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“Are you ever going to introduce me to your guard friends?” Suzu asks around a mouthful of dumpling. “Or are you embarrassed?”
To say Obi is unprepared, would be an understatement; there’s a pork bun lodged between his teeth, his gloves not only coated in pig grease but also far less effective against steam than he’d thought they’d be back when he’d just grabbed a plump little blob off the stall. He’d laughed off Suzu’s concerns about protective equipment; after all, if smiths use leather gloves, they’ve got to be just as good as an oven mitt.
They aren’t. Not to mention the roof of his mouth starting to have a real good think about peeling off and having a vacation. Maybe even with someone who doesn’t eat entire dumplings straight from the basket.
“Wha?” he manages eloquently, nearly drooling spicy meat drippings onto the street.
“I know I’m not cool like they are,” Suzu continues, warming to his new thesis. If his sudden flush of confidence is any measure, he’s spent more of time composing his arguments for this than Obi’s ever seen him work on his actual defense. “And I’m no good with a sword. Or fists. Or really any implement that isn’t a scalpel, and any opponent that isn’t already anesthetized. But I am very smart.”
There’s a thoughtful pause before Suzu adds, “Some people do enjoy that, you know.”
What Obi knows is that this kid tried this conversation on for size in front of Yuzuri, and she didn’t even bother to warn him as a courtesy. See if he buys her any more meat-on-sticks when she’s ‘left her purse in the lab’ now.
“That’s not–” he takes a hurried minute to swallow– “not what’s happening. I didn’t…”
Even know you knew I didn’t work for the pharmacy. His teeth clamp shut around that winner, and its friend, I didn’t think you lot would want to hang out with a bunch of men without degrees. Not only would that encourage Suzu to make a scene right here, right now, but if it got back to Jirou– well, if he thought Suzu could turn any day into a disaster, the lieutenant would make that seem like a vacation.
“I didn’t think you wanted to,” he settles on instead. Similar enough in feel, if…creatively edited. “You scholar types tend to flock together.”
“Well, sure,” Suzu murmurs, stymied, “but we’re friends too, aren’t we? If all my friends are your friends, then all your friends should be my friends.”
Only an academic could talk about arithmetic with that amount of confidence, especially the kind that involved transitive properties and letters, and all sorts of things that made Obi’s head spin.
“Well,” he hums, one boot scratching his calf. “You would know.”
Suzu whirls on him, staring down his long fox-snout of a nose. “You mean it? You’ll really…?”
“Sure. If that’s what you want.” He twitches his shoulders, more casual than he feels. “It’s fine if it’s you.”
There’s always been a lazy lilt to Suzu’s eyes, but it disappears now, all the sleepiness gone to surprise. “Me? You wouldn’t want to bring anyone else?”
“Well, definitely not Kazaha.” The glares he’d get bringing that twiggy pedant into the guardhouse might be enough to drop him dead on the spot. “And Yuzuri would be too popular.”
Suzu grimaces. “The number of admirers she’d get from a wink alone…she’d be unlivable.”
He can see it now, her ponytail bobbing with a buoyant glee, giggling through every painstaking penned line from her fan club– “Think of all the bad poetry.”
“Honestly, that might make it worth it. At least I’ll feel better about not knowing the difference between a quartet and a quatrain.” Suzu takes a thoughtful bite of him bun. “And you couldn’t bring Shirayuki, of course.”
“Right.” Not a one of them could be trusted to keep their lips sealed; she’d hardly have to take a breath and someone would call her Obi’s lady, or ask how they met, or whether she’s still Mistress behind closed doors–
But Suzu wouldn’t know any of that. “Wait, why?”
“Well…” He has the grace to look chagrined about it, whatever it is. “You know. Her hair…?”
“Oh.” Obi shrugs. “Sure, I guess.”
“You guess?” Suzu stares. “Shirayuki has a non-zero amount of stories about being kidnapped for looking like a candied apple, and you guess there might be a fuss about bringing her ‘round to the guardhouse?”
