Private Achromatic

[Chodayu]

Lining the arched columns up top is an abundance of flora. Spider plants and ivies; large devil's and grape's. Greenery spreads throughout the ceiling, cascades down the walls, stopping only to let light through multi-paned windows. Count half a second and see a black veil slip across one. From one side of the window to the other.

On the inside of the greenhouse, Chodayu slows down by a group of poinsettias. Runs the tip of her finger across a blood red bract. An overwhelming contrast of scarlet upon porcelain skin. It takes her attention away from the flower, but only momentarily for — count another second, and — she looks up. Over the greenery and timber and clutter of colors, something paler exists. Something gentler. Painted and textured like snow are gardenias. And they sit just a few rows down, and they beckon to a woman who's been beckoned for the better part of her life.

She easily pulls away, easily moves down the aisle towards her new target of interest. Silent heels; a lowered chin, as though it weren't plants she approaches but a table awaiting tea and a score of the Gion Kouta. Rounds the corner of a table. Slinks by a crown of alabaster, and —

... pauses.

A crown of alabaster; a head crowned by a handsome field of gardenias, and yet... eyes the color of woe.

Slightly — ever so slightly — her head angles. Not enough to peel curtains of jade from her face, but just enough for the boy to know she means her words for him:

"Please forgive my intrusion, but. Are you alright?"

Spoken just barely above a whisper.



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[Akane Kiseki]

Kiseki. Stop. Kiseki! Stop. Ki se ki ~ Stop, please, stop. A tired hand to rose at his temple, thumbing away a feverish heat from cold skin. Even now, he curled deeper into the greenhouse, drawing his breaths from the supplement of flora. We'll play. We'll play. Just a moment, though, okay? Please. The presence was unhappy. It shook him from the inside out - frost nipping at his fingertips, a redness spreading from his nose. Winter was here far too early and it threatened this sanctity. He thought to hide behind awning leaves, knowing better it offered no escape. You couldn't run from weary eyes. His little heart - soft, bleeding - met intention with a certain chill itself, hardening under the pressure of his thoughts until he thought he might just choke it out. He couldn't do more than look out the window. He watched the autumn breeze whisk dead leaves like so many corpses.

The threat of snow made his ears ring, slipping elbows down his knees until he held his head from each side. Covered them. He squeezed, toiling small digits through tresses of snow. The last little snowdrop before the flurry. He was just tired. He was okay, he was just tired. Kiseki? He was just tired. He needed this warmth. It was better than it was before - and yet it was lacking, Icarus' wings still in a sense of loss; each feather in quiet grief. Where was my sun? They ached to fly, but cloudy skies offered no freedom.

He sighed, a sound too big for something so fragile. His body shook with it, rubbing his hands down from his ears to his eyes and pressing their fatigue away. A voice broke his contemplative silence. He was slow to react, body shifting under the weight of rime, and he shook it off as if his head would poke from his den. Just a rabbit in the snow. "H-hello," came politeness, first. "I'm Kiseki Akane." Came respect, second. "I'm sorry if I've bothered you. It's a beautiful day for flowers." A tug at his heart, a turn of his lips to muzzle any further distress. He was stronger than this melancholy. He could fight little sadnesses without a helping hand.

And yet.
'Let's play tag!'
And yet.

"I'm -- haha. Uhm, I'm okay. Really. I'm sorry." He must look miserable - a frozen lake, bright and atlantean beneath glass, was lifted from his shy expression to meet the thought of jade. Blue turned, his eyes betraying a gentle light. He had an average read on people but cautioned his senses keener than most. "You look experienced, senpai. I-I hope I'm not misassuming. I'm an Academy Student." He straightened himself a bit taller on his bench, not from pride but due attention. The height difference was minimal. "I had a mission, a few days ago. A week ago, maybe? A ... a lot happened. I know that's -- I know that's what it must be like, but - but I," don't tremble. His voice always seemed so close to cracking, as soft yet uneven as it may be. The pealing of bells, one strong whack from shattering. "A few of my other classmates, they died. It wasn't supposed to be a difficult assignment. I'm just ..."

