#ahri.

E Gyochan abusava. Nunca tinha aprendido a beber, ainda mais no final de semana. Ele mesmo sabia disso, e sua meta era ser colocado debaixo de um chuveiro com água gelada assim que chegasse em casa, porém, não sabia que as coisas seriam diferentes naquele dia. 

Passava das três da manhã, quando o deixaram na porta do prédio. Cambaleou e cambaleou, e parecia estar na porta do próprio apartamento. Digitou a senha uma, duas, três vezes, mas parecia estar errada — Mas que porra...? — questionou, vendo a fechadura duplicada a sua frente. Tentou só mais uma vez, antes de perder a paciência de vez — Namsu-yah! — gritou pelo marido, mas nada. Só tinha um jeito, e esse era o que mais fazia sentia na cabeça do bêbado impaciente. 

Afastou-se, claro, mais pra lá do que pra cá, antes de meter o coturno com toda a força que tinha, na pobre porta. Não conseguiu nada de primeira além do grande estrondo, mas na terceira, o pé foi junto com todo o resto do corpo. Foi tão rápido que só viu quando já estava no chão — Eita... — riu como o grande idiota que era, ainda sem perceber que não era o seu apartamento — Amor, cheguei! — a voz arrastada e desafinada era alta o suficiente para incomodar, inclusive o morador. 

❛   i   had   a   feeling   i'd   run   into   you   here   .   ❜   it   was   where   they   met   and   though   winston   played   a   big   part   in   them   actually   speaking   for   the   first   time   ,   kiha   was   always   happy   to   see   ahri   .   ❛   were   you   planning   to   order   something   or   are   you   just   passing   by   ?   ❜

    Huff! Huff!

    “Mister Yagami!”

    Huff!

    “Mister Yagami Hiro! I finally caught up with… you… you’re not going into the forest, are you?”

    Guess what Khada Jhin is doing.

    “Oh, no! Mister Yagami, you can’t—”

    “—Don’t touch me.”

    “I’m sorry, Mister Yagami, but you mustn’t go in there. It’s possessed by a horrible spirit. All the townsfolk won’t dare to go near.”

    Khada Jhin, who is today Yagami Hiro, celebrated painter and landscape artist of Zhyun’s Kaijn, is an excellent actor. To put on another face for him is like second nature, an instinct so honed that ‘breaking character’ is inasmuch unthinkable as physically impossible. It just wouldn’t happen.

    Which is why, when he very nearly laughs in this caravaner’s face, it must have been the most absurd thing he’s been told in years.

    “Keep your warnings to yourself,” he says. “I did not come to the borderland simply as a sightseeing journey. There are dyes here irreproducible anywhere else in Ionia, and I will harvest them. Seeing as the last time I sent for someone else to do this simple task came back with little more than weeds and dandelions.”

    The caravaner is aghast. “There aren’t any dyes in… Mister Yagami! I must come with you!”

    “What?”

    “You don’t understand. If something were to happen to you, that would be it for our caravan. The least I could do is ensure your safety, even if you don’t believe the stories.”

    I think it is you that doesn’t understand, Jhin almost hisses, but stays his tongue, instead saying, “Very well. Do not slow me down.” Off with a flourish, he sets  into the forest without another word, caravaner desperate to keep up behind him. Typical. The next he employs a caravan to the northern reaches, he’ll be sure to pack double in gold such they might stay put.

    (And there is dye here, though not the kind to color some philistine’s fabric.)

    The caravaner says something about how fast Jhin is, and he’s well beyond deigning to hear it. Potentially if he’d been in a better mood he’d tell them that in another life—which had not been another life—he’d been a dancer, an acrobat, before settling down in Kaijn once he got older. But then he imagines that the caravaner would then again state the obvious like how ‘Mister Yagami’ does not look that old at all, and Jhin says nothing. Better the silence than…

    Hnh.

    … there’s something here.

    Jhin steps down where he is, covertly picking up a small stick. Enough to slip into the sleeve of his tunic and, once kissed with the breath of magic, emerge out a knife. There’s shuddering in the trees and Jhin whips around, ready to strike.

    Nothing. There’s nothing. Nothing except that the caravaner, too, is gone.

    “Ah,” Jhin says with a harrumph. “Well, now, I owe you my gratitude.”

    He stays ahead.

    Jhin comes across a stream, as expected. It is soot-dark and brackish, informed by the strange salt of the riverbed underneath. Bulbous cattails rise from within, glowing a hard, cool red. He smiles, and picks them one by one as a farmer would a plum. Finally.

    Under his obi are countless vials, and Jhin begins the delicate process of squeezing the bulbs until they secrete liquid to bottle them with. His motions are practiced—he’s done this dozen of times. There’s no common name for these cattails, but their poison is infamous throughout Ionia, the model of limitless imitation by two-bit ‘alchemists’. Jhin does not settle for anything but the best. He accepts only straight from the source, and so.

    Something is with him here again.

    “If you must know, I make for poor prey,” he says, unbothered, still working. “But, please, do enlighten me.”

—- not accepting!

the fox spirit; a rarity none the less but in the same measure at a base carnal thought there had been something appealing about the notion. predators in different distinction, the animalistic desires between kill and devour treaded a fine line. and in that line had been a budding interest at the notion.

‘ i could very well see the draw to hunting one such as her. what might transpire in my grasp...well, that is for the night to decide. ‘