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It brings me no comfort to think of the place of my birth. My parents were doctors by trade, and lived a guarded life even compared to the rest of our cowering kin; my childhood home was the last port of call for the most desperately sick, those for whom the family magics were their only hope of succor. For many it was not enough. I knew the stench of death long before the soldiers came.

Even our traders spoke of the outside world in hushed words, a fearful place that would never accept us, where we could never speak of our history. Some would return robbed and beaten. Some would not return at all. Yet many times I wished I could stow away in the back of a merchant's cart, let myself be carried off to a distant village with what little else we had worth selling. Would that I could be anywhere but here, I thought, even when I believed it was a hopeless fantasy...

[ It happens in a blink; Louis reaches for his ink and finds his pen absent from his hand, his chair no longer beneath him. He's standing, halfway across the floor of the study – it is the study, and yet it isn't. He is not in the same space he was a moment ago.

And he is not alone. The book he had just been writing in – he can see the glisten of the still wet ink – sits open on the desk beneath a pair of pale, slender hands. The seat he had been sitting in is occupied by a figure in simple dark robes, warm black eyes peering up at him searchingly from an achingly familiar face.

Louis had thought it a dying dream, the first time. The shimmering glimpses in the corner of his eye could have been a lack of sleep, or some lingering aftereffect of his transformation on the frayed edges of his mind. The boy king had thought differently of Louis's delirious ramblings, so Junah has said, but all he had had to offer for his suspicions was this drudgery, declaring Louis's sentence as prisoner to write a story no one would ever care to read. And yet— ]

You—

[ —damn him, he had known more than he ought.

Louis's mouth feels oddly dry. He feels underdressed, somehow, clad in plain garments of his own – white, as has always been his preference, but similar in their artless cut to More's own. He should be resplendent and unbroken before him, of all people, facing this specter with dignity.

Yet he's never felt more like the tongue-tied elda boy of twenty years ago than he does when he meets More's eyes. ]

—you cling to this world yet.

wayofthaw

[ Time seems to all but stop in the second after Adam waves to him – love again~ – and starts to close the car door. The police sirens are getting closer, Reki's right there shouting to hurry up, but all of that seems vague and distant compared to the impulse that grips Langa's chest and refuses to let go, the same that took hold of him in the race – get closer, don't run away.

So he acts on it. It worked great the other times. ]

Wait—!

[ He can hear Reki frantically calling his name as he bolts toward the car, grabbing the door with so little time to spare that it nearly closes on his hand. He makes it, though, flings it open and jumps in the back seat before he has any chance to consider whether he shouldn't. It's not the first time tonight he's practically thrown himself at Adam, even, though from the look on his face as Langa tosses his board under the front seats and pulls the door shut behind him, he was expecting it even less this time.

...Which is when Langa realizes that he has no idea what to actually do now that he's done this, nothing beyond the fact that his heart is still pounding so hard his chest feels like it's on fire, and he can't just let whatever just happened between them end. If he'd gone with Reki, it would. Like this – maybe it doesn't have to. Maybe they can go somewhere else to finish skating, or – something. Anything to satisfy the fire instead of having to go home and wait for it to sizzle out. ]

—Adam, I...

[ That's all he can manage to say, but he's pretty sure that's enough to make it clear what he's thinking. Probably. ]

matakara

[ Matakara's not trying to end up alone with Jin Mahoro, this time – he'd apologized to her, of course, but he can admit he played dirty doing it in front of her brother after he'd already declared the whole – well, situation water under the bridge, and he'd tactfully kept his distance since. Even as her newly appointed right hand man, Ara-chan's seemed earnestly clueless about how much she still wants Matakara dead, and no one from Siguma's demanded a blood match on her behalf, but... giving her space to figure things out has seemed like the better call, if a little bit of a selfish one.

But now – it's Minato and Siguma's first proper "group date" since Ken-san and Marito-san passed on their respective torches, this time at a lodge up in the mountains that Marito-san had paid to rent out despite not making the trip himself (no one would be able to stop him from getting in on the action if he was there to see it, according to Ara-chan, and the fact that doing that would undo all the progress he's made, if not outright kill him, is "like, seriously cramping his style") and the empty hall Matakara had come to scope out as a makeshift dojo for tomorrow isn't so empty after all. ]

Ah—

[ He freezes in the doorway, not sure whether to step in or out to clear the exit. It's late; he'd assumed she'd gone to her room – as the only person here who wouldn't be piled into a room with ten boys – when she'd disappeared after dinner. ]

Sorry, Jin-san, I didn't realize you were still awake. Uh – I was thinking we could use this room for tomorrow, so...

likeamarionette

Well, this is a first.

