maskormenacelogs | semi-closed;

Entry tags:

semi-closed;

WHO: Ken + castmates/housemates and CR; planned threads
WHERE: Nonah#005, De Chima#001, and various places as needed
WHEN: May 19th to perhaps the 24th
WHAT: the aftermath of this and reconnecting with friends
WARNINGS: like last time, talks of death and suicide and shit

i: Nonah #005; (the prompt is for the 19th, but other days work too)
On the 18th, he left with a note on the refrigerator that he was sleeping over at a friend's with Koromaru and wouldn't be home that day. That, he thought, might keep his housemates from worrying when he didn't show up that night. But Ken ends up home anyway, much later into the night, with a certain blue-haired man in tow, and he curls into bed and falls asleep almost immediately then. When he wakes up, it's past noon and he has a headache but he's feeling oddly refreshed.

There are things he lied to his housemates about. There are things he wants to ask them, and clear up. He doesn't feel like putting on clothes so he just throws his jacket on over his pajamas and steps out of his room. It's a weekday, so he doesn't know who's going to be home, but he has plenty of time. Whenever he comes across someone who's at the house, he shuffles over to them, hesitating just once before mumbling: "Can I sit with you?"

ii: De Chima #001
After the talks at Nonah have been had, De Chima is his next stop. He isn't sure how far the news had spread, if it had at all, but he's sure he'll find out once he's there. It's daunting, but it's hardy the scariest thing he's dealt with at this point... right?

Lies. Facing his friends is the scariest part. Scarier than running off alone with a knife in his pocket and no idea where to go. He's absolutely terrified of confronting them, even if there's a voice in his head whispering that it really wouldn't be a confrontation. It doesn't help the nervous twisting in his gut, though, so he clutches the straps on his backpack as he enters the house.

And the nervousness is overwhelming. He can hardly handle it. It's to the point that the moment he runs into anybody at De Chima #001 and they so much as greet him, he jumps and lowers his head and immediately blurts out a hurried, "I'm sorry!" ... Sorry about that.

iii: a text message
And maybe you're not at either of those houses when he is and Ken still wants to see you, or he feels like going somewhere that's not the houses to talk with you. In such a case, there will be a text from Ken to you, short and to the point. He'd make it more specific, maybe explain more, but he ended up getting nervous and sending it off quickly so the actual message ends up saying nothing more than:

Can we meet up somewhere?

((ooc; I'll likely also make this a catch-all for Ken stuff during June, so if you'd like to do something with him, whether it's about the above stuff of anything else, feel free to shoot me a message at

squigstuff!))

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His grip tightens.

Minato knows this is a pivotal moment, that whatever he says to Ken will resonate for a long time, for good or ill. He wants so badly to say the right thing, but that pressure doesn't overwhelm him, because surely the right thing is just the truth. The truth that Minato himself had taken so long to understand, the truth that had been strength enough to hold back the end of the world.

"Don't you think Shinjiro-san felt that way, too?" There's an urgency to his quiet voice. "And Akihiko-san. Mitsuru-san. Yukari-san. Junpei. Aigis. Me. Ken-kun... you haven't been through all of it yet, but all of us, we've lost someone. And sometimes it's been our fault."

Ken's mother. Akihiko's sister. Mitsuru's father and Yukari's father and Chidori and Ryoji and himself, for Aigis, and for him it was his parents and then everyone, Minato had lost everyone.

"Those feelings, the ones you have now that you don't deserve to be here instead of them, they're things we all have. Everyone wants to give up sometimes. This is what forms Shadows." Gently, one hand leaves Ken's shoulder to peel away the hands covering his face, to bring him out from hiding; and Minato's voice, too, is correspondingly gentle, a drift of snow being laid down or the first sheen of light across it. "We can't escape those, Ken-kun. They're ours. But that's not everything we are."

Before he'd have left it here. With his newfound appreciation for how much what he'd done before hadn't been enough, he pushes on. "You're my friend and my teammate and... and the person I will always guard. I've never regretted giving you this armband. You need to live, because I need you-- we all need you. What's coming when you go back... It was easier for us to bear with you there."

