[CLOSED || Heine & Naoto]
Who: Heine Rammsteinr & Naoto Fuyumine
What: Bullying Heine and Naoto become aware of each other's presence in the mansion
Where: The hallway outside rooms 211 and 212
When: Evening (before being phone-social with Kanda)
Rating and Warnings: GRR WOOF PG-13 at least...? Subject to change? Idk.
( Everything they whispered in our ear is coming true )
What: Bullying Heine and Naoto become aware of each other's presence in the mansion
Where: The hallway outside rooms 211 and 212
When: Evening (before being phone-social with Kanda)
Rating and Warnings: GRR WOOF PG-13 at least...? Subject to change? Idk.
( Everything they whispered in our ear is coming true )
She'd spent most of her time holed up in the small room assigned to her, grateful for the hospitality, but at the same time doomed to drown herself in distraught. The more time she has spent in this place the more time she realized she couldn't be here-shouldn't be here-and that she had to leave as quickly as possible. Except, nothing was making that easy for her. Although it perhaps was not intentional, there wasn't much hope for her being able to go home. The situation was as it was and there was nothing she nor anyone else stuck here (or otherwise) could do about it.
What did that mean for her? Apparently it meant being given a place to stay because the entire situation was, at best, indefinite. So, she'd taken it in stride as best as she could, asked as few questions as possible to make time being around others the bare minimum and quickly retreated to the room number on her key.
And there she stayed (seconds, minutes, hours, she wasn't sure), staring up at the ceiling as she had flopped backwards onto the bed upon arrival. At some point, she'd gotten up and retreated to the window to look out, sitting there for an undetermined amount of time clutching the katana as if it was her sanity. It was safe to say that, just like looking up at the ceiling, she wasn't staring at anything anywhere in particular. Staring just simply seemed to be the only thing she could do.
It was pathetic.
Finally, she'd stumbled to her feet after wasting that indefinite amount of time and, sword still in hand (although she questioned why, it was only a short trip down a hallway), made her way out of the room towards the bathroom. She was quiet as she walked, her footsteps cautious. Naoto wasn't one to be paranoid, but this was still so strange to her that she wasn't willing to take the chance. Besides, being polite to not disturb any others on the floor was a common courtesy, wasn't it? Making it to the lavatory was ultimately uneventful and she slipped in as quietly as she had wandered down the hallway.
And there she had stayed for a decent few minutes after using it for its main purpose, splashing water on her face to wake herself up (but there wasn't enough water in the entire city to rouse her from this new nightmare she'd found herself in) and hopefully drag her out of the silent daze she'd been in since the situation had sunk in. It helped, if only a little (but a little was better than nothing at all), and she furrowed her brow as she stared at herself in the mirror for a moment. Naoto wasn't a woman who took time to worry about her looks considering her situation, but even she knew when she looked like shit. Now was one of those times and she sighed, rubbing a hand over her eyes before splashing more water onto it as if it'd help. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't, she didn't really care at this point.
Done with the sink and the mirror, she flopped back against the closed door, sliding down to her rump in uneasy defeat. Pulling her knees up to her chest and burying her head against them, Naoto made sure to keep an ear out for anyone wandering the corridor that might need use of the lavatory, but for the time being she heard no movement whatsoever outside in the halls. For an area with quite a few rooms, the place was deathly quiet.
Unsure of how many minutes passed (but sure all of them were in complete silence, she didn't even heard a sound from the outside), she finally climbed to her feet. Finished dusting herself off, she turned to grab the door. As she stepped out, she had her head bowed, uninterested in looking at her surroundings. Only when she heard the footsteps of another approaching did she look, half curious as to with whom her first encounter would be and half simply not wanting to walk right into them.
She stopped everything when she saw him, however, and for a moment she wasn't sure if she was even breathing.
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And there was something familiar about the presence, something he knew in his gut. There had been only one familiar face to him there so far, so perhaps that was why his hand went to his hip before his eyes went to the face.
But his hand didn't grip the weapon before his eyes moved up, and as they did his attitude shifted in an instant.
