234/But Never Lose My Nerve

But Never Lose My Nerve
Date of Scene:	31 July 2015
Location:	Uminari City - Tako Cafe
Synopsis:	Seishi Tamashige seeks out the boy who looks like the one she saw in a dream she rode through, never expecting to find him so fast. (This scene is a followup to Not Straightforward. Unfinished: it led into Mamoru getting a terrified phone call from Madoka in Revenge, Piping Hot, which led into The Witches of Mitakihara, which led into Alcohol Therapy (Explicit Language).)
Cast of Characters:	Mamoru Chiba, Seishi Tamashige

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Mamoru Chiba has posed:
It's around two in the afternoon, and the day's bright but not terrifically hot, and not horribly muggy either. It's, in fact, a perfect summer day. The seaside park's got a lot of visitors, and they crowd or mill or wander, like acorns floating in a brook.

Amid the flow of people, there's a table at a little cafe stand where time stands still, where time-lapse photography wouldn't show a blur, where an aura of quiet stillness rests undisturbed. At the table's sitting a sharply beautiful boy, sixteen or seventeen, dressed in a summer-weight pale linen suit and reading a book. He's also drinking black coffee, which is a daring thing to do in clothes like those.

There's the faintest frown on his face, and he pauses to set down his book and take off his glasses, polishing them on his jacket.

Seishi Tamashige has posed:
Seishi doesn't really pay him much attention at first. She's more interested in getting herself the small indulgence of an iced coffee, occupied with thoughts of summer homework and how to kill the rest of the afternoon and the inexplicable rose that's currently residing in a slim vase on her desk at home. It sneaks up on her, that sense of stillness that seems to have settled over one particular table - if someone had asked her, she couldn't have said just when she noticed Mamoru sitting there, or quite when she'd started watching him over her iced mocha with the nagging feeling that he looks strangely familiar.

It's not until he takes his glasses off that it hits her who he looks like, and when it does Seishi is suddenly very still in a different way. The memory of the dream she rode through only a few nights ago rises up fresh and vivid - is that him?

She's staring now, without quite realizing it, studying Mamoru with the intent and slightly confused searching look of someone who isn't quite sure if they recognize him or not.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
That stillness -- it's partially a cultivated thing, and it's partly subconscious in nature. The blue-eyed boy (eyes so familiar, the exact color of the world's oceans from the perspective of the moon) pauses in the middle of lifting his glasses back up to put them on, and it's not a freeze, it's not abrupt. It's not like he was jarred into stopping; it looks like he remembered something, that same sort of a slight frown breaking a train of thought, and looking up mid-motion.

After a half-second of looking inward, staring at nothing with his face turned to the moving crowds, he looks directly at Seishi.

It's like this: When people notice him, they see a rich kid, they see a pretty boy, they see a studious youth, but they don't think about him -- he's noticeable, but aloof, apparently unbotherable.

It's like this: He likes it that way, it keeps the distance he's needed and hated all his life in place, it keeps the feelings around him quiet, it lets him still be where there are people, not entirely alone.

It's like this: There is a source for the feeling of being watched, and it disturbs the unbroken stillness.

His gaze is initially blank, watching-- then so very briefly sharp and analytical-- and then slowly, one eyebrow lifts and he's in realtime, smirking at Seishi and looking expectant. What. What is it. Can I help you with something. Do I have coffee on my shirt. The expression is insouciant and arrogant in equal measure.

Seishi Tamashige has posed:
Eye contact. Even from here those eyes are blue, blue, blue and suddenly Seishi realizes that she was staring. She has two options now: look away hastily and politely pretend it never happened, or...

On a snap decision, she makes her way over, iced coffee in hand and no earthly idea what she's going to say until she gets to the table and actually opens her mouth. "Sorry if I'm intruding," she says. "I'll leave you alone if you want, it's just - you look so much like someone I've met before."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Suddenly the smirk is gone, entirely, and the boy's shifted to serious in the span of a blink. He closes his book and finishes putting his glasses on, and he studies Seishi's face, searching. "You're fine," he says absently after a moment, focusing on her eyes and reading them for a second. Then he disengages slightly, the intensity gone but a burning curiosity still present. "Do I? How long ago?"

Seishi Tamashige has posed:
He hasn't invited her to sit, but she does anyway, sliding into the chair opposite his with a distinct air of self-consciousness. There is, she has the increasingly sinking feeling, no way to have this conversation that isn't going to sound crazy.

Even so, she can't just leave it alone.

"Would you believe," she says, holding his gaze with absolute seriousness, "in a dream?"

A second later she starts turning red in the face, and hastily adds: "I'm not hitting on you, I swear."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
The disappointment floods his features first, albeit quickly and gone in a flash with some kind of realization, and the distance starts growing rapidly again; to someone who functions on the particular levels that Seishi does, and with the nature of the boy's soul's origins, it could almost be a physical thing, a push back from the table. Visibly, it looks arch bordering on sarcastic.

And then Seishi blushes and corrects herself, and the blue-eyed boy stops and regards her. "I see," he says. There's a moment in which he lets her squirm, and then he says quietly, expression unchanging, "I believe you. Would you like to elaborate?"

Seishi Tamashige has posed:
Faced with that almost tangible sense of growing distance, Seishi shrinks down a little into the chair, like she's trying to draw in onto herself and perhaps if she tries hard enough simply disappear altogether. Or at least hide behind her drink.

