In Passing PV Ruth

Japanese -English - Thoughts -

Multilingual issues.

Hikari swallowed down the awkwardness as the girl blinked owlishly at him. She was clearly lost, the faint crease between her brows proof enough that she hadn’t understood a single word. And yet, she nodded—slowly, sagely, as if she’d just been enlightened. The boy caught himself before he could scoff. Is there a reason people can't say when they don't understand? His grip tightened on the duster. She should've at least pretended better

"It's nice." Hikari repeated, correct language this time around. His voice came out rougher than he had intended to, some of his irritation bleeding through.

Silence reigned once again as the two worked, broken only by the rasp of cloth against wood. Dust drifted about lazily, catching in the thin light that filtered through the open window. Hikari focused on brushing away the dust on the desk, pointedly ignoring the curious glances the Hogwarts student was flashing in his direction. She was restless, shifting in a way that made Hikari think that the silence was probably not having a positive effect on her mental disposition.

Hikari didn't dwell on that possibility. She was free to leave if that was truly the case. But the girl seemed comfortable, a light bounce in her step even as she worked through a chore as mundane as dusting the tables.

Hikari had a nagging suspicion that the girl was more likely to break the silence than to actually leave.

“So,” There it is. “What do you usually sketch?” Hikari didn't stop his movements, even as his eyes shifted, unbidden to the sketchbook peeking out of his bag. People were always way too interested in his art, and Hikari could honestly barely understand it. It wasn't like there was a shortage of art pieces in the world.

He cleaned up the last of the desks as he mulled over his answer. The first reply that had occurred to him was, "Anything in front of me." , which was as accurate as they came, but wasn't really an answer he could give someone who wasn't Akari. So instead, he settled with something else.

"Nature."

It was true, mostly. His sketchbook was filled with drawings of Sakura blossoms, along with the rains he could see from his house or lately, his dorm room. Except that one time he'd caught himself sketching Akari, but hadn't quite gotten around to telling him that piece of information.

The room was finally free of dust. Without a word, the boy took out his notebook and carefully slid it over to the girl. Considering she hung around, I suppose she's earned it.

—Finished Cleaning—
𝕽uth had never been much of an actor. While there was a record of her attending a Drama Club session, it was less of a testament to her talent than to her having a go at anything exciting.

She failed to show up for any subsequent sessions, if there were any.

Thus, she came to a troubling yet raw conclusion: Hikari had seen through her terrible act of understanding and had swiftly corrected her. It’s nice, he remarked. Ruth made no move to reply, letting the translation hang in the air. She was faintly glad to have turned away then, since her cheeks were starting to burn from the embarrassment. Why had she hidden the fact that she had been completely clueless as to what he was saying? She was increasingly digging a deeper grave for herself.

Any chance for her to redeem herself proved (or at least, looked to be) futile. Ruth tucked the feather duster back inside the closet, then turned towards Hikari to notice a pondering look pass over his face. Ruth was about to conclude that he was about to answer in a manner of formality, yet his answer was blunt and colloquial–Nature.

Hm. What kind? She wished to ask. Hikari had yet to announce that he was, indeed, going to show her his work, nor had he made the move to produce any. Ruth suppressed her disappointment. Nevermind. “Oh, okay–” The Hufflepuff trailed off as a notebook slid across the table, stopping short inches before her. Oh. Ruth bit back another wave of discomfiture. It was so hard to read the boy. She had to stop jumping to conclusions and making a reckless fool of herself.

Tenderly, Ruth flipped open the pages, taking her time to pore through the content. Ruth never needed to ask Hikari to specify after all. The pages were flooded with sketches of sakura blossoms and tinted windows hinting of pelting rain, though the former caught her interest. “Wow,” she breathed in sheer amazement. He had somehow managed to capture the translucency of the petals, stark pencil shadings used to capture hues. And the stamen…these he drew from what Ruth could only assume was the finest tip of the pencil, a cluster always present, no matter the scale of the blossom.

She traced the lines of the sketches, lingering on those smudged-out mistakes that marked its way towards perfection. At least, to Ruth’s eyes. She was not much of an artist after all. All she could tell was that it could be marked as legible praise was that she could never draw so beautifully.

