[X] … you really did ignore him for days, though. Does he really expect so little of you?


Ken holds your gaze firmly as his apology sinks into your stomach like lead. You struggle for reply, swallowing dryly before checking on Shanghai. Catching your glance, she rises from the drainboard, her bright red ribbon and cornflower blue dress darkened several shades by the persistent dampness. She crosses the kitchen to circle around your back and take up her station to your right, a few last drops of rainwater dripping from her tiny shoes.

And she probably looks better than you do, right now.

“No,” you say, voice low and thick. You swallow again, for all the good it'll do. “No... no I haven't.” You wait for him to reply, each moment scraping down your nerves till you can't stand it anymore. “I ignored you-”

for days,

“-too long. I haven't been-”

thoughtful, considerate, kind,

“-a good host.” You reach out and try to straighten out Shanghai's limp red ribbon again for something to do. “That's not my way. You just caught me... shorthanded.”

“Alice, you-”

Your temper flares at the pithy pity in his tone. “I'm what!?” you snap, rounding on him with your fists clenched. “What am I, Ken? Please educate me, oh sage of sinner's souls!”

Your pulse flutters in alarm to see him holding your gaze firmly, not tensing before your wrath like he has, like he ought. He just plants a hand on his hip, other supporting himself on the back of his kitchen chair. You screw up your fists and hold your breath, bottling your indignation in your breast. You remember the harsh rapping at your laboratory door, his hard eyes and curt exit - he was pissed, and now he just has pity, Mister Pork Pincushion good one use that deigns to show you-

“A professional,” Ken replies flatly.

You open your mouth and promptly close it again.

Ken twirls the chair around and sinks into it with a faint groan of relief, supporting himself with a hand on the table's edge. “Miss Margatroid, I have seen Eirin Yagokoro reassemble someone who was damn near torn in half. You know who she is, where she comes from. And she walked through that door-” Ken jabs his finger at the front hall - “-and complimented your work. And then showed it to bunnyb- her assistant as an example.”

You look askance and shrug slightly, flushing indignant at the heavy-handed ingratiation.

“That kind of skill takes devotion,” he continues. “And focus. Forgot-three-meals-why-is-the-sun-coming-up kind of focus. That's what makes someone a professional. I know you're one because if you weren't, I'd be dead about now. But my friends - my mother-” he heaves a sigh and flicks his hand to shoo their specters away. “They're... well.” He starts spinning the whetstone in little circles on the tabletop, avoiding your eyes.

You tighten your crossed arms a bit. “They just see a youkai,” you fill in.

“They just see a threat,” Ken stresses, tapping the stone against the table for emphasis as he looks up at you. “It'd be like you heeding everything tinytin here says-”

“-SIT ON A SPATULA AND SPIN ON IT!” the toaster bellows from the center of the table, kicking one of Ken's shirts to the floor for good measure.

“-all your dolls as people,” Ken finishes.

“But they're not people,” you point out, irritated. “They're dolls.”

“Exactly,” Ken says. “Was my mother a bitch to you?”

“Flaming,” you confirm crisply.

“Now you know why,” Ken says. He picks up the spearhead and the sheathed shortsword and holds them out to you. “Here.”

You take them gingerly, one in each hand. The spearhead looks well-worn and recently resharpened, and the leather thongs wrapping the sword-hilt has the dark luster of age.

You look up at Ken sharply.

He leans back in his chair a little bit, eyes wide. “What.”

Patterns. Everything revolves around patterns. Sewing patterns, spell incantations, even the seasons themselves - patterns within patterns. They're so fundamental to magic that ordering one's entire repertoire around them is inevitable; the natural evolution of one's research and continual development. Not for nothing is the elementalist in the Devil's manse know as the one-week girl, or you the Seven-Colored Puppeteer. It's why intricate dammaku patterns and “duel of skill” are synonymous concepts. It's everything to a proper magician, which is why Marisa's a knuckledragging gorilla by definition.

There's a pattern here - the pieces are bafflingly unfamiliar, but tantalizingly real. You toss the weapons onto the tabletop, causing Ken to start slightly as they clatter.

“Ken?”

“... yes?” he ventures.

“What are your friends professionals at?”

“Hunting,” he replies instantly, the word so clipped it's almost punctuation.

“... and your mother?”

“Hunting,” he repeats curtly.

“Your mother is a hunter.”

“Was.”

You glance over the accouterments strewn across your dining table again, methodologically dredging your mind for every fact and arranging them in neat order. Your stomach sours to see the sword, but it makes sense - if you're a stuck-up delusional bitch like Kaya who thinks your house gambols about on chicken-feet.

Your eyes keep returning to the spearhead.

The boar-spear head, to be precise.

It doesn't fit.

“Why did they give you everything you need to make a spear?” you ask.

Ken bites his lip and looks away, fingers drumming the tabletop. “Because they're morons.”

“No,” you retort. “I mean, why a spear?”

Ken blinks. “Why not?”

