Rin had figured the possible winnings far outweighed the risk of asking Daphne out to dinner, but he'd never expected she'd actually say yes. In spite of having what he considered quite a long list of desirable qualities, he'd never really had much luck with women. Now he walked with one—an American one—down the expansive set of steps which connected the Middle and Upper Rings on the south side of Academy Town. She trailed a little behind him, taking in all the sights and smells Rin had seen and smelled a hundred times while he sweated bullets and tried to think of a topic for a conversation. What did Americans talk about? Football? Hamburgers? Freedom? Either way, Daphne beat him to it.
"Where do you hide your tail?"
He halted midway through a step, turned around and stared at her. She stopped in her tracks, blinking down at him. When he didn't say anything, she spoke again.
"You do have a tail, right? I wasn't imagining that?"
His mouth fell open. "Of course I have a tail!" He threw his hands up in the air. "Why are you asking about it?"
"Because I don't see a tail anywhere," she answered, making a little circle gesture in the air around him with her index finger. "I was curious."
Grumbling, Rin whipped open his shirt, exposing his tail wrapped around his torso twice from his back and ending in the black tuft of fur. Daphne cocked her head to the side, looking with some inquisitiveness.
"You keep it curled up like that all day?" she asked.
Rin started buttoning his shirt from the bottom. "Yes."
"Isn't that tiring?"
"Sure, I'd rather let it be loose all day, but you can't just walk around a school with a tail hanging out the back of your pants." Rin shook his head. It was obviously common sense.
Daphne started laughing—small at first and then quickly spiraling out of her control. She laughed so hard she had to sit down on the steps in front of him.
"You just, like—flashed me," she hooted, covering her face with her hands. "No reluctance—just, bam! Here's my tail!" Tears started falling down her cheeks. "I was just thinking what that must have looked like from the outside."
Rin blushed, but she kept laughing, and soon, it infected him as well. They both laughed, fueling each other until Rin had to sit down next to her.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Daphne said, wiping the tears away from her eyes. "I shouldn't have laughed. Your tail's not funny."
But she started laughing again, burying her face in her hands and giggling like a little girl. Rin watched her, a smile on his face. The woman was a human weapon designed for killing demons—you'd never guess by looking at her that she could whip out a blade a slice your head off in the blink of an eye. It kind of turned him on.
He got up, offering a hand down to help her as well, pushing his thoughts to the back of his mind, and she took it, getting to her feet and reining in her laughter long enough to start back down the steps. The restaurant wasn't far from there and they walked the way in pleasant silence, Daphne still repressing a laugh now and again.
Once inside, the hostess seated them at the back and Daphne scooted into the booth across from him, swinging her purse from around her shoulders onto the plastic leather of the seat as he did with his own bag and Kurikara.
"You ever considered the tattoos?" she asked, gesturing at the sword.
Rin shook his head. "No. To be honest, they kind of freak me out."
She laughed.
"Does it hurt?" he asked.
"After a while, no," she answered. "Hurts like hell the first time, though. The pain dulls, and then you get used to it. Eventually you don't even feel it at all. Did you want to see mine?"
She raised her eyebrows and Rin found himself nodding before he fully realized what he had agreed to. Daphne turned, sweeping her hair forward over one shoulder and dropping her cardigan down into the crooks of her elbows so her back was exposed. Luckily, since she was facing the other direction, she couldn't see him blush. He leaned forward over the table in spite of himself to get a better look at the tattoos.
Up close he could see that the ink had a shine to it, an iridescence that made it shift from blue to black to blue again, to purple, green. The sun and moon were little more than simple outlines, but they were beautifully done, the lines changing thickness here and there to look like ribbon. With Daphne's entire neck exposed, he could see the full layout of the little stars that sat between the sun and moon.
"What constellation is that?" he asked, sitting back.
Daphne pulled her cardigan up over her shoulders, swinging her hair around as well as she turned. "Gemini," she said. "The Twins. The stars of the heads are Castor and Pollux."
"Ah, I see."
