#Hoshi Soichiro | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

vashtijoy · 5 months ago

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This one is extremely strange, so strange that I think I must have got it wrong somehow? Here's a line from Akechi's Black Mask navigation. Yeah, you know which one this is going to be:

Here's the English audio:

Is it me, or is something a little... off, here? Look at the portrait. Doesn't he look a little... calm? Downbeat, even?

Here's another use of the same portrait. This is not a laughing statement:

Akechi has a laughing navigator portrait, of course:

it's okay goro we know you're very normal

So we've got a mismatch between the portrait and the English line. Let's have a listen to the Japanese audio:

They're a bit... different? He's not laughing, he's not gloating. Just "Huh, I guess that was a thing that happened..."

So what's going on here?

translation time

Akechi 敵1体逃走！仲間に見捨てられたようだね。 teki ittai tousou! nakama ni misuterareta you da ne This one just got betrayed by its teammate! Ha, imagine how that feels! [lit. One enemy fled! Looks like this one was abandoned by its friend, huh?] One more enemy out of the way! So this last one got dumped by its friend, huh?

Let's talk about 見捨てる misuteru—"to abandon". misuteru pops up regularly in the P5R script. It comes up when someone's being ditched, bailed on, forsaken by God—generally left behind: if your friends run out on you, you are being misuterued.

Are there any contexts where misuteru can mean betray? Sure. If you leave a friend held hostage to die, the shadow will accuse you of misuteruing them. nakama o misuteru is used consistently here, similarly to Akechi's line above—"you betrayed your friend by leaving them to die".

Here's Kawakami, at the end of her confidant, resolving to never abandon any of her students again:

Kawakami でも、これからは君のことも守るよ。教師として、絶対、見捨てたりしないから。 demo, kore kara wa kimi no koto mo mamoru yo. kyoushi toshite, zettai, misutetari shinai kara. But from now on, I'm going to protect you too. As your teacher, I will never betray you.

What does Kawakami do? She tries to help her student Takase, but in the end abandons him; she believes she betrayed him to his death. But she betrayed him by giving up on him; by abandoning him. She misuterued him.

Here's Futaba, during her apology to Joker for dumping him at the start of Maruki's reality:

Futaba てかむしろ怒るだろ!{F1 82}のこと見捨てたんだぞ!? te ka mushiro okoru daro! <given name> no koto misuteta n da zo!? Why wouldn't you be!? I betrayed you! Don't you get that!?

Under Maruki's influence, Futaba loses herself in her happy family life, and leaves Joker to handle things essentially alone. Futaba betrays Joker by abandoning him; she misuterus him.

how does akechi use misuteru?

Besides the usage above, Akechi has two other uses of misuteru in P5. One is in his deleted Mementos mission from the third semester:

Akechi 君たちのことだしこういう人間は見捨てておけないだろう? kimi-tachi no koto da shi kou iu ningen wa misutete okenai darou? Well, considering what you and your group do, I imagine you could hardly abandon him to his fate...

This doesn't mean "betray". There's no relationship between Joker and the mission target—there's no betrayal. There's just an abandoning—a refusal to help.

Akechi やっぱり馬鹿は⋯お前らだ。見捨てて行けば、よかったのに⋯ yappari baka wa... omaera da. misutete ikeba, yokatta no ni... The real fools... are you guys. You should have just abandoned me here a long time ago... [lit. the real fools... are you guys. if only you'd [just] abandoned me here...]

Now this line is a doozy. Look at that use of misuteru here; in vanilla, it was his only use of this word. Akechi has just got done explaining that being unwanted and cast aside is the thing he fears most of all. He has shaped his life around it. He's done murder for it. Everything he's become, he became, at base, because he was abandoned—because he was misuterued.

It's here, at the very end, that he turns his back on that. This unwanted child who has killed to be wanted—he looks at Joker and the Phantom Thieves on the other side of the engine room shutters, people who've proved that they value him and want him around, for himself. And he says to them—no; you're idiots; why didn't you abandon me, like everyone else has? He says to them, I won't let you die here, and I care about that more than I care about being abandoned.

