2379/Trust, But Not That Much

Trust, But Not That Much
Date of Scene:	21 January 2017
Location:	Lacrima's Manor
Synopsis:	Eilam is still having post-card problems. Not all of Lacrima's suggestions help.
Cast of Characters:	Norie Okana, Eilam Hisakawa

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Norie Okana has posed:
Lacrima's Manor is mostly quiet and idle. In fact, the bit with the card recently is the second most major activity it's seen in a while. It is infact, another such quiet day and Lacrima decides to bring food to Eilam-kun on a tray. First she knocks on the door. She waits a second, then she opens it and walks in and unfurls some feet on the tray. It's one of those fancy carry and stand dealys. Food seems to be!....

Some sort of pink fish, probably salmon and vegetables. Lacrima may eat a lot and it doesn't matter what she eats, but she thinks Eilam would appreciate something besides 'all the donuts'.

There is of course, a plate for her. Looking the same, as she thinks no one wants to eat alone.

"Has the.... what was it. Card?... come back?" she asks quietly.

"Do you need help?" she asks quietly as she motions to the plate.

She hasn't brought up the things they'd talked about the other night since.

She probably gets that Eilam doesn't like to talk about it. And Eilam doesn't seem to upset easily. So if that upset him well...

She'll find other things to talk about. Right? Right.

She does say, however, out of nowhere. "I'm sorry."

Eilam Hisakawa has posed:
    Eilam had been largely keeping to himself. If only because he really had a lot to think about. Well, a lot as long as that included all the extra stuff he found himself worrying about perhaps pointlessly. Combined with his low energy and Lacrima having basically told him he wasn't leaving without her, well... he hadn't gone anywhere.

    Even if at the moment he was seated on the bed while leaning back against the headboard of the bed, staring at his cellphone. He didn't even seem to realize Lacrima had knocked or come in. It was only when she spoke again that he looked up. "Oh... hi. Right." Then he noticed she had food, and other questions, and he shook his head. "if it is back, I think it is being a bit more cautious than it was before. Then again I have not... been as forward as I intended to be about confronting it, given I am in your home." How exactly would Eilam confront anything though? Hard to say. "And how would your girlfriend feel about you trying to feed someone else? While I have been a teenager all my life... I think that is a new thing Japanese teenagers are embarrassed by, yes? Someone else helping them eat?" He may have read that in a manga or saw an anime or something. Which might not accurately reflect things.

Norie Okana has posed:
Lacrima makes sure the food is within reach as she grabs her plate and sits on the bed as she head tilts. "Mhmmm? Well I'd be helping you. If you needed it. I don't think she'd be bothered by it." she says silently as she trails off. Norie didn't really read a lot of mangas. She was more the play and ballet kinda girl in that sense.

Maybe she intended to try to read them before sometime then this happened to her.

She silently sits there and eats some Salmon. Salmon is good. She likes the taste of fish.

She frowns. "You shouldn't call out such things." she says quietly. "We'll make sure it's gone soon." she says.

She gently keeps a little quiet as she eats. "I wish I could do something to make this better now." she says. "But I can't." she says quietly.

"I'm still... worried. About lots of things." she says. "Lots...and lots... of things." she says.

Eilam Hisakawa has posed:
    "Well, thank you. I do not truly have to eat, though I still feel hunger regardless. Hopefully you do not mind my being picky, when you get as wealthy as I am, you reserve the right not to eat vegetables unless you want to." It seemed a bit ike a joke, though truly it wasn't remotely far off from his truth. "As for not calling out..." he takes the plate of salmon and looks at it before beginning to eat a bit. Mostly just a single flake for now. "...not like it's going to kill me or anything, right?" He laughs a bit at that. "Worst that happens is the thing shares more private memories. With all the people around. All of no one but you. Or it actually kills me and I just come back anyways. Consquences are limited, Lacrima, though thank you regardless."

    He takes a moment to eat a bit more of the fish before adding, "Besides... if this thing, whatever it is, wanted to be around me to begin with, who says I cannot speak to it? I don't think it wants to hurt me for whatever reason, if it did it could just... sit on me and steal all of my energy, right? Instead it just seems to drain some. For all I know maybe I can just ask it to show itself, or stop. ...or if it really wants to be around me that bad, maybe we can work out some agreement." Of course, there was something about his tone that implied 'agreement' might not be quite what the word means. As upset as Eilam was, it might lead one to wonder just how much he was willing to barter with such a thing... or if he was planning on trying to do something a bit rash to make sure it couldn't 'hurt' him further.

Norie Okana has posed:
Lacrima softly head tilts. "I have a theory that this...card? Yes Card, is attracted to intresting lifetimes maybe. And you'd have had a very long one. So maybe it's natural it latched onto you." she says quietly. She sighs a bit and rubs a hand up her face with a sigh as she goes about eating. "You don't need to eat anything you don't want. And I am practically a inhuman garbage disposal when it comes to food. I can eat. I just don't need to. And it doesn't serve any purpose but to turn into nothing when it hits whatever's inside me." she says.

She closes her eyes and sighs a bit and opens them. "I'm still sorry that. It showed things. To me and the others." she says quietly.

"We just need to nix this card then you don't need to worry about that anymore." she says quietly.

"If I could make people forget, I would." she says quietly.

"I just know that anyone who's seen it this far....they're not going to do anything with it. If they've even remembered anything they saw." she says quietly.

Eilam Hisakawa has posed:
    "Plus... well, since I am in the business of having things in my past shared... there was a period in my life where I ate whatever I could, just to try and subside the pain. It was not really something I enjoyed, just a daily task I did no different than bathing. During such time I subsided almost entirely on vegetables. Tasteless, bland 'food' if you can even call it such. Now that I have a choice... well, one might call it picky, but I eat solely for pleasure at this point. Or, rather... I will not eat something if I do not enjoy it, without a reason otherwise."

