Logs: Mariko Ohmukai, Nurse
IC Date: June 7, 2011
Who: Izo Imaizumi, Mariko Ohmukai, Akio Touma
Location: Izo's Apartment
What: Masahiko sends Izo a 'get well' present.
Imaizumi Apartment(#1000Tn)
Located in an eleventh-floor corner unit of a fifteen-story apartment building, Izo's apartment is of the kind colloquially known in Japan as wan rumu manshon -- a one-room mansion. While most units of the kind only contain a single large room, often done as a traditional, convertible washitsu room and a small, western-style bathroom, the corner location of Izo's unit has allowed for the addition of a galley kitchen as well -- not that he appears to use it; the cabinets are full of shadows and whatever mismatched flatware, cups, and cutlery the prior occupants deemed unfit to take with them when they left. The lights are always off in it, and the screen door that conceals it in the genkan is always closed.
Against the far wall is situated a low, broad, deep, dark wooden platform atop which a padded roll and numerous cushions provide seating during the day, tatami mats bundled to one side and neatly tied with a folded pile of fresh blankets atop, waiting to be switched with the cushions for evening, and sleep. A similarly dark table occupies the center of the room, arrayed with pillows for ground-seating; beneath it, a cream rug puddles on the wooden floor like spilled milk, concealing the scratches and damage caused by generations of student tenants.
There are various horizontal surfaces, most in a traditional style -- kobako chests, kaidan dansu -- on which candles have been arrayed, but stronger illumination comes from the pair of stunning Yohen Tenmoku-glazed ceramic vases, converted into lamps, which rest atop sleek, modern, milk-white glass tables in a mid-century antique style.
Amidst all of this minimalist taste in decor are signs of modernity. A flatscreen television of generous size occupies the wall near the platform for easy watching, and a corner of the room nearest the door is occupied by a shelf unit containing a computer, flanked by several shelves that contain his current (ever-changing) crop of books.
<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.
Evening on a Tuesday, just after the dinner hour.
Outside, the sky is resentfully spitting on the people in the streets, the rain still too light to be considered a proper drizzle, incapable of alleviating the sweltering temperatures now that summer proper has arrived in Sumaru. Inside, windows are closed and window unit AC boxes are cranked. Doors in multiple hallways are left open, students wandering to and fro, putting off studying for as long as conceivably possible. The air smells of take-out food and post-athletics funk. One floor down, a stereo blares j-pop occasionally overridden by shrill laughter.
Izo's apartment door is no different from the others, save that one of the numbers affixed to the front (the '8' of '1118') appears to have been stolen, and no seam of light radiates around the its badly-hung borders.
Well, that isn't quite true: the occasional flash of blue-white light strobes in the hollow beneath it, suggesting a television or a monitor in use.
<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.
Mariko Ohmukai is used to this kind of treatment. She walks, and boys follow, buzzing around her like flies, delivering randy almost-come-ons that she swats away with nonchalant ease. "How come none of us got invited to this party?!" the latest one asks, while the others survey her legs -- none of them dare touch.
"Because it's a private party," Mariko says politely, and smiles. "Now shoo, shoo, shoo, I can't do business with all of you hanging around, unless you're all waiting for your own turns with the lucky boy." The youths make displeased noises, wave their hands, and filter away.
Mariko Ohmukai carries two things, aside from her purse: in the one hand, a grocery bag, only a bit damp from the downpour outside. In the other, a small overnight bag of some kind, barely big enough to fit a change of clothes. Her coat is open a bit, and her bare legs show that she's wearing her usual tiny dress. An umbrella hangs from one wrist, dripping but having done its job. After a moment to collect herself, Mariko knocks on the door marked 111_, sharply.
"Hiiii!" Mariko calls. "Is Imaizumi-san home?"
<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.
At first, no answer.
None, but the submarine flicker of light beneath the door becomes suddenly static, as though the occupant had some inkling that someone were outside of the door.
A few moments later the floor creaks. The building is old; the reverberation may carry all the way into the hall, though Izo is light-footed for someone of his size. For the span of several heartbeats the air around the door will simply change in that impossible-to-describe way, like a tingling along nerves of human awareness, in indication of his presence behind it, looking through the peephole.