“Well, none of you acted weird about it,” he snips, hiding his annoyance behind a bite of dumpling. “There’s no reason they will.”
“Of course no one at Lilias acted weird, Obi!” he squawks, arms flailing as he talks. “You couldn’t pay them to look at anything but their own project. But when a bunch of normal men with eyes and, uh, other working appendages see a cute girl with red hair and a soft voice, they’re gonna go crazy!”
His palm hooks around his shoulder, thumb digging into the hard knot at his collarbone. “Aw, come on. It’s not that special.”
“Not that–?” Suzu whips around, eyes round as dumplings. “Obi, she’s the only person I’ve ever seen with red hair.”
“You don’t get out much,” Obi deadpans. “No offense.”
“That’s not–” Suzu grunts, throwing up his hands– “She’s the only person anyone’s ever seen with red hair!”
“Her dad’s is kind of red.” That observation wins him an unimpressed look, one that says you’re missing the point. “And Yuzuri had blue hair when I met her. That’s way more interesting–”
“It was dyed!” Suzu wobbles over to a wall, sitting with his head in his hands. “Shirayuki has a hair color so rare that the birth records in Clarines haven’t noted it in more than fifty years! And you think Yuzuri dying her hair with woad is more impressive.”
“Well, even her natural color is brighter than Miss’s. Not–” he waves a hand between them, quelling– “that Miss’s hair isn’t nice enough. But I’d think that people would pay more attention to that.”
“…Brighter?” Suzu murmurs after a long moment, stilted. “Obi, could you tell me what color that sign is, right over there?”
“The one for the tea shop?” He wrinkles his nose. “Why–?”
“Just…indulge me for a moment.”
“All right.” He squints up at the moon cresting over a wolf’s head. “Blue.”
“Right, and, um, that coat over there.”
“Yellow.”
“Right.” Suzu’s voice is tight, stressed. “And what I’m wearing?”
Obi squints. This one’s a little harder, but he’s confident when he says, “Green.”
“Ah, right.” Suzu stands, a unsteady on his feet. “That would explain that, then.”
Obi blinks. “Explain what?”
“Obi,” Suzu begins, with all the gravitas of both a grim prognosis and a terrible joke. “You can’t see colors.”
It’s not the first time Obi’s played hound to his prey’s fox, but there’s something distinctly unsettling about it being Suzu that leaves him lagging behind, unsure of himself. Especially with the way he scurries through the concourse, bounding toward the mess hall with this idea caught between his teeth like chicken feathers.
“I can see colors just fine,” Obi informs him with far less confidence than he’d like. “Some of them are just hard to tell apart. Weren’t you and Yuzuri arguing yesterday about whether salmon is orange or pink?”
Suzu waves a hand at him, dismissive. “That’s different. Salmon’s both orange and pink, and what color it looks most like has to do with the composition of your eye– and it’s pink by the way, with orange undertones–”
Between the two of them, Obi knows who he’d trust to know their colors. “Uh-huh.”
“You can’t make out red and green, which is different entirely, and–” the doors to the mess burst open beneath his hands, a noise lost in the din of a hundred scholars trying to share the same table– “YOU GUYS WON’T BELIEVE WHAT I JUST FOUND.”
The whole of Shidan’s lab– minus the man himself– have taken up right by the door, bags and coats piled to save them their places on the bench. Suzu makes short work of the pile on his seat, haphazardly shoving them to the floor as he sits.
Kazaha peers at him and ventures mildly, “A new way to avoid finishing your thesis?”
“No,” Suzu hums between his grit teeth, “but I have found out–”
“I don’t think we need to do this,” Obi murmurs, handing Miss her muffler. “It’s not–”
“Obi,” he intones with far more gravitas than his name has ever strictly deserved, “can’t see colors.”
“Not at all?” Kazaha turns those sharp eyes to him, like he’s a specimen under glass. “Just black and white?”
