The corner of his lip twitched with moderate annoyance when the girl introduced herself instead of immediately answering his question. He didn’t care what her name was, he thought to himself, but it did recall some familiarity to him. The Shouki clan compound was close to his own, Shiu remembered, even though they were hardly a noble clan such as his own. Other than where they lived, he knew very little about them. Something about poison. Whatever it was, he doubted it bore any similarities to his clan’s bloodline trait in the way that she seemed to think it might. There was nothing in the world like Kuronmeru blood.
As to the question of whether he could teach her or not, Shiu had the knowledge. Maybe not as much as if he had the black blood himself, or had partaken in all of the special training sessions his brothers had been given pertaining to it specifically, but he had been privy to many a dinner table conversation where the mechanics of their clan’s kekkei genkai had been discussed. He absorbed every detail of those. A younger, more foolish version of himself believed that if he just listened and learned enough, he would one day be able to make his own blood run black. He had, of course, dropped the notion as he aged and matured, but the compulsive need to
know all that he could was still there.
At first, when she walked towards him, Shiu thought it was just so that they wouldn’t have to talk as loud. When she didn’t stop, however, he stepped a foot back and curled his lips in the beginning of a sneer, staring at her with cold, unwelcoming eyes. She didn’t stop until she was close enough to him to bring goosebumps prickling along his skin. There was no amount of familiarity between the two of them where this close-distance was even remotely acceptable. The only circumstance where he would want to be in such close proximity with someone outside of his clan was if they were trying to kill each other which, if she didn’t back away in the next fifteen seconds, he thought, he would seriously consider doing.
But then a realization occurred to him that tempered the hostility that had ignited his eyes. Somehow, somewhere, during the course of this conversation, this girl had convinced herself that he was Enyo. At first, this epiphany only irritated him. It was all just more and more reminders of how he was not who he was supposed to be, that the very substance his body and flesh was composed of was just
wrong. If that had not been the case, she might not have been looking for the company of his twin, specifically.
It was a rare moment, though, for him to be mistaken for his twin for this long. Usually once he opened his mouth, the misunderstanding was cleared. Even if he enjoyed messing with people in the way that Enyo did, Shiu did not have the acting abilities his brother seemed to have. He came off more monotone, and he didn’t emote with the same intensity of expression as Enyo often did. They looked nearly identical, yes, but there was good reason for Enyo’s rise to notoriety in their academy days and Shiu’s lack thereof. For her to have only become more certain in her assertion that he was Enyo… well, maybe she was just stupid.
Normally, he would vehemently push against this mistake. To call it a pet peeve for Shiu would be an understatement. He was, however, in a particularly foul mood, and after a second’s consideration, he decided the way he wanted to vent the frustrations that he had built throughout the day was to take it out on her.
Instead of looking upon her with the absolute disgust he felt, he tilted his chin up to try to look down upon her, feigning a smug, knowing look, as though giving permission for the ways she submitted to his superior knowledge on the matter. This came with a small challenge, considering she was taller than he was. It was also painfully obvious to him that, in spite of the gesture of intimate closeness, the parasol she carried was not meant for two people. He could feel the scatterings of the leftover rain soaking into the back of his hair and pattering his sleeve where he could not be shielded.
For now, he would allow her to try to cover them both with that pitiful umbrella of hers.
"What kind of favor do you think I would possibly want from
you?” he asked. It was not an outright rejection, but Shiu wanted to make her work a little for the so-called ‘favor’ he was about to do for her. That, and he was genuinely curious about what it was she could possibly come up with for a Kuronmeru such as his twin. Shiu didn’t know off the top of his head if that was exactly how Enyo would’ve phrased the question, but so long as he didn’t acknowledge anything about his or his brother’s name, he might be able to drag this out without cluing her in on his true identity.