KAKUJA.

@diamondhortensia​​ said: ❝ What the hell kind of studio is this? ❞ Maiko asks, rifling through the ghoul's things like a petulant child, ❝ How can you call yourself an artist without glitter or crayons? ❞ 

     Attention is grabbed by her, his mind being pulled away from the mask he was ever so gently detailing with an exacto knife. Spider like fingers place it down on the table as he rises up off the stool. ❝ You and Kamisori used the last of it all when you made that. ❞ Uta states, pointing to the colorful banner that was hanging from the wall, doodles of he, Maiko, and Kamisori spraweled all over it, the words Welcome To HySy right in bubble letters outlined with various kinds of glitter. He found the effort put inot the sign cute, and while it clashed with the aesthetic of th shop, he kept it up, they worked so hard on it, and the faces they made when they presented it to him were adorable, it wasn’t a memory he wanted to forget anytime soon.

@diamondhortensia​ said: ❝ Uta-sama, do ya' think I'm pretty? Itori-chan, said you preferred more aesthetic women, n' I know I'm not tha'. How can I fix it? ❞

     The second Itori’s name falls from pretty pink lips Uta’s mind is filled with dread. The scarlet haired ghoul has made it very clear that she wasn’t going to get over his choice for a long time. While it is ture that before Maiko’s arrival that he and Itori had their fling, yet even when he was spending all that time with her, deep down he knew that she wasn’t the one, and no imprint was made. Yet when Maiko had arrived, things shifted, while he held a heavy distaste for her in the beginning, things didn’t stay like that. Hearing her slender fingers dance across piano keys is what did it for him, a song from his childhood that he had forgotten. 

     In a sense, Itori could be compared to Lilith, the first woman made for Adam, yet replaced when God learned that he didn’t like her, and then Eve was born. The apple she had eaten being the heart Maiko had stolen from him months ago in that warehouse. Looking back on it now, Uta realizes he didn’t have to be so harsh to her, throwing her around the room like she was some sort of rag doll.

Yomo can practically taste Uta’s venom in the air, smell the anger on the other ghoul like a veil. He’d always been like that, testy when it came to his relationship with with the pop idol. What right after all, did he have to assume when it came to them? While he was not, and never would be Maiko’s biggest fan, he knew how important she was to both Uta, and to Shini, and he withdraws a little more from the other ghoul, motioning for a drink. As his glass is filled, he takes a sip. Already he feels more relaxed, a little more easy, though his heart is still pounding in his chest. 

“I shouldn’t have said that.” he says after a moment, “It just seems…so much easier for you both. Uta, no matter what you do, Maiko will always think the world of you. Even if you lie, even if you hurt her, she always comes back.” 

He stares at the glossy coat of protectant on the bar, lets a finger trace over the woodgrain pattern before taking another sip. 

“I tried once.” Yomo says. “One night, I got ahead of myself. I’d watched some of those…videos. I just wanted to do things right.”

He winces, thinking back to the night where he had visited Shini, his head filled with AVs and had been rough, too rough with her. He hadn’t hurt her physically, but he’d hurt her heart, and somehow, that had been worse. 

“I just…I thought it was what she liked, what she wanted. The look on her face said everything, and I just had to get away from her as fast as I could. I couldn’t take her looking at me, not like that. Not like I was one of them, one of those men.” 

He takes another sip, and the alcohol burns his chest, though it does nothing to quell his shame. 

He laughs, though the sound is hollow, bitter. “Maiko found out, and you know I never considered her scary until then. You’re both really similar… She told me I was a fool, and that if I couldn’t separate reality from fiction, it’d be best if I stayed away. Made me feel pretty pathetic. I don’t ever want to do that to Shini ever again.”

“I just don’t know if I can trust myself with her. It’s not that I want to keep her away, it’s that I can’t handle hurting her.” 