Then more silence.
The door finally cracks, and the man lists into view, drifting into the door frame, where he docks one broad shoulder and settles into a lazy lean, posture slung into a sort of hammock curve. In sweatpants and a t-shirt, he is disheveled, to say the least. And though he's backlit by the etiolating glare of whatever paused movie is filling the otherwise darkened apartment behind him with its bony light, it cannot sap the color from either his red nose or the complex skeins of tattoos that wind from wrists upward to disappear beneath that slightly oversized grey garment.
And no, it's still Mariko. He'd thought himself hallucinating, a byproduct of opiate cold medication, and believed an open door might clarify his mistaken identification but, no, it's Mariko, and now he's somewhat at a loss, confounded in his present state by the fact that he does not know how she found out where he lives.
Dark eyes wander downward with atypical sluggishness to rest on the grocery bag.
"Uh," he says, eloquently.
<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.
And doesn't /Mariko/ look cheerful. (She is being paid to look cheerful, and it is an expert forgery.) She doesn't seem half as fazed by Izo as Izo is by her, but then, she probably put two and two together once she was given the name. Hell, he /was/ eating in that place where Yon Sleeved Ones get their nourishment.
Still: there Mariko is, over a foot shorter than Izo, and looking up into his bleary illness-riddled visage with unflinching cheerfulness. "May I come in?" she says, careful to use a polite, respectful mode of speech. "Your friends said that you were very ill -- they asked me to come by and give you a hand with things."
The grocery bag has a smell wafting out of it. Soup. Chicken, probably. Other stuff. It's actual, cooked food, not just new cans for his pantry. Of course, smelling it depends on having functioning nostrils.
<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.
Smelling capacity: impaired.
Thinking capacity: also impaired.
The reptilian brain takes over. There is a young woman who wants to give him food, appealing to not just one but two of said reptilian impulses, and he takes a few bewildered steps backward from the threshold, bringing the door with him as he does, before it occurs to him to ask,
"Uh...who...which friends were these?"
That is a more serious lapse in judgement than it may first appear. Izo is not without enemies at the present moment, and some of those enemies are Sleeved Ones themselves, albeit they report and are loyal to a different syndicate entirely.
Still: the damage is done, the entryway is clear, and when he looks down the hallway and discovers several of his fellow students peering out of their doorways at his company -- all of a gender -- some other instinct altogether prompts him to shoot a flinty, flat stare, of the 'mind your own business' variety that chases off the last few curious onlookers, thereby sealing his fate.
If chicken soup can be considered a 'fate.'
<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.
Mariko slips her shoes off next to the door and walks in, unbothered by the stares (she's only bothered by the stares when they pay her to be bothered -- one or two find it cute). She waits until Izo closes the door to say, "The Irie family sends its regards. And me." Which of the Iries -- old man or man-boy -- she doesn't state, but she figures it must not matter.
The teenager surveys the landscape she has to work with, and hms. "I'm going to set this here," she says, putting the grocery bag in the the little galley kitchen after flicking its lights on. She also sets down the umbrella, and looks over to the en-suite bathroom. "Get yourself comfortable, Imaizumi-san," Mariko says, wagging a finger at him as she carries her small overnight bag toward the bathroom. "I'll be ready for you in just a moment."
The door shuts behind her and the sounds of undressing can be heard -- she's working quickly.
<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.
He stands there, gaping like an idiot, when she disappears into his bathroom and makes girl-doing-something-with-her-clothes sounds. (The bathroom itself is practically pristine: Izo is fastidious, and there are indications as to a quiet but definite sort of vanity on his part, as well, with the assortment of personal care products arrayed along the counter beside the sink).
But what can he say? 'What are you doing in there?' And what if she answered with 'taking off all of my clothes'? There isn't any elegant solution to these pressing problems, and he does the only thing that he can do: he shuts the door and relocks it, and then wanders back into the main room, casting worried glances over his shoulder until he's reseated himself in the tangle of blankets that cover the platform on one side of the room. This is not his first day of illness, to gauge from the wastebin full of discarded tissue and the array of medicine bottles that gleam on the nearby low table.
Once seated again, leaning against the wall, he stares at the bathroom door.
<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.
