A/N: Thank you all for reading and especially for telling me what you think of the story so far. Enjoy!
Pazaror- I hope you don't mind that I've scrapped the previous Takasugi stories (bad habit when I get dissatisfied), but I also hope you'll like this! Thank you for your review, it means the world to me! :)
The first day that Takasugi had seen her, he thought it strange. The mission was to scope out the address on the mis-delivered crate. See what he was getting into. It was a fleeting moment. He passed by, focused on the ground under his feet and the walls of the back road, deep in contemplation. Everybody but him had known to bring an umbrella. Each person he passed had one propped over their shoulder and scurried about their business, unable to be bothered with one another or petty greetings. The rain had drenched his shoulders, and his hair was weighed down against his face; clinging. Empty as the safe house was, umbrellas weren't on the stock list. Only basic furniture in case the Kihetai needed to move at a moment's notice; lacking the personals.
It was then, that the sight of another person without an umbrella stole his eye.
He hadn't thought much of it, to be honest. Could have overlooked her easily, but something had drawn his attention to her. The smell in the air. Drugs. She was leaned against the wall, looking up. Didn't notice him, even when he walked up to her. Smoking in public on a back street, casually perched against the side wall of a cafe. The address was right. Her hair stood out more than her cigar; black fringe, and a black stripes cutting into blonde. Maybe more black at the back, he couldn't see, but before he knew what he was doing, he'd stopped.
The numbers of the tea shop beside her were exactly what he was looking for. This was the place.
She appeared to be enjoying herself. Held no discernible expression, and was dressing oddly; a white button up and slacks. Maybe an employee?
Absentmindedly, the girl raised her cigar, only to find that it had burned out. She was snapped from her reverie, and started to dig into her pocket, then took notice of the man at her side. Her eyes slowly opened, then trailed down to him. As if she was a robot, or a mere haunting image that had chosen to repeat itself on remote rainy days, the girl remained still. Intrigued that he'd walked up to her, or maybe that he could see her assuming the last speculation was correct. She was pulled from her spell of quiet indulgence, her cigar propped against her crossed arms, no longer smoking, and she made no effort to hide it. Just looked at him; stoic. Possibly thrown off by being interrupted.
But Takasugi saw and took his opportunity. He produced a match. Struck it on the grit of the box, then shielded it from the wind and rain in an offer of peace. A fellow smoker that knew the feeling too well, though the substance may not have been the same. If she was smoking in public, the shipment was likely hers. There was a good chance that Takasugi's artillery was just beyond the door.
The girl tucked her hair behind her ear and accepted his flame. Shortly after her ignition, he lit the tobacco in his pipe, and discarded the match before his fingertips were cooked.
"Where's the nearest post office?"
Instead of speaking, the girl pointed in the direction he'd been walking, then curved behind herself.
Take the next turn.
From her demeanor, and the way her cerulean eyes had honed in on him, Takasugi could only assume that she didn't want to be bothered by another person. It wasn't personal. She just wasn't inclined to keep company, or force pleasantries where they didn't belong. Where she had no reason to waste them.
His question had done nothing to draw her out. He didn't need a post office, he needed to look at the supply room of the tea shop and see if his shipment had been stashed there.
He continued on his way then. Didn't thank her, or speak another word after, and that was the end of it. There had been no shelter from the rain. No meaningful glance, but he remembered her as the rain girl. Just standing there, not bothered by the weather when everybody hid from it. No frills. No makeup to run down her face, and no special attention. She likely regarded him as a lost man among the skyscrapers and back alleys, and left him as that. A stranger, not befitting hospitality or even a single pitch of her voice.
She may not have known it, but being the only two on the side of the street, trapped without an umbrella and not caring was indeed a moment of shared privacy that twisted Takasugi to the point of wondering how she sounded. If her voice was musical; befitting an elf or a porcelain doll as she looked, or sacrilegious to pair with her appearance. Amagi's request rang clear in his mind as he rounded the corner she'd indicated. She was the first woman he'd met. Young, and likely poor if she worked in that shop.
He'd find her voice later.
