2026-09-06: A Mask For Two

• Log: A Mask for Two
• Cast: Umie Akabane, Shiryuu Ryouhara
• Where: The Prince, Yumezaki Ward, Sumaru City
• OOC Date: September 06, 2026
• IC Date: January 05, 2013
• Summary: After the events of Mother Joker, Umie borrows Shiryuu's hotel room in the prestigious Prince hotel to recover. Shiryuu comes, having already learned about what happened, as well as the consequences of Umie's use of the Mark's power. To him, his bond is not the sum of some cursed scribble on her wrist. It's a nice thing. However, as Shiryuu is finding out, Umie cannot have nice things.

---

<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

    That night, Shiryuu gets a text from Umie.
    >> messed up
    >> your fckin bosses nabbed smne j0kerifed
    >> using prince room

    Then, a few minutes later, as if Umie was thinking better of it:
    >> srry

    Umie didn't think Ruin'd follow her. That didn't seem to be his style, especially as she ducked outside that supernatural sphere of influence.

    She got a few stares for how pale she looked as she rode the subway, and for the blood splatters on her white jacket, but putting on a pair of headphones seemed to mark her as invisible, as if she had deployed Badb's shroud.

    Umie nearly dozed off the time she had arrived in Sumaru's Yumezaki Ward, having sunk into the stiffened fabric of her jacket as all the aches and pains of the past two days caught up with her. Passing into the subway and up onto the streets, she pulled her hood over her face to ward against the cold. squinting her eyes against a crisp hues of a cold clear sky. Nighttime was creeping in, and for once, all Umie can think of was how lucky it was for some animals that hibernated through the season, rather than deal with winter's long list of woes.

    -----

    The short blonde looked even more out of place coming into the lobby of the Prince, getting a few confused 'can I help you's from attendents until she flashed her keys, telling them that she needed a change of towels and some complementary bath salts. Oh, and a box of those chocolates, please, and thank you. Put it on the bill.

    She's not feeling that kind to that bill, considering who is paying Shiryuu.

    'Part of the establishment', however, seems to be an apt descriptor for her. Umie deserved each and every stab from the Groom.

    Umie promised herself she'd save the self-pity for later, and now, she's going to roll in it like a dog on a carcass.

    The first aid kit is rifled through, and used up; wounds are treated, but not bandaged, considering she was going to soak in the tub the second she could manage.

    She didn't get that far, however; she collapsed on the bed in a dead sleep, wadded up in blankets until her curled shape resembled a croissant rather than a sleeping person.

    She hates how she feels comforted by the fact that she can faintly smell him on the sheets.:

    The comforting smell of rain fills her thoughts, overflowing her mind until it washed away the suspicious drag of little fingers on silk and tiny whispers, egging her on.

<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

 
     It's a bit of a misunderstanding, to think that very much money is changing hands, if even at all, between the Ryouhara clan and their sponsors. Their allegiances -- even at the moment -- could not be held with such objectified means, and their exchanges were of far more rare import, to say nothing of what cash Shiryuu had to his name personally. And so, the only thing Umie's unkindness actually vexes is his own royalties and residuals -- not that it makes his bed any softer, or cooler.

     The young man himself was esconced in the dim upper corners of the room he was in, backlit only by the flahes of an arc welder in the lower corners where a frame wa being assembled, the harsh, keening blast of rotary hammers filling the air as they twist bolts as thick as thumbs into cantilever steel to appropriate torque.

     It was in this harsh steel and iron environ that Shiryuu gets her text messages, suspended by the knees from the triangles of a truss support, hooking an elbow through a bent line of loose conduit, lifting it gently against one side of the strut bracket before sliding the other part of the hanger against it, absently reaching for the impact driver suspended on a tether from his belt... he's completely upside down.

     *bzzrt brzzt -- voo*

     The boy makes a face, fixing his legs, flexing thighs to cling more securely to the strut, nestling the conduit into the hook of an arm as he unzips a pocket in his work pants. Power tool temporarily forgotten, he's sliding his red phone out and flipping it open with a hand, the screen illuminating his clear safety visor.

     >> eh wat
     >> are you hurt
     >> ??

     A moment or two passes. More like a minute or two.

     >> there soon

     In truth, the worksite was a far distance away from the hotel, being selected for its fitness as opposed to its convenience, unlike the seedy dive across the street Shiryuu spent most of his breaks in. Comparably, his room at the Prince is far cleaner. And, somewhat scandalously, still had their scent across most of it.

     He was, however, somewhat surprised to find out the scent of chocolate has returned. Less so then, when he steals in, to find his noble kizuna, the diminutive roguish blonde, curled up in bed in the blankets around a box of choco.

     He can tell at a glance based on the open first aid kit that she's been attended to -- this would be a very different situation, otherwise. The bandage rolls haven't been used, so it shouldn't be too bad, right?

     As always, the boy can't be heard until he slides into bed alongside her.

     "...hey."

     She'll feel his hand slipped between the space seoarating her skin from her bangs, resting his palm agaunst her forehead, checking for fever. Infection. Listening to her breathe. The onmitsu never actually gets to 'hello.'

     "....where's it hurt?"

<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

    Huh, they really did a number on this room, didn't they...?

    (Umie would be lying if she didn't admit she spent a moment or two looking blearily looking at a spot or two around the room, realizing that was when-- oh, there was when... oh that's where that bruise is from, that was embarrasing but something Umie does not regret, but what about the cleaning bill? And...)

    Anyway!

    There is chocolate.

    She didn't eat the entire box, having picked and chosen the ones she liked best (being the salted caramel or the dark chocolate ones, mostly), and then closed in, having fallen into her slumber.

    There wasn't so much as a snort or shuffle as Shiryuu enters, the blonde nearly dead to the world in a chocolate-induced food coma. However, when Shiryuu sits near to her, the lump shifts, the croissant growing a few locks of blonde hair from one end. "nghhh...."

    His palm feels heavenly against her forehead. She settles into that touch, sighly softly, her eyes opening briefly, then closing, as her own hand reaches up to politely tug on it to keep it from being taken away.

    .....

    There is no fever, but there is the smell of sweat and dried blood, of a previously sick stomach and clammy, stressed skin.

    Where's it hurt? "S'fine," she says, not to appear selfless, but because she selfishly wants to lay in that moment of closeness, separated from the noise and clamour of what happened an hour or so's distance away
    
    'Tell him where it hurts, Umie-chan. Let him make everything better for you. Don't you deserve it?' Umie would have preferred the version of Mai-chan that was a vicious little gremlin to that sweet, gentle tone that tries to worm into her thoughts.

    As if to spurn that voice, she lets Shiryuu's hand go and slowly sits up, her hair still somehow collected into their usual, if flattened, buns.

    "They took someone who was possessed by Joker. We tried to fight them off, but they were too strong."

    She clears her throat, rubbing her eyes.

    "What time is it?"

    .....

    Then, as if an afterthought, she mumbles, ".... I used it."

<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

 
     Ryouhara carefully takes the chocolates away, setting the box on the nightstand, picking up a stray wrapper that made it to too far to the edge of the bed, crumpling it in a hand and sliding it into a pocket for later -- luckily, he did take at least a few minutes to change out of his work clothes, so he's wearing at least what passes for street clothes, albeit absent his ceremonial haori, itself replaced with a jacket he's not yet thought to hang up on the hook on the door.

     He gives the faintest twitch -- when she takes hold of his hand, the sleeves of his jacket dusting over her knuckles as his touch hesitates against her for a second, before laying smooth, cool weight against a clammy but not entirely feverish forehead still. Warm, but...

     "....I don't think so," Shiryuu decides simply, insisting.

     Don't let her win, Ryouhara. Shiryuu sighs softly as his attempts are spurned. Instead, the young man's feet leave the bedside as he slides up into it, curling a thigh underneath himself as he leans behind her, and collects the first aid kit from the opposite end of the bed, pulling the tiny red case open and thumbing through its contents. A sound of annoyance is made, as he doesn't find what he's looking for.

     "I guess there's liabilities," Shiryuu mulls, as he thumbs a little packet of antacid tablets from the pack, ripping the little paper package, emptying the two coated chewables into his hand. At least they're not the chalky kind you'd need to get water for.

     Shiryuu is pointed on the matter, reaching out to take her hand in his.

     His eyes are downcast, as he gives her the pair, deliberately unwrapped. "A few minutes past seven," the young man replies succinctly, without explaining. Is he guessing? Or...

     "...but they were too strong," he repeats what she said, carefully. A power, used. But the Order was too strong. A slow, careful breath is taken, as Shiryuu slides closer, enough to pat the blanket where her thigh might be. He's careful -- he still isn't quite sure what all is injured, or broken. Eyes, both now back to their usual shades of brown -- one just barely so -- flick across Akabane's flattened, tousled hair.

     "...it's to be expected, where that curse is involved."

     She used 'it,' and Shiryuu doesn't need much clarification. Worse yet, it didn't change anything. 'It's to be expected,' he thinks, and it's true.

