Spring

The weather has remained a bit on the chilly side, what with it still being winter. But here in the Ninetails Dominion, up in the hot springs, things just feel warmer. The natural springs that run through the area make it so much easier to take a load off. The warmth of the hot springs is managing to get through into the wooden building that takes center at this location, and Cyrus is still feeling warm after a long hot bath.

Wearing a simplified yukata, the youth makes for a reasonably striking figure, looking for Mikage. Following Rama to the porch that overlooks the clear side of the mountain, he finds her. Touching one hand on the bench she's seated upon, he makes his presence known, before stepping around it to join her.

His heart is pounding. Because he knows what he should be doing right now. But thanks to years of being in the city before all of this, his nerves are getting to him.

"Hey." He manages nervously, glancing aside at the white haired girl with this dopey look on his face. Ears a bit skewed. Tail flicking with anxious energy. "So ehmm... I wanted to talk about something." He offers to Mikage. "I mean, we've been traveling for close to a year now and ehm... so I really like traveling with you and..."

Off to a great start.

In that moment, Mikage's eyes are looking out into the horizon. The warmth from the baths still radiates behind her, offering some ward against the chill, but the breeze feels nice on her skin. The girl wears a simple black robe over her bathing attire, her arms folded over the railing of the bath, chin resting on them in a relaxed posture. The hot springs trip has done wonders, after weeks of training, and she seems more 'herself' in that moment.

Oblivious as always, Miki looks over at the sound of Rama's padding feet and then raises a brow as Cyrus comes to join her. "Hey." She offers back, but seems to hold her tongue. That flicking of his tail suggests there is something else he wants to say, so she lets him speak.

Of course, her instinctive reaction when he begins to talk that way is for concern to show on her features. Internally, a flood of anxiety rushes into her stomach. With him stumbling for words, it's easy for her to fill in something negative into those gaps.

She shifts, ever so slightly. The posture seems almost defensive, as if she were preparing herself for a blow. Maybe assuming that he's trying to disband their traveling party.

Yet, unlike some people, she doesn't immediately give voice to whatever thoughts are flittering in her mind. Instead, she just offers a slow... "Okay...?"

Cyrus seems to key in on her instinctive reaction. The concern and defensive posture slows him a bit. That nervous energy rising. Of course, in his mind he wonders if she is just that disappointed he'd come to her like this. Trying to change the status of what they are.

Still, the brave man pushes through. Biting his bottom lip for just a moment, as he goes for it...

Ducking his head forward, holding out his hands, and presenting a small little gift in the form of a wooden carved Lynx he commissioned from a woodworker. "Please go out with me!" He declares, tail poofed up, ears flat!

That... went a direction that she was not expecting. Mikage's expression shifts to confusion, and then softens slightly as she look from Cyrus to the carved figure in his hand. A little of that cold well of anxiety lifts, but it is replaced by something else. Uncertainty.

Ever so slowly, she reaches out a hand and plucks the carved Lynx from his hand, moving it in careful fingers. Yet, the girl is quiet. Perhaps a bit too quiet.

Then, she sighs, "I don't know, Cy." It isn't a rejection, not outright, anyways. She's quick to talk now, rather than letting him get the wrong idea. "Traveling with you and Sassaral has been amazing, and... for the first time in my life I haven't felt alone." Her blue eyes look at him, as if she were begging him to understand something she has never really brought to words.

Her voice drops quieter, not as if she were trying to keep it from others, but more something she doesn't like to remind herself of... "You know how things are, for me." Her brows draw inward a little. "The differences between this world and ... the one outside."

She continues then, while she has some measure of bravery, "I like you, and I care about you. But... I'm not sure I could stand it if I let myself want more than that. Knowing that when this ends, you'll probably never want to see me again. Or take one look at me and realize that you can't deal with everything that comes with ... this. With me."

She looks down at the carved lynx in her hand, that tightness in her chest building as she tries so very hard not to let it get to her. "I've been alone most of my life, and I've learned to live with it. I just... don't know if I could handle you breaking my heart."

Cyrus looks up as she falls quiet, and begins to lean back a bit, tilting his head. In earnest, he knew this would not be easy. Mikage isn't your average girl. And the hesitance was somewhat expected at least. Leaning his rump back onto the seat, he looks at her with a soft look. It isn't quite a smile. But she can tell that there's anxiety in him, mixed with the usual patience he shows.

