Faux Flowers Errand PV Kazuo Closed

A new errand had been posted by the groundskeeper but Kazuo had been more preoccupied with the approach of summer break than chasing House Points so he hadn’t really looked into it until Ruka had invited him. Perhaps accepting the invitation without checking what the errand was about might not have been the smartest thing to do. It seemed the Groundskeeper was once again employing the students for some sort of manual labour. How clever, free labour in the form of ‘errands’ with the sad prize of a few measly house points and sickles. Well. He was stuck now. He could hardly back out after Ruka had asked him personally. As much as he would prefer to spend the day doing… well pretty much anything else… he could at least take solace in the fact that he would be wasting his time digging holes with someone whose company he enjoyed.

Dressed down in a simple outfit, unwilling to ruin his nicer clothes with what was inevitably going to be a dirty errand, he made his way down to the grounds. There seemed to be plenty of students attacking random patches of greenery in seemingly random ways. As he scanned the students, looking for that familiar shock of red hair and expressive green eyes - a colour he found fascinating - he couldn’t help but to think that employing the students would actually create more work in the long run. As he grew closer to the lake, noting the fun the other kids seemed to be having, tossing dirty and plants around, he mused that maybe this errand was less about the work and more about giving them the chance to release pent up energy.

Thinking about it that way, he could understand why other students might indulge though it didn’t make it any more appealing to him. Honestly, he wondered if he wasn’t being made fun of by the brothers. First the bike errand, now this. His lips pursed in a slight pout as he finally spotted Ruka, though they turned up into a smile almost immediately. He crept closer to his napping partner, noting the few holes he had already dug - barely any work done at all. He leaned over, staring down at Ruka’s relaxed features with curiosity. There was something fascinating about humans when they were sleeping. So unguarded and vulnerable. His eyes travelled to the scar on Ruka’s forehead and his brow furrowed, wondering where Ruka had gotten it. Scars were fascinating. Stories written on our bodies, indelible memories. Impulsively he reached out as if to touch the scar but paused, realizing his impulse was inappropriate. Instead he chose to lightly poke Ruka’s forehead.

“Napping instead of digging?” He teased with amusement. “Careful Cespedes-san doesn’t catch you or you might not get your reward~”

467/600

Reducio

OOTD

@Ruka Burnett-Tân

@Kazuo Shimada

T O P

J E A N S

It hadn't taken long for Ruka to doze off. It was warm out, without being uncomfortably hot, and the gentle sound of water against rocks was enough to make him feel relaxed to a point that sleep just came naturally. His arms were crossed behind his head to serve as a pillow, and his ankles were hooked together. Rays of sunlight hit his face and were sure to redden his pale skin more quickly than he would have liked.

It took a little while, but the first thing he dazedly realised was that something cast a shadow over his face, then there was a brush of movement, like something was hovering just over his head. The next thing he knew there was a poke at his forehead, and a familiar voice finally pulled him from the remains of his slumber.

Slowly, Ruka blinked his eyes open, lips immediately pulling into a grin at the sight of Kazuo standing over him. "Because I care so much about some Sickles and House Points," he said, rolling his eyes as he pushed himself to sit up again, gesturing for Kazuo to join him on the ground. The other boy had arrived in an all black outfit that stood in stark contrast to Ruka's wildly coloured clothes. "I'm mostly here for an excuse to mess up the Grounds and make them regret letting kids do their jobs." Laughing lightly, Ruka reached out for the extra shovel he had brought and handed it over to Kazuo.

Shuffling around, he managed to place himself with his back leaning against a rock, close to his messenger bag for which he reached so he could pull out a box of Bertie Bott's Beans and offer them to the other boy. Whether Kazuo would take one or not, Ruka fished out one for himself and carefully gnawed on it.

Reducio

1 - Almond 2 - Apple 3 - Baked Bean 4 - Banana 5 - Belly Button Lint 6 - Blackberry 7 - Black Pepper 8 - Booger 9 - Blueberry 10 - Blueberry Pie 11 - Broccoli 12 - Bubble-gum 13 - Buttered Popcorn 14 - Candyfloss 15 - Cherry 16 - Chicken 17 - Chilli Powder 18 - Chocolate 19 - Chocolate Cake 20 - Cinnamon

21 - Coconut 22 - Coffee 23 - Cranberry 24 - Cream Puff 25 - Curry 26 - Dirt 27 - Dirty Sock 28 - Dog Food 29 - Earthworm 30 - Ear Wax 31 - Envelope Glue 32 - Farm Dirt 33 - Feet 34 - Fish 35 - Fried Egg 36 - Grape Jelly 37 - Grapefruit 38 - Grass 39 - Gravy 40 - Green Apple

