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ofmanydevices (ofmanydevices) wrote in disappear_rpg,
@ 2009-11-24 20:10:00

Entry tags:

renju, tom

Who: Tom and Renju
What: Oh yes, it's time, time for love.
Where: Room 22-C
When: 7/19/2013
Why: Because told him to.

With their training done for the day, Tom had taken a seat. He lifted a bottle of water he brought and took a sip. His jaw still ached from that time Renju had accidentally connected. He was however proud that she had learned how to pull off such a good punch.

He looked at Renju, and took a moment to take her in. He felt both his heart pounding and a lump in his throat. It was actually hard to swallow the water in his mouth. He had never been so afraid of doing something in his entire life. He took a deep breath and...

"Sonozaki... I..."

chickened out.

"...I heard the punks Satou and I drove out of the boys dorm attacked you all?"

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lotus_beyond
2009-11-25 01:34 am UTC (link)

Renju was sitting on her usual desk, this time holding a warm cloth on her hand. She hadn't meant to clock him on the jaw, but at least he'd complimented her on her form instead of getting annoyed. Then again, she was coming to expect no differently from him. She was also pleased by the fact that she still had some energy left; the first several training sessions had left her exhausted, and while she still couldn't quite keep up with Tom endurance-wise, she was at least improving.

She'd been examining her fingers, looking for signs of bruises, when the question made her jerk her head up. "Apparently. The one who attacked me mentioned a 'psycho with knives' that had fought him earlier." There's a brief, faint trace of something that could almost be an amused smile on her face, but it's gone quickly. "They didn't last very long, from what I understand."

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ofmanydevices
2009-11-25 01:40 am UTC (link)

Tom looked kind of embarrassed.

"I'm sorry, I should have made sure they left the school, but I wanted to tend to Satou's injuries. I wasn't thinking."

After a moment he contemplated his situation, hoping his nerves had calmed. Yup, still heart pounding, even without having said anything. It was that same sensation he got when about to be attacked, but he felt it continuously. Tom wondered if this was what all human interaction felt like.

"I..umm.. I am proud uh... no... I'm impressed? Uh..."

Tom let out a breath.

"It's good that you managed to fend them off. You've come a long way in your training."

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lotus_beyond
2009-11-25 01:49 am UTC (link)

"Thank you." Renju flexed her fingers, then set aside the cloth. The sting had mostly gone away, so it was mostly a matter of taking it easy on that hand for a bit at this point. Focused as she was, she hadn't really noticed anything amiss with the conversation, nor picked up on the slightly different feel of the training session. "You've been a very helpful teacher."

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	ofmanydevices 2009-11-25 02:30 am UTC (link)
	Tom got flustered. "Well I... umm... yeah, yes!" Tom tried to regain his composure. "Yes, thank you. I've had Akuba ask about possibly teaching her too. I guess after that fight she feels a need to be prepared." Tom ran his fingers through his hair, and took another breath. He wondered why this was so hard. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

lotus_beyond
2009-11-25 02:40 am UTC (link)

"That's right, Akuba-san was involved in that, too..." The most Renju had noticed at the time was a few other indistinct voices from down the hall and a lot of yelling; she hadn't been able to place any of them until she'd seen the post in Maeko's journal the next day. "I think it would be helpful for some of the others to get lessons. We don't know if there will come another point when we can't rely on our Personas."

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ofmanydevices
2009-11-25 03:01 am UTC (link)

"Right. Being prepared for things. Oh, speaking of which."

Tom moved over to his stuff, and slipped out a long slender leather pouch.

"I had these made for you when we first started training. The pouch is custom so it's easy to handle. The blades can lock in place, or be folded down like my knives so they're... less lethal."

Tom handed the pouch to Renju, inside were a pair of kama, with their blades floded forward.

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lotus_beyond
2009-11-25 03:14 am UTC (link)

Slowly, Renju took the pouch with both hands and opened it, gently extracting one of the folded kama. A flick of her wrist snapped it open, and she hefted it to test its balance. She wasn't exactly trained in these things, but it felt significantly better than the ones she'd pulled from Reizo's bag and been using ever since.

Carefully, she folded it back up and slid it back into its pouch, then simply looked down at it for a long, awkward moment, not quite able to assemble her thoughts coherently. "This... You shouldn't have gone to all this trouble and expense," she said finally, trying to put a bit of the usual strength back in her voice and only partway succeeding. "If you wanted to get a weapon like this for someone on the team, it should've been someone who relies on it more." Unspoken, and perhaps only barely implied, in this last was why me?.

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	ofmanydevices 2009-11-25 03:23 am UTC (link)
	Tom lowered his head a little. "No one else on the team has the honor of being my student. No one else shows any genuine concern for me... well... except Kondo, and she's pretty attached to that racket." Tom tried to smile, he failed, and instead let out a sigh. "Sonozaki...-san, no one else has earned it like you have." (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

lotus_beyond
2009-11-25 03:49 am UTC (link)

Some part of Renju had some inkling about where this was going. That part was forcibly pushed back behind the rest. It was a ridiculous idea and she had no idea why her thoughts would have gone in that direction.