Mariko doesn't spend too long keeping Izo in suspense. Eventually the rustling and zip-noises stop, and a moment later, the door opens. Mariko emerges, wearing what those in the Halloween-costume industry would term a "Sexy Nurse Costume." It's white, it's clingy, it's a bit glossy, and it's /extremely/ short. Small white gloves cover her hands -- rubber ones would give the wrong impression -- and though she hasn't put on new shoes, her legs are nonetheless clad in white thigh-high stockings that leave a sizable gap between their tops and the hem of her dress. Mariko's auburn hair is tied into a simple but effective bun, and resting over her bangs is a little red-crossed nurse's cap.
"Your friends thought you might need someone to take care of you while ill," Mariko says as she walks to the kitchen -- a bit vampishly, because she's not just in that costume for her health. There is a definite intent there with regard to being gazed upon. "So who better to take care of you than Nurse Mariko?"
Mariko sets out some of the food-related equipment and opens the container of soup. She grabs a handtowel to drape on her arm -- just in case -- and a spoon, and steps toward Izo. "I hope I haven't interrupted anything important, Imaizumi-san..."
<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.
It's probably a minor miracle that the 'pop' sound of Izo's eyeballs isn't heard from the fourteenth floor to the first. It isn't just being confronted with a sexually-charged bit of kink costumery that does it, and it isn't even just the improbability of this taking place, coupled with the surreal feeling that comes along with high doses of codeine-infused cough syrup, either -- though that contributes. It's the absolute absurdity, the sheer ridiculousness of being nursed during a time of illness by someone wearing a nurse outfit, as though that has anything to do with /anything/, and Izo finds himself speechless, awash in a variety of intensely conflicting thoughts and feelings that run the gamut from 'she's fit, I wouldn't mind--' to 'what the fuck, Masahiko' and everything in between. He's shocked, he's intrigued, he wants to laugh; he's worried, he's disbelieving, he's embarrassed, but not sure whether or not he's embarrassed for himself, or for the young woman in his kitchen.
Both, he thinks, as he begins to impose order on the confused tangle of his thoughts.
"Well, I was about to have dinner with the Prime Minister, but I can postpone it until next week," he says, voice thick with his malaise. "...Mariko, you don't--" Have to do this, he wants to say, and then wonders whether or not it wouldn't make things even more awkward than they already are. "Do you--" Do this for all of your acquaintences? No, that's a stupid question, too.
"Where did you even get that dress?"
<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.
"I don't think they make them in your size," Mariko replies calmly as she kneels next to Izo's blanket-fort and scoots just a bit closer. She can't quite sit back on the heels of her feet -- he's tall, she isn't. So she stays raised up a bit, but nonetheless knelt.
"Chicken soup," Mariko says, in case Izo hasn't determined it yet. "Let me know when you've had enough." She's much more engaged than she was in the restaurant, but a lot of that is the vivaciousness in her voice, and the smile on her lips. "I was a little excited when they told me the name of the friend I'd be visiting. I bet you didn't think I'd remember you."
As she talks, Mariko is quite literally spoon-feeding Izo, carefully bringing spoonfuls of soup up towards his lips. The bowl is rested on the towel on the floor, and the other gloved hand is cupped under the spoon as it moves, to prevent even a drop of stray spillage.
Akio Touma has arrived.
<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.
She /would be/ spoon feeding Izo, if doing so didn't just cross the line of his discomfort but pole-vault across it at high speed. He lifts a hand and with extremely gentle fingers -- he is always mindful of his size, relative to that of other people -- catches at the well-meaning wrist of his unexpected guest, dark brows furrowing in the dim.
"Hey, whoa. Wait. I'm not /that/ sick." /And this is degrading, and degrading is not sexy to me. And I think you might be about the same age as my sister./
Which is not to say that Izo has confused a girl in a short skirt /for/ his sister, by any stretch of the imagination. She gets onto her knees and he can't help but look: he is a leg man above all, and there are legs, and they need looking at. But no, Izo, focus: there is a girl trying to spoon feed you, and it needs dealing with. "Masahiko asked you to do this?" The question is baffled and concerned; the little Irie hadn't struck him as the sort to go in for this kind of thing.
