Two weeks passed since the events of the Auction. Two weeks that Urie Kuki refused all form of contact with Katayama Yami. It wasn't the first time that she had been ignored by him, but it was frustrating all the same. He knew that there would eventually be a time in which this repetitive avoidance would be put to an end, whether it be by the Squad Mentor or Yami herself, but the boy refused to think of such a thing. Truthfully, after the embarrassing events of the Auction, he wished to never speak to the girl again. She saw a side of him that he never wanted anyone to see: his weakness. The very thought of it kept him awake most nights. A more selfish side of him loathed her, who couldn't spit a sentence out properly, for killing Big Madam.
A total of fifteen days went by until Yami had enough of this awkward silence. She didn't want to say nothing like the last time he began to ignore her:
Another day of training meant more weight added to Urie's intense lifting regimen. It had been hours since he disappeared into the training room, but that hardly mattered to him. Urie was delightedly aware that each contraction of the muscles and strain of the tendons resulted in strength. Nevertheless, groans left his mouth from those uncomfortable feelings. He hardly heard his own noises though, due to his ears being filled with Vivaldi— not his favorite composer, but the intense symphony of the Four Seasons inspiring comfort at the moment. The season that vibrated against Urie's ear drums was Winter. The notes were fast paced and the violin sounds were satisfying. It was his favorite movement of this famous symphony.
Beautiful... Urie thought passed the pain sparking in his arms, closing his eyes to imagine a chaotically snowy scene that matched Vivaldi's movement. I need to paint this... Oh, how many times that sentence had been thought... If he were left alone for another moment, a tear surely would have escaped his eye from the way Vivaldi's notes made his heart flutter. So, when an annoyingly familiar scent filled the air, he didn't know whether to be relieved or aggravated.
"Urie-ku—"
"Go away, Katayama-san." He cut the timid girl's words off before they could have enough time to escape her throat. He'd much rather be absorbed by the classical music that he loved than to endure the heavy air between him and Yami. The way she acted as though he hadn't nearly killed her at the auction was infuriating, the fact that she killed an SS-rated ghoul was aggravating, and the reminder that Shirazu did the same made him tremble with insecurity.
Moments passed filled with silence, Urie continuing on his exorcise, though Yami had yet to move an inch. With sly movements, he was able to take in her appearance from the corner of his vision. She stood in her casual clothing that consisted of black pants, a long pale-blue shirt— that could easily have been advertised as a dress— and a navy-knitted cardigan thrown over her shoulders to hide the brighter shade underneath. The skin underneath her eyes had grown consistently dark over the last two weeks, but it didn't take away from her innocent form of beauty. Her cheeks were flaming and he wondered what he said to make her blush this time. The uniquely-hued hair wasn't loose this time, something that made some part of Urie disappointed to see, and instead tied into the buns that she regularly styled the strands in. I would have been nice to see it down...
"Mm..." She hummed just at a time that the Winter movement had ended, and Urie cursed whatever higher power there was for forcing him to hear her nervous sounds. With a heavy sigh, he placed the weight that he was lifting on the rack above him before moving to a sitting position. Something inside of him knew very well that getting rid of her this time would be difficult. Perhaps appeasing her by listening to what she has to say will get her to leave... "S—Stop calling me that."
Urie was in shock, dumbfounded for an eternal second. "What?" He sounded his confusion, eyebrows scrunched and head shaking from side-to-side. It was so rare that she'd be this demanding, even if she did sputter in the beginning. "Stop calling you 'Katayama-san?'" He questioned after recounting his previous words. San... he hadn't used that honorific for a long time. His heart felt as heavy as the weight he was previously lifting when she nodded her head in confirmation. He didn't want that guilty feeling to show, so he rolled his eyes, "Tsk... that's your name, isn't it?"
Her hands folded in front of her frame, a habit of nervousness that Urie had attributed to the girl months ago. "You used to call me by 'chan.'" The clarifying sentence was obvious and should have gone without saying. Her bashfulness made him refrain from making a sarcastic comment on the matter. A breath escaped Yami when he didn't respond to her, the air existing shakily while she began to play with her thumbs. "I... want you to call me that again."
His answer was cold. "It was becoming too familiar." It was the half-truth. He wanted to distance himself from her. He was ashamed about his uncontrollable actions at the auction. It's for the better, he'd told himself. It's dangerous to get close... especially to her.
"I want you... to call me by my first name." It took fifteen days' worth of courage to say this.
Urie whipped his head around to the girl, surprised at her forward statement. She'd never been this demanding before. "Why do you care, anyway? You call me by my last name and always have."
She clutched at the end of her cardigan, eyes looking everywhere but in his direction. It was obvious she wasn't used to her behavior, either. "K—Kuki-kun."
