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Post by Red Irish Dragon on Jan 17, 2019 2:26:43 GMT
Getting a yes seemed to surprise him, despite her earlier suggestion. The way he glanced back at his brother, despite being so much younger, showed very clearly how little he had had such interactions. For a moment, he looked even more lost when she began to walk away, but he picked up on the cue faster this time, only a step behind her as she walked.
Ryo helped Kasumi sit and went to order their tea with an old-fashioned mannerism, picked up Naoki knew from old Masahiro. He went to quickly order a drink of his own, sipping at it as he found a perch to observe them from a distance, pleased with the fact that he had gotten his brother to finally talk to a girl, for the first time in ages. Plus, this would take Karyuudo off the Kitsune’s mind for a while, at least. And Naoki knew better than anyone how much Ryo needed that break.
As Ryo sat down next to Kasumi again, after hesitantly standing next to her for a moment, he once more seemed very lost in what to do next, and seemed to look about for sources of inspiration. This was how he saw one couple come up, taking off their glasses in the shade of the trees. Oh… In a quick move, he removed his own sunglasses, glancing back at Kasumi with an awkward smile.
Don’t forget what you’re here for…
“So… um… what-what’s your name?”
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Post by Kelathi on Jan 17, 2019 16:28:49 GMT
Fortunately for him, she found his nervousness endearing. She did make a mental note to perhaps be a little easier on him and cut back on the teasing- although, of course, no promises could be made. She smiled as he handed her the tea, thanking him and raising it to her lips to drink, relishing the sweetness on her tongue. When he removed his sunglasses and his eyes met hers, she was taken aback for a second. His jade-green eyes were, there was no other way to describe them, beautiful and intense. She found herself wondering why he had hidden them at all.
She was happy to oblige his question, curious as to whom this handsome stranger was that she had accidentally accosted. Dropping the small glass from her lips for a moment, she answered, “Yǔ Kasumi, and yours?”
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Post by Red Irish Dragon on Jan 17, 2019 17:17:28 GMT
Despite her ease with the situation, Ryo couldn’t help his own unease, steadying himself only by trying to think of the situation as a mission. Like Naoki said, or claimed… maybe he could get into talks with Karyuudo? Ironically, this plan felt less risky than trusting the emperor.
The little smiles Kasumi offered, however, was repeatedly distracting him from his “mission.” Yes, he’d found her attractive from… well, not the first moment he set eyes on her, back then he was too concerned about where the Karyuudo was hiding. Knowing he was behind a mask made it easier to offer the kissed hand as a thank you, as Masahiro had taught him as soon as Naoki had started trying to set his brother up.
Of course, he noticed her pause at seeing his eyes, but misjudged, his gaze dropping for a moment as he considered putting the glasses back on. No, they were off, and it’d be too obvious to put them back on… and he was already awkward enough with her undivided attention.
Despite everything, she answered his question, his gaze more easily going back now that she was the one talking. For a moment, anyway. “Ah… Ryo. Uh, Itagaki Ryo,” he replied, correcting himself quickly, silently admonishing himself. Then, a face in the crowds he looked at to avoid looking at Kasumi made him pause, making an annoyed face and mouthing something.
Naoki, across the square, had made a facepalm at his stiff body language, making motions with his hands to indicate talking. Then, another momentary facepalm at Ryo’s mouthing I’m trying, then - realizing they weren’t as subtle as they might have thought of - flashed a winning smile and waved at Kasumi.
Now it was Ryo’s turn to facepalm, groaning inwardly. “Sorry…” he managed from behind his hand, all pretence of having any idea of what he was doing gone.
