[log] Ryou K., Shinji
Nov. 28th, 2007 01:48 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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tenipuri_xpDate: 11/21/07
Rating: G
Summary: Shinji and Ryou meet in the library~ With much awkwardness.
Kisarazu Ryou didn't normally stay late on Ryuhana's campus, and when he did, he was rarely without the company of his twin brother. But there were exceptions to his normal patterns, and though it took awhile for Ryou to break a habit, he was getting used to the idea that he had to do other things.
Like research for his English paper.
It wasn’t as if Oshitari probably didn't have the information he wanted in the household's private library. Ryou could, more than likely, find it easily and meet the requirements that Nakamura-sensei had set for the project without too much deviation from his normal patterns. However, the three and a half or so weeks of festival planning had taught Ryou one thing (and probably not the thing Niou or Eiji-sempai wanted him to learn): He liked Ryuhana's library.
It wasn't as vast as the Oshitari's household's literature. Most of the books were, in fact, non-fiction -- exactly what he needed, really. And it was quiet. He could curl up in the back of the room, behind the last row of shelves and let himself get absorbed in what he was doing. Chewing on the end of his pencil, and still in his school uniform with his hair pulled into a neat tail at the base of skull, Ryou skimmed the English passage again, stopped, read it one more time, then reached for his dictionary.
Shinji walked through the library, looking at the books on the shelves and back down at the piece of paper in his hand, trying to find the book he needed for a history paper. He wrinkled his nose a bit at the thought of writing it, he never liked writing papers much, much preferring math or the sciences where there was a definitive answer.
He turned the corner around a row of shelves, certain that this row had the right range for the call number of his book. He took a few steps down the aisle before realizing there was another student there, flipping through pages of a book. Unsure whether he should say something or ignore the other student, Shinji took the middle road and raised one hand in a half-hearted wave.
Ryou caught the slightest of movement out of his eye. Living with Kamio and Saeki -- both of whom where quick and sneaky, in Ryou's mind -- had the long-haired teen jerking his head up and blinking at the person standing near the shelves. He was familiar…did they have class together?
Ryou was sure that he wasn't in his training group, at least.
He hesitated for just a moment before raising his hand and waving back. He scooted in the chair, positioning his body so that he could watch the other mutant (he had to be -- why else would he be wandering around Ryuhana's library?) without having to sit and stare at him. It was better to know where people were at after all.
When the other student looked up at him, Shinji thought it was his roommate, but a closer look told him it couldn't be. There was no smoke floating around his body. And besides, hadn't Shinji left Atushi in their dorm room just a few minutes ago? His curiosity piqued, Shinji abandoned his search for the book he was looking for and walked over towards the other boy.
As he drew closer, he grew more certain that this wasn't Atsushi. His roommate's hair wasn't that long. Stopping a few feet away from Ryou, Shinji started with the question on his mind. "Hello. I don't suppose you know Kisarazu Atsushi?"
Ryou looked back up from his schoolwork, momentarily quiet as he considered the student in front of him. He was getting used to being asked…that. They were twins, after all, and they did look almost exactly alike, save for Ryou's hair.
Ryou guessed if he ever cut his hair and Atsushi turned off his smoke and took off his glasses, no one would be able to tell them apart.
Slouching a bit in his seat, Ryou nodded hesitantly. "He's my brother," he answered. "I'm Ryou." Then he paused and studied the other. "Who are you?"
Shinji nodded. That explained the resemblance then. As he looked at Ryou’s face, he wondered if they were twins, he looked so much like Atsushi.
“Ibu Shinji. I’m Atsushi’s roommate,” he replied.
"Oh?" Ryou tipped his head to the side, curious now. He'd know his sibling had a new roommate…and he wasn't sure how much he liked the idea. Yet, Ryou liked the idea of moving into Ryuhana himself even less. The amount of people, the walls…the rules. He wasn't sure how he'd deal with all of it.
He had no clue how Atsushi did it. Even being this close to his brother's roommate, Ryou could feel his skin starting to tighten and crawl.
"Yeah, I guess he mentioned having one," Ryou murmured. "Uhm. Hi."
Shinji shuffled his feet, unsure of what to say next. He was sure Atsushi had told him about having a brother, but he couldn’t remember anything in particular about him.
After an awkward pause, Shinji ventured to speak. “So… Why don’t you two room together?” He thought that it would probably be more comforting living with family member than with a complete stranger, but maybe the two brothers didn’t get along. Or maybe the school wanted the students to get to know people outside their family.