With the hope that his question has deflected her determination to feed him, he reaches for the bowl with one hand, and with the one that attempted to halt her spoon-feeding, he attempts to take the spoon.
<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.
Mariko is stopped -- she's not so stubborn as to insist that Izo be fed at all costs. She even lets him take the bowl and the spoon, if that's what he wants. Her hands instead fold in her lap, between what are largely bared thighs. "I was told to keep a sick friend company," Mariko says with a shrug. The cheerfulness is a little bit gone from her voice, but she doesn't seem sad or upset.
"I admit, though... I'm not usually asked to do this for young men. Usually, when the nurse costume gets involved, it's for... gentlemen who actually require a certain degree of pampering." Mariko's head bows, though, belatedly -- she's not the type to instinctively and hurriedly apologize. When it does, she says, "If I have upset you, Imaizumi-san, then it is my fault, not any of your friends'."
The forward lean of her bowed head also makes a bit of a thing of the fact that the nurse's dress is not buttoned all the way up.
<Pose Tracker> Akio Touma [K] has posed.
You know. There is likely several things on the list of noises that Izo would like to hear at the moment. Police sirens. Gunfire. Someone yelling 'PREPARE TO DIE' as they lept at him with a knife. Squeaky toys wielding by angry dogs. Of all the sounds that might give him pause, of all the sounds that might draw his attention one is worst than all the rest. That sound of keys jinging in the lock. There is a short list of people who have keys to this apartment and the list includes people Izo may not want to see when he's hyped up on codine, being seen to by a fetish-tastic nurse, and newly crowned Lord Of The Fortress Blanket.
Does that stop the owner of the keys? Oh no. Not in the least.
"Yo Izo!" The voice belongs to the slightly shorter member of the family. The nearly-silver haired Akio Touma, the man with the scar over one eye and the perchant for being loud, smart mouthed, and quick with his fists. At the moment the denim jacketed teen is also the owner of a bag of...something...possibily food related. "I brought ya some stuff." he adds without preamble as he levers the door closed with one agile foot.
He has not yet noticed that Izo has a guest.
There is a thump as the brown paper bag goes down on the table. "I know ya don't cook anythin' so I..." There is a pause as his brain realises there is something amiss. There was a second figure there with Izo near his Bed Fort. Its a figure that could be dangerous! He turns fully towards the other member of the Family in the room and lets his eyes focus in on the scene.
Processing. Processing. Processing.
His head tilts slightly to one side as his brain slowly works its way though the scene infront of him. The outfit. The position. Izo's hand outstretched towards her. Her own head bowed. One silver eyebrow arches up slowly. Then its joined by the other one.
"...er..." AWKWARD.
"I'm intruptin'. I'll just be leaaving...yeah..." He starts to step backwards towards the door. "Just...uh...didn't know you had company..." One hand rests on the door as he starts to turn the handle and make his escape.
<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.
Izo's eyes are not as well-disciplined tonight as they were on the night he first met Mariko, when he appeared all but completely indifferent to her mode of dress, and disinterested in her obvious overtures. She leans and bows, and he looks down, that automatic reflex, that slight hitch in the fluidity of his thoughts -- usually pitfalls of less cerebral men, and lubricated by illness and chemical interference.
He swallows, and his adam's apple actually bobs.
This is all much more difficult than it should be. A little bit of Aneton in his system, and suddenly all of his collected, predatory smoothness abandons him.
And she is /apologizing/, which makes it all /that much worse/. "What? No!" The crease between his brows deepens, and he reaches for her shoulder, stopping short suddenly because a) he has a spoon in his hand and b) he realizes that touching her may simultaneously be the best and the worst of all possible ideas in the history of bad ideas ever. "No, that's -- hey. It's nice of you. And the dress...looks..." Oh god, so awkward, "...you look great in it, don't get me wrong, I just--"
Cue the sound of keys in his door.
Somewhere beneath all of that over-the-counter haze, there is a man who spent the last seven years of his life tailing dangerous men who belong to an organized crime syndicate, and that man has enemies, and that man has had an unusually fucked-up two months, and that man is still suffering from a (reopened) stab-wound to the stomach, and that man suddenly emanates a sonorous sound of chiming singing bowls and scent of incense for those with the supernatural capacity to sense it, as his eyes flick to the door and tension coils serpentine in a frame as strong and dense as supple iron.
