Strings [Kara no Kyoukai]

[Prix with a Silent X]

Sorry for the teaser bump, but after considering feedback from multiple sources, I made some concessions and some edits to my previous chapter. I do not feel that the circumstance nor the character I wrote is irreconcilable with being a valid interpretation of the character we know as Aozaki Touko's younger self, but I realized that my own sensibilities may have bled into the prose text more than I meant for it to. I have chosen to take a more objective route in some cases, though not all, and I have striven to make Glasses!Touko and No-Glasses!Touko feel a bit more distinct.

Still working on another update, but if anyone is interested in this fic, giving the new text a gander might be helpful or pleasing. And remember not to say anything if you have nothing nice to say. That said, commentary or even constructive feedback is very welcome. It's just that I don't understand the need to treat published fanfic as though you're a SPAG beta alone. Just... if you want fanfic, like... be a little nice. Mindfully so.

[SpoonyViking]

Hmmm... I'm sorry, Prix, but I'm not sure I can see the differences. Would you mind terribly expounding on it a bit?

[Prix with a Silent X]

Hmmm... I'm sorry, Prix, but I'm not sure I can see the differences. Would you mind terribly expounding on it a bit?

I just changed some of the prose, mostly, to try and reflect glasses!Touko as being involved in the performance of humanity while internally she is much more calculating and cold, as opposed to no-glasses!Touko which is the opposite. This largely involved making some of it more objective rather than thoughtful.

[SpoonyViking]

Ah, I see! Well, it does read as objective, and the prose is still a delight to read, so goal achieved! :-)

[Prix with a Silent X]

V. Quid Pro Quo


The rain falls from the London sky in the way that it often does. It is falling in great drops that tend to ruin a person's hopes of getting anywhere without being soaked through.


Touko had not brought an umbrella when leaving her flat this morning. She pushes open one of a pair of wooden doors that leads out onto stone steps. She looks up at the sky, its nondescript gray that seems both thin and impenetrable.


Traffic passes by on the street several meters ahead. People trudge past, most in a hurry and taking shelter beneath proper umbrellas or make-do substitutes: coat sleeves, newspapers. None of the passersby seemed to notice her.


So far, the only thing keeping her from getting wet is the protection of a stone arch that rises up from the steps and meets the rest of the building's weathered architecture. Shrugging her bag up onto her shoulder, she reaches out and touches her fingertips to the stone. It has a fine grit to it.


A few other magi emerge from the building and walk past her. An already-used umbrella opens up in the face of the rain and splashes a few drops in her direction. She feels herself frown, but to no end. The air itself is so cold and damp that even if the rain stopped, the clouds parted, and the sun shone at this very instant, one would have little hope of the wet chill not permeating their clothes.


Touko looks down for a moment, navigating her way to the first step and out from under the protection of the arch. Her Mary Jane shoe touches down and the other follows. A thick drop of rain splashes against the crown of her head. Her nostrils flare, but only to take a deep breath of the cold, humid air.


She grips the strap of her bag and lifts her chin only a little to navigate her way through the rest of the pedestrians. An old woman looks up into her face and her eyes light up a little.


"Oh, I'm sorry, dear. I did not see you there!" she says. Much more courteous than the average Londoner walking through the rain. The reaction also isn't a surprising one; it's one that any person who has ever been inside a bounded field becomes quite accustomed to. That is, if one ever wanders outside its boundary.


The old woman appears a bit shrunken with age, but she can still manage to stand up mostly-straight. The sight of the wrinkles near her eyes makes Touko's own squint. She feels herself bow slightly. She adds a nod, body catching up to where she is. The look of age on the woman's face is nothing extraordinary, but it is the kind that reminds her of the face she had grown up seeing every day — perhaps the only face she could rely on seeing every day — for most of her life.


"Are you alright?" the woman inquires. Touko realizes that she has taken on an overly rigid, straight stance, her arms tight at her sides, one protecting her bag. Rain drops keep falling on top of her head, and she knows she ought to keep moving.


Touko smiles and then gives an appropriate series of shaking her head and nodding it in turn that seems to give the woman some reassurance that she isn't crazy.


Even if it hasn't, Touko finally starts walking down the sidewalk.


She travels down the street and around the corner. Sometimes she rubs shoulders with a stranger, her orange coat dragging a bit against the slicker and more impermeable fabrics that most people have chosen to wear. Had Touko been inclined to turn on the television back at her flat this morning, maybe she would have thought to bring an umbrella.


As it is, there is nothing she can do about the rain. Her chin slightly lowered and her eyes fixed forward, blinking away the raindrops that make it past her glasses, she trudges on until she finds the correct location and squints a bit more to find the right place to step through.

It is quieter when she passes through the bounded field. She hears the rain a little more clearly over the sounds of traffic and complaints from ordinary Londoners. She approaches the building which houses Kischur, the Department of Mineralogy, with its garden before it.

The path is well-kept at its edges but has grown muddy in the rain, made from smooth river stones pressed into the ground to form a series of stepping stones that would feel more like smooth pavement, were it not raining. As resigned to the mud's effect on her shoes as the raindrops' effect on her clothes, Touko keeps her footfalls light but steady as she approaches yet another archway, this one more rounded and constructed of a pinkish brick. High above her, a copper roof has turned mint-green.


Safe from the rain when she reaches the copper-plated door. It is embossed with decorations that she notices but doesn't define. Touko reaches for the handle and hears its metallic squeak. The ceilings are high in this place, but she almost immediately finds herself looking at more weathered pink brick. It feels as if the floor-plan ought to have opened up, but instead there is only the choice of going right or left. A shiver runs up her spine.


