Zeno drops to his knees. Poor clothes didn't ask to be dropped on the dirty floor. Especially since they haven't been paid for yet...
He folds the abused fabric as he fabricates an answer in his head. He isn't, exactly, bothered by people knowing. The knowing, that isn't the thing. Nothing changes whether or not people know. It doesn't change his feelings, it certainly doesn't change the past, and he sincerely doubts its effects on the future as well.
"Zeno is sure Hakuryuu made a good impression on his sister," he says brightly, mostly to subtly clue Ouka in on why this is so significant to Kija. Secondary goal is to get Kija to calm down.
The immediate flaws in that plan are the words 'subtle' and 'calm,' Zeno is aware, but nothing ventured, nothing gained...
"Poor Kaya, though. It's not really fair that everyone knows such a private thing about her, when she must never know it herself."
A warning sneaks into that sentence, Zeno's voice gradually becoming firmer, sterner, on each word.
Because it isn't fair. That is Zeno's main concern. There's a particular assumption you can make about married people and it's not really something young girls should have assumed about them. It feels like a complete invasion of Kaya's privacy to give that impression, so he has tried to avoid it. He couldn't deny her specter during that... parade... not when he was going to destroy her, anyway. He owed her that.
But he owes her this, too. This odd ghost of a second chance. She has a chance at a rea... sonable facsimile of a life, without sickness, with mobility and society and comforts and what a terrible, terrible thing it would be, to have some old man who by all rights ought to have been dead before she was even old enough to get married, hold her back?
2/2
He folds the abused fabric as he fabricates an answer in his head. He isn't, exactly, bothered by people knowing. The knowing, that isn't the thing. Nothing changes whether or not people know. It doesn't change his feelings, it certainly doesn't change the past, and he sincerely doubts its effects on the future as well.
"Zeno is sure Hakuryuu made a good impression on his sister," he says brightly, mostly to subtly clue Ouka in on why this is so significant to Kija. Secondary goal is to get Kija to calm down.
The immediate flaws in that plan are the words 'subtle' and 'calm,' Zeno is aware, but nothing ventured, nothing gained...
"Poor Kaya, though. It's not really fair that everyone knows such a private thing about her, when she must never know it herself."
A warning sneaks into that sentence, Zeno's voice gradually becoming firmer, sterner, on each word.
Because it isn't fair. That is Zeno's main concern. There's a particular assumption you can make about married people and it's not really something young girls should have assumed about them. It feels like a complete invasion of Kaya's privacy to give that impression, so he has tried to avoid it. He couldn't deny her specter during that... parade... not when he was going to destroy her, anyway. He owed her that.
But he owes her this, too. This odd ghost of a second chance. She has a chance at a rea... sonable facsimile of a life, without sickness, with mobility and society and comforts and what a terrible, terrible thing it would be, to have some old man who by all rights ought to have been dead before she was even old enough to get married, hold her back?