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The features of the blue and black haired woman pulled into a thoughtful frown. "You've seen Shina ?" ...Where was she, then ? "I have not seen her for a good year... I should have thought she left to find you again. Though she... never warns anyone when she does that. Even less Sei..." It had started to wear on her slightly. And Sei...

...She feared that bridges were burned that would be hard to rebuild.

"He is." At least, she thought so. It was hard to tell what Sei actually thought sometime, behind those blank eyes of his, and even if he had come out of his shell considerably... The cyborg could tell he still held the matters closest to his heart sorely to himself. And that... was fine.

"...Mostly." She admitted, though she did not go into greater detail. Life had thrown her many lemons in the past years, and one had been rather sour to swallow, but she was fine now. At least, she liked to think so.

Nothing would have come out of it anyway, she still tried to convince herself. But it was a still a rather sour lemon.

Sei himself, however, was far from one. Even if he did threaten to turn her hair white pre-emptively sometimes.



Elsewhere, and rather unaware, Sei had finished his shift, reaching for his cellphone to his belt and flipped it on, only to get a voice message notice and... flee the store like a bat out of hell, without even bothering to change first and nearly forgetting his backpack behind, probably at the amusement of his close friend and boss. He knew he would likely owe some explanation later, but at the moment he did not care.

Hoshi. His father. His father. He was here. After he had not heard back from the man that had tracked him down, he had began to think that this, too had been a fruitless path. Or that perhaps, his father wanted nothing to do with him as he secretly thought might be the case with his mother.

...He had no idea what to think about all this. Or what to even expect, or how Hoshi would react upon seeing him. Knowing him.

In thought, however, he noticed belatedly he had just biked past the shop, and the loud screech of breaks, the faint smell of warm plastic and a rather creative one-feet-down u-turn later, that was easily solved, the bicycle was hurriedly discarded against one wall, and he all but bolted in...

...Only to end face to face with his father, and for a moment, there was nothing, and he could not help but stare as if he was not quite sure the other man was real. At least, with no pupil in his eyes to speak of, it was hard to tell he was staring. But as it, Zero was quite sure his orbs had stilled for half a second, even his most instinctive control of them slipping for that long, almost as if his brain had an hiccup.

It was like starting in a mirror. A slightly (only slightly) taller, darker mirror. "I... um... .......Hi ?"

Bigger than he'd expected. Such an odd first thing to say, but at the same time oddly fitting. He'd always been bigger than people expected, to be honest. "...Yeah, I get that often."

...Damnit, brain, think of something to say...

"Im glad that you're okay." ...Well, that was better than nothing at all.

Zero was watching, silently, and then sent a side-glance at Mireille. The kind of side-glance that mean that, perhaps, they should leave these two to their privacy.

"I see..." He said with a nod. "Well, you're here now. It's... what truly matters, right ? The past is gone and we can't change it."

The future, however... That was a different matter. He said nothing to the mention of his mother, afraid he might ******** up somehow, though there was some solace at being able to hide that as, by all apparences, his father was not an empath like his mother. Knowing that Shina could read his emotional patterns like a book had always bothered him slightly, even if he knew the angel had never meant ill from it.

And, on that matter, Zero was also nowhere to be found.

"Erm, sure..." It was only then, however, that the teen apparently caught a glance of himself...

Still in work uniform.


"...Just a second." Flinging his bag back on his shoulder, Sei trailed his way to the bathroom to change.

There was indeed the sound of rustling coming from the bathroom, as well as a few sounds of impact of the youth's body against the walls of the small room, though oddly enough there was no muttering or yelp of pain to follow it.

And the tink, tink, tink of glass impacting hard surface.

Over by the window, in Iris' tails, multiple sets of small ears perked up in unison.

It was evident when the teen finally exited the bathroom what this had been all about - now wearing a white tanktop and jeans, with fingerless gloves, rather than his previous work uniform. Sei made his way and sat near his father.

...He should be thinking of something to say right about now, shouldn't he ?