"Because I don't live here," Ryou answered slowly. It was another question he was having to get used, in several variations, though somehow it just felt awkward to explain. Setting aside his pencil, he drew his hands up and rubbed the backs of arms, under the fabric of his gloves.
Was he…cold? Not really, but his lower arms were starting to feel strange. Numb, almost. And his head hurt just a little, though maybe that was the last traces of that man he'd touched while in the park the other day. He couldn't hear him anymore.
Couldn't feel him anymore either, he thought. "I…live off campus. With niisan."
"Oh." Well, that explained why they didn’t live together. But why didn’t Atsushi live with him? Shinji didn’t want to annoy the other boy so he decided he’d ask Atsushi about it later.
Looking at the books Ryou was holding, Shinji titled his head. “What’re you working on?”
Still running one palm over his lower arm, Ryou dropped his gaze to the open book. "English," he answered. "I have to write a paper on the culture of an English speaking country." And for some odd reason, he'd chosen England.
He didn't know much about England…which was why he had to do so much research. But that was probably the point of writing the paper to begin with, so he didn't think too much about it.
The numbness felt like it was spreading, he thought, though he really wasn't numb either. His arms just felt weird. Like his hands did sometimes when he took off the dampener. Ryou crinkled his nose at the sensation and flipped a page in the book. "What about you?" He was probably working on something, after all.
Well, unless he was like Ryou and just liked being in libraries.
Shinji made a face at the mention of English. Sure, he was decent enough with the language, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed the class. “Yuck. Well, good luck with it, I hope it‘s more interesting than it sounds."
He held up the piece of paper with some writing on it. “I‘m looking for a few books for a history project.” He looked at the books on the wall, and with a half smile he realized he was in the right section. He bent down to read the spines of the books, hoping that the books weren’t already checked out. A lot of his classmates were also focusing their papers on Feudal Japan; Shinji hoped he got to the library before all the good books were taken.
"It's not that bad," Ryou countered, unthinking. It was probably one of the classes he minded the least since coming to Ryuhana. And he didn't mind writing papers.
Giving presentations...was another matter.
And not one he wanted to think about. Drawing his arms tight to him and rubbing one upper arm harder with the other, he wrinkled his nose. This was getting annoying...and his head was starting to hurt just a little. "History's not bad either, I guess," Ryou murmured. And there were lots of history books at home.
“Well, it’s not my favorite, but no, history really isn’t all that bad. It’s interesting the things you can learn about the values of older cultures and seeing what effects those values have on civilization today. Of course, this project is boring, just the same material with the same question driving the research. Hardly enjoyable, especially when the professor just isn’t interested in that aspect of history anyway…” Shinji trailed off and glanced at Ryou, noting that he was rubbing his arm. “Are you cold? I guess it’s a bit chilly in here…” Actually, Shinji didn’t think it was that cold in the library, in fact he thought it was a bit on the warm side.
Ryou couldn't say he had any favorite classes at Ryuhana. He probably just liked English more than the others, but even then, sitting in a classroom listening to lectures about material he'd just read seemed...really dull. He was much more used to his private sensei's unconventional way of teaching, giving him assignments and letting him figure most of the information out on his own.
It made his actual classes seem easy, by comparison. The only difference was the pace that the lecture-classes moved at was faster.
"No...I," he paused, reaching up to rub a shoulder as the feeling spread. His head was starting to hurt more too, a subtle headache that was getting worse. "I'm not cold. My skin...feels weird."
Shinji stood up and turned to look at Ryou. His skin felt weird? "Are you allergic to anything?" His sister was allergic to shellfish, her usual complaint was that her throat felt weird after she ate it. Maybe Ryou was going through something similar?
"No, I...shouldn't be." He'd asked his mother a while ago, when one of the maids had been concerned about food allergies, and she'd assured him that neither of the twins had had any allergies when they were little.
She wouldn't lie about something like that either. He was sure.
But whatever it was, it was spreading down the sides of his ribs and his stomach, up his legs...even along his neck. "It just...tingles, almost like its numb, but it's not," he tried to explain, at a loss for words. His hands felt normal enough. And it wasn't painful, really; a moment later, the tingling in his arms subsided, spreading to his legs.
Shinji stared at Ryou and knitted his eyebrows. It sounded like when his feet fell asleep after sitting on them funny. But somehow Shinji didn't think that was it either.
