Description: Rick and Kazue get to their apartment and have dinner after meeting for the first time and getting engaged.
It's not too cold out tonight, the progression of the seasons meaning both day and night are going to be getting warmer and warmer from now on, but the clouds overhead are thick and threaten with a sudden downpour, making it a pretty bad one to be stuck outside in. Even if it's close to summer the rain is still very cold. Luckily homelessness isn't something Rick has to worry about, entering the complex and taking the elevator up to his third floor apartment. After unlocking the door he lets himself inside.
Oh, right. And Kazue is with him too.
"Home, sweet home!" He announces, primarily to himself, stretching his arms wide before taking his leather jacket off and flinging it aside, landing nicely over the arm of a large couch in the living room. "This is it," he says for the benefit of his gues- fiancé. "It's not much now, but give it some time and it'll be filled with everything you need to turn a house into a home." After a short moment he adds with a slight grin, "Maybe even a feminine touch."
Kazue looks around a bit, her eyes peering this way and that, her eyes focusing on valuable looking stuff, the window, the door. She looks over it again more generally, trying to see the larger picture of the room, and furrows her eyebrows a little bit.
At Rick's words, she looks to him, and listens quietly. Finally, she nods a bit, her face blank like a mask. "Yes, I'm well known for my feminine touch." She stares at his face for a long moment, then looks away, and raises her right hand to adjust the glove on her left. "Seems like a nice place." Her eyes shift to the couch, then the stove, and she furrows her eyebrows again, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
There isn't terribly much of value in here other than a decent quality entertainment system, the large TV likely the most valuable asset. As she speaks he steps closer to her and shakes his head, holding up a singer finger, "Hey now, don't think like that. There are things any woman knows that a man never can." He pauses for a moment and then rubs his chin, "Most men, anyway."
"Feel free to make yourself at home- it is your home now, after all. Sit down and get comfortable, if you want. I'll have dinner ready in a few minutes- I hope you don't mind canned soup and... whatever this is." He pulls a small package out of his shopping bag and looks at it as he nears the kitchen, "What! You don't cook it?" He stares at the package with narrowed eyes and then looks over to Kazue with a small grin, "I guess this is ready now, ha ha ha."
Kazue raises her eyebrows and shakes her head a little bit as he tells her not to think like that, her mouth opening a little bit. At his assertion about women's knowledge, she closes her mouth and shrugs, looking away. She walks over to the couch falls back into sitting position on it, resting an arm on the arm of the couch and an arm on the back, palms flat on the furniture. "That's fine."
A long pause, and she doesn't really look back at Rick, but keeps him in her peripheral vision. "I don't know how to cook either, so that's about what I usually eat," She stops speaking suddenly, even though her tone implies she's going to keep talking, and closes her mouth firmly.
"Ah, that's no good. You're going to have to learn to cook. Anyone who lives alone should learn to cook- eating from a can every day isn't healthy. Soon you'll start feeling weak, and without energy!" He looks down at the can of soup in a disparaging manner, and slowly clenches his other hand into a fist, "With good food you can meet the start of the day with vigor, and know that no matter what obstacles stand in your path you can go at them with the proper fuel!" As he speaks the final words he turns back towards Kazue and thrusts his fist into the air. "And so, I'll teach you to cook, and you'll soon be filled with an energy you haven't felt since you were a child, Kazue!" He disappears after that, the sound of an electric can opener coming from the kitchen, followed by electronic beeps and then a microwave.
Kazue blinks as she listens to her fiance, and watches him with raised eyebrows, her lips pursed at his energetic words. She narrows her eyes slightly at those last words, the promise of teaching and energy, her eyes focusing up on Rick until he disappearing into the next room. "...and yet you're still cooking soup from a can." She doesn't say this particularly loudly, though, and it's entirely possible to miss it with the various electronic sounds going on.
She sits on the couch for a long moment, then flips herself backwards over the corner, and walks over to peer around the corner into the kitchen.
Rick's head pops out from around the corner while Kazue is still sitting down, "Tonight, yes, but not every night. I just moved in, and I haven't found anything other than restraints and corner stores yet. But soon, soon I'll find a proper store, and proper nutrition can resume." He disappears again after speaking, and by the time Kazue peers around he's setting a small table with a two bowls and two small plates, the bowls each having what appears to be half of the can of soup, the package he waved around earlier sitting in the center of the table. It's pre-packaged sushi if middling quality, but at least it's the kind meant to sit for a while rather than being eaten very fresh. He finishes up with silverware and two glasses of water, and then motions to one of the chairs. "Ah, glad you could make it." As he sits down himself he ponders, "My first meal as an engaged man. It should probably have been more romantic- but we must deal with circumstances as they come."
Kazue's face turns a little red as Rick replies, and nods a bit, looking down.
