Logs: Introducing Mariko Ohmukai

IC Date: First week of June, 2011
Who: Izo Imaizumi, Mariko Ohmukai
Location: Old Moon Restaurant, Aoba
What: Yakuza things. ...sort of.

<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.

It's a June evening, and as those things go, it's not a terrible one or anything. The lights of Aoba's innumerable businesses and other commercial engines could never be mistaken for daylight, but they don't seem of a piece with the night either way -- it's like discovering some glowing stratum under the seafloor. No one raised around here would really bat an eyelash at how a restaurant with a prominent patio -- already lit by hanging garlands of yellow lights -- would gate off that patio with a faux-stone wall that's interrupted by a big squared-off entry-arch. The sign is big, neon, and pink. Not only that, the place is called "Old Moon," for whatever stupid reason.

Names notwithstanding: Old Moon is a dutiful payer of protection money, and thus it's very well protected. The fact that the food's good certainly doesn't hurt, and ensures a certain long-sleeved patronage. This isn't where the big boys go to talk about Business -- it's where they go to get something to eat and shoot the breeze and all of that normal-people mug's-game shit. It's also where pretty girls go to catch the eyes of big boys.

Mariko Ohmukai is dressed to catch eyes, certainly. Her dress is short, her boots are relatively tall -- in both cuff and heel -- and her purse shows that she's the sort of girl who can be trusted to look good when attached to expensive purses. She's drinking some fruity thing in between demure giggles at bad jokes, delivered by young-turk gym rats who think frosted tips make them look metropolitan. It's not Business, but it's still business, and pretty usual.

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

Young-turk gym-rats.

One supposes Izo fits that shoe, but it isn't a /comfortable/ fit, nor does it match any of the other ones at Old Moon. Exhibit A: he is young, or young-ish -- young by the standards of the business. Exhibit B: he likely haunts a gym or two, but at his height the realm of all things physical is an advantage that he would be remiss not the cultivate and employ, particularly in light of the fact that he (Exhibit C) is wearing long sleeves like a slew of the venue's other patrons, for precisely the same reason.

In most other ways he fails to adhere to the standard. His mode of dress is casual, better-suited to the nearby campus than a syndicate get-together; he's carrying not a polished leather briefcase but a messenger bag; he looks tousled and stubbled, not clean-shaven and bleach-tipped. Were it not for his height it would be easy enough for him to slip beneath the radar here, especially given that he arrives alone, without either enchanting feminine company or a preening posse of silk-shirt or suit-clad Yakuza companions in tow.

For all that, he's still given a table quickly -- well ahead of a couple who have been waiting since long before his arrival, but who do not possess the requisite ties to the family that result in exceptional service.

It's a table for two, but he sets his bag down in the middle of it, and then sprawls long-limbed into his chair with a sigh.

<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.

Mariko is at the bar -- there's a nice, neat little outdoor bar, like two-thirds of a real bar, better than a pool party but worse than a nightclub. One of the frosted-tip types gets a bit fresh and grabs her ass, which makes her squeak loudly and almost drop her drink, because it's not a gentle pat or a rude spank, it's an attempt to compress her into a smaller jeans size. She almost huffs, but knows better. The game has its own rules, et cetera. Instead, she politely excuses herself and even flirts just a tiny bit.

By the time Mariko has walked away, the boys she'd been entertaining are halfway to the next girl, and maybe /that/ one won't be such an unappreciative this or teasing that or whatever. She places a cigarette in her mouth -- there's no ban in place, and the lack of a real ceiling means that the whole place doesn't reek of tobacco. She glances in her purse and frowns.

A moment later, there's a hand gently touching Izo's shoulder. Just the tips of her fingers, not even a graze from her nails -- Mariko's touch is as delicate and light as her voice, which sounds like a high-schooler's, even around the cigarette between her lips. "Excuse me," she says, with requisite bows and formal language. "Do you have a cigarette lighter, or a match to spare?"

