Disclaimer: I don't own Eternal Sabbath.
First Draft
She doesn't like small talk.
Really, he doesn't either--it's just one of those things he's learned to do, the way he learned to chew bubble gum. There are so many other senseless things he's learned to do in adopting faces and thoughts to place over his own. Somewhere, he learned to talk about traffic and sports.
Kujo, though...he doubts she will ever learn to hold one of those half-hearted conversations. Her mind is too filled with "how"s and "why"s, her very being is so colored with curiosity that she can't answer the merest "How's the weather?" the way she is expected to. No, Kujo Mine will supply you with an answer, a reason for the rain and the chill.
Shuro sips at his still-too-hot espresso, but is too engrossed in his thoughts and the absent trails of conversation around him to wince when the bitter liquid burns his upper lip and tongue.
Humans are nervous around each other. "Small talk", he's found, tends to be a cover for it. Humans use 'chit chat' like a shield, studying each other from behind disinterested conversation starters, waiting for a breach in the anxiety, seeking a way in.
Shuro doesn't need any shields. He wonders then, why Kujo doesn't bother with them either.
The mug has warmed his fingers. Outside, the rain continues to splash its way onto the pavement and cars. A lone dog trots by the window, its chewed-up leash trailing behind it. The dog pauses to shake off and scratch at its shoulder--fleas, probably.
The woman has called him a parasite, but Shuro prefers that term to another--"spy". He's not sure why, even now. His thoughts trip over the notion that it might be because, as a parasite, at least his hosts will be aware of him, however distantly. They'd have to accept his presence to some degree, no matter how much they would hate him if they really knew who he was, however symbiotic he says he is.
The idea that he would rather be seen and mistaken than always dismissed as a shadow...it's plausible, but it strikes no chords with him. Shuro half-scoffs as he shrugs it away.
Maybe, though, he only prefers that term because the only word he'd had to identify himself before had been "experiment". Neither term is kind, but at least one of them was given by a woman who tried to understand more than just the facts of what he, ES 00, was.
Shuro doesn't smirk as he brushes this thought off as well.