Ken's eyes are shining as is his face, wet from tears he smeared across it with his hands. And fear flickers across them when he finally looks up at Minato, resigned to the fact that there's no hiding from him, momentarily distracted and horrified of the future for the first time in months. He had been so caught up in the past and the present that he was so convinced he didn't deserve, he hadn't thought to think about what could lie ahead for him. He's terrified for a moment, then he deflates again. It was only natural; living meant you will lose more, that even if you gained something, all hellos came with goodbyes.

"I want to live." It's a quiet confession. One he hasn't worded that way yet, feeling like he shouldn't, like those should belong to people who didn't try to end theirs deliberately. He wasn't one of them. But he finds himself saying it anyway, lifting his hand to find Minato's, clasping it gingerly. "I want to. I wanted to... but every time I see everyone, it's hard."

Even to him, it sounds entirely backwards. To want to die because he wanted to live. But there was no other way to say it if he approached this with honesty; he thought he didn't have anything to be alive for after his revenge, but by the time he realized it there was a lot. His housemates all crowded onto a couch, fighting over a single bowl of popcorn while trying to keep Koromaru from diving into it. Traveling to Virginia every day to come visit the others and staying for dinner sometimes, traveling to the other cities to take Koromaru to the park. And that scared him; it felt like he was forgetting. Like he was walking away from what happened without learning anything, and that scared him. He wasn't supposed to have any of this.

His hand tightens around Minato's now. "I wasn't alone. But... isn't this something I have to carry on my own?"

Edited (sneaking in more because i'm off mobile...) 2015-05-30 05:16 (UTC)

He didn't mean to make him afraid; he meant to show that there's more left for him after he goes back, that this can't be his end because it wasn't. If he's patient enough, he'll find out for himself what there is to live for.

Somehow Minato can't help but feel that Ken has an easier time with that confession than Minato had, who'd choked it off in bitten words into Jaime's shoulder and been unable to cry. He's fervently glad. This is what makes them different, this and why living is hard for Ken. For Minato, it's because he has no experience with it, has no idea how. And he feels like he's betraying his sacrifice for everyone else, leaving them endangered, if he gets too attached. For Ken, it's guilt, he thinks. Creeping, swallowing, pervasive guilt.

"No. Or... not yet." Minato's hand squeezes back. This might not be the 'right' answer, might not be what a psychologist would say, but it's what Minato knows in his heart and has relied on himself. "One day, when you're strong enough to carry your regrets on your own, you can help someone else carry theirs until they reach that point, too. Let us do that for you. You all helped with mine.

"And, Ken-kun..." His eyes are warm now, sad but achingly compassionate. "Shinjiro-san dying should've been 'justice' for your mother, no matter how it happened, no matter who he was. If that's the case...

"Why do you still regret it so much? You don't have to pay for her death, too."

He doesn't understand, in this moment, exactly what Minato is referring to. His own what? Regrets? Ken didn't find himself so clueless that he'd think there were people who lived without any regrets; with a person like Minato, he's not surprised to learn that he has any, just surprised to hear him bring it up. But it make sense now, says a small voice in the back of his head, the one still processing these small thoughts even while the rest of him is still struggling with the other, heavier, suffocating emotions. It makes sense right now. Minato, who had always shown him little bits of himself when he thought Ken was feeling alone in their conversations here. He isn't entirely distracted by that reference to his mysterious leader -- his friend -- but maybe he's just simple. It works, as usual, and the smokey thunderclouds choking him up part just a little at those words and gives him some room to breathe.

And breathe he does, though it's shaky and more like a gasp than an actual breath. He always felt emotions keenly, but letting them out was a different story; he could never cry to the point of feeling refreshed after. He's tense, not knowing how to truly release these feelings even if he could string together words to describe them. Will he ever be strong enough to carry this weight? He felt like it was crushing him every day, and every day his regret grows thinking that Shinjiro carried this, too, alone, for two years. And he had just...

"... I didn't plan to live long enough to regret it." If all had gone as planned, then he was supposed to die at the same time as him. When it turned out that it was pointless anyway, that Shinjiro was going to die no matter what he did, when he realized that he did this out of regret for what happened to his mother, his rage popped like a balloon and -- had revenge ever mattered to him at all?

