A/N:
Just wanted to post something, and this had just been on my mind for some time. This is for Shadow Fox777, by the way, for just cuz. That and the odd number of stories I have is bugging me soooo much. OTL
"Well?"
His voice was deep, but also a little groggy. It was as if he had just woken up, which considering his lifestyle, was plausible. Mixed with curiousness and impatience, the tone of voice Yukari had heard Miki use time and time again. It was completely unexpected, and yet a little expected at the same time. Something that she wasn't used to hearing while she drank her coffee, but then again, should've came out of his impatient mouth a long time ago.
She gradually turned to face him, slow as an admirer studying their muse, just to test his tolerance that afternoon. Her side bangs moved with her body swiftly, and she reminded herself to get them cut soon, even though she never does what she reminds herself. With her thumb resting on its side, four other fingers tapped onto the table in a consecutive motion.
"Well, what?" She retorted, a freckle of a smile appearing at the edges of her pale rose lips. Her pale eyes looked up to read him, to watch his reaction and come up with the next few words to let loose from her mouth. Her hint of amusement remained printed on her face.
It was like a ritual with them, the way they communicated: fragmented sentences, bouncing back and forth between the two like a tennis ball, only hitting the net every once in a while when they bicker about their jobs. Then again, that was a part of what this was about. Yukari wonders when the ball would hit the net.
"Did you think about it?" Ppoiyo sat down next to her, spacing a decent amount of distance between him and her, a gap that signified a speck of a relationship, but wasn't close enough to indicate true feelings. An arm propped up onto the table, resting flatly; his stare at her lingered with a twinkle in his eye, a shine of appreciation – of adoration. He should've grinned at that point, to tease her into responding, to make her feel warm and comfortable around him, but he didn't. He wasn't the type of person, after all, and he knew she knew that. It's why she chose him.
There were few things that Yukari called her own. There were even fewer things that Ppoiyo called his. Like two jig-saw puzzle pieces that didn't fit in their own puzzle set that found one another. They still hadn't fit each other, but the mutual understanding of being the odd one amongst the pieces they came with had kept them around.
Her mouth hanged open slightly, and she remained still enough for a person to have mistaken her as a mannequin. Then she looked up at him, back into his eyes and the never ending abundance of red.
"Was I supposed to have thought about it, Sparky?" She reached out her hand, extending it towards him, only to miss his arm by a few hairs. There was a rusty, old penny sitting atop of the table, alone as she was. She pressed onto it with her index finger, and pulled it back to her; it cried out an eerie screech as it was being dragged.
Ppoiyo didn't flinch at her movements, because after watching a ballerina preform the same moves over and over again, the pirouettes and pliés begin to all look alike; it becomes repetitive, and the audience is no longer enchanted. He also didn't mind it when she starts to play with the penny, seemingly more fascinated by the coin than by him. She had the attention span of a child sometimes, purposely appearing and disappearing when she felt like it, like a rabbit diving through a rabbit hole to avoid detection; escapism. It kept their conversations short, their arguments even shorter. Twisting the conversation into something else entirely irrelevant was one of her talents. Twisting his feelings around like a plaything was another one.
If Yukari Yuzuki was truly a rabbit, then Matsudappoiyo must have been a guerdon; a carrot. Only sought after by if the rabbit was bored and chased after by the rabbit if pulled away.
The curve on Yukari's lips disappears and she looked at him for what seems to be the first time in a long time, because she had never noticed his decrease in muscle mass before, the frown lines blemishing his face, the worry in his eyes. And as she's doing this, her fingers continued to twist and turn with the penny in its grasp. Now, the question returned to her mind, asking if she wants to place the penny next to another penny. Two pennies: an unfathomable thought at first, but this was the second thought, or perhaps the third; Yukari didn't know.
And that was it. She just didn't know. But stalling a conversation with Ppoiyo was just teasing a lion with a piece of meat; it would only last for so long until the wild animal jumped at you.
"You told me you would," Ppoiyo said, the emotion in his voice unwavering. He still stared at her with compassion, with ferocity, and with ten other feelings Yukari didn't know could blend together in a single look. Finally, he extended his arm, reaching out for the coffee mug in her one hand, preventing the rim from kissing her lips. He stole it from her, without spilling a drop, and took a sip from it himself.
Ppoiyo stuck his tongue out in disgust and placed the mug down; it's too sweet for his liking as he usually preferred it to be as bitter as he was – as she was. He earned a laugh with that face from Yukari herself and it made his chest tingle – it made the muscles in his face tremor into a rare position. He's done this before, taking the coffee from her hands (as much as he hates the stuff) and complaining about her taste in energy drinks, but he continued to do so because her laugh was difficult to find.
Just hearing that sound from her, seeing that slight quiver from her shoulders when she did it, the musical notes that play out like a serenade, was one of the many reasons why Ppoiyo asked her the question, one of the many reasons why he's trying to be patient for the answer, and why he was dealing with her so early in the day.
Yukari rested her cheek onto the palm of her hand, with the other still fastened onto the coin; her face didn't spell anything. Ppoiyo couldn't tell if she's thinking about what he said, and Yukari didn't know what to think.
"Do you want an answer now?" She asked with a tint of hope in her voice that he'll tell her no, but she knew for certain he isn't like that. She always knew what to expect from him, whether he said something or not. He was almost as easy to read as Alice in Wonderland, a worn out item that she had owned as testament to all she had lost.
