2026-10-11: A Braid for Two
- Log: A Braid for Two
- Cast: Shiryuu Ryouhara, Umie Akabane
- Where: Red Light District - Main
- OOC Date: October 11, 2026
- IC Date: January 23 2013
- Summary: After helping deal with Shinichi's homunculus, Umie made off quite well, considering how powerful he was. However, one of her hairbuns was less lucky. Shiryuu, ever the engineer, devises a way to fix this... as well as punish someone. Two birds with one stone!
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
"It's fine... I would like to do something with you later."
It's a somewhat cryptic statement from the soft-spoken young man, whose nominal attitude is a stark contrast to the grandiose censure and bombast of the shihaisha whose haori he wears. A sentiment whispered quietly in an unguarded ear, Shiryuu would quietly take his leave only minutes later, excusing himself.
While Shiryuu had been more willing to actually appear with Akabane in public following the 'boyfriend scandal' at Seijin no Hi (he -was- referring to it as a scandal, for the record.) other business oft keeps the two apart, with Shiryuu's days being split between supervising the shifts at the hospital, the worksite in Yumezaki, and the ongoing tensions in Konan.
And then, out of the clear blue sky, the onmitsu leans over, and tells her he wants to see her tonight. Like most things about the soul, Shiryuu's sentiment is given like a confession.
The field of obsidian caskets line the streets in haphazard, disorderly rows as the winter sky shivers in delapidated strands of pale green. The lost hour was the one reserved for those with supralunar power, and it wasn't one that Shiryuu felt any trepidation at all towards -- the skulking monstrosities that menaced most Persona Users did not actually pose much of a threat to him. At best, they were in his way. At worst, they were a reason for him to carry his sword.
It wasn't entirely convenient or appropriate, considering he was escorting Akabane to Shinjuku, and he already had a bag with him. However, losing your bond in an unfortunate shadow attack because you were trying to be polite would have been equally inconvenient. At least it was only a little bit of a walk from Shibuya. But Shiryuu, child of privilege, often forgets how far things are from other things these days, so when he shows up to gather Akabane, he might have to carry her.
He does suspect sometimes she goes slow on purpose just to get carried. On that subject, Shiryuu did in fact bring her a newsie hat to go out in. ('....here.')
He did not stare at her head in deep thought for two or three minutes earlier on in the day, honest.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
For all that Umie has teased, prodded, flirted, and outright seduced Shiryuu, the boy manages to do the same to her, regardless of if it's intentional, or if he realizes that he's doing it in the first place. He just needs to mention wanting to 'do something with you later' and suddenly, every little hair is standing on the back of her neck in a way that splits between 'pleasant' and 'curious'.
It's not that Shiryuu is given to huge displays of affection or romance, or particularly cares to display them in public (Exhibit A: the 'boyfriend scandal'), but that somehow makes the ways he unintentionally gets to her just a little more exciting... even if it may just be him doing something that would only make sense to him.
So which will it be: something romanatic, something exciting, or... something really bizarre because it's Shiryuu? Let's find out!!
If Umie didn't have to move slower for Shiryuu's sake, this would be a lot faster. Trying to hide the still tender, scabbed spot where a chunk of hair had been ripped out, she had put the hood of her jacket up, pulling the cords of the hood tight so that it lay close to the frame of her face like she was about to embark on a trek up a mountain.
... Which only makes her feel more self-conscious, despite the only fashion-conscious souls around being Shiryuu and.... nobody else. She saw him stare at her head, she *knows*.
So, when Shiryuu offers that newsie hat, like a hermit crab being offered a much better shell, in a flash of movement, the hood is let down, and the cap is fitted on, Umie taking a moment to adjust to fit the band lower over her head.
".... Where are we headed?" asks Umie, seeming to relax a little as she looks to the side, blonde bangs framing her face. ".... Should I be wearing my mask for this...?"
As much as her earlier attraction to Joker had been based on the allure of mystery, there is some comfort in facing Shiryuu as he faces her: maskless, undeniable in his identity.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Shiryuu, for his part, doesn't give many helpful indicators as to the purpose of the escapade. It's ironically not that the destination is particularly secret -- as full of privacies as the boy may be, Umie takes a long time to ask, and Shiryuu doesn't volunteer.
She is in fact one of the few people the onmitsu is inclined to be somewhat forthright with -- she's earned that much, as his person.
Despite having to account for Akabane's terrible indolence, Shinjuku arrives without incident, and when she finally does ask, shortly after he hands her the hat in an intersection filled with idle cars mid-passing, Shiryuu watches her for awhile, hands sliding into his pockets.
If they were sharing the moment with the rest of the world, they would have been lit from every angle by headlights, their thoughts drowned out by the drone of car horns and the obvious danger of being in an intersection. As it is, all they have is the reflection of the moon off of windshields and piercing, omnipresent quiet.
It's not 'an obsession,' per se, though it could certainly be construed that way. It's just where the young man's eyes prefer resting, his gaze following Akabane's jawline, peeking with calm, bold inquisition behind the slice of blonde that conceals it. In a bi-hue flick of the eyes, the onmitsu looks at her new cap, tracing the brim as she turns away from his study.
"...Mmm." She misses the way he sets his lip to teeth thoughtfully.
It's a passing inclination. "We're headed to a boutique in town," he replies simply, before turning away to continue out of the intersection. "It's not far..."
"I meant to take you somewhere earlier, for Christmas, but..." The Colonel happened, and then ...
Well, it's enough to say his mind was taken off the details.
The exact place is in a little shopping arcade -- Saburo's -- in relatively good time, and the only indicator they've arrived at all at the little boutique is when Shiryuu stops and turns in front of the storefront, looking at the glass storefront quietly. He looks at the lock, a rather simple-looking commercial tumbler, fixing it with a passing glance before disregarding it, to turn and walk away to a nearby bench.
"...please stand clear."
Shiryuu kneels down beside the bench and slides out a decorative sukashi ash block, with a heavy rumbling sound as the ~15 kg weight scrapes across the cobble before Shiryuu picks it up.
"..so," the boy starts, conversationally, as he hefts the block up to his shoulder, and walks up to the boutique. He starts to line up his throw.
"Why are you missing a hair?"
It's weird that he says it like that.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
The allure of something being a surprise is too great for Umie to not try to upload, at least for a little while. Some secrets are there to be discovered in due time, rather than forced out.
However, a critical failure of communication has resulted in two people moving not as fast as they'd like, out of preference for the slower speed they've set for each other. But it's not without its own perks: the two walk through the Dark Hour as comfortably as slipping into worn sweater that's soft in all the right areas, with little concern for the deathly quiet and the constant threat of a possible shadow to lurk behind you.
It's just the two of them, and the moon, as Umie adjusts the cap over her hair, taking a thoughtful moment to spread out a strand of hair or two.
'...Mmm.' Reddish brown eyes lift back towards him, missing the way his teeth press against his bottom lip. A pause, and she casts him a coy, lopsided grin, her head tilted just so. "You approve."
It seems to perk her up from that lingering, self-conscious state she was before, just in time for them to continue onwards.
To say that the Dark Hour is an 'hour' underestimates just how much the warped space cannot be applied into the concept of 'an hour'. It's as long as it, itself, 'needs' to be, no more, no less. They can hurry like they are limited on time, but they both know that it's not needed.
