[ These days, it's harder to keep up false pretenses. Reluctant as he is to change, over the months he's begun to acclimatize, settling more and more into the person he's always been. The paranoia's always there, diluting his sincerity in the ebbing corruption of earnestness into vulgar psychosis, but resignation is its own vice and it's harder and harder not to take Kaoru at arbitrary face-value. Absentmindedly, he stares into the contents of the brimming cup and away again in tacit distraction, eyes lowered at half-mast.
His hands shake so badly while she speaks. Elliot buries them in his coat pockets at the first conceivable opportunity, shoulders sinking. ]
You care a lot about her. Chizuru seems like a good person. Maybe I'll have the chance to meet her someday.
[ Faintly spoken, like his voice is on the precipice of cracking open, slivers of weakness shining through.
In the end, overexposure wins out over his halfhearted qualms. The glinting brightness rounding Kaoru's eyes to circles, soft and empathetic when she smiles at him. Someone to trust.
Elliot glances up, then down, prepossessed by the urge to tear into his own palms in an effort to inhibit the shaking tremors bleeding into his fingers. ]
I ... I had a sister, too. If you ever got the chance to meet her, I think you would've liked her. She had a way of talking that caught the attention of everyone around her. It was ridiculous. She could be talking about the weather, and every single person in the room would stop to listen.
And just like your sister, she was really ... too kind, I think. She let herself care too much. When my mother — [ A stutter, an incongruous juncture of silence between one word the next. ] — fell ill, she took it on herself to run affairs in our estate. Our father was always at work, you see. He never had much time for us. And she could've left it to one of our parent's advisors, but she could never leave well-enough alone.
[ A stagnant pause when he disassociates, opts out of one conversational thread for another. ] Did you ever fight with Chizuru?
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His hands shake so badly while she speaks. Elliot buries them in his coat pockets at the first conceivable opportunity, shoulders sinking. ]
You care a lot about her. Chizuru seems like a good person. Maybe I'll have the chance to meet her someday.
[ Faintly spoken, like his voice is on the precipice of cracking open, slivers of weakness shining through.
In the end, overexposure wins out over his halfhearted qualms. The glinting brightness rounding Kaoru's eyes to circles, soft and empathetic when she smiles at him. Someone to trust.
Elliot glances up, then down, prepossessed by the urge to tear into his own palms in an effort to inhibit the shaking tremors bleeding into his fingers. ]
I ... I had a sister, too. If you ever got the chance to meet her, I think you would've liked her. She had a way of talking that caught the attention of everyone around her. It was ridiculous. She could be talking about the weather, and every single person in the room would stop to listen.
And just like your sister, she was really ... too kind, I think. She let herself care too much. When my mother — [ A stutter, an incongruous juncture of silence between one word the next. ] — fell ill, she took it on herself to run affairs in our estate. Our father was always at work, you see. He never had much time for us. And she could've left it to one of our parent's advisors, but she could never leave well-enough alone.
[ A stagnant pause when he disassociates, opts out of one conversational thread for another. ] Did you ever fight with Chizuru?