lost in thought

i do not need doubts, you were pretending you didn't notice --- shsl electric bassist, tsukioka kazuya status; alive association; happy hope studio

[superbassist]

[shslfletcher]

sometimes for the greater good... || [hh reaction/starter] {{open}}

It was a real doozy, the whole mess with Haruka. Atieno wondered why they would cut the detective from the show, but he decided to keep it to himself. He found the fact that the siblings were finally being compromised was a good move by the directors, definitely something that would give the audience something to worry about. The way Koya took the fall for his sister… it was truly a saddening scene, very well thought out. 

It was almost too coincidental to him to find out that Kita Yasei was apparently his twin sister the day before the Nekodas were separated, and it was almost weird when it turned out that Yasei was also found dead not too long after the trial. It certainly was exciting though, and for the moment he wasn’t sure if it was all just another plot twist for the viewers or if it was real. The trial came quickly after and, of course, Atieno stuck to his methods. Although he wasn’t stellar at the whole trial deal, he tried his best to stick with everything. That is, until things turned for the worst and he found himself in a state of execution.

Cool! He always wanted to see how they pulled them off, after all! It was all rather exciting and there were no hard feelings. Except… He was pretty sure that he actually lost his right hand. And then the pain started and that was when he finally realized that maybe all of this was more serious than he first thought. And maybe Yasei really was his sister. And… 

Maybe Yasei actually was dead. And he’d never have the chance to tell her that maybe they had a lot more in common than they thought they did. 

It was certainly a challenge to get through the rest of the trial, he couldn’t focus on much aside from the pain that was going through his entire right arm. Things were a blur until Aihara Rin confessed, and that was the last nail in the coffin. Family was important to him, no one could blame him for that. He just wanted to make sure that nothing happened to any of them. He just wanted to keep everyone’s families safe.

"….But…. what about…. wha..t… about my family….?"

Atieno was not going to forgive Rin for killing, he didn’t think he ever could, but there was no point in holding grudges. He simply wished that maybe it was him instead. Maybe things would’ve been better that way.

He found himself sitting alone, thinking about the past trial, the past few trials, the past few weeks, everything that had happened. It finally caught up to him just how jaded he was. He didn’t even mourn people properly. He had no idea what to do, having to deal with the aftermath of everything all at once. His forehead rested against one of the pillars in the Mastermind’s throne room, a very particular one. Cross legged, hand in his lap, he silently leaned against the pillar with his sister’s image on it. His eyes were closed shut, deep in thought, his hand jittered, trying to find solace in the smooth texture of the ribbon on his boot. The rest of him was oddly still, oddly quiet, his cloaked silhouette was uncharacteristically closed off. After living through most of this game ignorant, he was hit hard, and now he didn’t know what to do to fix it.

[superbassist]

After the previous trial, Kazuya was finding out that aimless walking around was really helping a lot more than he thought it would. It was similar to his time in Shibuya, anyway - always going out with his friends... He wondered why he hadn't remembered that sooner. Maybe he was just lucky now that his sprained foot wasn't hurting anymore. And so, after another change of shirt, he walked - around the lower floors, around the courtyard, trying not to think about the people that once visited the area. Who knew - maybe he would run into someone while he was wandering, someone who he really needed to talk to.

...Which, in light of recent events, was probably everyone. Kazuya wondered how Kanna was doing; probably not too great, given how she'd looked at the second trial. And what about the others who had been seriously hurt - Yara and Atieno, to name a few? Halfheartedly hoping they didn't hold a grudge against what he'd said, he continued his somewhat-search. 

Not once did he approach the scenes of the crimes. 

After a while, he found himself at the staff room door he'd tried to force open just before Haruka's murder.  The one he remembered had been unlocked to them, all thanks to Koya. 

Lo and behold, it really was true; the presence of an elevator meant there was one last floor to descend into! Stepping inside with curiosity, Kazuya supposed he'd check the place out. The others could have been down here this whole time, anyway, looking around for... what? Clues? He'd never actually looked at the map to see what was down there.

When he opened the door to the Mastermind's Throne Room, Kazuya had at first recoiled back out of the door, paying no mind to the room's actual contents. Damn, was it dark in there! ...Or dim, anyway. Whatever bastard had built this for themselves had some sick pleasure in making the lights look dramatic. Taking a deep breath, he supposed it... wasn't that dark... maybe. And so he peered in again, and the second time he thought he saw a hunched-over figure in the room. A very tall one, in fact.

