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You are boring.
It takes only one meeting for him to decide on that.
Your polite smiles and perfect bows tell him all: You nod when expected and your words walk the perfect path between intelligence and humility. You greet him with a curated shyness, and even with your young age your make-up is done to perfection to look natural, likely by some servant.
You are your parent’s perfect daughter to sell off, and his parent’s perfect future bride for their son.
Not that you are important in that deal. All that you need to be is be perfect, while both his and your parents discus your future marriage as a footnote in the plans to merge their hospitals.
He is perfect as well, of course. He knows to curb his sarcastic tendencies, engages with you in as few words he could get away with and even compliments your appearance, as his mother had made clear he should do.
They don’t acknowledge any of that afterwards. The only acknowledgment he gets is a “Do not do anything that would make them forgo this union.”
Just like he expected.
Chishiya Shuntaro had always known his bride would be the highest bidder’s daughter, he’s just glad it cemented as early as this so he that won’t be forced through countless needless meetings with countless coworkers’ daughters in the coming years.
During the years that follow, his opinion on you does not change. Not that he thinks much about you, only idly wondering whether your behaviour is a mask or just… you whenever you're forced into the same room.
If it is a mask, it’s a well crafted one. He does not manage to get a single crack in, but that might just be because he does not try that much.
This marriage is important to his parents after all.
You don’t shy away from him, like most do once they realise the empty look in his eyes isn’t an act. But that might just be because this marriage is important to your parents as well.
Both sides want their hospital, merged or not, to stay in their bloodline.
He learns about you over the years. Your hobbies are to be expected, intellectual puzzles like sudoku’s, you read up on medical cases in your spare time and most of all study in abundance.
The one thing he appreciates about you, is that due to both of your parent’s influence, the school pairs you up for group projects. You’re clever, so he does not have to waste time on morons, nor does he have to do whole projects himself to get the perfect grade it’d be irritating to fall under.
You’re boringly dutiful to him when you’re in his room, writing your part of the essay. You have this exact obedient smile you give him each time he tells you to do something he’s not interested in doing himself or just simply wants to see whether you’ll tell him off for once.
It’s fake. It has to be. If it wasn’t, it’d have changed over the years. It’d have changed after weeks.
Yet still there is not a single crack.
He’s sure that if he tried, he’d find out what’s beneath. But you’re just not worth the trouble.
You’ve already proven to be your parents’ daughter.
It’s only when you’re teenagers that his view on you radically changes. That for once, he admits that he was wrong.
It’s not a series of subtle events that makes him realise. Nor is it a crack in your mask. No, it is one single event.
It’s the absence of your mask.
Fifteen minutes of watching you without your mask. Fifteen minutes where you look serene.
You’re sitting on a secluded bench in a park, a notebook in your lap and a box of coloured pencils next to you. Your head is tilted in concentration as you draw, only looking up periodically at the field of flowers in front of you before looking back at the paper.
He’s not sure why it captivates him. Perhaps it’s simply that for once, he gets to see a you he didn’t think existed. A you that actually seems to like what you’re doing.
Perhaps he did want to know what’s beneath that mask after all.
It’s only after fifteen minutes, when he approaches you, curious to see your skill, that you notice him.
Immediately, your eyes widen in panic as you struggle to slip your mask back on, and you tear the page off the notebook before he can take even a single look, crumbling it between your hands.
A shame.
“Shuntaro.” You desperately try to keep your voice calm. “I… I didn’t expect to see you here.”
He sits down next to you, languidly putting one of his arms on the back of the bench behind you just to see how you’ll react.
You seem preoccupied with futilely attempting to hide your project, shoving the pencils into your bag. “I take walks on days I don’t move otherwise.” He tells you, amused. “While I rather don’t, movement is recommended for your body.” And he has no interest in actual sports.
“Right. Yes. Me too.” It’s fascinating how after a lifetime of having that perfect mask you’re struggling with it when caught unawares.
You seem to want to pretend he didn’t catch you drawing. Unfortunately for you, Chishiya isn’t polite enough to go with that. “Can I see what you were drawing?”
