The day was insignificant. A plain dreary day that consisted of actions that had been previously repeated more times than any memory could serve to name. A handful of exorcists were away on missions, a handful were not. It was a simple part of an endless cycle, a calm and even boring lull amidst the war. A day as regular as this was easy to take for granted. There wasn't any reason for it to stick out, to be any more important than others spent within the Black Order.
Particularly for a mind as brilliant as Lavi's, there was no reason for him to find interesting here. A mind that had exhaustively trained to contain more information by its teenage years than most would ever learn in the entirety of their existence. Something happens when you have a mind as full as this, though. Life becomes data. Dates, times, places, wars, names. Black and white information like ink upon a page. As stated, the day was insignificant.
That being said, it wasn't. The flowers of Kanda's garden had begun to bloom, a dozen more finders had been killed, Lenalee had mastered a technique she'd been practicing, Jerry had cooked a new recipe. Life was happening all around the bookman, but he'd been trained not to notice such things. Most people don't notice such things. They are too preoccupied with their own life and experiences, their minds full of assumptions.
We build our lives out of assumptions. That's human nature. We take what we have experienced before and use it to predict and expect what happens next because we have been taught that history is bound to repeat itself. This is not wrong, but it isn't entirely right either. Assumptions will often bring us to the correct conclusion. When a glass falls from a table and lands upon the floor, it breaks. This is what we assume. It's assumption, not fact, because sometimes the glass will fall and will not break.
Assumptions will lead us to the correct answer only part of the time. They leave us ill prepared for the discrepancies that are bound to occur. Lavi was particularly vulnerable to these discrepancies because he believed himself to be above them. Not maliciously, not even consciously, but his intelligence did drive him to assume and apply previous information to his everyday life. It was what he did, after all, as a bookman. Information. Facts. Black and white.
Kanda had been meditating, or at least attempting to. Lavi had been interfering with this. Their conversation, much like the majority of the day preceding it, was insignificant. If you'd later asked Lavi to recall what exactly their one-sided conversation had been about, he wouldn't have been able to recall. It wasn't until Kanda began to engage him a bit that things got interesting.
"Well, you're a guy. You understand." Lavi finished up a rant, sighing a bit.
"Am I?" Kanda retorted, eyes still closed and legs still crossed in a meditative position.
This caused Lavi to falter. He didn't ask "do I," he wasn't questioning the latter declaration that he'd understand. Instead, he was questioning his first statement. A fact, "you're a guy." Boy and girl. Black and white.
But it wasn't a fact, it was an assumption.
"Excuse me?" Lavi asks, blinking at his friend.
"Am I? Am I a guy?" He repeats, clarifying any of the disbelief Lavi had.
Lavi hesitated but then nodded, despite Kanda's eyes being closed. "Yes. You are."
"Funny. I don't recall ever telling you that." The dark haired man opened one eye, raising it at Lavi questioningly as he opened his other eye lazily.
"You don't have to say that to me. I can tell." Lavi says, blinking back at him. He could assume at least. That's what people do, after all. Though he did have a certain amount of evidence to his claim. He'd seen people mistake Kanda for a girl before, and it'd usually ended with Kanda drawing his mugen against them.
"Oh? I was under the impression that something like my own gender would be something I'd be more aware of than you." He counters snidely, Lavi raising an eyebrow at him now.
"Are you telling me a girl then?" He demands
"Of course not."
"So you're a guy."
"No."
Lavi stared at him, dumbfounded. His assumptions falling away, the neatness of the simple data of his mind not falling in place the way he was used to. It wasn't black and white solid facts, and he wasn't used to that.
"Well what are you then?" Lavi demands in annoyance. "You have to be one of the other."
"I don't actually." Kanda retorted, a ghost of a smile just barely twitching at his lips. He enjoyed watching his friend struggle through his confusion. He decided not to leave him floundering for too long though. "What about Alma?" He points out. "You met him. Or her. Body of male, soul of a female. What would you refer to them as?"
Lavi hesitated. "I'm not sure." He admits. "Is that what happened to you then?" He asks. "Were you a girl in your past life?"
"Does it matter?" Kanda counters.
"Of course it does!" Lavi snapped in annoyance, still attempting to gather the facts. Kanda merely shrugged.
"No, it doesn't matter actually. I'm here now, and I'm telling you. I'm not a boy. I'm not a girl. I don't see why that's so difficult for you to understand. I could be neither, I think it'd be more accurate to say I'm both."
Lavi had never noticed how grey Kanda's eyes were. He sighed, closing those eyes and leaving Lavi to work through this concept. Not black or white, grey. Both and yet neither. It's own identity created of a mix of two to become something different all together. He'd assumed, he'd always just assumed, but he'd been wrong this time. Kanda wasn't what he'd assumed, not he or she, just simply Kanda.
The day was in fact significant, more than a Bookman's notes. Life was happening all around him, and for the first time in a long time Lavi could see that. These details that would be lost in the notes of history but none the less were real and present and important in this moment. As insignificant as they many be in the whole scheme of things it was still human, it was still life. The slight scent of flowers that lingered to the room from incense burned days ago, the muffled noises of feet and voices in the hallways of members returning or leaving, the color of the sky above not quite blue or black but a color all of its own.
Lavi turned his eye upon the samurai with this awakened sense to details. Kanda hardly seemed to remember Lavi was there, immersed within himself and his meditation. This left him open to the roaming gaze of his red headed friend. He'd never noticed just how delicate their fingers were. The length of their nails not indicative of the strength and skill of the arms that followed. He'd never noticed the glow of blue that glinted off the long dark hair like a halo, or the soft but angled features of Kanda's pale face. Their thin delicate lips the sort that Lavi could fantasies of pressing his own against. How had he never noticed before?
A shiver ran through his body as Lavi's breath hitched a little, softly breathing out a single familiar word.
"Strike."