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Post by Kelathi on Jan 17, 2019 21:44:57 GMT
“Nice to…” She had begun, when Ryo had looked away, clearly distracted. Curiously following his gaze, she was amused to find his brother was still present, and not just that, appeared to be trying to give his older brother tips. Upon noticing that their game was up, the teenager had waved at her, something she responded to, waving back as she laughed. Ryo, though, looked mortified by the time she turned her attention back to him, covering his face with his hand. At his words, she reached up, taking his hand gently and removing it from his face. His skin was warm against hers, probably a testament to his embarrassment. “Don’t be.” She responded to his apology, with a patient smile. “Just relax.” She removed her hand from his; reaching again for her glass of tea she had set down next to herself. As she took another sip, she decided to take charge of the conversation, to give him something to talk about that might put him at ease. That was why her hand came up again, this time, touching the tattoo on his arm with a brush of her fingers. “What does this mean?” She asked curiously… but the moment she uttered the words, she visibly blanched. For she had been struck as how familiar the ink-work seemed to be, and then she had noticed the band-aid and thought of…
No… surely not?
She pulled herself together, forcing herself to relax and meeting Ryo’s eyes, unbeknownst to him her thoughts running a mile a minute as she connected the dots.
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Post by Red Irish Dragon on Jan 17, 2019 22:14:10 GMT
Kasumi’s reaction genuinely surprised Ryo, not expecting her to gently pull his hand from his face. Her words made him look up at her, clearly confused at her patient smile, but doing as told. Finally taking a sip of his own tea, his gaze flitted between the cup and Kasumi, almost as if he was expecting something to go wrong and was lost when it wasn’t happening. This flitting glance meant he had missed her face paling, only seeing her recovery as he looked to the tattoo she was referring to.
At the top was a kitsune spirit, flanked by flames and the handles of two katanas. The pattern clearly extended past his shirt, with the bandaid hiding the stitches across the kanji character. Her fingers had brushed the topmost figure, Ryo letting out a soft chuckle. “That’s, um, my old master’s favorite yokai,” he replied, for a moment distracted by the memory of Masahiro’s response to his taking on the name. “He, uh, he really enjoyed stories of kitsune causing mischief, y’know? Like… making fun of people who are greedy, or proud. Or fighting evil spirits. Or just being problems themselves…” he added with a bit of a laugh, recalling a handful of the tales that used to make Masahiro laugh.
Talking about his master came more easily than talking about himself, even though there was a feeling of loss as he spoke, of missing him. It was enough of a distraction he didn’t realize how Kasumi had reacted to discovering the bandaid against the tattoo.
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Post by Kelathi on Jan 17, 2019 22:54:39 GMT
It seemed too much of a coincidence not to be so. She couldn’t recall the tattoo in detail, of course, she had been much too distracted at the time, but the placement of the band-aid seemed too convenient. If she really was speaking to Kitsune, then what had been the purpose of the whole preface with the younger brother? If he had just wanted to talk to her about Karyuudo, why bother with all that? The situation didn’t make sense. Had she really managed to lure her enemy into a date?
But… he didn’t know yet that they were enemies. If he really was Kitsune (an idea she was still resistant to, their personalities just seemed worlds apart), then he was under the impression that she was just some woman that had helped patch him up, and someone who did not know who he was. So she decided to keep it that way, for now at least.
Meanwhile, she couldn’t help but bitterly recall Yuudai’s words. “You need to track him down, and you need to talk to him.” She could be 100% sure that this was not how he had imagined that conversation was going to play out. Still, this could be her opportunity to find out more about this stranger.
She listened to Ryo intently, and decided to try something. “A fox fighting evil spirits, hm? Sounds like a protector- a guardian.” She ran her hand over his skin again, he had let her get away with it earlier, and she hoped to keep his gaze distracted so that she could watch his face. Tracing the lines of the tattoo, her eyes on his face as his gaze followed her fingers, she pointed towards Kitsune. “A fox…” Her hand moved to trail around some of the dark clouds framing the animal, “…the evil in this world...” She annotated as she moved on, now tracing the dragon. Then she paused. “No lion, though?” She questioned, wondering if he would get her reference to the old story, and curious as to how he would take her words.
