Boo!

"You know, I'm not really usually one to take walks in the middle of the night..."

"You take walks?" Mafuyu's sudden and blunt question cuts a little sharper than it should, but Kanade can't say she doesn't deserve that one.

"Mafuyu! Come on, ease up--" With a small chuckle, Mizuki ruffled at the hair on top of Kanade's head, shaking her own head. With Mafuyu at her right side and Mizuki on her left, Kanade felt almost strange admitting that even something as normally uneasy as a midnight walk through the city felt rather...safe, like this. Between two vampires that the young woman was well aware would go to violent lengths to keep her safe and in one piece, Kanade hardly needed to worry about safety even in the dead of night in a big city.

"Where exactly are we going anyway? I was surprised you even mentioned wanting to come out with us at all, but you seemed to have an idea in mind when you came out here with us." Mizuki glanced over at Kanade, retracting her arm and folding her hands behind her back. With a small sling bag hanging behind her back, Kanade simply nodded, looking around.

"I...did, yeah. Honestly, I haven't been around here in a few years, and...I don't know. I wanted to see it again."

See what? Mizuki glanced at Mafuyu, but the other vampire knew as much as she did and merely shrugged.

"We're almost there, I remember it being around here." They were already pretty deep into the park. Normally people didn't go taking walks around here this time of night, so the emptiness of the area felt that much more obvious, yet Kanade didn't seem bothered. If anything, she was grateful. She didn't like being around too many other people. Crowds were a huge discomfort to her, but at this point in her rocky life, even so much as 'too many people' could feel like too much, even if it was just a handful of people in a small area she normally liked to be around.

"Here we are."

Mafuyu and Mizuki both stop as Kanade does. They're a bit off the walking path, but a lone streetlight still persisted here, illuminating a rather large patch of flowers. In the dead of night, not a single one moved without so much as a breeze in the air. They stood, small but proud, multiple subtle colors mixed amongst each other.

"Ohh....what beautiful flowers." Mizuki stepped forward first, kneeling down next to them and gently brushing her fingertips over a few of their petals. Kanade watched with a small hint of a smile on her face, walking over to join her.

"Carnations. I'm relieved that they're still here. Still so healthy looking, even...they're being taken care of. I'm so glad."

Mafuyu watched the human's face, intrigued by the subtle expressions on her face. Something like...a deep calm. A soothed look. Something she hardly got to see on Kanade's face any other time. Even when she expresses how happy she is about the flowers, the way her lips pull into that gentle little smile is much more serene than the expression itself, somehow. It's almost as if she could give her own glow apart from the streetlight, crouched where she was.

"Do you like flowers?"

"Hm...I do. I love carnations, though. They were my mother's favorite flower. When I was a child, my family would take me here all the time, and we would spend time together. Picnics, walks...just...anything. My mom would tell me to stop running around so recklessly or to leave the butterflies alone, and eventually my dad would take out his guitar and get both of us to sit down to listen to him play. Just for us."

Mizuki looked over at Kanade, a little bit surprised to hear her open up about it so readily. So...sweetly. Even someone so frequently distant as Mafuyu could see that the memories Kanade recollected and recalled were something dear and precious. Something she never wanted to be without. Her words sparked an imagery that was...warm and loving. Inviting. Things that even Mafuyu could just distantly recall having felt herself around her family, if only fleetingly, before it was lost to time and pressure.

Memories almost lost to time, honestly. Having them even vaguely recalled by Kanade's words makes Mafuyu's chest ache a little bit. And here she had simply accepted that those kinds of feelings and memories were never going to have a place in her life anymore. It seemed this human girl was never through with putting the vampire through her own paces, unexpectedly.

Her attention drifts back to Kanade when she realizes that the woman was placing a brown box on the ground in front of the flowers. It was familiar--the music box that Kanade kept in her bedroom.

"It's been so long...coming here again feels like...a lot, honestly. It's probably stupid of me to put myself through this much all at once."

Mizuki gave a gentle smile, reaching over to rub Kanade's shoulder comfortingly. "Don't push yourself."

"Ah." Kanade laughed weakly, shaking her head and raising the back of her sleeve to her eyes for a moment before reaching down to the box. "It's okay. I'm fine. I just...miss all of it too much, I think. I thought I didn't. I kind of thought that I didn't need to feel like that. Like maybe I could just move on and leave it behind. If I did that much, maybe I could stop trying to move forward. I could accept giving up in stagnation and leaving all of it for good. But...I guess I really can't."

Giving the box several winds, she opened it gently and let the mechanisms within the box begin to wind and play. The ballerina within the box was as graceful looking as ever as the gentle music began to fill the empty silence of the night around them. A quiet little serenade, reserved only for the flowers and the three that were here alone with them. Standing up slowly, Kanade sighed and looked down at it, taking a moment to simply...listen.

Her chest felt so tight. Yet...this felt like the first time in a long time that she's felt all of these emotions welling up inside of her and didn't feel lost or miserable in their wake. No. Rather, she felt...surprisingly peaceful. Was it because of everything that's happened lately? Was it that she was here with these two? Was it just...some change in her that she couldn't identify yet? She has no idea. She felt like she wanted to cry, but it wasn't for any kind of sadness inside of her. She just felt...relief.