     There are those who work with demons.

<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

    'I don't think so.' "Mgh," Umie complains, unceremoniously.

    Shiryuu will feel the breath of it land against his hand, like the complain was a live, warm thing.

    "Suit yourself," she conceeds, then, her tone softer, the touch of her eyelashes against his skin.

    She says that, but she says nothing for a time.

    ".... Sorry," she says. She definitely noticed that twitch in his hand, when she grabbed it. "For grabbing your hand like that." At the very least, Shiryuu's allowed to pull his hand back, as she sits up.

    She's distracted, noticing how the brown of his eyes have settled to nearly the same shade.

    They stand out, dark against the shade of silver in his hair, which has been tamed. Did he come from his job? He must have changed his clothing...

    Did he skip out of his shift because of her texts? She just wanted to curl up in his bed, or soak in that luxurious tub that made the one in her apartment feel shallow and cramped in comparison.

    On nights like these, she wonders when that flame of passion will fade, and he'll realize he sees nothing in her.

    .... She's always waiting for the other shoe to drop, when something makes her feel happy...

    He's ripping something open, depositing the pills in the palm of her hand. "... eh?" She blinks, red brown eyes looking down at them as they rest in her hand.

    'A few minutes past seven.' ".... That fast, huh..." Or she's been out of it for long enough.

    She glances back up at him, her gaze centering on him for a few seconds, before popping the pills in her mouth.

    (well, if they were somehow swapped with poison pills, she would have had chocolate beforehand, she belatedly considers with some humor.)

    '.... but they were too strong.' "Mmn." That's a noise that sounds like agreement, maybe. ".... I thought..."

    "... I thought I could call a miracle. But I'm not you."

<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

     "Chew them with mindfulness," Shiryuu advises her, as Umie takes the antacids. That type of medicine is not itself based on digestion, but the interaction of saliva with the tablet chemistry. Luckily, it's not the chalky kind, but perhaps it'd be too much to hope that it's an acceptable fruit flavor. Even so, Shiryuu can dream.

     Even so, chew them mindfully.

     He continues, soothing idly through the blankets along her thigh as she gets lost to the details, his eye settling on his hand as if it were a third party to the matter, slow-going in his touch. For once, he's paying more attention to what she's saying than the restlessness that so often seems to consume him. He's not smiling, his expression worn and pensive.

     His hair has been combed, at least sometime today, albeit the effect is somewhat both tempered and preserved by the fact that it's blatantly obvious he's been wearing a safety helmet for most of the day, what few tousles the grey-headed boy sports a vagary of the fact that he ran to the nearest station to get to the hotel and understand what happened. A rebellious sprig sticks up still, letting Umie know in no uncertain terms that it did not at all forget about the crime she did a few seconds ago, and no matter what breathy attack she shoots at him, the shihaisha will not abide being contained. Ah, but that's a story for another day.

     Shiryuu's eyes peel from his hands, tracing a line across her hairline as she glances up to him.

     'I thought I could call a miracle, but I'm not you.'

     In this situation, it would be simple. 'Of course not, the invincible power of the Shirogarasu is not so easily wielded,' or 'the infinite mystery of ninkougakujutsu can only be wielded by the absolute strongest,' all thoughts that could be easy for him to say. But it's something to do with the tone in her voice that provokes such a pursed expression from the onmitsu.

     A tiny, short, soft sigh slides along his lips. If her own was a roughsawn bullet, his is a brush of silk.

     "Iih, ih ih ih," Shiryuu starts in, along the tail end of her words as if he'd heard it in advance and gave himself a warning from the future. He's shushing her, his hand lifting from her leg.

     "Where's your real voice at," Shiryuu thinks, sliding hands around her shoulders. She can feel him patiently looking away from her eyes, shooting a glance just past her neckline and to one of her buns, as if reminded of what he was looking at just before.

     She'll feel the way he quietly works to unfix her hair, as long as she sits still enough for it. "You should be telling me something like, 'a girl is her own miracle, so she doesn't need anybody else's,' or something like that. Your hair's all but given up on you, is why.."

     If she sits still for that much, for the loosening of her buns to drop her hair across her back, Shiryuu will press his hand into her forehead again. It's a tacit acceptance of her earlier apology, though the boy simply doesn't respond to a lot of things in the moment. He does hold her in place, for a moment, a second. As long as she doesn't slip free.

     "You got hurt," Shiryuu says, just as hushed. It's not a question, this time.

<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

    'Chew them with mindfulness.'
    'Don't be reckless, Umie Akabane.'
    A innocent reminder to be careful over how she takes the antacids segues in Umie's mind into Joker's rebuke for Umie to not be reckless.

    She looks up at Shiryuu's gaze, how he attempts to soothe her with his touch and pressure, careful and attentive.

    Her heart rushes a beat, her cheeks briefly flush with a feverishness that isn't tied to sickness, but something else.

    Yes, now that she's looking more closely, she *does* see where his hair's been forced into the mold of that helmet. She reaches up, drawing a fond line along that rebellious sprig of hair on his head, her lips twisting in a faint line of a smile.

    Yet, it's the recklessness and restlessness that she reads in others that draws her to them, whether to indirectly soothe them, or incite it as the Badb demands. Which of those does she intend now for Shiryuu?

    Well, for Shiryuu, it's something special, just for him--

    'I _left_," she told the Groom.
    'Did you?' said the Groom, right back.

    And now, the person who represents her tie back to the Order asks Umie where her real voice is at, his hands brushing around her shoulders, working themselves on a wandering journey to fixate on her sad, sad off-center buns.

    It can never be that simple, can it...

    'Your hair's all but given up on you, is why..' A cackle irresponsibly spills out from Umie at the absurdity of what he wants her to say, and what that cocky little rebel that frustrates him seems to sound like, from his vantage point, translated through him.

    "Is that what I sound like?" she asks, a wry note laced into the end of her words. "..."

    She bows her head, letting the shihaisha have full authority over her hair, his worrying over it giving precious seconds for her to think, her pale blonde hair settling around her shoulders. Dark roots show, as always, aligning with the color of her eyebrows.

    "... I saw my friend, from back then. Taro-kun." She stops a moment, as Shiryuu's hand presses against her forehead again. He'll feel the slight pressure, as her head leans slightly against his hand in a subtle nod of trust and affection.
     
    "... a cute little guy, standing about..." Mona was slashed as well. How is Mona doing?

    "... I didn't see him, after the attack started. Likely, he was..." She swallows. ".... But that is... what had to happen. They were demons."

    The pause there was supposed to be definite, like there was nothing more to say.

    But her traitorous mouth keeps going. "Everyone there had to deal with the mess I made. They were very confused, but they just... dealt with it Joker even made sure to stand guard with me for a second or two," Umie says, making a conscious decision to not mention what *from*. In fact, she won't even mention that it was the Groom who was there, though she imagines it'd be in the report.
    
    "Maybe they were disappointed, but they just accepted me. So I did my best to be the person they needed."

    And she keeps going.

    ".... I wonder, if Taro-kun felt I turned my back on him, when he was killed. What did he think? Demons... aren't humans. But they're not evil, strictly, anymore than a wild animal is evil for attacking a person."

    She got hurt.

    "I feel like I betrayed a part of myself."

<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

 
     Ryouhara finds it very easy to fixate. At first, perhaps he think it's a matter of fluffing the buns out, tousling them between his index fingers, the way one winds a cat's cradle. Then he notes they're not just flat, they're misaligned. Tiny little tugs at her scalp delay the careful glance along her neckline, a pause, then a slight breath of air as he realizes her hair is a lost cause. The way he unties each bun in turn, running his fingertips through those roots of hers to evenly disseminate and orient the poor girl's undoings, his fingertips counting the fine bones in her neck, once in each turn.

     He even tries to duck and look around her and, as she pokes at his head for some reason. His grey hair is unamused at her trepidation, and resists all efforts to be tickled.

     She cackles at him, in that sharp, blurted way, earning her a flat glance through Shiryuu's right eye, the darker brown shade fixing on her face as his other eye closes reflexively, as if letting her see his whole, pure eye alone could sharpen the look he gives.

     'Is that how I sound?'

     "... yeah," Shiryuu replies, loquaciously.
     He doesn't sound like he had to think about it for very long.

     Once her hair is dealt with, it leaves the boy's wrist to hang off of her shoulder, as he moves the rest of her hair out of the way of her face, as if nothing was said at all. "Mnnn," he comments, listening.

     Mona -- he doesn't know anything about, even if Umie were to mention the name. 'Taro-kun,' though, is a name that earns a pause, the onmitsu's curious fixation on the fine lines of her face and neck breaking as his eyes run a quick sweep from this way to that, pupils contracting, one more than the other. He recalls the name, clearly, from what she's told him before.

     To think that he would come back at such a moment.

     But.. "It's not for you," he thinks, "to pass judgment on yourself based on a fanciful dream."