    The topic of the card, or that she doesn't think others will do anything with it, doesn't get remarked on by him. Maybe changing the subject or simply trying to let it drop. But that does leave something else on his mind.

    "I... you saw me the other evening, when I was scared. Angry. I do not... show that side of me, ever. The last time such anger came up was at an employee of mine thirty seven years ago or so. Instead of asking me for help, he thought he would just steal something from me since I 'would not notice it anyways'. Suffice it to say, I did. I am not what you might consider a good person by any stretch of the words, I am hardly even a person at this point. My interests almost exclusively serve myself unless it amusement for me that I am nice to others, I care not for charity or any such trite things. I am petty, vengeful to those who betray me. And on top of that I am extremely paranoid, as a result of my fear of being betrayed."
    The half plate of food he still had is set down for the moment as he looks up towards Lacrima. "I want you to understand that. It does not bother me, it does not embarrass me. I am how I am because I choose to be, because I have no reason to care about being any other way. I have always been willing to try new things, because I will outlive any consequences if I play things right, but with this new world... magic, whatever else there is, it terrifies me because I do not know if I /can/ outlive the consequences. I do not know if I can... just accept what you feel, even if I trust you. Not without scrutinizing it. Because once I let go... I can never take hold of it again. Not in this day and age. Information spreads too fast and is too hard to get rid of. If one wrong person ever finds out, there are things worse than death for those like us, and you might not even know. You can... reform or whatever, I do not have that luxury. If I am pinned under rocks... I am stuck there until I..." he shivered a bit and trailed off, leaving the details to the imagination. "Imagine what a single being who had the creativity to try and abuse me could do? I cannot just kill myself, or leave and go elsewhere. Do you understand why... I am so concerned?"

Norie Okana has posed:
Lacrima Shakes her head. "You don't need to worry about that. You have someone like me who would notice. And I can be many places at once in a very short amount of time when I do not care about hiding my prescene." she says quietly. "I don't like talking about it." she says quietly. "But when I drain 'energy' from people, I drain life energy, yes. But I also take. Thier identity with it. And convert it." she says.

"Because that's what fuels the intelligence I have. What I take is 'scrubbed' so I don't become other people. Or see events." she says.

"Nothing what I take is... permenant. Things grow back. Your body knows how to repair things like that." she says quietly.

"But I've done my own share of not nice things. And I work with people that do not nice things for personal gain." she says.

"Sometimes those relate to making people dissapear or worse." she says.

"I try to ignore it. It's easy for me to." she says. A pause.

"Would you like me to put a tracer into your personage that I could personally track?" she asks.

"Then you wouldn't need to worry. Because I'd always be able to find you then." she says.

"Depending if your body doesn't destroy it everytime you.... regenerate.. rebirth. Whatever your prefered term is." she says quietly.

"Do you have one?" she asks.

Eilam Hisakawa has posed:
    "...I trust you, but not that much."

    It was a rather clear statement. "I do not trust anyone that much. The closest I suppose I will allow is the ability to track my cell phone, which I can enable or disable as needed. Though do not take that too personally, I pay others to keep limited track of where I am and keep in touch with them to a point regularly. If something comes up, well, someone will know something." As he spoke, Eilam reached over to take the stave he had and pull it onto the bed, unscrewing it to pull the estoc inside out. "To this point... you seem a little confused about such." He put the tip to his hand and cut his palm with a bit of a wince, letting her see as he pulled the sword away and held the palm out that the cut healed shortly after being made, closing back up back to 'normal', whatever that was for him. "I do not... really call it anything. Never considered it magic, never knew of magic until recently. What would you call it? I just... always return to how I am normally. No matter what."

Norie Okana has posed:
Lacrima head tilts. "There's lots of things that could cause that." she says softly. "I know you're not filled with dark energy like I am at least. It'd be obvious." she says. "For me it's... my body was consumed and replaced with dark energy and my 'being' is something nebulous I don't understand. It isn't in this necklace- but it's most likely just a part of this dark in me." she says.

"I mean. I obviously still have something that masquerades as a soul somewhere in me." she says quietly. "I just don't know what form that takes and maybe... I don't want to know." she says.

"But it does mean my body is tangible and repairable in ways like that." she says motioning to Eilam's healing.

"Puella Magi I know can heal grievous wounds like that." she says. "But there is no way you are a Puella Magi. You're disqualifed because you are not a female." she says frankly. "Besides, you'd know if you'd made a wish to a stupid little white rat to live forever or something." she mutters.

"I remember you told me you were just this way. So it doesn't sound like you know either. Have you ever come into contact with something odd or strange? A gem? A jewel? Some sort of odd artifact?" she asks head tilting.

"Of course, you may not remember." she says softly.

"Do you remember... everything... Eilam-kun?" she asks. "What I am has a safeguard for that. It's why I need to 'sleep' like other beings. It's kind of like hitting the save button in a word processor, only it's 'everything I learned that day'." she says.

She purses her lips, perhaps just a bit bemusedly. "You could use me as a note taker. Remind you in one hundred years about a thing you wanted to do..." she says. Close to a joke as she's gonna get right now.

"Then tracking your phone in such a manner with suffice." she says softly.

She sighs a bit. "You do have some sort of magic, Eilam-kun. I mean that much is obvious. It's the matter of finding out it's nature." she says.

"And I have no intentions of subjecting you to tests to find out unless you very specfically ask me to." she says.