Everything about Akechi is resolving at this moment. He transcends his obsession, fear and trauma. And that word misuteru is doing a ton of heavy lifting—because if Akechi can't have what he wants, then he'll reject it. He makes a free choice, for once in his life.

This moment influences him for the whole of the third semester. And when we hear him say misuteru later on, we should remember this. When black mask navigator Akechi notes the Shadow being abandoned to its fate, he isn't laughing about it; he's thinking about it. In his head, he isn't the betrayer, thinking of Joker in the interrogation room; he is the betrayed, being left behind by everyone he ever hoped would care about him. He's being left behind behind that engine room door.

This line as localised, taken in isolation, can transform your reading of Akechi's character and motives—which is why it's so important to look at the whole of canon, and not single cherrypicked lines. Step forward, "I hate you"

unhinged ranting

Lemme be clear here: this line has always pissed me off for its inconsistency. Akechi reacts against the engine room ending in the third semester, sure. Almost the first thing he does is to rub that deal they made in Joker's face. He's desperate not to be viewed as that pitiful object on the floor. He's desperate to keep up walls between himself and the others—for whatever reason.

But after 1/2, he doesn't really gloat about what he's done. He doesn't argue with Futaba's threat to him on 1/11—"if you ever betray us again, we'll make sure you regret it."; he just agrees to her terms, which he knows are well deserved. He's not walking around like "lol, I got you arrested and tried to murder y'all and there was that whole thing"; even unhinged combat Akechi doesn't do that. Except for this one line. When he suddenly reveals that, deep down, he thinks the whole thing was hilarious.

Except he didn't do that at all. If he did, I think he'd find the others tolerated him a lot less. And he's already walking a knife edge with many of them.

What was the translator's brief here? Honestly, I have no idea. Did they even have access to the original audio? Did they have time to play it? Did Atlus give them a brief to make this guy just as crazy insane as possible?—because we know they told Akechi's JP VA, Soichiro Hoshi, to underplay it.

Either way, I don't think the line as localised (and as delivered, excellently, by Robbie Daymond) corresponds to the Japanese audio. traduttore, traditore—translators are traitors. Even me

revision history

Click here for the latest version.

v1.1 (2024/6/18)—it's 1/11, not 1/13!

v1.0 (2024/6/18)—first posted.

#persona 5 #p5 meta #japanese language #goro akechi

224 notes · View notes

wannabepoeticischiya · 1 month ago

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if I can stop one heart from breaking

[ 04 ] — the flares of the sun

⟵ prev | master list | next ⟶

He existed in the morning dew, in the afternoon haze, within the illusions of twilight. He was there. In the silence of midnight, in the wake of dawn... he was there.

Hoshina Soushiro was everywhere... except right here. He existed in every corner of the cosmos-just not in the space beside her.

[Name] treaded the empty hallways of the Hoshina estate. Faint, rhythmic thuds of clothed feet making contact with the wooden floors resonated in the elongated space. Sunlight streamed through the gaps made by the opened screens, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air.

This time around, she dressed elegantly in a yukata dyed in a gentle hue of periwinkle—a far less pressuring choice of clothing than the one she wore eight days ago. When she oh-so-ceremoniously dropped both her mass and her kimono’s load on Hoshi—err, Soushiro.

A small noise echoed her footfalls, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once, startling the once deathly calm waters of her soul. It shook her body awake. Because even when she ceased her strides, the vibrations only grew—stemming from the center of her chest to reach every branch and root of her being.

At the mention of his name…

[Name] thought that she looked like a fool: standing in the middle of a barren corridor, covering her face that was probably steaming red because her heart would not relent its incessant longing for that—

“Hoshina-sama!”

The Uehara shamelessly turned her head so eagerly at the call. An instinct, a tug, a hurry to steal a glimpse at the face she yearned to see—whatever it was, it didn’t matter… all that occupied her head was that: ‘This is my chance’, and ‘Don’t blow it, act cool…’, with the addition of ‘Not like you’ve been stalking him all week to try and bump into him or anything’.

