Tatsuya reclined backwards against the trunk of the tree. His shift at the oni nest had just ended; he'd stopped by the blacksmith's to check on the progress of their weapon order on the way home. The new material was proving tough for the smith to deal with, but fortunately he and his apprentice were more familiar with it than most humans, considering that they did the maintenance on his father's blades.
The order should be ready within the next two days. In the meantime, the nest was getting restless. Apparently, they'd only get worse if any of their number were killed, so Tatsuya had spent the better part of an hour this morning playing chase with one. It was more difficult to do, as a man; the oni weren't as interested. That got more disgusting the more he thought about it, so he tried not to.
For the moment, he lit his pipe and settled it between his teeth, inhaling a lungful of the smoke and holding it for a second before exhaling through his nose. It was something he found vaguely relaxing for some reason; a habit he'd picked up from his father, who thought the same. He'd been resentful of even the smallest similarities between them until recently; even now he hated the comparison, but he supposed there were worse people to share some traits with.
Besides, he needed to take the edge off somehow, and his preferred method for doing that was sex, which he'd been avoiding lately. Fuck if he knew why. All he knew was the one time he'd tried, he'd still felt unsatisfied afterwards, restless to the same degree he'd been before. Maybe it was the oni presence making everything worse, so that the usual methods of dealing with that side of himself didn't work as well.
Blowing another cloud of smoke into the air, Tatsuya tipped his head back against the tree and let his eyes fall shut. Didn't help that he was fucking hungry. Kentaro's little emergency had thrown off the schedule they'd put in place years ago to avoid overtaxing Reiko. It wasn't easy for six adult vampires to share a single blood source, even if some of them supplemented with humans.
In the distance, he could hear voices. They were still too far to hear what they were talking about, exactly, but he could recognize them as Washi-san and Ayla. They were coming closer, and it was easier to make out what they were saying.
"Do you really need me coming along, Ayla? You could do this on your own, you know," Aram spoke. Ayla sighed and made some sort of grunting noise.
"If it weren't for you, it wouldn't be broken. Because you decided to sneak up on poor Sayuri, she broke my bow. I need to make a new one, and since it's your fault, you're coming with me," she spoke. Apparently Sayuri broke her bow, and she was dragging Aram along with her.
"I still don't see why I needed to come along."
"Because I said so," was the only response she gave. One of them must have spotted him, because they drew closer to him.
"Minamoto-san, good afternoon," Aram greeted.
He cracked an eye open, shifting his pipe so he could talk. “I hope she cracked you over the head with it. Having a tough time imagining her being strong enough to break it, otherwise." He fixed Washi-san with a flat, one-eyed stare for a moment before moving it to Ayla. “You could let him stay, though. It's not like you need the help, do you?"
"She did, actually. Whacked him pretty good, too," she replied to his first statement. Aram merely rubbed the back of his head as if it still hurt. "Are you going to take his place, then, if I let him stay?" she questioned, arching a brow at him. Aram pursed his lips together, and looked like he wanted to say something. She gave him a look, though, and he remained quiet. For the moment.
"Going by yourself isn't a bad thing, Ayla," he finally spoke, and she replied by giving him a flat look. "I just don't think I'm necessary. You're only going to find wood for your new bow, right?" he spoke, and she nodded.
"That's not the point, Ara. The point is, what if there's one of them out there, and it just so happens to have a brother or son with it? Do you honestly think I can take two of them on my own right now?" she stated. Aram just slumped his shoulders. "I'd rather come back in two pieces rather than not at all, thank you."
If anything, it seemed like Aram would rather stay here for whatever reason. Tatsuya shrugged. “I'll go. I'm bored as fuck just sitting around anyway." He pushed himself into a standing position, flicking a few bits of dust off his hakama and tossing his hair away from his eyes.
“What do you make them out of? Yew? There's a copse of those a couple miles out." He'd lived here long enough to have a sense of where the natural resources were. If her preferred wood was around here, he'd know where to find it.
"And going with me to find wood is less boring?" Ayla questioned, arching her brow in the process. Aram stared at her with pursed lips, and she sighed. "Fine, I'll go with 'suya," she stated. He smiled, bowed in Tatsuya's direction, and departed.