"I know. At least, a good bit of it." He remarks as she asks him to understand, quieting so he doesn't cut her off. Letting her talk. One ear flicking as she mentions never wanting to see her again. Opening his mouth, but closing it so she can actually talk. To let her finish and find the point to best jump in.

And when she looks at the Lynx, his hand comes up to hers, touching the back of her fingers. "I'm not that kind of person. I am not saying I want to go out with the Were Fang, Mikage. I am saying I want to date you. All of you, Kimura Mikage." Cyrus remarks. "I, Takeshi Okada, want to go out with you."

There is a silent moment when his hand touches hers. In her world, people who were willing to reach out to someone like her, that is something rare. Time and again, this body, this world, it allows her to forget what waits for her outside. The feeling of being trapped inside her own body. The distance that people keep between themselves and people like her.

"How do you know that?" Her words are still a whisper, as if she can't quite bring herself to speak in her usual tone. Perhaps that other Mikage, the one that hides so often from the world, isn't usually one to speak up.

"The people you care about should be your light, your hope." She murmurs, as if she's given this some thought in the past. "I'd... just be a burden." Something in her words sounds as if she were repeating what someone else had said to her. Words have a tendency to sink deep sometimes. Despite everything she had built for herself in her life, sometimes they still ring loudly in those quiet moments.

She seems at a loss, uncertainty in those blue eyes. Eventually, she just leans her head, pressing her forehead lightly against his shoulder as if she felt... defeated. "I don't know what to do..." Despite everything, she still depends on him, even in moments like these.

Cyrus rubs the back of his head, flicking one of his feline ears. "A relationship isn't something as simple as that. Relationships aren't perfect. The other person isn't just your light and your hope. They're someone you can't think of being without." He explains to her. "And honestly, that's you to me. I know I am not always there when the big things go down. Protecting Sassaral, or moving in the background. But it's hard to imagine being without you." He explains to her. "Being around you has become as important to me as food and the air I breathe."

The youth leans back a bit. "Besides... who says you aren't my light and hope?" He then asks her. "You don't need to be able to run around from one side of Tokyo to the other to be someone's light and hope. You just need to care for one-another." He notes, looking into her eyes with those grays of his. Warm, soft gray eyes.

"To be ready to be there for eachother." He adds. "I'm not going to force this on you of course. If you rather just have me as a friend, so be it. But I know that I'd love it if you accepted me as something more, Miki." Cyrus expresses with a small cracking in his voice. "I told you before, I'm not abandoning you. I'm not going anywhere."

"I don't know anything about relationships." Mikage murmurs against his shoulder, a soft, almost sad laugh following those words. "I've never even held someone's hand before, not in any kind of romantic way, anyways." She lifts her head then, catching her lower lip between the slightly sharper canine ones that mark her as a Were Fang, her expression uncertain.

"You don't have to be there when the 'big things' go down. I'd probably be more worried for you then I would be about me." She shrugs softly, knowing that the words reveal that things have run deeper than she'd have admitted for quite some time.

Her thumb runs along the small wooden Lynx, but her eyes remain on him. "Promise?" That is all she seems to ask of him. That confirmation that he isn't going to leave. "I could live with it if we try and just... aren't compatible or whatever. I'm not sure I'd be okay if it was because..." She doesn't finish her sentence, but the meaning is clear enough.

"It's okay to not know anything about relationships. Every relationship is different." He answers her with a bemused sound, the anxiety and stress fading from his view a bit, as he moves his hand from underneath hers to over it. "We can take it slow. Hand holding seems like a fairly low effort step in that direction." Cyrus explains to her, before adding; "I didn't manage to get any romantic fireworks to stare at though. All we've got is the stars up in the air, and zero light polution."

He then quiets a bit as she asks him if he promises. Nodding his head instead in that deep confirming manner typical to the Japanese. Just a simply 'hmm!'. Returning to his usual quieter self.

"I am not too worried." He then tells her. "I think that we make good travel companions regardless."

Mikage's eyes are drawn back to where their hands are joined, something that could seem mundane under other circumstances. It's not like the two of them haven't touched before, but somehow it feels different with the new context attached to it. "Your fingers are ... warm." It's a stupid comment and she knows it, but it's the sort of observation a person makes when they aren't used to how to interact with someone else.

"Fireworks?" The comment seems to confuse her, drawing her attention back to his features. Luckily, his nod of affirmation seems to be enough of a confirmation of his promise, at least for now.