"When I found out that Aragaki-san was going to die no matter what I did, when Takaya said -- he knew that I planned to die after that, it's too late now, but I wanted to die more than I wanted him to. Even if I never found out who he was and this never happened, I think, eventually, I would've tried to die anyway."

That was something Crane pointed out, too. He called him out on it, how he was grasping for anything that could fill how empty he felt. Ken had been too young, at the time, to have expanded his world to outside his mother, and he was hardly given an opportunity to find anything else after she was gone. Fighting Shadows and discovering who Shinjiro was were just short-term goals that he latched on to and pretended were his purpose. He had always known that in the end, he ultimately lacked the will to live.

"I just wished, this whole time, that I died at the same time that Mom did. I didn't want to live knowing she was gone. It never -- 'justice' was just a convenient excuse to drag someone down with me. All I wanted was someone to pay for how miserable I was, when the one I was the most angry at was me because I couldn't protect her. And now, now Aragaki-san is dead."

It's a lot to process, but to Minato's surprise, the predominant emotion he feels is a sort of tender pride. Ken's come so much farther in shorter a time than Minato did. He's already seen through his own excuses. His gaze is soft and knowing and there isn't a single trace of judgement in them, there isn't any alarm. Minato knows better than anyone what kind of desires the human soul can hold, and he knows too that they can be overcome.

"I'm proud of you for knowing yourself that well," he says simply, without fanfare. Minato detangles his hand from Ken's but only raises it to rest lightly on his head, fingers sliding through his hair before his hand settles back on his shoulder. Be more forward, show more emotion, he's telling himself as watchwords, determined to do better.

"Until I found SEES, it wouldn't have bothered me to fall asleep and never wake up. I think... I would have been grateful for it." And then when it'd finally happened, he'd been grateful then too in a different way, for the dread to be over. "I never would have imagined that something could make me see differently. If I'd given up before then, I never would have met you."

Minato lets out a breath. "I'm glad that I didn't. It was worth everything, to meet all of you. And I know that some day you'll be glad you didn't give up, too. I know it's hard to believe that, so if you can't, then believe me. Believe me until you find that day."

That unfaltering conviction, the complete absence of hesitation in his faith, that kept Minato as their leader.

It's odd. It's curious, to be enlightened to these things about Minato in this way. It's strange, being talked to as if Minato needed them, to think that anybody in SEES might've needed each other. It's an odd feeling to be shown this side of their invincible leader, to see beyond what the others told him about him. He realizes, absently, that he might be hearing about a side of Minato that nobody, at least not whilst in Iwatodai, knew about.

Something ticks in the silence Nemesis left when Minato expresses his pride. And again, when he asks him to believe him. Something like relief trickles into him as he considers it. He can't find it in himself to have faith in those words being true. He tells himself not to be impatient; of the few things the counselor told him before he walked out, 'it takes time' was one of the things he remembers. Generic and unhelpful at the time, he disregarded it, but he clings to those words now so that he doesn't end up at the station again. It takes time. Someday. If he can stick around long enough to see the future.

He can't put faith in himself or that future Minato speaks of, but he can, he thinks, believe in Minato. We'll figure it out together, he'd said.

Still, he frowns, a small expression, and there's nothing but uncertainty in his voice when he asks, "But what if I don't?" But after all the conviction that he wouldn't and being so sure that there was nothing ahead of him anyway, maybe it's a good thing that he's questioning it again.

Far from being put off, Minato, instead, smiles. He knows change doesn't happen that fast. But he's certain down to his bones that this isn't the end for Ken and that he will, some day, find something that makes him happy to wake up each morning.

He has to believe that; there's no other way Minato could face his fate, except with the firm belief that his friends will come to appreciate that gift.

"You will," he says confidently. His hands withdraw, find his mp3 player, and unwind it from around his neck. Along with his headphones, he carefully reaches out and strings them around Ken's neck instead, slightly fumbling since it's his first time doing this on someone else but otherwise sure and steady. The headphones lay open and dangle below his collarbones.

He conducts the whole thing in silence, speaking only after he's done. "Could you look after this for me for a while? I'll need it back later. But when you need to hide from your thoughts, do what I did and listen."

And in the meantime, Minato is sure Ken wouldn't try to end it all again before giving his headphones back. It's a little bit for his peace of mind that he does this, but all the other reasons... Words can't define them.

