Chapter Text
2 years ago
Too much, and the plum would explode in her hands. Too little, and Kyouka would be doing nothing but wasting her curse energy.
She sighed. ‘Controlling cursed energy is so hard…’
SPLAT!
The plum exploded, and her hand is now covered in plum matter. She stared at her hand for a moment.
It twitched slightly in disappointment.
Six Eyes let out a small noise. Kyouka almost snapped her neck from how fast she turned towards him, daring him to make another noise.
Silence. He couldn’t hide his trembling shoulders, however.
She contemplated shoving him away, but then he’d just whine in that awful tone of his and come back.
“Hahh…” Sighing, Kyouka turned to grab another plum with the same sticky hand.
She had been going at this for an hour, and currently, she only had two completely peeled plums, and 10 exploded plums.
And someone is just sitting around not giving her any tips, but he’s sure damn well stuffing his face with various fruits.
“I wish I could help you-” Six Eyes started.
“No you don’t.”
“No I don’t.” He agreed. “Its amazing to see how someone is having so much trouble with controlling cursed energy.”
He paused. “Though I don’t know why you would train by peeling the fruits of their skin.”
As if to flex, he grabbed a plum, and five seconds later, its skin was perfectly peeled off.
She rolled her eyes as he took a bite out of the plum.
“Stop talking to me, I need to concentrate.” And concentrate she did.
For the next seven minutes, Kyouka painstakingly peeled off the skin of the plum using her cursed energy. It was like taking care of a ticking time bomb, where her curse energy is the one doing the snipping, and the wires have a fifty-fifty percentage of doing nothing when cut, or it immediately makes the bomb explode.
Luckily, this time around, a little under ten minutes, she had successfully peeled her third plum without it exploding on her.
“Kyo-chan? Can we sneak out later?” As she basked in her success, Kyouka didn’t pay much attention to what she said next.
“Sure, when we turn nine.” Six Eyes smiled.
“It's a promise then.”
…
“...Can I have tha-”
“No.”
After much whining and pouting, Kyouka relented and gave him the plum she peeled.
She got to work on the next one, and the only sound that existed for the next few minutes was Six Eye’s chewing.
SPLAT!
“...I’m getting tired. Let’s head back inside.” The boy blinked, but didn’t hesitate to follow the girl back inside.
______________________________
PRESENT DAY
Fifty two beats per minute.
Breathing rate is between eleven to fifteen per minute.
A twitch in her neutral face. The vessel looked unimpressed when she opened her eyes.
Eyes that captured the sun met eyes that held the sky.
“Riku-kun, why are you here?”
Six Eyes blinked, and realized it had been observing her sleeping form for ten minutes. A hand comes to shove it off, and Infinity automatically sputters off before the hand comes in contact.
“It's still night time, let me sleep in peace.” She grumbled before turning onto her side.
“The Sun will appear in the next hour.” It simply said.
“Well then you can wake me up in an hour.” Silence reigned, before Six Eyes realized that the vessel had fallen asleep once again.
It woke her up.
“But Kyo-chan, I'm bored.” The whining tone it used felt right.
“You sound awful. Fix it.” It paused.
Recalibrating, it tried again, using another similar tone. She grunted.
“If you were a normal child, I would’ve fallen for that.” It thoughtfully frowned.
“I see. Normal children sound more annoying than I thought.” Six Eyes mused aloud, and the vessel sighed, before she finally sat up.
“What do you even want to do?” She complained, and it looked at her.
“I don’t know. How about sneaking out?”
She made a face Six Eyes had never seen before.
“No way. We’re not suppose to leave, and I don’t want Kenny boy finding out that we’re alive.”
“Who is this ‘Kenny’ boy you’re speaking of? There are no other children in this estate.” It inquired.
The vessel absently waved a hand. “No one particularly important.”
She paused.
“Well, he’s the one who tried to kill us when we were like, a month old or something. Don’t worry about him too much though.”
It stared at her.
“Wouldn’t this be relevant information to share with the elders?” She cringed.
“I very much sincerely doubt the elders can or would be able to do much. And besides, I don’t even know who he’s masquerading around as in this period.”
Six Eyes politely ignored the vessel’s rambles. Perhaps it's a side effect of being a vessel of Tengen-sama.
It still quietly shelved away the information that this Kenny possibly has the curse technique to possess a body–the vessel didn’t know who, but she knows its name, so perhaps multiple bodies? –and was responsible for why it and the vessel is in hiding.
The vessel sighed just as Six Eyes blinked back into awareness, and it watched as she stretched.