41 - Ham 42 - Honey 43 - Horseradish 44 - Ketchup 45 - Lemon 46 - Liver 47 - Lobster 48 - Marmelade 49 - Marshmallow 50 - Mashed Potatoes 51 - Mint 52 - Mustard 53 - Onion 54 - Orange 55 - Peach 56 - Pear 57 - Pepper 58 - Peppermint 59 - Phlegm 60 - Pink Grapefruit

61 - Pizza 62 - Roast Beef 63 - Rotten Egg 64 - Sardine 65 - Spaghetti 66 - Spinach 67 - Sprouts 68 - Strawberry 69 - Steak 70 - Sulphur 71 - Toast 72 - Toffee 73 - Toffee Apple 74 - Toffee Pudding 75 - Tomato 76 - Tripe 77 - Troll Bogey 78 - Tutti Frutti 79 - Vanilla Ice Cream 80 - Watermelon

______________________________________________

Flavour: [d80: 71]
-> Toast

Grateful that it wasn't anything too weird or disgusting, he easily chewed up the rest of the bean, pulling a face at the bland taste of bread. He would have at least expected something a bit more exciting than that.

Humming to himself, Ruka placed that box of Every Flavour Beans between them, just in case Kazuo wanted to snack on them.

"Jack says Errands are an opportunity to try something new," he told Kazuo with a look that said he didn't quite agree with his brother's opinion on the matter. "A new experience so to say. I'd call it child labour but I suppose a rose by any other name..." He shrugged his shoulders and dug his shovel into the ground next to him, just a small distance from one of the other holes he had dug so far. "I figured if anyone could appreciate a new experience it'd be you." Scrunching up his nose, Ruka playfully poked his tongue out at Kazuo. "At the very least I thought you'd be good company, so thank you for showing up." He smiled lightly. "Been a while since it's just been you and I."

|Word Count|
523 + 503 = 1026/600
C O M P L E T E

He watched with interest as Ruka slowly came around and grinned up at him. He returned the grin, laughing at Ruka's response. "But House Pride and all that rubbish." He replied. "And two whole sickles! That's a lot of candy money!" He had seen more than a few students sneaking off to Hogsmeade to waste their money on candy after errands though he couldn't understand the draw of sweets himself. He wondered what kind of sweets Ruka liked, if any. "I bet you're a pepper imps type of person." He mused with a slight smirk. He took the shovel with a reluctant sigh, shoving it into the ground before gracefully sitting down beside it. "He probably has a spell to fix everything after the students wreck it all. I can't imagine him actually letting us dig holes everywhere if he didn't."

As he settled into a cross-legged position, he watched Ruka pull out a box of those awful jelly beans. He eyed the box and wrinkled his nose. "Those things are disgusting."

He considered the errands he had taken part in over the year, nodding slightly. "I think it depends on who is hosting them. The ones the prefects host seem to be about new experiences. The ones the staff host… seem more focused on child labour…" He agreed with a chuckle then atched a brow at Ruka. "I don't think digging holes qualifies as a new experience." He shot bag, sticking out his tongue in return. "Of all the errands you could invite me to, you just had to choose the one that involves dirt and sweat." He wrinkled his nose in distaste.

"Since I'm such great company, I'll happily talk while you dig." He offered the one-sided proposal with a wicked grin. "Yeah, May was pretty busy… I can't believe it's almost summer break. What have you been up to? Caught up on your schoolwork? Keeping Jack out of trouble?" He asked, giving a chuckle at the last question then smirked a bit as he added another. "Rescue anymore damsels?"

467 + 355= 822/600 - Complete

Reducio

OOTD

@Ruka Burnett-Tân

@Kazuo Shimada

T O P

J E A N S

Ruka snorted ungracefully. "Two whole sickles?" he repeated in a high pitched voice, laced with exaggerated excitement. "Gee whiz, just think of the half a dung bomb I could get with that!" He grinned brightly at Kazuo's comment about candy money, then tilted his head to the side at the mention of Pepper Imps. He did have a pack of them in his bag, but he felt like eating candy that made one spit fire around so much greenery was possibly not the safest idea. "I'll take pumpkin pastries over any sweets," he decided after a moment of thought. "What kind of treat are those two sickles gonna buy you?" Not that Kazuo needed errand money to get him snacks, but Ruka was curious about what the other boy would treat himself with. Something sour maybe? He couldn't exactly imagine Kazuo nibbling on chocolate frogs and Jelly Slugs, but who could really say for sure he didn't just get the wrong impression?

Humming in vague disappointment at the thought that their Groundskeeper likely knew of a spell to easily clean up their messes, Ruka popped the rest of his Jellybean into his mouth and poked his tongue out at the other boy once he had swallowed. "Just toast," he pointed out. "Disgusting won't bother you once you've gone scavenging for food in bins behind restaurants." He chuckled, then reached into the box of beans and fished out three different ones to let one each drop into the holes he had dug so far. "Magic Beans," he told Kazuo with a far too serious nod to actually be sincere. "This time tomorrow we could be climbing an Ear Wax flavoured beanstalk up into the sky." Grinning, Ruka shovelled some dirt back into the holes and flattened it with the back of his spade.