...Atieno?!

Oh, man, he looked terrible; hunched over, uncharacteristically troubled. As expected when your sister dies and you lose a hand for it, he supposed. Kazuya scratched his head, feeling guilty about helping him lose said hand. Of course he wanted to apologize, but could he call out for Atieno like he called Rin that time? It was so dimly lit in there. 

Eventually he'd decided that he needed to toughen up enough to try. From the door, he called in a hesitant voice toward the grieving fletcher by the pillar.

"Matsui-kun? ...Hello?"

[superbassist]

[rinaihara-blog]

Nighttime Echoes // Kazuya

[rinaihara-blog]

Rin didn’t answer right away. He dipped his head, focussing on his glove for a moment, his hair spilling down over his shoulder and into his lap. How did one even respond to that? It went against everything that was going on in his head - even if it was a positive assurance, it was still strange. Would a simple thank you suffice?

Had Rin really gone so long without needing to thank someone?

"I… appreciate your kind words, Tsukioka-shi," was what he decided to in the end, his voice quiet and hesitant, "I understand that Tatsu-shi was scared, yet…" Yet things said in the heat of the moment were often truest, were they not? Things said without pause to check and make sure they were not offensive laid bare the true thoughts of the mind. But he didn’t say this out loud. The words never found their way to his vocal chords.

"Ah, but- being a bassist has nothing to do with how much you know, Tsukioka-shi. Not to say that your talent is not valid, of course. Though I have not heard your work I am certain that you can easily compare to everyone else here in terms of skill.

"And… I believe you have a good soul. You have been nothing but kind and courteous here." Unlike Rin, apparently. Maybe it would be better for Kazuya to go before he somehow got polluted.

…Shit, Rin was so negative today. Maybe he should sleep, it was probably late.

[superbassist]

It didn't take a genius to know that people didn't usually feel better after only one thing was said to them. Still, it was good to get that out there. Hearing what he said next caused him to smile again, the self-deprecating undertones in his last chuckle absent this time. He'd half expected a cold answer, like Sayuri chose to give, but hey - different strokes, different folks.

Wait a minute. "Good soul"? Now that was what he didn't expect. Not that he thought himself far from one - in fact he'd been sure he was somewhere in the middle. It was just a rare thing to hear. Not that the circumstances they were in were exactly common, either.

"You seriously think so? ...Thanks."

After a moment, Kazuya yawned and stood up, stretching his limbs and feeling them crack - did he just seriously yawn? He had to get back to his room. If Kazuya kept them any longer here, it'd just get harder to return. Oh god, he'd taken it easy, but now the thought of making the trip was unnerving him again. No, as long as he remembered the least intimidating route, he'd be fine. ...He hoped.

"Whew. I seriously need to head to bed. Keep what I said in mind, alright, Aihara-san? See ya."

After nodding at the seated archer, he walked off, pace increasing drastically by the time he got back into the building. 

[superbassist]

[rinaihara-blog]

Nighttime Echoes // Kazuya

[rinaihara-blog]

Ah, that was the question of the hour. He supposed it would come around eventually. All of the others had heard the tirade and no doubt most of them agreed with Ryou. And why shouldn’t they? It was true, to the point that Rin agreed. 

"…Yes, I have been thinking about Tatsu-shi’s words," he admitted with a sigh, "They have been plaguing me since they were spoken." He paused, shook his head slowly. "But I need not bother you with my own conflicts."

It was so strange. Rin had never before been so deeply affected by another person’s words. Then again, he had spent so much of his life ignoring and avoiding other people. Maybe he just wasn’t used to dealing with people. Maybe that was why he’d been such a fuck-up lately.

[superbassist]

So he was right. He pursed his lips, looking back out to the shadowy courtyard (and back, before the darkness of the place unnerved him again.) Kazuya himself had been loath to admit that either he or Sayuri deserved to be executed - no one in the entire class deserved that, not even the ones already subject to such a fate. If he'd had to pick in completely different circumstances, he'd have... no, there was no point mulling that over. 

Either way, it didn't seem like Rin was the kind to like admitting to these things. He was at least somewhat surprised that he'd been feeling down in the first place. But that was fine too. He relaxed slightly, a small smile on his face showing in that moment. 

"Hey, don't sweat it. That's why I asked."

Kazuya had doubts about what to tell him. It was silly, but it would bother him if he didn't say anything - the guy was clearly not alright. Someone else could say it was... dangerous, but he didn't like thinking that way.