You let out an awkward laugh. “Just the flowers.” You lie. You’ve never let him catch you in a lie before. “Extra credit for one of my curriculars.”
You share most of the same classes. “You’re a much better liar than that.” His voice sounds deceptively gentle.
You fall silent. Finally, your mask slips properly back in place, and he can’t detect a sign of the lie he knows your next words to be. “It’s nothing, Shuntaro. Forget about it.” You stand up, giving him that perfect soft smile he does not care about. “I’ll see you later, alright? But I have an appointment.”
You give him a small bow and leave without waiting for his answer.
He watches as you walk away. Even with your mask back on, there is tension in your shoulders.
Interesting. There is no need to be so defensive if it truly was a one-off, so that implies-
Your pencils had been of varying lengths, proving a great deal of use. Either you lend them from someone or this is something you do often.
He takes his phone out of his pocket and searches up the brand of pencils you were using. The results tell him what he needs to know: an art blog claims the brand to be niche and expensive, but of a high quality. Not something anyone would just lend out. Not something anyone would just have.
Your parents would be furious. Drawing? What a waste of time. Time you could spend on making proper connections, studying or the hospital.
You clearly assume Chishiya would think the same.
Instead, he’s intrigued.
He’d never thought you’d rebel against your parents, however small. Which means he’s completely wrong about you.
How fascinating.
He takes the same path back he saw you disappear on, smirking when he spots a crumbled paper in one of the bins.
Clearly you assumed he’s too pristine to look, or to take it out even if he did spot it.
You’re wrong, although he is grateful that the paper is as clean as it could be for something he fished out of a trash can.
He straightens it out. He did not expect it to be beautiful. Nor to give it more than a single thought, but…
It’s a self portrait, except that you’re completely different than the you he knows. You’re laying in a flower field, your hair stretched between the unfinished flowers, swabs of your hair painted in different colours that would give your father a heart attack. Your shirt is like nothing he’s seen you wear, brightly coloured and with a silly cat stitched on the front, the stitches uneven in a way that suggests you’d done it yourself, uneven in a way that would be disgraceful for a future surgeon.
It’s your face however that pulls his attention the most. It’s laughing.
It’s what society would consider an ugly laugh, lopsided and your teeth on full display. It’s nowhere near any of the trained smiles you have for him. It’s a laugh that uses your whole face, your eyes extruding genuine happiness as they look up towards the viewer.
You’re older, an adult, as if it’s what you hope for the future. What you want for the future.
It’s…
His earlier amusement is completely gone, replaced by something unfamiliar in his chest.
It’s unexpected. It’s gorgeous. It’s making him feel.
He’s not sure what to do with that.
Is this how you want to be seen?
He carefully folds the drawing and puts it in his wallet. He’ll analyse his unexpected reaction later.
The drawing stays on his mind during class. It stays on his mind when he tries to sleep at night. It stays on his mind when you’re next to him, working on a project and pretending the meeting in the park never happened.
He could press, of course. But he’d seen the panic on your face. He knows why you’re panicked. And with the knowledge that you are not who he thought you were, that you truly are wearing a mask all the time, he does not know how you’ll react. He does not know how to deal with your panic.
So instead, he’s passive. He waits for you to bring it up.
You don’t.
It’s like it never happened. You just dutifully do your part of the project, interrupting yourself to refill his cup of tea when it's empty in a move he suddenly despises.
He asked you to do things for him earlier to see how far he could push you. Now he stops doing that, instead doing those small things himself before you get the chance to.
It’s annoying to be proactive over his preferred laziness. But the way you look in that drawing keeps coming to mind, so free.
He doubts you like doing those things for him. He doubts you think you can say, do, anything about it with how your parents raised you.
But he does find himself wondering about your other art. So, when you fall asleep during your study session a month later, he opens your phone. It’s not difficult to know your password when you’ve typed it in in front of him so often.
There is no art in your photo album, nor is there a hidden folder. But he does notice, three swipes deep into a folder on the homescreen with apps that are a necessity but barely used, a social media app he was not aware you have an account on.