"Since I was going to be stuck with them for life, I figured I might as well choose something meaningful." She smiled at him and then picked up her menu. "What's good here?"
"Everything," Rin replied.
A waitress came by, dropped off two glasses of water, asked if they wanted anything else to drink. Rin looked at Daphne and Daphne shook her head, so he did the same. The waitress nodded, saying she'd be back in a minute for their order.
"I feel bad," Daphne said. "This is the second time today you've fed me."
Rin looked up from the menu. "Huh?"
"Your brother gave me your lunch after you and Miss Kirigakure got into that tussle, so technically I owe you lunch and dinner."
He waved both his hands in front of him back and forth in a no-no-no motion. "It's all right," he said. "Don't worry about it."
"Thank you, though. As soon as I get my first check, I'll pay you back."
He shook his head. "Really, don't worry about it. I make lunch at home, so it's really not that expensive."
"You made that?"
"Why is everyone always surprised?"
She laughed. "It was really good! You just don't seem like the cooking kind of guy."
"Well, then, what kind of guy to I seem like?" Rin eyeballed her. He wanted an answer to that question. Nobody had ever given him one.
"I don't know," she laughed. "But not cooking."
The waitress came back. Daphne ordered the chicken yakisoba, which Rin himself had decided on, so he panicked, not knowing what to do and not wanting to look awkward doing it. He scrambled for a moment and then muttered, "Same." The waitress scribbled on her notepad and took their menus as she walked away. Daphne didn't seem to care one way or the other. She sipped her water through her straw.
Rin didn't know what to talk about. He realized as they sat there that he hardly knew anything about her. Only what Mephisto had told the cram school staff and what he himself had watched her do. The one thing he knew they had in common was exorcism, and while he already had a basic outline of her career, he figured he'd start with that.
"So, how did you get your temptaint?"
"Standard exorcist small talk, huh?"
He shrugged, sheepishly.
She smiled. "It's all right. It's been a long time since I've been around exorcists. Temptaints and meisters and all that other jazz doesn't really come up around other people."
Rin nodded in concession, waited for her answer. Took her a moment, she gathered her thoughts, but she spoke.
"It was, ah…coltars," she said, rubbing her left upper arm unconsciously. "My mother, she, uh—she never kept the house clean, and it was old, and when I was little Massachusetts had a few really wet years right in a row, so we got a lot of mold, and the coltars just moved right in. The house was full of them. I was two when they infected me." She sipped at her water.
So she'd been seeing demons since she was little. Like Yukio. Rin knew almost firsthand what that did to a person, seeing as it had happened to his twin. Had Daphne's family been supportive? How had she dealt with demon sight as far back as she could remember?
"What about you?"
"Oh!" He jumped. "Um…well, I never really had a temptaint. I'm half demon, so demon sight kind of comes with the package. I didn't start seeing demons until I was fifteen, though."
She sipped again. "Why is that?"
"My dad—not Satan, my guardian, I guess, Father Fujimoto, he, well, he sealed my demon powers in Kurikara to give me a chance at a normal life, but when Yukio and I were fifteen, Kurikara could no longer contain it and I started seeing demons." He shrugged. "Once I drew the blade I got my fangs and ears and tail."
"Is that why you only flame up when the blade's out?"
Rin nodded.
"Cool," she said, grinning. "You have a Knight meister, then? Any others?"
"No, I'm just a Knight. You?"
"I'm an Aria as well as a Knight," she answered. "I studied for a Dragoon meister for a while, but guns were never really my thing."
He nodded. "Me either."
She nodded along with him, then sighed, not a sad sigh, but a sigh like a weight coming off her shoulders. "It's been a long time since I talked about stuff like this."
"How come?"
Bright to black in a snap, her whole mood changed in an instant. She went quiet, looked at her lap. Sweet hell, what had he done? What should he say? Should he say anything? He didn't know what to do. Thankfully their food came.
The yakisoba seemed to cheer her up a little. They ate. Outside, the sun finally set and the streetlights came on. She picked up the conversation when she was ready. They talked sword technique, they talked movies, food, manga. She read manga. This woman was so freaking cool.