“I can see just fine,” Obi huffs, tossing Yuzuri her coat before he slides onto the bench, knee knocking into Miss’s in a way that puts his heart through its paces. “Suzu is just making a mountain out of a molehill.”
“Is that so?” he hums with a grin. “Then what color is Shirayuki’s hair?”
He stifles a sigh. It’s best to put all this to bed now, before he’s stuck playing what’s this color for the next two years. “Red.”
“What’s the point of this?” Yuzuri yawns, already bored. Obi shoots her a grateful look, glad that at least one of them isn’t going to play Suzu’s game.
It’s too bad he’s already puffed up with unearned confidence, like an evolutionist at a botany lecture. “And what’s the color of Ryuu’s cloak?”
He knows it by heart– how could he not, when the two most important people in this city wear matching ones– but still Obi glances up, anticipating a trick. Ryuu stares back, confused and guileless. “Blue.”
“Great, good.” Suzu’s grin stretches from ear to ear. “Now what color is your scarf?”
Obi’s fingers knot in the fabric, the weft tickling the pads of his fingers. “Well, it’s…sort of reddish, isn’t it?”
This is the wrong answer.
“It makes so much sense,” Yuzuri murmurs in wonder. “You really don’t know how ugly Suzu’s outfits are. That’s why you still hang out with him.”
“Hey!” Suzu pouts. “That’s not very nice.”
“No, that has nothing to do with color, it’s the cut.” Anxiety spikes through him. “But wait, it is red isn’t it? My scarf?”
“No,” Miss murmurs at his side, cheeks flushes. “Obi, it’s…it’s green.”
He stares down at it, trying to imagine what that might look like. “Green.”
“It looks very nice on you!” Her small fingers wrapping in the fur at his elbow. “It’s your color, really.”
“Oh, sure,” he murmurs, faint. “I guess it matches my eyes.”
“Hey, what do you mean ‘it has nothing to do with the color?’“ Suzu’s hands fly to his hips, brows drawn tight over the long line of his nose. “My clothes are just fine.”
“They aren’t.” Obi leans in next to him, grin feeling thinner than it should. “But I hang out with you anyway, which means you know we’re really friends.”
Kazaha rubs at his chin, where his ode to Shidan’s goatee is failing to thrive. “You know what this also explains?”
Obi blinks. “What?”
“All the black.”
It’s not Kazaha that says it, oh no. That would be too merciful for a mortifying moment out of his life. Instead it’s low and feminine, and when Miss Kiki leans out from the other side of Miss, it’s like a siren emerging from the depths, teeth bared to tear a man to shreds. “What an interesting thing I’ve learned today.”
“Miss Kiki! How–?” He gulps. “Why–?”
“I came to deliver a message from Wirant,” she drawls, too pleased. “And it seems I’ve earned myself a fine tip.”
“No,” he breathes. “You can’t– you’re not going to tell Master, are you? Or Sir?”
“Oh,” she hums, looking particularly hungry for manflesh. “I certainly will.”
“Oh, there there.” Miss pats his back, the sensation lost among the dozen layers of clothing between them. “I’m sure Kiki won’t tell them, not until you’re ready! You asked her not to.”
“I think that just means,” Obi mutters, voice muffled by his arms and the wall he’s throwing himself over, “that she’ll just enjoy telling them more.”
“Ah…” He doesn’t need to see her to know her grimace. “Yes, that’s…probably right.”
He lets out a heavy, dramatic sigh. It helps a little. So does a bit of flailing.
“They won’t make a big deal out of it,” Miss says, changing tack. “It hardly changes anything! I’m sure they’ll just forget as soon as she tells them.”
He peeps one eye over his elbow. “That’s easy for you to say, you haven’t spent the last half an hour playing What’s That Color.”
“Well,” she wheedles, “they are scholars.”
Obi groans, loud and long, which doesn’t help; but it echoes out over the rooftops, returning back to him, which does.
