile dissipates for one reason or another.
That left arm, halfway out of its sling, cautiously moves over to carefully rest a hand against those tense fingers of his, a thumb worrying over each knuckle with lavish care.
.... even when he asks how she found out. "A little bird told me," she replies, innocently. "There's been no breach of security."
Kouhei may have intended for her to die with Shiryuu, but saying his name aloud too easily may give him more trouble than he signed up for, due to this insult to the Shihaisha's pride.
"If I remember correctly, Ruin-san *did* just shoot me because I taunted him." She tilts her head. "I don't exactly call that taking a bullet for you. If anything, you were pretty determined to take one for me once things were ramping up."
Umie wouldn't call that right, either.
'I'll have to kill him, now.'
"That's..." The bed's wheels squeak as she shifts in the bed. "He's dangerous, Shiryuu. If he was there, that shows things have escalated. They wanted you to buckle, or ensure you'd be replaced with someone else."
Sure, it may be like telling fire that the forest is dry and ready to burn, but Umie can't avoid it, or freely encourage him on, the Badb inside her be damned.
So, instead of letting him think on that, she...
"Why is there someone with a Mark at that safehouse?"
Why wasn't that Umie's first question? She should have asked that at the start, she realizes, when Shiryuu brought her back.
Well, that's just one of the many what-ifs that shall add themselves to the pile.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Shiryuu doesn't know everything, despite his best attempts to the contrary. His phone had several messages left on it from Kiria, but none of them were descriptive of anything, and he'd not had the wherewithal to engage overmuch with the problem of being ready for an attack despite everything that's happened conspiring to get in his way.
As a result, he's critically unaware as yet of the discovery at the site, or the rapidly spreading revelations it's spawned about the Ryouhara jizamurai lineage.
'Know as much as possible, focus on one thing,' his instructor once told him.
Right now, the thing he focuses on is right in front of him.
She asks him if his eye is going to heal. The boy pauses.
"...it will, one way or another," he determines. The doctors had determined it looked like he'd been hit in the eye with a baseball bat, or perhaps had suffered some sort of catastrophic sinus infection -- characteristically, Shiryuu had only given 'I fell.' as an excuse, which naturally led to a line of questioning which led them nowhere. Now, he is fairly sure he is more antibiotic than man.
He blinks off the thought, his one good eye looking down, before she gives him a reason for a second look.
Ryouhara may certainly be naive, but he is not so dim so as to take Umie's words at face value. A long, suspicious look is given her, but a more protracted interrogation never comes -- there's much more to address from his bond.
'I don't exactly call that taking a bullet for you --'
"--you shouldn't have been there at all--"
'you were pretty determined to take one for me once things started ramping up --'
'-- I'll have to kill him.'
'That's - he's dangerous, Shiryuu -' "-well, it's too dangerous for you to go about -"
'They wanted you to buckle, or ensure you'd be replaced with someone else.'
Shiryuu begins to bridle immediately at the implication, his eye opening. "Zaaa--" he's about to tell her straight -- about how he'll ensure their teeth are replaced first, about how Ruin will choke on steel before he ever buckles -- but Umie is fast, and her followup cuts through most of his objections.
Shiryuu manages to bite back most of his opinion, looking down at the bed, and where her fingertips peek out from beneath his. He stares at the flaked color for a long time, an idle focus for his attention away from a harsher question that has a much less immediate answer.
"....no matter where you go in the world, you'll find people trying to escape their sins."
He is reluctant to do so, but the boy's touch and weight shifts away from her on the bed, his hands slipping away to brace on his own IV stand as he shifts his weight onto the balls of his feet, stepping away from the bed using the antiquated stand as a makeshift support. Now he looks away; out the window, towards the sky, as if trying to gauge how long the Dark Hour will last.
"...Kouzou is a lesson in the damage the decisions of selfish men can do," the boy states flatly. "We made use of him, an age ago. And then, we thought to try and make use of him again."
Shiryuu's mouth sets firmly.
"That's why what happened, happened. A string of broken men lay in our wake..." And yet, they are shinobi, is an unspoken thought. "I wanted to correct the err... but a man without a purpose is less than nothing."
Even so... Shiryuu folds his arms tightly against himself.
"I wonder how many times this world can make use of a man before nothing is left."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
What you don't know can't hurt you, at least until the morning comes.
For now, there is the two of them and the wounds they share between them, physical and mental, and the bond that ties them like a red string.