Packing the rest of the beans away again, Ruka nodded his agreement to Kazuo's words. It was true, most staff organised errands were very focused on putting students to work, rather than teaching them any new and relevant skills. "You mean Spring Clean the Library! isn't something kids do for the sake of experience?" He placed a hand across his chest as if deeply disappointed by that revelation. His faux outrage, however, quickly turned into laughter when Kazuo commented on the nature of the errand Ruka had invited him to. "I'm all about dirt and sweat," he pointed out confidently, pushing his shovel into the ground and digging away more soil. "If we're gonna be part of each other's lives then you may as well at least get used to watching me get my hands dirty every once in a while." After all, Ruka doubted he would have been able to survive if he'd been picky about getting dirt under his fingernails. Kazuo, on the other hand, seemed like the mere thought of physical labour was revolting to him, so of course he would have sat back and embraced his role as Ruka's Company of Choice.

"Have it your way," he agreed with a dismissive wave as he dug up yet another hole before leaning back against his rock again for a moment. He let his eyes flutter shut for a while as he listened to Kazuo's questions, humming noncommittally in response to the first part. "Should be able to keep my grade average," he announced brightly. For a while there he had struggled with Charms like he usually did but with some extra practice he had caught up with the rest of the class in no time. "Which is really more than I could ask for after having missed three months." At being asked if he was keeping Jack out of trouble, Ruka released a laugh, opened his eyes again and continued digging up more earth from his most recent hole. "An impossible task," he told Kazuo with a little shrug, eyes sparking with dampened amusement. He felt like he barely knew what his brother was up to anymore these days, so keeping him out of trouble had become even harder than usual.

It was the last question, however, the one that made Kazuo smirk like he knew exactly what he was doing, that gave Ruka pause. His mind raced with thoughts and memories, feelings and sensations. There was no doubt in his mind that the other by was talking about Winnie, but what was he supposed to say?

"I've had enough of being a hero for a lifetime, I think," he decided on after a moment, putting his shovel to the side and crossing his arms over his chest. He mustered Kazuo for a while, brows furrowing as he considered what he wanted to say next. There were things he wanted to talk about, get some insight on, and he valued Kazuo's opinion. He wouldn't have known who else to talk to, though he also wasn't sure if Kazuo considered them close enough to be having a heart to heart.

"Kaz," he started thoughtfully, letting his arms drop to his side again. "Have you ever kissed someone?"

He chuckled at Ruka’s exaggerated response, contemplating the value of two sickles. It wasn’t much, really, but to kids his age he supposed it probably seemed like a lot. Particularly if they didn’t come from wealthy families like he did. It made him wonder why the wealthier students would even bother with these errands. “Pumpkin pastries? Really?” He shook his head in mock dismay. “And I was so sure you’d go for the fire breathing.” He thought about what sort of treats he would buy, leaning back to rest his hands behind him and stare up at the blue sky above. “I don’t really like sweets all that much. Especially here where everything is really sweet. I suppose… have you been to that tea place in Hogsmeade? Madame Weirdname. Something to do with feet. Anyway, they have this lemon tart there. Not the one-percent-lemon-ninety-nine-percent-sugar kind. They actually taste like lemon, nice and sour. I like those. Two sickles could get me… maybe two?” He chuckled, looking back at Ruka as he chewed on his nasty jelly bean.

“Scavenging…?” He gave Ruka a slow blink as he processed what the older boy was saying. “You had to do that?” His brow slowly furrowed at the thought of Ruka as a young kid, having to scavenge in bins for food. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know poverty existed but the closest he’d ever come to it was seeing some of the homeless in the parks in Tokyo. He’d never seen a homeless child, though. Certainly not a wizard child, that was unheard of. He watched Ruka plant the jelly beans, the entire act of it pulling him away from his unhappy thoughts. “Did you trade your last cow for them?” He teased with a slight smile.

He watched Ruka as he continued to dig holes in the ground, pondering if Ruka had any actual purpose or pattern to his digging. “Dirt and sweat, is it? I would think that, being a wizard in training, you might give up your dirt-loving ways and join the rest of us in a world with minimal manual labour.” He teased with a laugh. “I’m not just watching. I’m supervising. Making sure you don’t dig holes in the wrong places.” Though he protested the very idea, Kazuo still picked up the shovel and began to dig up some nearby weeds. One could hardly call his effort particularly energetic but it was effort nonetheless. He might find the work distasteful but he wouldn’t leave Ruka to do it all on his own.

