Plurk paste

Shinji doesn’t exactly seek out the shady parts of town, but he doesn’t go out of his way to avoid them either. He’s not afraid of the punks, not after a solid decade of sparring with Aki on the regular and especially not after getting tangled up with the Dark Hour. They talk big, but they can’t actually back any of it up.

The back alleys are also a good source of information on Apathy Syndrome, and that’s something they desperately need. It ebbs and flows every month in a way they haven’t quite pinned down yet; sometimes people go missing for days before they turn up basically zombified, and sometimes they’re just fine one day and catatonic the next. It’s driving Mitsuru crazy. Shinji’s starting to think what they really need is to make progress in Tartarus, but they still don’t have enough people for that, so he’s doing what he can now.

It doesn’t take him long to figure out he’s not the only one milking the punks for information without them noticing. The other regular who never seems to get involved in their discussions is a girl, maybe his age or maybe younger, who’s always drawing and never seems to smear her bright oil pastels on her pristine white loli-Goth getup. It’s her hair that really catches Shinji’s attention, though; it’s red, too bright to be natural in Japan (or much of anywhere else in the world, for that matter). He figures she’s unlikely to have dyed her hair that bright if she can’t see it, but the back alley’s not the place to ask.

He catches her alone during his second Golden Week of high school – well, as alone as they can be in the middle of Port Island Station. She’s drawing again, and he can’t resist asking the question that’s been on his mind since he first saw her.

“How do you not smear that shit all over your clothes, anyway?”

She ignores him for so long that Shinji’s not sure she heard him at all, but he doesn’t repeat the question – if she doesn’t want to answer someone interrupting her, that’s her right. But finally, she says, “Handkerchiefs and years of practice.”

“Okay, fair. I’m just surprised you haven’t turned yourself into a fuckin’ rainbow yet.”

She finally looks up from her sketchbook, studying Shinji for a long few moments before she grants him a fleeting smile. That’s the end of that conversation, but slowly, they build up… he’s not sure either of them would call it a friendship. If anything, Chidori seems even slower to trust other people than Shinji is himself. Neither of them ever says why they’re fishing for information in shady places, but neither of them asks, either.

Chidori does seem to like being able to talk about colors with someone, though, and they end up doing that as the light fades and the punks filter into their evening hangouts. Shinji’s just glad he finally has full context for it now, and when he mentions that one evening, Chidori fixes him with that piercing look of hers.

“Red, green, or blue?”

Shinji blinks. “Huh?”

“Which one were you? If you only recently got the full package, there must have been three of you.”

“Oh. Uh, green, it turned out.”

“Me too.” Chidori’s fleeting smile comes back for a second. “Takaya and Jin are usually too wrapped up in each other to pay much attention to me, but no one else will ever understand what I’ve been through like they do.”

He wishes, for her sake, that she was less of a third wheel in such an important relationship. She seems to be making the best of it, though, so Shinji doesn’t press her for details.