[Name] closed her eyes and heaved in a breath, putting a hand over her chest in an attempt to try and placate her heart’s erratic cries. What am I doing? I’m acting like a lovesick middle schooler! Pull yourself together!

As the curtains that fell on her irises finally rose, [Name] came to terms with the fact that she was an idiot. See what your twitterpated behavior brought home? Foolishness! Everyone here is a Hoshina! [Name] tried to conceal her chagrin, yet a frown still managed to carve its way onto her face at the sight of some nobody at the end of the hall.

He possessed the same narrow eyes and the thin eyebrows nearly every person in this Hoshina-infested place had, but his hair gave away that he was not the person that plagued [Name]’s dreams.

The person in her visions grew a field of heliotropes on his head, a shade of violet dark enough that it embraced the warmth of the sun… but this one had threads shaded in daffodils that only faded into lavender at the ends of their journey, entwined with one another like the cords of a bracelet.

[Name] did not deny that the man who stood at the opposing end did bear a resemblance to the Hoshina she was searching for, but then again… everybody here did. The Uehara let her illusion of apathy shatter, letting whoever decided to look her way know that ‘it wasn’t you who I wanted to see but here I am seeing you anyway’.

“Soichiro-sama?”

Soichiro paid no mind to the servant addressing his return, instead, he turned his attention to the figure of a woman walking down the section of the estate that would lead her to the dojos.

The silver-haired Hoshina tilted his head in wonder at the sight of the stranger who stood out like a sunflower in a meadow filled with asters. Despite not sparing a single glance in her general direction, he felt every stab and cut of her sharp stare. When her head rose like daybreak, gaze akin to sunshine piercing through clouds at the mention of his name, the stranger appeared as though she longed for someone to say that, like she wasn’t in a place where everybody can be called by that name—or perhaps she hoped that by some miracle, the bearer of the name was the person she was seeking.

Seeing as she brazenly displayed her disappointment at the sight of him, as though he was some revolting nobody, he could safely assume that he wasn’t the one on her list.

Still, a thought blossomed in his mind that maybe he’d run into her again… perhaps then, he might be able to help her find the right Hoshina.

“Sorry, what were you saying?”

[Name] was close to giving up, in fact, she wasn’t even sure why she was doing this in the first place. More than a week ago, she was sure that this whole endeavor was going to burst into flames within the first few days, but here she was… actually enjoying the warmth brought upon by the stars.

A small smile grazed her face at the memory, no longer tormented by the embarrassment she had to put herself through to step foot into that scenic moment. But how am I supposed to make this work when I can’t find him anywhere? She internally yelled, fisting her digits and drumming them in the air, looking like a toddler having a silent tantrum.

The woman sighed, her head mirroring the image of a wilted plant: downcast, devoid of hope, sad.

Honestly… what in the world am I doing?

Her muffled footfalls continued to echo within the corridors, travelling from one shoji screen to another before they clashed with the frantic melodies of wood colliding with each other. Bokuto?

For the first time since her previous dismay, [Name] let her eyes drink in her surroundings, finding herself nowhere near the gardens she had come to love. In the place of grass and vermillion leaves were wooden statues accompanied by racks of traditional weaponry. Training grounds.

The sound of lumber knocking against lumber continued to ring, filling the void left by the soullessness of the place.

“As expected of you, Hoshina-sensei!” [Name]’s ears perked at the name, feeling that all too familiar warmth bubbling in the oceans of her soul—right before her earlier half-wittedness came back to laugh at her face. Everybody here is a Hoshina, you loopy, lovesick loser! Get a grip!

A resounding slap blanketed the atmosphere for a moment not lasting more than a second, nearly overpowering the relentless sound of training swords parrying one another. C’mon me, you’re better than this! The sting on both sides of her cheeks helped ease the tremors in her heart. Towering waves of fervor crumbling at the sensation.

“Not bad, but you left yourself wide open.”