"Listen, this... might not even mean shit since it's me saying it. But you're cool, alright? You shouldn't have to die faster than anyone else here, Aihara-san. I think Tatsu-kun said all that because he was scared, you know? I'd be too."

 He chuckled dryly and gave a shrug. 

" ...But what do I know? I'm just a bassist to the side."

[superbassist]

[rinaihara-blog]

Nighttime Echoes // Kazuya

[rinaihara-blog]

Rin’s hands were clasped on his lap. He appeared calm once more, seated in a good posture for meditation, and his face and body were still. His internal state, however, was betrayed by those hands, fiddling gently with the archery gloves he always wore, the thin, sturdy black leather gloves that exposed the ring and little fingers on his right hand. He picked absently at the seam along the edge that looped between his fingers. Normally he didn’t fidget, but that day had been anything but normal.

Slowly he nodded after Kazuya’s explanation, dipping his head gently downward and then back up again, a slight motion.

"I was…" What was the right verb here? "Thinking. The trial has given me quite a lot to think about." The understatement of the century, of course. "I was practising my archery to take my mind off of it all, but that has not proven to be an effective calming mechanism today."

[superbassist]

Kazuya was sure that the trial had most certainly given everyone something to think about. The bassist would've liked to believe he was done thinking, but that wasn't going to cut it anymore. Hell, here he was thinking again, about Ryou's exact words - impossible to forget, even for the one with the most terrible memory in the studio. And how could he? The guy had been yelling most of his tirade.

"You too, huh? Most of my time was spent thinking and walking. Not that it helped much."

And crashing into walls, but that could be left unmentioned. Most of his time was spent playing the ever-futile blame game; whose fault was it really that last trial stung so badly? It was the lousy poll's fault for choosing Ryou, it was his fault for bringing it up, it was everyone's fault for voting wrong, it was everyone's fault for pushing Amane over the edge--

At the end of the day he'd decided it was ultimately the robots' fault. Or were they just what his go-to scapegoats were, what he wanted so badly to believe? After a moment of awkward silence, he spoke again.

"...Hey, uh."

Kazuya hesitated, biting his lip. Saying what he wanted to say would be a challenge. Obviously nobody was in top form right now, so he couldn't ask if he was okay. He sighed, and continued.

"Were you thinking about what Tatsu-kun said? I...figured you might've been, since you sounded kinda tired when I got here. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's alright if you were."

[rinaihara-blog]

Nighttime Echoes // Kazuya

[rinaihara-blog]

Rin sighed, more like an audible exhale than a full out puff of exasperation or anything.

"No, you are not interrupting," he said to Kazuya, "There- there was nothing for you to interrupt in the first place."

He unfolded his legs and stood up. He stretched, arching backward, core muscles allowing him to bend back like a drawn bow, his ponytail dangling close to the floor - and audibly his hips and back popped, prompting a mild frown from the boy. Just how long had he been sitting there? Perhaps longer than he had though. What time was it? Not that it particularly mattered here, he supposed. 

His body satisfied by the stretch, he sat back down into a new position, resting on his shins with his feet tucked under him.

"What brings you out here so late?" Rin asked, as though he himself weren’t also outside at a questionably advanced hour.

[superbassist]

At least he didn't seem to mind company. That made things all the easier, but only caused Kazuya to wonder what, exactly, he'd been doing in the first place. Just like Rin was wondering right now about him, apparently. He explained himself while obscuring the truth just a little bit. Not that it mattered, though - absolutely everyone could see through his transparent facade now that they knew of his secret.

"Funny story about that. I... was out all day, and before I knew it it was getting, well, dark. So I left, and then I got totally lost in the courtyard till I saw those lamps here, y'know?"

He chuckled nervously, slouch evident in the way he was sitting cross-legged. The key necklace hung loosely around his neck still - it was a wonder he hadn't taken it off yet, considering how useless it was compared to a watch. At least the necklace had worked in its original purpose: to never be misplaced. Kazuya fiddled with it while he asked the same question to Rin in return.

"How about you? You mind me asking what you were up to?"

For all he knew, maybe there was no real reason. Still, he couldn't help but ask.

[rinaihara-blog]

Nighttime Echoes // Kazuya

[rinaihara-blog]

A new voice suddenly appeared, breaking Rin’s half-assed attempts to shut out the reverberating noise of the trial. He immediately felt a bolt of frustration at the interruption, but at the same time, a little relieved. Maybe conversation would help.

