Every pet name and endearment that falls from her lips becomes another reason for him to hate her and, by extension, his predicament as a whole.
Dear. Sweetie. Love. He grits his teeth and accepts it, that this is the price he must pay to retreat once more into the shadows, unnoticed. It is somehow worse that her voice wavers whenever she tries to display such affections — as though she isn't entirely sure that that is how she truly feels.
He feels her small, delicate hand rest softly on his forearm as he turns to leave for work. A chill racks his body.
"Have a good day, Kosaku," she says, her tone nigh beseeching.
He glances at her briefly. She's waiting for something; her eyes are closed and her lips are puckered.
"Thank you," he replies flatly before taking his leave.
Shinobu tends to the stir fry and contemplates her reaction to all of this.
Most people would probably be concerned by such a drastic change in their partner. Maybe he's cheating? She chews her lower lip, eyes glazing over as she robotically removes the pot from the stovetop.
She does know on a broader level that she's skipped those steps and stumbled headfirst into elation over his new behavior. So deprived was she before that she'll now gladly drink in his renewed disposition like a dying man in the desert. She won't ask questions. If there's another woman, Shinobu almost feels an obligation to thank her.
A smile blooms across her face. She won't worry about it. Curiosity killed the cat, after all.
Kira can feel her sneaking glances at him as he finishes his breakfast and scans the morning paper.
Such glances are fleeting, but they're still uncomfortable, like a jacket that's slightly too tight or fabric that rubs just a little too abrasively against one's skin.
He has to put a stop to it. He stares pointedly in her direction — because unlike him, she's mostly oblivious to what's going on around her — until she casts one of her gazes once more.
Kira looks at her, noting offhandedly how large and round her eyes are. Too often, she looks half her age.
I'll choke you. I'll slit your throat. I'll pour bleach in your eyes and break your toes, and I'll watch the blood swirl down the drain. And when your skin's gone waxy, that's when I'll take my share and erase you.
He smothers the thought, burying it deep within his id. Perhaps he'll return to it later, but now is not the time.
He's always been a cold man, Shinobu thinks, but this renewed vigor and simmering passion have brought with them an unknown kind of gelidity.
She can't say that it deters her much — she'd much rather take this than his previous corpselike state — but it's something that gives her pause every now and then when he looks at her.
Her train of thought is interrupted by the door opening, and she wants to leap from the sofa and throw herself at him, but she restrains herself. She needs to play it cool; she needs to make him want her.
This new dynamic excites her, but there is a small voice of reason at the back of her mind that asks if it's normal to be intimidated by one's sworn partner — like a little girl, running away from her crush.
He's given a fair amount of thought to her hands, of course. He may be Kosaku Kawajiri at the moment, but he will always be Yoshikage Kira. He isn't accustomed to seeing a pair that he cannot easily snatch from whatever they're attached to. Fantasy must suffice for now.
(In the moonlight, as she slumbers, he wonders how they would feel, cold and lifeless, between his lips.)
Her husband has always had a difficult time falling asleep. She's blessed with the ability to doze off rather quickly once her head has hit the pillow, but Shinobu had felt guilty for it. As their marriage deteriorated, she ceased the small comforting gestures that she once hoped would lull him to sleep — the hand-holding, the backrubs, the featherlight pecks upon his neck. She may not have ever loved him, but she tried to be kind.
Something possesses her to make another attempt tonight. Considering all the other changes that have been occurring recently, it's at least worth a shot, Shinobu thinks with a pout.
She tentatively sidles up beside him in bed and reaches out — hesitating briefly — before bringing her hand to rest on his chest, fingers splayed out across his heart.
He tenses under her touch. Shinobu frowns; perhaps nothing really has changed.
Crestfallen, she slowly begins to withdraw, but his own hand suddenly clamps down on hers. He drags his thumb across her wrist before intertwining their fingers, his breathing steady all the while.
It's a victory, she decides, but she watches as though something infinitely greater has just transpired.
Yoshikage Kira has never had a reason to protect anything other than his unassuming lifestyle. He had no titles to defend, no fortunes to maintain, no reputation to uphold. Any defensive action on his part had been purely survival.
And so too is the case now; when he cried out her name, it was out of frenzied panic at what her incapacitation could mean for him.
After his heartbeat has settled down and the enemy Stand has been taken care of, he looks down at the woman starring as his wife in this wretched play. His hands are trembling, and he worries his grip on her will loosen the longer he stares.
He brings her inside and sets her down on the sofa. She's still out cold, but she's safe — and he wonders, with increasing fear, why that matters more than he thought it would. There is no logical explanation for his panicked reaction to her endangerment; if she were just like every other woman — if he saw her on the street - he would hardly blink twice as he extinguished her life's flame and reaped his just rewards.
Survival. It's all about survival, he decides.
Out of habit, Kira straightens his tie and wipes the cool sweat beading on his neck.
Something entirely foreign consumes Shinobu in the days following the incident in the garden.
She does quite the job of convincing herself that she was, for the most part, simply imagining things. She still feels the ghost of his grip on her, however — still feels the pressure of his fingertips digging into her skin.
His fingertips. His hands. Her husband's hands have always been warm and slightly calloused, but she is noticing now that they've become frigid and silky. She marvels at their softness every time she reaches over to take his hand in her own while they are lying in bed together.