A long silence passed by, and it felt the incredulousness increase in the air.
“Are you deadass just going to stare at me after you rudely woke me up?” She complained.
“I’m still hoping that you will suggest an idea so the both of us aren’t bored anymore.” Six Eyes calmly said.
Deadass. Another absurd matchup of words that shouldn’t belong together.
“I’m seriously gonna punch you.” The vessel sounded resigned when she laid back down.
It fidgeted. “I’d rather you wouldn’t.”
…
“...Kyo-chan?”
“What?” Her sharp voice still sounded alert.
“We’re turning nine today.”
A pause.
“You promised exactly two years ago that we can sneak out when we turn nine.” Its voice turned accusing.
“...”
“You wouldn’t go back on your promise, Kyo-chan?”
The vessel let out a huge sigh.
“...No. Give me a few minutes to get ready and then we can head out.”
Suddenly, a guard popped up out of nowhere, kneeling behind Six Eyes.
“I can accompany you two, if you’d like-”
THWACK!
THUD.
It didn’t turn around to look at the body, only blinking at the vessel.
“Nice aim. Where did you get a cleaver?”
“The previous guard. I ransacked his belongings while the situation was chaotic. He was either a butcher or chef with just how many knives I found.”
Ah. The 356th attempt that happened a week ago. A curse user with an interesting cursed poison technique.
“A butcher. Butchers use larger knives like cleavers to deal with cutting meats. I believe chefs use smaller and slimmer knives to deal with various ingredients other than meat.” It paused. “Though I could be wrong.”
“Even if you are wrong, at least you know more than me.” She said wryly, before she sat back up. It watched as she got out of the bed to get ready.
“...You are not watching me get ready. Turn around, brat.”
Six Eyes didn’t push its luck any further, and obeyed.
______________________________
“When did you learn to reinforce weapons with cursed energy?”
The vessel didn’t bat an eye as she finished ordering two bowls of hanamaki soba for Six eyes and her. The waiter eyed the two children’s windswept appearance, but ultimately decided that his job wasn’t worth that much.
She waited until the waiter was gone before answering.
“Remember those plums?” Its eyes widened by a fraction.
“Ah. But you were refining your control through the peeling of fruits, no?”
“Yeah. Originally I could’ve used mikans, but it would be easier to see my mistakes by using plums.” She flexed the same hand that held those fruits.
“Plums bruise easier, and have smoother, finer skin than mikans. It's closer to the flesh, which means I would need to focus more. Easier said than done back then. Now, I can peel plums in under ten seconds, around five if it's a mikan.”
Pausing for a moment, the vessel continued.
“The hardest part was translating what I learned through the plum to other objects. Obviously something like a cleaver can’t be peeled like fruit. Not to mention, aside from being a Star Plasma Vessel, I literally have nothing else going for me.”
Silence reigned for a minute as the waiter returned. He placed their food and drinks down, disappeared, and Six Eyes began to eat as she took a sip of water.
“Literally. No cursed technique, no large pool of curse energy, and no knowledge on curse energy.” She spotted its look. “Don’t look at me like that. The adults don’t know I know how to use cursed energy, and I have no intention of letting them know. For all intents and purposes, I'm just a regular little girl, albeit a vessel for Tengen.”
“...I guess that is true.” It said between mouthfuls of soba.
The vessel’s cursed energy is leaking and leaving obvious traces, despite the fact that it knows that she can control her own cursed energy. It acted almost exactly like that of a civilian’s cursed energy, and the small differences wouldn’t be catched if it hadn’t had the Six Eyes.
“Anyways, back to what I was saying. After numerous failed attempts, I realized that because of my meager pool of cursed energy, I wouldn’t be able to do much more than give objects–like the cleaver this morning–a simple command to move in one direction.”
“I see.” A voice that was decidedly not Six Eyes or the vessel’s calmly said.
The vessel’s posture shifted from relaxed to alert, and it noted how her eyes immediately went to check if there was something on the standing stranger’s forehead.
Most of the tension left her once she saw there was nothing.
Six Eyes felt like it was getting a whiplash from how fast she went from alert and wary to barely cautious.
“Oh? And who might you be?” She asked in a rather amused way.
It blinked, and finally turned to the man who managed to mask his cursed energy so well it slipped past the Six Eye’s radar.
The man was tall. So tall that Six Eyes had to crane their neck up to meet his chestnut brown eyes. His eyes crinkled, obviously seeing the disgruntled look it was giving him, and carefully crouched down.
“My name is Utahime Makoto,” He rather happily introduced himself.
“And you two are the most serious children I ever met.”