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

Sigh gives way to face-rubbing, face-rubbing to pause as his shoulder is touched. He looks up -- wearily, and at an angle that displays excellently the fact that he was recently punched in the face, some of the shadows on his jaw the result of bruising rather than bristle -- and pauses, briefly looking down, before looking up again. It isn't a lingering look, by any stretch of the imagination, but it is slightly surprised, and possibly appreciative -- his expression doesn't change much, but it's a moment before he answers. "No, but--"

But? The bar has matches. He twists at the waist to see if he can catch the attention of a passing waitress, only to find that she's half-buried beneath a fully laden tray of plates, cleaning up after a large party of diners. There is only one remaining option: he extends a hand, retrieves the small glass dish containing the tea candle set out on the table for the sake of ambiance, and then places it on the table's edge for her to take, and use. Canted within his seat at a hard angle, he leans into one of his chair's arms, and one hand hovers in the vicinity of his chain, absolutely a stark contrast to the formality of her address. "I won't tell anyone," he says. As though anyone here would even care.

<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.

Mariko's response can be divided into two sections: the first moment of shock at Izo offering a tealight for her cigarette, and the moments after, when a small smile forms on her face, as if in appreciation of mild mischief. "Thank you," she says, her tiny voice coming very close to the elongated quality of a purr. Then Mariko bends down to bring her cigarette to the tea light, rather than vice versa. It makes more of a show than is necessary, but it does the job, and whatever inferences can be made about bending over so sharply in front of a strange man are probably all true.

"Ooh," Mariko says as she rights herself, holding one hip in a way that almost makes the ache traveling down her spine visible. "A bottle of vodka can do more damage than it looks like," she says, although she doesn't seem to be very drunk, and certainly not bottle-of-vodka drunk.

"I'm sorry for interrupting," Mariko says, holding her cigarette between index and middle fingers when she's not puffing at it -- like people do in the movies, or on TV shows that aim for the sexiness and respectability of movies. "At least whoever's waiting for you certainly would never have a hard time spotting you, Mister..." The sentence trails off with a theoretical yet probing question mark.

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

As out-of-place as Izo looks, this is not his first tour of duty. He trotted along at the heels of older gangsters for years as a teen, celebrated his early successes in their favorite bars and restaurants, curried favor with them and was rewarded with access to their favorite women. His messenger bag is not a briefcase, and is filled with textbooks rather than contracts, yen and switchblades, but this script is one he is familiar with, nevertheless. It puts an edge on the oilspill eyes that watch her go through the motions -- but one of mild, weary impatience, rather than one of anticipation. Not that this game is one exclusive to these rough-and-tumble criminal circles; that slow circling before the strike is universally a habit of the specie, differing only in its cultural minutae. Perhaps Japan facilitates it, with traditional reluctance to utter the word 'no', or place burdens upon strangers. Perhaps the Yakuza facilitate it even further, steeped as it is in archaic traditions that have centuries-old origins, reflected in everything from convoluted codes of honor to the very language used between them.

This Hermit never had a taste for the superficial, though. Beneath the table, one booted foot pushes the chair opposite of his out, unceremoniously, with a stuttering scrape on the patio. "Imaizumi. And no, I'm not waiting for anyone. Are you asking to join me?" And then, because this seems prudent: "Is anyone at the bar going to have a problem with that?"

One fist to the jaw is enough for one week.

<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.

The scrape of the chair's legs as it's given a little shove attracts Mariko's eyes. She still has a small smile on her lips, but it's a hard one to read. It might be smug. It might be hiding something! It might just be that she's not a girl who easily displays her emotions -- she'd hardly be alone there. "Only if you're asking me to join you, Imaizumi-san" she says, her tone not doing much to elucidate that whole 'feelings' bag.

Mariko takes the chair and sits down, gently. She skooches it forward a bit, and assumes posture befitting that of a lady. Her smile gets a little bigger, but just a little bit. "Mariko," she says, by way of introduction. Then she glances over her shoulder at the men at the bar, already telling the same bad jokes to some different girl in a different dress.

When Mariko looks back at Izo, she barely has to say anything; her total dismissal of them is scrawled across her expression. "I'm not their territory, if that's what you're asking, Imaizumi-san. Or anyone's, for that matter." She punctuates the sentence with another drag on her cigarette.