"To answer your question, yes, yew," she spoke. "They make better bows than most other woods, especially long bows," she continued, glancing at him for a second before shifting her gaze outwards. She narrowed her eyes slightly before turning her gaze back to him.
"So, I guess that means you're leading the way," she stated, arching a brow at him.
He shrugged. “Sure. Though it's weird to walk single file." Instead, he dropped in roughly even with her, leading by occasionally shifting direction rather than by walking in front. Since the grove was a few miles away and they were simply walking, it was probably going to take a while. He didn't much mind.
“Didn't know you made your own weapons," he observed, shooting her a glance from the corner of his eye. “Did someone teach you, or did you pick it up on your own somehow?"
"Correction, I make my own bows," she began, shaking her head lightly. "I had someone teach me a long time ago," she continued, glancing up to meet his gaze. "I broke them too often and I didn't exactly have the patience to wait for my order to be filled. Some of the blacksmiths had other orders to fill, and mine would always get pushed last. The one good bow I had," she paused, narrowing her eyes.
"I ended up breaking over an alpha," she snorted, as if she were remembering the incident. "He had me in a grip and I had to drive it through his eye to get him to drop me. They don't like things in their eyes, apparently," she continued, a smirk growing on her face as she did.
"Speaking of which," she began, glancing back up at him, "How are you holding up? I don't speculate any of this has been easy on any of you."
His automatic reaction was denial, but he stopped himself just before he gave voice to it. Instead, Tatsuya sighed, exhaling another cloud of smoke. “Honestly? It's not that hard on me, compared to the others." Reiko was struggling with it the most emotionally, Kentaro the most with what it meant for his control. The others were all dealing with various levels of physical strain; maybe a few of them worried for the village itself as well, but Tatsuya wasn't going to do that until something actually happened to it. Why worry when he could just prevent the damage he'd be worried about?
“None of the fights have been anything I can't handle, and while it's fuckin' annoying to go watch an oni nest for hours while we wait for the gear, it's not beyond my abilities or anything." He shrugged.“The worst part is the hunger. If we're not that active, comparatively, we can survive on less. When we're doing hard work like this, or someone gets injured... it's a strain on Reiko and a strain on the rest of us by extension."
She furrowed her brows, as if she were just realizing something. "You all use Reiko as a source," it didn't sound quite like a question when she spoke. "I suppose when you don't have other options, it would make sense. I don't see why you all don't use each other. You're going... when we go to clear out this nest, you all are going to need to be at your best. If..." she paused in her words for a second, and her steps. She quickly caught back up with him, though, before he could stop.
"Look, don't take this the wrong way or anything, but," she began, glancing up at him. There was something behind her eyes. Determination, maybe? "I said I would help in any way I could. If you need an alternate source for now, at least until Reiko or whoever is not so strained, I can help," she stated. Her expression softened for just a second before she shook her head.
"It's not like I'll turn into one of you, so I don't run the risk a human would," she snorted softly.
Tatsuya's mouth pulled to the side. Could she have made the offer in a less interesting or less-attractive way? He really doubted such a thing was possible. He hated when people did things out of some misplaced sense of obligation or vague and general benevolence.
“We might, except..." He pushed a breath through his nose. It was difficult to explain this in terms outsiders would understand; he'd doubted his dad would have bothered to share all the gritty details. “Well, first of all, we all keep too many secrets from one another to trust each other that much. She's the only one willing to let the rest of us see her memories and all that." If feeding on someone didn't have that little side effect, their lives might be a little easier.
Of course, there was still a problem. “And it's not as simple as getting along better, either." Tatusuya debated just telling her, but he wasn't sure he wanted her to know, in truth. It seemed like... like he might actually care what she thought if he told her. That was bizarre in and of itself.
"Siblings don't get along, that's nothing new. Siblings have secrets, and again, that's nothing new. You're talking to someone whose brother does nothing but keep secrets. Nothing is ever simple, I learned that a long time ago," she stated, furrowing her brows. "But if it's something that Reiko doesn't mind doing, then I've got nothing to say on that subject."
"Like I said, don't take it the wrong way, but if it helps Reiko out, then I'll gladly help too. But hey, it's an offer, not something I'm saying you have to do. I can't force you to do anything you didn't want to do," she spoke, shrugging her shoulders in the process.