Everything fell silent after that. And for a moment, even the zephyrs ceased their eternal waltz, the waters that rushed through the gardens lulled to a dreamless state, rustling of what was left of summer that adorned the trees remained inanimate; a movie put on pause.

You’re… here.

With slow, calculated steps, [Name] drew closer to the one thing separating her from the person haunting the illusions of her everyday life. From the first light of dawn to the noontime haze, phantasms of the eventide, all the way to the fragments of the dead of night.

Her hand, unsullied by the hardships of life, reached for the screen that was opened halfway. This was her chance. Finally, after spinning in the never-ending vortex of asking the universe where he could be—he… he was finally here.

For a moment, [Name] felt the pieces of her hope waver, the threads keeping them together snapping one by one, allowing the vines that flowered doubt to bloom in their midst. Her hand suddenly weighed more than what she could bear, and in the place of her ardor, fear had triumphed. It’s been more than a week, what makes you so sure that he will be waiting for you behind this door? He’s avoiding you—

“Oh! Are you here to train, too?”

[Name] was just about ready to jump straight out of her own skin, startled beyond her wits as her eyes darted in every single direction to try and look for a face to attach to the voice. Her blood was pumping far too fast for her mind to reach, tunneling her vision to a single point. When she turned, nearly tripping over her clothing, she was met with the eager irises belonging to a young boy not older than the age of twelve.

“Hoshina-sensei—err,” the boy faltered, and the Uehara—even through the fuzziness in her ears—could have sworn she heard him mumble: ‘That’s weird, I’m a Hoshina too’.

Nonetheless, the child held a cheerful character, and when he spoke… it was as though the person he praised rivaled even the majesty of the gods above. “Soushiro-sensei is the greatest swordsman the whole clan has ever seen!”

So… you are here.

[Name] could only stare as the child talked animatedly about his teacher, trying his best to imitate the movements he saw the older Hoshina perform. “And he would go like bam and wham then whoosh! Sometimes, he would go zoom and before you know it, Sensei’s got you at the end of his weapon!”

The boy kicked and punched the air, swinging his arm in a fluid motion that remained as a mere shadow of its actual glory. [Name] paid no mind to it, after all, she was being told of its tale by a child when the doer of the action had many suns and moons ahead of him to burn those routines in his muscles. The woman spared a fleeting glance at the space that holds the wielder of those achievements before she followed the child who now stood in the center of the open grounds.

Warmth blossomed in her chest, as she found herself smiling fondly at the boy.

“But you know, lately he’s been acting weird!” He paced around the space he occupied for himself, startling the sand underneath his feet.

“Really? Why’s that strange?” she asked, reaching to smooth out the hair that managed to stick upwards because of his frantic movements.

The boy shook his head, as though the mere thought of his teacher’s strange behavior was a phenomenon even the most accomplished experts would not be able to elaborate. “I—I don’t really know his how to say it—”

How could a child speak of the way his teacher lags in his steps, like he was deliberately slowing down to wait for someone? The glances he’d spare to every open panel when he was the one who drilled into their heads the importance of never looking away from an enemy. His stutters in movement when soft strides would echo down the halls—or a distant echo of a woman’s laughter in the distance.

The younger Hoshina cut his sentence short and turned his gaze to the entrance of the dojo. And in his head, a lightbulb flickered to life.

“C’mon, I’ll show you.”

As he was about to grab the older woman’s wrist, he hesitated, glancing up to shyly meet her gentle stare, as though he was silently asking if it was alright for him to hold her so forwardly. Listen to me, Shin, we have a guest here. If you meet her, don’t go dragging her around without asking if it’s okay with her, do you hear me? I’ll know if you do that and you’re gonna get ten laps around the estate as punishment.

“Uhm… o-only if it’s cool with you.” Shin scratched his nape in an effort to hide his embarrassment, feeling his face burn a thousand degrees. His teacher’s words echoing in the valleys of his mind. He will know… he always does.

[Name] smiled at his shift in attitude, finding it oddly familiar—as though she’d seen someone dear to her act the same way.

