(D1, EE) Awkward Sinceritea

[Shiba Jiro]

"I don't require much comfort either. That doesn't mean it is not comfortable," he says, tilting his head to look under the hood.

"We are similar in many regards, but there are definite key differences. In particular, he more easily rises to aggression, while I am vehemently against harming others for any reason. Which is likely why we both fit and excel in our schools."

[Isawa Natsuko]

As he moves to peek beneath hood and hair, she catches his eyes, stills, then sits up a bit, shaking her hair back. With self-conscious motions, she reaches for her tea again.

"That makes sense. You feel nothing alike," she says with a nod. "He is bushi then? One of the guardians?"

[Shiba Jiro]

"He is," Jiro replied. "And, you know, I honestly think we're less alike than most people probably think. But we just know each other so well it likely seems we're more alike when we're together," he says with a nod.

"You... have very striking eyes Isawa-san..." he pauses for a moment. He wasn't sure if she would take that as the compliment he meant it as, thanks to his current awkwardness, but if she met his eyes she would see an appreciation there.

[Isawa Natsuko]

Those eyes widen in some surprise, then blink. "They are...a sign of the void's touch. I was told." Looking hard at Jiro's eyes, she adds. "Yours are like honey. Golden."

[Shiba Jiro]

"Thank you for saying so."

He pauses before deciding to share a thought he doesn't often share.

"You know... being a twin offers something that most people don't realize. You might look at your reflection, or have someone describe you... I get the opportunity to see myself in the same manner I see others. So when I tell you that your eyes are beautiful, you've never seen them the way I can. But when someone compliments something about my appearance I can actually have a legitimate opinion about that detail because I have seen it. It's not just an assumption or a feeling. I imagine that makes it easier to accept compliments you agree with and argue with ones you don't."

He smiles a bit nervously.

"So it also feels a bit self serving to agree with such things sometimes."

[Isawa Natsuko]

"Oh?" That's definitely a slight question. "I am accustomed to assessments rather than compliments." She presses her lips together, uncertain and searching for the correct etiquette. "Thank you. I...only meant your eyes are that color, but it's unusual and..um..an attractive color." There's a nervous tremble in her voice, and she quickly downs her remaining tea with a shameful lack of attention to the beverage.

"I am relieved to find you kind," she says quickly, toward the table more than him.

[Shiba Jiro]

He moves to refill her cup, then sips from his own. "You are not the image I have in my mind of most Isawa. Which is a good thing. Certainly I respect the Isawa, but they tend to be... they often have too much confidence."

He tried to be diplomatic about their often arrogant nature. But he still said it.

"I know it is early in our getting to know each other. It's a duty right now and not quite the pleasant and close relationship that I hope it will become - and I truly do want that. I've told you what I hope to do for you, but that won't necessarily match what you want me to do for you. So, truly and honestly... what do hope that I will do for you... for us? That is likely a difficult question, but I would like you to think on it so that you can answer it someday if not now."

"Keep in mind that nothing is an unreasonable request. And I mean that in both ways you may understand it. Requesting nothing is unreasonable and anything other than nothing is reasonable. It's not a guarantee that I can provide, but it is a promise that I will try."

[Isawa Natsuko]

"My feathers are borrowed. I was not born to them." She nods a quiet acceptance of the fresh tea. "I expect Isawa parents create a different outcome."

She sips in silence for a time, a slight frown creasing her forehead. "It is hard to know," she says finally. "I have never thought of marriage, though I accept it. I do not understand the shape of it. I accept that children are expected, are the reason for the match. But..I do not know what I want."

Head tilting to the side she adds, "nor do I know what you want, really. Only what you hope to do for me. You have thought more about the shape of a marriage, I think. What do you expect a wife to do in that shape?"

[Shiba Jiro]

"The only expectation I have for you is to communicate with me. To be willing to talk, particularly about concerns that affect us. I have many more expectations for myself towards you and us, but will not hold you to the same. But I hope for more. I hope for friendship and care."

He smiles somewhat shyly.

"And as for children, I will leave that for you to decide when or if. The burden is harder on you, so you will feel no pressure from me. Though I imagine that the clan itself will eventually pressure you. But even then, if you asked I would resist that pressure alongside you. I would enjoy children, but they are not an expectation of mine."

[Isawa Natsuko]

She looks up sharply in surprise, then glances around a moment. "You would *resist*?" It's the most inflection her words have held all night...surprised and a touch fearful. "It's a duty. Not even a strange one...not even." She stops, looks down into her cup, gripping it tight.

Before she can think better of it, she asks, "What is it like to have" family "People who look like you around? Like your brother?"

[Shiba Jiro]

"I would," he replied with a nod. And even if she didn't say the word he understood what she meant. It was not hard to hear meaning behind the unstated word.

"Not that I would be comfortable with it. But... we are to be family. The tie of proper family is stronger than the tie of the larger family in my opinion. I abhor the thought of killing, but I would do so and suffer the pain of that action and the stain upon my soul, to save the life of any member of my family. And the feeling of having family is always changing: anger, joy, fear, love, happiness, surprise, contentment. And children change the dynamic too. My mother and father, of course, look nothing alike and have no blood ties. But when they stand next to my brother and I, you cannot help but see the two of them as family, because children bridge the gap and both look at least a little like us."

[Isawa Natsuko]

"Why? Why resist such a duty?" She shakes her head slightly eyes closed and brow furrowed, trying to figure out what she thought his stance ought to be.