“How…?”
Miss hesitates, a gloved finger pressed to her lips. He sighs, already braced for the onslaught– how didn’t you know? how did you go so long without knowing your colors? how do you find people if you can’t even tell what hair color they have–?
“How did you notice?”
Obi lifts his head, unblinking. “What?”
“How did you notice?” Miss repeats, more firmly this time. “You’ve spent your whole life this way, haven’t you? It must have taken something really special to realize there was more than what you see.”
“Uh.” It’s nice that it’s darker here, that it’s cold. He has perfect legitimate reasons to be flushed. “Well, it was Suzu really. He mentioned that–” his teeth clamp down around his words, not letting them out without a hasty edit– “that people think your hair’s pretty special, and I said I didn’t get why…”
Miss stiffens beside him, a statue that breathes, and he hastily adds, “Not that you aren’t special, Miss. It’s just, the red…”
“Right.” The words comes out stilted, strange. “You can’t see it. You actually…haven’t ever seen it.”
A silence settles on them like a wool blanket; not one of those nice ones at the castle, or the fleecy ones Miss stockpiles like one day the North might run out of sheep, but the itchy, coarse-woven ones of his childhood. Uncomfortable and smelling faintly of animal.
“So,” he coughs, fixing his gaze out over the city. “What did Kiki want?”
“Oh…” Miss shifts, mouth pulling into a guilty grimace. “She came to tell me that the Queen Dowager has invited me to dinner. Tomorrow night.”
His brows raise. “Well, well.”
“Don’t,” she murmurs, head giving the barest shake. “It’s not like that.”
“Are you sure?” He shouldn’t press, but if he doesn’t, no one else will. “After you told Master–”
“I told him a list of reasons why I thought I would be a better ally as a friend, and not as a…” Miss loses steam, letting her words sigh into the air. “I’d like to believe this has to do with my work with Phostyrias.”
He watches her, careful. “But do you?”
“I don’t know,” she says, which is as good as any no.
Obi’s barely stepped into the Protector’s solar when Master asks, “What color is my jacket?”
His head swivels, delivering a glare so flat carpets would be jealous. Miss Kiki only hums, shoulder lifting in a disinterested shrug. “I said I was going to tell them.”
Fair enough.
“It’s blue,” he deadpans, flopping onto the cushiest divan. He’s too long for it, his boots spilling off one arm a idling over the floor. “Apparently I can see that one just fine.”
According to Miss, at least; she’d unearthed a slip of a book from the university’s library, outlining the limits of his sight. Little Ryuu had pored over it for a day before showing up at his door, flushed faced and nervous.
Garrack always told me I had nice eyes, he’d admitted, lingering at the threshold. I was hoping you could see them.
Cross as he is about the whole thing, Obi can’t regret that. He might not have Miss’s hair, or Suzu’s coat– thankfully– but Ryuu’s eyes would always look true to him.
“But not red.” Master’s mouth twitches, far too entertained. “Or green.”
“I do see them,” he protests. “They just…don’t look very different to me.”
Just another shade of yellow and brown, if those books are right. Which they are, since he’d always thought so. Subtly different, like the way Suzu and Yuzuri fought over salmon, or Master and Miss Kiki would dither over chartreuse. Just enough that he’d been able to eke by on keeping his mouth shut and a fondness for black.
Still, there’s nothing worse than finding out something new about yourself this late in the game. Especially when–
“What about the curtains?” Master inquires. “Can you see those?”
–Especially when it’s so endlessly entertaining to everyone else. “I can see them,” he grumbles, sinking further into the cushions. “Just because I can’t see some colors doesn’t mean I’m blind.”
“Then what about the note?”
Obi rolls his gaze to where Sir perches at his desk. “Huh?”
“To our red-haired guest.” Sir coughs, a flush working its way up his neck. “It’s just– you wrote that.”