"A boutique, huh..." Umie murmurs, a glint in her eye. "I see... coming during the Dark Hour *would* be quieter..." She never even thought to ever do so, growing up in Sumaru; it felt like asking for trouble when she lost track of time, and besides that... Mai-chan was terrible about enabling her worst impulses.
'I meant to take you somewhere earlier, for Christmas, but...' Shiryuu might be able to feel that mischievous widening, red slint of a smile against his back.
She says nothing.
They arrive at the store. "Oh, huh... been a while..." Umie says, regarding the lock. She's already reaching into her purse for some lockpicks, but stands back when bid to do so.
"A homunculus had to be dealt with," Umie says, distracted. "And it has been. The hair'll grow back."
Wait. What is he doing.
"... You're not going to break in, are you?" she asks, flatly. "I realize you might hate shopping in public, but, you can just... pick the lock." Like a normal person! Or thief, she supposes. But they're going to somehow pay for it, right?
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
For Shiryuu, space and distance seldom meant anything at all, so when it does, it does with excruciating clarity. Even so, he finds a reason not to complain at the so-called source of the delay -- finding the infuriating Akabane's pace to fall just short of unacceptable thresholds.
Therein lies the probable truth: They are both *far* too comfortable with eachother to move any faster.
One could consider it a minor miracle they got this far at all, and the little interlude at the intersection almost ends their trip right there, when Umie tilts her jawline just so and gives him a crooked grin. 'You approve.'
"...don't get excited," Shiryuu insists, rolling his eyes with a black feather of a smile as he deliberately turns away to keep walking.
She can feel the onmitsu bristle when he moves, activated; and exactly how close she came to getting kissed.
Luckily, as in all things, the promise of delinquency makes for an excellent distraction, even if the shinobi is entirely patient with the way he puts his whole entire back into dragging the cinder block up into his arms, the way he walks it unceremoniously to the window, and the way he carefully spares a hand to untuck his sword from his bet, setting the sheathed black length carefully to one side of the window as he lines up his shot.
She can watch him while he takes a few practice heaves, wagging the block back and forth into a determined trajectory. Or she can check her purse for some lockpicks. "...Sounds unnecessarily dangerous," Shiryuu grouses, mid-sukashi. "...who was it?" he asks. He should probably find whoever it was and eliminate them to make sure they don't hae any further problems.
'You're not going to break in, are you?' ".....yeah," Shiryuu replies reasonably, getting ready to throw.
A beat passes, as she begins to complain, prompting the shinobi to fix her with an exasperated stare, a strand of haphazard grey hair falling over his eyeline with her. "...I checked this place out, earlier," he says, as if it explained everything.
It doesn't, and Shiryuu looks at the lock, then back to Umie, as if she'd just kicked over his sandcastle. He glowers, disarmed with perplexity. Then his notices something. The Ryouhara prince's expression changes, looking over her shoulder.
"...why is that clown wearing a domino mask," the shihaisha wonders openly, the cinder block cradled in his arms like a toddler.
A second later: *smash*
The sound of glass sprinkling across the pavement is pretty when it's the only sound for a mile around.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
It's just too easy to see Shiryuu as just Shiryuu, in these quiet moments. There's no 'shihaisha' or 'shirogarasu' or having to constantly be aware of that chasm of experiences between them.
Or the forces that seem content to entrap them further in ways Umie never signed up for.
It's just the two of them, and she can tease him as mercilessly as she pleases.
'Don't get excited.' "Too late." She knows.
... It's more fun this way.
"Not saying, because there's a real chance you'd visit the poor sap whose identity was stolen," Umie says, casually, as she sorts through her purse. "When it was my decision to become involved."
Tick tock, tick tock, Umie. He smelled the same thing on you they all smelled. Death, sin, kegare, taboo, it's all the same.
She looks up. Not good, he's making sure it'll hit home. "Surely you got an actual reason..." The blonde sighs. "I'm just saying, you don't need to do this if it's--"
'... why is that clown wearing a domino mask.'
*smash*
Umie lets out a sigh, looking at the glittering glass and shaking her head. "Some poor employee's going to come to their early shift to that, is what I mean." Still, the deed is done, and Umie really didn't offer much resistance.
"That 'clown' saved my life," Umie responds a second later, with some humor. "It's part of their cognitive abilities. Sort of like mine, but more foolproof." She taps the area where her own mask would be, if she was wearing one.
"... Well, I guess, it can't be helped." Glass crunches underfoot. "So... what would cause a young man with enough money to practically rent any store he wants for a day to turn to unecessary crime instead?"
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
"....good."
Shiryuu nods to himself as he straightens, snatching his propped sword from the wall with a decisive hand and a grim satisfaction, pointedly sliding the saya through his belt again. Mission success.
"What? ...not that clown." Ultimately, there is no clown, and if there were, Shiryuu is relatively sure they don't wear domino masks. At least, those real clowns. While the distraction does work in the end, it's not for the reasons Shiryuu supposes, distracting Umie with thoughts of Joker, and subconsciously outing himself in the process. Allegedly.
He wasn't talking about *that* clown.
'That 'clown' saved my life.' "Iih," Ryouhara grouses anew, smoothing out his sweater at his belly, following the lines of his outfit over his thumbs to snap his grey haori into a more dignified, less 'just got done throwing a cinder block through a window like a common hooligan' drape. Consequently, the sleeves drape over his hands as he lowers them at his sides. It gives him the room to look over his shoulder at Akabane, his lips pursing pensively.
"...no mask is foolproof," Shiryuu warns quietly, before he steps forward.
The shattered window lay ahead, the moonlight streaming into the dark expanse just beyond as Shiryuu's silhouette cuts across the beam. A hand lifts, knocking a bit of the more dangerous shards glass out of the windowframe using his sleeve as a makeshift guard. Truthfully, it's harder to break the windows of these storefronts than it looks -- with the block set aside specifically for cause, it's almost assured that he planned this ahead of time. Given his own ability with a lockpick, it does leave the question open, doesn't it?
"...it doesn't matter," Shiryuu replies quietly when asked, as she steps up to the window. Which sets off a new concern. "Hey, be careful, that's sharp," he complains, his face screwing up into a tilted expression. What follows is almost assuredly awkward. "Hey, let me help--"
He didn't actually have a plan to get Umie into the boutique to his standard of safety. Unfortunately, Shiryuu's standards are unattainable, and Umie is unmanageable. Eventually they'll make it inside.
"This place has a small salon in the upper back row," Shiryuu explains, pushing a makeup display to tilt it just so. The moonlight reflects off of the display's twin mirrors and further on into the black expanse, illuminating the tiny loft above the rows of clothes leading to a few chairs. He looks up; and it's very obvious that he's trying to keep track of time that stubbornly will not be tracked.
"There's probably not enough time..." The young man shakes his head, as if revealing more than he'd like. "I'll grab some supplies from up there, if you want to pick a few things out." The clothing is eclectic, but all very clearly fancy Bohemian middle-class evening wear inspired, with a winter collection prominently on display. "We'll leave enough for whatever you like."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
'....good,' Umie's date says with what seems like supreme satisfaction, as if committing a crime was the entire point of this exercise.
And then... 'What? ...not that clown.'
"Then what were you talking about?" Umie says, blinking, before she realizes--
..... oh.
The blonde squints back at the shihaisha. "You were trying to distract me, weren't you?" For a long moment, the two of them stand in the scattered fragments of shattered glass, the green moonlight glinting overhead making them sparkle like a field of fey emerald.
