#unoxidize

whoever they are, they’re incredibly clever, he thinks.  they can make their presence known, but oda cannot locate where their eyes are watching him from.  it’s a carefulness he hasn’t seen in a long time, a carefulness...  he relates to all too well.  someone wary  --  closed off?  why would they want to keep an eye on him, if they were concerned about getting close?  it doesn’t make much sense to him, but some people don’t want to make sense.  ( take ranpo, for example. )

the man’s lips pucker as he considers the options, flipping through the book he’s plucked from the bookshelf in front of him.  he had found his way into a secondhand shop to look at what old books were for sale but  --  

the flutter of pages, the heavy thunk of a hardback cover meeting the floor.  

a book he had balancing precariously on a hand falls.  oda begins to kneel down to pick it up, but stops himself halfway when a stranger does the honors.  strange  --  where had they come from? he hadn’t even noticed...

“sorry...  thank you for that.”

donate to the cause. donate to the cause. donate to the cause

yosano, the fairest lady in my life, i will carry your bags for a week, so plea

Normally, he would tolerate it, at the very least. Actually, he was happy that things weren’t always the same, even if he didn’t always understand how they worked. And he totally got that! He totally understood that he wouldn’t always understand, especially because the city was such a different place from his hometown.

But the question seemed to tug at his mind, and being as sincere as Kenji was, he couldn’t just leave it unanswered. He just had to ask honestly, right?