After uttering a few more breathless interjections, Ruth finally shut the book, crossing the room to return to Hikari. “You draw well,” she murmured, then smiled at him. “If only I had half your talent.”

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Japanese -English - Thoughts -

He was going to sneeze.

Hikari set down the duster quickly, pressing his handkerchief against his nose in an attempt to stop his head from blowing off. He wasn't really allergic to dust, but when you've got tiny particles floating about around your face and nose, one would need a very powerful nervous system to be completely unaffected.

He kept the handkerchief there a second longer, making absolutely sure his face wasn’t about to betray him, then tucked it away with practiced subtlety. The fabric brushed against his fingers—thin from years of use, edges softened to a fray, the color a muted greyish-blue that might once have been respectable before time washed it out. One of his father’s old ones. Formal, practical, and about as lively as a rainy Tuesday.

He wiped a trace of dust from his knuckles, more a reflex than anything else. The air in this part of the room was heavier than he liked—still, stale, filled with the kind of quiet that made dust settle in layers rather than specks. It clung to him, soft and intrusive, like it had been waiting all day for someone to disturb it.

He straightened, expression returning to its usual calm neutrality, and glanced over at Ruth Fairchild. She was still studying his drawings like she expected them to spring to life, sing, dance, and maybe recite poetry for her amusement. Hikari blinked once, then turned away, crossing the room to slide the duster back into the closet. Fairchild wandered over soon after, still wearing that earnest, overeager look that most people wielded like a weapon.

Her praise followed—light, casual, the kind of remarks people always gave when they had little to no real technical skill themselves. Typical. Though to be fair, the Badger was honest with her words. Or… was that just his self-deprecation trying to crawl up his spine again? Hard to tell. He was good at basically everything. Unfortunately, most of what he was good at belonged firmly to the category of mundane, obligatory tasks one learned because they were the oldest child of the Fujimoto household.

The only thing he had ever liked—truly liked—was the one thing he had begun on his own rather than being pushed into. Though knowing his father, even that freedom would’ve been temporary.

Not that it mattered now.

“Thank you,” he murmured, reclaiming his sketchbook and moving toward the desk by the window. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was going to draw next, but the view outside stretched wide and patient, offering possibilities. Usually, all he needed to do was look long enough, and something would find him.

His gaze drifted lower, toward the first row of trees marking the entrance to the Forbidden Forest. In daylight they were unremarkable—just trees—but at this hour they looked different. Still. Expectant. Warning. The frontmost trees were tall, straight-trunked guardians, but their bark carried a faint iridescence that appeared only when the light hit at the right angle, like something inside the wood remembered old magic.

The ground between them was carpeted with moss so dark it was almost blue, glowing faintly where the castle’s ambient magic seeped into it. Wisps of fog curled lazily around the roots, clinging to the boundary line but never crossing it, as if the forest itself respected an invisible threshold. In the shallowest parts of the darkness, Hikari could make out threads of gold—probably the fading sunlight catching on the ground, or if Hikari used his imagination, some fireflies.

It wasn’t dramatic. It was subtle, and quiet, and alive in a way he doubted anyone ever bothered to notice.

Hikari had never sketched forests before. Too chaotic, too many shapes that refused to stay still, too many shadows pretending to be outlines. But this wasn’t really a forest—not yet. Just the threshold. Just the first breath of something deeper.

Hikari shifted his sketchbook and began outlining the gentle slope of the mossy ground, the faint sheen on the bark, the precise angle of the fog that refused to drift farther. It was the kind of scene that didn’t demand attention, only rewarded it when given. Exactly the sort of thing worth capturing.

—Watching and Dreaming—
𝓦hat a quiet guy. How many times had the thought popped into her head? Probably quite often. Ruth hadn’t expected him to elaborate – hell, she hadn’t expected anything at all. This she had learnt earlier on, considering how unpredictable Hikari was. Yet, just a thank you? Well, there wasn’t like there was more to say to her compliment. The Hufflepuff couldn’t help but wonder what was going on inside the boy’s head as his gaze slipped away to the window. Maybe there were colours or shapes. Maybe there was nothing at all. Who was she to presume?

Her eyes joined his, trailing after him to get a better glimpse of whatever it was he had grown silently fixated towards. Ah. The forbidden forest.