When she was a child, her sister had told her that once she's hooked onto something, once she's hooked onto the game, she would never get out. Not because it was impossible (though it nearly was), but because she wouldn't want to. Hico must have known from experience, because her sister's fall into becoming a Cleric and her only brother's jump to the opposite side of the chessboard hadn't deterred her like it should have. But what Hico hadn't accounted for was another fisherman – another hook – to lure Yukari to the other side of the sea, away from her tiny dungeon called home. It may have taken her into a bigger cage, but she had more freedom, more swimming space away from the big, bad sharks. Most of all, when the fisherman reeled her in, he wouldn't have killed her.
Her first was that fisherman, that hook. All Yukari had to do was take the bait. And she had ignored him. Though Fate had been oddly cruel to her, it had lead her here, in a demon's home, thinking.
"Maybe," he teased her like she does to him. His actual answer was still quite clear behind that ambiguous reply; her unpreparedness is just as clear. With a hesitant thought, but confident move, he held onto her hand with both of his, and she stopped fidgeting with the penny between her fingers.
His thumb didn't run circles on her hand to calm her down like most men do in the romance movies. It just so happened that her hand was touching both of his. His calloused fingertips grazing her scarred palm, skin on skin contact – nothing new between them.
Ppoiyo pressed his lips together, and they form a line. His brows arched into a furrow, showing a man deep in thought, hypothesizing his ideas, trying to see the future with his brain. But no man can see the future unless he was made of magic, so all he got were a bunch of delusions derived from his fantasies. Sometime later, Ppoiyo's tongue pokes out, licking his dry lips before opening them to speak: "I don't care what you say, Yukari. Just answer me, please."
She cocked her head to the side, seemingly indifferent to his pleas. There was a contrast between what he is asking of her and what Yukari was used to. In her old profession, each mission was delivered like a death sentence, and each time, Yukari accepted them compliantly. Whenever she made herself invisible, she had to make the drumming of her heart quiet down, made each movement as swift as possible. Each word, punch, and kick were thoroughly thought out before said or done, like walking on a tightrope above a pit of lava; one slip, and you lose.
But suddenly, Ppoiyo's question took away all that. Her heartstrings could be played with a bow as many times as it wanted to, in staccatos and legatos, loud enough to match that of an orchestra's symphony. Bumping into chairs and dropping dishes by accident were alright, as well as cursing out loud, speaking her mind, and even crying and screaming if she wanted to. Yukari is essentially given a key to her cage.
The question was: did she want it? Yukari wasn't sure – she's too lost out at sea with no ship to rescue her from her thoughts. She tried not to entice the bigger fish or drown herself in the pools of alcohol and blood, only remembering what her sister told her when she was a kid, that once she was hooked onto the game, she would never get out.
But then she found another hook.
"Alright," Yukari said and gently budged her hand free from his hold, raising it so that if there is a line connecting from her eyes to his, the penny pinched between her thumb and index finger would be in the middle. Its dull and aged appearance didn't shine much, even when the sunlight from the window had embraced it. All in all, it was an ordinary American penny that Al had left behind on his last visit, with Lincoln on one side, and his memorial on the other. It was as normal as the two entities on either side of it.
It was a saying that Yukari once heard on one of her travels. An old beggar had tried to teach her the value of a rusty old coin, in hopes that she would be kind enough to spare some. She had felt no pity talking to him, no remorse in leaving him there to starve to death, but that one particular lesson stuck in her head for some reason, probably waiting to be used in a time like this. The old man's words were glued to her memory like every word, comma, and period in her Wonderland book; that once you flip a coin, your decision can be made when it's enveloped in air, and only in air, because you would know exactly which face you wanted it to land on.
"Then I'll answer," she said calmly, but he's unresponsive. Maybe he's expecting her to pull this type of stunt, or maybe he's just a ticking bomb, not yet ready to explode. She gulped, and it's obvious that he saw her do it, but he's seen her expressed more emotions than she knew she had, so it didn't bother her on the slightest bit.
"Heads, it's a yes. Tails, it's a no," she explained before positioning the penny onto her thumb.
Ppoiyo nodded and waits for her move.
Yukari flipped the coin into the air.
It was after the initial second when she looked up, chest heavy with worry, mind completely scattered and barely responsive. But the moment Yukari laid her eyes on the bronze coin, effortlessly soaring through the air, winding in somersaults and all sorts of twists and turns in a timeless period, every muscle in her body loosened. And in that moment, the moment when time stood still just long enough for her mind to make its decision, when the coin stayed in the air for just a while longer than it's supposed to, Yukari made her choice. She knew her answer.
It fell into her grasp, and its face was hidden from the world as she placed it flat onto her opposite palm. The penny was sandwiched in between both hands, waiting for its debut into the open air for everyone in the room to see. Yukari pressed it down tight enough for the former US president's face to be temporarily imprinted onto her skin.
"Well?" Ppoiyo asked again with his deep, yet tired voice. It was reasonable, given his work, but it was also something Yukari wasn't expecting to hear from him, at that time of the day when she should be relaxing with a cup of coffee in her hands without a care in the world. But then again, she should've known he'd ask her that eventually; it was in his character, after all.
Yukari didn't look at the coin in her hand, didn't bother revealing the answer to the world. She merely smiled a soft, freckle of a smile and told him her answer.
When she was a child, her sister had told her that once she's hooked onto something, once she's hooked onto the game, she would never get out. Not because it was impossible (though it nearly was), but because she wouldn't want to. Hico must have known from experience, because Yukari's rebellion against the Embassy hadn't deterred her like it should have. But what her sister hadn't accounted for were two fisherman – another hook – to lure Yukari to the other side of the sea, away from her tiny dungeon called home. It may have taken her into a bigger cage, but she had more freedom, more swimming space away from the big, bad sharks. Most of all, when the fishermen reeled her in, they wouldn't have killed her. Rather, one of them would have fallen in love with her.
Matsudappoiyo was that fisherman, that hook. All Yukari had to do was take the bait.
"It's heads."