And then it turns out to be his friend and colleague Akio, rather than a life-threatening force of Sumiyoshi-kai hitmen.
And that, he thinks, is /a thousand times worse/.
He stares, and tries to come up with something to say, He opens his mouth when Akio notices Mariko, to say 'this isn't what it looks like', but that seems rude. And then Akio dismisses himself, and Izo deflates slightly, resigning himself to the mistaken impression, because explaining is simply too difficult.
"Thanks for the...uh. Whatever it is," he says, wearily. And then he closes his eyes, and tries to rub his face, but his hand has a goddamn spoon in it.
EVERYTHING IS SO HARD RIGHT NOW.
<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.
Throughout Akio's visit, Mariko glances between the silver-haired new arrival and the blanketed resident of the flat. She doesn't seem particularly stricken by awkwardness, but she does know her place in situations like these -- more often than not, she's paid to be the girl who sits there and shuts up (if these guys wanted someone with opinions or thoughts or banter they'd take their wives out). So Mariko sits there, and shuts up.
Only when Akio is snaking his way back out of the room does Mariko reach for the spoon and the bowl, since clearly they're causing Izo a bit of trouble at the moment. "Here," she says. "This can wait a moment while you figure things out." Whatever 'things' are there to be figured out, Mariko doesn't explain. She does, however, stay seated next to Izo, and she glances over at the doorway, waiting for the click of the lock.
<Pose Tracker> Akio Touma [K] has posed.
If the positions were reversed? Ohhhh yeah. Akio would totally take a life-threatening force of hitmen over a situation like this. His flailing hand finally finds the door handle though and manages to turn it enough to start to slip out. "Welcome, have a good night. Nice to meet you? Hope you feel better." He adds as he nearly trips on his own feet backing slowly out of the cracked door. The door shuts with a click...
Then a 'GODDAMIT' is heard from outside...
And the door opens again. "Forgot my keys." Comes the explination as Akio slinks back in so that one long arm can snatch the offending keyring from a nearby table. He then starts his wairy backing up again, though at the last moment. Just before his head dissipears he pauses, and gives Izo a Very Serious Look(tm).
And two thumbs up.
Then the door does shut behind him, and the keys rattle in the lock as the younger gangster leaves his partner in crime to his own fate. Man, there needs to be some kind of rules. Hat on the doorhandle or /something/.
<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.
The soup gets taken. Izo /wants/ the soup. Izo did not want an Akio. Izo did not want a sexy nurse. Okay, maybe now he wants a sexy nurse, but he's pretty sure that he shouldn't, even though at the present moment the reasons for that are, well, elusive at breast.
BEST. Elusive at /best/.
And then Akio leaves, and he can think. He rubs his face roughly, stubbled jaw whispering on calloused palms, and he marshals his thoughts into some kind of order for the first time since she arrived.
"I don't mind the company. And I /definitely/ appreciate the soup. But I think you're..." Cautious, he opens dark eyes and begins to earnestly continue that sentence when...
Akio walks back into the room, and fucks everything up. /Again/.
Akio could probably be forgiven for having his misunderstanding reinforced, because this time Izo shoots an annoyed look in that direction, and it holds, stern and hard, until the younger gangster is gone.
Afterward, he drops his gaze to Mariko, in front of him. A beat passes. "...what...the fuck was I saying."
<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.
Mariko is just as patient with Akio the second time, although there is a bit of a flinch when he barges back in -- wasn't expecting it. She waits, and then he's gone again. Back to Imaizumi-san -- her gaze turning back toward him is something that can almost be felt.
"Don't strain yourself, Imaizumi-san," Mariko says, offering the bowl of soup and spoon again, for Izo to do what he pleases with. If he takes it, her hands again go back into her lap, and her attentive kneeling posture remains.
Mariko has gone back to the chipper, paid-in-full voice, and she almost sounds like she believes it, too. "You were just about to tell me what you thought of me."
Akio Touma has left.
<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.
"...ah." Right.
It's harder to do when she puts it that way. When she's waiting for it.
Izo's courage knows no bounds. He murmurs a thank-you, takes the soup bowl and spoon, and then sets everything atop his knees, attempting to start over again.