Once they'd finished, Rin paid the waitress and they collected their bags, heading out into the night that had fallen on the street. As they passed through the door, Daphne's strange mood resurfaced. Gasping, she fell back a step from Rin, bent over and put her hands on her knees. Rin started, turning as he jumped at her sudden movement. She was breathing raggedly, her face shaded by her waterfall of hair.
He went to her. "Are you all right?"
She didn't answer for a moment, just breathed in and out on shaking, labored breath, doubled over. When she finally looked up there was fear in her eyes, like, real, actual terror. She tried to subdue it, but failed and turned away from him, starting to walk away and saying something about thanks for dinner and she'd be sure to pay him back. Her hands were shaking. She was terrified. He couldn't leave her alone like that. She was already pretty far down the street.
"Hey!" He hurried to catch up with her. "Can I walk you home?"
She halted, looked at him, scared but hopeful, her eyes wide. "Would you?"
Rin nodded. "No problem."
She pulled her hands into the sleeves of her cardigan and folded her arms tight against her chest. "Thank you," she said, looking at the ground. "It's this way." She gestured vaguely ahead of her and started walking. Rin fell into step beside her.
A ways down the street, after walking without word, she chuckled a self-depreciating chuckle and said, "Being walked home by a demon. What kind of exorcist have I become?"
She glanced at him and smiled. Rin blinked, but smiled as well. She was indecipherable.
"Was it difficult?" she asked. "To come to terms with that, I mean."
"With being the son of Satan?"
She nodded, took a turn down a side street into the neighborhood proper.
He followed. "I mean, yeah. But there wasn't really anything I could do about it, you know? I guess I was more worried about if people would accept me. I kept it a secret from my friends for a long time."
"And your brother?"
"He knew before I did. I was the one that gave Yukio his temptaint, so he's been seeing demons since we were kids. He started training to be an exorcist early on. Like you."
Shit. He'd let it slip. She herself had never told him when she started training to be an exorcist. He'd only heard it from Mephisto. He grimaced, waiting for her to call him on it, but silence was her only answer. Eventually he looked over at her and she was looking at the ground in front of them again, lost in thought.
They walked a ways down the street, taking a few more turns in the maze of apartment buildings and houses until they came to a multiplex with six outside doors, three on bottom and three on top. She started climbing the stairs and he followed suit. Hers was the first apartment at the top. She dug around in her purse.
"I'd invite you in, but I don't have any furniture," she said, laughing that self-depreciating laugh again.
"That's all right. I can sit on the floor."
She blinked at him, surprised. Apparently not the answer she'd been expecting, but he wasn't going to leave her yet, not until he was sure she'd be all right. A little flame of fear still danced behind her eyes. He could see it, sense it. He'd stay until she wasn't afraid anymore.
Daphne started out of her stupor, then looked through her bag for her keys some more until she found them. Sticking the key into the lock, she turned it and the knob at the same time and the door popped open after she gave it a little push.
"It sticks," she said.
She went through the doorway into the darkness and flicked a light on as she went, dumping her things on the counter. Rin came in after her.
Jeeze, she really didn't have any furniture. The apartment was literally empty aside from the sink, counter, fridge, and what few other non-movables there were. The door to her room was cracked open. She had a mattress at least. That was good. He made a mental note to bother Mephisto until Daphne had that advance on her paycheck. Nobody deserved to live in an empty apartment by themselves.
"Do you want tea?" she asked, taking her hair and tying it into a knot on the top of her head. How did she do that?
"Um, sure," Rin replied, eyeballing the knot as she went to the cupboard and took out a kettle and two cups, a little tin which was apparently full of tealeaves, other tea things. She filled the kettle with water from the sink and set it on top of the stove to boil.
"I'll be right back," she said, and disappeared into her room.
Rin glanced around. Looked like he would be sitting on the floor. As he took a place against the wall, opposite the stove and kettle, his phone went off in his pocket. Fishing it out, the caller ID let him know it was Yukio on the other end of the line. He hit accept and held the phone to his ear.
