[Sagarafuji Ririko]

Much to the chagrin of her reclusive family, Sagarafuji Ririko was about to make a scene yet again.

To be fair, she was a controversial figure in many eyes. An instructor that set a bad example in dress, in language, in behavior, in attitude. The more pushback she got to conform and comply, the more rebellion arose. Not in any way grievous enough to get her more than a slap on the wrist thus far - there wasn't actually a rule against getting piercings, or turning your flak jacket into a croptop - but she persisted. Still, as Ririko found herself a good corner in the market area, just as night fell, and with it, most of the more reputable vendors were packing up or had long since closed, leaving behind drinking establishments, and those looking to profit off the inebriated.

Ririko did draw eyes, which brought a toothy and sharp grin to her face. She wore nothing that marked her as a ninja. Her clothes fairly revealing, complicated, and mixture of deep blacks, pure whites, and blinding neons. One of the storeowners gave her a scowl as Ririko passed by, shamisen case proudly draped over a shoulder. Ririko winked at her, and then took down the case, and began to prepare her instrument and herself.

Those who frequented the market late at night were likely to know what would come next. It wasn't every night, but the black sheep of Kumogakure's vampiric clan made this place her haunt of late. And her stage. She had more than detractors, of course. Some liked her aggressive and harsh performances, and others were merely bored. Could she call them fans? Maybe. Ririko would anyway.

She clutched her bizarre six-stringed contraption of an instrument, and let the chakra flow from her into it, and strummed it experimentally. The harsh sound reverberated through the street. The grin broadened into a smile, and she turned on the heel of her chunky boot, and struck a pose.
"Kept you waitin', huh?" There was a murmured, half-hearted response. Ririko wasn't too popular. Yet. Hearts and minds. Hearts and minds. She'd get them, eventually. Maybe.

Especially since she didn't actually have a place to crash tonight, she had to turn up the charm. "And remember! If it's too loud, it's 'cause you're too old!" She made the strings screech, then threw herself into her set.

The sound was... incomplete. She wanted a more driving bass, more structure to the rhythm, something loud, booming, and metallic. Another voice, capable of hitting those low notes her practiced-but-unavoidably feminine tone could not reach. But still, once her multi-colored mane was swaying with the aggressive and angry music, once her voice lifted lyrics of hate, frustration, dissatisfaction, doom, and despair into the otherwise-peaceful night, that didn't seem to matter. Some others joined in, nodding heads and tapping feet in time to the unheard beat. Even adding their voices to some of the simpler choruses. But the crowd was thin, and few stayed for long.

What she wouldn't give for a proper stage... but she was a ways off that. She needed a band. One day. Maybe.

It was a short set, and Ririko came to the conclusion. The song was harsh, rapid and aggressive. Her voice lowering into a strained growl for many of the lyrics.
"I won't forget your lies! I won't regret this path I take! I've seen these shadows rise - upon the crest of every wake! I know my definition - won't lie inside diluted means; I pray a luddite swarm - to level these machines!" The rokumisen was loud, enhanced by her chakra, but her voice still cut through the noise. Passionate and burning anger boiling as she allowed it to bubble up and out of her. "I felt the ground beneath me shake! Saw my fate unfolding! Grind my gears until they break! Don't have to spell it for me!" The tempo increased, the tone more desperate, more feverish.

Then more driving, as she entered the chorus again. "Some of us will run! And some of us crawl!" She inhaled sharply, and the next words were more screamed than sung. "AND SOME! WON'T LEARN! TO LIVE! AT ALL!" Her eyes were wide, staring burning accusations at the crowd. "Some of will rise! And some of us fall! AND SOME! WON'T LEARN! TO LIVE! AT ALL! COME ON!" The song continued. A long, violent solo. A near-wordless chant to rile up the thin crowd. The chorus repeated twice more.

The final 'all' turning into a dragged out, guttural yell. Then, the final, desperate, finale. "Not everyone will die!" Her breathing was ragged now. "Not everyone will DIE! NOT EVERYONE WILL DIE! DIE! DIE! NOT EVERYONE WILL DIE!" She let her voice, and the last chord of the song linger, then, itself, die.