“If I'm going to creep up on you at midnight and stuff you into my oven to make man-biscuits for the Man-Killer Monthly moon-viewing party,” you sneer, “wouldn't that giant cleaver in your boot do you more good?” Another childhood memory rises unbidden, stealing a peek into the Forbidden Parlor and the wall: dark-paneled wood hung heavy with heraldic shields and bucklers and - “Or a proper dagger?”

Ken shrugs. “What do you expect? They're just hunters, you know? Pig-sticking is close-quarters combat to them.”

“Close-in.”

Ken's chair creaks as he pushes it back an inch. “Uh... yeah?”

You peer at him intently, the embarrassment of your miscalculation a few days prior sharpening your recall. “I thought boar spears could be wonderfully handy close-in - if you hold it like a quarterstaff.”

Ken glances aside a slight, polite smile jittering about his face. “I... uh...”

“Told me that yourself.”

He swallows. “Yeah.”

You feel your pulse quicken, that forgotten feeling of excited curiosity back again - that little aluminum asshole was wrong. “Well. At least you'll handle yourself well if the demon-boar's spouse comes for revenge.”

Ken's mouth flattens into a line as he stares resolutely at your belt. “You... heard that.”

“Every. Word,” you say crisply.

Ken sucks in a long breath, fist pressed against his mouth as he turns to look at the front hall. “Urgh.”

“He was saying you threw Reisen's...?”

His fingers are drumming a bit faster now.

“What?”

He grumbles something into his fist.

“You asked her how 'the wrist was',” you remind him. “Did you disarm her?”

“Nnnnnooo,” he says.

“Then what did you... throw...” you gasp. “Her!?”

Ken lets his face slide till his forehead hits the heel of his hand, hiding his eyes. “Yeaaah.”

“You threw Reisen Udongein Inaba through a plate-glass window.”

Ken's other hand flies off the tabletop, palm up to ward you off. “She, really, really, really picked a bad time to go sticking her fingergun in my face,” he says. “I told you. Ben was hurt bad, I run in shouting for help, and that bitch-” he sighs. “It was just, you know-” he makes a grabbing motion in the air, then sweeps it across his body like he's slinging something aside. “Reflex.”

You pull the other chair over and plop in it sideways, leaning on the table with one elbow. “How did he get hurt?”

Ken turns back to you, resting his cheek on his fist, staring at something past your elbow. “Ben's a womanizing asshole-”

“I noticed,” you say curtly.

Ken's expression turns into a scowl. “Stupid bastard never learns. A few weeks back he got torn up by a bone woman.”

The name is vaguely familiar, but you can't quite place it. “A... some sort of succubus?”

“A little. They lure idiots the same way. Except they're liable to rip your limbs off as soon as they get their claws in you.”

“I'm... not familiar,” you admit.

“They're not that much stronger than humans - that's why they lure you in and strike before you can draw. I'd walked off the road to fill my canteen at a farmer's well and when I got back I found the fucking thing ripping Ben up.” His fist is quavering a bit now, curled rock-tight. “Took off when I shouted.” Ken's scowl has deepened, eyes brooding and dark.

“He certainly seems okay now,” you point out.

“Yeah,” Ken admits, straightening up in his chair. “Now. But it was a pretty close thing.”

“If only Ben had a legion of swooning fangirls begging him to stay out of the scary Forest to warm their beds,” you say dryly.

Now he crosses his arms and scrimps up his mouth. “I didn't say that-”

“Not that you had to,” you say, sweeping a scattered letter off the table and whipping it up for inspection with a quick flourish of your wrist. Ken pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs.

“Yes, you'd rather all those young lovelies stop bothering you, right? Such a nuisance.”

“You have no idea,” he grumbles.

“I got an inkling when I started juggling the second pound cake!” you snap irritably.

Ken wilts a bit, a faint flush coloring his cheeks. “It's not like that-”

“I certainly hope it is,” you cut him off sharply, “because if you're not risking life and limb hunting this deep in the Forest to impress your floozies, I can't imagine what does.

Ken stiffens. “Why wouldn't I?”

“For all the dangers you recited to me yourself, perhaps? If it's so damn dangerous and you know it, why hunt here?”

He opens his mouth-

“-and don't give me any guff about bigger kills or more plentiful game, Mister My Credit's Good At Any Store In Town.”

He closes his mouth.

You drum your fingers on the table steadily, waiting for a reply, heart thrilling as you anticipate the final unraveling of the thread.

Ken crosses his arms tightly and looks away towards the parlor. “It's not important.”

[ ] The hell it isn't. His friends are slipping him weapons (which he knows how to use,) he hip-tossed a powerful youkai through a window without a second thought and his mother isn't afraid to threaten you - a powerful magician - to your face. You want to know who he and his friends are, and you want to know right the fuck now.

[ ] But it's interesting. This strange villager who talks so freely of Devotion and Focus, who spurns popularity and spurns the pigsticker's savage sport for the patient, slow stalk - this is something new.

[ ] Solve the puzzle. (Pure write-in vote, feel free to attempt in addition to a standard vote. If you can figure out what's really going on here, it'll make for one hell of an update!)