A smile creeps back on her face, like a corrupting miasma, until she begins to cackle. "Did you think I've survived this long not being able to sense whether or not a shadow was nearby?"
Placing a hand to her mouth, the blonde's eyes narrow merrily, seemingly pleased with the other fruit of this discussion. "Also, what a way to tell on yourself~"
It's not like it's a surprise.
Neither is Shiryuu's warning.
With a breath, that brassy bit of pride extinguishes itself in the light of reality. "Maybe, if it was someone like me," Umie says, softly, in complete contrast to her earlier statements. "It wasn't like I was expecting to have a fun time during the speeches on Seijin no Hi." Glass tinkers as she carefully steps through it, the sound of it crunching audibly underfoot as they come closer.
"In an theatre hall full of rows of young men and women, it would be crazy to think that the foreign prime minister of Japan was looking specifically at me when he talked about those 'lacking potential'." It's yet another moment where Shiryuu hears the things Umie doesn't tell others-- all those quiet thoughts that indirectly put herself down, or are full of bitterness towards those she can't touch.
It's why, when they have to get in ('You're concerned *now*?'), the young woman may be especially spicy ('you should've thought of that first before you planned this all out!'), though ultimately, she lets herself be helped by her concerned boyfriend ('... wait, what about you? You better not get cut!').
'There's probably not enough time.' Umie glances towards Shiryuu now, as she stands on her two feet, looking a shade guilty. All she's done is complain...
What exactly is this about? "... I'd rather... spend that time with you," she says. ".... I can always get clothes during the day, at any time I want."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Oh no. Absolutely not. Shiryuu is not about to stand for any of this. The young man phases through all of the stages of grief, from pride in his dutiful work, to alarm at Umie's line of questioning, to being unimpressed by her cackling, to being fully scandalized by her pleasure.
"Iiih, lies and apple pie, as expected of the unrepentant blackguard Akabane!!"
It's some form of the stages of grief, anyway.
A finger is stabbed accusingly at the bunned criminal, Shiryuu's eyes narrowed in deadly retort. "Don't act like you weren't completely disarmed by my masterstroke! A single mention of a dashing clown dismantled your defense! Your proclivities for clownery and vagabondism is well documented by the peerless intelligence gathering prowess of an unyielding spymaster like myself!!"
It goes on like this.
At least, right up until she stops fighting. It takes everything Ryouhara has not to start shaking sense into the young woman, the boy biting off a aggressive little growl in the back of his throat, the fight draining out of him with a short, dagger-sharp sigh.
"...don't mythologize scoundrels," Shiryuu finally finds it in him to tell her, his hands lowering back to his sides, as he tilts his gaze away from her. He was in fact there when Tatsuzou spoke, though from a vantage from anyone else who could have been considered as 'coming of age.'
He knows. She's afraid, but...
"You should live life prouder than that," he thinks. "There, in the shining light, where a precious person like you belongs."
That ceremony was for people like Umie, not himself, and despite not strictly understanding the ritual, the boy's expression tilts when she admits it wasn't 'fun' because... so that's what it was. It's really all there if he thinks on it, written in that miserable space between worlds the three of them were in.
His right hand finds its way to her shoulder, the drape of his silk sleeve coating her to the elbow. "....besides, for now, you are the scoundrel queen," the boy with grey hair points out matter of factly. "Completely unmanageable. The other scoundrels should answer to you, until you finally give up this life of crime of yours. Now, come on."
He does, in fact, get Umie in without so much as a nick. The same may or may not be said for him as of the exact moment she yells at him not to get cut. ('What--I would never! It's impossible to injure me, I'm invin--ah!!--...vincible!')
At least Shiryuu strides past Umie with the *utmost* of imperious pride after vaulting into the window. He is absolutely not testing his weight on one leg, and his hands are in his pockets on purpose, no matter how weird it makes the sleeves of his haori look.
'I'd rather spend that time with you.'
Shiryuu breathes outward, his eyes closing. Damn it.
"....mmm." His consent is quiet, as it is.
"I thought," the youth thinks to start. It'll make it better if he explains. "I wanted to see you in..."
The boy eventually gives up. Instead, Shiryuu leans forward, his hands still in his pockets. Awkward at first, anxious before committing to the motion, the young man's forehead will eventually come to meet hers with a tiny *bump*. He stands there with her, murky grey to blonde. Just long enough to visibly swallow, and figure out what to say.
"...Okay, tomorrow can be tomorrow," he decides, without moving.
"Come upstairs with me, then."
Shiryuu will help her up.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
It's a strange contradiction: where moments earlier Umie would verbalize her darker thoughts about herself, she now proudly takes on Shiryuu's complaints with little fear, instead proudly basking in the light of his accusations. "So you think he's dashing~..." Umie teases, lowering her eyelashes alluringly. "The Phantom Thief of Hearts has struck again, carrying away yet another precious prize..." He? .... hm. What *would* Joker prefer to be addressed as...? She should ask, next time there's ever a chance.
It might have been enough to keep her mind away from Tatsuzou, but... the two topics simply combine instead, leaving Umie to wonder...
... The Phantom Thieves can't be strong enough to take on someone like him, but... if she waited until it came to a head, would that be better than to ask if it was possible in the first place? To take the man's heart... They could take down the entire NWO with one blow. But it'd be foolish to believe that someone like him didn't have those roads already somehow guarded--
'There, in the shining light, where a precious person like you belongs.' "....!" How terrible, for Shiryuu to use those eloquent powers of his to say something so foolish, that it sounded like he believed it. ... Because he does. 'You're biased,' she wants to say, before he cruelly denies her that out, with his fingers settling on her shoulder, the silk sleeve following after. She'll try to keep from smiling as he continues, even resorting to the childish tactic of turning her face away, as Shiryuu continues.
The scoundrel queen. Ah, he knows her heart far too well to know exactly how to make his earlier words stick. "... I liked the part where I got to see you dressed up," she says instead. "Seeing you there, with the snow falling down around you..." She looks upwards. "I felt like I was really lucky, you know? 'How did I manage to do this'. And going to the izakaya place afterwards. I wasn't expecting Ryuuja and Shimizu-san to show up, and it was neat to have Nagisa-san come along." To exist in that world, alongside Persona users (save for Remi), and to proclaim that yes, she had a boyfriend.
... A boyfriend she didn't have to break up with for his own protection, even.
"... I have a ways to go, before I can wear that crown," Umie will concede, ultimately. "But I'm in a far better place than I was before, thanks to the people I've met. Including you, Shiryuu."
Even if her nimble, deadly, very capable person will start bleeding as soon as she shows concern over whether or not he can get inside without making a mess.
The deadlist attack shall be when she admits where he sits on the list of priorities.
He wanted to see her in....? "You want to see me look cute, right?" It's a gentle sort of tease, as if the half-admittance, while left unsaid, seemed to touch the blonde young woman. "I can't be cute for you if you're not there to admire it," she admonishes, as gentle as the huff of air against his neck, as he leans in.
Bump. A hitched breath, as Umie relents, letting out a giggle. That may have not been what Shiryuu meant (OR MAYBE IT IS NOW?) but she's glad to share a little more of her feelings.
"Hopefully we're not leaving any DNA evidence behind," she murmurs, as she lets herself be helped up. "Quite a few people would be eager to see me in jail, you know..."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Of course, the darkness is not far from either of them. The idea of an expanse beyond the borderposts of 'this youth of theirs,' one that forces a child to be an adult far too soon, is an idea that's far too pervasive in the supralunar world. It's enough to give Shiryuu pause.