Perhaps if her blood did not run cold, sweat would have beaded on her brow as she caught her breath.

Her performance won her scattered applause, some muttered demands for her to turn it down or play something 'more ladylike,' and enough coins for something to eat... or drink.

And no-one sticking around for her to convince to let her borrow their couch for the night. "...Fuck. You'da thunk I'd have at least one die-hard fan by now..." Ririko grumbled, crouching down to collect the spare change that had been tossed into the cup at her feet. "Wonder if they'd let me sleep at the table if I buy enough booze..." Ririko complained and wondered aloud, still not cleaning up her instrument just yet. Apparently oblivious that there were others privy to her not-so-internal monologue.

[Tokugawa Taro]

---

"Good night, Taro-kun!"

A bell chimed as the last of his friends filtered out of the little tea shop and into the streets of Kumogakure. As the sun began to sink below the horizon, little else but a bright orange smear smothered under a blanket of darkness, the paper lanterns strung above the market began to blink on. It was as clear a sign as any that those who wanted to be well-rested for class tomorrow should start heading home now, but Taro had wanted to stay out longer. Normally he would've walked them home before retiring himself to his own flat, but he'd had two servings of matcha tea during their stay at the shop, and now his head buzzed with caffeine. He wouldn't be able to sleep anytime soon.

Unfortunately for him, the friend who'd brought the deck of cards they'd been playing with now had a stricter curfew following a certain incident Taro had not been totally uninvolved with. After he'd left, he knew the rest of his friends would be soon to follow suit, and sure enough, he now stood alone, his back lit as the shop's workers made one final bid at scrubbing their floor before closing for the night.

And so, he walked. It was an aimless walk meant to take him in no particular direction. He chatted up anyone manning a stall that made eye contact with him in his path—unlike at the academy, he was well-received by most of the adults here, and many of them were happy for the company. He asked about how business was today, how their kids were doing, gave feedback for what new product lines might help grow their business, and even helped one of the elder merchants finish packing up the rest of her stall.

Just as he fastened the last latch on her trunk, he heard someone shouting, followed by a sustained screeching not too far off.

Taro straightened at the noise. It was an odd thing to hear so late in the evening, and for a second, the sound of it put him on edge.

Then the screech blended into a sound that was a little more familiar, and much less threatening. He looked to the old woman he'd been assisting, only to see her expression had soured. She only grunted before collecting the rest of her belongings and starting down the street. There was no point in exchanging any further words. She had already expressed her gratitude towards him, and they both knew she wouldn't have been able to hear anything else he had left to say. Curious, Taro followed the noise to its source.

As he approached, the sound became less distilled and more refined. It was... noisy, and grating to his sensibilities. Yet, it was so unconventional and far out from anything he would expect to hear out in the open, there was something that drew him in. He felt his pulse hasten, his heart beating faster and harder to try to keep in time with the rhythm of the music. Either that, or it was just the caffeine again.

The music became near-deafening as he came upon the small crowd. It took only for him to roll himself onto his toes and catch a flash of neon highlights for everything to click into place. Ririko-sensei.

Once he saw her, small for her age, yet as large of a presence as she ever was, he felt a little silly for not knowing that it must've been her doing sooner. He knew that she was a musician, not just for the sake of demonstrating her puppet or for being a nuisance to her coworkers, but this was the first time he had actually been around to see her perform. Her energy was infectious, and even as he didn't particularly enjoy the music itself, he found himself bouncing on the balls of his feet right up until the set drew to a close.

The scattered applause that followed sounded strangely distant and muffled, even as he stood within the now-departing crowd. Taro did not think twice before flanking the final stragglers and making his way to a tree just by her. It was young, and perhaps unnaturally implanted there, but when Taro reached up for its lowest hanging limbs to hoist himself up and scale its trunk, it supported his weight without any issue. There was no particular reason for him to climb into the tree. He just wanted to be tall.

Taro positioned himself on a branch that hung almost directly above her, only a few leaves shaking free as he settled onto it belly-down. Wrapping his arms around the branch and resting his cheek against his arm, he gave an easy smile and called down to her.