Her coat is soaked through, and she can feel it seeping through to her shirt.


Her fingers reach up to the ends of her dripping hair. She grips it a little, wringing it out and then combing through it as best she can. She sees no mirror in the entryway as she considers which direction to turn first. She needs to find someone who might part with the appropriate stones to the tune of the right price or favor.

◇

Touko feels herself drawn deeper into the labyrinth as she finds that her first turn is to a dead end with the door only to a supply closet a person could find anywhere. Strangely, she feels the sense that someone is following her, but she doesn't hear or see anyone when she looks. There are squeaks of boards and doors, but none close enough to explain the sensation that tickles something instinctive inside her.


Only vaguely irritated by it, finding no reason to believe it a threat, Touko continues on her way to find someone's workshop or lab. The semantics are a matter of a magus's personal taste.


Finally, she lays eyes on two people occupying a room, together but not saying a word to each other. They are sitting on opposite sides of a long work-station which resembles something one might find in any modern laboratory, but there is something about the white and steel sterility of it all that gives off the impression of being retrofitted into something much older.


"Excuse me," she asks softly, her hand bracing on the door frame where she stands without apology. When the person at the far end of the room but facing the door looks up and sets aside their magnifying glass, Touko's lips form into a smile and she blinks behind her glasses lenses. There are a few specks of rainwater that cling to the material.


"Can I help you?" the woman asks, standing from her stool. She straightens out a long cardigan that creates a silhouette much older than its construction.


Touko rolls her shoulders back, straightening her posture even more neatly.


Magi are secretive, even when the nature of the Clock Tower is a certain degree of shared support and resources, even if the thought of sharing personal research is quite close to forbidden.


"Ah, yes," Touko agrees, committing to her soft smile a bit more. "I have come here from Valuay. I need to buy some agate."


"Agate," the woman repeats. She looks Touko up and down, seeming unimpressed with the state of her clothing. Touko isn't impressed with it either, but she brings her bag around in front of her to hold its shortest handle with both her hands. She keeps smiling, refusing to be insulted by some Barthomeloi heiress.


"Yes. Agate," she replies with a quick nod.


"Do you know what kind of agate you would like?" the woman asks. She looks at the other person, a man, who has not even looked up from his research. There is nothing like shared disdain for another magus to bring magi under an umbrella of camaraderie.


"That is precisely why I have come to the Department of Mineralogy for your expertise," Touko says. She steps past the threshold to use the end of their work-station. She hoists her bag up and undoes its snaps.


The contents are perfectly dry.


She rubs her lips together absently as she gently files through the loose pieces of paper that lay atop everything else.


The man has finally started looking at her. He seems to be ready to wrap his arms around everything sprawled before him, like an elementary school child fearful that someone will so easily steal his glory by peaking over his shoulder during a test.


"Oh, how cute!" Touko takes a moment to exclaim. She points to a shiny bit of amethyst she spots before him on top of a neatly spread, fine white handkerchief.


The man knocks her hand away with a broad gesture that probably endangers his specimen far more than anything she might have done by poking it.


Touko turns back to the woman and side-steps toward her a little, too. She can feel the bristle.


"Yes, I could go to one of the many new-age shops springing up around in SoHo, but I do not want just any agate. I want five specimens with different, traceable sources. I thought Kischur might be the perfect place to come to someone with the right connections to get the stones for me."


She checks the other woman's eyes. They are still giving themselves worry lines, narrow in their focus and sour at once. She watches as the woman seeks across the work-station. Are these two people friends? Whatever that word might mean here.


"Samuel, do you know anyone looking for some cheap paid work?" the woman asks.


"Not me," Samuel replies. He turns his attention back to his tiny piece of amethyst as if it is the center of the universe. Touko watches his face, his focus, for a moment.


"Perhaps you should check—" the female mineralogy student is suggesting when the door creaks on its hinges behind Touko. It is a sepulchral sound, and Touko turns her head to see if it might accompany someone more willing to earn money or a favor than to continue to play this game.


No one is in the doorway, only there is a presence, empty and hollow and tugging at any person's stomach that might observe its gnawing lack. A concentrated burst of air flies over Touko's shoulder and in the direction of 'Samuel,' who cries out with disgust as the sourceless wind catches the corner of the handkerchief and blows the tiny fragment of amethyst to the floor.


A person might think its action malicious if they knew quite what it was.


Samuel ducks down in a desperate scramble to find his particular piece of gemstone, swearing under his breath.


Touko hears soft footfalls approaching from down the hall. They are smooth but not silent, leading with the hard click of the heel of a man's dress shoe. She looks back over her shoulder and leans a bit. She takes a few steps backward until her fingers can reach to brace on the door frame once more. She leans back to let her gaze work its way past the frame of her glasses.


A man approaches, his dark, shiny shoes and tailored black dress pants cut short by the length of a navy blue coat which drapes over anything else he might be wearing like a uniform. It is well-embroidered with a few darker, decorative seams, and it flares a bit at the bottom. While it is obvious that this man wears only the finest money might buy him, the coat does not fit quite as well as it could.
Perhaps it has seen use by another, tailored to suit the present Lord El-Melloi only when he had come into that position.


Touko recognizes him as the man she had spoken to once at one of the local pubs, weeks ago.


Her gaze tracks upward until she finds his pale face and blond, slicked-back hair. It looks a bit wet even when it's not raining. As a matter of fact, his clothes look quite dry. Touko loses interest and picks up some of her hair from her shoulder, squeezing it in her hand to see whether or not it has stopped dripping at the slightest provocation.