But then, for a moment, he regretted sitting out here so late. Though his eyes were closed, he knew it was dark, and that it would be hard to make out the newcomer. He hadn’t expected anyone else to be out here. They were all smarter than that.

Or maybe it was someone here to kill him. He didn’t think it would happen so soon after a trial but he could be wrong. And would that be such an entirely disagreeable thing? …No, perhaps not.

Well, with a little hesitation, he opened his eyes to see Kazuya looking up at him. He did not answer immediately; words were always hard, but in this state they were especially so.

After a few moments, he finally answered, “Yes, it is I. Good evening, Tsukioka-shi.” The words were said hoarsely and quietly, as if Rin’s voice had fallen out of practice. He shifted in his posture slightly, but remained seated.

[superbassist]

Ugh, his feet had had enough. Kazuya decided to sit down a little ways away from where Rin was. The place was no chair, but it'd do. He let out a deep exhale, wondering why he hadn't thought to rest earlier. ...Had he? Surely he'd have to, he just didn't remember when.

"Right, right, evening...Sorry, am I interrupting something? I, uh, y'see, this seemed like a great place to sit down..."

His slightly-tremulous tone was now in part also due to his late realization - he'd been so subtly terrified preoccupied that he'd practically invited himself in. He was just so bad at this 'tact' deal that it seemed to be a near impossible concept to grasp now, but at least he knew he had at least enough to hold back on talking about the trial. Especially given the things Ryou had said about him, and the way he'd heard how his voice had sounded... tired. For now, until the time was right - or Rin indicated otherwise - small talk would be the best distraction for both of them.

Oh no, but what if he really was interrupting something, and he'd just sat down like a fool? That would be too embarrassing! He'd outright avoid passing through the Noir District whenever he had to leave, he knew that. Just a straight-up sprint into the elevator would do the trick, culminating in another dash directly into his room. The district was like a mini ghost town now. It only unnerved him all the more; he'd read ghost stories about empty apartment floors before, and being haunted by the deceased neighbors? Haha, no thanks!

...It was best that he decided it was all stuff he could worry about later. 

[aimupostusongs]

Visit Original Link

ドーナツホール covered by そらる Original: ドーナツホール Music & Lyrics & Movie: ハチ

[rinaihara-blog]

Nighttime Echoes // Rxn+Open; Kazuya

[♪♪♪]

It was just a constant reverberation. Ryou’s final words at the trial kept pinging in Rin Aihara’s mind. Kill Sayuri or Rin or someone who didn’t care about the kid’s life! Kill someone who led him to want to end his own damn life! One of those dishonourable pieces of shit!

kill Rin

dishonourable piece of shit

kill Rin

kill Rin

This was his fault, wasn’t it? Rin had voted to send Natsuhiko into the nightmare room. He had voted for him on the first day of the motive. Rin had driven him to suicide.

Maybe Rin should be dead. He hadn’t known Ryou well but he knew that he had been a kind person. He had returned Rin’s bow, after all, and he had been invested in making sure Rin wasn’t using it for malicious purposes. That had to count for something, didn’t it? Ryou was a good person and Rin had sent someone to their death.

kill Rin

Besides, what had Rin done here so far? He’d kept to himself, and argued wiht people, and that was it. He’d done nothing to improve morale, or to try to stop the murders, or anything productive. Maybe he should be dead.

Meditation wasn’t helping. It was well into the night and Rin was sitting at the top of the temple steps, cross-legged, trying to make Ryou’s voice go away. Kill Rin kill Rin kill Rin it was just an unceasing echo. His bow and arrows lay beside him; he had tried shooting to take his mind off of things but when he raised the bow, his fingers had trembled so much he had just known he was going to miss and he couldn’t bear the thought of missing a shot. So he had resorted to this. And it just wasn’t working.

He had been sitting there for well over an hour and nothing. The voice was still there. Still echoing. And it wouldn’t go away.

[superbassist]

Following the conclusion of the trial, the incidents had gotten to a point where not even the routine shower-rest strategy had calmed Kazuya down. Another change of shirt and he was out again, wandering about who knows where. He knew he probably had to stay in his room till his foot was completely fine, but his legs were itching to go somewhere. It was to the point where he didn't really mind if he tripped. 

