Private Autumnal Acquaintances (Req Kiseki)

[Yuki Michiko]

Michiko, being of the Yuki bloodline, was used to the chill of living in the mountains where Kumo was built. However, she had recently learned of a hot springs located in The Nimbus Delectatio and, of course, her curiosity took over. She didn't have much money to her name, but a soak in a hot spring sounded divine. So she scrounged up what little bit that she had, made her way over to the hot springs, and paid her way in. The building was much larger and nicer than anything that she was used to, so she quickly became overwhelmed when one of the employees led her through to where the changing rooms were. He had told Michiko that the springs were split between male, female, and co-ed baths and pointed to the doors that led to each of them before heading back to the front desk.

Blushing profusely, Michiko quickly undressed and wrapped herself in a towel, before heading for the door to the female springs (little did she know, she had approached the co-ed baths). As she stepped out, the steam clouded up around her, wrapping her body like a warm blanket. She let out a sigh of relief as she stepped down into the spring, letting the water reach her chin, before wading over to one of the walls where she lay her head back and looked up at the beautiful sky above. Autumn was one of her favorite holidays, if only because it meant that winter was right around the corner. Hot chocolate and cider would be coming soon, snowball fights at the Academy (she hoped), and perhaps she would even have some friends to do winter activities with like building a snowman! Her eyes slowly drift closed as she envisions all of this, not realizing that there were other people joining her in the springs.

 

[Akane Kiseki]

The chill nipped at Kiseki's skin and ears under every tide of the coming winter. It was almost feverish in the way it beguiled him to slip back under his blankets, away from the building cold, and remain hidden until the seasons had passed and flowers pocketmarked his walkway again. He liked autumn, truly - his favorite weather came from the end of year slush - but his fragile frame suffered at even the suggestion of the elements. Spring was the only season that didn't threaten his unstable existence with a new challenge -- and even then, he looked so small when wet from rain.

He looked small even now, chewing the tip of his thumb with his chin nestled beneath his scarf. His t-shirt, his shorts, even the quilted fabric around his neck were slightly too big for a body still growing; or, even, one that hadn't started yet. His complexion resembled the snow that he tamped through to enter the awaiting hot springs resort. It was meant to be a treat - mission money from simple odd jobs that had tested his limits - but he saw it as more of an escape. A refuge. His body had been so, so cold lately. He needed a chance for warm heat to sear freezing 'til he returned to his natural tempo.

It was his lingering doubts about the effect of the hot springs on his skin - if cold hurt, how would fire temper its thinness? - that stalled him, but it was a deeper flame in his chest that willed his feet to carry him on regardless. He was a Ninja. He wasn't scared of a little temperature! ... He was a little scared of temperature, but a Ninja isn't supposed to be. Go on, little cat. Stride soft paws to haven.

He slipped into the co-ed baths without a thought - a natural disinterest in gender that came with small children - and stuttered out the softest "Pardon me," that had ever pealed from such pale lips. His skin was glaringly white under the warm lights, touching a toe at the water with a recoil that a seemed as if it should come with a hiss. He shook his head, took another breath, and sunk a foot slowly into the water opposite the girl's side -- grimacing comically the while. "I-I'm Kiseki ... Akane ... hhhaa ..."

 

[Yuki Michiko]

Michiko shot up in the water at the sound of another person entering the baths, surprised that there was anyone else out here this early in the day. She thought for sure that she would have some time alone before more people started flocking to the hot springs, but alas, that was not the case. As she looked up, a blush quickly took to her cheeks as she saw a boy dipping his toe into the water. She looked around, confused, wondering why in the world he was stepping into the girl's hot spring. But then her eyes traveled to the door behind him, and she quickly realized her mistake. She had taken the wrong door, and ended up in the co-ed hot springs instead. She'd never bathed with a boy before, and didn't really know the proper etiquette, so she settled for sinking down into the water until it touched her chin and waved a small hand at Kiseki.

"Hi... I'm Yuki Michiko, it's nice to meet you. Are you alright? You look a little pale, are you sure that getting in the hot springs is such a good idea? I mean, from what I understand, it's supposed to help circulation, so it could probably bring some color to your skin. But are you sure you aren't sick? I don't know what the Academy's attendance policy is like, but I don't want to get in trouble for missing too many days because I got sick. No offense! You seem like a nice person and all, just have to look out for myself first, ya know?"