Ken's nothing if not surprised when the music player is placed around his neck. It was such a big part of Minato's identity, his music, that he almost jerks back and protests that he shouldn't. He shouldn't! But he stands still, eyes round and staring before he blinks and looks down, touching one of the headphones almost in wonder. It feels like the time with the armband all over again, and he's saddened to remember that he finally took that off his sleeve after his meeting with Crane. That had been a horrible moment for him, but this is comforting and he finds himself nodding before speaks to answer.

"I'll take care of it." He can sort of understand Minato's intentions behind it. But above that, he can also guess, after that earlier confession to him, how much the music must mean to him. When he needs to hide from his thoughts... had Minato always been hiding, too, then, whenever he had his headphones on? He can't quite put it into words. He doesn't know how, except his body tries to express it without words anyway and his eyes sting again, watering up. He turns his head away as he scrubs at them, sniffling. "I promise."

Giving up his headphones does hurt a bit. It's one of the few things Minato has from home, one of the few things he takes comfort from without any difficulty, like trying to open up to others causes him. Talking about his problems still makes him feel like he's gotten something stuck in his throat, physically blocking the words from coming out. He has every intention of asking Hiro for a replacement mp3 player, one he can give to Ken once he gets his back, but the headphones themselves he feels are irreplaceable. He wouldn't cry or anything like that to lose them, but he has to admit he'd mourn a little.

Perhaps it's ridiculous to feel that strongly toward an object, but as time goes on Minato can't quite believe it's real that he'll one day be alive again back home. For all his faith in Elizabeth, that seems a distant dream and not his future. He'll probably never get a chance to see those headphones again if he loses them, after all the years they've spent with him. In some ways, they're more important to him than his Evoker.

But to make life easier for Ken-- life in a very literal way-- he doesn't mind lending them out.

"I know." Minato directs him gently toward the bed, tugging on his free elbow. "Come sit with me." It's a nice convenient cover for having them both sit down side by side on the edge, Minato wrapping one arm around his shoulders in a half-hug, drawing him into his side and waiting with all the considerable patience he has for Ken to settle.

Ken follows, physically trailing after him but also watching as Minato moves, curious what's going on through his mind, marveling at how different Minato can look when all he did was take off his headphones. Did he rely on that so much for identifying him? He wraps a hand around one of them and as much as it feels like he has a piece of Minato with him now, he also feels like this is too personal. This belongs with Minato, and his hand tightens around it as he just focuses on appreciating it for now. For now, he'll hold on to this.

Minato is really full of surprises, though. They sit, and then there's an arm around him and he feels himself being moved until he feels his shoulder come in contact with the other's side and it'd odd, receiving this from Minato. From anybody in Iwatodai. He's had Junpei yank him around before, but this wasn't the same. This was something familiar.

In the end, Ken's got more recent experience with affection like this than anybody on the team. He hadn't thought about it for a long time, but ever since Jaime got him talking about it it's been easier to remember all the little things his mother did for him. Hugs before they left in the mornings and when they got home, the way she came home sometimes with a snack to share, the way she would never complain about her days to him but let him know that she needed him as much as he needed her, when she would ask him to sit with her much like Minato was now, one of her arms around his shoulders. For Ken, this was still more familiar to him than the harshness of the solitude SEES shared, and while it takes some time for him to catch up mentally his body remembers and he sinks into the embrace with ease, his smaller body finding just the right way to fit against Minato's.

He takes pause. Then reaches over to grasp a part of Minato's shirt with his hand, a bit hesitantly still but returning the embrace anyway. "... Thank you."

The Minato of a year ago would never think of doing this. But the Minato of a year ago had never had a physically affectionate relationship with anyone, not even family, and he's experienced it enough and, in this case, seen others do it enough that he knows what the right gestures are. They aren't smooth and natural yet, but they never will be if he doesn't practice.

He can tell when Ken loses his self-consciousness and relaxes into the contact, even if it takes a while. His arm is loose around his shoulders. He wants to say it's fine, his usual deflection against gratitude, but it's still not fine so he can't.

"I said I wasn't mad," he says simply instead, because even though he is mad, he's furious, really, none of it is towards Ken. All of Minato's substantial emotional control means that not a scrap of it leaks out around him, either. "Want me to show you my favorite song lately?"

