2022-11-08: Leucothoe
- Log: 2022-11-08- Leucothoe
- Cast: Akane Shinjo, Liam 7-020
- Where: ??????
- OOC - IC Date: ?????
- Summary: Akane Shinjo makes a friend.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Liam is a third year student at Tsutsujidai High School. He went somewhere else before. Right?
It's another boring day. Nothing ever really happens. The teachers are just a little too disengaged to notice anything out of place.
Or, for that matter, anything wrong.
It's a cool morning in April, and a girl scoots up next to him as he stands on the walkway between the main building and the practice building, staring up at nothing in particular.
"Hey," she says, lilac hair swaying just a little in the breeze. "Coming up here to be alone at lunch, huh? A mysterious illness... transfer student disease!"
The young lady giggles, and volunteers after a moment, "Akane Shinjo. I know when you're a first year it's less weird to transfer, but I don't know anyone from middle school here or anything. We've got more in common with each other than with anyone else, huh."
She pulls a juice box out of the pocket of her hoodie, prying the straw off the side. She gives it one shake, two. Hopping up onto the concrete step-up in which the railing sits, she slumps forward against it, driving the straw into the juice box and sipping at it.
"Aaah~" she breathes after a nice, long sip, satisfied. "Can I bounce something off you? One transfer student to another."
It's easy to fall into her patter -- and there's a sort of vulnerability in her slumpy posture. Even on casual inspection, she seems like she could use a friend...
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
It's barely been a week since Liam left his home and flew halfway across the world to Tsutsujidai. He's told that it was a bigger thing in the past, before the advent of regular spaceflight and the Orbital Ring, but that doesn't matter much to him. What does is that he's homesick, anxious, and lonely. He knew it would happen. His host family has been warm and accommodating, ensuring he has every comfort he needs. But in moments like these, he thinks back to a different bed, and a different home.
Of course, to the student body, Liam is the one who is different. He's taller than most of the others--he's lean and rangy, and he's going to be at least five foot nine when he finishes growing. His hair is a bright, coppery red, and his eyes are gas-flame blue. He clearly comes from a school with stricter uniform standards, because he hasn't even tested the flexibility of the dress code.
He wasn't--and isn't--sure what to expect. This includes a young woman approaching him, fearlessly, and asking a question.
...Shinjo. Has he seen her in class? Liam can't remember. He understands her, at least, which means his conversational Japanese is already paying off.
"I needed a moment... alone?" Liam says, his smile friendly, but a little nervous around the edges. He's got the right word, but there's uncertainty there. His stomach twists and flutters. "But I can help." He has no siblings of his own, but Liam's always liked helping. Maybe if he helps her, he can numb the fear buzzing in his head.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Ahaha, yeah... I know how that goes. The nurse's office is a pretty safe bet for that kind of thing if here isn't working out," Akane answers, at the idea of needing a moment alone. "I'm warning you, though, I use that one too!"
She brings a finger up, tapping at the side of her neck as she thinks about something. "This is a little bit personal, I guess, but... do you ever feel like something's chasing you, even when you're in a totally still classroom or something?"
Her gaze tracks out again. "I get that feeling sometimes," she continues, "and I guess I was wondering..."
Another long sip; a swallow, a breath in, and another gusty little sigh. "... It's okay to hide even if you're not sure what you're hiding from, right?"
Looking a little embarrassed, she concedes, "I figured you'd know best, as my senpai, especially since you've probably got a totally different perspective on the world! You've got to have transferred in from somewhere interesting."
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
"The nurse's office?" Liam says, arching a brow. "They let you do that?" There's no judgment in his tone, merely surprise, and more than a little anxiety. Some of the nurses he's dealt with were nice, but others were keen to report "malingerers" to the headmaster. Something throbs against his skull, and he reaches up to touch it, tracing his brow...
"No. I don't think I will. But thank you." The jumpiness is getting worse. But it isn't just the uncertainty of an unasked question that's the problem. It's the thought of going to the nurse, but why? Liam's gotten sick, but it was never bad, even when he had his appendix out. He was back home within a day. The doctors were...
Again, that throbbing, like there's something inside his head trying to get out. "Of course, the moment I say that..." Liam laughs, mirthlessly "But... I'm sorry. Go ahead."
Akane confesses something to him--something heavy. Liam listens, nodding here and there; a gesture of sincerity as well as politeness. "I do," he says, once Akane's finished. That's what he did by coming here, right? He got away from his old school, his old life, his old baggage, for just a little while. "Sometimes I can bear with it. Other times I need to talk about it. Sometimes there's no one to talk to, though, and..." Liam scratches the back of his head, fingers tangling in his hair. "Nothing wrong with wanting to."