“Oh, His Grace told me that one.” A lifetime ago, it seemed. “‘The red-haired girl, you’ll know her when you see her, I’m sure.’“
Master winces. Obi can admit his talent doesn’t lie with impressions, especially ones of dour old men.
“Right,” Sir presses, voice oddly tight. “But you don’t see– I mean, how could you find a girl that looks just like everyone else?”
“Ah…” He grimaces, scrubbing at the top of his head. “Well, I just looked for the girl who didn’t belong. It–” he hesitates, suddenly aware of Master’s eyes on him– “didn’t take very long.”
Master’s frown belongs above one of those prie-dieu, to remind penitents that forgiveness isn’t absolute. “What is that supposed to–?”
“So what does she look like?” No one could say that after a decade of dedication, Miss Kiki doesn’t know how to do her job; she deflects Master’s brewing sour mood with the ease of a professional. “What does her hair look like to you?”
“Uh.” He clears his throat, tugging at his collar. “I wasn’t lying when I said I bought my scarf to match…”
There is a stillness to the room that is too much, too pitiful. Much as he hated it, Obi would much rather be a joke than a charity case.
“Huh,” Sir grunts, gaze still fixed to his neck. “Now I wonder what we all look like to you.”
“Well, I sort of wonder what you all look like to yourselves.” Obi let a sigh float wistfully through his lips. “At least I know that me and Miss still have the same eyes.”
There’s silence again, but this one buzzes, filled with words no one dares to say.
“What?” he laughs, nervous, pulling himself upright. “Don’t we?”
Sir grimaces. “Ah, Obi…”
Miss is quiet when they walk the walls home that night, the winter stillness making the silence and heavy as any drift. Her mouth is pursed, not with anything like anger, but something closer to consideration. As if there’s words back there she’s sorting through, trying to compose a thought that just won’t come.
Well, she should know: she won’t get anywhere if she doesn’t air a few of them out to look at. “Something wrong, Miss?”
She blinks, shaken out from wherever she gone away. Her mind palace, maybe. Suzu’d told him about those once, with busts and painting and curtained alcoves. What she’d do with a place like that, he couldn’t imagine, but if anyone asked, he’d put his money on hers having apothecary drawers instead, and gardens too. The kind with half crumbled walls, ivies curled around every stone. Cluttered desks piled high with books, and one of them with curtain drawn to let its owner nap the afternoon away.
“Oh,” she breathes, finally. “No, no. Nothing’s, um, wrong. I was just…thinking.”
He lifts a knowing brow. “So something is wrong.”
“That’s not what I said,” she informs him, primly. “I was going over my meeting with Haruto, and…”
Her lips snap shut around the words, distress narrowing her eyes. “And…?”
“She didn’t know about my work,” Miss huffs, arms wrapping tight around her chest. “Or, she did, but only what Zen had told her. Which…”
Was far less than the whole of it. He’d heard that part of her argument that night, try as he might not to. “So she invited you as Zen’s ally?”
“No.” The word is colder than any he’s ever heard fall from her lips. “That I wouldn’t mind– I’m still trying to be his ally, after all, and if she saw me as an asset…” She shook her head. “No, she wanted to meet his…paramour, even if she didn’t say as much.”
Obi grimaces.
“And even that wouldn’t be so bad if…” Miss took a deep, steeling breath. “When I came in, after all the curtsies and pleasantries, she said, your hair is just as red as he said it was.” Her knuckles are white where they wrap around her elbows. “All those years, all those letters, and the only thing he thinks to tell his mother is that my hair…”
The rest is lost in a sigh, a cloud of mist swirling off the wall.
“It must really be something,” Obi deadpans, gaze following it off the edge. “Since it makes all these people forget how smart you are.”
She’s watching him; he can feel it as she sidles up to where he stands, hands unclenching from her arms and splaying on the crenellations instead. “Obi, you really can’t…?”
Miss hesitates, falls silent. He lets her; she’s put enough words in the air to sort through, and now all she needs is time. Obi’s happy to give it to her.
