Chapter Text
The body is a wild, unpredictable, visceral thing. Not one vessel is the same, and how alive it is fluctuates. Whether it be spiritually, mentally, physically, or emotionally. Now, we still have so much more to discover, and fail, and advance in this science.
Ryunosuke does not consider himself a scientist. Though he thought he knew his body well, like a creased and yellowed book, weathered at the spine; there’s always room to be wrong he supposes. Only more room to annotate, study, and ponder.
At this moment, he ponders.
Iris told him it’s a process called “rumination”. He learns that is something he has been doing all his life, in little doses. Seems fitting coming from a girl who has a medicinal degree. She’s going to crease a page of her own with the way her eyebrows knit over him. Ryunosuke sees no point in it. He’s not going to do anything stupid.
“Runo, that’s not what I’m worried about… You’re getting thinner day by day. I can see your cheeks become caverns. They’re not as pinchable as before.” Iris pouts, with a touch of a comedic shine in her eyes and something more genuine and immense behind them. She’s quick to disguise the concern beneath it all. And he’s more than willing to play along.
“It’s culture shock.” His heart drops a couple steps down. “The food here is way too greasy, and also bland. It’s a little alienating, isn’t it? Being so much more different here, and missing what I know to be home? You understand, right?” He cracks out a sorry smile, crumbling like weak foundations of an abandoned house.
Silence floats through the air, a scentless gas, bound to suffocate Ryunosuke.
He couldn’t bear looking directly into her supposedly wobbling eyes, akin to two deep seafaring pools. During this whole exchange, he’s been staring at the woodgrain of the attic floors as if it’s the secret relic of life, or a enveloping romance novel.
He rolls over in his futon to face the young rose-haired girl, laying in tandem to his own slumped, sore body. Though hers was on the worn, nicked floorboards. Uncaring of the filth that crowds her, and his own.
If he thought his heart took a descent earlier, it now feels like a mere tumble.
She does not look her usual composed and cunning self, for she drowns in a well-loved nightgown adorned with hand-stitched flowers. Iris looks her age for once, and it terrifies Ryunosuke. His heart jumps off that stairwell it has been tripping over.
Ryunosuke thinks he has taken too much of this so-called “rumination”. A realization, dragging him up and down, something much more beastly attempting to fill his lungs up with that salted, stinging seawater. He is not consuming it, for it is consuming him instead.
Filling up the empty space that his partner once took up.
“You miss him don’t you?” Iris whispers, emotion cracking through her voice.
Ryunosuke inhales, feeling that placebo-like poisonous gas fill his lungs. “Who might you be talking about?” He makes a swim for it.
“You’re not daft. Neither am I, Runo.” Of course you’re not. You’re the most brilliant person I’ve known, and youngest to know of as well. It never fails to be both terrifying and impressive.
“I appreciate the compliment, but that will get you nowhere.” Iris grinned with amusement, and stray tears prickling at the edges of her eyes.
Right. Thinking out loud again. Got to stop that.
“You don’t have to quit that habit, it’s quite silly to me and very useful! There’s no need for me to thoroughly read your features since they are clear as day! You know, reading people is fun but it does get tiring sometimes.” Her shoulders shake with laughter, as she tiredly clasps her hands in delight.
Ryunosuke can’t help but let a genuine smile escape, feeling his body tread back up to the surface. “You know that does remind me of him in a way. Kazuma.” he rasps, a tinge of melancholy and fondness clinging onto his voice.
“I’m betting he’d barge in here with the grace of a stampeding bear, urging me to wake up in the late hours of the morning. If I hadn’t awoken or gotten out of bed, he’d either pull me out himself or use my full name like a scolding mother.”
“And if that didn’t work?” Iris’ curiosity grows, easily visible with her glass blown eyes.
“He’d say he was going out for dango, or for sukiyaki by himself, and I’d jolt awake, just like this!” Ryunosuke feigned a deep sleep in his bedding, and as if lightning struck his spine, he straightened out with an unfortunate crack due to him being still as a rock, fossilizing through the night, early morning, and nearly to noon.
Wincing in slight pain, he powered through for the bit. Scrambling like a newborn, he crawled out of bed, akin to a deranged animal. Though his theatrical escape was quickly interrupted by his blanket gripping his foot, almost causing him to faceplant, but instead falling chest first.
“Just like that Runo?” Iris fails to contain her rambunctious laughter behind her hands, sitting criss-crossed rocking back and forth lightly.
Ryunosuke lays sprawled to his side and arching beside his head, which is half smushed into the dusty floor. “Ywesh. Jhust like that.” then proceeding to sneeze violently.
“Alright, enough of this! Let’s go treat ourselves to some breakfast! Or lunch. Brunch!”
Iris marched down the stairs, gesturing to the fallen lawyerling to follow. He complies once again, and attempts to gracefully rise from his grave to eat.