It asks him for the phone’s password when he tries to open it. He patiently types it in again.
He smirks when your dashboard loads in and it shows an art piece in the same style as the one in his pocket. He scrolls to make sure, and yes, this seems to be how you log your pieces.
What do you do with the physical art? You’d have to be careful so your parents don’t find it. It’d be a shame if you just threw them away. As far as he’s aware, you don’t have friends you could store them with, especially not ones you would trust enough.
He quickly makes an account on his own phone, following yours before removing the evidence that he was on your phone, and putting it back turned off exactly where it lied before.
After you leave, he for once forgoes studying in favor of scrolling through your account.
You use different mediums for your pieces, some drawings, some paintings, some digital. There are some pieces about characters from books or shows he did not know you indulged. Some pieces are about nature.
What interests him most are the ones about you.
Unlike your drawing, you’re smart enough that none of your pieces you post have identifying details. But you do draw yourself into pieces, as a silhouette or an animal or just a flower. What he realises are your parents are often in those pieces, their faces always obscured, not particularly large, but still dark or imposing, often holding a key he quickly realises symbolises your freedom with how often you draw your representation into a cage.
He is in some of your drawings too, and he’s uneasy to realise you seem scared of him. At least, of your future with him.
One particular painting has the two of you at the altar, you a songbird with muted colours in a cage him a faceless silhouette that nonchalantly holds the key, in a way that suggests he does not care much for it. It’s only defining feature is a frozen over void in place of his heart.
Which… fair enough. It is understandable why you would see him that way.
Another painting consists of only a pair of eyes. His eyes. You do manage to capture the emptiness in them quite well.
Of all your art, he prefers the drawing in his pocket. He’s not sure why it matters, but it’s the one you seem the most happiest in. The most free.
He can’t help you get your freedom from your parents until you marry him, when he could make sure you won’t have to hide at home anymore. But you’d still just see that as another cage, wouldn’t you?
The next few years he makes sure to try and relax whenever you’re around, in an attempt to get you to do the same. It gets easier as time goes on, until he finds himself genuinely relaxing in your presence in a way no one else gets to see him.
Do you realise?
The odd times he pops up in your art still has him holding that damned key, but the edges of the silhouettes seem more softened. One time you draw him as a cat, which gets an amused smile out of him.
He wonders if you’ll leave when you turn eighteen, and when you don’t he wonders if it’s social pressure, your family name or simply money that keeps you shackled.
Those few years he simply enjoys your presence while you keep up your mask, and you do stop doing anything for him just like he wanted, end when he’s walking across Shibuya Crossing and everyone disappears.
You’re the first one on his mind. But after he learns about the nature of the Borderlands, about the death games, he’s not sure whether to be relieved that you’re not here. It likely means you’re safe in the old world, but Chishiya is selfish enough to long to see how your mask would finally drop around him during those death games.
But he doesn’t find you. Yet, against reason, he finds a smaller wallet and keeps carrying your drawing around.
“Oh? Are you actually sentimental? Who’s she?”
Chishiya, cauterising a gash on his side, glances towards Kuina who apparently saw it fit to empty his bloodied jacket’s pockets for him and is currently looking at the drawing.
“My fiancée.” He tells her curtly. “Careful. Don’t get blood on it.”
“Your fiancée?” Her eyes lit up, delighted. “I didn’t know you were engaged.”
He shrugs, silent for a moment as a flare of pain shoots through him. “Don’t get too excited. It’s a marriage arranged by our parents.”
“You carry a drawing of her around. She means something. What’s she like?” Kuina shamelessly sits on the bed in front of him, showing him the drawing as if he hasn’t each detail memorised.
“Don’t know.” It’s a half truth. He has learned a lot about you through your art, even if you keep that mask up in person. “She sees me as the cage that awaits her after she leaves her parents’. So she always hides who she is around me.”
“Oh. But you won’t, right? You’re not the type to cage a woman.” He might’ve appreciated Kuina’s faith in him if there hadn’t been a clear underlying threat beneath her words.
“Of course not. But she does not know that. My parents don’t show a promising picture.”