Since, along with his headphones, Ken also gets his playlists.

"Sure." He'll hold up the music player, just high enough that Minato will be able to take it, but he's reluctant to move away enough to remove the lanyard from around his neck. And while his answer was honest, he's less interested in the music and more in the attention he's getting from Minato right now, and in the new bits and piece of his friend that he's getting to see. Those songs he played for him. Now this. He presses closer, and he adds even as the mp3 is passed between them. "But I don't think I want to listen, right now."

He will, and probably soon. He hasn't picked up the habit of listening to music yet so he doesn't fully understand the comfort of it yet, but he remembers how soothing it had been when Minato played the violin for him. Maybe it's like that. Now that he thinks about it, he can remember his mother listening to music sometimes, too; he saw her with headphones once or twice before on the rare occasion that she was home when he got back from school. Maybe it was a normal thing, and he'd like to try, to have this in common with Minato. But for now...

"I meant it when I said I didn't feel alone." Only that he had to be, but the people around him since arriving in this world had done a great job of making him feel like everything but. For the first time since his mother's death and getting moved out of his old school, he felt like he truly had people who accepted him as a part of their life. And a hope that maybe, eventually, he could reach that with the SEES that remained back in Iwatodai, too. And as much as he despised himself for clinging to that, it had been comforting. "I meant it, and I-- right now, I just want to be like this. I don't... I don't need music. Because you're right here, Minato-san."

Minato is basically always ready to listen to music, so it doesn't occur to him until Ken says it that someone else might not be the same way. It's fine with him, though; he's here for Ken, and part of being a good friend and listening well is not impressing anything upon him.

And he has to admit, it makes sense that he'd had to rely on music so heavily because he'd been alone, himself. It seems so much less important these days. Nostalgic and a coping mechanism, but not vital. Not the only way he gets through another train ride to another town...

So Minato queues up the song he thinks Ken would most benefit from listening to and lets the screen rest there without hitting play. He returns his arm around his shoulders afterwards, though it's not an instinctual move for him. He has to consciously remember to do it. He's almost stiff about it, unfamiliar as it is to him, but he's absorbing Ken's attitude about it and it's slowly getting more natural.

"I think... you're right. I don't need music when I'm not alone. Knowing all of you, I've really learned a lot," he exhales in a wistful sigh. He really does owe them so much, doesn't he? Minato can't fathom not trying to repay that, like he is now. Like he had.

When you're this close, it's hard to miss the tension. Ken doesn't say anything about it but he can feel as Minato's adapting himself to this, absorbing and learning, like he said. He remembers what he said about having lost his parents when he was younger, though, and maybe that makes sense that he isn't as used to this, then. He went through a lot of schools, too.

He always thought his senpais were much more put together than he was, older and smarter and stronger. But, he thinks to himself, that isn't the entire picture, is it? There's a lot he didn't know, and there's a lot he still doesn't know. But if he learned about it the way he learned about Minato here... He leans against him more, letting his head weigh against Minato's shoulder.

"Was it because it was too quiet without the music? or too loud?"

The position is convenient if for no other reason than that it's much easier to speak without looking directly at him. This subject isn't immensely personal, but it's still more personal than Minato is typically ready to own up to. He's becoming used to saying these sorts of things to Ken, though-- and Jaime. It almost feels normal when it's the two of them.

Almost.

"No. There just wasn't anything I wanted to think about, so it was easiest not to think if there was something else to focus on. Everything around me... There wasn't anything I really cared about."

Even though Ken can't see his face this way, Minato still looks away. It's hard to admit these things, hard in the sense that it feels precarious. It makes it more real, and the last thing Minato needs is for the tragedies in his life to take on more weight. It's why he's always avoided them.

Quietly, "It's a relief to me that you haven't had to cope that way."

He fingers one of the headphones hanging around his neck and considers this. So the music had been something for Minato to focus on. He had overheard plenty of classmates talking about music was an escape, or how it blocked everything out, and he didn't even give it a thought back then but perhaps it was true. At the least, there must have been people it worked on, like Minato. Like his mother, folding their laundry with some song he couldn't place playing on the stereo behind her. (What were those songs? He can't check anymore, and there's nobody who can tell him.) Music hadn't even occurred to Ken until he saw Minato come around the shrine. He wonders if it would have made a difference.

