𝚒𝚗𝚋𝚘𝚡 — 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚗𝚒𝚊.

[sacral]

EVEN WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS

Comments

[hallowedly]

He's an overpowered liability with no professional consideration.

[sacral]

[ ah. ]

So, [ and he says this with the utmost reverence in his bleeding heart ] a child.

What did he do to you?

[hallowedly]

Don't condescend me.

[sacral]

Tell me, then. It must matter to you.

[hallowedly]

Must it.

( But apple-crisp gritted teeth won't keep his condescension away. )

I could accept if your child cost me my life through malice. I refuse to lose it to his incompetence.

Your child shikigami master is spiritually and mentally compromised. He's hardly even purified after possession.

Fix your child, thirteenth head. Before I break covenant and do it for you.

[sacral]

[ A — pause, a rift chiming, then a calm pulse for him to squeeze and shatter and deny, pouring dust. Now was that so difficult? ]

There are reasons for that. But because they've been preceded by an offense, I'd guess that makes no difference now.

[ Thirteenth, still. ]

Leave him to me.

[hallowedly]

( ...oh. Oh, but he is disappointed now. )

You knew.

[sacral]

Some of it.

[hallowedly]

( Give him a moment; another. The spumes of his fury, depleting. )

I don't know what I had anticipated. I think, not this.

[sacral]

We're finding ourselves with less and less time to anticipate. We're at the whim of impatience.

[hallowedly]

( Impatience, like oil slick, like a sheen. )

Or those of your bleeding heart. You know he can't go on like this. You do know.

[sacral]

[ And beyond it, a depth, a blood red bath thick on the edges of the Murmur. His heart; Megumi's soul. What difference is there? ]

I know. And he won't. But he had to make that choice.

[hallowedly]

( Give them their rope, and they will hang. Give them kindness grieving. )


As you like.

[sacral]

If he can learn the rites, he won't stress our agreement.

[ ...magically, at least. ]

[hallowedly]

...you think that's the problem? You fool. He can't keep his lights off.

[sacral]

A disservice to a shadow master. But not the only one.

[hallowedly]

You're stubborn. It's charming. Reckless, but charming.

I kept him alive. Where's my treat?

[sacral]

[ ...the telltale balk, so many years old, plastering anew: ]

You don't want anything I have to give you. [ Especially not once you see what he's done to your clinic — ] Unless you're in need of a nap.

[hallowedly]

Subaru-kun, what might your grandmother say, asking a man so brazenly if he'd like to come sleep with you?

[sacral]

She'd obliterate me.

[hallowedly]

Understandably. And I'm a demure and mindful man.

I was about to modestly offer dinner.

[sacral]

That wouldn't be much of a treat for you.

[hallowedly]

Is this a heartbreaking refusal?

[sacral]

[ ... ]

Have you been home recently?

[hallowedly]

Not yet. But surely chief Sumeragi won't think the worst of me if I all can serve him is a last-minute dinner.




( And a view of the beautiful monstrous arm in the sample fridge. )