 

[Akane Kiseki]

Concerned words that seemed to sail like arrows with a dull thud against the boy's thin chest. He wasn't quite emaciated - not genuinely malnourished, just a consistency similar - but there was still little in protection between sticks, stones, and his heart. He loosed a soft cough, brought about by the brutality of the small girl's honesty rather than any perceived sickness. "W-what?" was all shocked tones could muster as he collected himself, standing one foot sizzling in the water and the rest of him standing -- well, not quite tall, but at the very least exposed. The change in temperature was making him as dizzy as the girl's immediate read of him. He watched her disappear under the water until only a peering face remained, and he wondered briefly if this was how sailors felt before they were called to their doom.

"I. I'm not sick," he finally managed, flinching as another foot joined the first and the wisp of a boy seemed to all but evaporate in the heat. A red flush met white skin. Blood on the snow. "I'm sorry. I just -- uhm, I was born wrong, I guess? Haha." His voice was quiet, as if it might join the steam in floating away, but he still politely addressed her with what he could manage between the whirlwind of their circumstance. "Nice to meet you, Yuki-san. I -- I promise, I'm not sick. I'm just not very ...," he didn't want to say strong, embarrassed. His constitution was something he was working on! "I just don't handle the cold -" or heat "- very well. If you mind me joining you, I won't trouble your company. But ... uhm, you also go to the Academy, you said? We must be in different classes. I'm training to be a Shinobi, too." This was just another type, for him. He wavered between bashfulness and a need to be respectful, even to strange girls in hot springs who doled out harsh realities.

 

[Yuki Michiko]

Michiko immediately felt a wave of guilt wash over her as the boy before her began stumbling for words. Why did she immediately assume he was sick, and call him out like that?! Hadn't she learned her lesson about thinking before speaking? First she insulted her friend Sumi, then the blind woman at the hospital, and now this poor boy standing before her. Without thinking, she dunked her head under the water of the hot spring and let out a silent scream. What she wasn't planning on, however, was the water rushing down her throat and trying to force its way into her lungs. Popping back up out of the water, she started coughing and spluttering, feeling embarrassed that she had made such a stupid mistake as to swallow the water.

"I- I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you! I don't think you were born wrong at all! I believe that everyone was born exactly the way they were supposed to be, and that each person has their own unique set of skills that benefits them and the people around them. I totally get what you mean, if it weren't for my bloodline, I probably wouldn't handle the cold very well either! My father, he was always bundling up under several layers of clothes when the snow began to fell. Whereas me and my mother, well, we would go outside and play in pants and a long sleeve shirt! I never really thought much about it until my father died, and I learned of my abilities as a Yuki. Also, please, call me Michiko. Yuki-san is way too formal. How are you liking the Academy so far?! I love the Taijutsu classes, but Genjutsu goes in one ear and out the other. I just can't wrap my head around it, and it just feels so dishonest. Taking over someone's senses like that feels like a violation that just makes my skin crawl."

 

[Akane Kiseki]

Spiderwebs of infinite possibilities from the refraction of one motion - Kiseki, half-leaned into the hotspring water, with shocked hands splayed out in front of him to both dismiss Michiko's concerns and worry towards her hiding away. A bolder Kiseki might have jumped over to help her after she started sputtering; and a bolder Kiseki still wouldn't have minded the searing heat picking at his submerged feet, exposed legs, and the idea of fully drenching that boundary in order to act on that concern. A modern Kiseki, however, found himself frozen between wisps of steam, shell-shocked from the reaction and following fallout the poor girl stumbled into. "I-it's okay, really!" He squeaked, wobbling in his half-step until he began to imperceptibly sink.

"You're really nice, Yuki-san. I-I didn't mean anything in a bad way -- uhm, maybe saying I was born wrong sounded too harsh? I'm just a little ... uh ... haha." He almost motioned to himself, but even he had enough sense to melt in with the misty room. "I just have ... some ... muscle issues, and I'm overcoming them! Thank you for the perspective, though. I don't really mind how I am. I just want to - h-how would you say this - I want to make the world okay for people who are born like me. So I'm becoming a Shinobi anyway."

He listened to her with a keen ear, despite its reddening and the nervous way he shifted in his awkward standing position between getting into and staying out of the water. He was still, just so very slightly, losing ground. "I don't think I've ever met anyone from the Yuki clan before, but I've heard really good things. Kumogakure's better for you being here. Thank you for everything your Clan has done, u-uhm ...," ah, he struggled with the waning informality. "M... Micchan." Every time. It stumbled from shy lips and hazy thoughts before he could catch it. He just had such a hard time addressing people that weren't his family or childhood imaginary friends without honorifics - it always came back to childish naming schemes! "M-Michiko!"

It only got harder. She threw a lot of information at him, this cat in the headlights. "I'm sorry about your dad, Miccha-- Michiko. Your parents sound lovely. Mine are really good to me, too, but we're not clan-affiliated. We're just farmers. It makes the Academy life really exciting --" Oh. Genjutsu was the only field of being a Shinobi he at all specialized in. Something between a grimace and a scare, twitching fingers lost to a moment of silence and the balance at the edge of his step slipping--

Ah.