What words explained this feeling? What justified taking time out of her day - and what was his excuse for caring at all? It wasn't supposed to bother him. "I've never known people who've died before." There it is. You could run away with that.

 

[Chodayu]

A slow smile spreads across her face. To level a mountain with a hill, Chodayu dips her head, flattens two palms over her hakama and tucks unwrinkled cloth under her bottom; lowers to the floor, and rests the back of her thighs atop her ankles. Just so she can see him better. Just so she can catch secrets whispered from the blue fireflies in his eyes. Eyes that, upon a moment's worth, Chodayu decides are "quite beautiful, yes."

But no matter a frozen lake for the river nearby will always house a lively stream. And, if he's this lake, then the neighboring stream is his uninterrupted flow of words. Pours out from clouds and cotton to tell the tale of a boy coming across God's playground.

Obsidian cascade tips to one side. Then, Chodayu unrolls the words resting on her tongue, "Kiseki-kun," breathes them out.

"You look much... much too young to lose friends; classmates." Gentle movements guide her hand. Pauses it in the air where Kiseki can see it. Reject it, if his person wishes for him to. If not: catches the corner of his face in her palm, not firmly — doesn't press. Simply holds him. Curls long, feathered fingers over his cheek and traces a thumb across the bone of it.

"What were their names?" is blanketed with a real whisper.



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[Akane Kiseki]

There was something about the gentleness of the air that took between them - this unabated sadness, treated with softness reserved for little birds with clipped wings. Hollow bones and brimming eyes. He had to fight not to cry: how embarrassing was that? He swallowed down dry heartbreak like he could weather the rock in his throat with crisp air alone. Trembled, the threat of dissolution from so much as a brush from such kind fingers; but he backed not away, instead leaning into the touch with something of a need. A raw, quiet desire. He had no solace but this. There was no one in the world - no one but his light, shimmering so weakly from recent darkness - he could talk to about these faults. He couldn't put this, too, on Ichika. His family, well-intentioned, had no sight for these troubled waters, and his teachers had no sympathy left. I can help, Kiseki!

He was the sight of a feline in winter-coat, face pressed to the warmth of a tender hand. He breathed out so slow, frost on his breath and arms pulling up to cross his chest in a seek for warmth. Comfort. He hugged his own middle, allowing bewitched blue to fall close and lay burmal lashes in hibernation atop sharp cheeks. They'd graze her sympathetic thumb. "Kurosawa Hideyoshi, Shigeyuki Hayate, Kaen Ren. I didn't ... I didn't know them very well. I had class with Shigeyuki-kun, but Kurosawa-kun and Kaen-san I only knew from field exercises. Kurosawa-kun and Shigeyuki-kun - they were paired on this mission. We were all," a drawl of his tongue, hesitating at a memory. "paired. They didn't return. Kaen-san fell in place of his teammate when things went bad. That's all we were told."

He let this rest with their memories, a hand lit with nerves to thrum across the small of his chest. "Twenty-five. Did you know that, Senpai? Twenty-five students are said to die in training e-every year, on average." He couldn't help the lack of bravado. "I'm not very strong, but I've made it this far. Is that --" a gross thought, a shiver spelled from disappointment in the pit of his thoughts, " -- fair?"

 

[Chodayu]

With every name listed, a clap! from a pair of hyōshigi follows; company of an unspoken prayer.

With every internal prayer, Chodayu's brows curl closer. Slowly, carefully. As though she carries his soul in a vase made of brittle glass.

Kiseki's words and the suggestion that accompanies them don't draw much more from Chodayu. If they do, it's lost in a blink. Melted under a tipping crown, now leaning to her other side, unveiling a new corner of her smile. She offers the air another two beats of silence before she begins, "often times," voice coated in hushed warmth, "a storm will hit a tree. Threaten the eggs from a bird's nest."