“Of course, lead the way.” She gestured to the space before her only to feel something pull at the tips of her fingers. The force compelled her to put a foot forward, until the two of them stood with their heads peeking over one another, acting like creeps peeping into the public bath—or in this case, a dojo.

“Watch.” [Name] craned her head to behold the sight that left the child in puzzlement.

But all she saw was the face of the man she had longed to see for so long that it drove her to the brink of wanting to commit a crime (stalking). What would she even say if Soushiro was to catch her spying on him like this? She wanted to run. This was a bad idea. Stalking Blade Instructors wasn’t the reason she was brought to stay in this estate!

“I’m not really sure what I should be seeing…” she whispered, holding the shoji frame tighter as she silently planned her escape.

Soushiro’s steps were accounted for, every twist of his body, the parry his weapon would make—they made it so that the tides of the spar would favor him. When he raised his arm to land a strike at his opponent, the boy’s earlier imitation dimmed in comparison to witnessing the beholder’s execution. His action was fluid, firm, not a breath out of place—even as his hit was countered. Watching him felt like seeing the stars flicker to life one by one: the movement of his feet as he shifted his weight, the bends his wrists would perform when he gripped the blade at a different angle, pivots his heel would do when he dipped to catch his opponent off-guard and strike from below.

The Soushiro in the gardens dyed in golden sunrays had vanished. Here, in his place, was someone who looked like the welkin littered with a thousand lights.

[Name] was enamored all over again, fingers easing in on their deathly grip on the frame, taking with them her plans of fleeing.

But as soon as she faltered, Soushiro was on the floor with the weapon of his previously overwhelmed opponent pointing directly at his throat.

“See?” the voice below her pressed, dragging her back from her trance. [Name] averted her stare to look at the pensive expression decorating the face of her companion. Unsure of what to make of it all.

The Uehara Clan is indeed renowned for its skill with a blade… a hundred years ago. Only a select few still practice the art now, opting for the more practical approach of firearms and heavy artillery. [Name] wielded a blade, but she was never taught the depth of it—deemed unfit a knowledge for a lady.

So, when Shin expressed his troubles—even when he tried so hard to make it easier for her to understand, [Name] could simply not grasp what creature morphed from the nature of the instructor. And it crushed her heart to know she could not help him.

Perhaps it’s because Shin drank in everything his teacher did with the wishes to someday be like him, to follow his lead.

Or maybe, [Name] simply did not know where to look. Choosing to hide behind her ignorance instead of staring at the truth head-on. That she didn’t know what to see because she never witnessed what had changed.

“Something is bothering him, for sure! Seita sucks so bad that it’s actually kinda sad but he’s beating Soushiro-sensei even if it’s just barely because he sucks—”

“I can hear you, Shin.”

Seita, or so Shin had called, offered a hand to an exhausted Soushiro and hoisted him to his feet. He was the same trainee who was at the receiving end of Shin’s grievances—claiming he ‘sucks’ but still managed to outpower Soushiro even if it was by a hair’s breadth.

“Stop hiding behind the door.”

To [Name], everything felt like it was beginning to be coated in frost—like the world, or rather [Name], was trying to get everything to freeze. The Uehara had no words saved for this moment.

What was she supposed to say?

When Shin slides the door open, she’ll be unveiled right then and there with him. Soushiro will see her, and he’ll wonder what in the world is she doing here, standing next to his student like a weirdo. [Name] couldn’t even begin to formulate a single coherent thing to say to him! What a joke. Uehara [Name], famed within her clan to have the sharpest tongue, the princess who always had something to say, the one who feared no judgement… had been rendered speechless.

The sole slate of thought that formed in her head was that [Name], under absolutely no condition, let Hoshina Soushiro know that she was looking for him all week long.

Everything was thawing, and fast.

She had to play it cool, as though she wasn’t gazing out her window every chance she got to see if he would pass by. Or that violet began to be her favorite color seeing as she looked for it everywhere she went. And certainly not the secret desire she held in her heart—bracing herself at every corner she turned because she was hoping that he’d bump into her.