“How does she not know? You could just tell her.”
Unimpressed, Chishiya lifts his eyes from his wound to Kuina. “She knows how well I lie. I doubt that’d work. She’ll learn once we’re married.”
“Chishiya.” Kuina sounds disappointed in him. “Communicate. She deserves the chance to decide for herself. Maybe she knows you well enough to know your tells. It might make her feel less caged now if she knows.”
Maybe she’s right. But. “She panicked the only time I saw her draw.” He admits in a rare bout of honesty. “I don’t know what to do if she panics again.”
“You deal with it.” Kuina has no sympathy. “Use your oversized brain to figure it out. Or are you scared?”
“Provoking doesn’t work on me.” He reaches out towards the bandages, carefully starting to wrap his wound. “I suppose I can try, if we leave this world.”
When, at the end of stage two, he’s sitting against the car, his trembling fingers take your drawing out of his wallet. It’s bloodstained, which tightens his gut more than the realisation of the lethality of the bullet through his abdomen did.
But it’s still clearly you.
He wonders if you’ll miss him if he won’t last long enough. Or if you’ll be relieved. If you’d put up with another man your parents would choose for you. His chest tightens at the thought of that.
When the fireworks return, and he’s given the option of citizenship, he declines without hesitation.
When he wakes up to the beep beep beep in the hospital, his last memory is that of fireworks at Shibuya Crossing.
You’re next to him, your back to a corner as you are engrossed on your ipad. He wonders if you’re drawing, but his just-awakened mind only allows him a fuzzy sight. He hopes you are.
You startle when your given name leaves his lips, his voice cracked and barely audible.
“Shuntaro!” You seem genuinely relieved, and he’s surprised to feel his lips form a soft smile. But he’s in a hospital, likely drugged. That would explain erratic behaviour.
He probably should be more worried about being in a hospital.
It’s a day later, when he’s more lucid, that you explain his wounds in a clinical voice. That you explain the meteorite.
He does not particularly care. “Are you alright?”
You seem surprised that that’s his first reaction, the cracks in your mask showing. “Yes. I wasn’t near the impact.”
There is a pang in his chest when he realises his wallet isn’t between his personal items. As you’re the only one who visits him, he asks you about it when he sees you next. “It was bloodsoaked.” You tell him, no sign of a lie on your face, even though none of his other items have even a speck of blood on them. “They had to throw it away.” He wonders if you saw what he kept in it. If you did, you don’t show it.
When you leave, he checks your social media on his phone. There is a new piece about him, his silhouette laying in a hospital bed, less cold than it’s usually in your pieces. In his chest is an anatomically correct heart drawn. For once, he’s not holding the key always present, instead it’s laying on the pillow next to his head.
It’s a few days after his release from the hospital that your account is deleted. It’s for the first time in his life that he finds himself worried. Have your parents found it? Even though he’s never talked to you about it, he knows your art is important to you. It’s the only place he knows you can be yourself.
His doorbell rings late that night. You’re fortunate that his mind had been too active for him to sleep.
It’s the second time in his life that he sees you with your mask missing. Your eyes are slightly red, but there’s a determined look on your face he instantly likes.
“We need to talk.” You demand of him as you walk inside, not even taking your shoes off. Do you anticipate having to leave quickly?
“Alright.” He’s slightly amused, but he enjoys this new side you are showing as he follows you to his couch, where you don’t sit down.
“You had this in your wallet.” You all but throw the drawing at him. “That was years ago. And you have an account on your phone following my art. Yet you never mentioned anything. You’re supposed to be heartless.”
He lets out an amused exhale as he straightens out the drawing before refolding it carefully. Thankfully, there is no blood on it. “It’s rude to go through the phone of someone in a coma.” Both of you ignore that sentence. You must know it’s likely how he found your page. “I enjoy your art. Am I not allowed to?”
Something vulnerable flashes across your face. “You enjoy my art?” Then your face hardens. “My parents found out. They threw my sketchbook under the tap. I’m done with them.”
His face hardens, but he lets you talk.