He continued to unearth plants while Ruka relaxed and answered his questions. He also laughed when Ruka admitted that keeping Jack out of trouble was impossible but he grew silent at Ruka’s reaction to his last question. He paused in his half-hearted digging, planting the shovel in the ground and giving Ruka his full attention. The older boy was obviously thinking about something much deeper than the light tease he had meant to toss in Ruka’s direction. He remained quietly, patiently waiting for Ruka to find his words, understanding that sometimes it was hard to find the right words. The words that finally came, though, he was not expecting.

“K-kissing?” He replied in surprise. “No. Well, family I guess but not the kind of kissing I’m assuming you’re talking about? I don’t really see the appeal of it. How is mashing lips together supposed to signify love or even attraction? It’s such a weird human behaviour. Anyway, who would I even kiss?” He gave an honest enough answer but then he turned the focus back onto Ruka. “What does kissing have to do with being a hero? Were you offered a kiss as a reward for saving a life?”

Reducio

OOTD

@Ruka Burnett-Tân

@Kazuo Shimada

T O P

J E A N S

Ruka tilted his head back a little as he laughed at Kazuo's assumption that he would opt for Pepper Imps if given the choice. Raising his eyebrows, Ruka reached over to pull the pack of fiery treats from his bag as well to wave it in the other boy's direction. "You're not wrong," he admitted and set the pack down next to him, signalling for Kazuo to help himself if he wanted any of the candy, though by the Hufflepuff's own words he didn't exactly seem to have much of a sweet tooth. "I really just like food." Almost any kind of it. Sweet, sour, savoury, it was all special. There was so much, too, so many different ways to prepare the same ingredients to get a differently tasting result each time. It was fascinating, made him think of Potions in a way. Maybe, if he had had a normal Muggle upbringing, he would have strived to be a Chef.

"Lemon tart," he repeated thoughtfully, nodding along with Kazuo's words. Most candy and pastries really did seem to be more sugar than flavour. Sometimes it was hard to tell what you were actually eating. "I know that Teashop. Had to decorate it for an Errand last year, but I've never bought anything in there. Seemed a bit kitschy for my taste." He chuckled, thinking about the frilly decorations in the shop windows. "Guess I'll have to go and try their lemon tart sometime, then. See if it can measure up to those pumpkin pastries." Two sickles could get them two tarts. Maybe he could use his Errand reward to treat Kazuo to one.

Then, he leaned forward a bit and wagged an accusing finger through the air. "However," he said, raising his eyebrows at Kazuo. "Am I to understand that you are visiting Hogsmeade without permission?" He gasped in mock outrage. "Aren't you too young to leave school grounds unsupervised like that?" Grinning at the other boy, Ruka wiped his fingers against the grass as if the bean he had just eaten had left any traces of stickiness behind.

With a quiet hum, Ruka tilted his head to the side when Kazuo questioned his statement about having had to scavenge for food in bins. "On bad days," he said with a small smile. It wasn't that big a deal to him, especially not anymore, but Kazuo almost sounded a little surprised at the fact that a reality like the one Ruka had lived through actually existed. "You wouldn't believe the things people throw away sometimes." Or maybe he would. Maybe he'd seen food get wasted like that first-hand. "One man's trash is another one's treasure, right?" Such was life on the streets. You had to take what you could get and value it for what it was.

Smiling brightly at his buried beans, Ruka laughed at Kazuo's comment before nodding a little dramatically. "Poor old thing," he said with an exaggeratedly sad expression. "But sacrifices had to be made so I could find the realm of ridiculously rich giants." Not that the wizarding world didn't have enough giants already, some of them probably quite rich as well. "What'd that Giant need all that gold for anyway," he questioned curiously. "Didn't sound like they were selling any lemon tarts for him to buy up in the clouds." With a lopsided grin he watched as Kazuo moved to dig at some weeds with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

The gesture made Ruka smile, expression smoothing into something relaxed. "I don't like the thought of relying on magic," he admitted amusedly, though it was a concern that had crossed his mind multiple times but he had never voiced before. "It feels good to know that I could go without it if I really had to. You never know what might happen, right? One day you have everything, the next you've got nothing at all. I don't think I'll ever get used to wizards and witches using magic to fix almost all of their problems with minimal effort." He shrugged as he threw some more dirt in the bag he had moved a little closer to Kazuo by then. With the other boy having grown up in the magic world, Ruka suspected that solving problems with magic was something he was quite used to.

He laughed at Kazuo's comment about supervising his work and harmlessly flicked some dirt in the boy's general direction. the force behind it was not nearly enough to actually propel it anywhere close to him. "Supervising," he said with a wink. "Pulling the strings while other people are doing the dirty work, was it?" He recalled Kazuo saying something like that when talking about what kind of job he wouldn't mind doing once their education was done. "Best to get in some work experience early on." He chuckled and watched for a moment as Kazuo kept digging despite seeming so reluctant to get his hands dirty. Something about that warmed Ruka from the inside.