     He doesn't comment on her group. It's too easy to think of things as perfectly miserable in the moment. Shiryuu peers at her closely now -- and for once, he's actually paying attention. She may notice the way he examines her closely for bruising -- and exactly how much of his touch is also tangentially related to examining her for fractures. Checking her neck, her temples, her jawline.

     In truth, it's probably the only way he can hear anything she's saying to him that close at all.

     "...come on, you."

     Ryouhara will slide off the bed in that moment, gathering up bits and sections of Umie Akabane's varying pieces scattered to and fro, to unceremoniously scoop what's left of her up -- carefully, decisively, with a hand slid beneath her knees and the other beneath her shoulders -- along with whatsoever may come along with, blankets, sheet and all, to carry her in some varying state of bundled over to the bathroom.

     He is prepared to subdue her with the blankets if necessary.

     "If it's really true, that maybe you lost your friend, you should tell me more about him," Shiryuu reasons, intently, unsteadily. "Maybe.. I don't know a lot about ... things like that," and it would be easy to assume he means demons here, "so, it's not very helpful, but.. let's start small."

     A moment of thought passes.

     "Maybe start with what he looked like...?"

<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

    "... ei..." That's the sound of Umie relaxing, as Shiryuu fixates over trying to fix her hair. It's like hearing a hummingbird flop on your shoulder for a breather: precious, but also a little nerve-wracking as you wonder when it's going to start zipping off, right as you begin counting each little iridescent feather on its dumb proud little head.

    Such is the power of an Umie Akabane.

    That a soft sound like that could be followed by something so crass as that cackle is also the power of an Umie Akabane. "You could wait another second or two before you agree, you know," she says, with a small smirk, inspite of how much she tries to sound cross about it.

    But that is the power of a Shiryuu Ryouhara...

    And Umie has all the time and closeness to think about it, with him so close, enough to see the fine eyelashes on his eyes as they dart over her face, or the difference between his two pupils and how they are ever so slightly out of sync. The curve and swell of his lips, the lines of his jaw, the rise of his cheekbones. The spots on his neck that she found best to press her lips against.

    There's bruising, and in the shift of bedsheets, he'll see the rusty remains of blood from wounds she hadn't bandaged yet, but were clearly not to the point of destablizing her condition. Considering she was going up against Miyu, her injuries were to be expected. Miyu is, after all, one driven by a desire...

     And she, basing herself on a fanciful dream, as Shiryuu says. "Why would you call it fanciful?" she wonders, quietly, as she leaves the rebellious little hairs alone.
    
    She doesn't shrink away from his examination, either, no matter how faulty his reasonings may be. It seems to soothe him as much as it soothes her, right now.

    '....come on, you.' "... oof." She's briefly surprised when she's lifted up, all her pieces and all, looking up at him like a dazed falcon.

    There's a threat hidden in his gentleness; this is not a suggestion, but a duty he's undertaking. "... where're you..." The bathroom, where she was originally going to go. "... I was going to go here," she says, like it was a protest.

    She doesn't.

    Especially when he asks her about Taro-kun.

    'But he was a demon,' she wants to say. Did it matter to her back then? It didn't matter when she attached some distant fondness to Mona on their first meeting.

    Taro-kun was special because he was her friend, just as Mona is special because he is a heroic little thief.

    ...

    Would... Mona think it's weird, if she texted Joker asking if he was doing okay? It's not as if she knows much about Mona, and, when she thinks about the reasons why, it feels selfish.

    ... But wasn't her admitting about her Mark to people like Joker also selfish, in a way? In a good way, in admitting that they were things she *did* want to open up about, and that she felt some reason to trust each person, regardless of how little she truly knew them.

    Taro-kun deserved to be known, by someone who wanted to know about him. Shiryuu doesn't know about things like that.

    Maybe, neither did Umie, when it came down to it.

    "I only got to summon him one time. He came to me, right away. I was smaller then, but him being around the same height as me meant he was perfect. I loved how fuzzy his head was, and how he chirped at me. His wings were so beautiful." She smiles. "... He'd nip me, if I wasn't careful. But, giving him a little bit of blood was great, when I knew it was something he appreciated. He'd get in trouble, and... I'd be blamed for it, because no one knew."

<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

 
     'I was going to go here...'
     "Aa."

     It's not necessarily that Umie's protests fall on deaf ears. To the contrary -- Shiryuu is focused enough on other things that he actually is paying rather a lot of attention to the content of Akabane's words, as opposed to their shape.

     It's just that protests have not historically done much to move or sway the shihaisha of the crows, less so now, with his person in this way of hers.

     "...I hope it wasn't for 'that' reason."

     That much chocolate could have given her a stomachache, Shiryuu doesn't know. However, the onmitsu faces more of a logistical problem, entering the bathroom with a small train of blankets and sheets with him. Luckily, he is skilled enough to avoid knocking Akabane out on the doorframe -- he is very nimble.

     Unfortunately, he didn't plan this through quite all the way..

     Now faced with a person wrapped all the way up in blankets while minded to tart drawing a bath, Shiryuu makes a face, looking over the tub while listening to Akabane. He sniffs in thought, one blink, two -- the lowering incline of his head gives him a second to look at the roman faucet, while contemplating what she's said thus far.

     "...don't let demons bite you, Akabane. I'll censure them for it if they do," he thinks, mouth set in vexation. Even as an innocent child free of sins, she was an incorrigible rogue, it sounds like. Hnrr.

     "Only I'm allowed to bite you," he adds, absently, factually.

     There is not an ounce of self-awareness or even flirtation in the way he says it, either.

     Shiryuu ends up sliding a foot out of his house shoe to prop up high on the tub, lowering Akabane's figure to rest gently against his raised knee as he a w k w a r d l y leans over to reach the handle, starting to draw the bath. He tests the water -- and makes a face, waving his hand. Ah, it's so hot. He doesn't want to inadvertantly cook her. Grr. He fiddles with the knobs for a few seconds, batting Umie's blanket-tail out of the tub before she gets prematurely soggy.

     "....you said he was a Mothman, right?" he thinks, changing the subject when he finally reaches the edge of his recollection, from months ago. A lot of the details were fuzzy. "He was ... rotund? Chunky?"

     It's honestly a feat that he remembers that much. It's not like he was able to concentrate, that night. The feel of her hands in his took the lion's share of space in his memory. As well as the monstrous leg cramp he suffered later, after sitting in seiza with her until morning.

     She said he'd get her in trouble, because no one knew he was there. That should annoy him even more, but..

     "....he sounded fun."

     Ostensibly, a healthy median has been reached with the pyroclastic flow that is the bath faucet. Shiryuu sighs softly. If Umie hasn't become a problem yet, he'll lower her to the edge of the tub, planting her rump-first there and making sure she's stable before carefully rolling her out of her blankets -- to help her out of a layer or two, with the jacket, at most, at least.

     It'll start to get a little humid, and the shihaisha's attention falcons over her for a few moments -- it's probably the only time she enjoys his undivided attention, as he takes great care to keep her hair from getting in her mouth. (He seems weirdly concerned about it, honestly..)

     "Ah... I'm going to get the bath explosives," Shiryuu tells her quietly. He's probably referring to the bath salts he saw on the table. Hopefully. He looks her in the eyes. "Do... you need help?"

     Undressing, theoretically. She could be injured, after all -- it's a practical offer. But it's also sort of a loaded question, because it's actually spanning a range of other things as well. She could probably ask for help brushing her teeth right now and get his help.

     (Don't ask for that. Shiryuu is brutally efficient at brushing teeth.)

<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

    '...I hope it wasn't for 'that' reason.' Shiryuu will likely feel the shift of Umie's head, swaddled as she is, though the way she squints her eyes at him will have to rely on sight or imagination to convey the full picture.

    Her answer is direct. "No."

    It's followed by a quiet, resigned explanation: "There's something that just feels... bad, when I'm done. Like, while you pull something out of the fridge and know it's rotten before you've smelled it or looked at it. That and, the... whole Taro-kun thing. All the different parts of it." She doesn't mean the different body parts of what could have been Taro-kun, either--

    A demon would have done the same to any of them if seized with the right complusion, Umie reminds herself.

    Normally, she'd protest just how impossible Shiryuu is making what should be a simple, if somewhat grandiose gesture: carting your girlfriend to the bathtub like she was a stinky family cat. (Okay, maybe a little more romantic than that, considering this is Shiryuu.) "You could just... let me..." But her words are muffled by a cover, giving her a chance to realize something important.

    This may be Shiryuu's way of trying to 'solve' her 'problem', she thinks. She is, after all, a problem, afflicted with a problem that the shihaisha's knowledge and methods of 'miracles' cannot touch. She cannot be subdued through force (well, in a satisfactory way), her powers cannot be sealed with a ninkou, the demons would be more likely to try to kill Shiryuu on sight for being a Ryouhara alone than be shown the 'reason' of his will. Or let him censure them, for that matter.

    All Shiryuu can do is draw a damn bath and listen to his girlfriend whine about the time she made friends with a talking moth that'd stand about waist-high in comparison to him, or people solved an incident he wasn't able to intervene and completely command.