But he'd called her '-san', and this was Tom. It was impossible for this to not mean something. And even if it didn't, it was still...

She looked down, away, at her feet, anywhere but at him or the kama. She wasn't blushing; in fact, her cheeks had gone a bit paler than usual. "I don't... er... thank you, sempai," she finished awkwardly.

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ofmanydevices
2009-11-25 04:19 am UTC (link)

Tom nodded.

"Well then, I'm glad you like them. I suppose we should... uh... wrap up for the night?"

Tom turned to leave, but stopped himself. He was not going to turn away from this again. He turned back toward Renju and took a deep breath. He thought about what everyone had said, and it all amounted to "just tell her your feelings" And so that's what he did.

"Sonozaki... ummm... look I..."

He put a hand to his forehead.

"I know, that I shouldn't say this to you, it's, not really appropriate, and if it makes you feel awkward, I'm sorry.
I don't... expect anything from you for this, I just..."

Tom shut his eyes. When he opened them, he met her gaze, possibly for the first time, he actually looked into her eyes.

"...I just couldn't go on not saying it.

See, Sonozaki-san, when I was younger, I was by myself... a lot. But it was okay, I sort of developed this defense to occupy myself, I'd let my mind drift to whatever was important to me.

Over the past few weeks, when my mind drifts... it drifts to you. I... get so excited by the possibility of seeing you, for training, or for Paradise, for... anything, I'm just happy to be in your company. And I hate the idea of leaving you. I love... the stern voice you use when you tell people to do something, I love how dedicated you are, how smart you are. I love how much you care about people, and don't think I mean in the same way Aoi does, I mean... you know whats important. And that's amazing to me.

I can't remember caring about anything this much before.

Sonoza..."

Tom ran a hand through his hair, and sighed.

"...Renju. If I had the chance to ask for anything, anything in the whole world, all I would want would be to see you happy, and to know that I was the reason for it."

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lotus_beyond
2009-11-25 05:02 am UTC (link)

Through all this, Renju looked increasingly uncomfortable. She'd managed to meet Tom's eyes at first, but as he went on, she averted her gaze again, and her heel beat out a quick, nervous staccato against the leg of the desk. The gift had been bad enough; this was almost more than she could take.

"Please don't call me Renju, sempai," was the first thing she managed to get out, her voice quiet and tense. Her nails dug into the underside of the desk, her knuckles white. She took a long, deep breath, pushing back the thoughts that threatened to crowd her mind, and tried to shape them into a response.

"I won't pretend to understand how or why you feel that way about me, but..." She stared at her shoes, took another long breath, cleared her head again. "I can't... it's not something I can reciprocate. And I don't know if it's wise for us to continue with this with something like that between us."

Carefully, she laid the pouch containing the kama on the desk next to her and hopped down from her perch, the soles of her shoes clicking sharply against the hard tile. "I can't accept this. I'm sorry, sempai." Whether the 'this' referred to the kama or the confession was hard to say, but Renju left little opportunity for him to ask--she gathered up her satchel and was headed for the door.

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ofmanydevices
2009-11-25 05:07 am UTC (link)

Tom, moved after her quickly, before he actually knew what he was doing.

"No... wait... Sonozaki-san."

He walked up to the door, but made no move ot block it. He bowed his head.

"I... apologize. Forgive me. As I said, I don't expect... anything from this, I just wanted to be honest.

Please... keep the weapons, from a master to a studnet, nothing else. You may need them at some point, and I won't use them."

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lotus_beyond
2009-11-25 05:48 am UTC (link)

"You're right. Thank you." Renju squared her shoulders, managing to at least bring herself back to her normal posture, but still couldn't quite bring herself to meet Tom's eyes. "It would be a waste, otherwise."

She moved back over to the desk and picked up the pouch, regarding it with an unreadable look before sliding it into her bag. She wasn't quite sure what she'd be doing with the others--giving them back to Reizo? Keeping them in her room? Either way, it would be a waste not to use the new ones, even if...

She headed back for the other door to the classroom; hopefully this would be the end of it. Before she left, though, she looked back over at Tom one last time, with perhaps more sympathy than she'd intended or he might have expected. Half a dozen things sprang to mind to say, but instead, she simply closed her eyes and stepped out.

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ofmanydevices
2009-11-25 05:53 am UTC (link)

Tom let out a breath, and leaned against the desk for a moment. He idly wondered if there would be any future training sessions.
He also thought, and not ofr the first time, that he was glad Max would be waiting for him back at his dorm room.

he also wondered if perhaps he had taken the wrong tactic. Perhaps Kondo's advice of "stealth date" would have been a better plan. Certainly he had begun to be less and less subtle since he'd started interacting with the other persona users.

After another deep breath to calm himself, and rolled his shoulders. He headed out the door, with a number of things to contemplate on the trip home.

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