Siblings keeping secrets might not be anything new, but he seriously doubted her brother had ever plotted to murder her. Whether the same could be said of Daichi or Jirō, for example, was an open question. He also doubted that the same act that could reveal those secrets could give them actual physical control of one's body in the future, as it could if he took someone's blood. Tatsuya didn't bother making the point. She'd think what she wanted to; it wasn't really any concern of his.
“Enticing as the prospect is," he said instead, referring to her offer, “I'm not interested in favors. Now if you ever decide it's something you want we can revisit this discussion. I am reliably informed that it's a rather pleasant sensation, in the right circumstances." He certainly had a lot of empirical evidence to this effect, though he did not himself make a habit of letting people take his blood.
She laughed. "And if I said yes?" she replied, arching her brow almost in a challenging manner. She rolled her eyes, though. "As appealing as your offer may be, I'm simply afraid I'm too boring, remember?" she stated, and pursed her lips somewhat. It almost looked like she was thinking about something, but she didn't say anything for a few minutes.
"Look, Tatsuya," she began, actually using his first name. "I wasn't offering it as a favor. I don't expect anything in return if I did do this, and I'd make the same offer to Tsubasa and Kentaro. You three are, probably, the only ones I like enough to do that for," she stated, though oddly, her face tinged slightly. It was a little more noticeable against the pallor of her skin.
"Now I feel kind of stupid for saying it out loud like that."
He snorted softly. “It's not the incursion of a debt I'm trying to avoid. If it's a matter of generosity at all, it's still nothing I want." He frowned. He supposed there was a more straightforward way to say it. “What I mean is, if you're doing it out of some kind of altruistic motive, or because you simply want to help, you're still doing a favor, you see? It's an imposition, however minor. To be blunt: I don't want it if you don't want it." He put an obvious emphasis on the second use of the word, then shrugged.
“But if it pleases you to ease the burden, do consider offering to one of the others. They may not see things quite the same way I do." Though he suspected they would. It was a rather intimate sort of thing, taking blood from a person, inherently charged with a certian meaning that didn't correspond exactly to the categories other creatures had.
"If you say so," she stated, shrugging her shoulders. "And I shall. It's not that it pleases me, 'suya. It's the fact of knowing I can help where no one else can. I am, by nature, not a generous creature. Never have been, never will be. What I want... isn't something I can have. It was something I could never have," she spoke softly. She seemed to close the subject off after that.
He didn't press.
The order should be ready within the next two days. In the meantime, the nest was getting restless. Apparently, they'd only get worse if any of their number were killed, so Tatsuya had spent the better part of an hour this morning playing chase with one. It was more difficult to do, as a man; the oni weren't as interested. That got more disgusting the more he thought about it, so he tried not to.
For the moment, he lit his pipe and settled it between his teeth, inhaling a lungful of the smoke and holding it for a second before exhaling through his nose. It was something he found vaguely relaxing for some reason; a habit he'd picked up from his father, who thought the same. He'd been resentful of even the smallest similarities between them until recently; even now he hated the comparison, but he supposed there were worse people to share some traits with.
Besides, he needed to take the edge off somehow, and his preferred method for doing that was sex, which he'd been avoiding lately. Fuck if he knew why. All he knew was the one time he'd tried, he'd still felt unsatisfied afterwards, restless to the same degree he'd been before. Maybe it was the oni presence making everything worse, so that the usual methods of dealing with that side of himself didn't work as well.
Blowing another cloud of smoke into the air, Tatsuya tipped his head back against the tree and let his eyes fall shut. Didn't help that he was fucking hungry. Kentaro's little emergency had thrown off the schedule they'd put in place years ago to avoid overtaxing Reiko. It wasn't easy for six adult vampires to share a single blood source, even if some of them supplemented with humans.
In the distance, he could hear voices. They were still too far to hear what they were talking about, exactly, but he could recognize them as Washi-san and Ayla. They were coming closer, and it was easier to make out what they were saying.
"Do you really need me coming along, Ayla? You could do this on your own, you know," Aram spoke. Ayla sighed and made some sort of grunting noise.
"If it weren't for you, it wouldn't be broken. Because you decided to sneak up on poor Sayuri, she broke my bow. I need to make a new one, and since it's your fault, you're coming with me," she spoke. Apparently Sayuri broke her bow, and she was dragging Aram along with her.
"I still don't see why I needed to come along."
