Though he had a more or less straightforward answer for Ryosuke’s first inquiry, vocalising it was, to say the least, problematic under his current conditions; said conditions being terror, dread, horror, and any abbreviations, lengthenings, or synonyms for roughly the same flavour of sentiment. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the fear that this boy’s careful glower roused in him was an ardent one indeed. Though the set of his face was admittedly lost on Juzou as he approached, his scowl was of the full-body kind, from the sharp lines of his silhouette in the door frame to the dark haughtiness with which his strides cut across the kitchen floor.
There was something about him, Juzou realised, that reminded him of the one relative — for there was, with a distressing frequency, one — who was not only not unhappy to see the dead go, but welcomed the following proceedings only as a customary fanfare through which funds could be eventually distributed. There was the same impatience; the same lack of care for things that glowingly mattered. The difference in Ryosuke was that, from the fineness of his aspect, it seemed as though funds were at no great lack in his own life. That was where the metaphor, and Juzou’s estimation of the other boy’s goals, firmly stopped.
Needless to say, the truthful no Juzou had prepared died in his throat at the approach. When Ryosuke deigned to shove him, he yielded, though he briefly summoned the gall to look mildly offended. And there were those permeating words: Kill. Knives.
The shorter but infinitely more imposing boy still standing close (too close, and the brusqueness of his touch sickeningly lingered), Juzou timidly smoothed out the lines of his vest and conjured up his best look of disapproval. This stranger who had judged him guilty and not metaphorically pushed him around — there was something about him that reminded Juzou of all disturbers of the peace in the world.
“Y-You,” he finally muttered, shoulders and neck still not drawn straight as his eyes uncomprehendingly navigated the contours of Ryosuke’s face (mostly for effect, he’d admit). “You didn’t have to do that.”
A heady silence hung. Struck by the weight of his own ineffectuality, Juzou paled and found himself continuing to talk, despite himself. His words took on a light, appeasing tone — a coping mechanism that left him with more guilt than anything else, but an automatic and often effective one nonetheless.
“I’m sorry— I’m being terribly impolite here,” he blurted out, inclining his head with a chastened fright to the stranger. “Here you are, on guard for killers already, and I’m letting simple things like pride and manners get in the way!” Nervous as he was, he couldn’t help but exclaim the word manners with a certain vitriol towards the person who’d pushed him; it filled him with a sly kind of satisfaction, as small a victory (if even a victory) as it was, but mixed with guilt at the slight chance he really had taken him for a proper killer.
“The— the next time I open a drawer,” he added carefully, some part of him still perversely ready to get back but unwilling to undress his statements of all rue, “I’ll have to remember your concern for the others. W-Won’t I.”
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