#kenzen

It would be a long day, certainly, but Kenzen was pleased. He looked over the straight bladed longsword in his hand, turning it over and letting the light shimmer off of it as he gazed at the metal and leather. He shook it lightly, feeling the balance, before turning his attention to the shield in his left hand. It was shaped similar to a kite, wide at the top and tapering down at the bottom — though where the character’s emblem would normally be, instead there was what he had hoped would be an insignia of his own. As he hadn’t properly visualized it, however, the front of the shield was blurry and undefined. All the same, Kenzen didn’t let that stop him and continued to assess his gear. The well-polished border shone along with the blade in his right hand, as though the two items were made for each other — and in a sense, they were. They were the sword and shield of one of his foremost characters, Conrad, and the first items he’d summoned successfully.

Naturally, he was going to be excited.

Grinning eagerly, he rolled his shoulders and looked around the small room he’d allocated to be something of a training space. It was relatively bare for the time being, simply having a bench near a closet (presumably filled with miscellaneous supplies) in the corner. Finally returning his gaze to the space in front of him, he did his best to settle into a fighting stance, took a deep breath, and focused inward. He had a long day of practice ahead, and for practicing both mind and body with the weapons in his hands.

He couldn’t wait to get started.

——————————————————

“I love you. Good night!”

A simple enough message, yet Kenzen sent it with a sigh to Genjitsu as they signed off for the night. It was relatively early for him still, not yet time for bed -- his mind was rattling for vague ideas, games to play, internet to sift through... goodness knows what else. But with Genjitsu heading to bed, he felt, somehow, an unusual sense of emptiness.

What a sap. Less than a minute and he already missed them. 

He shook his head with another sigh, trying to drive the thought out of his head. Nothing wrong with missing them -- they were what recharged his soul, after all -- but all the same, he’d need to find something to occupy the hours until he felt properly ready for bed.

With another melancholy sigh, he pulls open some youtube video or another of an archived stream, the next in a series he’d been watching, but hardly paying attention to it itself. Skip the intro, get to the start, let it murmur in the background. He booted up a slow-paced video game, something he could play while still half paying attention to the video in the background, and sighed as he leaned back in his chair while it started to load, making sure to keep his window focused on it, knowing the occasional inconsistencies of his computer relatively well. Look away from a high capacity game too long and it might just crash. But that was all right, he wasn’t going to be looking at much else.

The game on, the youtube playing, he tried to relax and lean back, softly adjusting his computer glasses as he curled up in his desk chair, posture no doubt horrible as ever as he huddled in his soft yellow and blue pajamas. With the occasional clicks and clacks ringing out, he settled into a rhythm to somewhat busy himself with the passing time. 

But no matter how much he did so, there would always be a slight poke in his chest. Sure, he did this during the day as well, but then he always had texts and time with Genjitsu to look forward to.

Now, with her asleep, it was just a vague sense of content monotony to pass the hours until he would sleep himself, not yet tired enough to do so.

Two hours crawled by as he poked at the computer, occasionally holding a stuffed animal and hoping it was Genjitsu. Enough time, he supposed, to head to bed -- nothing was keeping him at the computer at this point, and he didn’t have much else he couldn’t do in bed while he waited to fall asleep. So to bed he went. Brush teeth. Bathroom. Maybe brush the hair. Hit the lights, and snuggle under the covers.

Another sigh, wanting to be with them. In the morning, he would be, but until he found the right measure of exhaustion and calm, sleep would not find him.

He pulled out his phone, starting to poke through social media, texts, posts, smiling as he saw things that they wrote, saw bits of them held safely in the palm of his hand. Ideas to share, stories to create, all held in his memories of them and more.

Turning his thoughts towards Genjitsu, he curled up, holding his necklace to his chest, and doing his best to think of holding their soul in his hands, just as they do with his, every single day.