[ It's not like Adam's actually trapped; he could put his earpiece in and have a few capmen here to unlock the door from the other side in five minutes, and there wouldn't be much Cherry could do about it. Especially with a scan around the room confirming that Joe (and the extra kilos of muscle he put on since high school) couldn't be hiding anywhere in wait – which also makes it substantially less likely Cherry lured Adam here to attack him, at least.

That doesn't really seem like his style, anyway – not that Adam can really say what Cherry's style is anymore.

He leaves his earpiece untouched in his pocket and languidly lights up a cigarette, staring Cherry down where he stands between him and the door. ]

What do you think this is going to accomplish?

someiyoshino

[ Kaoru isn't entirely sure what he's expecting bringing Adam – Shindo-sensei? Ainosuke? Surely it's Adam, it's always Adam when he's with them – back to his room, each step from extending the invitation to this, swiping his keycard and letting him in behind him, one step further than he'd been preparing to get.

Kojiro would probably say it's good for him, having to fly by the seat of his pants like this. But Kojiro can go fuck himself. ]

Make yourself at home.

[ It's still a pleasantry, but all his saccharine formality is gone in favor of his usual tone of voice. Kaoru runs a hand through his hair – he needs a shower, really, he can still smell the cologne of dozens of oily businessmen and politicians sticking to him – and sets Carla in her base to recharge before returning his attention to the oily politician he's choosing to spend time with. ]

You don't need to tell your guard dog where you are?

wayofthaw

[ It's nearly 3 AM and practically all the stragglers are starting to disappear from the mountain; even Reki, riding the high from a victory that night, is almost falling asleep on his board when Langa tells him to go on ahead, he just wants to do one last thing, he'll be right behind him.

Reki gives him a little bit of shit about it, but not much. Langa hates not just getting things, is the thing – he's pretty sure if he can't stick this trick once before he goes home he won't be able to sleep anyway, so what's the point, really. Whether Reki gets that or he's just too wiped to argue about it, it still means Langa's alone on the slope, practically the whole stretch to himself without anyone but the omnipresent drones watching.

First reach max acceleration in the direction of travel, Cherry's voice echoes in his head. Lift the nose, do a tail manual to do a U-turn with the smallest possible turn radius, and then, the important part– ]

Gah–!

[ For what feels like the hundredth time that night, even if it's probably only the seventh or eighth, gravity takes over before Langa can even bring the nose of his board down, and he ends up flat on his back. ]

Ugh...

lovecampaign

[ Shujin Academy is loud and Ainosuke almost instantly recognizes that he is not nostalgic for high school. The school board has invited him in as soon as possible, once staff was less busy with the exam period. This winds up being the day the results are publicized, leading Ainosuke to witness the condensed anxious energy of teenage life as he passes through the hallways. How... unpleasant.

The meeting itself is even more unpleasant. The longer he looks at the girl he is supposed to be sponsoring, the more he feels not only ambivalence but a mild resentment. Where does she get off having a hobby so respected that everyone is tripping over their feet to believe that a politician from miles away would hold any interest in it? Getting here was far too easy. With the girl is the vulgar-looking principal, her coach and... her counselor, it appears? Maruki Takuto, a sloppy man with an awkward smile. Not the caliber of person Ainosuke would normally grace with a second look. But this guy was brought here to deal with the aftermath of "the Kamoshida incident" - a psychologist debriefing the children about the emergence of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts? Not half-bad as a source of intel. So all the better if the man is linked at the hip to that grating little star athlete.

By the time Ainosuke makes it out of the room, he feels a headache coming on. It feels as though the talks had run forever, but a quick look at his phone reveals that he still has almost an hour until Tadashi is scheduled to pick him up. 'Sure goes to show how being bored out of your mind slows down the time,' Ainosuke thinks and sighs. He needs a smoke. And the upside of his distorted time perception is that he has the chance to go get one. He just needs to find a corner out of sight...

How fortunate, really, that school buildings hardly vary in structure. Finding the back door and exiting into a small back courtyard is almost too easy, just like everything else about infiltrating Shujin had been. Ainosuke leans against the wall and takes out his tobacco set.

He doesn't get even halfway through his cigarette before the door slides open again and he finds himself face to face with Maruki Takuto. ]

-- ah.

[ It's a little too late to drop his smoke and pretend this isn't happening, so Ainosuke just takes another drag and smiles thinly as he exhales. ]

And here I thought I could indulge my little vice in secrecy. Silly me.