He'd made a sandwich for himself in the kitchen at some point during his time, but the bread only tasted plain. He hadn't been paying attention to the taste; he'd been too busy thinking about the trial, the deaths, the sheer unfairness of it all. It was a pain to admit, but perhaps the damn robot was right. Kazuya indirectly killed someone - choosing Amane, as much as he still harbored some dislike, had caused his death. He hadn't signed up for this questioning of his morality, and to take orders from the guy who personally killed Yukie and kicked it all off was the absolute worst thing of all.

The wall made itself his enemy - with his head bowed down as he walked aimlessly, collisions were frequent. For once he was thankful his bandmates weren't here.

When he'd finally become aware of the time, the lights had gotten dim. Realizing it was nighttime, Kazuya quietly left the basement; even through all of this he still couldn't shake that feeling of fear whenever the dark started becoming more prevalent. A ghost, or a monster... or someone else out to assault him... all three ideas terrified him. He had to walk faster, but his feet wouldn't allow for it, to his chagrin. The courtyard was worse, with him wandering lost in the area. Why did it have to be so dark in this fake "outside?" Lights by the temple were his saving grace, and to his surprise Rin was there, eyes closed, seeming troubled. Or perhaps that was just a trick of the light.

"A-Aihara-san? Is that you?"

He bit his lip. Why did he have to stutter? It struck him too late that maybe the archer would be annoyed for his interruption, but... he didn't want to just go back to his room. Call him a child, but the dark was just a little more bearable if lights and people he knew were around.

[superbassist]

ch5 outfit! 

[superbassist]

[superbassist]

a broken string; reaction/open

"Wh...what is...?"

When Kazuya and Rin had assisted Yara in pushing the door open, he'd smelled smoke but heard nothing past the crackles of the smoldering whatever-it-was in there. It was almost like something out of a visual kei music video, but none of these effects were supervised. The bright light in front of him was nothing to marvel at, nor was the sight of the barely-visible hand. 

He stared straight ahead, dazed, till the sprinklers' cold water woke him up to the exact situation. Monty's robotic, happy-go-lucky voice wasn't helping matters at all. It was most likely in the bot's programming to be this inappropriately glad, and he cursed at both the robot and whichever bastard was responsible for it.

...God, his glasses got drenched, too. He hated having to wipe his glasses with his hands, but droplets of water were already obstructing his vision. And then Monty uttered the words "two bodies".

Two?

He had only seen the first body inside that piece of shit horse! Who else could have died? Kazuya frantically looked around the area until his blood ran cold at the blurry sight of the second corpse. Wait, those colors looked awfully familiar... 

"B...Bando-kun?!"

Hurriedly putting his glasses back on confirmed it. This was indeed the same person who'd tried to kill him, and she'd ended up dead first. Despite himself, Kazuya chuckled at how weird that thought was. Had it been disbelief? His mind was so scrambled that he wasn't sure.

"C-come on, that's low. Just getting attacked like that..."

Whatever loose ends they'd had would remain loose forever. He'd been so intent on comforting her somehow. Yet here he was, with drenched hair and soaked clothes, crouching beside the dead kabuki actress with a feeling of muted horror. No, he realized it already: since the days of the third case, Kazuya hadn't done or said a thing about it. He'd just shaken it off like the passive guy he was and hoped she would brave it alone, and even when he'd seen her just a few hours ago, she'd...!

...A realization came to him like a rude awakening. It didn't have to do with not knowing anyone enough to dislike them. This was the real consequence of disconnection, of just letting things slide forever. If he was gonna step back like this all the time, nothing would change. People would die, whether he liked it or not. He'd only been complaining and missing his bandmates the entire time, to her especially, and he'd never done anything about that either!

So Kazuya stood up, sighed, and made a decision. Starting now, going with the flow wasn't good enough. He couldn't stand back and let the brainiacs find the answer for him anymore. Looking down at Yukie, he was sure of it: he'd do his best this time, or make a fool of himself trying.

[ironbornforge-blog]

winter is coming [kazuya]

In some ways, it came as no surprise that this motive was fear. Even when the twenty-two of them had hardly known one another, the Director had seen fit to play on the insecurities and inequalities between them: a bullet, an unloaded gun, footage of their homes, and the promise of safety in submission. So, in the shadow of actual interaction, it seemed only natural that their mutual mistrust would be exploited within the same basic framework.

