Kirijo is gaudy and unnecessarily fixated on numbers in bank accounts, the number of zeroes she’s had for the right amount of time – she spends her money on vacation homes, and if they were better, if they couldn’t feel their heels press into the soles of their stiff shoes and feel how it roots them from ankle to knee, maybe they’d have the time to laugh ( never enough time, never enough time to talk or laugh or think of something other than their next action – planning, but never acting, keeping others here, their thoughts are so confusing ) about it. The air inside is too clean, and there are too many mirrors down every hall, letting too many thoughts come with too many chances to look at oneself and ask if this is what they want. They’ve considered Rise thinks this is routine, if it wasn’t like the summers of their last year or the special place she could hide in when the world got too loud and static became a friend – they’ve considered, that Rise doesn’t have the dreadful excitement in her stomach, and doesn’t feel the same kind of conclusion they do.
Shinjiro knows it isn’t peace. Not the good kind of peace.
She’s sunshine through a window’s crack and full of words the moment she gets enough air, lighting herself up like she’s doing herself a favour – it’s a better change, they feel, think, because it calms the restlessness inside them, water over wound, hand over hand. Opening the door allows the fog in, curling around their ankles and draping itself over them like a languid presence ( something with its own thoughts, or the arms of another that can control it – for all they long to fall to its clutch, Shinjiro can’t say the understand the fog as much as they should. ) that waits on their every movement. “Wasn’t waiting for all. Glad you found the place on your own.”
Mitsuru would be ashamed of them, and it doesn’t hurt them to acknowledge that. Three years ago, and they kept their habits to themself, hiding how much they knew for the sake of a better dorm. Trust is different, now – it comes easier, even though those who earn it are few. But they feel – know, Mitsuru would not appreciate their efforts to reverse what she wants to call progress. She is a good woman. She will never understand what pulls in their core, nor what feels taken from them – she will not, and neither will Akihiko, and neither will anyone that tries to support them. They find the wrong alternative to what they need. There is no alternative. For Shinjiro, there is only one solution.
“It’s – just gonna be us, right? I don’t want to get others wrapped up in this. Feels like it’d be more of a group thing – don’t really want that.”
"As if I could miss this place! You're right, you know, it's showy even by my standards. Isn't that wild?"
Her laughter glitters the smog, slides along her arms and over the threshold of their temporary rooms uninvited (but not, really, the mimicry of western vampire myths belied its honesty by the simple scythe-cut of them against the early morning silver; inviting, inviting, arms spread wide in their eyes even as their hands hunch back into their pockets - if she were a monster come to split them open clean and spit the fat from their ribs she'd never have to even open her mouth, the force they press themselves against any danger deep enough to swallow them for once and for all) as she wraps her slender fingers around Shinjiro's wrist and tug them out into the chill proper. Her hands are cold and thin and she knows it well, but matched pulse-to-pulse with their own it's apparent that despite her best efforts it is a healthy measure for a girl her size. Shinjiro's bones roll like ball bearings in damp cloth, clammy and alarming enough that it almost shakes the webs clean from the corners of her smile and replaces it with true worry.
(Not quite, though. Not enough to push her clean from the pillar she balances on, to tuck the wind away from out of her hair and the sick light from her eyes, not enough that she considers letting go and turning them back in - turning them both in, keeping her friend from finding an end she remembers dreaming of.)
"Don't be so nervous," she chirps, spinning carefully around them until they've been sufficiently herded away from the door
(not that they need bullying into this, not that they need any reason to act that she could possibly carry with her and set into motion; but she's a piece of performance art even in her own secret silences and she knows the value of appearances here, the indelible weight of her enthusiasm at their back all the way up to the screen)
and tucking her weight against their rattling shiver, "I remember what you said! And, besides, the only person I'd want to bring beside us is senpai, which definitely isn't happening. Don't get me wrong! He's - he's amazing, but I think maybe he wouldn't quite understand what we're doing the way it needs to be understood?”
- and that's true in its own way, her heart fluttering at the thought of it, his gentle derision six steps away from ugly animal instinct as they need it; as people like the two shrouded in the mists reach for and listen to in their times of need. He'd ask his questions and he'd watch them with static eyes and he'd see it neat and laid out as any chemical equation or origami pattern, something to turn over in his hands but never listen to with his heart. It would break the suspension of their disbelief - of their real belief, the secret-shared atmosphere that grew between them such a short time ago.
It wouldn't stop Shinjiro from acting, or even stutter their step in that direction, but it would rob them of a certain simple unspoken dignity. She can't make them better, and she can't undo what was taken from them, and she doesn't know that she'd move to find out if given the chance no matter how well she understands the shape of their ragged wound. But she can do this. She can give them this.
“Not without being told, anyway, and we're far too busy to deal out tutorials at this late stage! Why, the game is basically over already. No, no, cross my heart, it'll be just the two of us and whatever that special place decides you've earned! So there’s nothing we need to wait about for, unless you’ve forgotten something?"
titsay
