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“Is it hard? Protecting Tosaki.”
Izumi pauses, fork hovering awkwardly between her mouth and her plate. Not in a million years would she have expected Nagai Kei, of all people, to start up a conversation on something like that. (Then again, she isn’t sure what to expect from him.) He’s not looking at her, staring blandly down at his own food.
“Well,” she says, slowly. Kei still doesn’t look up. “He doesn’t go looking for trouble.”
Kei hums, noncommittally. He doesn’t say anything else, leaving an awkward silence hanging between them. Then, after a long pause, Izumi starts, carefully, “I’m the one supposed to be protecting him, so it’s simple.
“He doesn’t go around trying to protect me.”
Kei looks up, scowling in distaste. Izumi makes a point of not flinching, blinking deliberately as she holds his stare. She’s half-expecting him to set his black ghost on her (or, worse, for it to attack her on its own accord) when finally he sighs, slumping against the table. He closes his eyes.
“I never asked him to. I don’t need protection.”
Izumi tries not to smile.
“He does it because you’re important to him.”
He opens his eyes.
She’d heard that Kei was a strange person (from sources beside just Kou, of course). She’d understood what they meant more acutely after meeting him in person - he held himself at a distance, refusing to engage emotionally with other people. No, that’s not right – his strangeness comes from the fact that it seems more like he’s incapable of regarding others with emotion. Even now, his eyes are cold as he stares at her wordlessly.
Callous, removed and uncaring – a frown pulls at his lips weakly, and she wonders if it’s possible that he doesn’t understand what being important to someone means, and if maybe they’re talking about different people.
“That’s the point.”
The fork clatters against the plate, metal striking porcelain and bouncing broccoli off the table and into the abyss. Izumi stares.
She stares until Kei’s mouth starts twitching, a full-blown grimace playing tug-o-war with his stubborn nonchalance. She stares until Kei’s face makes it abundantly clear that he’d rather die than repeat what he’s said, and even after that he’d rather die again. She stares until Kei begins to seriously consider the idea, if only to get himself out of this mess.
He must be spending too much time with Kou, he thinks spitefully. He would’ve stared at him in incomprehension, words bouncing aimlessly in the space between his ears. Kou definitely wouldn’t have been able to extrapolate any sort of deeper meaning to his words, but this is definitely not Kou, and Kei is definitely beginning to understand regret.
“Hey, Miss Izumi! What’re you guys talking about?”
Speak of the devil.
Kei doesn’t even try to hide his disgust as Kou drops down next to him, tray all but slamming against the table and sitting way too close than is comfortable for anyone. Droplets of water hit him in the face, shot out of their glass with the force of impact, and it’s all Kei can do to not lose it then and there. Izumi is slowly beginning to thaw, fingers grasping at empty space and eyes shifting between Kei and Kou.
“How troublesome it is to stop humans from getting killed,” Kei says, disdainfully, stabbing at his rice. Kou eyes his plate warily, as though his head could be on it next. “Fragile. Weak to pain. You can’t take your eyes off them for one second before they’re falling down the stairs into an early grave.”
“Well,” Kou starts, in a reasonable tone, meaning whatever’s going to come out of his mouth next is likely to be less than reasonable. “Satou is pretty damn old-lookin’. If you stop aging after you first die, then he somehow made it to his hundreds, even being a weirdo like that.”
“Most humans aren’t trained in combat.”
“Yeah, well,” whatever comes out of his mouth next is nigh incomprehensible, words chewed between large chunks of beef and sauce-bonded rice. Kei feels nothing but despair. “I dunno. You’re pretty smart, arentcha? You could always just stick ‘em in a truck.”
“You should be thanking me. Those were probably the most deathless days of your life.”
“Hey, just so you know, I’m pretty sure I died a few times trying to climb my way out of that thing!”
“Yikes. Sounds rough.”
Kei shuts his mouth. Kai lowers himself down next to Izumi (who is still staring, but more piercingly, quietly shovelling food into her mouth), across from Kei. Kou stares, too, as though waiting for him to kick Kai out of their impromptu Ajins Anonymous™ meeting (no mortals allowed). He doesn’t.
“Okay, but back to the point,” because apparently Kou just doesn’t know when to let things die (himself included), “it’s not like it’s hard, normally. I mean, most people don’t exactly get themselves into life-threatening situations, right? We’re sort of the exceptions.”
“Those aren’t the kinds of people we’re talking about,” Kei doesn’t say, because Kai is right there, and he’s the sort of person to listen and infer the subject of conversation instead of announcing his ignorance, and Izumi is also still right there, though her gaze is now less concentrated.
What he says, instead, is, “alright, if it’s so easy, I’d like to see you have to watch over someone. You haven’t even told us how you died in the first place.”
“Not until you tell us first!”
“I’d been killed by accident,” Izumi says, curtly. Kou immediately shuts up. Kai’s brows raise just slightly (the only indication that he hadn’t previously known she was an Ajin), but otherwise says nothing. “People can be surprisingly willing to kill. They can also be surprisingly willing to die, if they have something they care about.”
She doesn’t even look at Kei meaningfully or anything, and that just makes it worse. She’s already smiling while Kou asks, waggling his brows, “so how is it, babysitting Tosaki? Does he ever throw tantrums?”
It makes it harder to tamp down on his scowl, which is already too obvious, enough to draw Kai’s attentive gaze. If he scowls any harder, he’s basically writing out his thoughts in neat print across his forehead for him. Graciously, he doesn’t say anything, looking down as he chews slowly on his food. (Then again, maybe he’d read the desperation on his face.)
The room is slowly filling up with people, with only minor yawning accompanying them, and usually, a quiet dining hall with Kou in it quickly becomes a loud and crowded dining hall, tired people scattered like constellations drawn in by the black hole that is Kou and his chatter. Thankfully, this is avoided, saved by the only slightly lesser of two evils that is physical training. Kai was never one to dally when eating, and Kou apparently thinks it an honourable death should he die by choking, shoving the remainder of his plate into his mouth. As it is, Kai waves as he’s swept away by Kou, who’s probably asking him about Kei’s weaknesses or something.
“It’s hard,” Izumi says, suddenly, making Kei stop. “Trying to protect anyone, human or not. Sometimes we can’t, but we try anyway. Because we have to.”
Kei narrows his eyes. Half-standing, he’s looking down at her, but she doesn’t do him the favour of tilting her head to look up. If he had been asking for practical advice, then for his situation, she had none, and regardless, she’s not sure what it is that he wants to hear. She’s not exactly expecting a thank you, but she’s not expecting this, either.
He sighs again, deeper than before and more resigned.
“That’s just how it is, huh.”
His plate is still half-full when he empties it into the trash, and he walks away like the thought of exertion is physically weighing him down. Still, he says nothing else, even when Izumi follows after him.
He really is a strange person.