"Some of those eggs will plummet to their fate." Her thumb repaints a stroke across wan skin, "what of the few others that manage to withstand it?"

"Is it unfair to come out of a storm alive, Kiseki-kun?"



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[Akane Kiseki]

Her first sound startled him - a custom unaccustomed - but on succession he found peace in the rhythm. Warmth. It bloomed outward from the pit in his chest, occupied by curiosity that watched it stretch thin through his limbs - not quite reaching the tips of quivering fingers, but relaxing the tense of his arms around himself. He hummed a small, appreciative noise for each clap in the space left by them, adapting from context clues that he might offer his lost friends an additional thought. You didn't need belief to have hope. Maybe they had already found that softer world. His breath left in a long stream, nearer to a whistle without the sharpness, as he fought again the prick of tears. He failed, just once, with a twitch against her kind fingers and a spill from white lashes. A single drop held at the end of his shut eye, waiting, waiting, then falling at once in a rivulet that bled transient 'til only the memory remained.

"I ... ah. Ha ... haha." His words came sluggish, as if the silent sadness of the moment had robbed him of the wherewithal. "I understand what you mean, -- o, oh. I'm sorry. I didn't catch your name, Senpai. Uhm -- but I. I understand. It's hard to apologize for ... for luck. I don't really ... I don't really blame myself, for their deaths, because I couldn't have been there. I was also --," he caught himself in a choke, clearing out his throat with a sigh that lifted him from his melancholic slouch. "I had my own mission. I think that makes me feel bad, too, though. I think I feel bad for feeling bad but -- not feeling bad enough? It's like I had a lot on my own mind. But they're the ones who died." A flinch, almost. "Does that make sense? Goodness, I'm sorry, Senpai." He tried to recede - tried to pull back from the kindness and the cold both - and run a tired hand through sheepish hair. "Th-this isn't becoming. I promise I'll be a stronger Shinobi, someday, and do them proud ... everyone as proud as I can. It just feels really ... now ..."

The word 'real' hung in a spotlight of quiet thought. Swinging like that dastardly lightbulb across a shadowed room.

 

[Chodayu]

Her touch ignores it, her eyes. Even in her peripheral, Chodayu pretends not to see the roll of a bead woven from his inner-turmoil, exhausted from raw apatite; falling 'til it falls no more. Only then — only after — does her thumb repaint over his god-delicate face. So delicate, so soft (— so forgotten a-feeling.)

To say her smile softens isn't to suggest it fading. "Chodayu." Movements are rendered after tradition. Habits are birthed from a decade of labor, but for Kiseki... her name is given as easily as a smile. As though she treasures the exchange, happy to offer a piece of her person to another. To the only gardenia in a field rotten with starfish flowers.

"My, you carry a busy head on your shoulders." She lets her hand slip from his face, and she moves. Like a stream avoiding a rock in the middle of its river, she dances around him, seats herself at his side now.

"I'll have to ask you to do one thing for me, Kiseki-kun." And here, her smile shifts in its nature. The touch of stone — no, a pebble. "No more apologies. I've decided they aren't needed." Just as quickly: the return of up-tilted corners. A bit tighter, a bit shakier, to mimic the soundless laugh that escapes her lips.

Chodayu's gaze slides from one flower to another. In the distance, she settles on a class of bluebells. "Someone once told me:

The bud honors god by blooming. Some bloom to sun, some to rain."

Inked lashes give to a flutter.

"What might you bloom to, Kiseki-kun?"



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[Akane Kiseki]

"I-I get that a lot," is his dulcet reply to such tender commentary. He twines his ankles together so that they nestle closer in to the pocket of heat he managed, cotton snow amongst the greenery - and oh so summered by her touch, as Frosty must leave again come the end of winter. "Chodayu-senpai. You have a really pretty name. You're a very pretty person." Every word spoke earnest, unable to hide a single thought beneath the ocean he drowned in; each bubbling to the surface like his last grasp for the sun. He couldn't walk on water nor could he tread it - but kindness meant lifting others from depths, and he would never drag someone down with him.

