restart. || kuroha & ayano
The smile in his voice is more than obvious. She could picture it now, Kuroha’s sharp teeth slowly being revealed as the corners of his mouth pulled into an impossibly wide smile that could be simply described as smug. Still, that air of cockiness, that selfishness — it doesn’t bother Ayano. She had dealt with it before, even before meeting Kuroha, with that other boy.
Her patience was something to be applauded upon, it seems like.
She finally turns around, wisps of hair unfurling from underneath her scarf from the movement and swaying along the summer breeze. Her smile doesn’t falter as her eyes meet the others sharp gaze, and if anything, her expression softens as she looks so, so kindly at him.
"For you, I guess it is," she concedes after a moment. It’s her usual answer, this conversation repeated hundreds and hundreds of times, the stage set for them to answer questions they knew the answers to all too well. Making her way from around the front desk, she circles to the first row of desks neatly tucked in rows, and seats herself on the desktop of the one directly in line with Kuroha.
Chalky hands smack gently against her leg to rid of the white dust, and she brushes the remaining residue from the pleats of her skirt. These moves are deliberate, Ayano allowing lulls of silence to span between them before one of them speaks again. Again, they had more then enough time on their hands.
"Even so," she continues, lifting her eyes from her lap, "I can’t imagine doing this — what did I say? Six hundred thirty-four? Yes, that was it. Six hundred thirty-four times."
She breaks their usual routine in favor of a new question. It’s simple and bluntly phrased, even for Ayano.
"Is there nothing else you’d rather do?"
This was a familiar routine to the black-haired snake, something that looped again and again, going on for as long as he tormented the queen into resetting the timeline time and time again. He expected her questions every instance he returned, the blood of her friends and siblings splattered across his face and hands. It was something that seemed almost eternal, this never-ending dance of death followed by the same questions, looping around again and again and again. He almost relished it as much as he did causing the queen so much pain at this point.
And then, with that single sentence, she changed it. It was just a slight shift, a grain of sand being thrown into the gears of a routine that had been repeated hundreds of times, six hundred forty-four times, to be exact.
But it was still a change, ever so slight. And Kuroha knew that eventually, that grain of sand would begin to work at the gears that spun endlessly, wearing them down until they no longer fit perfectly into each other. She was really quite selfish, that one, wasn't she? Not content with the usual routine at all, having to throw it all away in favor of something more entertaining.
Well, he certainly was one for entertainment.
"I live because they die. Again and again, over and over again. Each time they die by my hand is another loop where I get to continue existing. Wouldn't you rather be ensuring your own survival than doing something else? Even you, with that hero complex of yours, must value your own existence."
Though, he wasn't so sure. Someone who would sacrifice herself to the heat haze to stop his plans surely musn't value herself as much as she should. And maybe the was what was so intriguing about her, that willingness to throw away her life for others. How pathetic.