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

"Anyone's? Everyone belongs to someone," Izo opines, reaching forward to gently drag his bag toward his edge of the table. When it reaches the edge he lifts it over the band that circles the surface, and then gingerly sets it down beside his chair, casually dismissing several hours of homework -- a not-inconsiderable concession to make, which may owe itself as much to curiosity as anything else. He adjusts his position to ensure that there will be no knocking of knees beneath the table despite his sprawl, and then braces his jaw on his thumb, index finger near cheekbone, the better to maintain an easy regard of his tablemate.

Some of the men here -- in the Yamaguchi-gumi, really -- practically bristle with their station. They exude aggression, authority, control; they have short tempers and long memories, and that sense of danger radiates off of them like a stench (or possibly a perfume, depending upon whom it is that one asks). Here again Izo differs: his is a mellow, almost lazy attitude, undershot with a current of something predatory, like an overfed lion lazing in meager savannah shadows. Once she dismisses his concerns about the men at the bar, they more or less cease to exist.

"Or something," he allows, belatedly.

<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.

Izo's attitude is well-mirrored by Mariko's. She's dressed like she should be falling into his lap, lipgloss and all. She plays with her hair when she looks at him, and she's clearly put a lot of practice into the way she sits, the way she smokes, probably even the way she laughs. There's still something introverted about her, though, some layer that her surroundings can't penetrate. It's like playing poker with someone who insists on literally holding their cards against their chest.

"I think that's a more strictly male concern, Imaizumi-san," Mariko says, waving her cigarette hand so gently that it could easily be mistaken for a shake. "The need to belong." She smiles a touch more, smokes a touch more than that, and uses a finger to tug an ashtray in her direction.

"Then again, I'm sure you've never really had to worry about that," Mariko says, eyeing the man across from her with a paradoxically intense blankness. "Whether or not you fit in, everyone will still admire your size." Her smile splits a bit, to show a hint of white teeth.

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

His first response is a low and ambiguous tone, somewhere in the depths of his chest. The second is not addressed to Mariko; the waitress stops at the table, tray returned to the venue's belly, and asks Izo what he wants.

The order goes on for some time. Udon, tempura, scattered dishes of meat and sauce on rice -- Izo has a hell of an appetite, and for all of his height, he's not very /thick/. Where he puts it all is perhaps a mystery for the ages. He caps off the order with a sake carafe and two cups, obviously intending to share with his impromptu guest.

The waitress will linger and ask Mariko if she wants anything, but Izo says nothing about footing the bill, leaving it somewhat up in the air as to whether or not he intends to at all.

"It's more trouble than it's worth," he says of his height, as the waitress stands patiently by. "Clothing and cars are not made for me."

<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.

With no promise of payment, Mariko orders a fruit salad. It's a bit of a luxury, but as luxuries go, it's a cheap one -- apples and kiwis are pricy compared to bananas, but hardly gold flake. Her thinness makes it obvious where the food does and doesn't go, but there's a softness to her narrow figure nonetheless, that keeps her from being a skeletal coathanger.

"I don't know," Mariko says, jabbing her cigarette gently in approximation of a pointer. "I think your tailors have done a rather fine job, myself." The girl is surrounded by serious men in some serious suits, so complimenting fashion is just another part of the game, even when that fashion involves G-Star Raw Denim tee-shirts or whatever the hell. Thankfully, such obvious fakeness isn't necessary here.

"I've always liked tall men, myself," Mariko says, with a semi-mischievous serenity in her tone, like a lecturer sneaking a joke into a math equation. "Even when they have sunglasses on, I can always tell when they're looking at me."

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

When the waitress departs, she too ceases to exist.

Mariko must be a connoisseur of the interest of men, and there's no denying that Izo has an interest; he let her interrupt his plans, included her in his evening, and if he seems impatient with her saleswoman's pitch, then at least he doesn't seem impatient with her /company/.

Even so, there isn't much of the lascivious in the way he goes on watching her. An edge, yes. Impassive, back-burning intensity, sure, but it would be extremely difficult to accuse him of looking /covetous/. Curious, maybe. Curious, almost certainly.

He snorts, anyway. "I'm a poor University student," he says, with a slight upward cocking of a dark brow, and a bit of exceptionally dry mirth ghosting through his deadpan tones. "I don't have money for tailors."