He fell in.

Splash! went the memory of Kiseki Akane, but the disturbance was - at his expense - not terribly big. It was more the flailing that came with it -- and the girlish yips that accompanied grasping hands of white to find a ledge he could yank his head and thin shoulders back out of the water from. "OUR RAIKAGE IN HEAVEN."

 

[Yuki Michiko]

Michiko smiled up at Kiseki after she got her sputtering under control, listening intently as he described why he was becoming a Shinobi. "Oh, if you have muscle issues, I'd be more than happy to help you train your body! I love Taijutsu and working out and things like that, so I could definitely help you develop some muscle tone! I think that's a wonderful reason to be in the Academy. Representation of various peoples is the best way to show others that they can do whatever they want."

She watched as Kiseki hesitated on the steps, as if afraid to step further into the water. She simply cocked her head as he kept talking, nodding along. "Well, I wouldn't say that I'm really a member of the Yuki Clan. My mother came from Water Country, actually, so I don't have any relatives here. I've never really thought to reach out to the other Yuki Clan members around the village to see if our roots can be traced back here or not." Michiko blushed a little bit, ducking back under the water. She was actually afraid that if she did approach anyone in the village, that she would be rejected because her mother wasn't from here. She wasn't quite sure how tight knit the clans were in Kumo, so she just kept to herself instead. When Kiseki stumbled over her name, she laughed cheerfully and her eyes lit up. "Micchan! I love that! What a cute nickname!"

Michiko's heart felt heavy when Kiseki told her that her parents sounded lovely, an ache that had never quite gone away since they had passed. She didn't mind talking about them, because as long as their memory was out there, then they were still alive somehow. But it didn't ease the pain of their loss. "Well, actually, my parents are-" She yelps as Kiseki falls into the hot springs, rushing forward to try and help pull him back up when the boy surfaces and cries out. She tries and fails to stifle a laugh, moving closer to the ledge that he had used to pull himself up out of the water. "Are you alright? That was quite the splash you took!"

MFT: 366

 

[Akane Kiseki]

"That ... that could be really nice, actually, Yuki-s - Micch - Michiko ... san." His poor little eyes were spirals of blue, the whirlwind of the girl an enjoyable experience but one his atrophied social skills had to fight to keep up with. "I don't move very well, and I have a hard time circulating chakra through my limbs, so I sort of rely on ... well, I came up with something else. It's silly, but I could show you sometime? Maybe we could ... uhm, how would you put it ... soundboard off of each other?" A breath at lasting through the interaction and the following one, even if his coming doom was foretold by fate. "Oh! I'm sorry, I didn't think ... I don't know a lot about Clan culture or bloodlines. I shouldn't have assumed you all - uhm - know each other?" Was he racist? "It could be fun, though, to see if you could find anyone else that shares your experiences. Maybe you could ask your mom? You might end up with a lot of friends and family members you'd never known about!"

He shook his arms in optimism, beaming at her even through the tempo his body seemed to naturally vibrate at. Cold, hot, nervous, cracking, excited -- something so small shouldn't handle so many sensations. It was overwhelming. Well, that's probably just what puberty was like for everyone. Atlantean eyes soon after fell beneath the foam as white struck shocked features, catching up to his arms and panting frame at the edge of the spring. He couldn't pull himelf out all the way; halfway in the water and halfway in the steam, gasping at every juncture, but gratefully accepting Michiko's help in finding a bit more ground. "G-goodness gracious Raikage Almighty," he continued, glancing up at the little girl. Kindred in that moment - so very simple.

He laughed. It happened slow, startled, but it continued in giggled pealing to continue off of her own. Within moments he was hugging himself and laid along the rim of the spring, one foot submerged, shaking with giddiness that overtook the rest of his concerns and troubles. It was so innocent, without purpose, joy for the sake of joy from the heart of it. "I'm so sorry. Ahahaha. I'm so sorry! Hahaha --," he was pleading between his fits, palming across his eyes to wipe water off white brows and shake out the sopping of his hair. He looked so scraggly, wet. The image in his mind only made him laugh harder. It almost seemed like his frame shouldn't be able to make a sound so boisterous, pitched but powerful. "You're really nice, Micchan. I'm sorry. Hahaha. I don't do new experiences very often. And that's funny! Because most experiences for me are!" It wasn't self-deprecating: that wouldn't be funny. It was, however, bluntly honest, and he just found that rioting. Just like Michiko. "Uhm, oh my god. Hahaha. Goodness. Okay, haha. Okay. Let's get back in the water. I'm okay. Hh - ha. I'm okay. I'm so sorry."