"Do you think you need to go to the medical center?" It would be a pain to walk the other boy there when Shinji hadn't finished his research, but he didn't want Ryou passing out on the way if there was something wrong with him.
Ryou furrowed his brow and shook his head. Medical center meant doctors. Doctors meant needles -- and he'd rather not see either ever again. "No, I…it'll be fine," he decided; he couldn't say he was overly convinced of the idea himself, but if wasn't going to be, he'd rather just go home.
Maybe Oshitari-nii would know what was wrong.
"My hands feel like this sometimes," he murmured. "Just…never felt it everywhere before."
Shinji blinked. He'd heard that before, and silently cursed himself as he took a few steps back.
Ryou gave the other teen a puzzled look as he stepped away; had he done something...wrong? However, as the other stepped away, he felt his skin settle down. The numbness passed even quicker than it had come. So did the mild headache, though Ryou's head still felt strange. But not painful, he decided. Just not so heavy as it had.
"I...whatever it was," he murmrued, flexing his fingers and looking down at his hands and arms, "I think it's...over? Maybe?"
Shinji sighed, he really needed to stop getting close to other mutants until he could reliably keep his power under control for longer than five minutes.
“That was me. I boost the powers of mutants around me. So whatever it is that makes your skin tingle got amplified to be stronger somehow.” He looked at Ryou, wondering what mutation he had that make his skin feel so uncomfortable. It couldn’t be pleasant, judging by his reaction to Shinji’s power. Shinji would have to remember to not get close to Ryou. “Sorry,” he added after a few moments.
"You boo…oh." Ryou went silent for a moment, eyes wide and glancing from Shinji to his hands. If the other boosted powers, and Ryou's own was related to his skin, then no wonder the rest of his body had started to feel like he'd just taken off the dampener. That could have been dangerous.
Not dangerous dangerous; it wasn't like Ryou blew anything up and he did try to be careful about letting people touch him. But he hadn't realized his power would spread like that. Ryou frowned, perplexed. Did that mean his power would…spread to the rest of his skin eventually?
He didn't like that thought at all.
Still, he shook his head when Ibu-kun apologized and backed away. Ryou could understand doing that, and maybe even the feelings that went with it. He didn't like to get too close to most people either. "It's okay, Ibu-kun. It's not like you did it on purpose…you probably can't turn it off, right?" he guessed. That was something else he knew about -- and it was a pain. Considering, Ryou twisted in his seat and grab his school bag.
If Ibu-kun couldn't control his power then…maybe Ryou should control his own. Just in case.
He didn't wear a dampener at Ryuhana anymore, but he still carried one of them with him. The gloves were still more reliable, and his head didn't feel strange after wearing them for too long. So he saved the dampener for home -- or when he was around Atsushi. Pulling the device out of his bag, Ryou sat up and snapped it around his wrist, then pressed a couple of buttons to activate it. His hands went numb for a second, then normal.
Shinji stared at the books on the shelves after Ryou got quiet. This was the reaction he got from most people, an awkward silence followed by more backing up. Since the other mutant wasn't, Shinji took a few more steps away, just to be on the safe side.
He looked back at Ryou when he spoke again about controlling his power and sighed. "I can turn it down for a few minutes if I concentrate, but... It boosts itself back up after a bit." So no, for all intents and purposes he added silently, but didn't want to admit it out loud. Shinji turned back to the books. He was still very unhappy that he couldn't control his power the way his roommate could. Atsushi made it looks so easy, pulling in the smoke and letting it out again. Why wasn't his power like that?
Movement out of the corner of his eye drew Shinji's attention. He turned and watched as the other boy pulled something from his bag and put it on his wrist. Curious, Shinji took a step forward, then remembered why he had backed up in the first place and stopped, cursing himself again. "What's that?"
"At least you can turn it down for a little while," Ryou mused, picking up his pencil again. He couldn't even do that much with his own, needing a device just so he could touch people without his power grabbing at their minds.
As the other teen approached, Ryou only looked up and blinked. "It's a dampener," he explained. "It…shuts off my powers for me. So maybe yours won't bother mine." It worked with Oshitari-nii's powers, at least; the psionics couldn't touch his mind while Ryou wore it.