In the following days, Takasugi made note of the fact that the shopfront was visible from his safe house. He scoped the place out. Watched for a daily routine, and found that the girl usually came out around the same times for smoke breaks after taking out the trash. Twice, the schedule was the same and she was in her usual spot with a joint. On the third day, she was on the phone, and another person met her out front. He was a young boy, teenager, if Takasugi had to guess, and likely devoid of a single hair other than the dark stands of his head. The girl left, then returned with a folded carry out box. Food, likely. Once he accepted the box, the boy bowed, and she returned the gesture. Deeper than necessary. There was an awkward fumble of bowing after that. The boy repeated himself no fewer than three times, and the girl was obligated to return the gesture. Even after walking a few paces away, he turned back around and bowed, but this time, the strange haired girl didn't mimic him. Just took a moment to watch his steady retreat.
Only when he was out of sight did she lean against the wall, as per usual, and pull her cigarette tin from her pocket.
Smoke streamed from Takasugi's mouth as he leaned up from his perch on the window. It had only been a few days, but he'd grown more familiar with the girl since. He still hadn't seen her interact much, aside from the skittish glasses wearing boy, and deduced that she was a recluse. The shop didn't get much business, aside from a few old bags that were impeccably dressed and people wanting pastries to go. There was a drunk that was the girl's personal charity project, as she'd give him money out of the till; likely without the owner's consent. When spoken to, the girl mostly nodded, stared, or shook her head. Rarely did she open her mouth.
After the first couple of hours, Takasugi noticed that he wasn't the only one watching. His attention set on a familiar man closer to the shop than his window, and lingered there more so than the store. He was standing at the mouth of a house and pretending to be absorbed in a newspaper. For three days, Takasugi had been watching the girl. For three days, the man had been watching her as well; newspaper unchanged. Never turned the page. And again, for three days, Takasugi found himself watching the man more than the one he still guessed lacked corporeal form and was nothing but a vapid wisp of long passed memories replaying until the end of time. Graceful as she moved, she had to be the work of the afterlife or a necromancer's perfected practice doll.
A dark patch that looped around the bald man's thumb formed a tattoo that Takasugi recognized, and in an instant he understood what had happened to his shipment. It was a set up, as Matako had guessed, but not the kind she thought. The cops hadn't done a thing. His supposed business partner wanted the goods without losing the pay, and to push the blame onto him, as if he'd lost the deal by way of his own incompetence or a mailing mishap. They'd staged it, somehow, maybe paid off the delivery man, and knew exactly where the shipment had gone.
Then, they sent a man to watch the girl, likely an innocent tool or bystander than knew nothing of the intentional mishap.
They were going to take the shipment.
When they made their move, Takasugi would be there to shove their faces back to the dirt where they belonged.
"Bansai," The deaf man was only a few short meters away, and looked up from the paper he'd been scribbling on for the past few hours. After motioning the man nearer, Takasugi stood "Take a picture of him and get his name." Likewise, Matako was staged in the alley beside their place and instructed to shoot straight if the man approached the shop Takasugi was walking towards. With his men staged, the one eyed man strolled over to where the girl stood. The back road was mostly empty, and twilight was starting to lick at the sky when he took spot beside her. She immediately noticed him this time.
Kinu hummed under her breath in a greeting that could have escaped the man for all she knew. His pipe was at the corner of his mouth, and a stream of tobacco smoke met her senses as she crossed her arms. Waited for a reason to see him a second time. A single olive eye sifted over her, then set on her face as the man leaned one shoulder into the wall beside her.
"The mail service here has been rather... unpredictable lately. Hasn't it?"
It was a direct approach, but Kinu remained silent. Didn't make any expression, or move in the slightest.
"I believe you've received something unusual."
Instead of responding, the girl turned to face Takasugi. She pressed her rolled joint into the building and knocked the smoking cherry off. Maintained eye contact as she placed it back into her cigarette tin and moved around him. Without so much as a word, the girl went back into the shop and locked the door for good measure.
Stared at Takasugi from the glass between them as she turned the sign from "walk on in" to "walk on by".
Hopefully, he would get the message. She wasn't going to incriminate herself to what had to be undercover cops just waiting to bust her when she hadn't done anything wrong. He was probably the Shinsengumi. They knew. The way he was smirking at her, as if she had proven her guilt by refusing to comment, was evidence enough. If it happened again, she was skipping out to China. He probably had a wire, and dozens of men staged around to drag her off to a jail cell, kicking and screaming. As she looked at him, she reached to the wall and flipped the lights off. Left him there to stare at the going out of business sign, and retreated to the back of the store, the actual house, and eventually her room. From her window, she watched the strange man walk away, and breathed a sigh of relief at the fact that he didn't break her door down with a search warrant.
That was close.