“I’m dropping out of my studies.” You cross your arms defensively. “I hate the hospital. I hate how desensitised it tries to make me to human suffering. I hate how clinical it all gets. How… devoid of anything.”
That really does not come as a surprise. He tilts his head, intending to let you continue, but you seem to expect a reaction. So he just nods. “You- Gosh, you’re frustrating. I just told you something we both know my parents will disown me for.”
“Good.” This time he does react. “You’re clearly unhappy with the roles they force on you.”
“I’m leaving.” You tell him hotly, and that is what finally makes him frown, which gets a flash of satisfaction through your eyes. “Why should I marry you if I couldn’t care less about them?”
He’d hoped you wouldn’t come to that conclusion, even if he expected it. “It’d make your life easier.”
You snort, your next words like a dare. “I have no interest in being a housewife. I want to go to an art school. I want to never have to pretend to be someone I’m not again.”
“I have no desire for a housewife.” He tells you, completely honest. “That’d bore me. Who you pretended to be bored me. You do not. I can support your studies.”
“Why would you support my studies?”
“Why not? My apartment is bare, I don’t go on vacations, nor do I have an expensive car. My savings are quite sizeable. I’ll be a doctor soon enough, and eventually take over the hospital. I do not have to worry about money.”
“Do you want to marry me?” The notion clearly is alien to you.
“Of course I do.”
“Why?”
“You’re the only person who does not bore me. Marriage is the easiest way to keep you around. Besides, it’d be a headache to deal with both of our parents’ complaints.”
You seem to contemplate it for a bit. “…You’d pay for my studies? Non-medical studies?”
“I will.” That’s truly a non-issue.
“Necessities? Amenities?"
“Yes.”
“I won’t be a housewife.”
“No. And you don’t have to worry about me touching you, nor do we have to have children if you don’t want them. I don’t particularly care.”
“What if I want to touch you?”
That throws him off-kilter. He’s genuinely unsure of how to react. Does he want to touch you? …He’s never thought about it. Uncertain, his eyes drop down to your lips before coming up to your eyes again.
But then you smirk, and teasing he can handle. You turn serious again at your next words. “Let me get this straight. You’re offering me a free ride through life. Just for the price of my hand.”
“I suppose I am.”
You run your hand through your hair. “You’re saying that, all this time, I could’ve just been me around you, and you wouldn’t have minded. You would’ve preferred it.” You don’t let him answer. “Why wouldn’t you just have told me?”
Well. “You panicked when I came across you drawing. I figured it would be better to let you open up first.”
You look completely unimpressed. “Of course I panicked! I knew my parents would destroy my supplies if they would find them. I thought you’d let them know. I thought you’d see it as a waste too. How was I supposed to know you’d like my art instead? You’re supposed to be heartless. I didn’t think you could like anything.”
“You keep repeating that one.” Chishiya says amused, ignoring the part where you rightfully call him out. “I think the meteorite proved I do in fact have a heart. While I agree I don’t care for much, I do care for some things.”
“Really. Like what.” For one, he really likes this new side of you.
“You.”
He says it so calmly, so matter-of-factly that you sputter, your cheeks heating to a pretty red. “Fine. Fine. We’ll do this. But I won’t hesitate divorcing you if this turns out to be a lie, and you know how that would be for optics.”
He smiles, a sense of satisfaction running over him. He does not care less for optics, but that’s fine. You’ll learn to know him.
You glance around the apartment. “I’m not going back to my parents. I’ll have to move in now.”
“I have an empty guestroom you could use.” He shrugs.
“This place is bare.”
“I know a great artist who could liven it up.”
“…You’d let me?” There is that vulnerability again.
“Of course.” Why wouldn’t he? “It’ll be your home too.” Chishiya might be selfish, but that includes you too. It’s a small thing that clearly would make you happy.
While his hospitalisation wasn’t enough to get his parents attention, your supposed fall from grace and pre-marital living with him is. The plan had always been for the ceremony to take place once he became a doctor, but now they suddenly use his recent near-death experience as an excuse to want you chained to him early.