The other boy only ceased his - halfhearted but still - efforts when Ruka had started struggling for words only to come out with one of the probably most unexpected questions he could have asked. It definitely surprised Kazuo at least, who did a good job at answering as calmly as possible anyway.

"I thought, maybe you and Dee..." Ruka said quietly when Kazuo questioned who he was supposed to kiss anyway. Of course, Dealla had told him that their Ball date was for other reasons, but that didn't necessarily have to mean that they didn't like each other in a deeper way than mere friendship, right? Shaking his head to himself, Ruka pulled his knees close against his chest and hugged his legs to himself, staring at the randomly scattered holes he had dug so far.

The question about whether he'd been offered a reward kiss made him laugh, though the sound wasn't quite as full as it still had been moments before. "In a way," he said quietly. "You... I seem to do this thing where..." He paused, unsure how to really explain himself. How could he when he didn't even understand what was going on in his own head? Taking a deep breath, he shook his head, deciding to pick a different approach. "I kissed Winnie," he said quickly, like pulling off a bandaid. "And I... Don't really know why. One moment she gets close and touches my hair, next thing I know my brain just kind of..." He lifted both hands and wiggled his fingers while mimicking an explosion sound. "Same thing happened with Flash last year and I..." He groaned quietly, rubbing the palms of his hands across his eyes. "I can't figure out what's wrong with me." With his hands still covering his eyes, Ruka rested his elbows against his knees. "You seem good with... emotions. Got any pills you can prescribe me for that, Doc?"

Kazuo glanced at the pepper imps and shook his head. "As fun as it is to breathe fire, they leave my throat dry and I didn't bring any water." He replied in explanation of his refusal. "Food is a universal human experience." He mused with a slight smile. "Cooking and eating, sharing meals is arguably one of the oldest human rituals. Kitschy?" He asked, unfamiliar with the word or its meaning. "It's the only place to get decent tea. My parents usually send me tea but sometimes I run out and the school tea is bland crap. They have other pastries too, and little sandwiches."

He stuck out his tongue at Ruka when he brought up the fact that technically Kazuo wasn't permitted to go down to the town unsupervised. "How do you know I wasn't there on a supervised visit?" He asked with a smirk. "Honestly, I wandered around Tokyo alone. I think a trip to some tiny village in the middle of nowhere is hardly a problem. The professors have the weirdest rules. Don’t let the children go into town to buy candy but let them wander the dungeons where the hags are said to dwell." He made a face at that. “Pretty sure a cup of tea and a lemon tart isn’t going to kill me.”

He shook his head in… what? Dismay? Disappointment? The feelings Ruka elicited in him with his admission were strange. He wasn't an overly empathetic person most of the time, especially when he could often see how people would clearly bring their misery on themselves but there was something about Ruka, a child, having to live off the scraps of others. It felt wrong to know that the adults in his life had failed him. The same way he grew angry when he thought about how little it seemed the adults were doing to protect the students here at Hagwarts. There was an injustice there that bothered him deeply.

"I can imagine. People can be very wasteful. It's a shame." He added the quiet reply, staring down at the hole he had dug. "This errand is a good example. The absolute ego of humans, cultivating and destroying in turns simply because they can. Why dig up these plants only to plant different ones? A waste of life, a needless sacrifice, for aesthetics." He might have lived a life lacking for nothing, might be too frivolous with money because of it, but the nature of his upbringing kept him from being completely wasteful like most wealthy people tended to be.

He chuckled at Ruka when he continued with the Beanstalk story then affected a sorrowful expression. "Those poor giants, having all that gold but no lemon tarts. Maybe if you bring them tarts, they'll trade their gold and you won't have to fight them. You could set up an entire trade system with them." He grinned and winked. "I'll be your manager for a fifty percent cut."

He considered Ruka’s point of view on magic, his grin widening to an eager smile as the other boy talked. “An unexpected point of view.” He spoke and there was approval in his tone. “How many students do you think could defend themselves if they lost their ability to do magic? From what I’ve seen, not very many and those that could tend to be among the mudbloods or focused around the Quidditch teams.” He shook his head in disapproval. “Hubris, too much. Forgetting that magic is a tool but not the only one. Forgetting that wizards are still human, no different from the ‘muggles’, ‘no-mags’ or whatever other word they have for them. Human ingenuity goes so far beyond a single tool.” He paused then, giving Ruka a lazy grin. “Not that I don’t intend to wholly take advantage of all the benefits of magic, but I have no intention of growing completely reliant on it, either.”