And with that, he began to slip away into the spring, whining in a keen just barely muffled by his throat. The most helpless, sopping cat, determined and mirthful.

 

[Yuki Michiko]

Michiko perked up at the idea of seeing the technique that Kiseki had developed. She hadn't really met anyone that used alternative methods before, and was really curious to see what the boy had come up with. She nodded eagerly as he mentioned soundboarding off each other, more than happy to provide her input and ideas. But when he mentioned the other members of the Yuki Clan and her mother, her face fell for a moment before she quickly schooled her expression. "I'd love to do that together some time! I'm always interested in learning more about people and different techniques, especially if it is something that you came up with yourself! Who knows, perhaps there are others like you that could utilize it! Perhaps together we could even find a way to incorporate this technique for all kinds of people, not just those that have difficulty circulating chakra! You never know, it could be a groundbreaking new technique that changes the way shinobi utilize their own chakra! Also don't worry about it! I've never really been worried about not knowing the other Yuki in the village, but it might not be a bad idea to meet some others. They could help me to hone my skills, and teach me any other techniques that my mother never got the chance to teach me..."

Michiko quickly covered up her sorrow by joining in with Kiseki's laughter. She felt guilty at first, for laughing at the poor boy, but as his own laughter grew, she could no longer contain it. Joy bubbled up out of her, and she wondered if this is what it was like to have a friend. She of course knew a lot of people, as she frequently wandered the streets and got to know various vendors and regulars in the entertainment district. But she had never simply sat back and laughed with someone like this before, carefree and fun. "I totally know what you mean! I don't normally try new things, either, but I decided on a whim to check out the hot springs today. I overheard someone talking about it, and thought it would be a nice break from my usual routine. I have to say, it has definitely lived up to the expectations that I had and then some! I'm so glad that you decided to step out of your comfort zone today and came out here! It's been really fun meeting you." She smiles at Kiseki and finds a shelf along the edge of the hot spring, sitting down and letting the water flow up over her shoulders and up to her chin, ducking under the water until it was nearly covering her nose. She childishly blew some bubbles before dissolving into laughter again, throwing her head back and looking up into the beautiful clear sky overhead.

 

[Akane Kiseki]

He was a wreck - shaking, hiccuping - in the heat of the springs, a red to his complexion previously unseen; as if monochroma was burnt away by a new splash of passion. He was a mess. He was a very happy, very silly, very excitable mess. He pawed weakly at the edge of the water, his back turned to its open so he could cling to the steps, and looked from his shoulder to Michiko while she displayed a much higher level of tolerance & skill than he. He couldn't help but laugh. He never really stopped, as long as they talked - it was an undercurrent to his soft little tone, as if every word could jump up after spoken into a joyful room.

His slight form lent well to slipping beneath the folds of steam, a pale shoulder trembling at a slower pace as he surely, yet glacially, adjusted to the temperature. It did not come easy. There was always this bite to his skin - inside, along his forearms and within his chest - as if the cold was inescapable. As if the season had infected him in some strange, wicked way, begging him to succumb to snowfall and escape from this little hearth. He didn't heed it. He offered only a sliver of a smile on a strained expression, eyes branded with light and mirth that kept itself a place the frost couldn't reach. "You're ... you're a really funny person, M-Micchan. You speak your mind really easily. I ... uhm, I really respect that. It's harder for me. It's ... well, it's not that I don't know what to say, I just have a harder time putting it to words. It can feel hard to talk at the ... the same level, as other people. I don't always keep up." His breathing was soft, not so much sad as contemplative. His arms hung out of the pool and crossed to prop up his head on the ledge, looking up with her to watch stars twinkle back at them. They were almost as bright. "It's like you always have something to say and know you want to say it. I want to be like that. I-I think it's been really fun meeting you, too! I'm really glad I did."

"Maybe things are ... hard, sometimes, and we don't always know everybody we want to know, but, uhm -- if you want, I can be your friend, too. You can always have someone to talk... to ...," he was shying the more he spoke, head ducking deeper until his chin brushed a ripple and he hissed. "Ack! I'm just trying to say I think you're really cool! I'd love to train with you, and talk, and try out new things like this! Maybe we really could groundbreak being Shinobi together." A bubble of his own. A wrinkle of his nose, the pink of his cheeks not from the vapors that clung to them. "Maybe help make a world that doesn't ... maybe that's just," he didn't know how to broach this - his exclusion, her parents - but he spoke his heart the same. "A softer world. That's all. Like this."

He waved his arms to indicate their little abode, smiling over. "If that's okay. You have a friend in me, Micchan."