They assume he’ll correct your behaviour. He does not bother to correct them, but makes a dry comment once they leave so you’ll know his allegiance. The comment makes you laugh.
He lets you use his office for your art, after he has to remind you that paint fumes aren’t healthy in the place you sleep. Which you really should know, given how far you came in the studies you just dropped.
He just places a desk in his bedroom. He does not need an entire room to study anyway.
You slowly learn to relax around him, which he takes as a bigger accomplishment than his perfect marks. He softens the first time you laugh out loud at one of his comments, your smile so similar to the one on the drawing safely returned to his pocket.
He doesn’t have to look at pictures of your art anymore, instead you pull him into the newly minted art room as soon as you’re finished, wanting his commentary. He’s not sure why his honest words on your work mean so much to you, as critical as he can be, but they do. At the end of the day, he likes each of your pieces.
Whenever he shows up in them, he’s not the icy blue anymore. Instead you use a warm white. There are no longer signs of a lack of a heart, and the key is missing. Sometimes you let yourself hold it.
One day, he comes home to find you cross-legged on the couch, some old western building on the screen of your tablet. What pulls his attention is that it is one a well-known booking website.
“Going somewhere?”
“Europe.” You seem distracted as you scroll through the options. “For our honeymoon.”
“Oh?” He was under the impression they’d only hold whatever parts his parents wanted him to do for the hospital’s publicity. He hadn’t considered a honeymoon once.
“Yes. I want to visit the Louvre. The Rijksmuseum. The British Museum. You’re coming with.”
He lets out an amused exhale. “Just don’t empty my accounts.”
He’s well aware that you’ve been pushing his boundaries to see if how he’s been acting is a mask. Fortunately for you, he hasn’t been acting, so your attempts only serve to amuse him.
The ceremony is a drag. It’s the last time you have to wear your mask, but it doesn’t fit neatly anymore. He’s never seen it slip as much as it has this day, but he doesn’t mind. He just smirks at the silent fury in your parents' eyes.
He supposes you are conventionally very pretty that day. Not that he cares, but if he’d had to choose he’d prefer how you look in old shirts full of splashes of paint and a pair of sweatpants. You look most at ease in them.
He is very amused to come to the hotel room after a long day of travel, pleased you haven’t plunged for the honeymoon suite so he won’t have to deal with that ridiculousness, to find that there is only a single bed. One quick glance at your face confirms that you knew.
He does not give you the pleasure of a reaction, instead simply stripping down to put on a comfortable pair of pants and lays down on the closest side.
Only to freeze as you cuddle against him, shamelessly draping yourself over him.
“Is this alright?” You frown at his reaction.
He releases his breath he didn’t realise he was holding, and just lets himself feel.
The pressure is surprisingly acceptable, and your warmth isn’t that bad either. While he has a history of an aversion to touch, he supposes this is just another thing he can indulge you with.
“Yes. I suppose it is.” After some hesitation, he slides one of his arms around your waist.
Huh. This is nice.
He truly has no interest in the many, many, art pieces you insist on showing him in various countries, each time chatting about their histories, techniques or artists. Whenever you ask for his opinion, he keeps repeating the same words: “I prefer your work.”
It makes you blush without fail.
When he sees the large queue in front of the Mona Lisa, he naturally suggests skipping the painting. You look at him like he’s insane, so he’s subjected to standing in a crowd of people to wait.
He’s glad he did. Something about the painting stands out to him in a way only yours have before.
“There is a theory that she is Da Vinci in disguise.” You tell him, excited when you notice him paying attention.
“He just wanted to be seen.” His voice feels far off.
“Reminds me of you.” That breaks the spell on him, and he moves his head to look at you. “Don’t deny it. Your eyes do that thing where they soften slightly each time I have something correct about you. Each time I get to know you better without turning away.”
“I suppose you’re right.” His hand goes to his pocket, taking your drawing out of his wallet and gently unfolds it.
He looks at it like it’s the first time he sees it, taking in your figure strewn over the flowers, glances back at the Mona Lisa, then back at the drawing.
“I still prefer your work.”
Your eyes are filled with adoration as you smile at him.