"Iih! No good, no good, no good!" Well. It's enough, or will be in a minute. "Don't you become one of those no-account fujoshi!! In a hundred--no, a thousand years, there still isn't going to be anything of mine that that 'KURAMU BAMU' can steal!!"
If Umie listens really hard, she can feel the cognitive, high-pitched digital warble of Shiryuu's aggressed resonance, finally rising to the point where it can be detected at all. The sound is like an angry woodpecker to start. He's inconsolable, and as he smoulders, a thick, aggressive, chunky bassline accompanies his annoyance.
It only calms down to a subtler trip-line when she reflects on that day, a tonal shift that leaves the onmitsu with narrowed eyes, like a spritzed cat.
".... dressed up.."
...but Shiryuu is always dressed up, according to him. Now he's going to be second-guessing his regalia. His smouldering only increases, as the grey-headed boy looks at the floor.
".... you looked like you had the whole world in front of you," Shiryuu admits, nodding slowly, as if it were right.
'It'll be awhile before I can wear that crown.'
His head meets hers, the subtle affection replacing any higher gesture.
"You're with me," the white crow reminds her, breathing out. "You'll never not wear a crowm."
"....mm. yeah." It sounds correct to him, and he'll take literally anything to avoid having to address the idea of Akabane looking cute for him.
That she's so forthright with those feelings stirs something with the boy, and that slithering beat follows him as he slides his hands out of his pockets, turning towards the stairs up to the loft. He's also turning away to conceal his face as he lifts a hand to the small of Umie's back, helping her up in the dark. "Be careful," he says. "Jail isn't important. Your neck is." He can break her out of jail. He can't break her out of a broken neck.
'Cute for me,' Shiryuu murmurs to himself, the exact second Umie is up in the lift and safely out of earshot. He blinks once, twice, three times, before shaking his head.
It's nothing. Don't let her win.
It's not a particularly large salon, due to being an attachment to the boutique, with only five chairs to its name, and rows of products for sale across the top wall. Shiryuu does take a moment to take a towel from one of the seats and tie it around his thigh, before investigating the products on the wall, looking for something.
"...hair butter?" the shihaisha echoes incredulously. Oof. He's out of his element.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
"Fujo-shi...?" Umie parrots slowly, squinting. "Is that... an anime thing?" Like that sad limited edition phone, that was sacrificed to the bathtub that weird evening. She hated how much she sank into Shiryuu's embrace that night, her body cold and shiving, while the two of them were dripping wet long after the bath water had been drained.
Depend on something too much, and it'll be taken away. Love something too much, and it'll hurt later when you are forced to realize what it's like to lack it. Yearn for it, and you will wish you could forget what it was like to have it.
Which may be partially why Umie teases and prods at him now with relentless precision, in all the ways that would properly frustrate and rile him up while avoiding anything that would feel like punching down to her, in the moment. Like a surgeon's scalpel, she cuts quickly. And because she's a creature of the Dark Hour as much as Shiryuu, she knows her mark is hit when she can feel the reverberations coming from Shiryuu's repressed resonance. ... Though, on the other side of that coin, her own resonance is not as tightly bound, sometimes appearing during storms of emotion that would not move the shihaisha.
He can strike as neatly as she does, and sometimes does so without realizing it.
'.... you looked like you had the whole world in front of you.' How can he say that and mean it? She's a konbini store clerk, a joke in many ways. She can't say her future was taken from her, because it was a future dictated by society, rather than what she wanted.
... but what she wants is impossible. The Dark Hour only feels as comforting as it does because Umie always knew it would end. You can't have an identity in the Dark Hour; it is a release *from* having an identity that made it special.
But before she can say anything-- *bump* 'You'll never not wear a crown.'
".... You..." Her resonance flares in anger, excitement, love, as she shares the air with him, feels her breath against her cheek. She smiles.
Seriously, who *says* that?! And why is she smiling?!?
She's still smiling, as they step up the stairs.
Wait. Hair salon. That was...
Is he... going to give her a hair cut? She looks to Shiryuu with a questioning glance, then smiles.
She should refuse, if this was his intention.
She sits down, instead, grinning like a crow over a shiny treasure. "So are you doing my hair, or am I doing yours?"
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Luckily, it's hard for Ryouhara to focus on the fact that she is very plainly trying to aggravate him. Surgeon's scalpel his ass. "Uwoh!" Shiryuu roars eloquently. "They are not an 'anime thing!' Fujoshi are the unrepentant rivals of the noble purists! Cute and depraved reprobates who lust for something unspeakably beyond the honest, honorable warrior bond between men!..."
It goes on like this. Clearly, someone slashed his favorite two Titanomachy characters together at one point on a forum and Shiryuu's never gotten over it.
(The honorbound warrior and the lost soldier, obviously.)
Eventually Shiryuu's Dark Hour-rocking samurai beat tails off into that more subtle electronic introspection, the harmonic tones of soft synth trickling muted across the loft floorboards as he pads silently across them. He doesn't actually seem to be aware of the sound as he goes, and is in fact more focused on tying his leg tight before blood ruins his pants and gets all over the floor.
The wrap is doubled over, and cinches tightly against the muscle with a soft, audible sound before he ties it off. The boy's expression is determined, distracted, as if the injury were secondary and unimportant. The floor should only be so lucky to wear blood like his own, hrmmph.
No, his mind is on other things, the young men mouthing the shapes of words to himself as Umie finds her way to a seat.
He stares at her a little too long when she smiles at him, and it takes him longer to remember what he was up here for. "...ah, right."
The rhythmic kinesis of his resonance is composed now entirely of those heavy synth pads and the strum and idle pluck of strings -- gentle, fond, intimate, and barely heard.
He goes through the sweeping wall of hair care, the colorful arrangements making the salon seem more like decoration in the upscale little boutique than anything else. He frowns at the house branded product, the little 'Saburo's' logos facing him. Eyes narrow. And then, the boy turns a spate of them inwards, taking care that no two logos are oriented exactly the same, before gathering some supplies into a box which is also haphazardly emptied -- a set of travel-size pomades fill what was only a few moments ago a spare disinfecting jar. He seems grimly satisfied with the obvious clutter that's made.
The idea of Umie doing his hair gets her a terse, unsteady glance, right in the middle of Shiryuu making a mess of one of the workstations.
"You'd just cause problems," Shiryuu opines cattishly, before setting the box down, disappearing airily behind Umie's perch. And just like that, it's just the Dark Hour. The Dark Hour, and a voice not attached to an identity.
His hands on her shoulders are the same, if she doesn't think about it enough to attach the sword-long sigh to its owner, the familiarity of his touch to the one that held her, both of them half-dazed and soaking wet in a frigid and drained tub that claimed so much.
Alas, that poor phone. Luckily its replacement isn't working, otherwise Umie may have had a chance to be subjected to the absolutely horrific 'HELLO MOTO~' ringtone Shiryuu still hasn't figured out how to turn off.
Mmm. His hands rest at the little crow's shoulders for longer than is strictly appropriate for the moment. "...I guess, it should be safe now..." The choice of words seem slightly awkward as he picks them. Safe to take off her hat.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
"Two rivals in battle, engaged in a battle of the soul... The purest expression of struggle and trimuph, as they declare the vows that paint their mission before each other, the gods as their only witnesses... their hearts, burning hot as they lay their weapons against once another in heated combat!"