It was as though the proper noun had sent a Stupefy straight at her and knocked her down like a bowling pin. The realisation hit her like a jolt, causing Ruth to suddenly remember why she had been lurking around the fifth-floor corridor all this time. The Headmaster’s Office! She resisted the instinctive urge to palm her face in dismay. In her earnestness to help her way out of trouble, she had completely forgotten her goal! Just as forbidden as the forest was, the trip up the secret staircase hidden behind the gargoyle felt just as tumultuous a task, hence the connection.

Oh, gosh. She really needed to find someone who knew. Someone who would presumably have a reason to accompany her, because in nature, everyone had their own goals they needed to fulfil through another. Someone she was willing enough to get caught with, someone not close enough that she wouldn’t crumble under the guilt of being partly responsible for their punishment.

Ruth’s frustrated mulling muffled slightly under the soft scratching of Hikari’s pencil against the sketchbook. She blinked, having slipped out of consciousness for a moment and had truly forgotten what she had been mindlessly staring at. Leaning against the wall of the classroom, slightly distancing herself from Hikari such that it avoided the possibility of her seeming imposing or distracting him…though, from what Ruth could tell, the Mahoutokoro student was in his element.

She watched his hands glide across the page. Even though the view of the sketch was upside down for her, the Hufflepuff could see a clear resemblance to the forest taking shape. How amazing was it to know what humanity was capable of? To be able to create and transform a blank canvas into one shimmering with life, despite the structure being made of several curved lines leading somewhere, nowhere.

And how amazing it was to watch the person responsible, immersed in his form. Unbeknownst to him, the boy had interrupted her thoughts of conflict twice now, when she had been sorting through a possible person to accompany her on her rather ambiguous adventure to the Sorting Hat. Then again, just moments before. Maybe it was a coincidence. It was most definitely probably unintentional. But…he had been the first. Something odd stirred in her stomach.

Ruth knew she should leave. But she couldn’t help it. She wanted to stay, wanted to stray far from her troubles and stand, fascinated by the dark strokes that decorated the page, each marking its importance swish by swish. She wanted to ask questions, wanted to know him, wanted to understand, wanted to see what he saw. Was that weird? Was it so weird? Was it her curiosity? Was it her allergy to the void that was empty of chaos or awkwardness, but rather ambient and comfortable and just nice? She shouldn’t interrupt. It’d be annoying.

“Hey, Hikari.” There she went. “I’m not particularly familiar with Japanese,” as you can obviously tell, “and so I was wondering if your name meant anything. Mine, for instance, means compassion–compassionate friend.” She chuckled. “I’d like to think I’m living up to my name.”

Twiddling her thumbs, she cast her gaze back towards the forest, a vastness of green that made Ruth wonder how her forest-green iris would look, reflecting the dark phthalo of the trees. "And then there's Fairchild, which is Old English, according to my father. Means literally what you think it means, and the name only makes me wonder how far back my family goes." She was silent for a moment.

"My middle name's Isolde. This, I...don't know where it's from. It's my mother's. But it's a pretty name. Never heard of another Isolde before."

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Japanese -English - Thoughts -

Why was the girl still here?

Not that hikari had anything against her being.... there. Ruth was tolerable, which already placed her several leagues above most of the people he'd been unfortunate enough to encounter. At the very least, she wasn't breathing down his neck or engaging in engaging conversations that demanded answers he did not wish to give.

He just wasn't used to having company while he was sketching.

Her presence pressed at the edge of his awareness like a thorn beneath fabric—easy to ignore if he focused hard enough, but impossible to forget. Silent, but there. He also sensed when her thoughts drifted away from him, towards something else. Maybe scheming. Corridors she wasn't meant to wander. Doors she shouldn't be opening.

Hikari didn't care, as long as he wasn't being involved.

The pencil moved steadily across the page, graphite whispering against paper, grounding him in something solid and uncomplicated. Lines formed. Shadows deepened. The forest took shape beneath his hand, dark and dense and honest in a way people rarely were.

She broke the silence again.

Her voice came gently, unintrusive, the kind that didn't demand attention so much as earn it. It reminded him of Akari, and the realisation lingered longer than he expected. Perhaps she was used to speaking softly. Or perhaps she simply knew how to enter silence without disturbing it.