The sake arrives. He pours it before he continues: "What is it that you do, Mariko-san?"

<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.

"Rich or poor," Mariko says, tapping her cigarette against the lip of the ashtray, "the ability to dress yourself well is something they don't teach at university." Her hand comes up to play with a lock of her hair, but it might as well be a near-invisible gesture toward the bleach boys she abandoned.

"Thank you," Mariko says, when the sake is poured. She lets it hang there for a second in the air before the proper answer comes -- it's far more important to get another lungful of nicotine first, apparently. "I do... this, and that, and some other things besides," she says. "I could dress it up in some exotic wordplay, but I won't insult either of us." This is somehow not an explicit confirmation of anything. Implicit, probably.

"I'm not here soliciting anything from you, though, Imaizumi-san," she says with a smile and a small hand reaching out toward one of the sake cups. "Somewhere in the 'this and that' is just enjoying a conversation with a mysterious gentleman."

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

It would be rude to press for specifics, especially here, in a place where pointed questions are unwelcome. The narrowing of his eyes confesses to dissatisfaction with the vague reply, but his appreciation isn't of much consequence, and easily mollified: just as he answers superficiality with impatience, he answers forthrightness with the expected degree of appreciation -- and a glimmer of humor, too; one of his shoulders shakes a little, twice, with a chuckle that doesn't do much more than change the shape of his eyes and get the corner of his mouth to twitch. "Well, that's a good thing for both of us, because I haven't got much to offer." He plucks the cup of sake from the tabletop with a hand that outsizes it by several orders of magnitude, and continues with his line of questions: "You're from around here? Originally."

<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.

It's unclear how closely the minute changes of Izo's expression are being watched. Mariko has eyes like laser pointers -- if things didn't get in their way, they might as well beam straight up into space. Of all the tools and tricks her face uses to keep its intentions hidden, that is by far the handiest, and yet it seems to be something she's not consciously doing -- she just looks at people as if trying to see the back of their brain out of habit.

"I am," Mariko says, with somewhat more concreteness than before. "I lived out in Inaba for a while, but... the country life disagreed with me. I like to be where it's all going on, and short of Tokyo, that's here." Her cigarette is nearly done, so she crushes its smoldering skull against the ashtray and lifts the sake cup, offering a polite, respectful, respectable word of toasting.

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

Toast met, sip taken, Izo rolls the cup back and forth between thumb and fingertips, a meditative gesture too slow and deliberate to be a fidget. "Ahso. I was there three days ago to...retrieve someone I know. Japan seems to be full of places like it, now -- big towns forced to be little towns by even bigger cities. They remind me of..." He pauses, searching for the atmosphere that he wants. "Hospitals," he decides eventually, which is esoteric enough that it probably deserves an explanation that he does not ultimately choose to give. Perhaps in consolation, he follows up with information about himself, rather than another inquiry into her life.

"I was in Tokyo until a month ago. Sumaru is..." Behind his lips, he runs his tongue across the crescent of his teeth, squinting with that same impulse to be precise in his use of language. "...more scenic."

<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.

Izo doesn't explain himself, but may have accidentally told a joke in the process. Mariko sips, lest she look like a cretin, because only such as that would make a toast and then /not/ sip. She sets the cup down on the tabletop, next to the debris of her cigarette in its ceramic gravesite, and giggles when Izo compares Inaba to a hospital. She has to bite the tip of her pinky finger gently to stop herself, even though the slight, unobtrusive peal of laughter only lasts a second. Whatever was so funny... well, that's hers to keep.

Holding the cup again, Mariko retains her enigmatic smile, and it affects her tone of voice as would be expected. "I'd love to go to Tokyo one day," Mariko says. "I just don't think I'd ever come back home, if I did."

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

Finally, a definite, obvious gesture, even if it's categorically one of ambiguity: Izo shrugs. If this is a game, it's different sort of game than it could be. When he purses his lips, he might be considering whether or not it's worth it to attempt to barter for whatever it is that makes her look so sly.

"Maybe. Would that matter?" One of his brows edges to a slightly higher vantage than its opposite, and the dark eyes flick away only long enough to track the position of their waitress. Given the size of his order, it's unlikely his food will be arriving any time soon, but he checks, anyway -- maybe another indication of something that makes him a little bit impatient, another little foothold on what he must take pains to turn into a reasonably unassailable facade.