"Miss Aozaki!" she hears a voice. Of course, it is Lord El-Melloi's voice. The only thing that gives her shoulders cause to jump a little is its volume. She looks back at him, more directly this time, just as he is about to step through the doorway, whether she moves out of the way or not.


She is backed into the room by a few paces with his entrance. He has come upon her, quite close, and his gaze fixes on her eyes the second he is in a position to allow it.


"Lord—" the woman behind Touko says. He does not seem to hear her.


Samuel has gone a bit quiet in his search for the tiny piece of gemstone.


"I had hoped to see you again," Lord Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald says to Touko. "I see that you have made good on your word."


"My word?" Touko asks him, her voice light and innocent. He is quite sure he leaves an impression.


Kayneth's smile shows his teeth, straight and white.


"I see you have pried yourself away from your work studying runes to grace my department with your presence," he says, speaking of the Department of Mineralogy as his possession, his right.


"I was hoping to enlist your department's help, actually," Touko says, tilting her head. Her eyes flit up and down along Kayneth's coat — his uniform of authority — seeing an opportunity to bypass the social politics of the aristocrats if she has this aristocrat's attention. She blinks her eyes and flits them up to meet his.


"My help?" he asks, proud, curious, and perhaps with a hint of correction in it.


"Yes. I need some varied samples of agate with traceable sources. Better than the quality I would find in a New Age shop," Touko reports breezily.


Kayneth steps past her, heedless of the two students in his department.


"Ah," he acknowledges, but he seems more intent on moving his hand between her shoulder blades. She can tell that his palm is flat and gentle even though it does not quite touch her, communicating through static energy and warmth more than touch.


As any proper young lady might, Touko steps forward, away from the near-contact. This seems to have the desired effect, as Kayneth walks in step with her, guiding her out of the room with the simple ghost of a touch.


Touko's eyes flit around, taking it in as they step back out into the hall. She scrunches her nose a bit to adjust her glasses before taking a greater step to create enough space to turn to face him.


"So, you'll help me?" she asks.


Kayneth stares into her eyes for a moment. His face is somewhat less attractive as he seems dumbfounded that she will not allow him to lead the dance any longer than that. He finds his center again.


"Of course," he says. His hand is still lifted into the air, fingers curling in where he had nearly touched her back. His eyes close for a moment, and he reaches for his own chest, dusting off the coat. The friction makes a distinct sound. "But, I wonder if you will do me a favor. Rather, an honor?"


Touko blinks several times at the question. Her focus settles back on his eyes. They are a bright green color.


"Is this favor in exchange for the one you'll do for me?" she asks. That seems plain enough. The expression he is making at her has a kind of manufactured warmth in it. It only broadens, adding to its heat, as he grins.


"Well..." he says, dragging it out, "if you want it to be..."


Touko lowers her gaze, her own expression revealing nothing. Her tone remains light, cheerful enough. Almost innocent.


"What kind of favor?"


There is a silence long enough to draw her gaze back up. He seems to have been waiting for it. He steps a bit to one side of the hallway. His shoulder rests against the wall, giving him a more casual stance, an almost fixed shrug.


"I would like for you to have dinner with me," he says. His grin softens and his face relaxes a bit. He appears already to have won this coin-toss in his own mind.


The hallway is cold. Touko feels goosebumps form on her skin beneath the sleeves of her coat. It feels as though something — there but not there — entwines itself through the strands of her hair, pushing to the nape of her neck and sliding across her skin. When she focuses on Kayneth once more, te strange feeling subsides.


"Dinner," she repeats, affecting some naivete. "That's all?"


"Well," he huffs, feigning modesty. He pushes himself off the wall and folds his arms for a moment instead. "I believe we might have a... number of things to discuss."


Touko draws a deep breath. She looks down at her shoes. She considers the way she is still cold, still wet, and that she had not done anything to stop the rain from falling on her clothes and skin. She takes a small step toward Kayneth, making herself almost in reach when she looks up at him.


His lips part, and for the space of a breath, he does not offer to say anything.


"Like the samples of agate I would like to see?" she asks.


"That, and other things," he agrees in a hushed tone that still rumbles in his throat. He grins down at her and unfolds his arms.
Touko thinks she senses a twitch of his wrists, as if he might be thinking of doing something else.


"Where would you like to meet?" she asks in the same tone she has used for most of this conversation. She rises to her tiptoes and lowers herself down to the flats of her shoes again, stretching and indicating — perhaps — anticipation.


"I would like to speak with you in private," he says. "I thought you could taste the exquisite meals one can have within my own home here in London."


His intentions are plain enough. Touko thumbs at the strap over her shoulder. She searches herself for some reaction to the suggestion — one of interest, one of revulsion, one of anger at his presumptuousness. She finds none but the easy, soft shape of a smile. She nods in a way that manages to not quite turn into a curtsy.


"If you'd like to have me," she says.


There is something in his eyes, a cool silver through the kindled warmth in them. Recognition, satisfaction?


"May I count on seeing you tomorrow night, then? Around seven o'clock," he suggests. His tone is stranger now, for the topic. It sounds as if he is planning military strategy instead of a date.


Touko doesn't mind. It is a means to an end, and she might derive some pleasure from the food, no matter how cliche it all seems to be. How many times has he done this before?


Touko nods, her gaze fixing forward and finding it about the level of his upper chest.


"What's the address?" she asks.


"I'll send someone for you," he says.