Kazuo had meant the question about who he might kiss to be rhetorical but Ruka provided an answer nonetheless and the answer was not one he expected. It drew a giggle from Kazuo, shaking his head vehemently in denial. “Don’t get me wrong, I like Dee. She’s smart, witty and likes to cause shit. But I’m not interested in dating or kissing or any of that. I’d rather be her friend. We’re kids. The value of friendship is far more important to me than pretend relationships that are doomed to fail.” There was a cynicism to his view that wasn’t entirely misplaced. He’d already seen how many of his classmates ‘date’ and ‘break up’ and ‘date’ someone new in a matter of weeks.

He fell silent as Ruka continued, expression growing serious as the older boy explained why he had asked his question. His eyes narrowed to slits, lips curving downward in what was becoming a rather unfriendly scowl as Ruka spoke of puppygirl and kissing and hair touching and Flash. He took a slow, deep breath, distracted by a growing sensation he didn’t like in the pit of his stomach. Ruka was asking for help, he could sort out his reaction later. “I don’t think it’s all that strange for teenage boys to end up kissing girls? Hormones and whatnot?” He pointed out with a calmness he didn’t feel. “Why was puppygirl getting close and touching your hair? I thought she was obsessing over Jack. Wait. This isn’t some weird twins thing is it…?” Kazuo’s expression shifted to disgust at the thought. “And what happened with Flash that made you want to kiss him? Was he also getting close and touching your hair?” Kazuo arched a brow. He didn’t entirely understand what the issue was so he prodded for more information, trying to understand. “Why do you think there’s something wrong with you?”

Reducio

OOTD

@Ruka Burnett-Tân

@Kazuo Shimada

T O P

J E A N S

Ruka hummed his understanding when Kazuo refused the Pepper Imps. Breathing fire did tend to dry out one's throat, and he had to admit that he hadn't thought of taking anything to drink with him either. It would have probably been a good idea to, considering it was a warm day and they were supposed to be digging up weeds.

Smiling lightly, Ruka nodded along with the other boy's words on food and sharing meals. He remembered sitting around bonfires with other street performers at night sometimes, handing around bread and canned foods. Not being alone had somehow made the food taste better than it usually did. What a strange concept to someone who usually enjoyed being alone as much as Ruka did. "Kitschy," he repeated when Kazuo questioned the word, and it took him a short moment to realise that the other boy was possibly not familiar with it. He pulled a face as he tried to come up with a way to describe its meaning. "The decorations there, they're a bit... excessive. Kind of showy but not really all that nice to look at. Kind of makes you feel like you got lost in someone's grandparents' storage room." He wasn't sure if that was helpful at all, kind of wished he had his phone to look up a definition that was easier to understand than what he'd just been trying to say, but he hoped it would do for now.

When Kazuo talked about tea, Ruka found himself straightening up in interest. He liked tea, personally, though it was rather because of the memories of warmth flooding through him whenever he got to take a sip because a merciful stranger got him some tea from the closest cafe. Kazuo, however, seemed to genuinely enjoy the beverage if he actually had his parents send him some. "Bland?" he asked curiously. Was tea supposed to taste different from what they served at Hogwarts? More flavourful? "What's the difference between the tea we have here and the one in Hogsmeade? Or the one your parents send you. I didn't realise there was much you could mess up when it comes to tea." He gnawed on his bottom lip for a moment, feeling ignorant about something he thought he was supposed to have a better understanding of.

He released his lip again to grin, eyebrows raised, as Kazuo questioned how he was so sure he hadn't been there on a supervised trip. "Let's see," he said, humming with amusement. "You said you sometimes run out of the tea your parents send you so you must've gone to that place more than once to get decent tea, and it must've been during the school year. You're not a third year, and the only time I recall younger students being allowed in Hogsmeade was that errand last year that I don't think I've seen you around for. For the best, probably, it involved physical labour." He grinned teasingly and waved a dismissive hand through the air. It wasn't like he didn't fully agree with Kazuo's view on school rules anyway. Students were allowed to do all sorts of dangerous stuff, and in a way it seemed like there was more opportunity for kids to harm themselves on school grounds than in the calm little village close by. "Well, just to make sure you should take me along next time," Ruka decided with a grin. "You can introduce me to decent tea and lemon tarts, and I can make sure you get back to school with all your limbs still attached." He chuckled, though the sound quieted at the way Kazuo shook his head over Ruka having had to resort to desperate measures to get food sometimes.

Was it disapproval? Not for Ruka himself it seemed, at least. Maybe it was just something Kazuo couldn't really imagine; something that lay outside of how he thought the world should be working. It made Ruka smile to hear the other boy's acknowledgment of people's wastefulness, but it turned into a thoughtful frown soon enough when the attention was turned on the errand and people's need to destroy things just to build something more to their liking. It was enough to make him put his shovel to the side. "If everything has a spirit," he said slowly, recalling the conversation about Kazuo's beliefs they had had just a couple of months ago. "Does that mean we're disrupting the balance by messing with nature like that?" He didn't think he had ever destroyed anything in nature for the sake of making anything prettier before he had come to Hogwarts. Used the resources it had provided him with to survive, yes, but needlessly destroy like this? It suddenly seemed wrong to even think of uprooting those plants that had just naturally been there first. Carefully, Ruka reached out to trace the edge of one of the holes he'd made with a fingertip as if apologising to the soil.