If it weren't for her parents being so focused on keeping their daughter on the straight and narrow path to a good college, Umie would have probably been a devilish fujoshi, indeed.
Instead, she's Shiryuu's problem.
"Hey, hold on, let me help you get that bandaged up." Umie's face becomes one of utmost concentration, likely only held back by Shiryuu's dismissal of extra help. ".... Won't this just lead people to figuring out you're the culprit...? Your DNA is all over the carpet now..."
Surely, Shiryuu has a plan, right...?
A plan, from the same person who stares at her a little too long, lingering on her smile as she sits there in the chair, his resonance like a muted, quiet serenade of his heartbeat.
"What, who wouldn't love their girlfriend playing with their hair?" she teases, sweetly. Then, in a tone that doesn't fall on the spectrum of teasing, she says, "... I like your hair, actually. It's beautiful, on nights like this, when it catches the light."
She doesn't look behind her, a gesture of complete trust despite there being many reasons why she should be cautious. The same fingers that move to rest over her shoulders are the same that could neatly kill her, exposed as she is. She can imagine the ways, if she put her mind to it. She doesn't, instead relaxing, the muscles moving and settling underneath the cloth of her jacket and turtleneck.
"Mm." Safe for what?
She takes off her hat anyway, turning it over and feeling the fabric with her other hand. "This is a nice hat... I might keep it, if you don't mind."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Shiryuu's lip sets in latent frustration, deeply unimpressed at every level of Akabane's incessant clownery. Yes, she is his problem. His infuriating, careless, messy, impish little problem.
Shiryuu wants to press her into the wall and kiss her -- hard.
Fortunately, the onmitsu seems far, far more inclined towards temperance and a curiously specific grudge against this boutique than to callously make out with Umie in the middle of the Dark Hour again. He waves her concern off for the time being, "To suggest that I would bleed in this bawdy little circus," Shiryuu remarks at her, cavalier to the end.
There's likely a few droplets here and there to be sure, though it's har to pick out in the light. Enough for a reasonable detective in the daytime to gather as evidence, perhaps. But for some reason, Shiryuu pays it very little mind for the moment.
"...you like ... my hair?"
He's taken aback. His hands don't lift from her shoulders; and she can feel the way his hands squeeze her shoulders, on the exact periphery between his fondness and his restless nature. The silken electronica is barely a ghost in the air now, dimmed by the boy's sudden, sharp pang of self-focus.
They're lit from below, with the only reason for the light penetrating this far into the back of the shop being the mirror turned earlier, the light from the baleful moon filling the back of the loft with the harsh and haunting glow of the Dark Hour. Shiryuu is quiet for a long time, the soothe of his touch gently pressing into the fine muscles of Umie's neck. A moment, a minute, where hands serve as a replacement for thought.
"...it's just dirty," is all Shiryuu says, softly.
"...they said my mother's was nicer. Yours, is nicer."
A small, tiny sniff, to cut short the topic, to replace it with another as Umie takes her hat into her hands. He finally finds animus in him to actually move; though he lifts one of her sad buns, touching the spot where she had her hair ripped away. His voice is replaced; not soft and small, but cavalier and doting. "What am I going to do with you, Akabane..." Shiryuu shakes his head. There is an audible pang in his voice; relieved that it's only her hair, but the evidence of her being mishandled.
"You won't be able to protect people treating you this unacceptably forever," Shiryuu breathes coldly, his voice growing casually lethal in a very specific way. His instinctive will to capture her assailant is really only drawn off by thoughts of the red brocade ribbon he draws out of the box he placed on the workstation, the length of it wound between his hands.
Just under his breath, the boy murmurs absently: "... I find who ... even his nightmares will beg to kiss your feet ..." Focus, Shiryuu.
The boy shakes his head. "... Anything I have is yours," the Ryouhara prince resolves quietly of the hat, letting Umie have it for now. "For now, if I tried to cut this, it'd just be butchered," Shiryuu reasons. He's excellent with a blade, but it would be folly to imagine he was a true stylist. Instead, she'll feel his hands behind her, smooth motions unfastening her remaining sad bun, a fingertip traced down her scalp to asymmetrically part her hair just behind her ear as he gathers up what's left. She can feel the slight tug as he fills his hands with her locks, blonde strands woven between his fingers as he starts gathering a braid.
"...mm." Focus. Don't make it lopsided because you're distracted, Ryouhara.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
Such a mystery... Shiryuu is normally so careful. Perhaps he'll have his clan members clean up afterward, but there was no need to break in like that in the first place. Maybe it's a pride thing? Perhaps Shiryuu's lockpicking skills are poor, and he didn't want to have to deal with Umie being the one to get them in.
That *would* be a very Shiryuu thing to do.
There are many facets that make up a Shiryuu Ryouhara. Like... his hair.
"Of course." Umie's smile grows fond, though it may be hard to appreciate it from Shiryuu's current vantage point. Nor can she satisfy the urge to run her own fingers through his hair. "No wonder you treat it so poorly," she tsks, instead. "I think it makes you very handsome." Dirty... he's said it before, but at those times, she thought he meant it literally. "... You've said that before. ... Why do you think of your hair that way, if you don't mind me asking?" It's an interesting contradiction: the same man who bragged about the establishment not being good enough for him to bleed on also thinks poorly of his hair.
.... It's really not that much different from her own little contradictions. Umie, for her part, decides to not mention how her hair has suffered from the bleaching and tinting treatment.
It's an easy decision to make, as his fingers soothe over the muscles of her neck.
The touch to the spot where her hair was ripped is less so, drawing a slight wince from the blonde, barely felt from the slight movement of her head. "... It's still sore. But... much better than it was." The scalp tissue is intact; Umie had the foresight to weave in her fingers as she pulled away from the noose, having already planned to stick her hand against her neck where it was originally aimed.
"... He's dead," she murmurs. "He has been killed, quite thoroughly. Deprived of his identity, reduced to a husk, burned to ash, his parts scattered and fought over like he was a carcass at the beach." Tick tock, Umie Akabane. A low-burning anger drips into her voice. "He saw death in me, but it was his own." The details seemed necessary; Shiryuu would appreciate just how far beyond death it went. The rest of it will be left secret: how she became involved, how he tracked her (was it by chance that day when he came in to the Triple 7, or intentional?), the threats, the reminder of how much the Order's threat still constricts her actions, drawing the Phantom Thieves into it, as well as mentioning her parents.
And, when she tried to see if he saw the same thing in her as everything else did...
"Does your eye..." Pause. ".... Can it see...." Start over, Umie. "Do you... see death, on me? Or sin? Not... what *you* see, but what those other senses might see."
'Anything I have is yours.' His fingers weave her hair into a braid; Umie fights the urge to smile like an idiot.
She knows she's failed the moment she begins to speak.
"You have my--"
A temari ball bounces past her perception, invisible to Shiryuu's eyes. The giggle that follows, much the same. It's a quiet, childish threat, from someone who could very well draw the enchanting night to a close at any moment.
If his hands weren't buried in her hair, or if he wasn't so close to her, Shiryuu may not have noticed the tiny change in her countenance, like the first string of a violin tightened a notch too tightly.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Shiryuu has rarely met the lock he couldn't break. However, there does seem to be something rather personal about the way he's essentially vandalized the place -- and certainly, it might be something he intends to continue doing. Fortunately for Umie, he doesn't currently see fit to make her any more of an accomplice than she already is to whatever his grudge is, as the boy is currently more focused on attending to her than to the random acts of delinquency of which he seems inordinately fond today.