Shinji looked at the dampener as Ryou described it. "It shuts off your power?" That sounded a lot like the Cure. The Cure that Shinji had been brought in to help Rin fight off. He leaned against the shelf and looked up at the ceiling. "I don't think that'll work. One of the trainers here was accidentally cured. A friend asked if I could meet up with him and it turned out that I reversed the Cure." He couldn't say for certain that the dampener was the same, but Shinji was betting his power would reverse whatever it was doing as well.
But the dampener did bring two questions to his mind: would it work on his power and why did the other mutant have one? He decided not to ask either question, but Shinji was still curious what effect it would have on him.
"Yeah, for as long as I'm wearing it…but I can't wear it all the time." He'd tried to, but then whenever he'd take it off, his head would feel strange. Oshitari-nii had finally talked to him about it, and while the original idea was for him to wear it at school and not at home, Ryou found he preferred to go without it at school. His gloves were more reliable and it meant he didn't have to touch anyone if he didn't want to.
Though…it might not work? Ryou looked over at the other mutant, blinking. "I…oh," he murmured, glancing back at the device around his wrist. "That…okay. I should make sure I keep my gloves on them. So I don't touch anyone on accident…"
Shinji stopped himself from asking why he couldn't wear it all the time or why he would want to wear it all the time. "Well, it should work normally. My power just... fights it." Shinji stood up straight and looked at Ryou again. "It just means I can't stay near you."
And that brought up another question, one Shinji was more inclined to ask. "So what do you do, anyway?"
"Mmm," Ryou sighed thoughtfully. That had to suck, right? Not being able to get near other people -- well, other mutants. And in a school full of them.
It made him wonder why the school didn't give Ibu-kun an inhibitor of some kind. Surely they had them? This was where Shishido and Ohtori had gotten them from, after all. Though that was back when the government had been in control and imprisoning mutants, so…maybe they didn't have any of them now.
"Okay," he decided. "I wouldn't want to risk touching you on accident anyway…my power is…" He trailed off, chewing on his lower lip. "Tactile-based memory assimilation. When I touch someone, I…take their memories from them."
Shinji narrowed his eyes when he heard the scientific name for the other teen's power, then widened them when he heard what it did. Stopping himself from taking another step away from Ryou, Shinji thought out loud for a bit. "Oh... Well, I can see why you wouldn't want to touch other people, especially if you can't control it. I'd imagine that'd be awkward... Do you take everything, or..." Shinji trailed off. He realized the dampener wasn't only to keep Ryou from being uncomfortable, it protected the students of Ryuhana from something possibly worse than a physical mutation.
"Yeah…and, well. When I take stuff, it stays in my head. What I make people forget, I remember," Ryou explained. "And I can, if I touch someone for long enough. But if it's too long, I mess up my own memory too." He still wasn't sure how that worked; even with the small experiments he'd been doing the past few weeks since the festival, he didn't know exactly how long he had to hold onto someone before his own mind went blank.
He was barely figuring out to pick out just the bit he wanted of someone's mind.
"It's only my hands, though. I wear gloves most of the time so I don't do it on accident."
Now that had to be confusing, if the memories he took stayed with him. Shinji looked Ryou up and down. He didn't look like he was crazy, but since he lived with that power, Shinji assumed he had just grown accustomed to it.
"You mess up your own memory? Do you give it to the other person?" Shinji looked at Ryou's hands to examine the gloves. Black? Fashionable, but they didn't seem to suit him.
"Yeah, sometimes. I've only done it really badly once," he admitted, uncomfortably. "I still don't remember…much of anything from before I got my power." Only what his parents had told him and his brother, and little snippets of things, but none of that was really 'memories' of anything that had happened. "It's just weird if I touch anyone for a few days, most of the time. Like I have someone else in my head…"
Shinji shuffled his feet in the awkward silence that followed. His problems of not being able to control his power really didn't compare to losing your entire memory. And dealing with the memories of another person in your head. "Can't imagine it's good for you to carry multiple people around with you like that." That wasn't exactly what he had wanted to say, but Shinji thought it got the point across. And it was too late to take back anyway.
"It's…normally quiet. They go away after awhile," Ryou shrugged, looking back to his book. "Or…not really away, but they kind of fade out." Things were getting awkward again, the way they normally did whenever he talked about his power to someone. He knew it was a little dangerous, but…it's not like he picked it.
And he did try to be careful around people that he knew.
Seeing the other boy go back to his book, Shinji resumed his search for the book he was looking for. After a few minutes, he had finally located the book and pulled it out, flipping through a few pages to make sure it had what he needed. Satisfied, he turned to look at Ryou again.