If she had to play as the coy woman, then so be it. This will not be a battle won by Soushiro—not when she had spent the past days drowning in the sea of missing him!

The shoji screen collided with the jamb, causing a loud thud to resonate in the room. In that instance, [Name] had already built the walls that would hide her lovesick soul.

A chorus of what sounded like bare feet meeting wood joined by the ruffling of clothes filled the void left by their intrusion. The students who were once seated had now stood at a certain pose: feet separated at a standard distance, hands held behind their back, eyes gazing forward. Even Shin, the boy she met in the hallway, had joined the line of his fellow trainees, standing next to Seita whom he had berated for his lack of skill.

Now’s not the time to gawk at all these Soushiro-looking youngsters, [Name]! He’s right there!

[Name] was left there to stand like a fool once more. She stood out like a sore thumb. In the sea of narrow eyes and thin eyebrows, she really felt like an outsider with her wide eyes and overwrought demeanor. It did not miss her stare that a few of those supposed ‘eyes ahead’ drifted in her direction.

How am I gonna go about this? She internally screamed, why do you have to open the door all the way, Shin?

“Oho~ I thought that the great Soushiro-sensei was nifty with a blade?”

What the hell was that? You idiot! [Name] wanted to run. She wanted to disappear. She was embarrassed beyond all rhyme and reason—even if her tone betrayed none of her internal turmoil.

Her voice sounded like it went on forever, waltzing in between the skies of these swordsmen until it finally found its way and sunk into the horizons of his heart.

Soushiro’s breath staggered at the melody of her presence, his heart thudding desperately against his ribcage… like it always had been for the past week.

His head, his soul, his everything—he was so full of her that he could hardly have time to be himself.

In the break of dawn, his first ray of hope is to see her again, like he didn’t just spend the duration of the sun basking in her grace. The shimmer of the afternoon heat would beckon his mind to conjure her image, causing his body to break free from the shackles of his routine. Using wooden swords didn’t make the impact hurt any less. When dusk would settle, her shadows loomed everywhere. Even the midnight sun shed its curtain of clouds to gaze at him through his window.

His foot swiveled in a manner that should have been no less than second nature, for he had done it on so many occasions: in training, times when he would go back halfway because he forgot something, or those pride-shattering, heart-wrenching moments when he would turn so fast all because he heard a voice speak—a voice he could have sworn belonged to the person standing at the threshold of the dojo.

The image of her here, right where he is, was something not even his most fervent dreams could ever begin to replicate.

But he couldn’t let her know that.

So, he smiled. Bridging the distance that held them from one another like a leash. Then he spoke, his usual tease present, yet brought alongside it was a whiff of relief—like he had been waiting for this day to dawn on him.

“What? Like you didn’t magnify me the other week; sayin’ I was an assassin for the Sovereign Ruler of the Darkside?”

The Uehara blushed a thousand shades of red at the reminder of her nerdiness. It’s not that she was ashamed of what she loved—but when he said it like that, like there was no other person better fit for the description other than him, it sent this hurricane of colors in her head.

“I just didn’t want to hold the rumors above you, that’s all.” She tried to cover, crossing her arms over her chest. “I had to see for myself what you were truly capable of.”

If his students did hear their exchange of words, [Name] was internally grateful that they did not act like it. It would eat away at what was left of her dignity, and she would be left with no other choice than to move to a new country, change her identity, and live her life as an entirely different person from before. In theory, of course.

“Now you’re lookin’ down on my abilities? I’m hurt.” He pouted, taking one step closer to gibe at her from a nearer distance.

[Name] scoffed, waving her hand dismissively at the swordsman’s accusation. “Hardly,” she said, trying to ward off the fires that threatened to set her face ablaze.

“And please refrain from making that expression, it’s quite a disturbing sight to see.” With her arms still twined with each other, her eyes sifted through his face—it wasn’t disturbing in any way. Before she could delve into her world littered with stars, a voice rose like the moon.

“Soushiro-sensei, who is this?”

