Ankyra Sound sound & color

Kaori shrunk beneath their gazes, looking between the two before Kierkegaard’s voice registered in her head and her eyes shifted towards the ground. She felt her ears burn with embarrassment as a soft oh fell from her lips. He was there, too, which meant he’d already found his sister. She was happy for him—she always seemed to experience secondhand joy when siblings were reunited, perhaps because her own attempt at a reunion had gone so terribly—but also disappointed in herself for having not been able to help; for someone that offered her assistance so often, she was proving to be awful at keeping promises.

Slowly, she lifted her head up to stare at the other girl, then cast a sidelong glance towards her potential teacher as if to ask if she should answer or not. But her mouth began moving before she could get any response, verbal or otherwise, from him. “I met him before, when he was looking for you,” she answered, likely stating the obvious. “He told me about the coast and the sunsets—and about you and his brother. He was nice.” She intentionally left out the bit about his presence protecting her from invisible forces, more so because she didn’t want to think about them than because she doubted how believable it all was.

Though the leader’s eyes had yet to stray from her, Kaori looked towards the man, expecting him to answer for her; she wasn’t entirely sure how to answer on her own without backtracking and retelling her life’s story up until that point. It felt safer to let Kierkegaard do the talking.