A chill ran through him and he had trouble breathing. Where is this braveness coming from?
"That wasn't an invitation. Don't call me that." Urie shot the idea of her uttering his first name down firmly. He hated the way it made him feel when he heard the syllables made by her mouth formed his first name. He could no longer look at her because of it. Kuki-kun, Kuki-kun, Kuki-kun... Why couldn't it exit his head? "Just go away, Katayama-chan." It was practically a plea, now. She still didn't budge, unsatisfied even though he said the correct honorific. The only way to get away from her is to distance us myself. With a heavy hand, he began wrapping his earbuds neatly. There were no words, nor glance, spared to her as he passed her quickly to exit the room.
Urie was about to leave with no remorse... but a question flashed in his mind. He paused, though he didn't dare turn in her direction. "Are you scared of me?" He couldn't help but asking. There was no controlling the words that spilled off of his tongue. The sound of his rapidly beating heart was deafening. He hated it. He hated all of this. He hated the way she was making him feel and he hated the way he could no longer control his action in her presence.
"N—No! Not at all!" Yami shrieked a fast answer, spinning around to face him only to get the image of his tense back. Tiny fists formed in determination as if that would solidify the honesty of her words. In Urie, a breath was released with the answer he both did and did not want to hear.
My emotions are getting so damn complicated...
He wished to see her face, but he couldn't move. Something was preventing him from moving a single inch. Is this... anxiety? "Well, I think that you need to reflect on why you aren't frightened of me, even after I lost control and hurt you. Yet, you are frightened of Sasaki-san." Urie was amazed at how cool and collected he made his words sound.
Yami gulped, "I'm... not scared anymore." Her feet carefully moved towards him, he heard her shuffling. A part of him wanted to command her to stop, to not get any closer to him, but again, he couldn't. In reality, Yami made sure to keep quite the extensive distance between him and her, but the closing proximity still made the boy feel nervous. What the hell is she doing to me? "If anything, I'm scared of myself." Me too, Katayama-chan... You can't even imagine... "Don't go." It was meant to sound like a demand, but it came out far from. "I... I came her to ask if you would like to go to :RE."
~~~~~~~
Why did I agree? How did I get here? What am I doing at the coffee shop again with her? Urie reflected as he sat at the same table that that he and Yami had when they went to this café previously. It was overwhelmingly silent between them and he wanted nothing more than to stick buds in his ears and blast the notes of Beethoven at the highest volume to calm him, but he knew that would be rude. Since when do I care about being rude? The thought of defiance prompted him to stick a hesitant hind into his pocket, feeling the plastic strings that bring him joy. I wish that I was painting right now.
He hated everything about this situation: the strange way he was acting, the way that he could still smell her scent over the coffee, the persistent messages coming in from Shirazu, interrogating him on where he was and if Yami was with him, and the fact that he knew Yami was getting them too. Luckily, her phone was off. There was also the tempting smell of that delicious coffee, the comforting air, the erratic thoughts, the thin scarf wrapped around her neck... he hated it all.
Yami's nose was dug int0 her notebook, the only part of her face not hidden from Urie's view being her eyes. A black pen scribbled words that he couldn't see, and he ignored the longing of wanting to know what she was documenting as best as he could. To compose himself, he forced air into his lungs— act fucking normal, idiot— and then released. He gave an order to all the unfamiliar stress to concentrate into one area of his mind, only allowing his leg to bounce to cope with it all.
"You know," Truthfully, the two weeks of silence between them made countless questions pile up in Urie. He wanted to speak with her so badly, to scold her for her actions, but he couldn't bring himself to do it in the slightest, up until this point. "last time we were here, I asked you to stop risking your life in attempt to save me during missions." Forcing his eyes in her direction, he saw that her attention had already been redirected from her notebook to him. He swallowed when their eyes locked. She looks scared... "You failed."
Yami, who's internal stress was at an even higher level than Urie's, covered the lower half of her reddening face with her poetry book. This lecture was all too familiar, as Haise brought about the same subject the day they visited Dr. Shiba. However, hearing the words from Urie brought more guilt than it did when speaking with her superior. "I... don't see it as failing." She confessed, close to the same response that she gave Haise on the matter, though her voice was muffled due to the obstruction of the notebook against her lips.
"I do." The face that she was making was weakening. She knew what she had done had inflicted disappointment in Urie and her face showed it. She could no longer meet his steady gaze. She isn't scared, Urie reminded himself, She told me that she isn't... Another whimpering noise left her, just like the one in the training room. That sound she would make when she was internally frustrated with herself and the situation, the sound she would make when her nerves were overpowering. She's just nervous.... like always. More nervous than me...
