[D6MA] Off The Boardwalk

[Usagi Rei]

Eyes widening at the splash, Rei briefly relaxed his arm, making Yakumo drop a little... but he did not, after all, let go. He pulled her up. "Who, me?" He asked, brushing his shoulder and hip against hers.

Rei continued on, bending down to open the bag, pulling out two towels. Even as he buried his face in one, he offered her the other. "Of course. It's my pleasure." He lowered his towel, smiling at her. "I gathered you were pretty tense today, what with the concert, and all the other stuff that's going on. I figured some time to relax would be just the thing."

[Susumu Yakumo]

While Rei was busy with the towels, Yakumo stood at the water's edge, wringing the worst of the water out of her hair. At least the waters here wasn't as salty as the real sea, or so she imagined it. Probably to irritate the patrons of the resort less, because the salt of seawater was bad for a lot of delicate swimwear, skin, and hair.

"Mm... perceptive as always, you are," she remarked with a smirk, looking over her shoulder at him before taking a moment to just look out at the artifically created landscape (and waterscape). "... Amazing what they can do with some shugenja and architects, isn't it? Makes me wonder what the World of Dreams looked like before all this."

[Usagi Rei]

Rei tossed one towel around his neck for a moment, walking out to hand the other to Yakumo. "This part would have once been just ocean. Shugenja raised it to protect the harbor, and then they did all this." He waved a hand. "Before that... I don't know. Worldscaping can do a lot, I know."

He took a deep breath, then sighed. "I do like it here... I can't decide if all this counts as real, or an illusion. Maybe if the illusion is real for long enough, it becomes real?" He chuckled, shrugging. "The World of Dreams gets me thinking a lot about stuff like that. When we believe something's real, we act like it is..." He frowned, thinking back to the last night.

[Susumu Yakumo]

"Repeat a lie often enough, and people believe it?" she added on, looking back to him as she had noticed his words trail off slightly. "... Everything alright, Rei?"

"You know you can trust me a little too, right?"

[Usagi Rei]

Rei smiled wryly. "Something like that. Maybe you don't even have to repeat it. They'll repeat it themselves."

Once she took the towel, Rei went back to the bag, pulling out two more towels, one at a time, spreading them on the sand. And then, finally, an umbrella, which he unfolded and stabbed aggressively into the sand with a grunt.

He looked at her, smiling, meeting her gaze. "Of course. I do trust you. That's one of the things that I do know about you. Something I knew since that night at the Golden Frog." He shook his head. "But there's some things I can't share. Just like I haven't told anyone about you and me..." He shrugged, smiling. "Really, it's just been quite a week."

[Susumu Yakumo]

She took the towel, using it to dry off the worst of the wet spots for now. "Hmmm, I understand," Yakumo nodded. As they agreed on before, they didn't push one another on any topic, but let the other one decide whether or not to open up if they chose to.

"Not often I get called trustworthy you know," she chuckled softly, moving to take her spot underneath the parasol. "What about me is it that made you think I was someone who could be trusted, considering I'm a Spider and all?"

[Usagi Rei]

Rei sprawled casually on the adjacent towel, shirt casually open. At her question, he rolled over onto his side. He smiled, as he usually did, but his pale eyes were narrowed, studying her.

"It's difficult to say for certain. So many assessments are based on a thousand tiny clues, from the way you wear your hair, to how you drink, to the dilation of your pupils." His eyes went to hers, pausing a moment to admire that violet... "But I remember coming the the conclusion that you are very genuine. And surprisingly kind."

His gaze went distant. "I think it has to do with how you live in the moment, thinking and feeling. Like with me..." he smiled, "-and Kuni-san. It makes you very easy to trust." He looked back at her.

[Susumu Yakumo]

Yakumo kept his gaze for a while before settling down to get comfortable. "Hmmm," she stretched out her arms, then tumbled back onto her back on the towel, using the first towel as a pillow to tuck under her head. "I know some would say that maybe I am the one trusting both of you too easily then... but I suppose sometimes that one who is willing to trust is trustworthy, to some degree?"

Yakumo turned her head to the side, to be able to look at Rei. "I'm not as gullible as Hinata though. Just to make it clear."

[Usagi Rei]

Rei smiled. "That's very much my experience with that, yes."

He slid over a little bit, so that his head at least was in the protection of the shade. "But there's more to it than that. Willing to trust isn't the same as genuine. It's hard to explain the difference... but one is you, and the other... well, I guess you're also willing to trust. But I think that's because we can be real with each other."

Rolling onto his back himself, Rei chuckled. "No. I can't believe anyone in the galaxy is as gullible as Hinata. I refuse to believe that somewhere out there, there's another Crane who approaches life with the same... I don't know, simple enthusiasm as Hinata." Rei chuckled again. "He's very sweet, though."

[Susumu Yakumo]

"Let it be known that Susumu Yakumo keeps it real. One hundred," she tried mimicking the way Yoritomo Jiro would've put it with his hip-hop kind of way, but it just sounded silly to her. "Err... yes, I suppose I can be real."

Judging by her expression Yakumo was heavily debating whether or not to open her mouth. But being the gossip that she was she couldn't resist. "Hinata isn't the only Crane I have met who is that... simple. And innocent. She was also so, so... unbearingly..." don't say dumb, Crane is your allies, "simply sweet. I think if I put them in a quiz-show against a pre-gempukku kid, the kid would win with ease."

Right, so we're just indirectly calling them stupid.

"Makes me concerned about the Crane genetics these days to be honest..."

[Usagi Rei]

"Another one..." Rei sat up, giving her an incredulous look. "Fortunes... that's hard to think about." He tilted his head, considering. "In the Hare, we've got some who clearly did an orbital drop right onto their head. And my cousin who wears the ugliest shirts I've ever seen. But..." Rei shook his head again, "-two Hinatas. Wow. That's something."

Chuckling, he fell back, crossing his arms behind his head, content to enjoy the sun.

/fadetorelax