He does pause; her ongoing fixations with his hair start to distrct out of turn. "Hey," he begins to object, small and nettled. "Hey hey hey..." He's trying to focus, pleating a bit of hair along theside of her temple, while carefully feeding the brocade through his fingers. "...you're the vandalized treasure here, not me..."
The undertone in his voice is pensive as he replies, his movements growing more clipped, his undertones just barely remaining strong, deliberately skating away from the subject.
'Why do you think of your hair that way?'
Yes. You're so very pretty, aren't you.
Just another one of his empty-headed pets.
And just like that, the silken rhythm of his resonance reaches its featherlight end, so quiet in the end that its absence could scant be noticed at all. Far more noticeable is the pause in Shiryuu's rate and rhythm; fingertips behind her ear, he is still for a moment.
".... Grey hair is just an illusion of the blood," Shiryuu explains, though it takes him a long time to think of a way to say it. "In that .. the Ryouhara bloodline is not always so kind to those without the necessary 'heart' to withstand it." He closes his eyes.
"It makes me look old." At least that part is almost honest.
A small, tiny sniff again. He might be starting to come down with a cold, or some form of congestion, or it could be a tic to separate thoughts, to reorient his mind. The boy changes the subject, the pad of his thumb soothing along the bare spot along his girlfriend's scalp, sympathy at war with his wrath as he catches the heat in her voice, his eyes half lidding.
"What a cruel woman you are," the Shirogarasu remarks calmly.
"To deny me the chance to make him kneel at your feet."
In it is a tacit reminder of exactly the young man he is; a boy with a limitless appetite for enmity where it lay. There is a world in which those whom cross Umie Akabane simply disappear, and the periphery of that world is at her back. Shiryuu's lesser natures are very much not kind.
A broken window is the least of him.
"Though." He returns to his work, following along the curve of her head. She'll notice that he keeps closely to her scalp, and the feel of the ribbon is a soft susurrus at her opposite ear. It's starting to feel like he's tracing the outline of her head, and pulling the braid over the criminal spot. "I would suppose that if that were all the way true," Shiryuu continues reasonably, lightly, "there'd be no 'poor sap' to visit."
He _was_ listening closely during that moment, wasn't he?
'He said he saw death in me.' The idea sits carefully with the young man, as he thumbs along the integrity of the braid. Ah, he's not the greatest, but he is excellent with his hands when there's a knot to be tied. But it's not to check his own handiwork that she feels the soothing of his touch. The boy apparently reaches a stopping point as he turns to the workstation, mulling over her words with one eye closing the rest of the way.
He's given her a crown braid with a red brocade ribbon wound through it for body, starting at one ear and positioned such that the braid winds around her head like a halo, gathering enough of her blonde with it that it neatly paves over her offense, to end somewhere at the nape of her neck. Shiryuu is currently comparing ornaments.
"....maybe," Shiryuu thinks aloud, quietly. "Maybe it worked that way for others, Kyotosaigan. It just hurts, when..." No, that part isn't important. "What I feel with you is.."
Shiryuu pauses, as if he could sense the chill in her.
"...Umie."
An open question in the air.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
"A vandalized treasure?" Umie cranes her neck to try to keep Shiryuu a sideeye, even if she knows his words come from a different place than others who have used such concepts to illustrate their points. "Talking like that... you don't want to flinch if we have to fight, do you?"
The smile may be a pointed, red thing even at this angle, but her eyes display no less of the fondness they've held before.
It's one of those ironies that the thing that Umie would relate to the most, in the boiling pot of Shiryuu's thoughts, is that concept: a pretty, empty-headed object. A pawn to place on the board, moved and manipulated, a doll that tells a fortune as casually as the weather for you.
Dolls can be powerful, ritualistic things, embodying hopes, fears, prayers, and curses, but their power comes from their emptiness; they are a vessel to put things into. To remain faceless is to linger on the fence between nonexistence and empty significance, even if it is meant to be temporary.
To be able to transform is to have the power of movement between fates. To be visibly marked with something as distinctive as grey hair.... What does it mean, to have a 'necessary heart'? It's a sensitive subject, going beyond just a matter if whether or not one person or another likes it. (Is that why Kurou dyes that white streak of hair?)
"If you ever want to change it... You can dye it, if your hair will take the dye." Her head bobs with the smooth movements of Shiryuu's work, her eyes fluttering closed. "And even if it can't... there's ways to dress it up. Even if it's not permanent... it just means you can try another style."
It won't change Shiryuu's feelings, though Umie chuckles as he's truthful. "Don't some people in anime have white and grey hair? No one calls them old, right?"
'What a cruel woman you are, to deny me the chance to make him kneel at your feet.' If Umie's hair wasn't being woven through in Shiryuu's hands at that moment, she'd try to fix him with another flattened expression. "... My, my... you know, if you really wanted to kneel, you don't need an excuse~" she teases instead.
'I would suppose that if that were all the way true, there'd be no 'poor sap' to visit.' Umie sighs. "Damn it..." She pauses, thinking over how to explain in a way Shiryuu would... see some logic in relenting. "It's... how homunculuses work. They borrow the appearance and humanity of someone else to fit in," she says next, carefully choosing her words. "We're aware of the, uh, supralunar? That space. A lot of the people the homunculus terrorized fall below that. They'll have to deal with all of them. That's... why I called them a 'poor sap'." Among other reasons.
"Their homunculus, though... they saw something similar to what a lot of supernatural figures see. There's something in me that is 'disgusting' to them; I imagine... anyone who's cursed in the same way likely deals with similar things."
'What I feel with you is..'
For a moment, the breath against her back borrows the same credence and heat as the homunculus known as Eshm: that openly predatory, hungry, animalistic presence, draped in the skin of a human teenager like a wolf wearing sheepskin.
Tick tock, tick tock, Umie. Maybe you're dead, and you don't know it yet.
She fights the urge to spring away from Shiryuu's fingers, forcing herself to remain in place with a rigid posture.
"... I was being careless with my words," she admits, after a breath. "It's fine, though."
"Tell me what you feel, with me. If you can, without it hurting." Let her hear your voice.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
It turns out that Shiryuu can make a face just as flat as Umie's.
"What are you talking about?" the spymaster replies incredulously, dismissing the thought out of hand. "I never flinch."
It's not even all that inaccurate. Shiryuu is not known for hesitating in the slightest -- even as he goes through the little haphazardly collected box of supplies, he selects a white and gold kanzashi fearlessly to go with the brocade ribbon.
Of course, fighting Umie is a different subject, and the boy slides the hairpin into his own hair for a moment as he keeps at it, drawing a small paulownia wooden case from a bag tucked underneath his haori, against his chest.
It's written in his grim expression as he continues. It is somewhat regrettable that he knows how to ornament things nicely -- that it is in his nature, when he opens that box and draws loose the origami lotus, to gravitate towards pretty things.
But then, she smiles just right, and the boy's expression softens from the weight of a very dismal thought drifting along the back confines of his skull. He fixes the lotus to the end of the hairpin.
"...it's fine," he says, unsteadily.
If he changed it...
