But he is already brushing off her hand and turning to leave, as if her words were just passing things that have already glanced off of him, and the hand that she had dared to scandalously place upon him here, where anyone might see them, meant little. For a moment, just before his gaze leaves her... "Liem" will see something that almost looks like it might be hurt on Hayame's face.
But once he has turned... that expression slowly becomes strange. Later, when she is inevitably asked what it was that led her to the suspicion that wells up inside of her... Hayame will not be able to settle on on definitive thing, or even three or five. Was it how his tongue formed the sounds of her name as if he knew how the syllables were supposed to sound? Was it the way his smile seemed almost stiff, when they had known each other more for a year, and he called her friend? Perhaps it is how his shoulders suddenly drop and his posture grows rough. Or maybe...
It is the fact that he turned from her touch after all. The two of them... did not touch often. Hayame felt as if she barely knew how to properly, even when she desired to, and though she suspected (but never did him the indignity of trying to imagine that) Liem might... be different, in his private life, considering how he had tried to insist to her that while holding hands might be vulnerable enough intimacy for her Discord it was not nearly as effective on him...
It did not change the fact that neither of them were the type to view touching as something to be done in the public eye. And yet despite that... Liem had never done anything but accept and bask in her paltry attempts at touch. Most of the times she had found the courage to hold him he was "dead", his shard cradled close no matter how the sharp edges bit into her skin, but when she had held his hand, when she had enfolded him in an awkward embrace...]
Liem!
[The sound of hooves sound out behind the man after he turns the corner, but though he might expect an attack or an accusation it is just... Hayame, having caught up just enough to peek around a tent and call out,]
- I will come by your tent to read to you later as usual. Alright?
[Just a last reminder of a shared plan before parting properly.]
no subject
["Now"...
But he is already brushing off her hand and turning to leave, as if her words were just passing things that have already glanced off of him, and the hand that she had dared to scandalously place upon him here, where anyone might see them, meant little. For a moment, just before his gaze leaves her... "Liem" will see something that almost looks like it might be hurt on Hayame's face.
But once he has turned... that expression slowly becomes strange. Later, when she is inevitably asked what it was that led her to the suspicion that wells up inside of her... Hayame will not be able to settle on on definitive thing, or even three or five. Was it how his tongue formed the sounds of her name as if he knew how the syllables were supposed to sound? Was it the way his smile seemed almost stiff, when they had known each other more for a year, and he called her friend? Perhaps it is how his shoulders suddenly drop and his posture grows rough. Or maybe...
It is the fact that he turned from her touch after all. The two of them... did not touch often. Hayame felt as if she barely knew how to properly, even when she desired to, and though she suspected (but never did him the indignity of trying to imagine that) Liem might... be different, in his private life, considering how he had tried to insist to her that while holding hands might be vulnerable enough intimacy for her Discord it was not nearly as effective on him...
It did not change the fact that neither of them were the type to view touching as something to be done in the public eye. And yet despite that... Liem had never done anything but accept and bask in her paltry attempts at touch. Most of the times she had found the courage to hold him he was "dead", his shard cradled close no matter how the sharp edges bit into her skin, but when she had held his hand, when she had enfolded him in an awkward embrace...]
Liem!
[The sound of hooves sound out behind the man after he turns the corner, but though he might expect an attack or an accusation it is just... Hayame, having caught up just enough to peek around a tent and call out,]
- I will come by your tent to read to you later as usual. Alright?
[Just a last reminder of a shared plan before parting properly.]