"Hey 'Riko-sensei." An abridged version of her name. Ririko was well-known throughout the academy for many things, among them her penchant for playing with the sound of her students’ names. Taro enjoyed mirroring some version of this back at her from time to time. "Whatcha' doin'?" he asked.

He knew what she was doing, of course. Anyone within a mile radius would've heard her cacophonous song, but somehow, it seemed more polite to let her put it in her own words, and he wanted to afford her that kindness. After all, he held more respect for her than he did for almost any of his other instructors.

---

Sagarafuji Ririko

[Sagarafuji Ririko]

If it had been some goody-two-shoes student who had accosted her, Ririko might have made a face. Last thing she wanted to do was put on her 'respectable' persona, as paper-thin as it was.
"Yo, Taro-roro." Ririko gave a mock salute, biting back some mild irritation. It looked like she was going to be spending some precious ryo on an inn room after all. "What's it look like I'm doin'? Busking. 'Cause our oh-so-generous village doesn't pay your hard-workin' teacher enough to get by. Sad days." It wasn't exactly a lie, but it wasn't truthful, either. Ririko was making decent - not extravagant, but decent - money, and she could cut her expenses down a lot if she just moved back home. She wasn't officially exiled, after all.

But that wasn't an option, and she wasn't out here for the money. Not really.

"So, uh... what're you doin'? A little late for Your Highness to be slummin' it with the local riff-raff, ain't it?" Far be it from her to criticize a fellow loiterer and ne'er-do-well. But turnabout was always fair play. "Oh, and, uh..." Ririko scratched the back of her head, then straightened out her messy hair. "Didja catch my set? Got a review for me?"

[Tokugawa Taro]

---

Busking. It was a term he had never heard before, at least as far as he could remember. If he had to guess, based on context, it was something akin to swindling people for money. Based on the amount of coin that had been dropped into her cup, she wasn’t really doing a good job of it, either, perhaps because, in her own way, Ririko-sensei was simply too honest for this line of work.

The beginning of an idea started forming in his mind, but he was distracted from it when Ririko turned the conversation back to him.

Between the whimsical twist of his name, the mock salute and the soft ribbing when she referred to him as 'Your Highness,' his smile became more of an amused smirk. Playfully, he pressed his arm's weight down against the tree's limb, giving it just enough pressure for him to shake free some of the leaves and watch to see if any of them landed in her hair.

To her question about what he was doing still up, he gave a small shrug which, to his pleasure, jostled one more leaf off the branch. "Can't sleep," he said.

By that point, his ability to hear and hear well had recovered, and when Ririko asked him about the set, she no longer sounded like she was drowning.

"I didn't really like it," he said without hesitation. It had been a far cry from the ballads and epics of his childhood, the ones he delighted in when he would watch stage plays with his mother. By contrast, her performance had just been... noise. Rather than understanding the technical skills behind producing death growls, and the practice needed in order to match the pitch of such vocals to the tune of instrumentals, he assumed she was just uniquely bad at singing.

And yet, while he doubted he would have ever sought out listening to such a song on his own ovation, something about it still appealed to a part of him, and Taro considered this with a thoughtful hum and pout of his lips, tapping one of his fingers to his cheek. "But," he began to amend, "I didn't really hate it either."

He may have attributed it to the simple fact that he liked Ririko, and she had been the one to perform it, but the more he thought about it, the more he knew there was more to it than that. It had stirred some almost primal urge in him. Something that excited him, and made him want to tear something apart. It was a feeling he often did not have access to.

He tried to explain this phenomenon. "Like… it was bad, but kind of in a good way." Yes, that was it. Then he added, "The shamisen solo was cool." Taro nodded, perhaps to himself. He didn’t know if her weird instrument was actually a shamisen, but the comparison was close enough.

Taro concluded his performance review with a smile that was meant to be encouraging. "I think you'll get better if you keep practicing."

If Ririko had ever asked Taro for his feedback before, she would likely know that he still did not always seem to discern that just because something did not appeal to his personal sensibilities, didn't necessarily mean it was poorly done.