Especially since there’s a rabbit down there in the dark. A small one, moving slow, hind legs churning like clockwork winding up. It’s nose digs into the snow, snuffling around, searching–
“Can you really see better?” Miss asks, startling him back to the wall. “In the dark, I mean. That book said you could.”
“Well, after the past couple days, I’m a little shaky on what’s normal.” He jerks his chin over the edge. “Can you see the rabbit down there? Right by that sapling?”
She blinks, pressing in close. “The what? It’s just…dark out there.”
“Well,” he says, grin tight on his lips. “There’s your answer.”
Miss settles back on her heels, one hand already cupping her chin. “It makes sense. Without the distraction of color, your movement tracking must be much more acute…”
Obi only half-manages to stifle a laugh. “Seems like it definitely distracts everyone else.”
Miss goes quiet; almost too quiet, enough to make his teeth sit on edge. The seconds tick by, and Obi might play at patience, but it’s not in his nature. He glances down, just from the corners of his eyes, but Miss is already watching him, eyes strangely shuttered.
“Obi,” she says, so clear his name rings in his ears. “You don’t…? My hair, it’s not…” Her mouth works, quiet, before she manages, “It’s not anything to you?”
Anything special, she means. Because that’s what he said so stupidly last night, nothing special.
She’d tied it up tonight, finagling the strange looping knots that were partial to the queen’s court, but already some of it’s worn loose, slipping from its pins. “It is,” he murmurs. “I like it.”
She huffs, unimpressed. “But you can’t see it, not really.”
“Of course I can see it,” he laughs, weary. “Maybe not the color, but that’s fine. I like it because it’s yours.”
She ducks her head, and Obi might not be good at colors, but he can see her cheeks flush in the lamplight.
“Miss.” Her gaze lifts to his, no longer shuttered, just full. “Can I ask you something?”
Her breath catches. “Anything.”
“Be straight with me,” he pleads. “We do have the same eye color right?”
“Obi!” Miss‘s laughter bubbles bright with betrayal as she hops down the stairs after him. “Obi, please–”
“Let me grieve, Miss,” he grumbles, hands shoved in his pockets. “I’ve been a real champ about the rest, but let me have this.”
“Obi!” She catches him round the wrist, mouth twitching as she turns to him. “Is it really so bad that they’re gold?”
“No,” he mutters sullenly, shoulders slumped enough that with two stairs between them, they’re nearly the same height. “It’s just…”
Her eyes flutter wide with curiosity. “Just…?”
“It’s fine enough that they’re unique.” He spits the word with more venom than it deserves. “I just I wanted this one thing in common.”
“In common?” Miss blinks. “You mean, me and…?”
Obi would lay down his life for his mistress, but even she can’t ask him to do this, to lay down his pride for her to walk on.
“Oh!” She flusters, limbs fluttering in the air between them. He’s half-tempted to turn away again, but she grabs his face and holds him steady, her cold, slender fingers caught behind his jaw. “Just– just one moment…”
“Miss?” he wheezes. This is entirely too close, too much–
“Yes!” He breath flutters over his lips, her own parting in a celebration of teeth. “That’s it. I see it. There’s a little, right there.”
He blinks. “A little what, Miss?”
Her teeth flash around the word, “Green.”
It’s cruel to throw a starving dog a bone, but he snaps it up anyway, heart nearly clogging up his throat with hope. “D’you mean it? You’re not just saying that to make me feel better.”
“Really,” she promises, her nod serious and officious as any she might give Little Ryuu. “There’s a thread, right around the middle. Green. Just like mine.”
“Oh.” His own hands raise, leather muting the feel of her skin, but– Master always told him about the red thread that bound him and Miss together, that drew them toward their fated meeting, but this– Obi will take this too. “Thank you, Miss.”
She smiles, eyes shining bright in the lamplight. “No, Obi, it’s my pleasure.”
Not much different between green and red to him, anyway.