Compassionate friend. Hikari had to admit that name suited her perfectly. Or maybe she had grown to suit her name. Hikari couldn't be sure.

"Hikari means.... light. Illumination."

Hikari, for his own, was exactly opposite of what his name meant. He thrived in the dark, the silent, and definitely did not illuminate his surroundings.

It sometimes felt like his name was an echo of the person his mother would have liked him to be. A version of himself brighter, warmer, easier to understand. But that expectation had long since lost its weight. Now, Hikari focused less on becoming light and more on simply being good—on existing without needing to shine like the sun.

Ruth was still speaking, and he blinked his thoughts away, focusing on her rant about her name. Fairchild. The name sounded foreign to Hikari's ears. But it had a nice ring to it, even if it did sound rather pretentious.

...Which was not a good thing to think about somebody's name.

Isolde.

Hikari froze at the word, finally looking up from his sketch towards the girl. "Isolde?" He echoed, the name rolling carefully over his tongue as he said it, the word blurring between familiarity and something he couldn't quite place.

"That sounds familiar." He muttered, more to himself than to Ruth. The name lingered, heavy with a memory that refused to surface.

—Questions—
𝓣he drawing was slowly coming to life before her and Hikari’s eyes. The fine lines that were inked into the paper morphed from lines to trees, curls to clouds. Tendrils of curves, as though lost, trailed down and became aerial roots that snaked along the horizon, merging into the ground. It was stunning to witness the process.

Much to Ruth’s delighted surprise, the Japanese lad before her did not seem displeased by her interrupting the silence. On the contrary, he donned a thoughtful expression (or perhaps this was the Hufflepuff’s too-positive imagination) as he answered back.

"Hikari means... light. Illumination."

Ruth was unsure if the hesitation was an act of contemplation or disagreement. Either way, she couldn’t help but beam. “I can see that,” she remarked, resting her weight on the one hand that braced the windowsill. “It suits you. Hikari.” There was almost a sense of reverence as she echoed his name, now that she knew its meaning. As she gazed down at him with a soft smile, taking in his soft strands of silver hair that glistened under the sunlight, his downcast eyes – the colour of the sea after a storm – his hands working magic using not a wand but a pencil. Yes. To Ruth, it was clear that the boy illuminated his surroundings. To her, he was light.

Just then, his grey eyes flitted up to lock eyes with her. The suddenness caused her breath to hitch, and she flushed before looking away, embarrassed to have been caught staring. Blast, she should have been focused on the art, not the artist! She was so caught up in the fluster that Hikari’s mutter was almost lost to her ears. It was only after a beat that she came to and glanced back at him.

“Hm? Yeah. Isolde.” Another beat. Ruth frowned. “It sounds familiar? Really?” Her brows furrowed, and her lips slipped into a deeper downturn. She shifted slightly, straightening up from her casual lean against the window. “Are you sure?” Ruth wasn’t sure what to make of it. Maybe he mistook it for a word or another name?

But what if? Isolde was a rare last name, much less a middle name. But the word itself, nevertheless, was unique. So, what if?

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Japanese -English - Thoughts -

By then, Hikari had already established the fact that Ruth liked to talk, always seeming to have something to say, even if the words themselves were not too special or remarkable. She would fill the air easily, like she treated silence like something to be pushed aside than actually shattered. Hikari found himself not being too bothered by it— her voice was gentle, warm and not loud or boisterous in a way that grated into his senses.

However, her words made him look up at her, confusion and disbelief coloring his features. His name suited him? The thought echoed in his head. That was the singular, most inaccurate thing he had heard in a long time. It was so far from the image he'd harboured of himself that he didn't know whether to dismiss it or question it. What was she talking about?

Hikari blinked uncertainly, searching her face for any signs of idle chatter or careless flattery. He found none. Unlike before, the girl's voice had been earnest— almost reverant— that gave Hikari the feeling she hadn't said it just for the sake of saying something. She'd actually meant it.

Hikari didn't quite know what to do with that piece of information.

