#oathstruck

--- HEAVENLY was the smell that wafted from the bowl laid before her, a tantalising fragrance that made her mouth water. Suddenly she was STARVING, the pain swelling in her head momentarily forgotten, and the hangover urging her to gorge herself on the soup. Emily was hungover so rarely that she never really knew what sort of 'cure' would best suit her.

Thank GOODNESS for Tomoko, truly.

I'll let you know in a minute.

Taking the offered cigarette from her fingers while pulling out his handmade lighter from his back pocket. In no time getting the extremity lit to smoke. Lifting in her direction the golden lighter in case she felt like having a smoke herself.

Considering the lack of shock coming from her he’s more than sure she can handle this revelation..or in fact, she’s even experienced a few tussles here and there. “I can teach ya how t’ hurt ghosts. All ya need is a little thing called reiki.” Yusuke said softly, extending a finger and allowing a small sphere of light to emit at the tip of his finger. “It’s somethin’ everyone’s got, teachin’ ya t’ draw it out is gonna be the main focus. I wanna take ya on some of the cases I got. Sometimes I’d need back up.”

Scath stood as a shadow in the library, a spectral lingering where eyes could not spy him, peering over the shoulder of a guest he found most...pleasing, to spend his time with as of late. What little of it he could rightly spare (he always did have so much to do, keeping the nasties away; Anyone who stayed too long often, without fault, would rouse the dead). Lovely, he thought Yamato, though not without regret. An impossibility, but he wished he'd been possessed of the same youth, and that they'd met under better circumstances. For now, the moment, Sam was content to stand watch over his guest, whatever he may need.

Grimly, he emerged, tendrils of shadow and ether solidifying to give him substance however cold, coming when his name had been called. Posture straight, steps light and uniform. No matter how thick the elegant green carpeting, there was no mistaking the true master of the house, even in the dim light and air that seemed to suck the life right out of the vast space. Dust hung nearly undisturbed in the air, and remained as he pushed through it, a gloved hand soon settling over his chest. For a moment, he thought it fitting that Yamato find a place, stacked high with technical and classical art instructionals, where many of even the greats had once sat, from the Daughter of the Stormcrow to the King of Kings - or so the family guestbook had recorded.

     𝑪𝒐𝒍𝒅, 𝒃𝒂𝒍𝒎𝒚 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒐𝒖𝒄𝒉, strangely eerie the flesh that renders itself in a gentle cast of pale splendor. Blue veins that trickle upwards in a current, fingers moving methodically as he tilts his head with a curious precision. “One last suture” there is an odd lilt to his voice, too chic as if he was covering the past in a cosmopolitan mannerism, but something was amiss. Natural components that formed into jewelry, a wooden bracelet worn like a talisman, underneath a shattered foreign import - a gold watch, too gaudy, too expensive for a resident. His thumb caresses a patch of flesh, oddly friendly despite the detachment of his scathing hazel gaze, or was it amber?  “I won’t ask how you obtained such an injury, that’s too much paperwork for my taste, I will insist on the other hand to be more careful, @oathstruck” withdrawing, he stands, an elegant profile, long, lean, the modern clothing unnatural upon him as if he was from an era bygone. Comically, he removes what could only be assumed candy from his pocket, snickering softly in a teasing manner as he chimes.

                                     “For being such a good patient, come visit me again?”

s.c.

Rain pattered the wet blacktop, ribbons of melting neon streaking across the ground as fluorescent, horizontal signs hummed with electricity and flickered at odd intervals. It was a warm summer rain, the sort that didn't soak passersby to the bone; that was, if they possessed bones. Clear's footfalls slowly faded as he came upon a strange morass in the center of the backstreet, brow drawing together in confusion.

A human body lay prone in the waterlogged street, limbs akimbo, with a pinprick of blood weeping from a blossom of blood in their back.

10 laps. About as much actual training as could be respected in this kind of heat. Although Yoshika wasn't exactly the type to swim during the day for...myriad reasons, it was hard not to accept with some pressure put on her by a certain someone. Ever the more eager and definitely willing to play around with being the wolf's charming vassal, they'd certainly get the brunt of the wolf's criticism as she broke through the water's surface to catch her breath.

"Why do I get the feeling you're enjoying this enough for the both of us? You sure we shouldn't have just gone to the beach instead?"

A facetious question. Izumi knew how much Yoshika hated the beach.

Countless lessons as a young girl replay in Sophie’s mind as she holds her scotch glass, thumb pressing against its rim. Speak when spoken to, never raise your voice, keep yourself in order—the expectations of the dutiful eldest daughter, who was once unchecked and boundless. Girls to women exist in an unspoken world; age is not what marks the transition between them, but it is dictated by another’s perception. Contention arises because one errs in someone’s maturity. How much longer could the mother shield her daughters from reality? It is but a disservice.

A twisted conclusion, but the heiress understands why it was done. The boundaries of the female sex are amenable and adaptable, formless and forced into spaces cramped by the architecture of masculine stripped neoclassicism.

At least, at the age of twenty-three, the cycle is currently at “acceptance.” It may cycle again in the next month, or half of the year, or into the night. Grief never relents and sleeps. All the more glaring it was in the moment, as a colleague whose eyes constantly observed and mouth smirked was commentless; gaze remembering where someone’s eyes are.

The copper-haired patron leans against the counter at the bar, the air in the room practically fogged by cigars and cigarettes. Their leather glove hisses as they flex their free hand.

“Sure, sure,” the words drag out of the investor’s lips, swirling liquor in their glass. Rust brown irises flit around the crowd, the low thudding of the speakers thankfully drowning out half of the conversation.

‘Simeon’ was not a commitment Sophie plotted. Yet, with the accumulated investment and entanglement in the latest strangeness in Kabukicho, a forged identity helped get deeper into the labyrinth of red lights.

Pressing the drink to their lips, they take a quick swig. Eyes trace over their Oxford shoes before scanning through the crowd. Simeon exhales as they retrieve their phone from their black slacks.

‘Where is Miss Kimura?’

This may have been her adoptive father’s territory, but vanishing from the eyeshot of another was ridiculous.

Simeon finally and fully adjusts their weight on their feet. “Ah, I need to check on something,” they wave their hand, dismissing the ‘equal’ who nonchalantly nods and takes a drag of their cigarette. What a strangely shorter exchange. Maneuvering out of that exchange, had she been herself, would have stretched through minutes.

Slipping through the patrons on the dancefloor, Simeon retracts her glass and arm beneath the large suit jacket cloaked over their shoulders. Their other hand even covers the top of their glass.

Heading towards the stage, a familiar face was stepping down from the stage. Simeon hears the whispers of dalliances and feels the heat of bodies pressed against them. They shuffle faster to the stage, feeling their breath balling in their throat.