Smiling a little bit, Mizuki smoothly stood back on her feet. In the same motions she took to stand, she reached out and slipped her fingers around Kanade's, taking both of the composer's hands in her own.

"Ah?"

With a small giggle, the pink vampire pulled Kanade gently, her motions guiding Kanade along a somewhat clumsy...dance. Kanade didn't know how to dance anymore. She learned a little bit when she was a child, but that was lost knowledge on her now. Things she could only barely scrape back up as Mizuki slowly pulled her along an unfamiliar and yet strangely graceful pathing.

This kind of thing...it's a little embarrassing. It's only the three of them here, though. It's not too bad. Actually, it's...a little bit exhilarating. Something giving Kanade an unfamiliar and very subtle sense of vibrant life.

"You're beautiful when you smile like that, you know." Mizuki's comment comes unexpected. Some heat rushes to Kanade's face, but she can only smile a little bit more and look off to the side like some shy, bashful maiden. That really only makes it more charming. Chuckling, Mizuki pulled her closer, Kanade stumbling against Mizuki as the side of her face rested against the woman's collarbone, the charming vampire able to take an easier lead in pulling Kanade along like this.

"Did your dad make this melody?"

"U-um...he did, yes. For my mom."

"It's pretty. I can tell how much she meant to him."

Kanade swallowed. "Yeah." Her answer earns a slip of Mizuki's arm around her back as the woman's other hand still held firm to Kanade's.

"I'm happy you shared so much with us just now, you know. Mafuyu, too. Maybe it's a little bit out of line of me to say but...in a way, it feels like...now, you're doing the same thing. Showing us how much we mean, to you."

Kanade blushes a little bit more, her cheek brushing a little bit against Mizuki's shirt.

"...y-yeah."

Mizuki spots the opportunity before Kanade is even aware of it. In yet another single, smooth motion, Kanade's coaxed away from Mizuki's form as she's led away from her. Mafuyu gently takes Kanade's free hand as the human woman is passed to the other vampire casually, Mizuki smirking a little bit and stepping back to let the two of them steal the scene for a bit.

Of course, the heat creeps up to Kanade's ears at the realization they both wanted to apparently do this with her right now. Grimacing, she glanced away from Mafuyu's face at first, focusing on following the much more graceful vampire's steps.

"...thank you. If that's what you wanted to do here...that means a lot."

Kanade blinked and looked up at Mafuyu, surprised. Mafuyu met her gaze, allowing her more honest, neutral expression to replace the usual amused smirk she carried so often. The hint of softness was still there, something yet rarer to see on her. It was so subtle, and yet when Kanade noticed it, it was like some formerly unseen glow that hid itself in Mafuyu's subtle expression and her much more subtle purple eyes.

God, she's beautiful. They both are. In more ways than one. How in the world they ended up here with her was...forever a mystery.

"I always thought...when I came back here, if I ever did, I'd just do it alone. Really, I never wanted to come back here at all. It hurt too much to think about those years, and then think about where I ended up since. But...despite that, I found myself wanting to come here anyway. And...I just wanted to do it with you two. It felt important. I needed to show you this place. I needed to share this with you. Only you."

Mafuyu ducked her head, her lips brushing chastely against the young woman's cheek. "I see..." She smiled just faintly, straightening back up to continue dancing. "That's sweet. It's been a long time since I've gotten to spend an evening important enough to feel like such a lingering kind of memory. I've forgotten how...nice, it could feel."

Leaning over, Mafuyu's arm firmly wraps behind Kanade as she gets the young woman to dip herself backwards, holding her up effortlessly with her arm. Lingering a moment to study Kanade curiously, she then pulled the human back upright before slowly spinning her across her other arm, letting Kanade take a step out of the dance before releasing her hand, the melody of the music box conveniently fading to a stop as she did.

"Hmm...that was nice." Mizuki sighed, resting a hand against her own cheek. "What a lovely little evening. Of course, getting an opportunity to dote on our little composer makes it even better." She giggles at the blush that gets out of Kanade. Mafuyu nods in agreement though, before looking over at Kanade with a tilt of her head.

"Do you want to go back? Or..."

"Um..." Kanade's hand raised to her other arm, rubbing at it gently for a moment as she timidly looked at the ground, then towards the flowers with a hint of admiration in her gaze. "...could we stay a little longer?"

"It's late. Are you okay to?"

"Yeah. I just...it feels good, here. I just want to be here, a little longer. Please."

"...of course." They had nowhere else to be but right here, after all. And should Kanade end up drifting off despite everything, they were right here to scoop her right up and bring her back to the safety of her own home and her bed.

For the time being...these two troubled, teasing vampires were simply content to find themselves so deep into this quiet human's lost, wandering life, with more than enough time to spare to spend it admiring the rare, soft look in Kanade's bright eyes while she gazed out at the field of carnations.