"Good luck with your control, Kisarazu-san."
Rating: G
Summary: Shinji and Ryou meet in the library~ With much awkwardness.
Kisarazu Ryou didn't normally stay late on Ryuhana's campus, and when he did, he was rarely without the company of his twin brother. But there were exceptions to his normal patterns, and though it took awhile for Ryou to break a habit, he was getting used to the idea that he had to do other things.
Like research for his English paper.
It wasn’t as if Oshitari probably didn't have the information he wanted in the household's private library. Ryou could, more than likely, find it easily and meet the requirements that Nakamura-sensei had set for the project without too much deviation from his normal patterns. However, the three and a half or so weeks of festival planning had taught Ryou one thing (and probably not the thing Niou or Eiji-sempai wanted him to learn): He liked Ryuhana's library.
It wasn't as vast as the Oshitari's household's literature. Most of the books were, in fact, non-fiction -- exactly what he needed, really. And it was quiet. He could curl up in the back of the room, behind the last row of shelves and let himself get absorbed in what he was doing. Chewing on the end of his pencil, and still in his school uniform with his hair pulled into a neat tail at the base of skull, Ryou skimmed the English passage again, stopped, read it one more time, then reached for his dictionary.
Shinji walked through the library, looking at the books on the shelves and back down at the piece of paper in his hand, trying to find the book he needed for a history paper. He wrinkled his nose a bit at the thought of writing it, he never liked writing papers much, much preferring math or the sciences where there was a definitive answer.
He turned the corner around a row of shelves, certain that this row had the right range for the call number of his book. He took a few steps down the aisle before realizing there was another student there, flipping through pages of a book. Unsure whether he should say something or ignore the other student, Shinji took the middle road and raised one hand in a half-hearted wave.
Ryou caught the slightest of movement out of his eye. Living with Kamio and Saeki -- both of whom where quick and sneaky, in Ryou's mind -- had the long-haired teen jerking his head up and blinking at the person standing near the shelves. He was familiar…did they have class together?
Ryou was sure that he wasn't in his training group, at least.
He hesitated for just a moment before raising his hand and waving back. He scooted in the chair, positioning his body so that he could watch the other mutant (he had to be -- why else would he be wandering around Ryuhana's library?) without having to sit and stare at him. It was better to know where people were at after all.
When the other student looked up at him, Shinji thought it was his roommate, but a closer look told him it couldn't be. There was no smoke floating around his body. And besides, hadn't Shinji left Atushi in their dorm room just a few minutes ago? His curiosity piqued, Shinji abandoned his search for the book he was looking for and walked over towards the other boy.
As he drew closer, he grew more certain that this wasn't Atsushi. His roommate's hair wasn't that long. Stopping a few feet away from Ryou, Shinji started with the question on his mind. "Hello. I don't suppose you know Kisarazu Atsushi?"
Ryou looked back up from his schoolwork, momentarily quiet as he considered the student in front of him. He was getting used to being asked…that. They were twins, after all, and they did look almost exactly alike, save for Ryou's hair.
Ryou guessed if he ever cut his hair and Atsushi turned off his smoke and took off his glasses, no one would be able to tell them apart.
Slouching a bit in his seat, Ryou nodded hesitantly. "He's my brother," he answered. "I'm Ryou." Then he paused and studied the other. "Who are you?"
Shinji nodded. That explained the resemblance then. As he looked at Ryou’s face, he wondered if they were twins, he looked so much like Atsushi.
“Ibu Shinji. I’m Atsushi’s roommate,” he replied.
"Oh?" Ryou tipped his head to the side, curious now. He'd know his sibling had a new roommate…and he wasn't sure how much he liked the idea. Yet, Ryou liked the idea of moving into Ryuhana himself even less. The amount of people, the walls…the rules. He wasn't sure how he'd deal with all of it.
He had no clue how Atsushi did it. Even being this close to his brother's roommate, Ryou could feel his skin starting to tighten and crawl.
"Yeah, I guess he mentioned having one," Ryou murmured. "Uhm. Hi."
Shinji shuffled his feet, unsure of what to say next. He was sure Atsushi had told him about having a brother, but he couldn’t remember anything in particular about him.
After an awkward pause, Shinji ventured to speak. “So… Why don’t you two room together?” He thought that it would probably be more comforting living with family member than with a complete stranger, but maybe the two brothers didn’t get along. Or maybe the school wanted the students to get to know people outside their family.