She moves almost automatically to turn around and take her leave.


He doesn't stop her, but before she rounds the corner to find her way out of Kischur, she glances back over her shoulder. Her hair falls off the back.


"Why are you interested in me?" she asks, plainly but in a soft voice that disguises some of the impropriety.


"Six generations," Kayneth replies. He has done his homework. "And I think you are quite lovely to look at."


Touko stares back at him. He is the shape of a handsome man of this country, even if he looks like a child wearing a father's clothes in his uniform coat. The only further acknowledgement she gives is a blink that files it all away. He is honest, at least — transparent. She can attribute to him that quality, anyway.

[SpoonyViking]

"If you'd like to have me," she says."

Oh, I like the wordplay here! I'll be honest, I did not expect Kayneth to appear in this fic, but this is an interesting development!
May I ask some things, though, Prix?

"My word?" Touko asks him, her voice light and innocent. He is quite sure he leaves an impression.

Kayneth's smile shows his teeth, straight and white.

Should the "He is quite [...]" part be in the next paragraph, perhaps?

The expression he is making at her has a kind of manufactured warmth in it. It only broadens, adding to its ***eat***, as he grins.

I'm guessing there should have been another word there instead of "eat"?

[Prix with a Silent X]

First question: No, because it is an observation she is making it does not have to be.

And yeah, "heat." Key stickage, I guess.

[SpoonyViking]

Ah, OK, she's referring to him assuming she'd immediately remember him from when they met at the pub! OK, I see.

[Pastykake]

I deeply enjoy your prose! On a purely technical level, reading this gives me dopamine. The only (minor) detractor is your use of past participle verbs for past-tense events given that present-tense events are written in the present tense.

I also like the story. I enjoy Touko's automatic (as in, automaton) analysis of subtexts and social cues and body language, etc. As someone who often misses stuff like that, especially when it's not blatant, I relate in a way to her position as someone outside it, if not to her ability to read it.

[Prix with a Silent X]

I deeply enjoy your prose! On a purely technical level, reading this gives me dopamine. The only (minor) detractor is your use of past participle verbs for past-tense events given that present-tense events are written in the present tense.

Thank you for taking the time to comment. It means a lot, especially when the subject matter is for a relatively more niche part of the fandom.

I've had that past participle thing pointed out to me before, and I have actually tried to do it less, but I guess it happens because it's a reflexive kind of clarification that I did not just forget and slip back into the more common past tense prose. Also, on a grammatical level, I think you're talking about past perfect, which means to expresses that something in the past is complete or like a complete unit within the past. Past participle just describes that it's like an adjective form of the verb or at least can be used that way like "lost book" or whatever.

Basically, I just think one needs to accept that English is nonsense and because present tense prose is fairly non-standard in English it can feel a bit uncharted, in my opinion, but I prefer it for fic writing. I'm still working on it, but I have taught grammar more than most people and this particular issue dizzies me a bit.

I also like the story. I enjoy Touko's automatic (as in, automaton) analysis of subtexts and social cues and body language, etc. As someone who often misses stuff like that, especially when it's not blatant, I relate in a way to her position as someone outside it, if not to her ability to read it.

That is actually something Touko is supposed to be kind of 'known for,' I think. Her ability to see through things and especially People. User You and I were talking about this not too long ago with relation to a character in their Fate/Mythologie fic and another character having that kind of social-analysis ability. For Touko, at this point, I think it is more a way of navigating through things in a rather detached way because at this point she has recently been through something that has made her kind of delineate her personality between emotional and non-emotional, caring and learning to be more ruthless. Glasses Touko versus no-glasses Touko, y'know.

Again, thank you for your kindness in leaving a comment, especially one that comments on the story itself and not mechanics alone. I really appreciate the compliment, and I hope my argument about the tense issue doesn't come across as arrogant.

[Pastykake]

Thank you for taking the time to comment. It means a lot, especially when the subject matter is for a relatively more niche part of the fandom.

You're welcome. Admittedly, I watched the KnK anime once years ago and enjoyed it, but I don't know much about Touko, which is why I don't have much commentary.

Also, on a grammatical level, I think you're talking about past perfect, which means to expresses that something in the past is complete or like a complete unit within the past. Past participle just describes that it's like an adjective form of the verb or at least can be used that way like "lost book" or whatever.

After looking it up, yes, I meant past perfect: indicating that of two past events, this one happened earlier. Thank you for correcting me.

I guess it happens because it's a reflexive kind of clarification that I did not just forget and slip back into the more common past tense prose.

The use of past perfect/"fictional past" tense for past events and the use of present tense for present events don't fit together in my mind, but if it's necessary for your peace of mind, I can deal with it. (I'm afraid that comes across as condescending. I hope it doesn't.)

That is actually something Touko is supposed to be kind of 'known for,' I think. Her ability to see through things and especially People.

See above re: my knowledge of Touko and my commentary.

Again, thank you for your kindness in leaving a comment, especially one that comments on the story itself and not mechanics alone. I really appreciate the compliment, and I hope my argument about the tense issue doesn't come across as arrogant.

Not at all—or, if it does, I'm equally arrogant. Again, thank you for correcting me.

[Rowknan]

A bi of a late post to say the least, but I wanted to say that I enjoy this very much. Touko is fascinating as she should be. I also find Kayneth very interesting here. Partially because he has a type apparently and partially because I remember him actually caring about Sola-Ui. So I’m wondering what will come of this.

[tsugumi]

I liked this. Kayneth is a decent person for a mage, so this should be interesting.