"Better than this," he says, when he's teased the abandoned thread of the conversation out of his memory. And then he pauses to reconsider that phrasing, flicking his eyes toward the flatscreen TV, where a frame of Kurosawa's 'Dreams' hangs in its ethereal, unearthly stillness: as coherent a tale as he could bring himself to watch, in his state of mental disconnection. "Not that there's anything wrong with it. But I don't think...that it's necessary for you. The way you were talking to me before."
Because smart girls never do anything like this, right?
Ineloquence is not his hallmark, but it certainly plagues him this evening. Dissatisfaction with his choice in words is apparent; he actually sends an anxious glance at her sidelong, as though to solicit some manner of response from a young woman whose responses are all presently so much more calculated than his own. And then he drops the spoon briefly in the bowl and pats the platform beside him. "Come on, sit. It's hard to talk to you when you're like that."
<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.
Mariko doesn't respond just yet. First, she sits down properly. She navigates herself to the platform beside Izo and rests herself in such a way that she can remain both coquettish and ladylike -- she sits mostly on one hip, with her legs bent to the side, one foot crossing over the other ankle, and a hand supporting herself. It's between naughty and nurse.
"I know what I'm doing, Imaizumi-san," Mariko says. She's still friendly and happy, masking any possible displeasure in her voice. She glances over at the TV, since Izo did, but she doesn't recognize it. Never a movie girl, this one. "Besides, it does not suit you to put yourself down."
Mariko shifts her hip just a bit. She's sitting rather close, but not making an attempt to turn it into further closeness. "I have my own life that I'm in full control of, besides. This may not be a career that you respect, Imaizumi-san, but it works well for my needs and I have no complaints, especially when in the company of genuine gentlemen."
<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.
"Respect?" Does he disrespect it?
Ever a slave to his Arcana, he mulls over that accusation as he turns his attention to the bowl of soup in his hand, taking several unhurried bites. His gaze remains somewhere in the vicinity of his room's table, all of that insight turned inward upon himself -- for whatever weak illumination its compromised beam can presently provide.
"I'm not a gentleman," he says absently, while he works through those other, nebulous feelings -- and comes up without an answer. Yes, he finds it hard to respect. No, he doesn't. If it were his sister, he would be furious. When it's someone else's sister, he minds less. The crossed wires between the two must necessarily reveal something about him, but he's not the equal at the moment of deciphering what that thing is.
"I'm just good at pretending." Dark eyes flick up to settle on the girl beside him, evaluating; the frozen cinema across the way cuts slats of white light across black and liquid irises. Curiously, without agenda: "Do you...enjoy it?" And then, "No bullshit, Mariko, you don't need to sell me anything. Do you?" That he has slipped from attaching a formal appellation to her name does not seem to register, which probably only lends credence to his earlier suggestion that his mannered habits are studied and deliberate rather than intuitive.
<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.
Mariko does not seem incredibly troubled by Izo's confession of ungentlemanly behavior. She's still smiling, looking like they might as well be having a sunny picnic with no dirty flu germs anywhere around for miles. "You must have classes that you enjoy... classes that fascinate you... and classes that you only take out of obligation."
Mariko may still be laying on the charm, but at the very least, she certainly doesn't sound like she's outright /lying/. "I do enjoy it, sometimes. It can even be... thrilling." It takes her a moment to settle on the right adjective. "Every night is different. Sometimes I'm earning a frankly ridiculous sum... just to sit, eat a wonderful dinner, and laugh at jokes."
Mariko lets her eyes wander over Izo's blanketed body as he tends to his soup. "What about you, Imaizumi-san," she says, careful to keep her own reverent tone, "is that ungentlemanly?"
<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.
It's difficult to tell whether or not he believes her. Ever the skeptic, it seems likely that he's unwilling to buy wholesale into almost anything said by anyone -- but he certainly /responds/ to what she says like a man who takes it for face value, and there's no arguing that what she says is only logical, and makes sense. He tips his head, nods, and swallows the soup in his mouth.
"And some nights, you wear a small nurse dress and spoon feed a man on your knees," he murmurs, the words low, and held almost entirely in his chest. The suggestion is there that /she/ ought to find it degrading, even if he ostensibly refuses to pass judgement, himself. That she refuses to, or seems to refuse to, is at once frustrating and fascinating.