"I think I'm getting a headache," Liam says. "Would you mind showing me to the nurse's office? We can talk along the way." He can deal with the discomfort as long as it's helping her. She sounds like she needs it; she wouldn't come at him out of nowhere with a question like that. Even if he can't help himself, he can help her.
As he sets off, Liam does just what he said. "I'm from Britannia, Historic Kingdom. That's the islands northwest of Europe. I'm from Hibernia," and then a little pause, as if to ensure no one's listening. "Which we call <Eire>, or <Ireland>." Liam code-switches for a moment, first into Irish, and then into Britannian English with an Irish accent. And then it's back to Japanese. "I'm from Dublin."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Half the time there isn't even a nurse around," Akane answers, cheerily. "I guess it'd kind of suck if you actually got sick, but that doesn't seem like it happens that often, so, hey! Great place to skip." It doesn't sound like Liam finds any kind of medical situation particularly exciting as a skipping option, though... but he does seem to find it perfectly compelling as an actual need.
"Sure thing," she says, taking Liam back into the main building. She eases off a little for now; she doesn't want to press him too hard, too fast. (Someone really spun him around before, Akane realizes.)
"Huh. I could tell you had a little bit of an unusual accent," Akane reflects, as Liam volunteers the knowledge of where he's from.
Britannia... has places like Area 11 inside it, too, Akane thinks. That's a bit weird to think about. Is anyone in that country their authentic self...?
It's not like she can throw stones over an inauthentic presentation, admittedly. But even there, there are old names buried under Britannian ones?
And Dublin... another symbol of the Federation's disinterest in its people. Not in her world, mind -- but...
Tapping at the corner of her lips, Akane says, "I think the OCU is a little better overall. I hope you get to stay for a long time."
Should she...? "Like I said, I only moved here recently myself!" she enthuses. "I used to live a ways southwest of here. I've bounced around a bit." ... a kinder world would make that movement less notable, so it's surely nothing.
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
"No nurse?" Liam says. What's he supposed to do, then, call his host family and ask them to drop off medicine? Or just... stay there a while? What if something worse had happened? "Maybe it's eyestrain." Hopefully nothing that bad. He lets Akane lead him through the halls, refamiliarizing himself with the signage. "But a rest would be good. And you can tell the teacher where I went?" Her name eludes him. The growing headache doesn't help.
"I like it here. It's nice." Liam puts a hand to his temple again, and rubs at it. "Home feels so run-down. I miss it, I just..." He trails off, and lets out a sigh of his own. "I feel like Pendragon's letting the rest of us rot." Somehow things have gone from small talk about being new to a subject that would lead to swift disciplinary action were he home. His shoulders tighten, and he glances back, as if searching for a hall monitor who isn't there. "Do you like it here so far, Akane?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Yeah, that happens," Akane says, as if it were totally normal. "I think our school's a little understaffed..." Akane approaches it pretty nonchalantly. "-- Oh! Yeah, I can handle that," she says, after a few moments of seeming a little distracted by something. "... or, actually, let me get Ako to do that. I think it's better if I stick with you." Akane reaches down, snagging her phone and tap-tap-tapping away for a few moments, as they approach the nurse's office.
"Yeah, that's definitely how it goes. The OCU's a little better about that kinda thing... but to tell you the truth I think this whole dumb system is kinda rotten." Evidently, the OCU's political culture is... pretty open, when it comes to dissent -- or at least, teenagers can get away with saying whatever they want.
Does she like it here... "Of course I do!" she says, before poking her head into the nurse's office. "Helloooooooo~" she starts -- and there's no one, of course. "I think if I had to pick a favorite thing..."
Alexis glances down to Akane, as the pair stand -- well, Alexis stands, Akane is at more of a slump.
His curiosity is strictly academic.
"... it's probably that people don't hassle you!" As if she knows that prompts a follow-up question, Akane explains, "People here are really easy-going? Like... if you screw up, or even if you get someone hurt... they kinda let it rock." Bringing a hand to her mouth, she giggles and says, "I couldn't have even imagined that before I moved here!"
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
Liam's brow creases in a frown. "Even here?" he says, the question more rhetorical than anything else. But at least he'll have a place to lie down. The throbbing behind his eyes continues. He follows Akane, and nods as she elaborates on her thoughts.
"It isn't fair," he says, "if people don't have a say in things. If they can't get what they need just to get by."