[Prix with a Silent X]

Oh hey a surprise reply. I appreciate it, though! Gives me motivation to maybe write some more. Replying to the last two.

A bi of a late post to say the least, but I wanted to say that I enjoy this very much. Touko is fascinating as she should be. I also find Kayneth very interesting here. Partially because he has a type apparently and partially because I remember him actually caring about Sola-Ui. So I’m wondering what will come of this.

I like that you picked up on the fact that Kayneth has a type, apparently!

I liked this. Kayneth is a decent person for a mage, so this should be interesting.

I'm interested that you find him to be "decent for a mage" since I think there are better people, but he's also not the worst. Just an entitled boy with everything handed to him, maybe.

[tsugumi]

I'm interested that you find him to be "decent for a mage" since I think there are better people, but he's also not the worst. Just an entitled boy with everything handed to him, maybe.

Chose the life of someone he loved who didn't even love back over the last chance for his magical ability to be returned/to no longer be a paraplegic. tbh "trading any hope of your ability to walk returning" in exchange for the life of someone who broke your fingers and doesn't love you is a hell of a ask even for a regular person.

It's also worth noting that in the novels, he tells Waver to stop wasting his time and intellect privately, rather than in front of audience. I actually think it's a good thing they changed it for the anime because it makes Waver stealing a relic worth millions wildly unsympathetic. Like no, it still wasn't a good thing that anime!Waver did, but it's better narratively because it gives the audience the emotional reaction of "Kayneth deserved it" instead of "Kayneth was just doing his job as a professor and Waver is genuinely crazy to lash out in such a criminal way".

[Prix with a Silent X]

Chose the life of someone he loved who didn't even love back over the last chance for his magical ability to be returned/to no longer be a paraplegic. tbh "trading any hope of your ability to walk returning" in exchange for the life of someone who broke your fingers and doesn't love you is a hell of a ask even for a regular person.

It's also worth noting that in the novels, he tells Waver to stop wasting his time and intellect privately, rather than in front of audience. I actually think it's a good thing they changed it for the anime because it makes Waver stealing a relic worth millions wildly unsympathetic. Like no, it still wasn't a good thing that anime!Waver did, but it's better narratively because it gives the audience the emotional reaction of "Kayneth deserved it" instead of "Kayneth was just doing his job as a professor and Waver is genuinely crazy to lash out in such a criminal way".

I read the book quite some time ago! That is a fair point, but I think it is true that Kayneth also has a sense of entitlement that anyone would find maddening.

I appreciate you giving me some further explanation about your perspective, though! I like to consider different perspectives.

[tsugumi]

I read the book quite some time ago! That is a fair point, but I think it is true that Kayneth also has a sense of entitlement that anyone would find maddening.

I appreciate you giving me some further explanation about your perspective, though! I like to consider different perspectives.

Oh he is absolutely entitled, 100%. I think almost all people born into such an impossibly perfect life would be, since never facing any adversity or frustration means they literally never even have to consider that life will not always go their way, let alone learn to cope with that when it happens. But since it seems restricted to his thoughts and his enemies while he treats Waver with the seriousness he would any upper class student, he sort of seems to have it in check on a surface level since he doesn't say the crazy shit he's thinking unprompted.

[Prix with a Silent X]

VI. The Night Before

Touko’s feet are sore by the time she comes back to her flat. She unlocks the door and pushes it open. Standing with her back to the door frame, she toes off her shoes and pushes them out of the way. As the cool, damp air touches her feet, the soreness flares into a tingling that rushes up the nerves in her legs. She hisses against it and quickly hops over the threshold. A floorboard creaks.

She leans against the door again to slide the deadbolt and chains into place. It is old enough that the wood has swelled and shrunk enough times to be a bit ill-fitting in its frame, and the moisture in the air has made it especially thick and stubborn this evening.

Secured inside, Touko picks up her bag from where she had carelessly dropped it inside the door. She squeezes through the narrow entryway and into the large-enough room that makes up the totality of her flat apart from the washroom which is off to her right hand.

The space strikes her as more cluttered than she remembered leaving it, her blanket strewn across the floor off the futon upon which she sleeps. Even back home, she had a bed, but here it had seemed cheaper and more practical to buy something she could roll up and put away.

Obviously, she had not been considering the possibility of guests at the time.

There is a window to the back left of the room, tight against the wall in such a way that it makes her wonder if the wall has always been there or if it was a shoddy addition to create more individual rooms. On the windowsill, there are a couple of small potted plants. One of them is a vine which is growing to the point of spilling down along the wall and over onto her small writing desk – by far the most expensive piece of furniture in the room.

She lowers her gaze to her feet. Her glasses slip down her nose a bit as she sniffs at the air. Her white stockings are stained with deep gray droplets that have splashed up atop her foot, her ankle, her calf, no matter how careful in her steps she had been on her trek to Kischur and back to her designated workspace in the Department of Creation’s main building.

She hooks her finger at the back of one and then the other, pushing them past her knees and letting them bunch at her ankles. Even though they’re damp and cool, they shield her feet from the feeling of sticking to the floor before she gets the rest of her clothes off, down to her underwear. When she is finally finished with that, she slips into the washroom to take a cloth and dampen it with warm water. She slides up onto the counter and wipes away the dark water and glances back over her shoulder at herself in the mirror.

Magi are not dependent upon any particular strength of body to be what they are.

There are those who focus their attention on the mystery of what it is to be the most beautiful, but that has never been a particular fascination of hers. Beauty lies in many things, but it could also be said to lie in nothing. Of course, the Iselma family would hear none of that, and to breathe contradiction would only serve to deepen their cause.