    Uta believes the only thing Yomo knows is hardship, he’s endured terror after terror in his life, hardly having breaks in between. Losing his parents, his sister, his fight against Arima, his brother in-law, and the thought of losing his neice and nephew haunted his mind. But what he doesn’t realize is that he’s pushing those who’s been by his side away while he tries to protect a select few. What Yomo doesn’t know is that he too, deserves to be protected, but Uta thinks this isn’t something he could accept, not yet anyway.

    The man has no one to go home to, just an empty container that hosts nothing but a mattress on the floor, that he sleeps in alone. There is no one else there to keep him warm, no one to hold him in the night when he can’t sleep. But that misery he holds is something he brought onto himself. It’s clear to Uta that Yomo’s distant behaviour is what’s pushing Shini away, making her think that he isn’t interested in her, so she seeks the warmth that he wants to give her from someone else, and all it does is cause heartbreak for the both of them. ❝ You can’t believe everything you see, she’s an actress, putting on a show for the viewer. ❞ Uta says loosely, from converstations he’s had with her in the past he knows filming those videos isn’t something she doesn’t enjoy, she’s only there for the paycheck.

    ❝ She wasn’t always like that, after you left her alone and went to Antieku, she sought out others to replace the feelings you gave her, but nobody wanted her the way you did. So she gave them what they wanted, the same way her mother would, all for a temporary fix of fake love. ❞

     ❝ When you drifted, she spiraled, and the cycle has come back to you. ❞ It’s the butterfly affect. Yomo decided that other things meant more to him, and Shini went down a different path, yet if he had stayed by her side and let her protect him while he was protecting others, it would all be different.  ❝ But even during that time you both see as dreadful, there was beauty in it. ❞

❝ U-sama! I’m  surprised  at you! Forgetting about  our baby,  who we raised together for two whole weeks! ❞

Already Yomo can tell he regrets this. Uta is the wrong person to go to about these kinds of things, but honestly who else is there? He has no peers other than the weird mask maker, and maybe Itori. There’s Tsukiyama too, he supposes, but, they most certainly weren’t close enough to discuss this sort of thing.  And Uta is already going too fast, safewords and taking things away? Is something wrong with him, Jesus, what do he and Maiko do when no one is around? 

He blanches at the ghoul, his face unflatteringly tucked into his chin.

❝ Uta, wait what? H-hold on…I don’t want to take anything away, what do you mean a safeword? Uta, damn it,  I don’t want to tie her to the ceiling fan, I…can’t I do something simpler? ❞

     ❝ A safeword is a word agreed on by both parties that the bottom uses to establish that they’re not into what’s going on. A simple phrase like ‘ I don’t wanna do that ’ is easy, but some people use other terms. ❞

@maskeeper​ Yomo’s face is as red as the blood wine in his hand. He cannot believe that he’s even considering going to Uta for this, to divulge such a thing to the mask maker of all people. But, the other ghoul does have experience.

❝Uta-san,❞ he says, tone stiff. The drink does not make him braver. ❝I need your advice. Shini-sama’s wanting me to ah…how do I say this…take…charge…you know…in bed?❞

     He can understand why she wants to be the one lacking control here and there, it’s a common trope hosted in those who hold power. A CEO gets exposed for spending time with a dominatrix instead of his wife, yet it happens all the time. Those in positions of constant power enjoy being the one lacking it in the bedroom here and there. It was known to the majority of those around them that Shini was indeed the stronger one, so he can see why it’d be something she’d want. Or maybe, just maybe, she wanted to boost Yomo’s ego a bit. But that can’t be the case.

@diamondhortensia​ said: "U-chan, do you like babies? I mean, specifically, what if we had a baby, would you be happy or...." She's trying to pull her best puppy face, while trying not to make it too obvious what her concern is. She can't keep him in the dark any longer.

     He ponders the question for a moment, her expression causing concern to grow in his chest. She’s hiding something, but she wants to share it with him. ❝ I do like babies, yet I don’t like children if they happen to have a certain mindset about life. Our children wouldn’t host that view of ocurse, and even if they did I’d like to believe I’d still love them no matter what. ❞ Hand raises to his neck, fingers grazing over his tattoo. I can neither live with you, nor without you.