"You wrote that song, right, 'Iko-sensei?" he then asked. "What's it about?" He didn't have a clue, and that was only made worse by the fact he could barely understand the lyrics when she had been grunting them out.

---

Sagarafuji Ririko

[Sagarafuji Ririko]

"Better bad than mediocre."The review was what she expected, in terms of quality. People who didn't really get music just gave surface-level critiques. But hey, she had gotten worse receptions.
"Don't think practice is the issue. Song's just a bit... hollow. Needs some bass, y'know? Something to really rattle the teeth 'round." But there was a slim shot of finding anyone willing to provide that on this town. Everyone was obsessed with the military, valued tradition too much to make a blasphemous instrument like her marokumisen,
or both.

Then again, maybe there were other people like her here. Or somewhere.

"The meaning? If you'd have opened your ears, I think it's pretty direct." Despite the teasing, Ririko was quite animated and obviously eager to discuss her music with someone who gave a damn. Even so, her gaze drifted off into the middle distance. "It's wish fulfillment, really. It's funny, if I said what I meant, I'd get jeered at. If I scream it, people just whinge about the volume." The sentiment was a bit traitorous. But... well, Taro seemed cool. She could always play dumb later.

"It's about... well, my frustrations. Screaming my heart out into the void. How this society of ours reduces us all - if you don't fall in line, you're either exalted or ground underfoot. How so many people just don't live, y'know? Swallowing comforting lies they keep feedin' us to keep us asleep an' compliant. Good little soldiers. How it just makes me wish something would tear and burn it all down before it gets me too. Hey, not everyone would die, right?" Ririko spoke frankly, but she kept her voice low. She shook her head, and flashed an easy grin, pushing down that simmering hate once more.

"Would y'rather have somethin' a little more stately? I've got some less chaotic tracks in my repertoire." Since he had shown some interest, and it didn't seem a couch to surf on was going to materialize, why not, right?

[Tokugawa Taro]

---

Taro formed a pucker of his lips and furrowed his brow, miming a wise philosopher as he stroked his chin and considered her words.

Hollow. That was part of it. Without deeper accompanying tones, the performance had been a high-pitched, whining fever, and though there had never been a break in the noise of it all, it had left the song feeling empty in its absence.

There was still the matter that she could not sing to contend with. Ririko's voice on its own was not anything remarkably out of the ordinary. Maybe a little rugged, barbed by her cadence, and the words she picked and clipped to her liking, but nothing that would make a head turn in a crowd. Yet, when she sang, there was something that seemed to possess her. It garbled her speech, made her sound almost animalistic. It was such a stark misunderstanding of the way that song was supposed to make the voice languid and clear, Taro would have never expected someone to be so completely inept in the art.

So when she said she didn't think practice was the issue, Taro nodded affirmation after a thoughtful pause. "Adding bass would help."

Her singing, by contrast, was beyond help.

Taro broke character, originally just to smirk down at her in her teasing at his question. His expression began to sober, however, as she looked away from him and began explaining her thoughts, then her feelings behind the work. It was a sort of confession, genuine in nature, and uncharacteristic of the interactions he was used to having with her during school hours. He felt gravity in the words she said, and he mirrored this with a look that was both serious and concentrated.

Taro did not think of Ririko as a woman who harbored resentment or frustrations. She was always joking, quick to ease someone with a smile or uplifting words in a way that relaxed many of his peers around her. Of course, he'd heard the rumors of her butting heads with someone in the administration more than a few times, but as carefree as she came off, he never pictured things like that as something that could ever get to her.

She shook her head suddenly, as though breaking a spell, then returned to the cheeky persona that was much more familiar between them. Taro gave her back a weak smile that lasted only a second, then dropped again. When she asked if he would rather her play something more to his liking, he answered slowly, with deliberation. "No," he said, then added, "I don't think that suits you."

Even as he responded, his thoughts were still on what she had said, and as he thought, his eyes had never left her.

She had spoken in an almost poetic language. Taro didn't often think about voids or being lied to. What aspect of society did Ririko feel trampled by?