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Post by Red Irish Dragon on Jan 17, 2019 23:18:54 GMT
Ryo hesitated when Kasumi spoke, getting a bit of a funny look at the fox being called a guardian; he’d heard such reference before. Her hand had his full attention as she began tracing down the figures, eyes widening a little at the gentle touch, a slight blush creeping up the farther she went.
He didn’t answer her immediately, needing a moment to recover from her unexpected touch. “Um… no?” he answered awkwardly, glancing back at the dragon she had traced. “No, uh, this… you’re talking about that old story, aren’t you? The lion, the… the fox, and the… um… bird…” It wasn’t a story he was as familiar with as she was. “This isn’t about that, um… it’s… the dragon’s a protector, a guardian,” he explained, pointing down to the flower-like symbol in the dragon’s coils. “Family guardian,” he added softly, looking at the crest for only a few moments before it seemed too much. The symbol was of the Akiyama clan, known best for the late dojo master’s school, a symbol that had in the last few years faded into the background as his family had. “So… not based on an old legend,” Ryo added quickly with the flash of a smile, taking a breath to steady himself and keep the topic moving.
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Post by Kelathi on Jan 17, 2019 23:38:06 GMT
She relaxed a little at his reply. Just in case he had somehow figured out that Kasumi was Karyuudo, she thought the subtle reference to the lion, to Shi, might cause him panic upon realising she was onto him. Instead, his response fit in well with what he seemed to be, just a man, shy with her undivided attention. Well, not just a man, if her identification of him was correct, but his answer put her a little at ease nonetheless. She let her hand drop as he explained the symbols, but as he got to the crest…
“Wait…” She straightened up suddenly, her eyes widening. Looking closely at the crest, she hesitated for a moment before speaking again. “This is… the Akiyama symbol.” He had said the dragon was a family guardian… “Did you know Masahiro?” The surprise was evident in her face as she spoke, it was name she had not uttered for years. Masahiro had been a long-standing friend of Yuudai, his death had affected her old mentor greatly. Kasumi remembered the man, although his kind face was marred in her mind from the passage of time, and so she was unable to conjure it with any amount of detail.
It seemed they had moved in the same circles once, could it be that she had met Ryo before?
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Post by Red Irish Dragon on Jan 17, 2019 23:57:33 GMT
Ryo hesitated at her sudden shift in response, wondering instantly what he did wrong. Instead, she pointed to the Akiyama crest on his arm, drawing his attention back to it. Her words made him study her a little, confused and just a little concerned. “Y-yes… he was my master,” he replied, adding as if coming to the same thought of having possibly encountered Kasumi once before.
“I was there when I was young, for a short time… but then I changed homes and… well, he… he found me later,” he explained, visibly pulling back from talking too openly about his foster background and changing the subject back. “So… did you ever attend his school?” he asked, genuinely curious.
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Post by Kelathi on Jan 18, 2019 0:18:14 GMT
She had heard people say the phrase, ‘it’s a small world’ when referring to such phenomenon as this, but this was ridiculous… First, she’d accidentally come across an unmasked Kitsune, and now she was starting to realise they had probably met before, long ago. She had been a student of Masahiro very briefly, that had been before…
“I did… but only for a very short time.” She responded quietly, evidently battling with her own demons at that moment with her unspoken words, looking away and focusing elsewhere. She had started at Masahiro’s when she was very young, but had been pulled out after the incident. That was when she had moved in with Yuudai.
She appeared to mull on something for a moment before a small ironic smile slid onto her lips, and she turned to him again. “It’s funny, isn’t it? To think that we might have met before?”
Ryo had mentioned changing homes, and it stuck out to her because it was scarily similar as to what had happened to her. She recalled Yuudai had often mentioned the child Masahiro had taken in, and wait, she remembered a young boy disappearing from the school whilst she was there. The stories made sense when tied together. Could Ryo have been that child...? “Were you the child that Masahiro took in?” She pushed, unable to quell her curiosity, and all of this being way too much of a coincidence to let lie.