"Because I said so," was the only response she gave. One of them must have spotted him, because they drew closer to him.
"Minamoto-san, good afternoon," Aram greeted.
He cracked an eye open, shifting his pipe so he could talk. “I hope she cracked you over the head with it. Having a tough time imagining her being strong enough to break it, otherwise." He fixed Washi-san with a flat, one-eyed stare for a moment before moving it to Ayla. “You could let him stay, though. It's not like you need the help, do you?"
"She did, actually. Whacked him pretty good, too," she replied to his first statement. Aram merely rubbed the back of his head as if it still hurt. "Are you going to take his place, then, if I let him stay?" she questioned, arching a brow at him. Aram pursed his lips together, and looked like he wanted to say something. She gave him a look, though, and he remained quiet. For the moment.
"Going by yourself isn't a bad thing, Ayla," he finally spoke, and she replied by giving him a flat look. "I just don't think I'm necessary. You're only going to find wood for your new bow, right?" he spoke, and she nodded.
"That's not the point, Ara. The point is, what if there's one of them out there, and it just so happens to have a brother or son with it? Do you honestly think I can take two of them on my own right now?" she stated. Aram just slumped his shoulders. "I'd rather come back in two pieces rather than not at all, thank you."
If anything, it seemed like Aram would rather stay here for whatever reason. Tatsuya shrugged. “I'll go. I'm bored as fuck just sitting around anyway." He pushed himself into a standing position, flicking a few bits of dust off his hakama and tossing his hair away from his eyes.
“What do you make them out of? Yew? There's a copse of those a couple miles out." He'd lived here long enough to have a sense of where the natural resources were. If her preferred wood was around here, he'd know where to find it.
"And going with me to find wood is less boring?" Ayla questioned, arching her brow in the process. Aram stared at her with pursed lips, and she sighed. "Fine, I'll go with 'suya," she stated. He smiled, bowed in Tatsuya's direction, and departed.
"To answer your question, yes, yew," she spoke. "They make better bows than most other woods, especially long bows," she continued, glancing at him for a second before shifting her gaze outwards. She narrowed her eyes slightly before turning her gaze back to him.
"So, I guess that means you're leading the way," she stated, arching a brow at him.
He shrugged. “Sure. Though it's weird to walk single file." Instead, he dropped in roughly even with her, leading by occasionally shifting direction rather than by walking in front. Since the grove was a few miles away and they were simply walking, it was probably going to take a while. He didn't much mind.
“Didn't know you made your own weapons," he observed, shooting her a glance from the corner of his eye. “Did someone teach you, or did you pick it up on your own somehow?"
"Correction, I make my own bows," she began, shaking her head lightly. "I had someone teach me a long time ago," she continued, glancing up to meet his gaze. "I broke them too often and I didn't exactly have the patience to wait for my order to be filled. Some of the blacksmiths had other orders to fill, and mine would always get pushed last. The one good bow I had," she paused, narrowing her eyes.
"I ended up breaking over an alpha," she snorted, as if she were remembering the incident. "He had me in a grip and I had to drive it through his eye to get him to drop me. They don't like things in their eyes, apparently," she continued, a smirk growing on her face as she did.
"Speaking of which," she began, glancing back up at him, "How are you holding up? I don't speculate any of this has been easy on any of you."
His automatic reaction was denial, but he stopped himself just before he gave voice to it. Instead, Tatsuya sighed, exhaling another cloud of smoke. “Honestly? It's not that hard on me, compared to the others." Reiko was struggling with it the most emotionally, Kentaro the most with what it meant for his control. The others were all dealing with various levels of physical strain; maybe a few of them worried for the village itself as well, but Tatsuya wasn't going to do that until something actually happened to it. Why worry when he could just prevent the damage he'd be worried about?
“None of the fights have been anything I can't handle, and while it's fuckin' annoying to go watch an oni nest for hours while we wait for the gear, it's not beyond my abilities or anything." He shrugged.“The worst part is the hunger. If we're not that active, comparatively, we can survive on less. When we're doing hard work like this, or someone gets injured... it's a strain on Reiko and a strain on the rest of us by extension."
She furrowed her brows, as if she were just realizing something. "You all use Reiko as a source," it didn't sound quite like a question when she spoke. "I suppose when you don't have other options, it would make sense. I don't see why you all don't use each other. You're going... when we go to clear out this nest, you all are going to need to be at your best. If..." she paused in her words for a second, and her steps. She quickly caught back up with him, though, before he could stop.