Could a knight allow themselves to feel fear? Perhaps the better question was whether a true knight felt fear at all. Unfortunately for all parties involved, Yara was not any kind of knight — and if her inclination towards the recklessness side of the caution scale made her slightly more amenable to setting aside the thought of Monty’s room, the thought of voting for its future visitors still starkly terrified her. 

“What in the Seven…?" Yara muttered under her breath, belatedly enough that she still failed to pierce the quiet. A low-level buzz had already filled the stage area in response, and lingered long after Monty himself had gleefully wheeled off. While nobody seemed to be conspicuously rushing to the confession booth, there was still something disorienting about standing amongst the crowd, as though it suddenly consisted of a series of magnets attracting and repelling one another in an obscure network of ways. However a knight felt, they would employ whatever means necessary to protect honour and eradicate conflict, wouldn’t they?

Impulsively, and before she herself was entirely certain what she was doing, Yara stepped back towards the foot of the stage until she fully faced the crowd. As it turned out, making a scene was harder than it seemed in the Ringmaster scenes where military leaders rallied their troops, and it took a few moments of arm-waving and attention-grabbing for this entirely unpremeditated scene to be made.

"Uh— hey, wait a sec, hey—" Yara raised her voice, her expression falling oddly serious in the way that it had been more inclined towards being as of late. "Listen. This whole deal — never mind whatever’s in the Monty-dungeon itself — it’s meant to make us turn against each other, right? And all that. And with whoever gets voted, there’s going to be totally righteous grudges held there, like, Siltor Glecane at the Hill-level, and it’s not like the wait isn’t going to be mega tense either, so. So.” She paused, the actual intent behind the spiel still hitting her so quickly that she barely had time to transmute the rapid-coming thoughts into real words. “I think… maybe you should all just vote for me. I can’t think of who else I would; and I’m not just saying that, I seriously vow it. That’d maybe hold off this whole thing from tearing us apart, right? So… yeah.”

A look of an imperceptible meaning flickering across her face, she paused, then entirely fell silent. Maybe all of this was futile, and people held enough grudges to want to cast their vote for specific people anyway. If her classmates felt badly enough about one another to end up nailing their still-occupied clothes to a chair— no, that mental path was definitely not one she wanted to go down at present, and she shut it off as quickly as it had revealed itself. Rather than even linger there further, Yara turned on her heel towards the door and the rest of the building, dissatisfied to the extent to which anyone could do anything in a situation like this — let alone anything knightly.

[superbassist]

Yet another test of friendship, but much more alienating than the last. The robots were really stepping up their game, weren't they? This time it was them keeping the secrets in their little shop of horrors, and someone would have to be in there at any point. He shut his eyes, wondering what he would have to deal with should they push him in at random. Maybe it would just be a pitch-black room. ...Just? Who was he kidding?! Had he not been a total wimp about it, he would have told them to pick him, no sweat - but then Monty would pick something different. So much for taking one for the team.

Kazuya's eyes opened and he scanned the dwindling crowd, and perhaps his regrets were not that he hadn't made enough friends but that he hadn't decided to make much of anything out of anyone. On one hand, that meant less enemies. On the other, it left him clueless as to how he was gonna deal with choosing - until the purple-haired student in armor spoke up, offering herself as the first choice. He'd seen her around, always bringing up references to something he'd never watched (though he might just consider doing so if it was anything like his dramas). The bassist had never actually spoken to her - something that needed to be amended somehow - but from his exposure to her in the trials, she seemed kind-hearted. And heroic, if the costume and what she just said was any indication. 

...But before anyone could say anything, she had already turned and started to leave out of what looked like frustration. After looking at the others, he called out to her while following along. It was probably better to go than risk seeing what kind of arguments would stir up in the room afterwards.

"U-uh, hey!"

His quickened pace slowed when he caught up to her. Kazuya's tone was nervous, but hey, she was still kind of a new face. He'd no idea how to deal with her, especially since she seemed to be good pals with cold, calculating Yasei. 

"Y...uh, Yukimura-kun--I mean, san. Yukimura-san, yeah?"

He hesitated and scratched his head, only changing the honorific as a precaution. Hoo boy, he probably looked like a fool. He'd probably look even dumber for what he was about to say... but people only lived once.

"...About what you said. I dunno if the others're gonna say anything like this later, so you're pretty brave for... volunteering like that. Especially since shit's in a total mess right now."

[superbassist]

"what if togemura was evidence during an investigation and he Klutz'd Togemura"

"OH NO..."

amor: the trilogy