<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.

Mariko has another sip. First cup -- gone. Some sips. She plays with the empty cup idly, holding it in a manner not unlike her cigarette, with a studied semi-cool. "Not any more than anything else, I suppose," Mariko says, with a thoughtful pause afterward.

Mariko recovers her smile from the depth of thoughtfulness, and she slowly turns her head to give the waitress her own look -- one of idle curiosity, like watching a luxury sports car roll by while one's parked in a cheap sedan. "Still. I might have grown up here... but there's so much left to do before I move on." The smile, very briefly, becomes a grin, and the grin becomes reaching into her bag for her pack of cigarettes.

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

"Mmhm. Meet the boy of your dreams, settle down, have a kid, obviously," Izo drawls, without even the slightest lick of sincerity in his tone. She's a puzzle, but whatever that puzzle box contains, he is fairly certain that it isn't picket fences. Fences of a kind, maybe, but if he were to hazard an ill-educated guess, he'd be garnishing them with razor-wire rather than rose bushes.

Ever the obliging host, and possessed of a strange devotion to basic manners despite his flippant attitude and lazy informality, her cup isn't empty and on the table long before he's leaning forward enough to hold the carafe aloft in offer of a refill. His own is still largely full, which is a joke: it's barely a mouthful. "I didn't want to come here. I also didn't have a choice. I was never interested in anything outside of Shinjuku. But here I am. And really..." He drags a breath in through his nose, exhales slowly. "I guess there's a lot more going on here than it seems."

<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.

"Imaizumi-san," Mariko says, waggling a finger to ward off his insincere suggestion. "I don't dream of /boys/." Again, she pauses after that sentence, although the pause has a practical purpose, as she takes up the tea light again, for the same reason as before.

"Thanks," Mariko says, after the requisite first drag, when she's faced with a refilled up. She stares at Izo intently, listening to his tale (such as it is), and nodding slowly in assent to his conclusion -- so slightly that she might even fail to realize she's doing it.

"It's funny how that works sometimes," Mariko says, once again dipping into slyness, this time possibly as an accident. "When you cut away half the distractions, the things you notice underneath."

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

Silence settles on the table, at least for a few moments. Spring is quickly giving way to summer, and though the air isn't balmy yet, it possesses a weight and thickness that it lacked until very recently. The scent of cooking food, various perfumes and colognes, and -- of course -- Mariko's cigarette are all reluctant to quickly disperse, further adding to the sense of air as a tangible thing. It muffles the conversation around them and, rightly or wrongly, provides a false sense of privacy, compounded by the table's location.

"Mhm," he agrees, eventually, weighing his options. There is the safest route, which is to keep his thoughts to himself completely, and then there's the forthright route, blunt and honest, which addresses the mysteries of the universe head-on, shining a lantern into their dark recesses. His temperament as much as his arcana can be faulted for his inclination toward the latter. Setting the carafe aside with a soft click, he bands solid arms along the table's edge and leans in, eyes narrowed, to speak quietly and with great certitude.

"Two nights ago, I went into an hour of the evening that doesn't seem to exist for other people, and saw teenagers engaged in a magical battle. And all it took for me to be thrust into the middle of something that you would be well within your rights to call absurd or impossible is a knife in the stomach." His chair creaks as he settles back again, brows slightly arched, hands splaying upward on either arm of his chair in a sort of shrug. "Who knew, right?"

<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.

Mariko giggles again. As before, her laughter is polite, even demure. It's very much the laugh of a Japanese girl, which is very much the laugh of a Japanese woman, assuming she's stayed the course on her cultural homework. She may or may not be laughing at him; it's not at all obvious what she finds so funny, other than 'all of the stuff that sounds like nonsense.'

Mariko sighs quietly to shoo away her laughter and rests her cigarette on the lip of the ashtray. "I keep meeting people like you," she says, brushing her bangs away from her eyes to stop them from tickling her eyebrows for a moment. "People who have such... interesting things happening. Ever since I met that little man in Okina... now, after that, I believe in things like magic words after all. It's such an... exciting time to be alive and clued-in, isn't it, Imaizumi-san?"

