死体の花

Naoya's   gaze   remained   cold   and   unyielding   just     as     he    keep     himself     in    such     dead     silence    while    observing     Kaede   .    He    pulled    the    other     man     closer     and     now     his     lips     were    close    to     his    ear    .            ❛❛           I   really   feel   disgusted   seeing   you   right   now,   it's   repulsive.            don't     do     it        again    .         ❜❜         a     warning        that         he     said    in    such     a    low     and         bitter     way     before    pulling    back     just     a     little    to     face     the     other    again.            There   was   no   need   to   say   anything   else,   he   thought   he   had   made   his   position   clear,   he   is   not   playing   and   surely   next   time   he   would   not   react   this   way   but   maybe   even   worse. 

Eyes downcast, he tried like hell to control his emotions, will the tears to stop - hide everything he felt in the moment. Wiping his eyes, once his warm was released, sharp pain jolting through it, he swallowed. He forgot Naoya could sometimes be cruel, insensitive, perhaps thinking he was special, but it was clear to him now that simply wasn't the case and he had to get over it. Accept it, choke it down, and remind himself of it every time. Even so, even so, he sank into Naoya, tentatively settling his head against his chest.

He didn't speak, nodding instead - he understood. It was too late to put on a brave face, but he tried anyway, heart heavy, twisted into knots. Tried think that this was just Naoya's best means of showing he cared at least a little. Would he be so...so disgusted with him if he didn't? Contradicting himself again, shaky fingers digging into silk and cotton - loose grip turning tight, holding onto him, curling into him no matter how much it ached and burned--

"I'm not surprised you don't know of the treaty, it seems your family as a whole forgot about it a long time ago, too, or they decided to ignore it."

Jin hands Kaede a rolled up scroll, one that, once unraveled, would bear both the Shikibane family seal, and another, presumably belonging to Jin. The contents of the scroll go onto describe some sort of agreement or 'union' between Jin and one of Kaede's Sengoku-era ancestors, the result of which required a specific Cursed Tool, apparently named 'Mourning Star (喪 星)', to be given to him in exchange.

"The Mourning Star was never delivered; from what I gather, there were a few individuals in your family who objected to the treaty," Jin remembered the Shikibane clan to be quite torn over the idea of associating with someone like him at the time, actually, with the idea spurring a great deal of contention, far more than he hinted at, "and even after all was signed and done, one of those busybodies stole Mourning Star and sealed it away in some secret vault."

Jin, after taking a few steps toward the shoji that led to the balcony, waves a hand toward it, a faint gust of wind sliding it open. Jin then steps outside and pulls a cigarette out from his coat, which he lights and begins smoking from in-between his words to Kaede.

"Even in death, I'm responsible for these people..." he grumbled, tucking his words into a sigh under his breath and snatching the treaty Jin had provided.

A centuries-old parchment, kept well and cleanly but still showing the familiar marks of age. Wrinkles, frayed edges, some smears of ink here and there, but no less clear on what was owed - and just who had signed it. He scowled, searching through the document for a drawing of some kind, a picture of the so-called Mourning Star - how pretentiously grim. The Shikabane clan and its inclinations toward all things death-related...even centuries before today. He was almost embarrassed.

Still, he half-listened to Jin while he read, picking up on ancient legal jargon and agreements that seemed forged in friendship, but knowing his family, it couldn't have been anything more than a ploy. At least, at first. Or maybe the former heads thought they'd be able to wriggle their way out of it; They succeeded, after all. The debt no longer belonged to the family, but to Kaede. And now here he was, no doubt soon to embark on a mission to the ruins of the estate and pick it clean as if a vulture, carrion vermin to a corpse. He closed his eyes for a time, setting his jaw and wrinkling his nose.

"It doesn't make any sense for anyone in my family to sign a treaty unless marriage is involved. The only treaties I was aware of until now were made in time for certain weddings over the centuries - this should have been filed away in the same place," he went on, bitterly annoyed at his ancestors and the more recently departed. For a clan obsessed with keeping records of everything... Sabotage, but who? A great-grandfather? Grandmother? The one his would-be father was named after, Zenchou? But that name wasn't anywhere on the treaty that he could see, so perhaps he was one of the few who disagreed?