"I think learned to lie, instead," he confesses, a quiet murmur projected downward toward the fabric of his hood. He doesn't elaborate, but the admittance brings back a flood of memories he shoved away anyway. What he remembers are his last days at his relatives' home, pretending he didn't overhear them talking about him the night before they brought up Gekkoukan; he remembers the rumor mill that started up after his new classmates got curious why he wasn't going home for spring break; he remembers the concerned looks nervous teachers gave him and all their questions if he was okay. He didn't have a way to shut it out and it had been so loud, but the nights were unbearably silent, returning to his empty dorm room and not having anybody to say good night to. What if he had music to fill in those gaps? He sighs, closing his eyes and wondering how long Minato would let him stay like this next to him, if he wasn't getting too uncomfortable. "I went out into the Dark Hour right after I got sent to Gekkoukan. I saw somebody get attacked by Shadows, once... and instead of staying inside, I went out more. I wanted to know that it was real, that I wasn't really imagining it or going crazy like everyone thought I was."

He sucks his lower lip between his teeth, and he forces himself to shrug.

"I don't think I really coped. When the Shadows didn't kill me, I decided I'll kill them so I snuck a brush into my room and started learning how to fight."

He's letting Ken rest on him because it's what Ken needs; it's something he's doing for him. That way of thinking means Minato could do this forever. It's almost like he, himself, isn't personally involved.

"Just because it started out as a lie doesn't mean it needs to stay that way." It's spoken in a murmur as Minato turns it over in his head. "Killing something preying on others is a natural urge. If you were doing it for your own reasons... that you understand that now means you can decide your reasons for yourself."

Ken growing to understand himself means that he can be self-determined. It's a process Minato's watched every social link he's had go through: in the beginning, allowing others to dictate who they were. Or allowing their own helpless feelings to do that. Ken being caught in grief and rage fulminating into a need for vengeance wasn't so surprising. But Ken has grown a lot, has seen inside himself to the uglier parts and clearly been greatly affected by that.

He has an opportunity, to make up his own mind, clear-headed, about who he wants to be.

"My reasons," he repeats, trying out the sound and feel of the word on his own tongue. It wan't that he was without a reason before; he at least convinced himself that he had one. It used to feel thick and impossible to breathe around when he used to say it, growling to himself that his reason was revenge and nothing more. Right now, the word feels foreign all over again.

His reason. Would he be able to find that? Even with the revenge out of the way, even trying to tell himself that he wouldn't try to die again, all he can see ahead are Shadows. Shadows, the Dark Hour, Tartarus -- he wants them to end, but what will happen to him after? He'd told Jaime that he and Koromaru would just have to find a place after because he didn't think the dorm would stay open after. He wouldn't return to his relatives' place, anyway. Would he be able to return to a 'normal' life after this, teaching himself to not stay up until midnight and attending school and eventually finding a job? Was there a 'reason' in that? An ordinary everyday life where nothing special or adventurous happens, trying to find somewhere to belong again. After all, SEES will disband, and they'll probably scatter; even if they all became friends one day, they were still individual people and people who meet inevitably part, one way or another.

He lets go of the headphones and his hand lands on Minato's over his shoulder.

"Do you think I can?"

"Of course."

But straight forward confidence, for all that it's accurate, might not be enough to persuade Ken that it's a founded belief. Minato is used to others not understanding him and particularly to Ken seeming to believe that his faith in him comes from some mysterious, inexplicable Minato-ness that defies normal convention. If he understands better, maybe it'll be easier for him to believe it himself.

"You're stronger than I was at that age... and you have all of us. You've already grown a lot, and even if you don't realize it, you've decided certain things about who you are. You won't hurt Shinjiro-san for what he did, because he feels remorse... You'll protect others to prevent them feeling the pain that you did, rather than calling it a lost cause.

"When you feel doubt, when you wonder, it's something everyone does. Even Mitsuru-san wonders if she's doing things for the right reasons. We all do."