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

Izo doesn't take offense from the laughter, whatever its sources; the subject matter is ridiculous. Even true things can be ridiculous. The corner of his mouth may even turn up very slightly in its own turn, though he'll lift his cup of sake to take a sip that drowns any fledgeling impulse to smile or grin outright. It nevertheless carries in his eyes: nighted irises that do not differentiate from the pupils they surround, they're nevertheless capable of mirroring the light around them, and amplifying that which comes from within.

"Two weeks ago, I would have been surprised. Today?" He shakes his head once, and then sets the cup down, lifting his hand to rub at the stubbled line of his jaw, pushing his chin forward in idle musing. "Not really. Iriesama says that 'people like me' are drawn here, or maybe it's that a lot of 'people like me' are born here -- I don't know which he meant." Clearing his throat, he slumps back into that slacker's lean, chest a slung hammock of planes that describe a studied effort to appear indolent. "I'm not sure I'm as enthusiastic as you are. My life was already complicated. It hasn't uncomplicated things." Tipping his chin upward: "What do you think is so exciting about it?"

<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.

The mention of 'Iriesama' earns a brief raise of Mariko's eyebrows; they disappear up behind her bangs for a flash and leave dark brown eyes unadorned. Her eyes don't have the desaturated two-tone quality of Izo's, but they do well enough at making an abyss slightly obvious.

"You're a uni student, right?" Mariko doesn't wait for an answer, but she does take up her second cup of sake. She doesn't drink it yet, she just holds it, with her cigarette in the other hand, truly ready for war. "Consider the books you buy, the ones your professors tell you take out of the library, the ones that pop up in lectures... the films, if you watch films, the composers, if you play music. Now think about how all of history, the entire world around these people, billions of people... whittled down to the handful from each generation who we keep with us as we move on. You're not reading about..." Mariko gestures vaguely with her cigarette, quietly indicating 'everyone here.'

"And I'm not saying stuff like this will get us in the history books. Who would want that? It'd be mortifying, having some grad student in the future poking around what survives of my e-mail and phone bills, extrapolating their idea of my life. But it means we don't have to be bystanders to the history in those books. It means we're part of a secret history." Mariko then grins like a cheshire cat, and downs the second cup in one go. She sets it down. "It's another world, one worth exploring."

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

It's the first time she's said anything of real substance, and accordingly, Izo is silent, and attentive. Changes are valuable; changes that provide a window into a thinking mind the moreso. He'd picked his cup of sake up off of the table, intending to drink, but it sits still forgotten in his hand when she reaches her inevitable conclusion, and the ultimate answer to the question he asked.

"You're more interesting this way," he notes, and sips. And then the food arrives.

Hers is easily enough positioned, but his? They take up the rest of what little real estate the table has to offer, covering the surface in an array of alternately chilled or steaming dishes that it doesn't seem possible to eat in one sitting, not even for someone of Izo's size. He looks undaunted; before the waitress has even gone, he's picked up his chopsticks.

"I guess the difference between you and I," he adds seamlessly, taking up the thread of their interrupted conversation even as he sits forward and looks down at the panoply of foods in front of him. "Is that I've never assumed that opportunity was closed to me. Not even before."

<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.

Mariko's fruit salad is surrounded on all sides, it seems, by that which it is not. Mariko seems untroubled -- she's not the elbow-on-the-tables type anyway. She has manners, even when she says crass things like, "People tell me I'm interesting all kinds of ways, actually."

Mariko takes up her own chopsticks, setting the cigarette aside. She doesn't actually put it out -- it's left to burn in its tray, like lazy incense. "But the perspective I've always had," she says, and gestures at Izo with a piece of pineapple before letting herself trail off, lost in the possibilities of self-expression.

"Mmm. I speak... quite a few languages. Four, maybe five, fluently. A few more, I know how to order dinner and not make a fool of myself. I was good at it when I was young, and I'm a bit rusty now but not so rusty that it'd be much of a problem. It came easily to me, but the thing about speaking all of those languages..." Mariko eats the chunk of pineapple, looking away, as if a wall sign might have cue-card-style lines for her to read.