No nurse. Liam stands in the doorway for a moment before walking in, heading for one of the cots. The plush, washable polymer crinkles slightly as he sits, and then stretches out to lie down. "Getting someone hurt...?" The throbbing grows more painful. Liam grimaces. Something half-remembered skitters at the edge of his consciousness like the shadow of a spider he can't see. "Has that happened?" Again, that almost brotherly concern on Akane's behalf. "Not bullying you is one thing, but if someone's hurt..."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Oh, I mean, not in like a big way. But, you know... if it did... I think people would get it. Things would move on." Akane sounds a little evasive about it herself right now, as she follows along after Liam, keeping the conversation lively.
"Hehehehe... if there's no nurse around... maybe I'll just have to be the nurse!" she diverts, with a big smile. "Want me to take your temperature...? Or maybe your pulse?" Here, Akane practically saunters toward Liam as he lies down, then --
"Got you~"
Having punched out of the cruel possibility of intimacy again for now, Akane loops back a bit. She sits down on the bed next to Liam, placing a hand on the small stand beside it, starting to tap lazily. "I think you're worrying a little too much... you must have been having a really rough go of it if you're interrogating every little thing this hard. The point I'm trying to make is that this is the kinda place where you don't have to!"
Akane shifts slightly, looking down into Liam's eyes. "You comfy there~?"
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
This is not the sort of thing Liam wants to think about while dealing with a headache. He closes his eyes, tilts his head to look up at the ceiling, and--
'...maybe I'll just have to be the nurse!'
Liam's eyes snap open, and his cheeks redden. There's something in Akane's tone that he doesn't quite recognize, something that isn't mischievousness, precisely. Nobody's so much as flirted with him, and it takes him a moment--that 'Got you~'--to realize that Akane was just messing with him. Blue eyes fix on sunset-red as Liam tries to sort out the tangled knot of fear, relief, and disappointment, and fails. Liam lets out a breath as Akane sits down, and explains.
"I am," Liam says, as Akane looks down at him. "But you're right. It's been rough." He breaks eye contact for a moment, his face adopting a worried frown. "I have a question for you, Akane, if it's... all right." She asked him one, so it's only fair, right? And he's leaving her an out. "Have you ever felt like you weren't good enough? Like you'll never be good enough, no matter how hard you try?" A softened version of the burden Liam shoulders in the waking world. This is a softer place. The horror that changed his life never happened here. "Sometimes I feel like that."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Liam asks Akane a simple question, and Akane goes quiet for a moment and looks away. Still... this is a space she controls, so it's actually fine, she thinks, for her to answer that with something resembling authenticity.
"Mm," Akane says -- the sort of weighed-down acknowledgement that sounds like it could be agreement but doesn't have to be. "It's hard, right? To come up short again and again and again? Ahaha..." She rubs at the back of her neck a bit before saying, "That's actually kinda part of why I moved. I needed to get away from that kinda feeling!"
Akane gently nudges Liam over about three inches; she's petite. Lying down next to him on the bed in the nurse's office, she says, "That's the real thing, right? Having people expect stuff from you... really sucks."
She leans in a little, hand wrapping around Liam's. "It's fine. I may not look like it, but I'm actually really good at handling stuff... and I'm pretty easy to please!" Bringing her other hand up to giggle, she coos, "I know I'm moving a little fast... but setting the speed can be my thing too, right~?"
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
It feels like he just hit a nerve. Liam looks away, listens to Akane's sort-of-acknowledgment of his question; it feels like she's hedging, but she might just be... less awkward than him. She didn't grow up in a place that treated her like dirt just because of where she was born, and where her ancestors came from. She was never made to feel like a stranger in her own home, or a pitiable child constantly in need of correction.
Liam lets out a soft "Ah!" of surprise as Akane nudges him over, and lies down next to him. His eyes widen. The flush in his face deepens. "Akane," he says, "what are you."
She grasps his hand. Something scrabbles at the back of his brain--the urge to pull away before something horrible happens. "We just met," Liam says, his face bright red. His stomach churns. "Please stop. What if someone sees us?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane doesn't quite stop -- but she does at least pause. "I'm not saying we have to go all the way right here -- I kinda would rather we didn't!" she replies, first, with a dismissive little wave. "But that doesn't mean we can't stick together, right...?"
She clings to an arm without the faintest hint of hesitation. "We have all the time in the world to take this one slow, but..." Her lips pout slightly, and she asks: "Wouldn't you like to take care of me a little bit? And I can take care of you, too~."
Akane makes a bit of a face -- for just a moment -- on the construction crane. The only person she's gotten this physically close to in this long is Yuta (is this physical closeness? her spatial perception is kind of slanting into something unreal) and she... can't say she enjoys it.
... but she ought to, right? Isn't that how it goes, when you're from somewhere Britannia has taken? An offer of closeness is a path to freedom. They're both like that, which means they ought to...
