☆ | I, Rhys Kakyoin: Mamoritai | Jotakak

9 ★ The mark

(tw: non con kiss/caressing)

If there's one thing in the world for me that will forever be trapped between the awkward abyss of indifference and idle aversion, it's FaceTime and how easily you can force a switch to it from normal voice.

I know I owe it to my father to tell him, but there's hesitance here in my hands as I do so. Anyhow, I can't just be getting bruises and wounds left and right while my parents kick back for tea after work.

  "I told you, I'm fine," I sigh in the face of the inevitable switch, greeted with my father's widened eyes and angered brows. He's driving, I notice hints of cityscape behind him, but he insists on this anyway.

"If your mother saw you like this, she'll split the Earth in two and drag you back to Tokyo with her bare hands," Dad snaps, his gaze alternating between me and the road in front of him. "What happened this time?"

"Picture a woman with terrible hair," I say. "Then take away her body and leave only organs and a head. Then give her really sharp teeth. Then give her vein tentacles that spit blood. Now you have the thing that gave me the cut."

"My goodness, Noriaki," he says wearily. "I hope a cut was all you got. Is Jotaro fine too?"

"Not a scratch on him, considering that he's practically invincible."

There's a pause as I notice his changing grip on the steering wheel; a glance at me in consideration of something, pondering on a decision. There's a subtle shake of his head, a gentle lift of his chest as he draws a breath. "I know, Joseph says you are a tough nipper, or whatever he said. But you're fifteen years old, not an adult."

I look at Auntie, wrapping a scarf carefully around a now awakened Alix's neck, certainly sore and tender from the unforgiving stranglehold of Heartless. Though, Alix seems pretty unaffected by it all, seeming only tired, needing sleep, leisurely snorting at me as my eyes lay fully on him.

"Well, I've been growing up fast," I say. "I'm probably mentally eighteen now."

"No, no, still a young Kakyoin," Dad says. "Still our young child, Noriaki! Just one year ago you were fourteen, we took you to Hakone and got you an ice cream on the way up the mountain. You forced us to get you that cute little Keroppi keychain!"

  I resist the urge to retaliate with the fact that I've already had a go at a marriage proposal and instead offer him an acquiescent nod, telling him nothing else. He's right, though: thinking about Hakone, about the train ride back to Tokyo at night, makes me fuzzy and warm and youthful inside. The mountains ahead felt so infinite, stretching into another world. It's the kind of thing that makes you miss being so young, with little to contemplate other than the window of sights before your eyes.

   "So, you're all okay, right? No lasting damage?" he asks.

  "Yes, I'm fine. Look, see!" I say, pointing at my face. "Actually, be careful on the road. But I'm fine."

  "Right, then. Stay out of trouble, Nori. I'm having a meeting soon. Be good, always say thank you to Jotaro and his grandparents."

  "Yes, Dad, I will. Bye."

  When he hangs up I toss my phone away, on the sofa between me and Alix. Auntie is checking around him for more injuries, having found a bruise on his elbow along the way. She prods at him like a dentist with his tools, he pulls away at each reach forward in annoyance, tutting at him as she goes. If he ever gets a Stand, he'll realise that a mere bruise on the elbow, as if from a slip and fall, will be the best deal he can get.

In due time, Mr Joestar arrives by foot, Nonna absent from his side. The sun in his face, his eyes, is gone this time, as if it had been drained from him, or his soul had turned to a sieve, absorbing the gloom of the outside fog. At first Jo and I are nervous to talk to him with the look he has on his face, against the shadow that his hat casts.