Chew, swallow, continue: "With very few exceptions -- cultural things that don't translate -- you've got endless words for the same thing. Whether it's a pineapple, or ananas, piña... it's still this wet yellow cube in front of you, and that's the only part of it that's really real. It makes the world seem small, like everything's been found, been named a hundred times over."

Mariko plucks a piece of kiwi from the bowl and says, with her smile blooming again: "So that's what I like. The things that aren't quite so... found."

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

What was merely passable curiosity has developed -- slowly, slightly -- into something more like honest engagement on the part of her tablemate. Not widely known for his love of discourse, is Izo -- but that may owe itself more to the casual small-talk fare usually in the offing than any quirks of his disposition. He certainly /seems/ game enough, flicking his gaze between his company and the food that he is, without rushing but with methodical, consistent determination, beginning to make disappear.

He's even animated, or what passes for animated in a man so committed to sedate neutrality, when he chews, swallows, and ripostes: "But what is it about unfound things that you like? That there are undiscovered things out there, or the act of discovering them? Either way, you've got to face disappointment, in the end. Eventually even unfound things will have names."

<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.

Mariko's own engagement is curious -- not curiosity, mind. She speaks with the enthusiasm of a sedated revival preacher, clearly meaning every last syllable, but lacking the force to be aggressive about it. This could just be because she's a tiny girl with a tiny voice. Still, she's as game as Izo, and clearly enjoying the conversation.

When Izo asks his question, though, Mariko breathes for a few moments, considering her options for answering. She looks down at her chopsticks and her fruit salad, and then slowly brings her eyes back up toward the hulking figure across from her. "Imaizumi-san," she says, "if you were a chef, what would you cook, and why would you choose that to cook?"

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

It doesn't happen very often in the company of strangers, but every now and then, someone surprises a laugh out of Izo. It tends to steal in and happen before he's aware that it's going to happen, and splits his chilly, somewhat mask-like expression into a smile that momentarily zaps all of the oxygen out of the air immediately surrounding his head. Like most fiercely bright things, it tends to consume itself and go out swiftly, but the humor lingers on in his gaze after the initial detonation and recession, toying with the shape of his mouth.

"I can't cook," he says flatly, and seems to mean it. "Not even a little bit. Sorry. So my situation might be a little bit different. I'd cook -- rice. Ramen. Anything, and be glad that I didn't have burned pieces stuck to my pots and pans, or the meat under-done."

<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.

Mariko laughs, too -- it's an infectious moment, even if it's only a moment. "I can't cook either," she says, after another snatch from her fruit salad. "But if I could -- if that was what I was doing -- I'd want to cook things no one had ever tasted before. I got this bowl of fruit because I like how it tastes, but if the responsibility was on me... or I felt the responsibility in myself... to create food, I wouldn't want to dice some fruit and put it in a bowl, or... grill hamburgers."

'Grilling hamburgers' receives an unusually chilly mention, indicating that perhaps Mariko is just plain not fond of grilling hamburgers. "I'd want to find ways to make dishes that were new, and that people hadn't tasted before. Even if it meant finding ingredients no one ever thought to use. Even if it meant finding ingredients that were only good for one plate, ever, and once it's gone, it's gone."

Mariko giggles again, but quickly puts herself back on track. "It's not important whether it's something that will go in every cookbook afterward, or will never be known by anyone who wasn't there... being there is what I want. Feeling that new sensation when it's totally new, when it's totally pure, totally perfect..."

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

It's an outlook that he does not rush to respond to. He listens, obviously he listens, with his gaze flicking downward only as necessity demands -- at least until she finishes, when his gaze sweeps over the assembly of people in the room, and then drops down to the progress he's making on his dinner (which is not inconsiderable). In the quiet that follows, he puts on that notion, placing himself -- as much as he's able -- in her hypothetical shoes. What would it be like, to live that way? To be /gratified/ in that way?

"It sounds ...lonely." He picks a piece of fried yam out of a dish with soy sauce and rice in it, and looks at the food held in poise between his chopsticks. "There's room to say that it isn't the pineapple that's real, so much as it is our shared experience of it. If you'd eaten the only pineapple that ever existed, you wouldn't have the words to describe it to anyone else. It would be a unique experience, and exciting, but where is the value? For the rest of the world, it never -- was. Never happened, meant nothing."