    There is only the Roman faucet, his girlfriend wrapped in blankets like a lazily-made burrito, the rifled-through first aid kit and the half-eaten box of chocolates back on the bed.

    "... That's what demons do. They bite," Umie murmurs, half paying attention to the point of his words, half looking at how he's trying to problem-solve the issue of drawing a bath while balancing her on his raised knee.

    'Only I'm allowed to bite you.' A snicker huffs by Shiryuu's ear. "My, my..." At least she doesn't go further with that, seeing the efforts he's putting into helping her.

    Her eyelids lower, as she watches. It's these moments that really... make her fall for him, again and again.

    "He had a cute fuzzy belly. You'd think, it'd be more like an actual moth's, but... it was funny, since his legs were spindly. I fell asleep once, with him laying on me. His wings were like a delicate blanket. Maybe it was because I was a kid at the time, but I never got the sense he was malicious. Just... no moral compass. I'm sure, if my summoning lasted longer, there would have been worse consequences."

    A demon can understand the need for company, or warmth. Or play. Just not things like restraint, or morality. 'He sounded fun.' "He was." The corners of her lips turn upward. "Before I saw him last, I gave him a bow on his leg. He still had it on. That's how I knew." But when the battle went on, she couldn't see it.

    A demon cannot be a human, or meet Umie the way Shiryuu does now, helping her out of her blood stained jacket. The bruises and cuts are more visible now-- nothing life-threatening like it was with Ruin, but they tell the story of how a girl could become desperate enough to use that forbidden ability.

    Unlike a demon, Umie lets him, enjoying his attention, but also wanting to give him the satisfaction of a task.

    Plus, it leads to the little absurdities like-- ".... Bath bombs," Umie corrects, with a smirk, drawing her fingers across his hair affectionately, landing a kiss against the top of his head.

    'Do... you need help?' She laughs. "I don't know which answer you're hoping for. I can get undressed myself. But... after I get in the tub, I wouldn't mind you being there for company." She strokes his face. "I could really just use someone to ground me, right now."

    She couldn't trust people with the whole weight of this; Shiryuu already knows it, and thus, there is nothing that needs to be explained.

    There's no wall she has to listen through.

<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

 
     It is worth saying that Shiryuu is magnanimous. If you were to ask him, the reach of his severity and tyranny only extends as far as is just, the scalding heat of his silver and black breaking only those who do not commit themselves to order. If you were to ask him, he'd say as much.

     But make no mistake, Shiryuu is not kind to those on the wrong side of the equation, and problems that face him are solved as they were with Alexander's sword. If demons thought to defy him, the amount of bloodshed would be colossal and flow without delay. They would either heed words or steel.

     This is what he would argue.

     'You could just, let me...' "Iiih," Shiryuu shushes her again, monosyllabically quashing the thought where it rose. "In your state, you might drown. Or get back into the choco. Or both," he tells her, candidly. "You need to rest your body. .... maybe toast."

     With his knee propping her up in his grip between her shoulderblades, if gives him some space to muse openly about what to do as he draws the bath with questionable levels of success. He seems to vacillate between her hair getting in her eyes and her gastrointestinal health, and helping her out of her jacket does no favors in alleviating any of the small constellation of concerns that give him fits. "....!"

     He's only compelled to relax when she touches him -- his everywhere expression sharpening to focus on her, the furrow of his brow shortly following as her touch chases across his hairline, stifling his complaints. "I don't care if you're made of the most delicious grape-flavored Long Bakeru Gummy," he grouses in half-hearted protest. "Anyone who bites you answers to me..."

     He is gloomy but insistent on his point. As insistent as he can be, when she kisses him while he's busy gathering up the blankets from the ground. By the time he leans into her hand, he's promptly forgotten what he was talking about.

     "...." The young man stops to think, clearing his throat politely as he roll up her jacket and thebedding into one tight roll in his hands, having let her free only as long as he's reasonably sure she won't faint or die. Luckily she's given him several other things to be concerned with. "....either way, it's poorly named," Shiryuu insists flatly, shortly before he's given cause for his eyebrows to shoot up into the shadows of his bangs with such abject violence that his sprig twitches.

     "Wh-- not that I don't.." His gaze settles, before he turns away, calmly scandalized. "...it's not like it was on 'that day,'" Shiryuu settles on, insisting.

     He doesn't specify how, as he promptly leaves the bathroom to gather supplies and put down the blankets and othersuch. It gives him time to reflect. Where before he was content to simply listen while she described the little demon, with the benefit of being able to focus on something other than her scent and trying to focus on one task after the next, Shiryuu can put it together.

     "... so he's not a My Neighbor Dodoro ..." the onmitsu muses openly, folding the blankets and setting the jacket aside before picking up the box on the stand, giving it a disapproving look.

     "I suppose it would be for the best," Shiryuu thinks over the box, before closing up the first aid and adding it to his stack. "If he were like a moth, it would have been a dust fire hazard."

     A thought, Shiryuu looks down at the medician's cross on the front of the case.

     "Maybe... later, when you're ... we should look for him."
     As much as he'd argue otherwise, Shiryuu is a tyrant, it's not an incorrect assessment. But heartlessness is only a word. At least, if he thinks hard enough, perhaps that can be true.

<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

    'In your state, you could drown. Or get back into the choco. Or both.' Umie makes a sour face. "I wonder how I've managed to survive all this time without you being there to keep me from drowning in the bathtub, or eating too much chocolate," she quips back sarcastically.

    In revenge, she gets into character of the damsel in distress just a little more, floping her arms back as her back rests against his support, like she was a wan maiden, only helping herself out of that jacket whenever his attention is pulled back to the bathtub.

    But eventually, as they both inevitably do when protesting and arguing with each other, she's touching him, and extending her own affections on him. After all, this is a man who is merciless towards anyone who defies his will, who rules over the Ryouhara clan as its leader and protector, even to the point of showing that blade against his own 'bond' when he suspected her. Yet, he draws her bath and fusses over her, seemingly trying to exert control in a way that Umie finds painfully similar to her own efforts.

    The worlds they exist in are far apart in some ways, but the wavelengths they exist on sing the same melodies, drawing them into the same orbit.

    "My, my," she repeats instead, breathing it against his forehead as he grumbles. "Clearly I'd be apple, not grape." Does it even come in apple? Probably a BS flavor, like sour apple, as an excuse to have something be colored light green instead of red.

    She falls quiet as he leans into her hand, lips slightly parted, content to continue touching him, this boy so in love with this girl, this Shirogarasu.

    That quiet moment of physical contact is broken with Shiryuu mentioning how 'bath bombs' are a terrible name. "No one would buy them if they were called something like 'bath fizzies'. Bath bombs sound more interesting."

    It was a child's sentiment.

    In contrast, there is nothing child-like in how Umie looks at Shiryuu now. "'That day'." Umie gives him an angled, mischievous smile. "I wonder... was it your first as well?"

    That pause is scandalous. "... Your first Christmas date."

    Flee, Shiryuu, while you still can.

    After Shiryuu exits, the topic turns back to the late(?) Taro-kun. Umie snorts just before Shiryuu can hear the soft sound of her sweater hitting the ground, as well as the swish of her pants following suit.

    Umie pauses with the last bit of her undressing, looking over her shoulder towards the sound of Shiryuu's voice. "... A dust fire hazard? ... Moth dust?" Is that a thing?

    The minds of shinobi are mysterious.

    Finishing her undressing, Umie gathers up a towel from a rack, and stops momentairely once again over Shiryuu's suggestion. He'd suggest that, because it's important to her.

    "... You have a kind heart, Shiryuu." The word might come off as an insult, but it wouldn't be from Umie's tone of voice. "... I don't think he'd be around, by now. Probably a shorter window since I summoned quite a few. There was a Sati, a Jack Frost.... I think a Moh Shuuvuu."

    She folds up the towel, doubling it over and placing it next to the head of the bathtub, before she steps into the tub proper.

    The sound of water is the only thing that breaks the quiet, as she thoroughly soaks in.

    "You can come back in, by the way. It's too deep to see anything."

    She folds over her arms, resting her chin on them. ".... I want to... hear about your day."

    If he comes in, he'll see the folded over towel, which Umie will nod towards, as a seat.

    "Even if you think it's boring."

<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

 
     Shiryuu is unmoved by Umie's quips. "You survived with a lot of indigestion, poor sleep and stomachaches," he guesses. Technically, Umie sleeps like a rock he's found, but he absolutely does not put impulse-control hangovers past her.

     He's had more than a few back cramps with her name specifically on them..

     Of course, it's in her nature to be troublesome, now she's talking blasphemies while draped over his knee like a melodramatic beach towel. "Iiih, Umie!" Shiryuu complains, scandalized. "--don't be candy!"

     Of course apple is not a flavor! That he knows of.

     It's hard for him to hold focus with her, given as he is to wonder along the lines of her words, how much his thought slows to a trickle at her touch. It's bothersome, in one way, that he can't quite...