Hearing him say that he believes her doesn't help as much as it should. "I can't, very much," she admits awkwardly. "I don't understand a lot of it myself. This might all just be some kind of terrible mistake, just... if you really are him, I felt like I couldn't just ignore it."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"But who?" asks Mamoru, not actually frustrated-- he's mentally backing away some but still reengaging, giving Seishi space but listening; his body language reflects it, as he deliberately crosses his arms at the edge of the table and leans into them, a casual pose. His eyes are on her, still serious but significantly lighter. "I dream true dreams," he explains without explaining, "so I really do believe you. But I don't know what you might need or want, and I certainly don't remember everything I dream. I have a feeling I forget most of it."

Seishi Tamashige has posed:
"That's usually how it works, isn't it?" With a trace of visible frustration, Seishi wraps both hands around her cup of coffee just to have something to do with them while she tries to find her way around the things she doesn't understand and isn't supposed to talk about.

"I don't really know either," she says, looking down into her mocha. The ice is melting. "I rode through a dream. I met someone who looked like you, and I woke up with a rose in my hand. That's never happened before. I didn't know it could."

Abruptly she looks up, meets his eyes again. Hers are serious. "I'm not the one who's searching for something."

A beat, and then she has to ruin a perfectly good dramatic one-liner by looking self-consciously aside. "Well, I am, but I already know what it is." Another beat. "More or less."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
The boy across from her startles, and the expression stays. Poor Seishi, his interest is unmasked again: looking self-consciously aside would probably have happened to almost anyone at that point. "I'm searching for something for /someone/, who I'm also searching for," he says, half-agreeing, half-clarifying. "I don't know anything about taking dreams into real life -- if I could, I'd take her with me. Sometimes I think that's the only place she is..."

Thank god he's managed to distract himself, looking past Seishi's shoulder and into his bright and unclear memories of what he dreams every night. It's like he actually literally forgets he's mid-conversation, trying to see her face.

Just before it gets really awkward, he laughs self-consciously, himself, then twists his hand in the air and presents Seishi with a rose from nowhere. It, too, is perfect and impossible, not really of this world. "I probably am. I'm sorry I don't remember you. Did you meet her too?" Try not to sound or look desperate. Try. Really hard.

Seishi Tamashige has posed:
"It's okay," Seishi murmurs, smiling faintly. The rose is twin to the one in its vase on her desk at home; it confirms, not that she wasn't already almost entirely sure, that she's not mistaken after all. "You said you wouldn't remember... the other you, the one in the dream."

Maybe she's not supposed to tell him that. If she meets his dream-self again, Seishi thinks, she is going to have a few things to say to him about how cryptic his request is making her be.

And then he asks the question she knew, sooner or later, he was going to ask, and the faint smile fades as she shakes her head. "No, I didn't meet her. I'm sorry." She sips her drink, trying not very successfully to distract herself from feeling like a liar. The way the dream ended, she knows for sure, is something she can't tell him about.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"It's just as well, I guess," the boy says in disappointment that tries very hard to be mild. The voice is mild, at least. "It hasn't been a good dream in a while. Almost a year now. She's always so sad now." He's distant again, but it's not at all the same as it was in the beginning, or when he thought she was messing with him or macking on him. It's obvious what's on his mind.

He lifts his hand to idly pick up his coffee cup, then sets it down again. "I guess dream-me is a jerk," he says lightly, then, and cocks a crooked, underhanded smile at Seishi. Like the prince in the dream, but understated, reserved. "I won't press you, but if you talk to him again, punch him for me? Anyway, what is it you're looking for? Maybe I can help somehow."

Seishi Tamashige has posed:
Seishi's head ducks a little, but she answers his crooked smile with a faint, hesitant one of her own. "He was pretty nice about it, considering I was the one trespassing. Anyway, I don't think it's his fault you don't remember. You realize you just asked me to punch you in the subconscious, right?"

She pauses there, makes a very wry moue. "This whole conversation is insane. I didn't even introduce myself. Seishi Tamashige, first year at Verone high school. Nice to meet you."

Another brief pause to drink some more of her mocha before it goes all watery. "As for what I'm looking for, and why I barged into your dream the other night... My enemy hides in dreams." Her eyes settle on the rose; she spends a moment contemplating it. "He wasn't in yours, though. I'm pretty sure I'd have been able to tell."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Maybe my subconscious needs a punch," the boy says cheerfully. "I'm Mamoru Chiba, second year at Infinity High School. Pleased to meet you as well. And if you think this is insane, you should hear some of the others I've had lately."

He drains the dregs of his coffee, then leans comfortably on his book, rose on the table between them. "I don't know what sort of enemy could hide in dreams, but they must be pretty awful if they can. If there's any way I could help with that, I would, but I don't even-- every dream I wake up remembering is the same, or close to it. If I don't even have control of my own dreams, I don't know if I could do anything."

Seishi Tamashige has posed:
"You should figure out how to punch your own subconscious, then," Seishi quips back. "It's your brain, after all."

Letting out a little sigh, she rests one forearm on the table. The other hand tilts her cup, swirling the remaining coffee around the ice. "Hopefully you won't ever have to," she says. "He turns dreams into nightmares, so that he can eat them. It makes him stronger."