It may as well be iron, both in how unbreakable it's become, as well as how heavy it can feel compared to a silk thread.
Two shades of brown meet eyes that lean red, framed as they are by all that green and red around them. This is the first act of their dance, a combat of words and will neither will back away from.
"Me and Joker being there tipped the scales in your favor, which may have saved your life, as well as Kurou's." ... But not the life of the other man-- She tries to blot out that memory, and the image of Mai-chan walking through it, as if she were walking innocently through a puddle riddled with red leaves.
How can it feel so harsh, when she's already seen someone dissolve in front of her?
Maybe that's why her question comes out so readily, like a spring-loaded blade, and little of the payback once it sinks in. One, and done.
'....no matter where you go in the world-'
His touch leaves her with a reluctance she observes, feeling the ghost of his warmth in her fingers with the thumb of her other hand.
The doctor will surely be cross with her tomorrow, but all she can think of is the feel of the tension in Shiryuu's fingers.
"You used the Mark as punishment?" Umie surmises. "What 'use' did he serve, and what 'use' does he serve now?"
To make use of. What happened, happened. He wanted to correct the err, but a man without purpose?
".... Is that what will happen to me, Shiryuu." It's like prodding a barbed needle wedged in her skin, and expecting that it *won't* hurt. Umie's mouth feels dry, her gaze directly focused on the silver-haired man gazing out the window, his head framed by the white roses that were ironically left by another man wanting her hand in marriage.
Didn't that man know that red was a better color for her, when it came to flowers?
"Will you be forced to throw me in a cell for my own protection too?" she whispers. "Is that who we are? Things to be used?"
The Badb in her calls for blood, even while her fingers still want to rejoin with his.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
His hands flex against his arms, absently remembering her skin.
The gesture is long suffered, Shiryuu's hands never quite idle. His arm knit tightly at his waist, the gleam of the sickly moon through the tubule tracing a line under his sleeve, the boy faces away from her. It's a reminder of their ill circumstance, the absence of the symbol at his back.
Their battle is brief, but the moment is long lived, an idea that spreads roots and leaves the shihaisha shifting listlessly in place.
It is the idea that he can't protect everyone.
If he'd let Tenzen stand, perhaps Zakuro would still be alive. Perhaps Kouzou wouldn't be...
"...They say that shinobi are weapons," the bandaged boy says.
"That we live and die at the whims of our lords. That we bravely sacrifice our whole lives to be nothing and no one to anyone. That the highest honor that we could have is to die in the old ways for a future we'll never see. That is what it means to be a shinobi."
"...but..."
...Shiryuu shakes his head. "I don't believe in that."
The thought is hard, harsh. "I think that we're meant to be more. That all the children of this world deserve a chance to realize their own life, and their own bonds with one another, on and on in the cycle, until everyone is in harmony. That is 'synthesis.'"
The Order misunderstands it when he says it, frequently, misunderstands 'Synthesis' to mean the World Without Sin. A lack of understanding is not his problem.
"It's not easy. You're beset on all sides by the conspiracies of evil men. Again and again, they'll return to the idea that people are just weapons. They'll try to kill and to coerce, to hold ransom the idea of your own personhood from you. We're seduced by that empty world too often..."
Shiryuu is not awkward when he says this, and his thinking is barely dogged by the infernal doubt that follows him around. The boy thinks hard on what he says, and what he thinks is simple, at the very end of it:
"I think that's why terrible people like me need to exist. To ensure that you can realize a good life."
She asked if that's how she'll end up, alone and in a cell for her own safety. Shiryuu's mouth sets against the light.
"...I won't allow it," he says, after awhile.
"You. Kurou. The clan. It doesn't matter. I will..." he pauses, for an acid moment. "..I should always be the one to stand between you and the bullet, no matter what form it takes. I'm the strongest...and it's my responsibility."
Shiryuu blinks, his one eye breaking from the light outside, dark brown falling into the shadow.
"...no one else's."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
A young man, absent his symbol, his weapon, and his Persona, along with it.
A few days later from now, Umie and Joker will relate about similar worries. Joker was unable to keep Zakuro, a man they knew likely has killed many, from dying, which was a mark on the principal they and the Phantom Thieves enforce, both on themselves and others around them. For Umie, it was simpler: she felt she could have affected the results with her own abilities, but her kneejerk hesitation to directly fight Ruin, as well as her choice being the 'easier' one of the two she saw in front of her.
One was duty, the other, shame.