     And in other ways...

     "It... ah.." With an ashen face, Shiryuu is only -minorly- relieved when it turns out the question she asks isn't ... the boy is given to turn briskly on his heel, walking lopsided out of the room. "Akabane!! Don't ask me things!" Really, he's full of demands. "I'm not some... slutty Christmas dater Korozen-type!"

     She will note that one of his house shoes is still on the tile where he left it to help prop her up on his knee.

     This, naturally, means disaster as he bursts into the main room again. There is a heavy, meaty -thock- and the rattle of wood. Dead silence. An ominous creak. The sound of shuffling movement, then the soft sound of blankets hitting the bed.

     Shiryuu takes a *long* time to get the Epsom.

     From the other room, she can hear him suck in a breath and hold it before he replies.

     "....if it were interesting, it'd really explode. It's ... it's inert.. oh. I guess this isn't the explosive kind, just the seasoning kind." Maybe women do like to be cooked in soups.

     "....and, my heart isn't.."
     A pause, as his voice softens, letting the subject drop.
     "...even so, I'll look."

     By the time Shiryuu limps back in once invited, he's managed to kick off his other shoe somewhere outside of the bathroom, probably closer to the bed than not. He does peek just beyond the edge of the door before entering, making sure Umie isn't lying, though some part of him thinks it may almost be worse to peek first before entering. Doesn't feel right, he notes with a bitter frown.

     In most circumstances, he'd barge in twice as hard. In this, he still pads in softly, unsteadily, carrying the little carton with him in a hand. He follows her indication with a dim expression, blinking fully once it sets in what she wants. "... Ah.."

     He closes his eyes, as he tenderly comes to rest on the spare towel, sniffing once as he fiddles with the salt packaging. Hm. How's this open.

     It's what she's asked, so... really, can he do less than to honor it?

     "I ... was at the site today," he admits, finally intuiting the pour spout, a little metal sliding thing, that he actuates more than once with a finger, prodding at the box as he inspects the spout closely. "It's not really anything special... but, the building itself is done. The projector I ordered showed. But... the supervisor's got me running the conduit for the electrical."

     Therein lies an important fact -- Shiryuu is ordering the facility equipment. Unbeknownst to the crew, he is both the owner of the club and the lowest ranking member of the contractors in the process of rebuilding it. Apparently, he gets stuck with bitchwork a lot as a direct result. He is also a terrible story teller.

     "Hm. How much of this should we use," he thinks, starting to pour the box in. Hssss.. ssss... ssss... "If it's like ramen, I guess you have to use a lot.." ssssss. Sssssssss... He shakes the box a bit.

     Umie should probably stop him.

<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

    'You survived with a lot of indigestion, poor sleep and stomachaches.' "And again, I *survived*," Umie protests. However, Shiryuu's assumption would be correct, with one caveat: Umie slept like a rock because he was there, or because she fell asleep, her touch lingering over and remembering each and every callus on the palms of his hands, as well as the softer spots in between.

    Which serves has a nice analogy for their relationship: full of calluses and soft spots, from two people trying to understand what it means to let another get so close. When Umie is allowed to forget about the NWO, she finds little interest in the possible secrets and intel she could derive from her relationship, just as she's not interested as serving as a double agent for the very place she's claimed to run away from.

    She owes all of the people that wanted to believe her that much, as well as the ones she claims to hold in such high esteem. She is, after all, in love with the enemy, even if Shiryuu holds himself as separate as he can be.

    And, since he is in love with her, there's no finer punishment, for someone like the shihaisha.

    Exhibit A: Umie asking him, with that widening, teasing, open-mouthed grin, that double-edged sword of a question.

    "That's what makes it so cute, when you give in~" She smiles, sweetly, then... freezes.

    Why did she have to say it like that? It sounds like something Mai-chan would say...

    She chases the thought out of her mind, focusing instead on Shiryuu. Like, how... Wait, why is he walking with a limp like that

    *THUD*
    "H-hey! Are you okay?" The blonde hesitates, looking at the door and wondering if she should peek out and check on him.

    Creaakk. Shuffle. Thump.
    He must be fine, if maybe nursing some kind of bruised muscle.
    "Don't accidentally kill yourself," she says, her voice relaxing from that earlier concern. "Your family'd have my head on a platter." Bath explosives... the Ryouharas are an unconventional group, aren't they...

    .....
    By the time Shiryuu peeks in, Umie is, indeed, in the bath. "Hey," she says, with a softer tone. "You okay? That sounded like a pretty loud thump." Maybe Shiryuu should stay here, where he's not going to injure himself trying to impress her with how invincible he is.

    She smiles as he talks about his day as not the shihaisha, but as the lowly EDM FNG. "Mmhm," she sounds, in that normal back and forth that happens. "Sounds difficult." But maybe not for Shiryuu, given his knack for engineering things.

    "... I take it, they have no clue you actually worked there," she says. "Does the owner know?" A pause. "... Though, knowing you... Do you actually own the building yourself?" After all, why would he deal with another boss if he didn't have to?
    
    sssssssss

    ".... Whoah whoah whoah. Are you trying to pickle me?" A few chipped red nailed fingers reach out to tip the spout of the box back, as she laughs. "It's not that kind of salt anyways. If you used this to salt ramen you'd have everyone running for the bathroom, and not to take a bath, either."

    She also makes a face, as she realizes that, while it's not tablet salt, it's still salt. Eeehhh, it's fine, those cuts'll be disinfected now.

<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

     He would say she's being the unbearable kind of romantic, if that young man were at all privy to the meander of thoughts rolling through her head. He has a disciplined mind, not prone to the vagaries and fancies that most claim. Always dead ahead, he would think. As straight as an arrow shot from heaven. Anything else is just...

     Shiryuu oft doesn't like where his mind goes, when he lets it roam so freely.

     "I didn't give in," Shiryuu insists. "Everything that happened was tactical," the onmitsu informs the rambunctious Umie matter of factly, even if he remains mysterious as to what, precisely, tactical means. Especially in the .. several.. contexts that comprised their date. He doesn't seem to catch the eerie subtext that chills her so -- though it is to be expected, halfway out the door as he is.

     Most of the rest can be chalked up to Shiryuu being a little nore nettled than usual from inadvertently trying and failing to kick a desk in half using exactly one toe.

     Limping back in, Shiryuu waves a hand dismissively of the whole matter. "...enough silliness," he tells her. "My power surmounts both my family's and the furniture."

     ....

     "..And your hip moves won't work so easy next time. I _am_ the strongest," he feels like he needs to remind her, severely, while not looking directly at her with her hair down and wet.

     She wasn't even talking about that.
     Shiryuu salts her hard, to make sure she doesn't get any ideas about winning. Right up until he's distracted by her long enough that she can *zoop* poke his spout shut.

     For some reason, it vexes Shiryuu. You can tell by the cross-eyed way he looks at the box.

     "...yeah..." Work was difficult, the boy replies absentmindedly while staring, but not in the fashion that indicates frustration with his lot. The box tilts.

     There is a weird pacing to the way his thoughts catch up with the conversation, like he was making some decision somewhere in the back of his mind when it comes time to talk about who, precisely, is in charge. The owner... "He, ah... he died."

     It's really all Shiryuu will say about it.

     "Ieeh.." Shiryuu peers at the box, still displeased, but much quieter about it. "You girls and your strange wannabe explosive luxuries," he complains. "First you want to be candy, then you don't want to be ramen, then you're talking about making people run for the bathroom. Aaah, Umie.."

     He says her name flatly.
     Like she's being difficult about being seasoned.

<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

    Tactical.

    The word distracts Umie from her existential crisis (for now), as the natural urge to bend that word over and play with it drives the Badb in her instead.

    "Ah..... examining the battlefield, scouting for weak points in my defense, pressing the advantage, being aggressive when you spy errors in my strategy, tactically retreating to force an advance on my part... it was all according to your plan.... I see..." It's too bad Shiryuu's currently nursing that stubbed toe. "Until finally, I had to concede to your wiles and recognize that victory could only be found in a tactical surrender!"

    ".... Which I then struck my secret attack on, subverting your expectations, and stealing my prize." Did any of this actually recount any line of events that happened that day? ....... most definitely not, Umie's making it all up.

    Well, maybe the hip moves, but Umie's certainly not thinking about those until Shiryuu mentions them.

    "It's not about who's the strongest~" she playfully chides. "A single strike can break through rock, if applied carefully!"

    WHO IS THE ROCK HERE

    *zoop*

    "If you put too much in, it's going to make my skin all dried out," Umie points out. "Trust me, epsom salts were my go-to on some nights."

    Though, most of the time, she was too tired, collapsing into bed.

    Umie's gaze lowers over the water, seeing the angle of her face in the faint reflection.

     ".... 'She' would be there, sometimes, on those nights. It was like a treat. My parents were strict about sleepovers, so this was 'our' secret. Then, she'd disappear... and I'd miss her. Then. she'd be back, and I'd be so happy, just seeing her again."