One more prod to daylight. He would tilt his head to watch her, scooching what was needed to assure her comfort without sacrificing their closeness; she didn't seem to mind it, he didn't wish to lose it. He wouldn't lean on her - he's done enough of that this dialogue - but he'd settle near, as if oxygen shared meant breath strengthened. "I ... I've been told that, too," and it was the memory of a laugh on his tongue, exhaled with the finest dusting of frost. His shoulders quivered. His expression held the softest smile - an attempt, prying up sullen cheeks until he could will color to his palette. A tired smile was still a smile worth giving. "You're really nice, Chodayu-senpai. I-I hope people tell you that. It doesn't always feel like ... like there's room, to be really nice as a Shinobi. It's nice that you find it. I want to be like that, too. If I could help people like you've helped me ... just listening, just talking ... maybe it wouldn't be so --," don't say scary. You're not a little boy anymore. You're ... you're a ninja now, Kiseki Akane. "-- difficult. Maybe it wouldn't seem so difficult to face. When I'm like you."

He had to consider her words, thumbing over his palms and knuckles to trace pale scars and softer skin. "Mm ... my boyfriend's the flower. He's the brightest, biggest flower in the whole world. Th-the prettiest red, too. He always knows what to do. He knows who he wants to be. ... I'm still the bud, I think. I just want to be ... if I were to bloom like he does ..." His head would hunker to his hands once they were done fiddling, propping up a pensive face - far too heavy for something that uncreased - and watch the flowers with her. "I'd want to be something that takes as little light away from that as possible."

 

[Chodayu]

Chodayu-senpai. You have a really pretty name. You're a very pretty person

Flattery or not, to tug at strings connecting the corners of her lips is to breathe. "Thank you."

There are no movements on her end. When glass is moved, it doesn't shift. It doesn't adjust ( — not unless absolutely necessary, not unless hammered.) It lets its surroundings settle around it, and reflects them coming & going in its eye. Her own eye trails back; finds the boy swallowed by his anxieties. Sees him try to sing, sees them chip away at him mid-attempt. His smile — a confession — tugs again. This time, a-different collection of strings.

(Something protests in her. At the mention of kindness, at the mention of becoming like Chodayu, something within her heart knocks around. Riots and claws at its cage. She tightens the lock.)

Next, her gaze lands on his pale hands, colored with unrest. A cassette replays. One of a girl. She sees a snow-haired boy instead, and she blinks away the thought. The idea that the world encourages more of her kin. Poles on the side of a road. Lighting the way. Signalling danger to those that tread aforementioned road. Those that are meant for the greater things in life, always rallied by those on the sidelines. "I mean it to sound nothing but honest when I say you are a selfless boy, Kiseki-kun."

Some bloom to force, others to motivation. Perhaps, the red flower is the boy's motivation.

Casting your desires aside — "placing care in the life of another while you navigate your own is... hard. You're a kind thing. No doubt a strong one, too." The unspoken warning rests on her tongue, but what comes out instead is; "I trust you'll manage, Kiseki-kun. But — " the word is sharp where it hangs, and her gaze flutters away, again, and her fingers curl in on themselves, and the cage rattles.

Much softer: "But... there is no shame in tripping along the way. Nobody's path is smooth nor straight. If, and when, you feel like you've hit the ground.. promise you'll come and find me."

And, upon her berceuse, the cage settles. The creature within cries, but is soothed back to the bottom of its abyss. She's already decided who the biggest, brightest flower is. She looks back at him, and the ghost of her previous smile warms up her gaze for him. Her gardenia.