He eats, sips, and shakes his head. "I'm not saying that I wouldn't feel the same way. I have a weakness for knowing things. But I think I would find it -- isolating. To have knowledge that couldn't be shared."

<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.

"A secret's only ungratifying if you keep it," Mariko says, and then she actually, really, and truly winks.

Mariko is content to eat in silence for a few moments after that. (She eats quietly, too, which is good, because there's nothing worse than a slurper.) Her hair occasionally has to get brushed back, a minor nuisance at most. She could be thinking. She could also just be eating quietly.

Then Mariko looks up, and says as if an hour had passed rather than a few minutes tops: "Besides... who said I'd eat the only pineapple in the world /myself/?"

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

His chuckle registers as little more than a change in the arrangement of shadows on his chest, any change to his face lost in the dim and the slow shake of his head in response. She catches him with his mouth full. He drains his cup of sake.

"I guess that's fair." He tucks his chopsticks into the side of his plate, then settles back, palming his napkin over his mouth before returning it to his lap and regarding her with his head slightly rolled to one side, eyes lidded. "So is that what you want to do, Mariko-san? Spend your time learning everything you can about --" What to call it? Occasionally, language does actually fail, as she astutely noticed earlier. Here, it isn't a cultural limitation so much as an issue of paradigm; Izo hasn't properly transitioned between one and the other, yet. He opts for the vulgar, sufficient option: "--strange shit?"

<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.

Mariko gives a very polite shrug of her own that's comparable to some kind of controlled shoulder twitch. She smiles, too, and it's almost adorable, if you forget that not only is she probably what, like, 18, 19 years old, with dyed hair and a dress that's extremely ill-advised in a culture where panty-photography is actually a thing that happens and no clear job and a handbag that cost more than the down payment on a car, but also, /also/, that she's somebody's daughter...

"I want to see where it takes me," Mariko says, in a tone that suggests the breath behind her words might be better spent as another coquettish giggle. "Before I... what was it you said? Meet the boy of my dreams, settle down, have a kid... /obviously/."

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

"Obviously."

Nature's danger signs. It changes nothing.

"Well," Izo says more briskly, once a beat of time sufficient to punctuate that line of conversation has passed, "if you decide on a course of action for going about that, maybe you'll let me know. Right now I feel like I've been dropped into the middle of a gang war, and I don't know who belongs where. I'm not interested in spending the rest of my time here looking over my shoulder and jumping at shadows. Which isn't to say that I'm alone," comes the amendment, as he cups his hand over the nape of his neck, and rubs. "I've got resources. I just prefer to know what I'm getting myself into."

<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.

As if on cue, there's a rude little 'breep breep' from Mariko's bag, one of those default mobile-phone rings for people who don't want to buy censored choruses of Rihanna songs. "Oops," Mariko says, with the guilt of someone who has eaten one more chocolate than they said their diet allows. She fishes the phone out, and gives a tiny frown at its text-message news.

"I really hate to be this rude, Imaizumi-san, but this is important. I get the feeling that we'll have other opportunities, though..." Mariko puts down her chopsticks, leaving them with half a bowl of assorted fruit pieces. She takes her cigarette back up, and stands, pushing her bowl back toward the table while also snatching up her bag.

"...to see where the conversation goes." Mariko smiles, brightly, and then turns and sways away -- watching her walk from behind is as good a way as any to realize just how tall the heels of her boots are. It also might delay the discovery a bit longer of the money she tucked under her bowl -- a few colorful but unwieldy notes that are nonetheless enough to pay for her food, Izo's, and then some.

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

Apologies are waved off, silently. He did not come here expecting company, he did not expect to enjoy, even a little, the company that he got, and subsequently cannot find it within himself to be much fussed about said company's sudden departure. There is a large amount of homework in the bag beside his seat, which is not armed with a ringtone but which nevertheless has been pinging his conscience with increasingly urgent petitions from the moment he sat down, distractions or no.

A silent nod will suffice, as to further meetings.

And does he watch her go? She doesn't turn around, so she'll never know.