"Look, don't take this the wrong way or anything, but," she began, glancing up at him. There was something behind her eyes. Determination, maybe? "I said I would help in any way I could. If you need an alternate source for now, at least until Reiko or whoever is not so strained, I can help," she stated. Her expression softened for just a second before she shook her head.
"It's not like I'll turn into one of you, so I don't run the risk a human would," she snorted softly.
Tatsuya's mouth pulled to the side. Could she have made the offer in a less interesting or less-attractive way? He really doubted such a thing was possible. He hated when people did things out of some misplaced sense of obligation or vague and general benevolence.
“We might, except..." He pushed a breath through his nose. It was difficult to explain this in terms outsiders would understand; he'd doubted his dad would have bothered to share all the gritty details. “Well, first of all, we all keep too many secrets from one another to trust each other that much. She's the only one willing to let the rest of us see her memories and all that." If feeding on someone didn't have that little side effect, their lives might be a little easier.
Of course, there was still a problem. “And it's not as simple as getting along better, either." Tatusuya debated just telling her, but he wasn't sure he wanted her to know, in truth. It seemed like... like he might actually care what she thought if he told her. That was bizarre in and of itself.
"Siblings don't get along, that's nothing new. Siblings have secrets, and again, that's nothing new. You're talking to someone whose brother does nothing but keep secrets. Nothing is ever simple, I learned that a long time ago," she stated, furrowing her brows. "But if it's something that Reiko doesn't mind doing, then I've got nothing to say on that subject."
"Like I said, don't take it the wrong way, but if it helps Reiko out, then I'll gladly help too. But hey, it's an offer, not something I'm saying you have to do. I can't force you to do anything you didn't want to do," she spoke, shrugging her shoulders in the process.
Siblings keeping secrets might not be anything new, but he seriously doubted her brother had ever plotted to murder her. Whether the same could be said of Daichi or Jirō, for example, was an open question. He also doubted that the same act that could reveal those secrets could give them actual physical control of one's body in the future, as it could if he took someone's blood. Tatsuya didn't bother making the point. She'd think what she wanted to; it wasn't really any concern of his.
“Enticing as the prospect is," he said instead, referring to her offer, “I'm not interested in favors. Now if you ever decide it's something you want we can revisit this discussion. I am reliably informed that it's a rather pleasant sensation, in the right circumstances." He certainly had a lot of empirical evidence to this effect, though he did not himself make a habit of letting people take his blood.
She laughed. "And if I said yes?" she replied, arching her brow almost in a challenging manner. She rolled her eyes, though. "As appealing as your offer may be, I'm simply afraid I'm too boring, remember?" she stated, and pursed her lips somewhat. It almost looked like she was thinking about something, but she didn't say anything for a few minutes.
"Look, Tatsuya," she began, actually using his first name. "I wasn't offering it as a favor. I don't expect anything in return if I did do this, and I'd make the same offer to Tsubasa and Kentaro. You three are, probably, the only ones I like enough to do that for," she stated, though oddly, her face tinged slightly. It was a little more noticeable against the pallor of her skin.
"Now I feel kind of stupid for saying it out loud like that."
He snorted softly. “It's not the incursion of a debt I'm trying to avoid. If it's a matter of generosity at all, it's still nothing I want." He frowned. He supposed there was a more straightforward way to say it. “What I mean is, if you're doing it out of some kind of altruistic motive, or because you simply want to help, you're still doing a favor, you see? It's an imposition, however minor. To be blunt: I don't want it if you don't want it." He put an obvious emphasis on the second use of the word, then shrugged.
“But if it pleases you to ease the burden, do consider offering to one of the others. They may not see things quite the same way I do." Though he suspected they would. It was a rather intimate sort of thing, taking blood from a person, inherently charged with a certian meaning that didn't correspond exactly to the categories other creatures had.
"If you say so," she stated, shrugging her shoulders. "And I shall. It's not that it pleases me, 'suya. It's the fact of knowing I can help where no one else can. I am, by nature, not a generous creature. Never have been, never will be. What I want... isn't something I can have. It was something I could never have," she spoke softly. She seemed to close the subject off after that.
He didn't press.