His hair took the decision for him, confusion and nervousness bleeding into his abilities and he felt the all-too-familiar change in his disposition, gentle but swift. It felt a little different than normal though, a trickle along his neck which had not been there the past few times.

Hikari stilled. His eyes shifted to the girl standing across him, who'd still not noticed the new occurence. He turned his head towards the window, drawn more by instinct than intention and in the reflection of the tinted glass saw that the lower strands of his hair had been tinged with a bright orange.

He blinked, picking at one with a frown, that's new. He'd never had only part of his hair shift before and leave the rest of his hair in its original color. It looked quite nice, in fact. Not as bright as a completely orange set of hair would have looked, but not as dull as it had looked earlier either.

Hikari glanced back at Ruth, trusting his hair to run its course and shift back to its original color by itself. He answered her quietly, "Yes, I... might have read about it."

—Distracted—
Picture a cassette tape, pressure pad unlatched, film unwound and spewing out of the cassette. Imagine gathering the tape and trying to wind it back together.

Only you fail. Only you can’t, not without something to anchor the reel.

Ruth’s mind was a broken cassette tape, reels spilling out, tangled with confusion and wonder and curiosity and suspicion. With every rewind, the imbalance threw her off. Questions kept piling up, far outnumbering the answers. Confidence in herself and her identity was muffled and distorted as Hikari’s words swam in her head: Sounds familiar, sounds familiar, sounds familiar. Over and over. A constant rollback.

She shook her head to herself, letting out a breathless noise between a scoff and a laugh. She was getting ahead of herself. There was a slim chance that the information was of any relation to her at all. If anything, it was probably just a mere coincidence. Just another name.

But it didn't feel like one.

Hikari was mentioning something about having read about it. Ruth pushed herself off the wall to face him, suddenly alert. “Do you happen to…” She was beginning to ask, though she trailed off before having gotten far enough to reach the point of her question. Something else had caught her eye. In particular, his hair.

Locking eyes with the Hufflepuff was not the same boy she had first seen. His silver strands had seeped into the colours of sunset, curling lightly at the ends to frame his face. It was a beautiful shade of orange that caught her breath, before she was befuddled by another thought: Had it always been like that? Surely she must have been mistaking it– perhaps the colour was there all along, and she had missed it despite the godawful number of times she had looked at him. No, she would have noticed.

Ruth's jaw had gone slack. Carefully closing her mouth, she tore her gaze away so she could try to recall what she had wanted to say. “Uhm…” she tapped at the forehead, furrowing her brows, yet she couldn't find the words that had threatened to spill out of her mouth just minutes before. She cleared her throat, glancing back at the boy's hair. “How'd you do that?” She pointed at the gradient bleeding through.

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Japanese -English - Thoughts -

Why did people have such short attention spans?

It took so very little to divert them. A change of color, a movement in the periphery of their vision and just like that one conversationcould be replaced with another, as though it had never held any weight to begin with.

The thought lingered for only a moment, gaze following the direction of the girl's hand, which had become fixed in the direction of his head, focus narrowed so completely that it left little doubt as to what had caught her attention.

He didn't rush to answer. Instead, his fingers lifted, brushing lightly against the strand that she had pointed out, the one that stood apart from the rest of his hair. The texture felt the same beneath his touch, but the color told a different story. Warmer. Brighter. A quiet intrusion against the muted silver he was accustomed to.

"It's not something I can normally control." Hikari said finally, untouched by the curiosity that had clearly taken a hold of his acquaintance, "It will pass. In a while."

An explanation simple enough to acknowledge, but not enough to invite further inquiry.

From her face, Hikari had to assume that Ruth Fairchild was hoping for a bit more elaboration, a bit more detail on how his metamorphmagus worked. There was expectancy hidden under her expression; an unspoken question lingering beneath the surface.

He had no intention of offering any of it.

Not to mention that she had so easily abandoned her previous thought, sentence left unfinished in favor of something fleeting. Hikari disliked half-finished conversations, threads which deviated and shifted the moment something else presented itself.

Perhaps he had overestimated it's importance to the girl?

His gaze shifted back to her then, steady assessing. Leaving no room for further questioning.

He hoped the girl remembered what she had been attempting to say.

"What were you about to ask me?" Hikari prompted, redirecting her back to their previous conversation.