Touko’s skin is pale and occasionally marked with a freckle. She sees a couple on the back of her shoulder, though it seems like the sun hardly rises in London. Her shoulders are soft and slender but in a way that might suggest weakness, a lack of perfection in her posture. She wonders if Lord El-Melloi notices such things or if his concerns lie elsewhere entirely. Six generations.

Whatever he sees, it shouldn’t matter if it gets her what she needs. One step after the other, further from home.

She hops off the counter and acclimates to the cool feeling on the soles of her feet. She makes her way into the main room of her flat and finds a t-shirt to pull on over her head. It hangs down to the tops of her thighs, and she easily makes up her bedroll, lying on the pad and pulling the covers up to her shoulder.

The room is dark, and she stares across the room, adjusting the depth of her gaze from time to time. Restlessness tries to keep her awake, but she soothes herself with the thought that no matter what comes of her meeting , it is just another step toward that ultimate goal of being a magus.

Detachment might be one cynical way to put it.

Cynicism isn’t a dull weapon to have here in London, or anywhere in the world. Even up on a mountaintop, away from men and courtship of any usual type, away from school and friendship and the vulnerability of her younger sister, even the smallest desire for the taste of a normal life had made hers even more alien to her.

She closes her eyes and concentrates on her breathing. She tries to release the tension from her body and mind. She seeks toward the comfortable sense of nothingness that will let her drift off to sleep.

Instead, focusing on her own breath starts to lull her into thinking of the breath of another. She remembers the sharp sour of an empty stomach, not knowing which of them it belonged to. The urgency of touching skin and hair and the uncomfortable collision of noses. The feeling of it crawls over her until she feels her temperature rising, and she can’t stand lying there anymore.

She pushes her glasses back onto her face and goes through the motions of getting dressed. She isn’t sure how much time passes or what each movement means in the greater context of intent, but soon she is out on the sidewalk, moving against cool, damp wind, the taste of mint on her tongue.

The trek back to Creation isn’t as bad, now that the rain has lulled for the moment. The streets are also fairly empty. London is large enough that there is always someone about, but most people are home and tucked into their beds. Those that are left out at this time of night almost all have some kind of unusual quality. They lack families, homes, jobs, or anything else to pull them into bed at night.

It is near what some call the witching hour when Touko lets herself into one of Creation’s buildings, built near and attached haphazardly to the main one. The stonework is so loose that it breathes but never thinks of toppling, and the floorboards creak with lively voices from time to time.

She stops by her small desk that is more than covered with the work she does for the department. She sets her bag in the chair and stands behind it for a moment. The shapes of runes are scrawled at varying angles, and she considers sitting down to work, if only because it will stop her thinking about how long it will take until every inch of her is new and clean again of what happened back home. But she knows what she came here in the middle of the night to do, while only the wards are around.

She leaves her bag sitting on the chair and turns to go to the door that leads to a set of wooden stairs. They sing her arrival o matter how lightly she steps. No one can hear it, but she still finds herself trying to mind her feet. How someone like Araya had ascended them without her noticing seems more and more an indictment of her sense of caution.

The silence returns when she reaches the upper floor. She takes a moment to breathe it in before crossing the hall and taking the nearest door into the long workshop that has a number of wooden work tables that show their use in the way hands and tools have polished and marred them over many years.

She crosses to a wall lined with cupboards of various sizes and reaches out for the brass handle that belongs to hers. Tugging the door free, the half-finished doll still lies there atop folded fabric that will one day clothe her. Touko takes the doll into her left hand and gathers the rest of her tools and supplies in her right. She carries them to the nearest work station, not nearly so particular about that.

She perches on the seat before it and lays out everything she needs in a methodical way. It removes her from herself in a way that breathing exercises never could. She had finished the wig, the night Araya had curiously introduced himself. Since then, she has only visited with her personal project once. In that time, she had taken a sharp-smelling spirit that cleaned away excess adhesive, and she had worked with a sharp, fine needle to add strands of hair in places about the ears and front hairline to make the doll look more real.

Now, she examines the cloth body that links the head, the arms, and the legs. It dissatisfies her in the way it fails to reflect a person. A person’s face might be the most important part that makes them distinct, but Touko suddenly realizes that it is not the definition of a person that makes it recognizable. Instead, it is its resemblance to all the other people. As unique as a personality, a soul, a spirit may be, it does not matter what it is if it is not like the others. Only, to make this doll more like that thing she represents, she will have to take her apart and put her back together.

Thus, Touko spends uncountable moments carefully drawing lines in charcoal, cutting with scalpel and sewing scissors, creating new lines, replacing and adding new fill, until the doll’s body seems to grow and shrink and contort into something with much more human dimensions.

At some point, she lifts her eyes. On the way up, her gaze fixes on her glasses, set down beyond her right hand. The warm, low lighting in the room is interrupted by a figure she now recognizes.

Her brow ticks downward, and she doesn’t let herself smirk, though it’s a little bit tempting.

“Are you stalking me?” she asks. She only asks because she doubts it.

“It’s nearly daylight,” he replies. He looks back over his shoulder. This room is windowless, so it seems like he’s looking for some sign of the outside world.

“You get up early,” Touko remarks. Her voice hums along smoothly as though it’s too unimpressive to give any rise to a reaction, even as she gives one.

“I sleep little,” he says. She glances up, unable to discern if it’s contradiction, agreement, or neither.