Equally marvelous is the fact that he has become so receptive to her touch. Where he once tensed, he relaxes, his muscles giving way to her soothing caress.
(She gives no thought to the fact that his brow is always furrowed these days.)
Her hands, though not the most beautiful he has ever seen, are quite pretty. Slender, feminine fingers, French manicured nails — just his type.
What he cannot abide by is the power latent within them.
He can't stand it when she touches him with those hands. When her fingernail traces delicately along his jawline, his shoulder blades, his lips, it tears him open and leaves a fiery trail in its wake.
Her hands are so warm.
(The terror is more than he can bear.)
When he wakes up in the middle of the night to see her staring at him, she has difficulty coming up with a reasonable excuse.
"I'm sorry," she stammers quickly, looking away and twirling an errant strand of hair around her finger. "I was just having a hard time sleeping. Sorry."
When her gaze flickers up, his eyes are fixated on her finger, the hair threatening to unfurl any moment now.
"That's fine," he says. His voice is measured, neutral, but Shinobu's been entranced by his every word enough to know that something is strained beyond the veneer of indifference.
She's quiet for a very long time before he finally turns to his side away from her.
Shinobu lets out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
His bizarre passion for her has grown, unfettered — and with increasing passion has come an all-consuming desire to kill her. It takes every spare ounce of mental energy and willpower to resist.
Kira continues to convince himself that this passion is merely a result of outstanding method acting. By playing the part of her husband and attending to her affections appropriately, he can blend in better, camouflaging himself from Jotaro Kujo and his godforsaken colleagues.
Every day, he congratulates himself on abstaining. When she's sound asleep at night, deep in the throes of dreams, he'll snake a hand around her throat, exerting a most subtle pressure — but that's where he'll stop. She never stirs, let alone wakes up. He'll allow himself this one pleasure.
On this night, he considers the actual consequences of murdering her as he rakes his nails lightly along the column of her neck. The act of killing never quite felt real to him as far as previous girlfriends were concerned; he went after their living owners in a trance-like state despite the concentration required to deploy Killer Queen.
With this woman, however, the thought of her death chills him down to his fingertips. More than the thought of her death at large, it's the notion of her erasure that paralyzes him; no evidence that she ever lived, nothing to attest to the gentle breaths she takes now.
It's difficult for him to apply the same thought to any of the dozens of women he's killed in the past. He could tell just from looking at them that they weren't like Shinobu; they weren't good women. College girls have no morals or sense of duty. The world wouldn't miss them.
The thought makes him want to tighten his hand around her throat, but he settles for pressing his fingers against her pulse point, her heart beating steadily beneath him.
She wants much but expects little of him. Things weren't always that way; until recently, she wanted nothing, expected nothing, asked for nothing. In his defense, for all that he never gave, he never took, nor demanded.
(In reality, that almost made everything worse.)
When Kosaku comes to bed, there is a different light in his eyes, even when she considers the past few weeks. She feigns sleep, only peering at him through a squinted eye. The lights are already out; the moon reflects back on them both.
He grunts as he undresses, choosing to sleep only in his boxers tonight — a highly unusual occurrence for him. He slips under the sheets and she closes her eye tightly in a failed attempt to look natural.
Shinobu can feel him remaining still for an uncomfortable length of time. Moreover, he is almost certainly looking at her; she can feel it. Is this payback for when she creeped on him last time?
She swallows down a gasp when he hesitantly takes her hand into his own. All the heat in her body shoots straight to her face and somewhere just underneath her stomach.
She feels his thumb rubbing small circles over her index finger, his hand caressing hers. It's been so long, so very long, since anything of this sort has happened between them that she feels like an outsider experiencing someone else's intimate moment.
She lies there, reveling in the contact until that patch of skin on her finger practically goes numb — as if a sudden breath or movement will shatter this moment, suspended precariously in time.
On this particular day, however, she's feeling bold. She opens her eyes slowly and raises a hand to the back of his neck, drawing him closer to her. He looks surprised.
"Kosaku," she whispers in a voice not entirely her own.
His brow is still knit in what appears to be vague discomfort and confusion over her forwardness. She smiles; from the very beginning, he had been discomfited by any outward display of desire on her part.
She doesn't expect his face to contort in anger very quickly, but it does. A deep frown is etched in his face, every harsh angle pronounced. Her heart races, but not in the way she wanted it to.
He takes her wrist, flips her beneath him, and pins her to the bed, his gaze almost overwhelmingly intense — a first for him in the time that she has known him.
"Shinobu," he says lowly, and there's a vague promise of threat in his voice; why, she cannot say. "I'm not who you think I am."
She throws her head back and laughs. If this is his idea of roleplaying, he's rather misguided. Or maybe this is his admission of infidelity? She pushes that possibility out of her mind and continues giggling.
He closes his eyes, as if in pain, and rolls away from her.
"Good night, dear."
Shinobu is out like a light almost as soon as she hits the pillow. Sleep does not come to him so easily, however. He envies her just a bit.
Kira scrutinizes her sleeping form, the rise and fall of her chest, her slightly parted lips and the way her hand curls ever so slightly under her cheek.
"I won't kill you, Shinobu Kawajiri."
He stares at the ceiling, waiting for the answer to an unknown question.