He brightened up again when Kazuo indulged his questions about the beanstalk story. "Fifty percent?" Ruka asked, raising his eyebrows at the other boy. "That seems steep. Think of the dangers I face and the time and effort I have to put into climbing up and down for each trade. You can have thirty percent, safety from the giants, and the occasional lemon tart." He grinned and offered his hand to Kazuo. "That we can shake on."

What Ruka had thought was an unnecessary elaboration on a simple tease, elicited a pleased reaction from Kazuo, who immediately latched onto Ruka's view on magic to offer his own opinion. It was impressive to him, how aware the other boy seemed of the fact that magic was nothing but an extra skill, a single tool that made them different from any Muggle out there. "Make use of what you've got," he agreed with a nod. "Of everything you've got, not just the one thing that seems most powerful. If you don't develop any other skills you're left with nothing if that one fails at some point." He smiled. "Gotta be able to adapt when the need arises." Despite their drastically different upbringing, Ruka could feel a comfortable understanding between himself and Kazuo. He was infinitely glad to have asked the other boy to join him for this errand. "You call them Mudbloods," he pointed out after a moment, though not in any accusatory way. While he was aware that it was supposedly a derogatory term, he also knew that his brother was under the impression that it should be normalised to a point it would lose all negative connotations. He wondered if that was something he had also advertised to Kazuo. "Is that because of Jack?"

Ruka's sheepish assumption that maybe Kazuo and Dealla had a deeper relationship to each other than visible at first was met with an unexpected giggle, the ultimate sign that Ruka had been very wrong. He smiled a little at the other boy's words, nodding along, though he grimaced a bit at the cynicism in his words. "Doomed to fail," he repeated with a small chuckle. "I don't think it's that simple, is it? Maybe we're all still young, but isn't that exactly the right time for us to try to figure out what works for us and what doesn't?" He let his gaze drift down to stare at a scar between his knuckles for a moment, then looked back up with a slight smile. "Trying is the only way we can move forward, isn't it? If we just accepted that things are doomed to fail we might end up missing out on things that could make us happy." Shrugging, Ruka leaned back, shuffling into a position that would allow him to stay comfortable through the part of the conversation that was the most uncomfortable for him.

As he talked, Ruka could watch the expression on Kazuo's face shift into something dark and displeased, and for a moment he wondered if it had been a bad idea to confide in the other boy. It didn't seem like he was happy to talk about this; Maybe Ruka had overstepped and assumed too much about how close they were at this point. However, then Kazuo offered his own opinions, and it didn't sound like he was too opposed to talking Ruka through his problems, so he felt himself relaxing a bit.

It didn't seem strange to the other boy, apparently, that Ruka would end up kissing someone, but then why did it feel so horribly wrong?

A short laugh escaped him when Kazuo called Winnie "puppygirl", the nickname feeling almost eerily accurate. "God, I hope not," he said quickly when Kazuo questioned if her affections may have been some weird twins thing. It wasn't an unreasonable though; Ruka's first assumption had also been that she had been drawn to him because of his similarities to Jack. "I think she's just lonely. Her dad left, she doesn't really seem to have any friends. She's probably just a bit... eager to connect." A little disturbingly so, but who was Ruka to really judge?

Kazuo's next question concerned Flash, and Ruka shuffled a little uncomfortably at the memory. "Guess he was lonely too," he said quietly. "I just wanted to... see what was wrong, make him feel better, maybe. He kept touching me too and I freaked out." Closing his eyes, Ruka rubbed his knuckles across the bridge of his nose. It didn't seem like Kazuo really thought there was an issue with anything he'd said and Ruka struggled for a moment to try and find the words to explain.

"You're supposed to want to kiss people because you like them, right?" he asked, gnawing on the inside of his cheek for a moment. "I seem to do it because... Because I panic?" He pulled a face of disgust at his own strange tendencies. "I think I gave Flash the wrong impression when I kissed him. Winnie too, I guess. I don't want to date either of them." He shuddered visibly, hugged his knees closer to his chest. "I don't really... know why I did it except they were both close and I didn't know what else to do. That's not normal, is it?"

