Ink Stained

26: he invites*

He cocked his head to the side as he watched the exchange. So young, and already she was fending off the advances of perverted middle-aged men who preferred to lay against the bosoms of young waifs than the women they married. This girl couldn't be that much older than Pai.

He scowled as his stomach churned uncomfortably, chest heavy as lead when he recalled the stunning honey brown eyes, the shock of white hair, a shy smile that rarely showed itself. It – irked him, this odd, empty feeling in his chest, as if that beating thing that kept him alive had a mind of its own, sad and guilty about something.

What was there to be guilty about? He had done nothing to warrant such placid bullshit. Guilt wasn't something he cared for; that was all Shin's domain. Shin was a master at guilt, and doing nothing to alleviate it.

His eyes drifted back to the girl, still trying to politely get the drunken man to leave her alone. Polite this girl's smile was, but it was so clearly, obviously fake that it made him sneer.

Polite, she was, that other girl with hair white as snow tinged in silver and eyes that disappeared from this world every so often. She rarely looked like she was faking it, somehow.

×

Her hands are shaking in his. He can feel the minute tremors wracking the thin-boned frame of her hand from her wrist and down to her fingers. He can tell from the way her fingers twitch and curl slightly every few seconds that she wants to clench her hands into fists, to try and hide the shaking he has already seen. He keeps his grip on her hands loose, giving her the freedom to pull away if she really wants to.

Still, he has to remind himself not to press his hands around over hers, to stop the shaking the speaks of an illness that even Kanou hasn't been able to identify. It won't help – nothing seems to stop the shaking forcibly once it starts – and he doesn't want to startle her, either. Instead, he moves his thumb in tiny circles under the knuckle of her finger in a way he hopes calms her, frowning as he looks at the bright pink scars marring her upturned palm.

He knows that Pai is always pushing herself, always bustling around the house doing chores, sometimes random little things no one thinks to do, but she does. He's seen her get hurt on more than one occasion – and not say a word about it, whether it's cutting herself with a sharp knife in the kitchen, or bruising herself when she bumps into a table or chair in her way, or something of the like. He knows that with the way she's always pushing herself to do something, like she's afraid of just sitting still in a moment, it wouldn't be a surprise if she has the hands of a worker rather than a dainty princess like a lot of people do nowadays, human and Hengen alike.

But the faint calluses he gingerly runs his thumbs over are not those of someone doing house work; these are those of someone who handles weapons on a regular basis, but faded and softened with time. He would know what those type of calluses feel like. His own are like that.

He wonders why Pai's are like this, but he knows she probably won't have an answer for him if he asked.

He looks at her. She blinks up at him after a moment, as if she's rousing herself from a long sleep and only just woken up. She's done that thing he's noticed she does a lot; she looks like she's coming back from going somewhere far away, like her mind temporarily stepped out of her body and it has only just returned. He knows people tend to zone out in moments of boredom or when they're thinking deeply about something, but there is something about how frequently Pai does it that has him – worried, in a way he can't quite put to words.