“Would it be all right if I borrowed your sweater? It smells like you.”
The weather in Citta changed far more rapidly that Tokyo ever did. For that reason, someone like Naki who was never caught without his white suit, now wore a sweater pulled over his suit coat. Not thinking ahead of time whether or not such a messy arrangement of clothing would wrinkle his suit underneath. The sweater itself read ‘<3 Yamori’ in messy stitching as it had been done for him amateurly by Hogurou and Shousei for his birthday. It was basically a disaster and therefore one of Naki’s most precious possessions.
The two of them sat then, perhaps huddled a little closer than normal because they could both see their breaths in this kind of cold air. Even the dew on the grass they sat in threatened to freeze. Naki might have felt the frozen beads brush up against his legs and shatter as he rustled the grass with his every bouncy movement that accompanied his speaking, if he did not have all of his attention focused on Norah. There was no reason to pay attention to anything. Strange, Naki had invited her to this park to come play on the see-saw with him, but they just sat here talking instead. He had just completely lost track of the situation, was he dumb or something?
Then he heard her request, and his world seemed to flip for how little sense it made. The world seemed to flip every time Norah said something, for him anyway. Words always said to him in her soft, too soft voice, Naki strained his best to listen. He knew he was like a sieve with holes in it, but her words were almost as precious as big bros, so he did the best he could. There was no way, she could mean that with positive connotation, not to a ghoul like him. Ghouls had refined senses, they knew the many pleasant smells of the human world, but also in comparison, ghastly, grotesque, the smell of a ghoul was wrong.
“Smells like me? Whattaya saying? It’s a pain to get it cleaned okay! Isn’t it fine like this?”
He snapped, at the misunderstanding. His sudden flare up though, died just as fast, it might have been the cold, or the face Norah made in response. He misunderstood again, he was always misunderstanding.
From behind Naki wrapped his arms around her. He pulled her back deeper into his grasp, as if he were trying to cover her entire body with himself. She felt so soft and small in his arms it might just have been possible. When he finished with the motion, and their bodies slid together into something comfortable, he was able to perch his chin on the top of her head.
“There,” he said in the same bratty voice, “If you want my scent so much I guess we’ll have to share it.”