Shiryuu's sense of shame is overpowered almost entirely by the white fire that burns at the idea of Umie being bothered -- by anyone. He should have firebombed the salaryman when he had the chance.
Ruin still has yet to pay.
And now...
Shiryuu's voice is even, warm as he sets the blunted point of the hairpin just behind Umie's ear, in a blatant play for the smallest revenge at her teasing. For the crow's crimes, he is deliberately slow with the grazing touch of that metal as he slides it into her hair, fixing the end of that braid in place.
'If you really wanted to kneel, you don't need an excuse~'
The young man sets his lips tightly, and leans down by a factor of mere inches, closing the professional distance between them as she cranes to try and keep a look at him. His hair drapes over his eyes as he does, casting them in dark against the glare of the moonlight reflected from outside in the still, quiet zone. His lips move, just slightly.
"...I did," he reminds her, patiently.
"Are you asking for another night with me..?"
The open threat of another Christmas evening hangs in the air for seconds.
Unfortunately, the spur of danger folds into something more, and Ryouhara can read, more easily than most, the change of phase in the blonde from when he turns away and the next. His touch gentles at her; there is space for her to go, if she wants. But her bravery earns her the soft lay of his hands again at her shoulders. This time it is barely for him; his touch gives her weight, and patiently pins her into a time and a place. His eyes dim as she asks, as she tries to petition him for the life of the boy that scorned her so.
The words stick; 'there is something in me that is disgusting to them.'
The boy's expression tightens further.
"Every day, this eye of mine finds a space, a tear, or a poison," Shiryuu replies calmly, evenly, pushing the thoughts of killing 'that person' and 'everyone who looks like them' absently aside -- she can tell that it's only a temporary distraction, borne of an idle worry. "It is an eye that watches for the gate to Hell to be left cracked, that it may fly through and leash every shinigami. I pray, and I pray. For hours, sometimes. But a musou-ninkou is unkind, and ... it never stops."
A hand opens at her shoulder, and Ryouhara pats once, enough to cause the lotus kanzashi's chain ornament to jingle lightly, where it's fixed in her hair.
"...until I get a chance to see your face again."
Then it stops hurting.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
If only Umie could have seen it: the white and gold kanzashi, set into his hair.
She would have told him, without a trace of irony or humor, that it looked good there, white and gold set against the silver strands of his hair.
But the light would need to be right, and light is not something they have in excess here.
But sometimes the green glow of the moonlit night is the only light that can draw out something's true beauty. Like the blunted point of the kanzashi grazing the skin behind one's ear.
... Umie is also drawn to pretty things.
Could Shiryuu appreciate the pleased look on Umie's face, as he responds? "Why do you say that like it's a threat...?" Her lower eyelids rise, briefly obscuring those red-brown eyes with the upward movement of her smile. Then, as her face relaxes, she gazes up against his face, his gaze outlined in shadow. A reflection of green moonlight slants against her eyes at a distorted angle, neutralizing the red hues that would be there.
She wants to say more, but the jingle of bells ring as a cheery warning, for her ears alone. The blonde trusts that he knows enough, for her not to have to spell out anything more than she has.
She's been seen with disgust, as beautiful, as sinful, as pure, as coveted, strange, scary, as wasted potential. Rotted, valuable, ordinary, exceptional, rich, poor.
Unexplainable. An annoying contradiction.
And his own nature is the same. A clumsy boy unable to speak when his hand clasps hers, a young man who upholds a secret night as a dark something that could be repeated, a shihaisha who commands a clan, a prince that is seen as an empty-headed puppet.
He accepts her; not blindly, not illogically, but he accepts her. And she him, in all the ways that don't compromise with her own code. She'll be angry, when she finds out about Tsubasa Seki, and they'll likely fight. They may fight still, even if Umie never finds out.
She'd accept no other option; she'll draw the battlefield with weapons, words, or unwillingness to play a part, as she had when they first fought.
"... How ironic, considering what I'm capable of," Umie murmurs.
But the Mark is terrible in that it normally displays no abnormal hint to its origin; it'd be easier in society if she could just lie and say a ghost was grafted to her hand, rather than commit the sin of having a mark that cannot and could not be mistaken for anything other than a tattoo. Only a sinful woman who get something so unmistakable, so large that she has to go out of her way to hide it.
And any family member that allowed for it to happen? Just as culpable. Better to hide it.
But a man with silver hair he thinks looks dirty and old, who yells mispronounced English insults at his co-workers, who tried to get rid of her old fan out by throwing it out a window, who preserves cutlets thrown at him by rumor-borne demon colonels, who is admired by quiet skeleton heroes...
He braids her hair with ribbons and lotus ornaments, and she showers his with kisses.
.... or she would, if she wasn't sitting down. The disadvantages that come with height difference...
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
For the contours of a moment, she favors him with that quieting glimpse of her eyes, limned in the tattered ghost greens of the maddened space. Therein, hidden in the dark of an open threat is the deadly graze of an intentional smile -- a white edged flash in the dark that she's seen exactly once before.
Tracing a fingertip along the curve of that moment is a boy who sees exactly what he wants.
It's short lived, his expression softening as Ryouhara sheathes it into her hairline, the white crow replying to all of the black crow's musing with the subtlety of a kiss secreted away against her hairline. It lingers there for her, his warmth in the cold serving to anchor her into her skin with feeling, with a tacit reminder just as subtle.
Be careful thinking too much. If she gets too lost in the reeds, she risks letting the onmitsu win.
The warmth of his half-breath gusts across his bond's temple, the boy electing to press the advantage of his height by taking that rogue glimpse of her face with him along with the uncontested, stolen kisses she dreams of as hers -- she is welcome to as many as she can reach, as the onmitsu stands, clearing his throat politely.
It's a polite way of decoupling himself from her, before he's tempted to linger.
"...anyway," he breaks, awkwardly.
"...I'm not as good at this as I should be," Shiryuu explains, the trailing drag of his hand allowing him to turn Akabane's seat towards the mirror. The notion evokes a memory of a hospital, and the haphazard, talentless way Shiryuu fixed a comically lopsided bun into her hair. The gulf between then and now is colossal, with Shiryuu's plaiting work is snug and (mostly) neat, though one would be forgiven for not thinking him a master beautician.
In the mirror, she can see the outline of herself in her silhouette, with the details reflected off of her hairline like a halo -- illuminating a crown braid lacing around and over her unfortunate mishap, run through with a brocade ribbon and fixed in place with that kanzashi pin. It gives color to things he'd said earlier, as Ryouhara's aim with moonlight turns out to be entirely, entirely premeditated.
Some could argue the boy is better with angles than hair, and that's why there's a discrepancy of 'back then, not so long ago;' and 'in this moment, right now.' One could say he's just good with rope -- he is.
But, the more likely answer is that Umie will never now _just_ how badly Shiryuu's hands are aching from hours of practice right now.
Shiryuu is counting bills onto the workstation, right next to a box of supplies he almost assuredly is going to take. "You deserved more than a hat," he explains. "But... things didn't work out, at least not tonight."
He makes no secret of the implied intention; she'll get most of what's in that box, and later -- a phone number for a hairdresser much closer to her apartment in Shibuya, highly motivated to takecare of whatever Akabane needs at no charge.
"...we should go," Shiryuu guesses, thinking about the transit of light across the ceiling. Enough time has passed that the Dark Hour is likely to end soon. Even absent that --
"I have a meeting with the proprietor in the morning."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
That smile could belong to a shark, due to what the young man is capable of, but the same could be said of the young woman below him. After all, the Dark Hour affords quite a bit of flexibility in the new ways one can easily murder another person, or how someone can die.
