(D10-Night)(Ask) Catching Up Among the Steam

Hisui pauses. This question has been on her mind for days now, ever since the topic of hitsuzen came up in her class. The topic brought her to all sorts of tangents and ideas, but she could trace things back to the startling number of coincidences that led to that fateful night in the hotsprings.

"Fate," she answers. "If not for my finding Hida-san, I wouldn't have been drunk enough to brazenly call you beautiful. If not for Otomo-san suggesting it, I'd never have gone to the hotsprings. If not for Ichiro-san distracting Aiko-san, she'd have called me over and you would not have gotten a chance to speak to me. If not for Akodo-san walking in when he did, you'd have been bolder and we'd not have connected as early as we did."

"One such incident is luck. Two is coincidence. Three times is a Scorpion plot. Four is death. And we're both death worshippers." She smiles softly, blushing at the explanation and a near-childish faith in it as fact. "Fate brought us together."

"As for the first time we met? That I can pin down to rain and Makubesu-sensei giving you a concussion."

Hisui looks at the ring. It brings a smile to her face and a skip to her heart.

"I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case," she admits. "In my studies, sometimes I hear tales of omens showing two lovers being reborn. Children born clutching clots of blood in their right hands or rain on a hot summer day. No one can prove anything, of course, but the old legends persist."

"But I believe that, omens or not, we can find each other. Even if we don't remember. And the Fortunes will give us the sign we need."

"That seems rather poetic." She looks above, at the stars and the night sky. "So all the dancing we did around each other was just us having poor timing? I suppose, then, that our meeting days ago was Emma-O finally getting tired of subtlety. How we must have frustrated him, then."

She faces her Crane bride again, more pleased and content than ever. "Perhaps that will be our sign. Something that ties us both to death. It will be how we know each other, life after life."

"In time, we'll understand these things better. For now, I agree with you. Come what may, I will find you," she says. She leans in daringly close, but pulls away. Too public, too open. "I'm sorry about earlier, by the way. But I couldn't think of any other way to pull the Otomo away from Kuni-san."