The question meets with a pause in his chewing, a beat of time before the muscle at his jaw's squared hinge begins again, and the spoon rakes through the soup still in the bowl as though he might find the answer in it.
"I'm not a good person." The elaboration comes only after a pause; he looks up at the screen, squints, gestures with his (her) spoon and clears some of the husk out of his throat before he continues. "None of us are. You can't be a good person and do the kinds of things that we do. You can have a good heart, maybe. Good intentions. Those things just aren't enough."
<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.
"So? I'm not a good person either, Imaizumi-san. None of us are." Though she says it with the bounce and verve of a television commercial, Mariko's judgment would seem to be a bit more universal than Izo's. "But you don't see people letting it get in the way of going about their day... unless they really want it to."
Mariko rests one gloved hand on her leg. Whether this is an attempt to draw Izo's attention toward it or mere coincidence, who can say. "You're like a character in a novel, Imaizumi-san," Mariko concludes. "Tonight, anyway. The last time we met, you weren't."
"You're like a man sitting in his castle," Mariko says, but she doesn't explain any further than that.
<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.
Intended or not, it has the same result. Izo looks, frowns at looking. He flicks his attention upward, and frowns at what she says, too.
He can hazard a /guess/. "I'm a careful person. You are like the opposite of what is careful," he says, pointedly, but not without a little bit of humor. "And I'm sick, and anyway, you asked me what I meant."
The soup did not have a chance. He finishes the bowl and leans forward to set it down, casting a glance at Akio's bag -- which is just too far away for him to be bothered. Instead, he pushes the pillows stacked behind him against the wall and settles backward, not quite into full recline, but close enough -- enough that he's got to look up at her along on oblique angle rather than down and aside, which is infinitely more dangerous to his self-mastery. "The soup was good." And, "What else did Masahiko tell you? Just to keep me company?"
<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.
Mariko turns a bit as Izo declines, which either does or does not help the problem of temptation, depending on where he lets his eyes lead. "Give you something to eat, keep you company, take care of anything that needed to be taken care of... to a certain extent," Mariko says, a mild tone of caution sounding in her voice, as if trying to cut off any untoward ideas at the pass.
"What that means... is up to you, Imaizumi-san. I can sit and converse. I can sit and be silent. I can't afford to get sick, which rules out a few ideas... not that I suppose you would want to act on them, right now." Mariko says it without judgment.
The teenager looks down at her reclining host. "The ball's really in your court, Imaizumi-san. You can be as bad or as good a person to me as you choose. I won't take any of it personally."
<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.
"I think that's what bothers me about it, actually," comments the long-limbed figure on the platform, lacing his hands atop the planes of his torso. Even sick and in blanket-draped repose, Izo is for the most part the picture of good health; a young man set on a course to strike peak physical condition before that inevitable decline with the great equalizer of time -- and perhaps sooner than most, if he's not up to the task of navigating recent developments. "That you won't take any of it personally, no matter what I do. Because it's a job, to you." His eyes lid, flick over her and shift away toward the plate glass of the half-screened window, where the weather is still sullenly threatening to evolve into a proper deluge.
"If you want to go, I can tell Masahiko that you stayed. He'll never know. But if you want to stay..." He gestures toward the small stand near to the television, where telltale spines of DVD cases are arranged in neat, no-doubt meticulously ordered rows. "...you could pick out something for us to watch. Though you'd probably be more comfortable wearing something else; I'm pretty sure that dress is eventually going to interfere with your circulation."
Or his. One or the other.
<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.
"Believe it or not, Imaizumi-san, I enjoy my work sometimes, as I told you. It's all down to the right company." Mariko stands, pushing herself up and giving Izo a rather scandalous peek in the process. Nothing truly indecent -- but perhaps immoral, especially considering the see-through lacework involved.
Mariko steps over to the DVDs and kneels again, glancing across the spines. Had he asked her to pick a book for them to read, she would probably have better faith in her own taste. As it is, her finger hovers over the selection of cases, never quite decisively touching any of them. "I don't watch a lot of movies, Imaizumi-san," she says, looking back over her shoulder.