"Hey."
"Hey. Where are you?"
She must have gone into the bathroom because a fan turned on somewhere on the other side of the wall he was leaning against. If he spoke softly, she probably wouldn't hear him.
"I'm at Daphne's place. We went out for dinner."
"Why are you whispering? I just got home and you weren't here—wait. You're in her house?"
"Um, yeah…it just sort of happened." Rin scratched the back of his head.
"What? How?" The shock in Yukio's voice painted a lovely image of his stunned expression in Rin's mind. He was pretty shocked himself, come to think of it.
"I don't know, man, she just started freaking out and I felt bad leaving her, so I walked her home, and now she's making tea."
"Freaking out how? What kind of tea?"
"The kind that comes in a tin, and I don't know, she just, like, panicked. Outside the restaurant. She, like, got all bent over and was breathing weird, I don't know. But she was scared as shit."
"Scared of what?"
Rin shook his head. "I don't know."
"Well, Shura's coming over with her tapes. You wanna watch?"
"The military ones? Yeah, definitely. I'll drink the tea and then I'll come."
The fan turned off, a sink turned on, then off. He heard Daphne go to her bedroom door, start to turn the handle.
"Oh, she's coming back. I'll see you later, bye." He hung up the phone and tried to stuff it back in his pocket before Daphne appeared in the kitchen, which he only just managed to do. He smiled up at her from his place on the floor, trying to look the least fishy he could.
"What's with that face?" she asked, chuckling and going to the stove.
Damn. He was a terrible actor. He managed to dodge the question though as the kettle started whistling with the steam that shrieked from its spout and Daphne reached into her cupboards to grab a teapot. She poured the boiling water from the kettle into the teapot, added three scoops of the tea from the tin and placed the lid on the teapot, bringing it over and setting it on the floor in front of Rin. It was shaped like a pig, and you poured the tea out of its mouth with the tail for a handle. It was quite possibly the strangest teapot he'd ever seen. Daphne went back for the cups and a strainer.
"I'm sorry you can't sit in a chair like a human being," she said, taking a seat across from him pretzel-style.
"It's all right. Yukio and I didn't have furniture for a while when we first moved either. I've eaten off the floor plenty of times."
A laugh burst out of Daphne's mouth.
He blushed. "No, not off the floor!"
She waved it away. "I knew what you meant."
She poured the tea, into his cup first, through the strainer. Rin glowered a little bit. Why did he always have to say something stupid? It was like some kind of curse. Yukio didn't even have to do anything and girls followed him around everywhere. Four-eyed mole-face…
"If it's bitter, you can add sugar," Daphne said, picking up her cup and blowing at the steam that rose from the surface of the liquid. Like Kuro, and Usamaro. She looked his way when he'd been staring for too long.
"What?" she said.
"Oh, sorry, nothing…" He picked up his cup of tea and sipped it, warm and strong.
As they drank they talked a little more about nothing—stuff you'd just talk to people about. She asked him questions about Academy Town and the Academy and the Knights of the True Cross, some of which he didn't know the answers to. She skirted around the topic of Mephisto—like she thought she knew something he didn't, but he didn't pry. As they talked, she seemed to relax—the flame of fear in her eyes waning, flickering, and then going out. Rin didn't know if it was the tea or his company, but it was probably a mix of both.
He helped her move the tea things to the sink when they were through and he mentioned something about getting back, so she walked him the several steps to the door and pulled it open. As he stepped outside, she caught him with a string of words.
"Mr. Okumura," she said, holding onto the doorknob and looking at the floor. "Thank you. For dinner, and…for everything." She looked up, at him.
Rin smiled, nodded. "You're welcome. I'll see you tomorrow?"
"You will."
He started off, pausing at the top of the stairs to look back at her over his shoulder. "Until tomorrow, then." And he gave her a wave.
She waved back. "Until tomorrow."
Daphne closed the door and Rin started down the stairs, the beginning of a short walk to the train station and the long ride home to the Lower Ring.