"I—I'm fine, Urie-kun. Haise-san spoke to me about this, too. You don't need to worry—"
The realization of her awkwardness gave Urie a boost in confidence, and he snatched the book away from her face. She jolted from the loss of protection and Urie wasn't overly surprised to see that the lower half of her face was overheating with bashfulness. This, without a doubt, was the shyest person that Urie had ever encountered. How? He found himself wondering yet again, How did this person kill Big Madam? He shook his head of the thought, "Don't flatter yourself, Katayama-chan." He said before he could study her face and formulate questions further than he already had, "I'm not worried about you. It's just angering that you failed to listen. Now that Sasaki-san has said something, I'm sure you'll comply though."
Urie felt an unfamiliar heat crawl up his neck and tore his attention completely away from Yami, ignoring the slightest hint of her from his vision. There was no response from her and Urie tried to tame his overactive mind by playing various symphonies in his head. For good measure, he brought his gloved hand up to cover the lower half of his face. If what this heat was what he guessed (a blush) then he could never allow her to see such a thing.
"I'm... sorry for assuming." Urie didn't bother to look Yami's way when she spoke. He didn't expect to feel so much guilt when she apologized. "But, you're wrong."
Urie's face displayed shock, but his eyes still didn't so much as flicker over to her, "Huh?"
"I..." Yami raced for the appropriate words that wouldn't sound too harsh. With her lips rubbing together, she internally practiced different sentences before feeling the need to vocalize one. "If any other Squad member was in danger, I can't stop myself from helping. Even if Haise-san tells me otherwise. It's... not what I was trained to do..." The last part was a lie, Urie could detect it easily. There was a reason as to why she constantly put herself in danger, and she wasn't being truthful about it. He wanted to know. While there was a certain type of satisfaction that he felt when she revealed that she wouldn't listen to Haise, there was still a part of him that wished that she would listen to someone on this matter.
"Do you want to die?"
Yami's heart raced. She looked horrified— horrified, yet guilty. "W—What?"
"It's a simple question," Urie grumbled, burying his face deeper into his hand. "If you keep that mentality, then you will die. Do you understand what death is?" Of course, she did. Urie knew that she had only been surrounded by it her entire life, yet he couldn't stop the question from spilling out.
She clenched her fists and looked at the poetry book on the table. If she were to hold it up to hide her face once again there was no doubt that Urie would snatch it away again. "What's wrong with it all?" Yami wondered aloud, avoiding all of his previous questions to present him with one. "What's wrong with looking out for your comrades?"
Urie could tell this subject was hard for her to address, and something clicked in his mind see her overly-reserved reaction to it. He would have expected a bashful expression to take over as she sputtered out furious denials of wanting to die, and that she knew the harm that came with what she did. Yet, this was a different kind of "reserved" that he'd ever seen from her. She was closing herself off emotionally, stuffing herself into a shell in the hoped that Urie wouldn't follow suit. Even her shoulders curled inwards in attempt to shut the conversation out. She can't seriously... He didn't want to think of it anymore. Not one bit. Without putting much thought into it, Urie changed the subject as quickly as possible. "Why do you write poetry?"
The hand that had been occupying Urie's chin moved to swipe across his face before settling at his forehead. Now, Yami couldn't see any of his facial features. An ignorant eye would almost assume that the boy was weeping, but Yami knew better than to think something so absurd.
It took a moment for his rather random question to fully process. The change of pace made her mind whirl, and Yami had to put herself back into a normal state. When the question finally did register, her eyes widened, heart skipping beats in a way that couldn't be considered safe. She wondered is she had heard him correctly. "W—What?"
"Why do you write poetry? What made you do it?" Same question, different tone. It was softer this time, less irritated and more desperate. Urie didn't want to think about the previous topic anymore. It brought a pain within his chest that he felt too unfamiliar to be comfortable with. He hadn't felt that sort of feeling since his father died. He didn't want any part of it.
Yami was more flustered than he'd seen her in months. It seemed that she had forgotten about her previous withdraw but he swore that he fingers were still trembling from the remanence. "W—Why do you ask?" It was a solid question with an answer as uncontrollable as liquid.
Do I really care? Urie wondered... He didn't like how honest his inner voice answered the question. Of course, I want to know. In the end, he simply avoided a truthful reply. "Don't worry about it." Oh, but she did.
Yami adjusted her posture, the leather underneath of her legs squeaking in an unfavorable way because of her awkward movement. With her teeth chomping down on nothing, she debated whether or not to pursue the topic. It was rather sensitive, after all. Not as sensitive as the previous topic, but still uncomfortable to mention. "Well..." She pondered, "I haven't ever told Haise-san..."