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Post by Red Irish Dragon on Jan 18, 2019 0:30:30 GMT
Ryo noticed how she went a little quiet at the memory, so he only nodded in response. He knew that look simply from experiencing it himself. Small world, hm? Finding another one of Masahiro’s students… it had been a while.
Her suggestion made him pause, given how close it had been to his own thoughts. He smiled a little bit himself, nodding. “Yeah,” he agreed, unsure of what else to say. But her question made him pull back a little, looking very surprised again. And a little unsettled at the idea that anyone ever talked about him, which was the only explanation for her phrasing.
“Uh… child he…? W-well, he um… y-yeah, I guess you could say…?”
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Post by Kelathi on Jan 18, 2019 0:44:35 GMT
His reaction was all the confirmation she needed, and her face broke into a smile once more. “I think we have met.” She explained, excitedly. “I think I remember you. I… was upset for some reason. I can’t remember why now, but this boy…” A boy of her age, with jade-green eyes… Her eyes closed for a moment as she tried to reach back in her memory. She had been sat on the porch step, it had been raining…
“It was at the end of a class, I was upset because the other boys had been teasing me. I ran away and sat in the rain. And then this boy, the quiet one, had come up to me, and he gave me a flower…” Her smile quirked at the memory, and she opened her eyes. “I know it was you. I remember your eyes. And I remember when you stopped turning up to class.”
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Post by Red Irish Dragon on Jan 18, 2019 1:00:54 GMT
Ryo tried very hard to recall what she was talking about, his brow furrowed as he thought back. So much of his youth he had tried to keep behind him, it was almost difficult to pull up any memories of it now. As she recalled the event, however, his expression shifted, recalling it at last… and nearly dropped his tea as he went red at the memory.
“Ah! So, y-ye… um…” he stammered, quickly pulling his eyes away again as she mentioned them. He only managed one more glance at her reference to his sudden departure, more carefully holding his tea cup. “I… changed homes,” was all he said in answer, and the way he said it indicated that he did so many, many times.
Across the square, Naoki tensed, still working on his bubble tea but seeing every mood shift between the two. It had gone from her being sweet and patient with his shy brother, to surprise, to touching that made Naoki wonder if he was still needed as a watchdog… to Ryo suddenly seeming to grow scared. Naoki slid forward a little off the railing he was perched on, intently watching to see if he was needed. Had she said something to make him so anxious? Wouldn’t have been the first time… but that wasn’t what her own body language seemed to indicate, so he waited, concerned simply for his brother’s sake.
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Post by Kelathi on Jan 18, 2019 1:21:56 GMT
This time, it was Kasumi’s turn to feel a little embarrassed. She had been so eager to get him to remember, and although he claimed he did, she could tell that the moment was much more prominent to herself than it was to him. She suddenly felt like she was acting like an excited schoolgirl. This, twinned with the fact that he looked very suddenly panicked as he tried to remember, caused her to decide to tone it down a little. “I’m sorry…” she apologised quickly, forcing herself to lean back a little, realising she had been practically perched on the edge of her seat. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. It’s just… I remembered it fondly, that’s all.” She smiled apologetically, and then cleared her throat, setting her now empty glass down besides her. “I’ve hijacked the conversation… what do you want to talk about?”
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Post by Red Irish Dragon on Jan 18, 2019 1:31:37 GMT
Ryo glanced at her again as she withdrew a little, sitting up a little straighter himself. “You… don’t have to apologize,” he replied, offering an apologetic smile himself. Still, it took him a few moments to decide how to respond. “I just… don’t remember much from when I was a kid,” he admitted, softly adding, “But… I do remember… that day, at least.”
There was quiet between them for several long moments, Ryo taking a last sip of his tea after clearing his throat. “So… uh,” he began, taking up her offer to change the topic. “What… brings you out on a market day?”
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