    Many nights, Umie slept, wishing that 'extra' hour actually counted toward something, rather than feeling like it drained her instead.

    ....

    'He, ah... he died.'

    Is it disappointing or reassuring, that Umie just accepts it? ".... Oh. Of... normal causes, or..."

    It would make sense, if the Old Maid was there for the owner, and Shiryuu intercepted. But then, he'd have to know about it.

    It feels like too much of a coincidence, otherwise, since he seemed to take it personally that someone was trying to kill her.

    Not even Shiryuu's mention of water-based explosives and being picky about what food she chooses to be.

    "... Did you... know the owner?" she asks, slipping into the water until her chin was submerged.

<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

 
     'Examining the battlefield, scouting for weak points in my defense.' "...yeah. Exactly." Shiryuu settles into Umie's energy with a soundless click, following her rhythm along effortlessly, his lived experience aligning perfectly with Umie's summary.

     'Being aggressive when you spy errors in my strategy,' "That's right too." Shiryuu's forgotten all about his injury, completely sidetracked. Ugh, she's so cool to understand the tactical prowess of shinobi in this way. They should be more than dating, he resolves. They would make incredible battle partners, if it's this level of insight he can expect.

     'It was all according to your plan, I see..' "A commendable insight, Akabane..!" Shirogarasu replies humbly. Now Shiryuu's activated and distracted by more than her hair, seasoning Umie with a shihaisha's ultimate authority and a Purple Dragon's vigor, which is likely the inciting factor that lures her into *zoop*ing his Epsom salt spout shut only a few moments later. If he weren't a dignified soul, he would be fistpumping right now at Umie's astute power of observation. Yeah. Lures her, obviously to concede to his wiles and surrender again. Wait, wiles?

     First comes the fall.

     'Which I then struck my secret attack on, subverting your expectations,' "Wait, attack? What are you even talking--" 'and stealing my prize.' "Wh, _what_ pri--" now the man's fully suspicious of what Umie is talking..

     ..are they still talking about...that means the prize was...
     ...!!
     "_Umie!_" he repeats, scandalized with his face screwed into a sour expression.

     Then his spout is *zoop*ed.

     Shiryuu sits with that, for a long time.

     "... not if the rock is the hardest and the strongest," he glumly points out after a whole forever, petty and unwilling to concede. He would salt her some more, but it sounds bad. Morosely, he doesn't want her skin to get dried up.

     If you don't laugh, right..?

     A child surrounded by demons and ghosts. It's a poor excuse for a childhood meant to be lived in the light of freedom and friendship, he reflects. The box of Epsom salts bears the weight of Shiryuu's idle, the cardboard drummed with alternating rows of fingers as he focuses on the marketing copy on the back without ever really reading it.

     "So... it's why you sleep better, when it's two."

     The insight is somewhat suspicious to have, but hardly unbelievable for the leader of an entire family of spies. The boy pats the box into an open palm, adding a subconscious rhythm to the moment, one meaningless movement at a time.

     Isn't it really the same for him? He can only sit still, when..

     The thought contours into something else, as she asks about the owner of Club Harai. An underground artist type, the one who died in the fire, with the building now under the ownership of and being reconstructed by a nameless administrative company, owned by a nameless investment trust.

     Did he know him?

     "... No," Shiryuu supposes.
     "There was ... a gulf, between us. Always, I think."

     Pursing his lips, the boy gives a small, suffering sigh. Her curiosities can be cruel, can't they..

     "...It's harder now, but...it's fine." He's not defeated so easily.

<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

    *zoop*

    Umie's grin is pleased, the warm brown of her eyes shifting redwards as her eyes narrow into curved, glinting silts.

    "The most valuable prize," she says, softly, her equally curving lips slightly open. "The sort of victory you can't have, unless you are willing to lose."

    It's terrible, how gratified Umie seems with herself here.

    "But a shinobi would know that's not true; otherwise, blind might would be all that mattered." She's doing it again.

    This is a way someone may survive, when they are surrounded by demons, ghosts, and the burden of silence. You find humor in your failures to measure up, and in the absurdity of adults who remain ignorant of the supernatural.

    It gets harder, when you find yourself an adult yourself, and realize that incompetence isn't always the reason for your own suffering.

    Sometimes, it's the void.

    ... Which leads to the next thing that Shiryuu says, on the subject of still nights. "...." Umie, leaning her shoulders over the rim of the tub, the upper half of both arms dangling there, is quiet. The black stain encircling her right wrist feels wrong, like an extra eye or mouth where it shouldn't be, amongst the white flooring and wall.

    "... Yes," she admits.

    It makes sense, that Shiryuu would understand this. Wasn't that why he appeared, that one night?
    Even the Shihaisha bleeds red.

    ".... When I was little, there were nights where I called for her, because I was scared. One time she did come." A strand of ash blonde hair weeps a still trickle of bathwater on the edge of the tub. "Maybe it would have been better if she hadn't, because it then made me think there was always a chance."

    Shiryuu has his own wounds, as well. It is a crow's nature to be curious, and in that curiosity, there is a cruelty.

    She moves closer; in truth, she had been slowly drifting over, with every shift and adjustment.

    "Sounds like you two were closer than you thought."

    This also makes sense; it was difficult enough for Shiryuu to admit he had feelings for her, and even, in Kurou's case, when he kept trying to hold onto some distance between him and Kurou.

    Cruelly, she asks the same question he did.

    "Could you tell me about him?"

<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

 
     He repeats it. "Umie...!"

     Most of Shiryuu's disapproval is filtered into using Umie's first name, the onmitsu's pretense of imperious formality punctured with the varying colors he can paint onto her name in chastisement, telling the unrepentant rogue woman exactly what he thinks of her incessant chicanery.

     He's really only used her first name in a few other situations.

     Once, when he was afraid she was about to die. And once, when...

     That time, Shiryuu didn't dip his fingers into the bath to splash the rambunctious scoundrel with her own bun water, turning his face away from her imperiously. Now that he knows what she's up to, he absolutely will not sign on to her shenanigans. Take some more of all of *that,* Akabane. Splash splash. Be sealed by your own ambitions to be ramen.

     He's actually talented at splashing, being careful not to get any in her eyes until they're properly closed. It's one of his many skills.

     What is more grave to handle is the way their words filter and entwine, quilting through the next moments with far more somber traipse. The young man's glance breaks from his bond's eyes as she softens to recount 'her,' and the contours of that terrible thought, hope.

     He takes a long time to think about it, now-wet fingertips again taking to the box of salts as it suffers for being his proxy. Only the hilt of a sword truly calms his hands. Only the hilt, and...

     The young man's gaze comes to rest on the tile, the shape of a tiny shame dipped in the ink dark.

     'Could you tell me about him?' The question sits in a haze, like a woodchip lost in the censer.

     Shiryuu shakes his head. He shouldn't, but.. "He was.. someone who was surrounded in bonds. The unimaginable rogue who effortlessly seized every heart, who stood at the edge of all things fearlessly. A howling dragon, a diving fox."

     A rueful expression wry and focused paints his lips as he sets the box of salts down on the tile. ".... it's pointless. that person's curse was too great for him to survive. Not like others. Not like.."

     He thinks again of her, and that fear she spoke of, letting his thoughts stray away from things he should not feel at all free to speak of. A glance stolen nimbly -- of the wet lines of her drape, his glance never quite meeting her eyes, as if unwilling to indulge even the smallest want in his heart to see 'her.'

     He's trailed off. Instead, Shiryuu reaches out solemnly, to slide his fingers between hers and take his bond by the hand, without looking up.

     But it's not her left hand he claims, but that abominable right, dark and whorled and blasphemed as something wrong, as something awful.

     He chases away the ideas of a cold, dead thing with the press of his warmer lips to wet skin. Heat against the cooling evaporation and soothing gooseflesh before it can rise, with a slow, thoughtful kiss, lingering long on the black marks at her wristline, feeling her heart in her pulse against his lips.

     A thought's space, and Shiryuu affirms with one more kiss. Higher along her Mark, returning to words that were just as cruel on the other side of that wall. He is still unafraid.

     "... don't regret your hope," Shiryuu says, the smoother, imperious tenors of his voice trickling into a lower timbre this close to her skin. His and relaxes in hers, as he steals a glance of her face when he thinks she might be distracted.

     Fast, quick, diffident, desperate for even a glimpse of her eyes, no matter how unreasonable a demand it might be to make of his love. The unyielding, colossal urge to kiss her again is carefully, tastefully pushed down as improper, out of line. Even this much..

     "Don't," the shihaisha repeats. Don't regret your hope.
     "No matter where it comes from."

<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

    There are some who use her first name, but they're few in number, despite Umie's nonconfirmist nature, when she's not under the mask of a slightly less nonconfirmist konbini clerk. Umie never objects when someone moves to her first name; she sees it as a personal decision, and when few are ever able to feel close enough, or have the kind of relationship where first names could be feasibly exchanged in the first place, it matters little how she wouldn't object. So, when someone like Shiryuu says her first name, Umie hears it, and understands it.