“How did you know I was here?” she asks. She doesn’t think he’ll give a real answer. She isn’t concerned enough not to finish the stitch that secures the waist and the innards of her reassembled doll.

“I entered the department. Your things were in your chair, but you weren’t,” he says.

Touko’s breath leaves through her nose. She draws it back in again as she cuts off the thread as invisibly as she can. More invisibly than most machines and most hands out be able to do, but it still isn’t as perfect as she’d like. She wishes she had something to singe the ends into precision, but she casts about and can’t think of anything, and a wrongly formed flame rune could send the fill up in smoke.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she tells him. She glances up as her hands start to gather her things to put them back in her cupboard. He lingers near the door but doesn’t quite block it. She wonders if there would ever be a way for him not to be imposing, but she isn’t afraid of him. She rises to her feet and begins to replace the doll and her tools back into their place.

“Is dollmaking your craft?” he asks her. It seems a follow-up to questions asked the first time he had found her here.

Touko goes back to the work station and picks up her glasses. She slides them back into place atop her nose as she approaches Araya.

“Now, you know magi keep their secrets,” she tells him. There is a playful lilt in her tone, but the part of her that might have been honest secrets itself away behind a closed door, the way the doll rests in the quiet dark of the cupboard.

“Knowing the general and common ways of magecraft between ourselves is the point of this organization, is it not?” Araya asks her. His Japanese is stilted and formal, Touko thinks, though she hasn’t been speaking her native language except when she’s around him lately.

She tilts her head at him as she finds that she must look up to meet his eyes.

“Then what’s yours?” she asks.

“I am seeking the Root through the understanding of the meaning of death,” he says. She can imagine that a different man might have made that sound more threatening and malicious, but he sounds resigned and almost dignified in the face of it. She blinks against her surprise. Recovering quite quickly, she reaches up with both arms and stretches herself up onto her tiptoes. She continues a ritual of stretching as she moves to side-step him to make her way to the door to go downstairs.

“Sounds depressing,” says her voice in a flippant tone.

He turns after her, and she can feel the waves of his voice follow further still.

“Would you like a place to rest before your work begins for the day?” he asks.

Touko rounds back on him and looks him over. He is absolutely nothing like the man she is to meet tonight, full of vim and desire for something, even if that something is not really her. She wonders if Araya wants anything, as she looks into his dark, weary eyes, except for the final cessation of death. The fact that he looks for a purpose and meaning in it seems to be all he has, and in that thought there seems to be some kind of trustworthiness that she can’t see in other men.

“What do you have in mind?” she asks. “And why me?”

“I have coffee and tea in my room,” he says. His gaze doesn’t waver, and there doesn’t seem to be any reason for shyness on his part. “And you are worth talking to and seem to need it,” he says.

Touko wants to bristle at the judgment he makes about what she needs. She doesn’t, though, and nods for him to lead the way. If nothing else, seeing where he lives might tell her something more of what she still itches to know around him. Even if there is nothing more to know, it might satisfy her curiosity.

Araya doesn’t take her very far. After she picks up her bag from her chair, they leave the building and go down a block and make a few turns. As they reach another building, this one of washed out, pale brick, she senses that it is guarded by a bounded field that makes her assume it is somehow still part of the Clock Tower. Her own apartment is in a building with no such accommodation, and she feels a prick of jealousy as he tugs open the door and holds it open for her. His robe is such a dark curtain hanging from his arm that it seems a bit absurd, but she ducks her head down with a bemused smile and walks into the foyer.

The panes of glass that make up the square cuttings on the door look ancient and like they might shatter with a heavy roll of thunder, but she is used to seeing old things that seem like they don’t have any right to be.

Touko still can’t quite place whether Araya is one of them.

The landing is small, and the floor seems to have been replaced in the last century, at least. A long moment passes, and Touko looks back up at Araya.

“Where to?” she asks him, her voice still lilting with a calculated lack of assumption.

He guides her up the stairs for several flights but stops before the top. She thinks the building is six floors and that they stop on the fourth, but he leads her off to the right before she has a chance to be completely sure. Her eyes are tired from concentrating on the doll for such a long time.

He stops at a door at the end of the hall, opening it onto a room that, true to his word, smells like coffee and tea and the heat used to make them. The entryway is narrow, and Touko waits for him to pass through by standing there and taking off her shoes. She sets her bag down in easy reach of the door. Her shoulders sag a little as she sees Araya pass to a counter top with a sink and a bit of space to the side. There is a refrigerator, or an icebox, that looks like it dates back forty years while remaining untouched by age.

The room is longer than it is wide, but it’s a bit larger than her flat. She can’t quite tell what the space’s primary use is supposed to be. It seems divided into quadrants. The first to her left hand is the area that seems to be for washing and cooking. Beyond that, there is a space with a bed pushed into the corner. It is a heavy thing made of dark wood that seems very bound to this place, rather than to Araya himself. There is little else in what seems to be a sleeping area. A door at the foot of the bed. She assumes it must be a closet, a washroom, or both. To the right of the sleeping area and straight ahead of Touko, there is a desk that faces outward, as if Araya stands prepared to receive someone at the other side. There are a smaller end table and a chair that seem angled for this. Finally, just in front of her, and a little awkwardly butted to the wall, there is a leather sofa, draped in a handmade blanket.

She stares at the sofa. It is the most curiously placed item in the room. In particular, she can’t help but wonder where the blanket came from and why he has it at all.

Even with her unspoken questions, she navigates her way around it and drops down to her shins on the center cushion. She looks up at Araya. He still sweeps around his little kitchen, making her tea.