Her gaze fixed on him again though as he spoke of family, her focus entire, and a bit hungry. "Is it not more proper to...convince family who shy from duty to larger family, and clan, that they should embrace it? Otherwise all of them might be punished for it."

[Shiba Jiro]

"If you are not against it I won't be. The point I was trying to make was that even if you had an extreme opinion about something, I would do my best to support you. If you want children, either personally or for duty, I going to support what you want to do when you want to do it," he says.

"If that is how you would handle that, then that is you. I... connect with individuals more than groups. I grew up feeling that way and was trained to be that way. So if the clan takes issue with me being that way they can only really blame themselves."

"All this is not to say I don't care for the clans goals or expectations. It is to say that by default, because they chose me to be betrothed and married to you, they basically told me that you are my focus and I am to support you. Because that is what I am trained to do. For me that means wanting to connect and making you an important part of my life."

[Isawa Natsuko]

She hunches a bit over her tea, frowning slightly. "Everything is connected. Everything. But I don't think that is what you are talking about."

"I never thought about wanting children, or marriage, or most things. But those I just assumed as a given state. They exist in some form in all realities...probably." The cup remains on the table as she turns it absently, repetitively. "But...I think children would be, family of my own. I would like to learn more about that connection, even if it were not my duty."

Letting the cup still, she nods once, looking up "Thank you. It is a lot to think about. I am not used to..." She pauses, trying to frame what she's finding so disconcerting. "to your kind of support."

[Shiba Jiro]

Ahh... the realities talk. I'm at least a bit more prepared for that.

"Well, in all those realities in which we have children, I have no doubt that I love them and am glad to share the joy and responsibility of them with you." He smiles softly at her. "In some of those possible realities, that feeling may even exist between the two of us... because or regardless of those children."

He nods at her and slides his cup aside. "You don't need to thank me, though it is appreciated. We are a team now, working together for the common goal of a successful marriage, regardless of how we decide to measure that success."

He picks up the origami butterfly. "I will make so many of these for you. Truly, a staggering number from now until I can no longer do so I think. So, between us... let's not play the refusal game for them. I won't expect you to keep them all. And I'm not trying to promote you collecting hundreds or thousands of small origami. Give them away, leave them as offerings at a shrine, toss them in a fire. They are paper, their existence is even more fleeting than ours as humans. But I would rather our relationship not include you refusing things from me two thousand times."

He holds it out for her.

"Just understand that they are yours, to do with as you please. Always."

[Isawa Natsuko]

For a long moment she looks at the folded paper, with little change to her expression as she mulls over the feelings expected to exist within families and how those might compare to what she's known with classmates, teacher, servants...

She begins to reach for the butterfly, then pauses, feeling out the spaces where this ritual happens and does not happen. Have there been hints in dreams?

Instead she lays one finger on it. "Then let this one stand in for them all. Your sincerity laced from one to another. My acceptance bound up the same." There's a darkness to her eyes as she catches his. "Or you could keep it as a remembrance of this meeting. Not quite a first, but more important than the first, I think."

[Shiba Jiro]

"I will not forget this meeting. As you say, it is far more important than our first. And likely even more than many in the future. Because it is the meeting where I now promise you... I will do my best to care for and support you. But this is not a token of that promise or of the memory," he says, gently pressing the butterfly forward once more.

"It is as ephemeral as the connection we likely shared unknowingly when we gazed at the same butterflies in different times and places as far back as we can remember. It represents the fact that even before the intersection of our lives there were things in the world that represented an undefined connection between us two as strangers. And now those strangers are acquaintances and the connection defined. Hold onto this butterfly... our bond will slowly strengthens while the paper crumbles and the memory fades to haziness, as though they nourish us while we are feeding on them in order to grow together."

[Isawa Natsuko]

Her finger strokes along one velvet-dark fold. "That connection lingers still across the void. I will search for it in meditations." Her voice has a faintly distant quality, as if her attention is already drawn away a bit, seeking that eddy in the ocean of emptiness.

She thinks for a moment. "It's a fitting offering you might burn when asking the fortunes' blessings for this match. I do not know and can not see for certain that you will find another so fitting." Taking her hand slowly from the paper, she clasps both together in her lap.

[Shiba Jiro]

"I spent months working, sweating and bleeding by myself to build a shrine in Benten-no-kami's name, honoring an ancestor that died for love. At this point any simple offering to that end is the equivalent of giving an obligatory bow to a person that you have loved with the full energy and excitement of life itself, it would be unnoticed amid the feelings that already exist."

He smiles at her.

"I've been asking for the fortunes to bless this match since far before the idea of it existed. But if you feel it is a good offering then I would like you to have it so you can do so if you wish. I would not argue with you making an offering of it on our behalf."

[Isawa Natsuko]

Natsuko's eyes widen a bit at the revelation. "Oh! Yes...if Benten-no-kami has not noticed you already, one more offering is unlikely to shift the balance after that." She takes the butterfly in both hands, though the maimed one holds only lightly.

"I accept it and all the rest as you intend them. A...a bond. A connection. Thank you." She smiles gently as she examines the butterfly as if for the first time, musing, "I will meditate on whether offering this symbol of that connection is wise, or if destroying it--even in offering--would symbolize a destruction of that bond. I...do not think I would want to do that."

"I will devise a betrothal gift before the tournament is over. To balance the arrangement," she adds with a slow few nods.