Akane shuts her eyes for just a moment, affirming, "We can at least be lonely together..."
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
"I don't want to, either," Liam says, rising up on an elbow as he turns to Akane. He winces, and presses his hand to his temple as the headache reminds him of its presence yet again. "Please don't feel like you have to. Okay? I don't want you to feel like that." If his schoolmates back home heard about this, they'd heckle him for being a coward. But for once in his life, Liam couldn't care less of what they think. Akane sounds confident, but it feels hollow. Desperate, even. It's wrong.
"I would like to meet a new friend." Liam settles back down. "I want to get to know her. If something happens, then it happens, but..."
What Akane says next cuts through to his core. He laughs, but it doesn't sound right--it's a display of tension, not a release. "Funny. One outcast finding another on the other side of the world. What are the odds?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane considers -- very briefly -- writing this one off; she was a little too aggressive.
It's fine. She can play this one door-in-the-face, too.
"I don't want you to feel like that, either," Akane says. She remains comfortably where she is, but there's a little less forward pressure. "I might have given you the wrong idea, a bit... ahahaha, I guess I'm a little awkward."
She takes a breath in, noticing Liam's scent but not mentally lingering on it. "I mean, any encounter is a one-in-a-million chance, right? Just... don't worry about it that much."
Her hand grips a little tighter on Liam's, saying, "This is fine. We can take care of each other. Really. And if we can do that, we can handle anything~" She seems awfully serious about it for someone who's known Liam this briefly -- but maybe she's just... weird.
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
She must be so lonely. So desperate for affection that she flirts aggressively with the first person to show interest in her. Liam lies on the cot, turning the thoughts over in his head. Akane backtracks, tries to laugh it off. Why does she feel that way? She shouldn't. She shouldn't have to deal with these feelings.
Akane squeezes his hand. "If we don't," Liam says, beneath his breath, "who will?" His family takes care of him, but they can't be there all the time. They certainly aren't here. And the more he's seen of Akane, the more his heart breaks for her. She's putting on a brave face, but she is not all right.
And if he can help her, even a little...
Liam squeezes Akane's hand. A pang of inexplicable worry shoots through his thoughts, but it quickly vanishes. He can handle weird. "We can do that," he says.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Perfect, Akane thinks, not realizing just how vulnerable she's shown herself to be.
Then again, the salience of that feeling... has started to fall away for her, a bit.
Everything else falls away, too. This is Liam's first time, of course, in the belly of a beast simultaneously the whole universe away and directly nestled into his own mind (or is he in its?), but Akane has started to get used to it here.
She doesn't even register the feelings it leaves in her -- just the ones it's dumping into Liam.
"So," she says, trotting forward toward him amid the wires and traces. "Can't live without some sad, vulnerable thing to fret over, huh?" It's... easier to nod along, somehow, than not. Akane's aura is all-consuming here.
She steps in close, as normal, but... even here, all she manages is footsie. Her leg slides against his; eventually she steps in and presses hand to chest, but it's extremely tentative.
"... Hehehe," comes a sudden giggle. "We were always going to end up in the same position," she points out. "'Helios' and 'Akane' -- though I dunno how sunny people really think either of us are, huh."
She switches tacks back to her original point. "It's okay to stop fighting. Even I kinda gave up, after everything that happened in Paris."
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
Liam squeezes Akane's hand, and the world falls away.
He's standing, now, but his whole body feels numb, like he's being anesthetized for more brain surgery. (Brain surgery? When did he have that?) The Liam that Akane saw was not a Liam that ever got the chance to exist. BioNet broke him, and then remade him into something they could use. Here, in the belly of the beast, he exists in a state of superimposition, the normal high schooler and the extensively-augmented super-soldier overlapped atop one another.
Liam nods. The eyeshields flicker across his eyes, and are gone in the next instant. Are they still there?
"Tired," he breathes. He has to care, but he's so tired, and so sick of the pain. He needs people, needs to feel needed, but how much of that is just him desperately trying to ward off the truth? "Even monsters... can be tired."
Monsters like the both of them, he doesn't say.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Yeah," Akane says, staying in as close as possible. "They can."
Her next movements are -- slow, a little hesitant. She still struggles with men -- especially larger, more physically capable ones. Even with fairly total control over the situation, there's part of this that's -- anxiety-inducing.
She reaches up. Pulls him in close -- makes him bend over to close with her.
When his eyeshields are gone, she reaches up -- and gently places her fingers over his eyes. It wouldn't take much pressure to be unbelievably cruel --
-- but she just gently drags the lids down, as if they were attached to a corpse. "Just let yourself be tired. I'll take care of everything."