It reminded him of himself before he had moved to Kumogakure. During that time, he hadn't felt alive, not in the way he did now. Seemingly arbitrary expectations were put on him. No adult in his life had ever given a satisfactory explanation for why he needed to speak a certain way, sit in a chair another way, or any number of other things that did not come to him naturally. He had begun to cave into these demands before he had even realized he was doing so, because it was either that, or have every person he ever interacted with upset at him every hour of the day.

Then there were the friends he'd made since moving here. Many of them seemed free and jovial when he was alone with them, but as soon as they were around their family, or an instructor walked into the room—even to a degree around someone like Ririko—something seemed to clamp down on them. They still had their joy, but it was muted.

But Ririko was an adult. She had her bosses, sure, but she was apprentice to no one, as far as he knew, and the dynamic between herself and her parents must have changed, he would have thought. Taro felt like he was missing something, that the picture she was painting was incomplete to him, but it also felt like something he wouldn't be able to puzzle out anytime soon.

"I... hadn't ever really thought about all that," he admitted finally. He only then broke eye contact, casting his gaze unfocused somewhere on the ground at her feet. "I think I get what you mean though." Kind of.

With the same suddenness she had shook her head earlier, he lifted himself to his knees in an almost feline stretch, then sat up, placing his palm against the trunk of the tree. Returning to his casual grin, he asked, prompting, "You're going to do another song?" If so, he needed to get himself back down into the crowd, if he valued his hearing at all. Either that, or he needed to find a way to climb higher into this tree.

---

Sagarafuji Ririko

[Sagarafuji Ririko]

"Sure, why not? Something more palatable to your too-refined tastes." Ririko set up once more, even nudging her beggar's bowl back out onto the street. She flashed a mischievous grin as Taro retreated, then took in a breath. Her eyes drifted closed, and her expression became contemplative.

She'd already touched the black hatred in her heart. Why not let it leak out a little?

Unlike before, it started soft, somber. There was an undercurrent of torment and anguish, especially as she gave voice to the song. And she did sing - no growls or screams.
"Quiet, the drone in the distance approaches; we hide and hope they pass us by." She kept her eyes closed, and while the sound from her unusual instrument was hardly traditional, she was plucking strings instead of strumming them. It was closer, at least, to a shamisen. "Waitin' in silence, prayin' they don't find us; and maybe they'll spare us our lives; just maybe they'll spare us our lives..." Her eyes opened a crack, and her feet took a firmer stand. The song and her voice increased intensity by a hair.

"Desolate village of sorrow and anguish; I stare upon what once was home... Explosions and flashes leave embers and ashes, and now I've got nowhere to go. And now we've got nowhere to go..." A moment a breath, to let the hopelessness breathe. Then anger flashed, and the sound became harsh again, the tempo increasing as her instrument again cried out distorted chords.

"Now! As the fire rains down from the sky! I see the love disappear from her eyes; I've seen the hearts of our people; all change like the wind! A helping hand I cannot find..." There was more hate, more animus, but it definitely stayed in the realm of what could be called singing by most. "Hold on! We'll find a place to call our own; nevermore! Will you cry! Together we'll live on alone! Life or death! We will not live forever, or did you forget? Selflessness bereft! You look the other way as we are left for dead..."

Ririko looked up at Taro. Her gaze was intense, even as she sung. Seeing if poetry, the despair and hatred that had long since wormed their way into her heart were getting through. "Gone! Are the days of the innocent child! Each day a curse watching her fading smile; you must be brave, little sister; I'll swallow my pride; whatever it takes to survive... Be strong! The fireflies will light the way; never stop, carry on! You are the life in me today..." Her eyes closed again as she focused on the chorus. "Life or death! We will not live forever, or did you forget? Selflessness bereft! You look the other way, as we are left for dead; as the raid begins! The blackened rain turns red! A beautiful display of hatred! Nothing left! Beneath the flames are where my loved ones lay to rest..." The more feverish pitch of the song abruptly returned to the initial somber and slow tune.

