Merry Christmas, Nokaru! I tried to remember your backstory explanation with your fanart of Obi and Torou for ANS Platonic Week, so hopefully, I got it right. But since I didn't look it back up, it might be a little wonky. Hopefully, it reads okay, and I hope you like this present. I know we've only talked a handful of times, but I wanted to surprise you and make you something anyway. I hope you enjoy, and I hope it's a lovely gift for you.
He isn't hard to like, though some of that is probably the mystery of him. He entered the group with the ease of someone far too used to nefarious work and with the attention to detail to exclude anything that really defines him. No past as far as anybody is concerned, no full name, not even family to speak of or friends. If Torou was any younger, she'd feel bad for him and head over to offer her own friendship, if only to take out the sting of this work.
But his eyes don't hold remorse or sadness. He's used to it, a well oiled machine, more tool than human. Like her, then. Except this business started here for her, as a young recruit eager to make a place and name for herself, eager to have some livelihood, she'd entered here, figured that the work would go easy on her. Instead, she grew into a woman she barely recognized.
But regardless, there is someone new here. Eyes are dark, but sometimes when he talks, they look almost jovial, sparkling onyx adjoined to his face. And Torou wonders when he'd become equipped for this kind of task.
It's only when she finally walks closer, hips following what has become their natural tempo, that she realizes his eyes aren't jet black like she'd first assumed. There's a gold tint to their amber shade, and she smiles at him. "I heard you're new?"
"If you can say that." He shrugs, and there's something so naturally shadowy about him. But there's that sort of pleasant ambience to him, and she wonders how he does it, how he somehow finds ways to put another at ease or as close to it as can be, when you can't trust someone at all.
"Then, I won't say that." She looks away, like she can't be bothered with this young recruit, and out of the corner of her eye, she sees him smile. He likes the shadowy air he gives off, she imagines.
"Say what you like." He grins, lazily, and she wonders how he's managed to enter this organization, how they didn't assume him to be innocent and kick him out from the start.
"I will." Torou looks back over, as if sizing him up, as if finding him small and rather uninteresting. He doesn't falter, and she wonders if he can see right through her. He's interesting, that's for sure.
When she first works with him, she determines that he's a silent animal, like a cat waiting to pounce. He's only feral, if he needs to be. And Torou lets him just be a part of her makeshift team. Really, people oftentimes either work alone or find someone they like working with and maintain the partnership. It's never really been a friendship, just a partnership, just two people trained to do work that could lead to death, of themselves or others, that don't bother with the knitted closeness of friendship or even the peculiarities of small talk.
So, Torou calls on him again and again, asking for his help, and he always obliges. She wonders briefly if it's the company, keeping him from chilling over, though it's not like he's unpopular with some of the others. He makes himself seemingly easy to talk to, and people surround him, though nobody really opens up when they do. It's all small talk and half-truths.
Torou figures that it makes sense; she is a living lie, exactly what you want when you want her, or close enough anyway. She doesn't do half the things people assume she does, and when she acts, it's all well planned action. No spontaneity.
Besides, she's an expert at keeping people at a distance. No time to draw close to potential backstabbers and no use getting close to normal folks that may just turn on you, if they learn what you do. She is a perfectly executed shadow, sneaky and dangerous.
But Obi is like a real shadow, only half there, and she wonders what to make of all that.
"I got a job." Obi tells her, like it's just a comment on the clouds on a rainy day, easy to make, natural, and not at all extraordinary.
"A job?" Torou's good at playing along; she's done this most of her life by now.
"I got hired out, by someone. Scare a lady off." He grins, all lazy and cat like, and Torou's grateful that she's not that girl, "And it pays well, so I guess we're not partners for now."
It's funny how easily he can say that, but he's always been all shadow, real and truly vanishing. The sun takes him out before anybody else can.
"Are you still a mercenary?" Torou asks instead, wondering if he's decided to go into honest work, and she already thinks that wouldn't suit him.
"Yes." Obi shrugs, "But who knows what will happen?"
"Don't get greedy on me now." Torou chides like she has a say in anything he does; she doesn't. He only accepts her offers to work with her, because it pays and keeps him on his toes. Obi is not a person who does idle well, Torou's noticed by now.
"I wouldn't be the first one." Obi grins, and Torou wants to feel angry at the insult. But instead her chest feels hollow, who knows what will happen? And Torou wonders when she stopped being a shadow too.
"I guess not." Torou shrugs, and she realizes that she'd let him into her life in a way that is much bigger than a partner. He'd become someone that she wanted to call friend, someone that she liked being around. The easy going shadow easily captures the attention of the faux easy going shadow.
Torou hopes that it's just this one job, but when Obi waves goodbye, it is as casual as it is final.