For Umie, it's like seeing the iridescent fin of a rare fish just before it disappears into the dark: ephemeral beauty. As her eyes close, her own lips smile as he buries it in her crown, graciously quiet to preserve the sanctity of the moment.
For a moment, the onmitsu wins with an unlikely move: tender, warm, gentle, his breath warm against her temple. If he steals a few kisses from whatever angle he chooses, all the better; though the attempt is mutual, the two stealing kisses from one another for a few fitful moments.
But, like Shiryuu, while there's the temptation to stay in that moment, there's still the inconvenient matter of where they are, and what they've done since breaking in here. Much like it is every night, the Dark Hour not only steals reality, but context, depositing intrepid souls in places they weren't an irrational length of time earlier, sometimes turning a placid jaunt into a security nightmare.
... Or, just a nightmare, if you were stuck in a zone with dozen of frozen vehicles.
'Anyway.' Don't give in to temptation.
The hairdresser's chair turns. 'I'm not as good at this as I should be.' Indeed, the difference is night and day, though Umie would argue the circumstances were vastly different, being they were dancing around IV poles and plastic cords.
.... But then again, that may have been by design, in the first place. She's had her hair professionally done before, with coiffed relaxed curls or wispy bangs, especially back when her hair was a thick dark brown, or even recently, when she had to get up at the crack of dawn to get her hair and makeup done for Seijin no Hi.
She turns her head, running her red nails over where the patch was. ".... Wow... I never thought to do this. it's a lot better than trying to do hair extensions. It looks nice, too..." There's that Ryouhara ingenuity again... or, is it _Shiryuu's_ ingenuity, given that he sits as Umie's biggest example of it?
There was a problem, and Shiryuu thought of a way to fix it, even if it was in a very convoluted way, as is his way. (... Which nicely disguises the other half of this whole adventure. Oh that Shiryuu, randomly breaking into a place to steal their hair supplies.)
"How many people's 'bonds' would braid their hair for them?" Umie turns a fond, wry grin at the onmitsu. "That's worth at least a pair of designer brand sneakers, right?" It's a rhetorical question; in Umie's mind, it's priceless. "I'd say it worked out the way it needed to be."
Like flowers in spring and the first snowfall of winter, the event cannot last. Umie looks up, checking the same parameters as Shiryuu. It's not a foolproof system, as the Dark Hour defies logic and convention, especially in regards to identifying things like 'how much time has passed' and 'how much time is left'.
In that way, it's similar to being in love.
She sighs wistfully, frowning. ".... Seems like nights like these never last as long as I want them to." She stands, one hand still holding the hat, the other running a free hand over the braid once more, the furthest parts of the Mark peeking out as she moves her hand back to gently touch the kanzashi.
'I have a meeting with the proprietor in the morning.' Letting the hand drop to her side, Umie turns, raising an eyebrow. "..."
She squints, as she puts the pieces together.
"... They better be alive and well at the end of it," she groans. "What did they do, Shiryuu."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
It's not theft if you pay for it.
And it is some facsimile of the truth -- the number of yen notes Shiryuu counts out onto the table is more than enough to cover the cost of what he takes. And likely then some; Shiryuu doesn't always have the best sense of how much things cost, and merely counts yen out of his billfold until it 'feels right.'
However, he very pointedly isn't paying for the window.
An almond sweet scintilla of time passes, with Shiryuu perplexed at first with Akabane's resistance. A hazardous thought, a brief flare of concern crosses his mood then then mind -- is it that she doesn't like the pin? Did she hear a shadow? Maybe he missed a lock of hair.
It requires taking a kiss to the eye before Ryouhara gets the message. Oh, he sees. Or doesn't, in this case. Mn.
The few seconds that Shiryuu relents to share Umie's attention passes for far darker strands of attention indeed, the soft sound of their involvements tying up in aural knots with Ryouhara's bracing hands along either side of the chair, a soft creak of overstimulated fists gripping the upholstery rising just barely above the soft break of lips.
But alas. Even in victory, Shiryuu is cruel to his own wants and whims.
The last bill is laid onto that workstation, a single fingertip pressing down and forcing the air out from between the stacked bills, to better let them rest. It's a concession to compass morality, the only notion that keeps Shiryuu from that temptation, and all of the little damages his crow is capable of.
Really, it's only Umie's inclination towards a baseline civility that keeps Shiryuu from insisting on her company through the entire night here.
Mm. "Extensions are.. well, anything would look nice," Shiryuu says, the pretense of cool dispassion gone as he finally peels his eyes off of the bills, pensive again steal a hare-fast glimpse of her in the mirror.
Pause.
"...if it's you, anyway. ... yeah."
"I.. still owe you a Christmas outfit," he counters. To go with the locket, despite what it might sound like at first thought. The brief shade of confusion passes as he figures to leave, picking up the box of particulars in one hand.
Figures to leave, at least until Umie begins to object to his extracurricular activities.
"...." Shiryuu raises a hand, and consequently the sleeve of his haori to his mouth to cover his imperious expression as the shihaisha makes a tiny scoffing sound. "Don't interfere in the business of ninjutsu, Akabane," Shiryuu counters mildly, turning to descend the stairs in demure non-commitment.
Oh yes, someone's kneeling tomorrow.
"I don't care for the manners of men anymore in Shinjuku, that's all. I've gathered some dyes and samples and things, they're right here. It should be your colors. But, you'll be handled much better in Shibuya, I think. Hey... come on, let's go, you'll trip if you try to come down the stairs by yourself...let me, are you still??--"
It probably goes downhill from there.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
Remember, Shiryuu: openly fawning over handiwork could be seen, in some circumstances, as 'winning'.
Which is why the moment Umie gives in and expresses her admiration may feel all the sweeter for it, like a hard-won prize at a carnival game.
(Later, when Umie gets ready for bed and looks at herself in the bathroom mirror, she'll quickly amend her overlooking the ornament, texting Shiryuu with a '!!!!!' and a photo of the kanzashi being held in her palm. She definitely likes it.)
Now, if only Umie was more open to Shiryuu's world view....
Alas, he'll have to settle for a dreamful outing under a dark emerald sky, and kisses in the dark that must be cruelly ended before the two would become too involved to care when the unnatural hour ended.
A glimpse at the mirror would see Umie looking back at Shiryuu, if more openly; his glimpse is rewarded with another one of those sharp, mischevious smiles, as if sharing something secret.
"You're biased," she accuses. She loves it.
How can you not like a man who continually insists on a Christmas outfit?
"It's more fun if I can try them on for you~" Umie teases, then adds, with a more level-headed tone, "And... I had a lot of fun when you took me out shoe-shopping. I didn't really know that it was so involved."
By every metric, Umie should have rejected going on that 'outing' with Shiryuu in what feels like forever ago. It made Shiryuu seem human; he was a person with interests, likes, desires, and hobbies, just like anyone else.
It was a moment where her lack of care was rewarded, instead of the universe finding another way to rub it in for her.
Shiryuu is a perfect match, in every way.
"What. What am I, an egg? My feet are perfectly fine!"
Because the fights wouldn't be this amazingly stupid, otherwise.
It does go downhill from there. And, thankfully, down the stairs and out the door, before the actual night starts up again.