"Kirijo-senpai's your example for that?" It's said with a laugh, maybe slightly more than humorless although it's not one out of joy. Of all the people to use, Minato went for her. But it made sense, he supposes, considering what kind of person Mitsuru Kirijo carried herself as. So even she wonders, huh? But then... he thinks he remembers, on occasion, coming across her in the dorm and she has a hand to her forehead, frowning, and she'd stand up straighter the moment she noticed him.

"I guess you're right, though. I'm not surprised. I think I remember, too.

"Can I ask you for a favor?"

"She's the person I thought would seem the least likely to question herself," he confesses, since he's well aware most people didn't get his perspective on Mitsuru. He didn't get it until the very end of the year, either. Minato wouldn't be able to betray her confidence, even here-- he knows how closely she guards herself, and it's too like him not to understand it-- but something this vague, it's alright. Of course she's human, underneath everything.

Minato hadn't been expecting the request for a favor, but immediately says, "Yes."

There wouldn't be any different response if it weren't the day after Ken had tried to throw himself in front of a train, but that certainly isn't hurting Minato's earnestness. He hasn't been given too many requests since he's gotten here and he may have some pent up desire to fulfill them. He likes direction; it's much less complicated.

"That makes sense," he says, his answer short and lame but acknowledging Minato's reasoning all the same. He couldn't agree more, anyway; Akihiko was like a bullet in how he shot forward once he decided on a part of a thought, but Mitsuru seemed to live her life with a different kind of conviction.

Of course Minato would be the one allowed to see past that. He can understand that, he thinks, with Minato's arm around his shoulders, feeling warmer and more relaxed than he thinks he has in years. He shifts only enough to grab the Gekkoukan jacket thrown on the bed beside them and to reach into his hoodie's pocket, pulling out the slightly-wrinkled SEES band.

"I took it off, when I decided -- it felt wrong to wear it and-- ... Can you put this on again? "

Minato had been all raring to go off on a quest for Ken, and has to settle himself at this seemingly innocuous request. But he understands it, he really does. If Minato had ever felt like he was undeserving of SEES, that they wouldn't want him around...

He'd take his own membership band off with a heavy heart. But he wouldn't claim something that wasn't his.

He wants to make Ken see that is is and always will be his. Minato doesn't speak immediately; his eyes soften and he nods, his deft, delicate hands taking up the strip of cloth and Ken's jacket and attaching it.

"In the future," Minato says, pinning it carefully so it'll lay straight when the jacket is on, "I think it should be my decision whether it comes off. So... come to me if you're thinking about it."

Which conveniently also means that when he's dead, Ken can never take it off. Minato can't deny he's thinking about that with well-hidden sadness, quickly swallowed. He can't keep going if he reflects on how his death will affect Ken and the others. He just can't.

Ken watches quietly as the armband is pinned to the jacket, his expression solemn but paying apt attention. Koromaru, now that the boys' moment of stillness has passed, hops onto the bed and lays his head on Ken's lap and watches, too, letting out a soft sighing breath.

"Can I come to you even if I don't think about it?"

He's pretty sure it's inevitable. He'll want to, maybe as soon as the first night Minato stops spending in this house. Maybe even as soon as tomorrow morning. But he'll hang it outside his closet, he thinks, so he can look at it if he needs to. And if it isn't enough...

"I spent the last two summers by myself in the dorm. Everyone went to Yakushima, too, but I was at the shrine with Koromaru... can we do stuff? Maybe with everyone, but... if you're not too busy."

"You can always come see me," Minato says with an air of solemn promise, his eyes heavy with meaning. No flippant, easy assurances here. Minato withdraws his hand, wondering if he can manage to say how alone he's been sometimes, too. Not literally alone, like Ken, what with how often Minato goes out and spends time with others.

But in the past, he has often been like that. And now, sometimes he feels like he can't breathe for thinking of the looming future ahead of him. If it's bad, he'll be stuck with Erebus again-- a fate and a memory Minato has carefully blocked out in any detail-- and even if it's good, and he's alive in truth, that comes with decisions and responsibilities Minato had thought he'd set down for good. He understands needing to be around others to distract his mind from reality. It doesn't do him any good to be thinking about it.

No, this isn't something he knows how to say articulately.

"I only work a couple days. And... I'd prefer not to be alone, either."

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