( voice test ) ibuki;

[dogmatically]

[maybe for late morning — very late morning, someone like ibuki should actually be up and about. maybe he should have been up and about hours ago. but today, nobody woke him up and now he's more of a flustered mess than usual.

but rather than actually running around, he's sitting on the engawa, a tray of rice balls at his side... but he's not eating them. why? because blue mop of hair it's a tangled, knotted mess. while the food he wants to eat just sits there, waiting to be stolen by anyone who passes by? he's tugging at the matted mess.]

Oi— Ah-t-t-t-tch! Why the hell is it is so bad today!? [his yells are both pained and aggravated as he winces. he's trying to work his fingers through the mess (instead of looking for a comb), which isn't succeeding at all. help him comb it? make fun of his agony? steal his breakfast? the choice is yours.]

Comments

[dogmatically]

With that guy? Who the hell knows. [it's frustrating, because there's really no way of ever knowing just what serizawa's going to do. the fact that he was granted a reprieve this morning may not bode well for the rest of the day; getting this far without having to do a sake run or some other petty, annoying thing kind of worries him, in all honesty. for all he knows, he'll end this day having the shit beat out of him for sleeping in and not waking up early on his own.

that guy is such an asshole, such a pain in the ass... but what can he say or do? ibuki's got a place to eat and sleep, and he's still alive because of serizawa — he's not totally ungrateful for that.

it probably doesn't matter much now though, right? he can worry about it when that time comes. for now, he's unthreading his fingers from the blue mess that is his hair and reaching over for the onigiri, taking a hearty bite and reveling for a brief moment in how good it is. he didn't even realize how hungry he was until he taste it.]

Ah— ow! Careful... [it's an automatic reaction though, as heisuke works at the tangles. it still pulls at his scalp, and he's a big enough baby to whine endlessly until it's over.]

[ofuse]

C'mon, Ryunosuke.. Aren't you a man?

[ Heisuke lets out a large sigh. He doesn't really stop tugging as he does so, mostly since he knows there's no other way to get these knots out than to just be a little rough with them.. it's not like it should feel as bad as getting kicked around all the time, anyway. At least his tone makes it clear that he's not exactly making fun of the other, but that he's more just saying it's something they just have to put up with.. the curse of having long hair like this, really.

His fingers manage finally untangle that particularly big one though - with one pretty hard last tug, sorry there, Ibuki - and Heisuke takes a bite from his own rice ball again before he sets himself onto the next knot. ]

It's really bad though.. [ Said as a true expert, mind you. ] How wild have you been sleeping last night?! It must've been worse than the way Shinpatsu-san and Sano-san sleep after they get drunk!

[ Pot, kettle... ]

[dogmatically]

Wh—Hey! Of course I'm a man! Being a man doesn't mean it stops hurting!

[it's not as if heisuke can really argue that, either. he's not exactly the most mature with pain himself... even if there's a definite different between pain from fighting and training and pain from hair tangles. it still hurts, though!

it could probably be worst though. serizawa's tessen trumps a lot of that, at least in his experience. in any case, after he finishes one of the rice balls, he's ducking his head a little, rubbing a spot on his scalp that feels sore from all the pulling. unsurprisingly, heisuke's doing a better and slightly less painful job than ibuki was himself... his patience levels are just too low.]

I don't know what happened. I wouldn't be surprised if Okita came in and messed it up just to piss me off or something... [everything is souji's fault, even when it's not it sounds like something that asshole would do to him, though. that guy...!!]

[ofuse]

[ There's just a lot of pot, kettle coming from Heisuke that we aren't going to address, okay. Especially since he doesn't bother saying anything further about it even if Ibuki does make a few more sounds or rub his hair. Instead Heisuke just laughs - sorry, it's not like he can hold that back - at the funny mental image of Souji really sneaking in while Ibuki's sleeping and messing with his hair.. mostly since it's just such a stupid innocent prank, and that's exactly the kind of stuff Heisuke likes compared to the most dark stuff that's been going on lately. It's the sort of prank Heisuke would pull on his best friends if he could actually pull it off.. and if Shinpachi had a little more hair.. ]

Imagine that, Souji sneaking around in the middle of the night just to mess up your hair.. sounds like he's really dedicated to you! [ It's at least half a joke, and Heisuke's still laughing after he says it and manages to more or less straighten out the knots in another strand of the blue hair. ]

Maybe it'd be easier to just let it down before you sleep.. but sleeping like that's even more of a pain, huh?

[ He Knows... the one thing Heisuke can understand no matter what is hair problems. Although in his case it probably doesn't help either that he actually looks pretty much like a girl when he has his own down. ]

And it's even worse when you have to wake up in the middle of the night and just be ready..

[ Stupid middle-of-the-night missions lately. With the trouble with the rasetsu growing, it's just been happening more and more often that they've all had to go on a hunt in the middle of the night.. even though it's a little hard to imagine compared to the image of them sitting there eating rice balls and doing their hair right now in bright daylight. ]

[dogmatically]

I don't know if it's better or worse than when he tries to shove me into the river...

[if there could be an award for heavy sighs, ibuki would probably win it, because he's doing it again. all of this a pain, because most things end up being some kind of annoyance to ibuki anyway. souji manages to be a big part of that on a daily basis, because he tends to be such an asshole about things—it's really a wonder to him that kondou still sees him as no less than a perfect angel child.

because he's a shitlord, okay.

maybe he shouldn't think about that right now though. he's already getting a pretty bad headache from this hair mess, and the chances that it will dissipate anytime soon will only get lower if he thinks about souji. instead, he's wincing, though this time heisuke's motions don't seem to be as painful. he's glad, really glad, that there's someone else who totally understands his pain here. the struggle of deciding how to sleep with it, and the knowing that cutting it just seems wrong even if maintaining it more like shinpachi's would make the mornings a lot less of a hassle. bathing, too.]

That's happening a lot lately, isn't it? We barely sleep through the night anymore. [why they're still working on this stupid ass rasetsu thing, ibuki will never understand. they're stealing people's humanity and making them monsters who can't be controlled. who does that help? they're a total danger to everyone and just make more work overall. it's a wonder any of them managed to wake up in the morning after those kinds of nights. niimi and that koudou guy really... they were making so much trouble.]

[ofuse]

[ There's a small pause where he just tugs on a knot, but then Heisuke slowly answers. ]

Yeah. It's like one of them goes crazy and escapes every night now.. [ It's said with less energy than everything he's said before, and the expression on his face is definitely rueful to say the least. Heisuke's probably pretty glad that doing Ibuki's hair means sitting behind him at least a little (although not entirely, given for just how long his hair goes on) so his expression isn't immediately that obvious.

Still, he can't help it - even aside from the grumbling about the lack of sleep like Ibuki may be doing, this stuff just really tugs on Heisuke's heartstrings. The whole matter with the rasetsu, really. Forcing people who've fought by their sides to drink that stuff, only to watch them go crazy and have inevitably hunt them down and kill them when they really lose it.. it's terrible. Even if the alternative for those men would have been sepukku, having to be locked up like this, practically becoming monsters...

It's cruel. It's terrible.

His hands don't stop pulling on Ibuki's hair, probably to distract himself at least a little. ]

I'm getting pretty sick of it.

[ It's pretty obvious that he doesn't mean it in as whiny way, but he's still trying to present it at least a little like that, like it's just about the bother of having to run around all night instead of anything else. He's a warrior, after all, he has to be stronger than that - but even so, he can't help the way his heart feels. ]