"Because I don't live here," Ryou answered slowly. It was another question he was having to get used, in several variations, though somehow it just felt awkward to explain. Setting aside his pencil, he drew his hands up and rubbed the backs of arms, under the fabric of his gloves.
Was he…cold? Not really, but his lower arms were starting to feel strange. Numb, almost. And his head hurt just a little, though maybe that was the last traces of that man he'd touched while in the park the other day. He couldn't hear him anymore.
Couldn't feel him anymore either, he thought. "I…live off campus. With niisan."
"Oh." Well, that explained why they didn’t live together. But why didn’t Atsushi live with him? Shinji didn’t want to annoy the other boy so he decided he’d ask Atsushi about it later.
Looking at the books Ryou was holding, Shinji titled his head. “What’re you working on?”
Still running one palm over his lower arm, Ryou dropped his gaze to the open book. "English," he answered. "I have to write a paper on the culture of an English speaking country." And for some odd reason, he'd chosen England.
He didn't know much about England…which was why he had to do so much research. But that was probably the point of writing the paper to begin with, so he didn't think too much about it.
The numbness felt like it was spreading, he thought, though he really wasn't numb either. His arms just felt weird. Like his hands did sometimes when he took off the dampener. Ryou crinkled his nose at the sensation and flipped a page in the book. "What about you?" He was probably working on something, after all.
Well, unless he was like Ryou and just liked being in libraries.
Shinji made a face at the mention of English. Sure, he was decent enough with the language, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed the class. “Yuck. Well, good luck with it, I hope it‘s more interesting than it sounds."
He held up the piece of paper with some writing on it. “I‘m looking for a few books for a history project.” He looked at the books on the wall, and with a half smile he realized he was in the right section. He bent down to read the spines of the books, hoping that the books weren’t already checked out. A lot of his classmates were also focusing their papers on Feudal Japan; Shinji hoped he got to the library before all the good books were taken.
"It's not that bad," Ryou countered, unthinking. It was probably one of the classes he minded the least since coming to Ryuhana. And he didn't mind writing papers.
Giving presentations...was another matter.
And not one he wanted to think about. Drawing his arms tight to him and rubbing one upper arm harder with the other, he wrinkled his nose. This was getting annoying...and his head was starting to hurt just a little. "History's not bad either, I guess," Ryou murmured. And there were lots of history books at home.
“Well, it’s not my favorite, but no, history really isn’t all that bad. It’s interesting the things you can learn about the values of older cultures and seeing what effects those values have on civilization today. Of course, this project is boring, just the same material with the same question driving the research. Hardly enjoyable, especially when the professor just isn’t interested in that aspect of history anyway…” Shinji trailed off and glanced at Ryou, noting that he was rubbing his arm. “Are you cold? I guess it’s a bit chilly in here…” Actually, Shinji didn’t think it was that cold in the library, in fact he thought it was a bit on the warm side.
Ryou couldn't say he had any favorite classes at Ryuhana. He probably just liked English more than the others, but even then, sitting in a classroom listening to lectures about material he'd just read seemed...really dull. He was much more used to his private sensei's unconventional way of teaching, giving him assignments and letting him figure most of the information out on his own.
It made his actual classes seem easy, by comparison. The only difference was the pace that the lecture-classes moved at was faster.
"No...I," he paused, reaching up to rub a shoulder as the feeling spread. His head was starting to hurt more too, a subtle headache that was getting worse. "I'm not cold. My skin...feels weird."
Shinji stood up and turned to look at Ryou. His skin felt weird? "Are you allergic to anything?" His sister was allergic to shellfish, her usual complaint was that her throat felt weird after she ate it. Maybe Ryou was going through something similar?
"No, I...shouldn't be." He'd asked his mother a while ago, when one of the maids had been concerned about food allergies, and she'd assured him that neither of the twins had had any allergies when they were little.
She wouldn't lie about something like that either. He was sure.
But whatever it was, it was spreading down the sides of his ribs and his stomach, up his legs...even along his neck. "It just...tingles, almost like its numb, but it's not," he tried to explain, at a loss for words. His hands felt normal enough. And it wasn't painful, really; a moment later, the tingling in his arms subsided, spreading to his legs.
Shinji stared at Ryou and knitted his eyebrows. It sounded like when his feet fell asleep after sitting on them funny. But somehow Shinji didn't think that was it either.