"It... probably doesn't help that I've had a crush on you for a while." She laughs, sounding a bit nervous at even admitting that sort of thing. She reaches up with her free hand and lightly tucks a few strands of white hair behind her ear. "Not to mention waking up a bit too close a few times. You know you're really warm when it's cold out, right?"

"I did just come out of the hot springs a bit ago." He answers her. "But you'll find I'm usually pretty warm." He comments as his fingertips trace over her hand in this sweet kind of way. His eyes turning to her again, smiling. His voice is soft and quiet as he keeps talking. As if the world around them was made of glass and could shatter at any moment, ruining this moment.

At her admission of having a crush on him, the youth quiets even more though, blushing at this. Realizing that the feelings had not been one-sided after all. A blush that extends wide across his cheeks when she mentions waking up too close. "Yeah... I am." He answers her, glancing away. "So are you."

"Not what I meant." Mikage laughs softly, shaking her head. It's just the sort of moment of amusement that she really needed to ease the tension. "Just... whenever we were camping on cold nights, I'd always end up curled in towards you, no matter how I tried to sleep." There is a hint of color on her own cheeks, but she seems to just accept that this is how things are between them. It's a comfortable switch from friends to... more.

So, she shifts her weight a little, leaning a little bit into his side and letting her head lightly tilt over onto his shoulder. "I guess, we'll keep each other warm as the winter sets in, huh?" Miki asks, likely trying to feel out the boundaries between them and determine just how things will be going forward.

He smiles as she laughs. He can't help it. Any time she smiles, or laughs, he'd always just... be drawn to smile in turn. His features relax further, and he lets out this breath he didn't realize he'd been sitting on for so very long. "Well, from here-on-out, you don't need to 'sneakily' curl towards me." He answers her, lifting his hand. "You are permitting to cast Drain on my Body Heat in order to raise your temperature." He remarks, smirking ever so slightly at his 'ingenious' way to make that totally less awkward to talk about.

He then nods his head. "Yeah, we can make sure we keep eachother cold during the winter. I just hope that Rama won't get jealous. Though I bet Rama will steal Sassaral's heat... or vice-versa. She's the keeper of treats anyhow." He adds onto that.

"It wasn't even me being sneaky." Mikage offers up with another of those soft laughs, "I think I just did it instinctually. You were warm and it felt... safe." She catches her lower lip again in that shy way, then shrugs, not seeming to really be able to explain something that wasn't done by conscious thought.

"I wouldn't be surprised if Rama still wanted to pile in." The cat is currently curled near their feet, his head on his paws, seemingly snoozing by the set of his feline features. "Especially if it gets bad outside." Some thought seems to flicker in her eyes, but she pushes it away, offering a small smile.

"So... I've never really done the relationship thing. I think you'll probably have to give me some coaching on the matter. Otherwise, I'll probably just act like a hopeless idiot."

It's heartwarming, in many ways, to hear her say such a thing. Enough to make the youth glance away looking shy for a bit, turning quiet for a moment, before nodding his head. "Thank you." Is the first thing that comes to mind as an appropiate response. "I'm glad." He bites his bottom lip for a moment, trying to figure out what to say. Feeling awkward. In a good way. Excited, but trying to temper that excitement.

He looks to Rama for answers, but all he gets is the sight of a snoozing critter. "That seems like a good idea." He still chimes in with the feline, before looking up.

"It's okay. Acting like a hopeless idiot comes with the relationship descriptor. So if that's what I get out of it, I think you're doing it correctly." He explains to Mikage. "But I will see where I can guide us away from any pitfalls." Not that he has that much experience with a proper succesful relationship. Still, he squeezes her hand, keeping her warm with a single touch.

The girl just gives a quiet sound in response to his thanks, perhaps feeling a little awkward to be thanked for something she didn't consciously do. Still, it seems to cause a bit of that color to remain lingering on her cheeks. "For now, we've got time to figure it out."

Though she has not given up on the chance of getting back to the real world, it seems like they are in this for the long run. Scale has only just reached the tenth floor, a place never fully beaten in the past. The world seems vast, beyond the expanses that they haven't been able to explore yet. They have time...

"Come on, let's go inside and get some sleep before we get cold." She offers, still holding onto his hand. Rama looks up at the movement, yawning once. "You too." Miki smiles to the cat, then pushes herself up to her feet.

"Let's." Cyrus agrees, standing up with her. "The cat will follow if he wants to join." He then adds, "For now, we have a comfortable bed of our own, before we hit the road again." And with that, he leads Mikage back to the sleeping quarters, in order to get a good night's rest.