"Sleep, little one; all your nightmares are gone; rest in peace and be free of your pain. For you I will fight one more day..." Her eyes squeezed further shut, and she gripped the instrument tighter as the intensity increased once more. "Echoes of your voice repeatedly tormenting; reminds me of my mistakes... How do I live with myself? My conscience says 'I sent you to an early grave!'" Just as the song built in pitch and tempo, it faded out again. Despair overtaking resolve and anger. "Have I sent you to an early grave...?" She plucked and strummed a somber tune wordlessly, eyes shining, but not from the glee of entertainment. Not every song needed to be fun or enjoyable to play or to listen to, even though this was certainly a better composition, from an orthodox point of view.

The song drifted for a time without lyrics, building up again into a complicated solo, after that complex series of riffs, she kept some of the energy as she began the final refrain. "Mother and father will dry your eyes; now that you sleep with the fireflies..." It was shrouded in allegory, but the message was one every resident of Kumogakure could relate to. Loss. Regret. Despair. A home rendered a ruin, and families destroyed.

The song faded out after a time, and Ririko recovered with deep breaths, dabbing at her eyes to cover watery eyes without spoiling her makeup.

After a long moment of recovery, she glanced back to Taro, and flashed a grin. "That a little more comprehensible for ya?"

[Tokugawa Taro]

---

His lips quirked into a slight smirk as she teased him yet again. Watching her begin to redo her setup was all the cue he needed, though. He didn't trust for a second that she was actually going to try to better curate to his preferences.

Taro stretched his arm and pulled himself up to the next branch. He tested the next one up, wrapping his hands around the branch and giving it a tug, but it was thinner, and at a slightly awkward angle for his reach. It wouldn't be able to support his body weight if he stood on it, but...

Holding tight to the trunk, he stretched and stretched his leg out, until finally he could hook his calf around it. With a huff, he managed to push himself the rest of the way up onto the branch, falling into a straddle near the base. Taro beamed a triumphant grin, pleased with himself when the first chord rang out. He leaned his back against the trunk and angled his head down to watch her, rocking his feet loosely in time with every measure of the song.

To his surprise, it was something he found more enjoyable. A minor key, melodic, whereas whatever she had performed before had been something he would've had difficulty describing. Even more to his surprise, she could sing. The vocals were clean, easy to make out, and the timbre of her singing paired sweetly with the strums of her strange string instrument. So why hadn't she just done that in the first place? Maybe she was right that practicing wasn't the issue. She just needed a better sense.

Regardless, with the change in tune, he was actually able to understand the lyrics as they were sung, and pay attention he did.

He may not have been the best student, but he'd spent enough time being assigned and made to discuss classical literature by his old tutors that he had a decent sense of literary devices, how to puzzle out a metaphor.

The first stanza elicited a sense of fear, paranoia, an invasion of privacy. The subjects of the song were being sought out under surveillance, and this was not wanted.

The second evoked an image of ruin and destruction. With how personal her explanation for the last song was, he took the use of 'village' to mean a literal reference to Kumogakure, or some other home. It was beautiful imagery, if a little gothic. Something about the words 'ember' and 'ash' always brought out feelings that seemed somehow ancient, perhaps because of the years he spent in Hi no Kuni. Thinking of it again, of the performances in Shihon, fire dances highlight acrobatic acts with bursts of color, his smile broadened a little.

It was in the third stanza that puzzlement settled over him, his lips turning slowly into a thoughtful frown. There was abandonment, a sense of being forsaken, and lives never to be the same. If this was meant to be a reflection of some real event or events, then what was she alluding to? The song felt like a war. He didn't know Ririko's exact age. She seemed younger than his mother, who had been too young to see the end of the Third Shinobi War. Since then, he couldn't remember any other conflict between their village and another one. If there was one, there had been no more than a paragraph dedicated to it in his history books.

Could it have been about the plague, then? But then where would this sense of blame be coming from? A plague was a random catastrophe. Something out of their control, like a tsunami, but one that last for a very long time. Kaminari no Kuni had closed down its borders, but hadn't that just been to better deal with what was in their walls? Did other countries not provide their aid during that time, and was that who she held at fault?

Suddenly, her eyes snapped up to him, and her gaze had a piercing quality to it that rose gooseflesh down the back of his neck. She was addressing him directly, and he could not look away from her.