"Which of these have happy endings? I don't think it's an appropriate time to watch something where someone gets sick and dies..." Mariko speaks with just a touch of morbid humor, but she seems genuinely in need of guidance, like a student unprepared for their report.
<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.
It probably can't be said that Izo is without morals. Like most people concerned with ethics and philosophies of living, he has plenty of them, and plenty of thoughts about them, which he will often bore other people with at great length. But, being Yakuza by choice, he doesn't always act on them. It is safe to say he is not scandalized.
As for movies, Izo is an ecclectic person with ecclectic interests. His selection of movies turns over just as swiftly as his selection of books, indicative of only a slice of his interests, and not really representative of the whole: kung fu, CGI movies intended for children but liberally peppered with references too adult to be gotten by the intended audience. Horror films -- a lot of those; probably more than any other genre. Westerns of the pre-Gunsmoke era with shoddy translations. Documentaries.
"Shit, I don't know. A documentary. Any of them. The animated ones. They're for kids." If the notion of a gangster watching Monsters, Inc. strikes him as at all absurd, he certainly doesn't /show/ it.
Because fuck the po-lice.
<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.
Mariko hesitates for a few moments longer. She can be observed looking at the carefully organized CGI spectacles and, perhaps, gauging her own interest in each possibility. "Oh, I don't know," she finally says. "I'm going to close my eyes and take one."
So that's what Mariko does. She puts one gloved hand over her eyes, and with the other, runs her fingers back and forth a couple times over the tops of the cases, until one is settled upon and plucked. "'A Man Vanishes,'" she says, reading the case.
Even if she's not a fountain of cinematic knowledge, Mariko still knows how to work a DVD player. The copy of 'Dreams' is put back into its case, and 'A Man Vanishes' is put in. She looks around for the remote before realizing Izo has it somewhere in his blankets.
Taking off the nurse's cap, Mariko also peels off her gloves. "If you want me to be comfortable, I'll be comfortable." She walks back to the bathroom, where her little overnight bag is sitting next to the door, and disappears for a moment. Zipping sounds, all that, nothing too spectacular or outrageous. Of course, then she emerges, she's dressed comfortably, just not incredibly decently. "The dress I wore here is even tighter," she explains, to cast some light on why she's sitting back down, next to Izo, wearing the stockings and white lace that she had on under the nurse's outfit, and a white tank-top over her bra -- an alchemist's combination of 'informality' and 'lingerie.' She doesn't seem even the tiniest bit ashamed.
<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.
"Nnn. I haven't seen this one yet." That sounds like a satisfied remark, made as he roots around for the remote in question. These things are much more difficult to find in the dark, particularly when one abandoned it after rising in a drug-induced stupor to find a once-met Yakuza escort standing outside of one's front door. A lot has happened since then.
"Yes, I want you to be comfortable," he reiterates blandly, as he leans over to great protest from the weight in his sinuses to feel around the side of the platform for that most elusive of devices.
He's found it, and queued the movie, and is settled back and at his ease when she reappears. Were it not for the fact that he insisted she change, and the secondary fact that he's seen her other dress already, he would be certain that he was being fucked with, at this point.
He drags a deep, long-suffering breath into his congested chest, carving out the chalice of his throat with it, and exhales it just as slowly, leveling a wry, tired look aside at her. "You're sixteen different kinds of trouble," he says with utmost honesty, and drags half of the blanket up in order to give her a pocket of her own to occupy, thumbing the 'play' button on the remote.
It is an absolutely inappropriate situation for two barely-acquainted, young Japanese individuals to find themselves in.
As Izo's already said: he's no gentleman.
<Pose Tracker> Mariko Ohmukai [K] has posed.
Mariko takes the section of coverage offered, and sits in a semi-reclined position of her own. "Let me know when you want me to make tea," she says, as she gets comfortable. "You sound like you'll need some." It's hard to say something like that and not come off as mothering someone, but Mariko plays it straight and doesn't inflect her voice with too much concern.
And as 'play' is pressed and the opening titles begin to appear, Mariko leans over to say: "If you think I'm trouble, you should meet my girlfriend." Then, having possibly destroyed a non-gentlemanly young man's focus, she sits back to enjoy the movie.