"Do you think you need to go to the medical center?" It would be a pain to walk the other boy there when Shinji hadn't finished his research, but he didn't want Ryou passing out on the way if there was something wrong with him.
Ryou furrowed his brow and shook his head. Medical center meant doctors. Doctors meant needles -- and he'd rather not see either ever again. "No, I…it'll be fine," he decided; he couldn't say he was overly convinced of the idea himself, but if wasn't going to be, he'd rather just go home.
Maybe Oshitari-nii would know what was wrong.
"My hands feel like this sometimes," he murmured. "Just…never felt it everywhere before."
Shinji blinked. He'd heard that before, and silently cursed himself as he took a few steps back.
Ryou gave the other teen a puzzled look as he stepped away; had he done something...wrong? However, as the other stepped away, he felt his skin settle down. The numbness passed even quicker than it had come. So did the mild headache, though Ryou's head still felt strange. But not painful, he decided. Just not so heavy as it had.
"I...whatever it was," he murmrued, flexing his fingers and looking down at his hands and arms, "I think it's...over? Maybe?"
Shinji sighed, he really needed to stop getting close to other mutants until he could reliably keep his power under control for longer than five minutes.
“That was me. I boost the powers of mutants around me. So whatever it is that makes your skin tingle got amplified to be stronger somehow.” He looked at Ryou, wondering what mutation he had that make his skin feel so uncomfortable. It couldn’t be pleasant, judging by his reaction to Shinji’s power. Shinji would have to remember to not get close to Ryou. “Sorry,” he added after a few moments.
"You boo…oh." Ryou went silent for a moment, eyes wide and glancing from Shinji to his hands. If the other boosted powers, and Ryou's own was related to his skin, then no wonder the rest of his body had started to feel like he'd just taken off the dampener. That could have been dangerous.
Not dangerous dangerous; it wasn't like Ryou blew anything up and he did try to be careful about letting people touch him. But he hadn't realized his power would spread like that. Ryou frowned, perplexed. Did that mean his power would…spread to the rest of his skin eventually?
He didn't like that thought at all.
Still, he shook his head when Ibu-kun apologized and backed away. Ryou could understand doing that, and maybe even the feelings that went with it. He didn't like to get too close to most people either. "It's okay, Ibu-kun. It's not like you did it on purpose…you probably can't turn it off, right?" he guessed. That was something else he knew about -- and it was a pain. Considering, Ryou twisted in his seat and grab his school bag.
If Ibu-kun couldn't control his power then…maybe Ryou should control his own. Just in case.
He didn't wear a dampener at Ryuhana anymore, but he still carried one of them with him. The gloves were still more reliable, and his head didn't feel strange after wearing them for too long. So he saved the dampener for home -- or when he was around Atsushi. Pulling the device out of his bag, Ryou sat up and snapped it around his wrist, then pressed a couple of buttons to activate it. His hands went numb for a second, then normal.
Shinji stared at the books on the shelves after Ryou got quiet. This was the reaction he got from most people, an awkward silence followed by more backing up. Since the other mutant wasn't, Shinji took a few more steps away, just to be on the safe side.
He looked back at Ryou when he spoke again about controlling his power and sighed. "I can turn it down for a few minutes if I concentrate, but... It boosts itself back up after a bit." So no, for all intents and purposes he added silently, but didn't want to admit it out loud. Shinji turned back to the books. He was still very unhappy that he couldn't control his power the way his roommate could. Atsushi made it looks so easy, pulling in the smoke and letting it out again. Why wasn't his power like that?
Movement out of the corner of his eye drew Shinji's attention. He turned and watched as the other boy pulled something from his bag and put it on his wrist. Curious, Shinji took a step forward, then remembered why he had backed up in the first place and stopped, cursing himself again. "What's that?"
"At least you can turn it down for a little while," Ryou mused, picking up his pencil again. He couldn't even do that much with his own, needing a device just so he could touch people without his power grabbing at their minds.
As the other teen approached, Ryou only looked up and blinked. "It's a dampener," he explained. "It…shuts off my powers for me. So maybe yours won't bother mine." It worked with Oshitari-nii's powers, at least; the psionics couldn't touch his mind while Ryou wore it.
Shinji looked at the dampener as Ryou described it. "It shuts off your power?" That sounded a lot like the Cure. The Cure that Shinji had been brought in to help Rin fight off. He leaned against the shelf and looked up at the ceiling. "I don't think that'll work. One of the trainers here was accidentally cured. A friend asked if I could meet up with him and it turned out that I reversed the Cure." He couldn't say for certain that the dampener was the same, but Shinji was betting his power would reverse whatever it was doing as well.