Even with the change in gender, it was clear to him that she meant for him to be the little sister in the song, and the bridge was meant to mourn him, the innocent child. Why else would she have looked at him like that, in that exact moment? But what innocence had he ever lost?

A gut-churning feeling of guilt settled in the pit of his stomach. He hadn't been there for the plague. Maybe she didn't know that.

When she finally broke eye contact for the chorus, he was able to finally look away, himself, he looked out into the small crowd that had gathered. On almost every single face of the adults gathered, there was a severe expression of one kind of another. Several looked uncomfortable, like they wanted to pull away but were somehow drawn in. Then there was one, a man perhaps around Ririko's age that was watching her meaningfully. The song had struck a chord with them. They intuitively understood the anguish conveyed in the song, even if they weren't sure if it was something they wanted to hear. It was something Taro realized he had no way of relating to.

As the long solo picked up its tempo, another layer to the song was brought to his attention. Throughout the despair of it, there had also been hints to a fighting spirit, railing against these perceived injustices. They'll find a place of home where tears were to never be shed again. She found power, a reason for living in the innocence of youth.

It was something he had never considered before, but now that he thought about it, he didn't have a doubt in his mind that Ririko would give her life to save another's, one of her students. It occurred to him that Ririko... was very brave. And for some reason that he could not identify, that made him fear for her.

For the remainder of the song, Taro had all but spaced out, no longer processing the lyrics. He was distracted by his own uneasiness.

The song ended with a similar reception to her last one. A few dedicated listeners doing their due diligence giving their applause, while others seemed to want to, but walked away without a word, as though afraid of being seen as complicit. The meaningful look man approached her bowl with the same intense gaze, seeming to try very hard to make eye contact with her as his display of gratitude before he was swept away back into the crowd. A few more chinks could be heard rattling the bowl, but far from the amount of coin flow a song that elicited such raw emotion in a crowd deserved.

Taro decided quickly he didn't want her to be performing these kinds of songs anymore. At least, not for tonight.

When she grinned up at him, he turned quickly away, taking the time it took him to clamber down the tree to compose himself.

By the time he reached the ground, he felt more confident in his ability to slip back into the usual theatrics he put on when around her.

Ignoring her question altogether, Taro strode right past her, fists on his hips as he swayed his shoulders with each step. Stopping before the cup, he leaned over it, exaggeratedly stooping over, as though peering into the bottom of a well. His face screwed up in faux-concentration, puckering his lips and rubbing his chin with the palm of one hand.

After a few moments of silent, close inspection, he straightened his back, returned his fist to his hip and shook his head.

"This simply will not do," he intoned, using some accent that was not his own. Taro didn't know what exactly her saving's goals were for this night, but he imagined the few ryō that had been chucked into the cup were not sufficient. By his estimate, with this much coin, she would be able to... maybe buy herself a fancy sandwich. Returning to his usual voice, he took to rubbing his chin again, tapping his foot. "We need to come up with something else."

Busking. If he were a conman, what sort of thing could he do that would really tug at the heartstrings of the people?

Taro hummed to himself as he considered their options.

---

Sagarafuji Ririko

[Sagarafuji Ririko]

That... wasn't the reaction Ririko wanted. Or expected.

She took a half-step back, and gripped the marokumisen defensively.
"...'Somethin' else?'" She repeated, and arched an eyebrow. The reaction she got was actually decent, and there was enough ryō for at least a decent meal. Honestly? Better than her average.

Ririko huffed, and planted a hand on her hips. "I'm not changin' my sound or my lyrics. Not for you, not for anybody." It wasn't the criticism she was irritated and defensive about. Plenty of people hated her sound, and many were uncomfortable with her lyrics. Lots of people listened to music to relax, or enjoy themselves. They didn't want to be confronted with violence, despair, and dread.

And that's precisely why she did what she did. Because if she didn't... well. Even she didn't know what she'd wind up doing. Nothing good.

"If y'think I'm gonna start simgin' sappy love song bullshit or folk songs, y've got another thing comin'. But fine! Fine. Let's hear it. What's your issue, Tarororo?"