    ... Especially when it's paired with him expertly splashing her with a few well-calculated flicks of his fingers. "H-hey!" Umie cackles. "Don't splash my face!" He never did. He can be very thoughtful in how he applies his skills.

    It's less so, when Shiryuu's applying them to his own care, as he speaks of that part of himself as a separate person, with Umie none-the-wiser, despite her knowing that he still dealt with the trauma of almost dying to the Old Maid.

    Umie listens, wet eyelashes lowering as her eyes follow the edges of his hair and neck.

    A rogue who's charismatic and fearless. Indomintable and fierce. "His curse? You mean... So... that's how you came across the Old Maid. He was looking for your boss." Could Shiryuu say she was wrong? "I thought you were going out of your way to challenge him because of me." Part of Umie wants to turn this into a prod, a way to tease him even if it really is better for her conscious that he met the Old Maid out of coincidence than him actively seeking the serial killer.

    .... It led to the same result in the end, anyway. Shiryuu was never one to back down.

    As far as 'her', well, Shiryuu, be careful what you wish for; in time, it might happen.

    But on the other side of it, lies Umie. The Mark winds up from wrist to further up, somehow terminating before it reached her elbow. It was easier to forget in the winter months, but in the summer, the sleeves she wore to cover it stick out like a sore thumb. It's easier, in the end, to look like you're trying to make a fashion statement, rather than be seen as an 'other' for the tattoo. What kind of woman would get something so noticable if she, herself, wasn't 'tainted' in some way?

    A woman like that... had no dignity.
    A woman like that... was cursed.
    A woman like that... could only bring someone ruin.

    So when Umie felt Shiryuu's fingers slide into hers, her head angled to look towards him, giving him one of those slight smiles that seemed to happen when she relaxed her guard.

    "...!" She was so unprepared for what happened next, wrestling with the instinct to pull that wrist back and protect her 'bond' from the corruption of her Mark....
        ..... as well as the sharp need to take his hand and kiss him deeply over that *nerve* to not care. This boy!!

    How *dare* he make her squeak like that, when he let his lips leave, then press their warmth further up that same arm, still centered over that unspeakable Mark.
    
    She can feel the vibrato of his voice through the skin and nerves that persist in their normalcy underneath that eldritch matte of black.
    She loves it.
    
    His look upwards nearly clips her in her impulse to press her lips into his hair. As a result, when he looks up, he sees her up close, her previous intent unmistakable even through the restraint she shows, now that their lips are dangerously close again.=

    "I won't forget," she says, quietly. She's distracted by how inviting his lips look.

    What value could be found in a desperate child's wish, anyways....

    "..... It'd be a bad idea... if I kissed you right now," she also says.

    ... Yet, if he saw value in that hope, did it really hurt to believe him...?

<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

 
     'What is the truth' changes smoothly, as Shiryuu's eyes half-lid against her quiet understanding as she builds it brick by brick. There are a hundred dark truths and implications that the small prevaricated distortion salves over.

     "... yeah," he agrees quietly, though to what he never specifies.
     "It was... a stroke of bad luck, after all.."

     Shinobi no mono. A person of endurance. It's a romantic notion, thinking about the nature of all those who dwell in the dark, and how the dark is not something to be feared, but cherished, along with all those in it. It's a pretty idea, when you think about it, and easily the one tied to the way Ryouhara entwines himself with her against his better judgment, the way his fingertips slide into her own so easily.

     It is a pretty idea, thinking of it that way.

     But...

     Shiryuu holds onto her hand, feeling only the slightest resistance when he turns her just so, that he can feel the fine bones making up her wrist under his kiss. A tiny, sharp, bitter taste marks his lips, the remnant of those salts ignored further for the electric arc of his lines of attention, burning somewhee at the nape of his neck as he politely keeps from lavishing the poor girl from wrist to shoulder in some garish display.

     She can feel the way he moves, the way he twitches just slightly when he discovers epsom salts do _not_ taste like ramen, the way he hides the barest, quickest ghost of a smile when she squeaks, the way he's disinclined to let the distance grow between them.

     How much he wants to say to her.

     His one hand is joined by his other, warming her hands between his own, her arm and its Mark against the press of his sweater without consideration. In that second, the sum of her isn't that obscene scrawl or its terrible charge.

     'I won't forget,' she says.
     "...I know," he says, quiet and warm, giving her that trust and agency.

     That sum of her isn't that thing. It never was, to him.

     "You're..." he trails off. She is just his person.

     Shiryuu almost devastates Akabane's poor jaw when he steals that glance, when he looks up, and finds himself face to face with her. It's a feat of luck that he doesn't, and instead of being endangered, they are dangerously close. Eyes suddenly as wide as dinner plates lock into hers with an unabashed shock and confusion. For a second, a moment, she can count the wires in his left eye, the differences between two shades of brown where the ninkougakusha division failed to exactly account for his natural eye color, especially over time.

     All he can think about is how close they are right now.

     'It'd be a bad idea.. if I kissed you right now.'

     "Aaa.." His voice catches in his throat, thick and hard with the potence of tension and the poisons of his own hyperawareness, of how soft she is against his chest and the warmth of her voice against his lips, so close to hers. "It wo..." he politely pauses, to make the smallest sound in the back of his throat, partway between clearing it and a hard swallow.

     That small belief he could hear in her voice, the vow not to lose that inner wonder of hers, pulls on every string the shinobi has.

     Every warning is telling him not to kiss her.

     "... I know," the young man admits quietly, what feels like an eternity later. He doesn't even realize he's repeating himself.
     And then, helplessly, he leans in.

     The scintilla of space is closed, and Shiryuu kisses her instead, pressing into her mouth gently with an unfathomably muted, gentle sound, filtering his warmth against her, taking up space everywhere the warm water can't reach.

     It's like falling.

<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

To become one with the shadows, instead of hiding in them. To be the person she imagined she was back then.

The sort of person that lies behind the way she glances at Joker's theatrical entrances in their occasional talks, and how her attempts at acting like she wasn't impressed just fell off when she realized it was, in fact, okay to just *like* them.

It's okay to like things, and feel emotions.

'She' hasn't managed to take that away from you yet, has she, Umie? .... how hard has 'she' really tried to take something from you?

_Umie Akabane does not care_.


There is a splash, as Shiryuu might come dangerously close to falling into the tub with her...
.... as Umie greedily attempts to take what's hers.

....

There was, however, someone she forgot to ask.

*splat*
Something filmy and frigid has fallen over her head.

*plop*
And another, falling into the rapidly chilled water next to her body.

".....!"

The bathtub is full of long black strands of dry, brittle hair. They drape from the ceiling like heavy, entangled cobwebs, wetly stick to the mirror, fall from the vents in tangled, snarled knots.

The flooring and the walls are a lost cause, as strands leak out, spider-like, from gaps in the tilework, crowding the floor and door.

In the spaces between those hairs are lips like his, cold, blue, purple, and bruised, broken capillaries visible through the thin, slick skin. They try to form words, but only weep foamy water, their accusations only uttering in squelching noise.

Umie will know they are his, when she feels them whine against her.

It's an attempt to corrupt this memory, and tear it away from her. She knows it. Logically, there should be no hair here. She should smell his scent, and feel the warmth of his kisses. The water should sting from the epsom salts he so callously dumped in.

So why can't she understand which reality she should be in?

........ "....g.... b....."

Shiryuu won't see anything, or feel anything, except the way Umie's pulse speeds up, and her body runs cold.

Her nails are digging into Shiryuu's body as she chokes on air, and stiffens.

<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

 
     The moment turns.

     Everything happens on a fulcrum. An unsteady balance. There is a symbolism in it, but Shiryuu's no longer paying attention, lost in the scent of her, and the feel of it. Slow, uneven even in all of his grace is that kiss, his eyes shuttered. He is much, much taller than she is, but he is kneeling; the level of the tub and the slow tilt inwards buttresses the unsteady balance they strike, with Ryouhara's arms twined around her own.

     His heartbeat drums lightly, even from beyond those myriad layers he wears, rapping lightly at her skin from wherever his arm is not wound up with hers, from wherever his fingers are not steepled with hers. The dangerous, dauntless thing they do is rendered in sweet tempo -- the tiny sounds of kisses chased, of the way she pulls against him.

     His mind is spun with fog; he wants this, and wants her, and so even a keen mind capable of casually interpreting the most complex of physics misses the tipping point amidst the ephemera. That critical point when his center slips beyond the fulcrum, and the well honed system breaks.

     He misses entirely the last point at which he could have adjusted to right himself, as Akabane slowly pulls him into her, and the boy falls entirely into the water with her.

     Water immediately floods the floor. "Uuu-!" Surely he meant to say something important. It hits like a hammer, the boiling rush of water into his clothes, and the immediate leaden sink of every fiber stuck to him. Weighed down with wool and steel, the onmitsu nigh immediately slams into the bottom on his ass, a leg halfway over the edge of the tub as he submerges in the abyss. A reflexive shock response to the difference between the ambient temperature and the heat of the water causes his breath to seize in his chest.