But the dampener did bring two questions to his mind: would it work on his power and why did the other mutant have one? He decided not to ask either question, but Shinji was still curious what effect it would have on him.
"Yeah, for as long as I'm wearing it…but I can't wear it all the time." He'd tried to, but then whenever he'd take it off, his head would feel strange. Oshitari-nii had finally talked to him about it, and while the original idea was for him to wear it at school and not at home, Ryou found he preferred to go without it at school. His gloves were more reliable and it meant he didn't have to touch anyone if he didn't want to.
Though…it might not work? Ryou looked over at the other mutant, blinking. "I…oh," he murmured, glancing back at the device around his wrist. "That…okay. I should make sure I keep my gloves on them. So I don't touch anyone on accident…"
Shinji stopped himself from asking why he couldn't wear it all the time or why he would want to wear it all the time. "Well, it should work normally. My power just... fights it." Shinji stood up straight and looked at Ryou again. "It just means I can't stay near you."
And that brought up another question, one Shinji was more inclined to ask. "So what do you do, anyway?"
"Mmm," Ryou sighed thoughtfully. That had to suck, right? Not being able to get near other people -- well, other mutants. And in a school full of them.
It made him wonder why the school didn't give Ibu-kun an inhibitor of some kind. Surely they had them? This was where Shishido and Ohtori had gotten them from, after all. Though that was back when the government had been in control and imprisoning mutants, so…maybe they didn't have any of them now.
"Okay," he decided. "I wouldn't want to risk touching you on accident anyway…my power is…" He trailed off, chewing on his lower lip. "Tactile-based memory assimilation. When I touch someone, I…take their memories from them."
Shinji narrowed his eyes when he heard the scientific name for the other teen's power, then widened them when he heard what it did. Stopping himself from taking another step away from Ryou, Shinji thought out loud for a bit. "Oh... Well, I can see why you wouldn't want to touch other people, especially if you can't control it. I'd imagine that'd be awkward... Do you take everything, or..." Shinji trailed off. He realized the dampener wasn't only to keep Ryou from being uncomfortable, it protected the students of Ryuhana from something possibly worse than a physical mutation.
"Yeah…and, well. When I take stuff, it stays in my head. What I make people forget, I remember," Ryou explained. "And I can, if I touch someone for long enough. But if it's too long, I mess up my own memory too." He still wasn't sure how that worked; even with the small experiments he'd been doing the past few weeks since the festival, he didn't know exactly how long he had to hold onto someone before his own mind went blank.
He was barely figuring out to pick out just the bit he wanted of someone's mind.
"It's only my hands, though. I wear gloves most of the time so I don't do it on accident."
Now that had to be confusing, if the memories he took stayed with him. Shinji looked Ryou up and down. He didn't look like he was crazy, but since he lived with that power, Shinji assumed he had just grown accustomed to it.
"You mess up your own memory? Do you give it to the other person?" Shinji looked at Ryou's hands to examine the gloves. Black? Fashionable, but they didn't seem to suit him.
"Yeah, sometimes. I've only done it really badly once," he admitted, uncomfortably. "I still don't remember…much of anything from before I got my power." Only what his parents had told him and his brother, and little snippets of things, but none of that was really 'memories' of anything that had happened. "It's just weird if I touch anyone for a few days, most of the time. Like I have someone else in my head…"
Shinji shuffled his feet in the awkward silence that followed. His problems of not being able to control his power really didn't compare to losing your entire memory. And dealing with the memories of another person in your head. "Can't imagine it's good for you to carry multiple people around with you like that." That wasn't exactly what he had wanted to say, but Shinji thought it got the point across. And it was too late to take back anyway.
"It's…normally quiet. They go away after awhile," Ryou shrugged, looking back to his book. "Or…not really away, but they kind of fade out." Things were getting awkward again, the way they normally did whenever he talked about his power to someone. He knew it was a little dangerous, but…it's not like he picked it.
And he did try to be careful around people that he knew.
Seeing the other boy go back to his book, Shinji resumed his search for the book he was looking for. After a few minutes, he had finally located the book and pulled it out, flipping through a few pages to make sure it had what he needed. Satisfied, he turned to look at Ryou again.
"Good luck with your control, Kisarazu-san."
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