Urie peered at her through the spaces between his fingers. "All the more reason to tell me, right?" He didn't necessarily expect Haise to be brought into this, but it also wasn't a surprise. It seemed to Urie that Haise was the first person Yami had opened up to in along time, so something that had yet to be told to him would prove to be more than uncomfortable to talk about with anyone else. It was frustrating. He wished that she'd talk to him more. "Don't want to have your life filtered by Sasaki-san, do you?" Her dependence on Haise would eventually turn into a sour situation, that's what Urie thought.
It was quiet for a moment, but she did begin to answer. "When I was little—"
"Well, well, well..." A voice that was not Urie's interrupted the start of Yami's answer, and both investigator's heads snapped toward the source of the masculine voice. Yami broke into a shy, forced grin while Urie's expression turned into one that could only convey absolute displeasure. "Baby Katayama is back again, and with her boyfriend too."
Urie growled, "I'm not—"
"N—Nishio-senpai." Yami ignored the embarrassing comments from both males, instead stuttering out a great to the old acquaintance of hers. Nishio Nishiki wore nice clothes and an apron that only the servers of the shop would clad themselves in. His shaggy blonde hair fell over his eyes, the frames of his glasses keeping the strands from completely blocking view of his irises. They were a similar color to her own eyes. That was something Yoshi-kun had told her once, but she shook that memory out of her head before it could resurface more. "You work here?"
Nishio smirked, moving the hand that held a small notepad to his hip. "On occasion," He confessed, eyes flashing over to Urie momentarily to see the reaction he stirred up in the boy. He was pleasantly satisfied to see that Urie had grown completely rigid with impatience. "You still want your coffee black?" Yami gave a small nod of affirmation, rather than trusting herself enough to use her words. "Good. And for you, dead-eyes?"
Who the hell does this guy think he is? "Call me that again and I won't think twice about making a scene in your shop." Urie growled, jaw tightening and anger rising to a new level. He didn't want to be humiliated in such a way, especially in front of Yami. She had see enough of his mortifying side.
"Urie-kun, stop." Yami took on an unusually demanding tone, almost like a mother scolding a child.
Nishio joined in on suppressing the younger boy's anger, "Calm down, kid. I'm only joking." He waved his hand at Urie to show the casualty of his previous statement. Nishio may not have been afraid of the investigator—hell, he'd even fought him and crushed him before— but he didn't want him to cause trouble in Touka's shop.
Urie breathed through his nostrils, Just order so he can leave. "Get me the same as her."
Nishio couldn't help but make a parting joke, though. "Matching drinks for the cute coup—"
"You can go now." With that, Nishio complied easily. The boy was nosey and wanted to rock the boat, even just in the slightest. Urie, on the other hand, was nearly ready to leave after encountering the blonde's presence. The very knowledge of his employment in this otherwise divine café made Urie sick. To think, he spoke internally, that Katayama-chan likes this guy...
As if reading the obscene insults that Urie held in his head towards Nishio, Yami spoke in the same firm tone as before, "Stop being rude to him." Urie looked at her fully, the first time since the tense subject of death had been discussed, to check if that voice had been coming from her. It wasn't by any means scary on the rare occasions that she'd use this tone (mostly because that sternness would never reach her face) but it did make him listen. There is still no way that I can think of her killing Big Madam, though... "He's my friend and it's disrespectful."
Still, Urie found it in himself to scuff at the way she labeled the annoying guy. Friend. She seemed so quick to present him as such, yet Urie himself had only been addressed as a 'co-worker' up until this point. It put a bad taste in Urie's mouth. "Where did you even get a friend as shitty as that?"
Yami pouted. "He isn't a bad friend." There was no way that she could bring herself to use the swear word that Urie had.
She's so oblivious... "Katayama-chan, he called you a murderer that other time and, even though you want to think otherwise, he wasn't joking." Open your eyes, Katayama-chan... "It's hard to watch."
Yami closed herself off again, curling her shoulders inwards and directed her face down so her outgrown nags could hide her eyes. "I am a murderer, though."
What is she...
Big Madam.
Urie's heart sunk so rapidly that he felt the need to clutch at his chest. She's hurting me... I hate that face that she's making... "No, Katayama-chan." His voice was firm but soft at the same time. He didn't care if that nuisance that Yami identified as a friend saw that touch, but he reached out to guide her face upwards again. He wanted her to see the sincerity of his words. "Thank you for saving me from Big Madam and thank you for bringing my state of mind back." He swallowed hard before he let the next words out, "You're not a murderer. You could never be anything negative."
Yami was confuzzled and utterly red for the remainder of the day. When Haise came home that night, he fretted because she thought that she had a fever. She didn't tell him what Urie had said, even she knew that it was only for her ears to hear.