     For a spun second, they are likely both underwater, and she can see the moment his eyes widen with shock.

     And yet, it doesn't really matter.

     There is a moment when want overrides good sense, and Ryouhara stubbornly eschews the latter for the former, unwilling to let her win by any stripe. A grip of four hands follows the break in his own, confusing immediately what is where and to whom it belongs.

     But though he is stubborn, Ryouhara cannot -- at all -- ignore the sudden tightening of her grip in his, her fingernails lighting up his senses like the points of a constellation in his muscle as she grips him. First, she tries to take what's hers.

     And then, she starts to drown in the air.

     Her blood runs cold even in the steaming bath, turning her skin to ice under his hands.

     It's like waking up from a dream to find out the house is on fire. Shiryuu, a soaked rat, breaks harshly from it to realize, by the sudden, violent cramp in his eye, that she's not breathing or resisting, and something is drastically, violently wrong.

     "...Hey.." the words are said almost as a precursor. Did she breathe in a mouthful of water? Is she choking? "...Akabane!!"

     The onmitsu, head swimming, reacts on a lower level than conscious thought, hooking a leg with hers. He rolls his hips -- moving to shift the poor girl entirely in the tub. He's darkly efficient about it, and it wouldn't be hard to connect the dots between 'rescue' and 'a killing,' when he moves to pin her shoulderblades against the side of the tub.

     His fist finds the spot just above her navel under the water as he binds her in place with his legs. "Don't ..." He clamps over his fist with the palm of his opposite hand, reducing the practical distance between the two of them to 'zero.'

     It's less than a second, and water is literally everywhere in the bathroom. It does not get appreciably better when Shiryuu fires off every ounce of energy from his shoulders and body weight up and into Umie's solar plexus, aiming to evacuate literally every ounce of whatever's in her lungs somewhere across his shoulder in one swift blow.

     If the first doesn't work, then again.

     He'll press his lips to hers, to replace poor air with good, forcing breath into lungs that's been stolen. Once-- twice. His eyes search hers quickly between, for signs of surprise, of anger -- of any kind of awareness. "--come on--"

     She has a breath, maybe two to respond, as the boy assesses her. Absent it, the soaking wet crow will cradle her face in his hands, patting her cheek rapidly to induce something, anything, tilting her head back --

     To finally slap her one more time, resoundingly, across the face.

<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

    This is the comedy of errors that two fools (the regular kind, not those of the Wild variety) can engage in, when left to their own devices. Lost in each other, lost to common sense, and loss(t) of balance, the two crows are soaked in the magnesium-rich bath water fully and completely.

    Water and dark is the Badb's domain, tied by the connection to crones and the pointing of fingers, tying mighty leaders to a doom they may not have foreseen otherwise, rather than the flight of birds. That would be where Dark comes in, after all; a crow is an opportunist.

    Cut to: Umie Akabane, underwater, recovering from shock and being an opportunist, just before common sense politely asks her to resurface for air.

    You could forgive someone for mistaking the manner of how those nails start digging in to be possessive in nature, at first, until they begin to cling and curl into the curve of his muscles, like a shipwreck victim unwilling to let go of the only thing keeping them buoyant.

    The imagery of water and fire, making necessary the mechanism of survival. How appropriate that a shinobi's grace and action make it hard to understand where those actions fall on the spectrum between life and death.

    All it takes is the right twist and bend to spill from one to the other like overdrawn bath water.

    "...!" Umie shakes as Shiryuu pins her efficiently against the side of the tub, water spilling and shifting everywhere.

    Her eyes roll and her arms flail out, the fingers of her right hand grasping out and entangling in silver drenched hair, positioning the black of the Mark just out of reach of his left eye's field of vision, but paradoxically almost touching, right at the corner.

    At this angle, if he could look, and if he even _would_, it'd be like that minute hand was grasping towards that miracle eye of his.

    But only in that moment.

    In the frenzy of shifting hot water, wet skin and clothing, who's to say if Shiryuu'd even appreciate it?

    Someone will.

    There are so many quips Umie could have said, when Shiryuu's fist and palm make a cordial knock on Umie's solar plexus to ask everything to move on out. Instead, there's just that pause, as Shiryuu gives her another sort of kiss, forcing air into her lungs.

    Sputtering and coughing sounds answer Shiryuu's efforts, following that last smack across the face.

    She's giving him that bewildered raptor look now: eyes wide, mouth open, unnervingly quiet except for the rush of air, in and out.

    ".... gh.... uh..."

    The first action, that Shiryuu might appreciate as a sign of Umie being semi-aware, is her crossing her arm over her chest.

    ".... I'm... here. I... think."

<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

 
     Everything is sound, for a few minutes.

     Words don't even factor into the chaotic roll of time that transpires -- sweet, muted kisses and the slow, polite lick of water gives way into a muted sound of surprise, and the massive splash of water as a body hits it, the froth and pour as water overruns the bath edge and freely runs across the tiles. The sounds of choking, and the muted fragments of broken, worried words in tenor, nonsensical everywhere but in their context.

     The slosh of water end to end as the basin shifts between two bodies, the gurgle of limbs diving from and into the water. The deep, harsh cavitation of thrusts, the spill of more water as the charge shifts. Tiny, fragmented begging. Then the rush of breath, and the sudden crack of wet flesh.

     The gasping, panting, the sputter of a cough, and further, more broken fragments of thoughts struggling to surface, like a broken mirror thrown into the ocean. The voice is softer than before, softer still when set against a deeper tenor. But they too, are drowned out by the drizzle of water into the basin, loud and sharp and soprano against the right, throaty sounds of 'they' instead of 'he.'

     Every part of him drips, soaking wet and full of water. He's struggling to catch up with her, his breath and heart cantering off from their low state of panic. The onmitsu recognizes the break, the sputter as he holds her face, the urgency bleeding out of his fingertips with the awkward, palming stroke of cold skin, trying to give warmth back as fast as it was taken, to assuage the sting of that slap as she coughs, as he assesses her again. Once, twice, three, even four times he does, her sputtering interleaved with the sound of his breath, with the thousand pinpoints of water draining from every point on his sopping wet clothes.

     But despite how ridiculous he looks, with her hand buried in his hair, wet and tangled up entirely with her, Shiryuu is not going anywhere.

     'I'm here... I think.'

     ".....good," is all he manages there, breathlessly, awkwardly, barely.

     The rest of his relief is bore out by the press of his forehead to hers, matching eyes with her wide expression of shock. His hands melt from her face, arms looping around her shoulders to relax on the edge of the tub, half-curled around the shocked little bird as if afraid to break her by holding her as tightly as he'd like. Ah, he pays attention to exactly none of it -- least of all modesty.

     Truthfully, Shiryuu may not notice like this, even on a good day.

     It takes him a time to actually say anything, quiet in the sound of water spattering aginst the tile, of his grey hair's bangs spattering at her collarline, to soothe the amperage of his nerves, to check her pulse and breathing over again and again until he's satisfied.

     He never will be, where she's concerned.

     "It's ... you're okay," Shiryuu tells her, breathless still.
     The sound of a handgun clicks somewhere in the back of his mind, weeks ago and from too far away not to cause him the slightest flinch.
     "I'm here... I'll chase you wherever you go."

<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

<poem> In a different set of circumstances, it could be the setup for hijinks. It wouldn't be the first time a bathroom has become flooded in this hotel, even with the expectation set of Japanese bathtubs needing to be able to spill, and the flooring being able to take that punishment.

   Later, after she recovers, she'll tell Shiryuu what she saw with a lopsided, 'can you believe it' dry grin, like she was recounting the time she slipped and fell due to her own error, or slammed her knee accidentally into a very sensitive part of her boyfriend. 

   That would be one part of the truth, but not the part that mattered. They've seen their share of imagery, from real, physical things that they could fight and stand up against.

   In some cases, there were horrors they caused, and may not yet answer for, if ever. Those too are truths, but not the ones that need to be spoken of right now.

   For every ounce of consideration and caution, Umie sinks into him all the more tighter, her breathing slowing as she forces herself to remain conscious of her own heartbeat, attempting to keep it in time with Shiryuu's.

   There is only the water, this room, the sound of dripping, and the thrum of a fan.

   And him.
   It relaxes that pearl of truth from her.

   With hope, there is a price. 

   She admits that price into his wet clothes: the two words she continually avoids at all other times. 
   "... I'm scared."

   To hope means to have something you can lose. To be hopeless is to have nothing you can have taken away from you.
   To have something you can lose, means you can be scared.
   If you're scared, you have to act like there's nothing you can have taken away from you.
   If you act like there's nothing that can be taken from you, that means you lie.
   That lie is the mask.

   He doesn't have to promise her anything, right now.

   He just needs to hold onto this little bit of her truth, so she can go on being the reckless, fearless Umie Akabane.