     In a sense, Uta has raised Kamisori. Even though Kamisori did appear before Uta in his mid teens, the boy wouldn’t be who he is today without Uta’s guidance. A lost soul who hadn’t found its purpose. Has Uta found his purpse? The thought of family scares him, yet only just a bit. Rena, the circus, that was his family, yet he left them out of fear for something he still believes he caused. But then came across a new family, Maiko, Yomo, Shini, and later on the Clowns. While he didn’t care for the Clowns the same way he does for the light of his life or his friends, he still considered them something close to his heart, but not to far in, that space was resevered for Maiko and whoever they’d bring into this world together. 

     ❝ I have experiance with them, when Shini first had the twins she did need a lot of help. I learned how to properly care for them. ❞ And to properly love them, but that’s something he wants Maiko to see on her own.

“You don’t understand,” Yomo says softly, cutting Uta off with a wave of his hand. He understands what Uta means, understands that the clown is just telling him to jump into the abyss with no safety net, to simply trust in Shini, and he does.  It’s himself though, that he cannot count on.  Does he have the strength to bear such a weight? To know that one wrong move could send them both careening into the crashing waves. He could hurt her irrevocably beyond repair, and it’s that, which stops him from the leap. 

“You’ve always had it easy with Maiko…it’s not complicated.” Yomo says, his eyes burning with a ferocious intensity. “Uta, it’s not that simple for me. I can’t be selfish about her, I don’t have the luxury!” 

Yomo grabs the side of Uta’s coat in his fist, trying to make the other ghoul understand, to see his point of view. He doesn’t need the affects of blood wine to make him dizzy, not tonight. The mere thought of the woman who had entangled his heart in their web had done that. 

“You let Maiko go.” he says, chest heaving, “You let her go to Osaka, even though you knew it would kill you to be separated from her. You sent her away so she could be safe!” 

His hand eases on Uta’s jacket. “You hurt yourself, so she could be safe. I..I have to do that too, don’t you get it? One wrong move, one misstep and she could get crushed, I could ruin everything for her and I can’t bear it. But, I can’t bear this either.” 

     The second Yomo grabs hold of Uta’s coat, the ghoul has to contain the sudden aggression building up inside him. Yet he had listened carefully to what the other had to say, it’s made clear that Renji doesn’t understand every aspect of what had truly happened. When Maiko left, he had lost a part of himself, she took it from him with a smile on her face, and yet he wasn’t mad about it. When she had left, he never felt complete, he was missing a piece of himself, and so he tried to fill it, spending hours with others, yet it never felt right, so before things got to far, he’d strike them down, human and ghoul alike.

     What Yomo does not know is that what he fears he can do to Shini, has already been done to her. Yet she handled it accordingly, or what she thought would be the best way to do so. She was conditioned to deal with the worst of the worst. ❝ You say Maiko and I have the luxury of getting to be with each other, but by sitting around doing nothing you too, are robbing Shini of that luxury. Renji, what you don’t see is that you’re selfish yourself, you’re selfish with Antieku, you’re selfish with Touka, Hinami, and Ayato. You’re giving yourself to them, you dedicate your every waking moment to ensure their safety, who’s there to protect you at the end of it all? ❞

      ❝ I believe Shini to be one of the most selfless ghouls, she constantly gives herself to others in ways you could only dream of her giving herself to you. You think she likes to be in such situations?  You should hear the things she says about it when her and Maiko are together, but she does it to provide for herself, for the twins, and those around her. ❞ His mind trails to a distant memory, back to the time when Maiko had been attacked in their youth and it was Shini who took care of her until she was well again. There is no lie, Uta holds appreciation in his heart for the woman, he could trust her in ways he couldn’t trust Itori, among several other clowns.