“This is Lady [Name].” He introduced, and Soushiro made no grand actions. There were no exaggerated hand gestures, no extremities such as having his students bow with their foreheads kissing the floor to revere her as though she was a member of the Imperial Family. He didn’t even turn to address the person who had spoken without permission.

He simply kept his gaze fixated on her—weary that the image of her would shatter should he look away.

And [Name] could only wonder if he had stopped there because of her request (that he calls her by her first name), or because there was nothing left to say.

But to Soushiro… she is [Name].

All the formalities—or any other name—only fell deaf on his ears.

[Name] was her… and she was [Name].

In the face of that… nothing else mattered.

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance.” She politely bowed, raising her head a breath later, and continued, “Please do not hesitate to inform me if your instructor here is lacking in any way.”

Soushiro vividly remembers the sensation of staring at something incredulously bright—like the sun, for instance. Everything around him would bleed into darkness until it was only him and that big ball of gas in the sky.

In the place of that heavenly body in the sky was [Name], smiling haughtily at him. When all he could do was look at her, frozen. Like he was carving to memory the image that would last him a thousand seconds before it would crumble again, and he’d be left burning with the desire to see it again.

Soushiro was usually the one with the teasing remarks, the one to rile her into bursting into flames but here, in his own territory, he yielded defeat.

He could only smile and sigh, raising a hand of surrender hoping that it would halt the barrage of taunts [Name] had in store. “Don’t patronize me.”

[Name] laughed and Soushiro’s heart exploded like a star.

“Okay, I’ll stop.” She smiled, then she stole a glance at someone else. “Your student over there was worried that you’d lost your groove,” Soushiro followed the trails of her stare, “up your game a little, Soushiro-sensei~” finding that it led to one of the youngest present in the room, “or Shin-chan will sweep you right off your feet.”

If Soushiro could snarl at the kid, he would. But he was the adult and he had to be responsible. So, he chose to give him the message that Shin would be running those ten laps around the estate after all.

“Don’t worry, Shin… you’re gonna hafta run and train for many, many years to come before you can even think of holding a blade against me!” His cheery tone did not match the spirit of his message, leaving the recipient unsure of how to take it.

Shin felt far too terrified to meet his teacher’s gaze, so his eyes made a beeline to look at [Name] instead. As he did in the courtyard, his irises reflected the words he could not convey through his words, a voiceless cry for help. He’s gonna work me to the bone! Sensei is a hard worker because he’s gonna make everything harder for me!

How [Name] got all that, she wasn’t sure. How she was keeping her calm display, even more so! She was just about ready to combust right then and there. Her body felt like fire, flaring all around her. She feared she would set the place in flames.

“Don’t be so harsh on him, Sou—” Whatever was said after that, Soushiro no longer heard it. Even the fall of his name from her lips had come to a standstill. All he felt was the warmth blossoming on one side of his face, the pads of someone’s fingers brushing against the underside of his eye, grazing the curves of his ears.

“People are only that observant because they care. And you shouldn’t fault someone whose only intention was to make sure you’re alright.”

Her words were said in a faint whisper, so fleeting that he wouldn’t have caught them were she not standing so close to him.

Soushiro was plunged into freezing depths, like fire ceased to exist—or maybe it was [Name] retracting her hand and moving a few paces back. The same smile painted on her face, similar to the one she gifted him earlier, but this one was kinder by a mile. Soft. Warm. And he feared this one would only last him a hundred breaths before he would yearn to see it again.

“I’ll see you around, Soushiro-sensei.” [Name] raised a hand in farewell, her footfalls fading into a distant hum; shadows drawing down on him like a pen bleeding on paper.

Uncharacteristically, Soushiro let out a loud groan of annoyance before he padded to the doorway and slid the screen shut. Echoes of [Name]’s touch remained in his system, reaching his ears that were still shaded a hundred colors of red.

What are you doing to me?

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#chiya's head rent 🎐#kaiju no.8 #ao3 #kaiju 8 #kn8 #soshiro hoshina #hoshina soushirou #hoshina x reader #hoshina soshiro x reader #hoshina soshiro

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