His shoulders fell back from their original tense and trigger-happy stance, the irritation around his eyes ebbed away to be replaced by unabashed surprise, and his back straighten as though from his lowered stalking stance he couldn't really trust what he was seeing.
"You..."
He likely sounded as dumbstruck as he looked, but really who expects to run into their other stalker coming out the bathroom in a strange mansion a million miles and years from home?
Well. Maybe not literally a million, but you get the idea.
And there's something about her that reminds Heine of Giovanni just a bit. No, not in a direct sense or even in a morbid humour about stalkers sense, it was more ephemeral than that and less amusing. It was like the feeling he got when he had been faced with Giovanni at the breakfast table though; that sense that something was different and Heine didn't know what it was, that there was some discrepancy between now and the last time he'd seen either of them. It irritated him because he couldn't figure out what it was and the experience wasn't too unlike trying to catch smoke in his hand to examine it.
Whatever it was, like Giovanni, something about Naoto was different and it wasn't just that--
"You look like shit."
Really, there were better ways to greet someone, but hey, at least he had some sense that she didn't normally look like that, right?
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She stared at him, her expression shifting from shocked at his presence to stunned at his comment. Really, of all the things he could have said that hadn't been what she was expecting. Naoto's expression melted into irritation a few seconds later, recovering from the initial surprise and suppressing the other surprise of him being here to begin with.
"Thank you for noticing," she replied, voice sour. She didn't need the reminder of what she'd just confirmed for herself in the bathroom mirror.
And then she let silence flood between them. Perhaps now would have been a good time for a nice to see you, sarcastic or not. In truth, maybe to her it was a little nice to see him (or at least he was preferable over someone like Magato), to know she wasn't alone in this nightmare. But, that left her just as concerned.
There was something off about it. About him, about his reaction, and their whole meeting altogether. There was a lack of mutual understanding, almost, a feeling of knowing between them no longer there. It was as if they were still just meeting for the first or second time.
That alone caused her to fumble for words, but she furrowed her brow, refusing to ask at the moment. She wouldn't magically open up and act concerned for this one, especially not here at this moment feeling such a difference. Besides, there were more important people to worry about-such as Nill and how she didn't have either of them back home if they were both here.
"Heine," she began, finally, folding her arms across her chest. So many things to say and so little time to say them. No time like the present to start asking the most obvious and necessary ones, though, right? "...where are you going?"
Well, that wasn't what she had intended to ask, particularly as her first question. But now that she did? She was curious all the same just like any stalker would be.
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But awkward was just what they did, wasn't it? She was irritating to him and he--as far as he could guess--was a callous asshole to her. It worked out. Sort of. But even so... That pause. That look. It like he was supposed to say something or do something in particular. It kind of felt like he missed a cue somewhere.
Tap-tap-tap.
But he didn't know what it was that he'd missed...
So instead he watched. He watched and tried to pick up whatever cue he missed, the end of a hanging thread to reel it in, something to make that odd tension make sense. What had happened before between them?
...
Ah. Granny's tea place. And the dress-fitting. And getting kicked out when Naoto was going to be force-fitted there. Ugh. His eye gave an irritated twitch as that thought passed through his mind, continuing to stare at the swordswoman in front of him in that generally unimpressed manner. But that wasn't it, was it? That was just bad timing and Granny being... Granny. Nothing to do with him in relation to Naoto, not really.
It likely seemed that he just really wasn't going to say anything to her at all after his charming first 'compliment' and the lingering irritable stink-eye placed upon her. But finally he gave up, heaved a huff past his teeth and turned his head away.
The tap-tap-tap wasn't letting up though and it was still several seconds until her question actually connected and he shot her a surprised glance with a raised eyebrow.
"Bathroom," he said finally, a thumb jerking down the corridor toward the room she'd just exited "Didn't know you needed to give that much of a damn."
While Heine wasn't normally in the business of making things easier for people, he didn't much care to linger on embarrassing her at this particular moment in time--too many naggling annoyances for that--so instead he moved the thought along quickly.
"You haven't been here long, have you? Properly would have noticed already. So I bet you fell through that portal downstairs. When?"
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