For Shiryuu, maybe, it is a fusion of the two, as leader, and as one responsible for sparing Zakuro in exchange for a new path, which still led to his death.
Kouhei said similar things, and to that, Umie had said, and says now:
"That implies the world is filled with extraordinary people, for a Ryouhara to be expendable." She tilts her head, strands of blonde shifting across her forehead as she gives him a lopsided, fond smile. "But beyond that," she continues, "that is why you did what you did for Kurou Ryouhara-kun, isn't it?"
"... And what you saw, that day, with me." What Shiryuu saw in an innocent frog-shaped ice pack: the many, many nights of a girl, by herself. What was freedom and agency was also needless risk and isolation, a loneliness that deepened when her inexperience managed to kill an innocent person, with no way to directly make amends save guilt and paranoia for the karmic judgement that was certain to follow. Umie may later relish in the partial illusion of someone who didn't care, displaying it before Akechi a day from now, but still... in those moments, it's a mask to protect herself.
From the conspiracies of evil men, and the forces they enable.
But not always, as something in Umie refuses to accept Shiryuu's methods completely, despite that softness in her tone, or the way her thumb strokes the palm of the other in the recollection of his own, doing the same.
(Or, *especially*, how undeniably attractive he looks, framed like that. How does he do that while still connected to an IV pole?!)
"And what if I disagree?"
Her lower eyelids rise against the spark in her eyes. "What if I say that you, Shiryuu Ryouhara, are worth what I've gone through? Don't get me wrong, I love a good rescue as much as anyone, but I also am not a princess in need of rescuing."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
'That implies the world is filled with extraordinary people, for a Ryouhara to be expendable.'
"Aa....maybe."
It would be easy to say that everything he'd done was to allow Kurou to live a good life. It would be easy, to say something like that. But is it not naive to think of himself as that type of person...? Someone who could be 'kind' like that.
"I don't think it's that easy, though.."
It _would_ be an easy thing, to let himself off the hook as magnanimous. But it's not kindness to condemn someone with forgiveness, nor to consent to something you could never feel.
The memory of a vast greyscale curtain chases the shinobi's eyes away to the white roses on the sill, a slow blink banishing the thoughts of pretty, empty-headed pets. How long have they been there? ... how long has he been lost in her scent, in her voice set against the light of the wild moon?
She'd said something about it. White roses. Left by someone. He has no clue what they mean. Flowers are not his strong suit.
But even so. The boy with the grey hair moves almost imperceptibly, the sound of his robe's lining the only signifier that he even moved at all. Politely, his stance changes, weight moving from one foot to the other, shifting uncomfortably away from the roses, enough so that his stand lurches with the motion as well, unbalanced before frozen wheels give, creaking to move an inch or two with him.
... he should be the strongest... the most invincible.. right?
Shiryuu swallows, the sound audible in the otherwise dead silence.
He's still staring at the roses. Who -would- give a girl roses, indeed. The context is vastly different now than it was in that hotel room.
"...The world is filled with extraordinary people, though."
The admission is--even in the silence, even in air that would betray a pin drop--almost too quiet to hear, an admission borne somewhere in the back of his throat. The onmitsu closes his eye with a knife-short sigh, turning away from the window, from that infuriatingly impenetrable, impassable curtain, from the roses placed just beyond it.
She's someone who's been alone all of her life, with no one to look after her, so the glance he gives her is distant and lidded by the time she challenges his thinking. He watches her lips move. But...
"...you can disagree, if you like."
It is times like these that the onmitsu is the most thoughtful, taking his IV stand by the staff and pulling its against his shoulder with a visible grimace when the added weight hits his spine. Truthfully, there's no reason to -- there's no one here who would even hear the squealing. But...
The devil _is_ in the details.
"... I'm going to go see if I can find you some things, in the next wing over, before the regime reasserts itself. ... if that's okay."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
If the flowers had been left there by someone with a name, rather than some spirit unworthy of mention, Umie refuses to give it any notice beyond what she as already.
After all, Syuusei Honjou is a man of pride, setting the template for the sort of man Umie assumed Ruin was, by extension. But where Syuusei would have likely sputtered and been rendered ineffectual in that face-to-face context, Ruin had so much more in wealth of his rage and violence to spend.
It was a lesson Umie almost didn't walk away from.
When Shiryuu finally seems to notice the roses there and backs away, Umie makes a soft 'tsk, tsk' under her breath.