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[Akane Kiseki]

He didn't mean to be derisive - he would never mean to dismiss her words, as heavy and lightening as they were; the gravity of a comet, each an impact imposing weightlessness, to lift him from his pallor - but the turn of his lips in a grimace such a face had never made before, air exhaled with it in a heartbroken snort (breathless, gaspless), and it was a fair assumption. It wasn't funny / it was ironic. Selfless, she said, as he invades her day with his lost rambles, the center of a chain - links of cruelty and guilt, of wanting and missing. Selfless, she said, and he wanted to listen, he wanted to believe, he wanted to think he was still capable of something good - that he was doing something good - that bad actions, bad intents, bad circumstances don't make you inherently bad, and the cloying of your vines don't steal sunlight from the things that need them, but.

Selfishness would be denying her her kindness. "Chodayu-senpai," and his voice is a feather on a scale, hopeful and needful and persevering to remain and not, not, not, don't tip over. He swallowed down his angst and his regret. He breathed out his suffering to feed to the plants, and in turn they'd gift him - as she did - with renewed breath. He'd have spoken, but he'd wait, still, to consider her words: to give them their due, as important as they felt to him in that moment. He wanted somebody to be mad at him. He wanted somebody to tell him he was wrong. He wanted somebody to hold this against him - his weakness - and demand he be better or be cast down this spiral of feeling.

He knew that didn't seem healthy, intrinsically. It was a wrong, gross, dark feeling, and he had to instead turn to face her - eyes wide and shivering like light trapped beneath a dull screen - in the hopes that, for just that second, he could absorb the warmth she offered. A selfish plant, after all, but the daybreak that touched his ears seemed to bring color not the deepest shade of sadness back into the lake reflecting. He couldn't help the sigh, shaking down his shoulders to little legs that hung off his seat, and then he smiled - true - as the smallest hand reached out to brush her shoulder. It wavered, tentative at the end of its journey, but it placed itself after a thoughtful second to offer a squeeze in turn. "Thank you, Chodayu-senpai. I want ...," he could swallow, here, again. His words stepped nervous across a frozen pond, each threatening a crack yet trudging on. "I-I want to be that. I want to deserve that. I want to ... I want to ..." Listen to him. You want?

I want to be the kind of person you think I am. Both of you. "I'll do my best." A nod, and its resolution wasn't lost. "I'll do my best." His head would join his hand at her shoulder, nudging to rest his weight - the burden of it - only briefly, but it got lighter the breaths that passed. "I promise I'll do my best. Th -- thank you. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for telling me I'm -- that it's -- that it's okay. I want it -," mm, "I hope it's okay. Thank you for being here."

It meant a lot, too much. "Thank you for being here. If ... I know I'm not like you yet, Chodayu-senpai, but if you ever need -- anything. If you ever need anything, too, you can tell me, too, okay?" Hopeful eyes and a release from her 'service.' He lingered to the side, detaching himself from warmth with its color still left on his cheeks. "If you're my friend, I want to be yours."

I want, I want, I want.

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[Chodayu]

Breaths that flutter. He's a rabbit, quivering under the storm. In his eyes, in his shoulders, and in his breaths, Chodayu catches a song. One of broken strings, pegs tuned out of sync. And how they flutter; those words of his, echoing the need for permission — as though a boy is capable of carrying sin like a man. The weight of which settles upon Chodayu's shoulder is proof that a boy — that he is not. And yet, the gardenia moves as though it believes otherwise. He's a rabbit thanking her for offering him a leaf to protect him from the blizzard.

"It's more than okay," she delivers words in hushed form. Whispers them to the top of his crown. And she remembers to run her fingers over the soft of his mane, weaving through locks in her own hopes of offering what she knows best to offer. Lets him decide the length of the moment and shifts the weight of her hair to her other shoulder when he resurfaces from her side.

And then, just like that — a sharp tinge. An ache, a needle jabs at her side. And another thought floats a warning, so she quickly decides: "of course." (Spider webs settle behind tar.)

"I'd be grateful to have some like you as my friend, Kiseki-kun."



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