She considers telling him she prefers coffee, but she changes her mind. The fact that he is doing anything for her without a question or expectation at the end of it fascinates her. She feels the tug of tiredness wash over her again and pulls off her glasses. She sets them on the skinny magazine rack, overburdened with heavy, old books that serves as the couch’s end table.

He brings her tea, and he doesn’t offer to sweeten it. He carefully uses one hand to make sure the cup is steady in both of hers. She holds the cup with ease but keeps looking up into his eyes, narrowing her own.

“You don’t trust me,” he says.

“No,” she admits easily.

“You’re not to be blamed,” he agrees.

A normal person might have chuckled. She wonders if he knows how.

He walks over to the chair angled toward his desk and turns it around, angling it toward her. He sits down, and it only creaks slightly under the size of his frame.

“How old are you?” Touko asks after blowing on and taking a sip of her tea.

“Why do you ask?”


Undeterred by this very magelike redirection, she answers with her assumption, leaving him to correct it.

“You seem like you’re very old to me.”

Araya’s eyes seem to brighten with recognition. She wonders if that’s the closest thing he remembers to the smile of a man, caught in a lie.

“How old are you?” he asks.

“Eighteen,” Touko replies without hesitation. That kind of information doesn’t matter. Nothing about her or her life matters. Only the secrets of the magecraft she must build up from nothing, because of her grandfather choosing her grossly unprepared sister.

“Hardly a woman,” he says.

“From what I see, there’s hardly a man left in you,” she replies. The words are a little sharp, but she squirms her way to rest her back against the couch’s arm.

“We have that in common too?” he asks.

She doesn’t give him an answer, wondering at the ‘too.’ What else does he hold in common, besides their tongue? He is so weary and pale, the longer she stares at him the harder it is to identify their shared nationality.

“What of your family? Your... bloodline?” he asks.

Touko snorts and looks down into her cup. It’s down to the dregs, so she sets it on the rug that defines the couch’s domain. She has slid down a little further, stretched out along the couch’s length, even without stretching out all the way.

“None to speak of,” she says.

“But they are not dead?”

“Not yet,” she hears herself say. One of them is. Her sister is still alive, and her parents are useless.

“All people meet their end, one day. Many sooner than they ought,” he says. Touko’s brows knit together as she studies him. She thinks he might be trying to comfort her. She thinks that, for the moment, it might be working a little.

Her consciousness grows heavy. The tea hasn’t awakened her quite as much as coffee might, and she even wonders if the tea had been caffeinated at all. The thought that it might have done quite the opposite, lulling her to sleep, crosses her mind. She nuzzles her cheek against her hair and then moves to pull it out of the way. She rolls onto her side, finding a more comfortable angle for her neck as she wraps herself, uninvited, in the old, worn blanket.

The next time she opens her eyes, the room is much brighter, the window at its end filled with pale and harsh morning light. She blinks at it and makes a sound of complaint. She looks for the chair where Araya had been. He has moved it back into place, and he is seated behind his desk. He looks up and notices that she is awake.

His presence seems to tug the weight of sleep from her quicker than it should have gone. She blinks at him. He isn’t very pleasant to look at, but she searches for fear or a deepened mistrust and finds none. She sits up, his blanket still around her shoulders. She reaches back and pushes her fingers up through her hair, combing it back.

He stands and nods to acknowledge her.

“Am I late?” she asks.

“Did you have an appointment?” he asks.

“Not really,” she admits. Most mornings, she arrives at her desk at nine or nine-thirty, depending. No one will miss her, unless the come to call on her debts.

He stands on the rug, its outer border seeming to hold him at bay from crossing to her. She slowly turns, still clinging to the blanket as a robe. Her feet touch the floor.

“Do you wonder what your craft ought to be? What is at the center of your being, from even before you were born?” he asks. He sounds more interested than he ever has in anything.

Touko blinks hard and widens her eyes a bit. She reaches out for her glasses and slowly lets the blanket fall away without any real effort. She grips her glasses a bit too hard, knowing she’ll have to clean the smudges away before wearing them again.

“Isn’t that the point of being here?” she scoffs at him. She feels her heart beating a little quicker, a note of nervousness that feels more like confused modesty than fear souring the relaxation she’d known moments before. She doesn’t want to let him see any more of her right now. She finds the balls of her feet against the floor, ready to stand.

“What if I could show you?” he asks her. “I want to know... why such life extinguishes because you are... so alive right now. I could awaken something within you. Something at your core that would make you even more alive until you burn out.”

Touko feels her mouth hanging open. Her skin prickles with a sense of needing to defend herself, but he stands there with his hands relaxed and looks almost helpless and pleading before her.

All she can do is shake her head.

Smudges be damned, she shoves her glasses onto her face. She smiles at him and springs to her feet.

“No. I think I’m plenty awake for now!” she tells him, managing a plucky tone as if to convince him. She pushes her feet into her shoes and grabs her bag. “Look, I am kind of late. I’ll see you later!”

Then she clambers down the steps, looking back only when she reaches the landing. Her heart is still racing. She stops and listens. He isn’t following her. It still isn’t fear that she feels. It almost disappoints her.

[SpoonyViking]

This is wonderfully good, Prix! Your prose is very atmospheric, and the way you use the setting to establish or enhance the mood is enviable. But I think I've already said that, haven't I? Specifically about this chapter, I loved Touko and Araya's repartee - like they're engaged in a duel which both began, but to which neither was challenged!

[Prix with a Silent X]

Thanks so much, Spoony! I was a little worried that I dwelt too much on the setting.