She considers, her eyes tracing his awkward pass from foot to foot. "You think Ryouhara-kun might appreciate these? It's not the roses' fault they were chosen poorly. ... I think he'd appreciate a visit from you as well, assuming he's still here."
Kurou'd probably feel better curled up in his blanket in their apartment, rather than in a hospital.
Shiryuu, meanwhile, is still looking at those roses. Does he suspect she has feelings for someone else?
Umie's gaze grows gentle.
Silly, silly Shiryuu. You can't escape now.
"I prefer the ones you gave me, for the record-- the red petals looked beautiful falling against your hair." A situation that only happened because they made things more and more complicated for each other, as such things went with the two of them.
The world is filled with extraordinary people, indeed, but the person she sees, this mess of a person, with his messy hair, bandaged face, and distracted mein...
That is the person she loves.
So much so that she'll fight him, as they once agreed. "I don't need your permission," she says, even if the veiled, glinted look in her eyes and the pursed part of her lips speak another, much more affectionate set of terms.
And that is all she speaks of as he ponders there, attempting to wheel along that obstinate IV pole.
'... if that's okay.'
"... I think I can allow that," she says, with a sharp little smile. "Maybe some magazines. Though I imagine I won't get to hear you read to me the next Dark Hour, unless they manage to keep you another day. Your voice is very soothing, you know that?"
There much more she wants to say, so many things that just don't feel right to say in the moment, or don't seem to fit in any of the sounds she could make. She looks at him, framed as he is in that weak, unearthly light, shadow and white, frail, but strong as steel, his actions calculated. His hair, silver, picking up the surroundings like a ghost, his lips, hard in thought, though in recent memory she would know how soft they felt against hers. Even in his 'robes', he attempts to define himself.
She dips her head instead, saying some things that feel like inadequate against everything she feels, both good and bad.
"... Thank you, Shiryuu. For being my bond, and... letting me be yours."
These are words she'd never thought she'd ever say, with meanings that only make sense in the context Shiryuu had set, that night.
She blames this impossible hour for everything she's feeling.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
In times like these, it's easy to remove himself from the equation. To think of the way things would be if he had never seized control of his fate, never became ...
... who he is now.
"A hundred mistakes," the boy thinks to himself, arms folded in front of those roses. If he'd not been there to make them, maybe someone else would. The words of only a few moments before taste sour the longer he thinks on them. Those powerful, confident words sit on the other side of that static veil, spoken by someone who was killed and left for dead. They are the right things to say, he thinks.
But the longer he looks, the more he thinks someone else said them.
Someone who would have known better than to let precious people die, or end up in such a miserable state.
'It's not the roses' fault they were chosen poorly.'
"Mm?" Shiryuu asks politely, broken of the thought and trying to focus on what was being said. Please be present, Ryouhara... things are bad enough.
"...they're .. it'd .. be nice," he decides.
The implication that he should be the one to bring them to Kurou sails right over his head, replaced by a thought to check on him.
He blinks twice as Umie tells him about the red roses, as the actual meaning of her words starts to filter through his senses, moreso than the sound and shape of her voice against his ear, moreo than even the way the miserable job he did with her hair is complimented by her smile, and the way she resolves to fight him.
Shiryuu's eye unfocuses, trying to look at the strand of silver hair in the middle of his face, a strangely long time after she brings up his hair. He makes a face, suddenly self conscious enough to blow the errant strand out of the way with a puff of air.
"...ahem," Shiryuu clears his throat for what must be the fourth or fifth time in the past few minutes. It's harsher than usual, as if quietly attempting to disprove anything Umie says about his voice. "I..."
Nothing really seems to fit the shape of what he'd like to say. For an acid moment, Shiryuu murmurs something underneath his breath. 'get it together. if nothing else...'
'...thank you.'
Shiryuu looks back up to her, meeting Umie's eyes, two to one, for one glancing half second. He checks on her vitals on the monitor, focusing on the blank, dead screen for a few seconds too long. He looks at her again; and tries to smile. This time he manages to for a whole three seconds. His grip tightens on his IV stand as something inside of him aches and anxious.
This girl...
He doesn't want to leave.
"....I'm not going anywhere," Shiryuu finally replies after an awkward moment, quiet and resolute and faraway and too close at once. His hand twitches, soothing nothing in him at all.
"...I think I ...need to be here, with you."
He tries to smile one more time for Akabane before the boy turns, padding off silently with the stand over his shoulder to find her better magazines.