Kazuo listened to Ruka explain the word 'kitschy' by describing the way the tea shop was decorated, nodding in agreement with his assessment. "Like tacky?" He asked, thinking that might be a synonym. The tea house was pretty tacky. "Grandparents storage room…" This drew a chuckle and a nod of agreement. "The owner might be somebody's grandmother… But I agree the decorations are pretty bad." He considered Ruka's questions about tea then shrugged. "We mostly drink green tea at home. Sencha or matcha. The school tends to serve this weak black tea at breakfast. It's okay, I guess. But there are lots of different types of tea, not just English Breakfast and Earl Grey, you know." He said with a chuckle. "The tea shop has more types, like oolongs and assams and China greens. I don't even know what they all taste like… Oh and there’s lots you can mess up. Water temperature, how long you steep it for, the tea to water ratio. Lots of people think that if you want more flavour you should steep the tea for longer but that actually makes the tea bitter. " Kazuo stopped abruptly, realizing that he was rambling about tea of all things. He flushed a bit in embarrassment. “Sorry, you probably didn’t care about any of that.”

He looked down at the hole he was digging, spotting a scurrying beetle, watching it run away from his destruction as Ruka teased him about going to Hogsmeade. “Oh no, I’ve been caught by an upperclassman! Whatever will I do! He might rat me out to the Prefects!” Kazuo responded with a smirk, shifting his gaze back to Ruka and sticking out his tongue. “Please don’t rat me out, senpai! I promise to buy you all the lemon tarts you can eat!” He snickered at his own silly response. All joking aside, the idea of having company - Ruka’s company - when he went into the village was actually appealing. He smiled then, and gave a nod of his head in agreement. “Tea is always better with company.”

Kazuo was surprised by Ruka’s next question. Surprised that the older boy had remembered what Kazuo had told him about his spiritual beliefs and surprised that Ruka would apply his basic understanding to what Kazuo had said about the arrogance of man. It wasn’t that he thought Ruka wasn’t smart enough - quite the opposite - but it was one of those things you don’t really expect people to think about. A conversation months ago, nothing more than a simple explanation. He gave Ruka a smile that was a bit shy but also pleased. “I don’t know if I can really answer. A priest might have a better understanding but humans are part of the balance too. Humans are very capable of disrupting the balance, more so than any other creature except the kami themselves. But as far as what we’re doing now goes, it’s pretty minor. The spirits of the plants we uproot today will simply return to the cycle and be reborn later. Maybe even in the plants Cespedes-sensei plants over the summer. I suspect, though I’d have to ask someone back home, that some of the things we do with transfiguration upset the balance more than a little plant murder.”

He arched a brow at Ruka when the older boy made a counter offer. “Thirty percent?” He scoffed. “If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even know where to get the lemon tarts! I will only agree if I get at least one lemon tart per trip.” He took Ruka’s hand and gave it an aggressive shake then began to laugh at the silliness of it all. When Ruka responded to his perceptions on magic he grinned and nodded. “More people should remember that. Especially wizards. Yes, I say Mudbloods because of Jack. I think it’s funny, the blood purism. We don’t have a word for it. A specific one, I mean, like you call them muggles or the Americans call them no-maj. It’s like… imagine if your job was to be a… policeman. And everyone who wasn’t a policeman, you had to come up with a word for. No-cops.” Kazuo shook his head. “It’s kind of silly, don’t you think?”

As it came back around to relationships, Kazuo just shrugged. “Who I am now is not who I will be when I graduate. Sure, we should be learning about ourselves but how can we claim to love someone we’ve known for a few days or weeks? It’s not love. It’s infatuation or hormones or both. There’s no such thing as love at first sight and happily ever after is a fairy tale ending. So if I have to choose a type of relationship to build, I would much rather build a friendship because I know that will last. Is it really missing out if the thing I’m missing out on isn’t the real thing anyway? Besides, when it comes to dating, girls are crazy.” He also shifted, turning so that he was facing Ruka properly, abandoning the shovel and the digging to focus on what was more important. When Ruka explained a bit about Winnie, Kazuo hummed thoughtfully, cataloguing the information for later use. It didn’t eliminate the twins theory but it did explain something of her behaviour.

Ruka continued, explaining about Flash, once again pointing out that he was being touched when it happened. Freaked out was not exactly what he expected Ruka to describe it as. When Ruka explained about Winnie, he’d assumed it was just girl + hormones but the way he explained it now was different. “Oh… I thought… Ok….” No, it was not normal. At least, not that he was aware of. He didn’t think he’d ever read anything about kissing as a panic-reaction. Then again, there was a lot he hadn’t read about yet. Kazuo considered Ruka thoughtfully. “I have no doubt you gave them the wrong impression. The common interpretation of someone kissing you is a romantic interest, after all. Why do you feel panicked when people are close or touching you?” He asked, ignoring the reaction in order to understand the trigger. “Assumably you don’t kiss people everytime you panic so this reaction is tied specifically to people getting physically close to you. What does kissing mean to you, Ruka?” It probably sounded like a strange question but Kazuo was trying to find the connecting points to build a hypothesis from. “And what do you think about Flash and Winnie? Other than not wanting to date them, of course.”

Reducio

OOTD

@Ruka Burnett-Tân