When she comes around the corner and he's finished the preperations, she sits down in the chair that was motioned to, and brings the glass of water up to her face, looking through it, and then sniffing it briefly, before taking a sip of water. She takes a spoonful of the soup, her grip tightening a little for a moment on the spoon as he ponders his first meal as an engaged man, but she proceeds to sniff the soup anyways, before taking a small sip of it. Her eyes shift to the pre-packaged sushi sitting in between the two of them.
After making sure the soup isn't too hot Rick starts digging in, eating fairly quickly without being obnoxious or rude about it. When he sees Kazue look to the sushi he motions, "Dig in! I'm sure there's enough for both of us. And hell, you probably need it more than I do." He reaches over and takes two of them out and sets them on his plate, picking one of them right back up and looking at it closely. "Is that really fish? Or is it just an imitation. Imitation crab is actually pretty good- but I guess that is just fish." He shrugs and pops it into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully before proclaiming, "Not bad! Especially for something you don't have to cook. It's probably better for us than the soup is, anyway."
Kazue looks down at the spoon in her hand. She blinks, looking over to the cooker of soup as he talks again, then takes one of the sushi with her fingers, and shoves it in her mouth, and starts to wolf it down, before glancing up at Rick and starting to chew slowly, a slightly impatient expression forming on her face. Finally, she swallows it. "It's definitely some kind of fish or fish-based product," she confirms. She starts to lay into her soup, then takes another piece of sushi hesitantly.
Seeing the way Kazue eats the sushi and then the impatient look on her face, Rick reaches over and takes one more of the sushi and puts it on his plate, having some more of his the soup before pushing the small package across the table towards Kazue, "Go ahead; you can have the rest." There were nine altogether, so there are four left in the little package. He picks up one of the sushi on his plate and eats it slowly, "Whatever kind of fish it is, it's good. I'll have to try and remember the brand for the next time I go shopping. It'd be pretty hard to make something like this myself." He pauses then and looks up, rubbing at his chin, "But maybe I could give it a shot..."
Kazue blinks as he pushes the package across the table to her, and perks up, looking up from her soup again to stare at Rick for a moment. She finishes her soup, then starts to eat another sushi with the same impatient slowness, but seems a little more relaxed about it now. Swallow. "I don't think making sushi is that easy. Sushi chefs train for a decade or something to prepare themselves for it." Once she's done speaking, another sushi piece is whisked away into her mouth instantly, to be slowly devoured. "...Well..." She remembers she has her mouth full, and furrows her eyebrows and chews some more. "Well, maybe not /this/ chef."
"A decade... that is a lot of time to commit to a craft. Perhaps this isn't something I should pursue- I have a lot on my plate already. It would be good to make something as delicious as this, but I wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't perfect the art of sushi making, and I am not prepared to devote my life to it at this time." Rick finishes his soup and crosses his arms, sitting back in his chair, "That is a difficult lesson to learn. You must strive to do your best in all things! ...but sometimes there are things you should not do because of what doing your best entails."
Kazue puts down the penultimate piece of sushi she was picking up. "I was trying to become the best thief." She tilts her head a bit to one side. "But I'm not allowed to do that now, am I?" The question doesn't seem to be imbued with any particular kind of emotion, just mild curiousity. "What do you want to be the best at, Rick?" She picks the piece of sushi back up, and begins to eat it, watching his face carefully.
Rick closes his eyes and shakes his head, "No, you shouldn't try to become the best thief, because you don't have to steal anymore. I understand that you didn't have any choice, and I can even appreciate your skill and dedication. But to commit crimes that are unnecessary is something I can't allow." His eyes open back up and he grins, "Me? I aim to be the best fighter in the world! It probably won't happen, but I'm going to raise as high as I can and not give up until this body breaks." He taps his fist against his chest a couple of times, "And it isn't very easy to break this body!"
He picks up his last piece of sushi and eats it, looking curiously at Kazue as he does. Afterwards he hums, "The real question is what -you- want to be the best at. You have a lot of options open to you now that you don't have to worry about food and shelter- I can take care of that. You should probably go back to school while you still can to help you figure it out, but you'll probably need a bit of time to adjust before that. I've seen what you can do when you put your mind to it though, so I'm expecting big things out of you."
Kazue nods evenly at his disallowment of unneccessary crimes. "Right." She takes the last piece of sushi, chewing it prefunctorily and swallowing it, staring off into the distance. "You shouldn't break your body, though. It's hard to be the best at anything with a broken body." She gulps down some water, and wipes her mouth with the back of her glove.
She looks away, clasping her hands together around the glass as she sets it back down. "I've never really thought about that. Now that I don't have to worry about surviving, I'm unclear as to my motivation. Whatever I do, I do, but what should I do...." Her grip tightens on the glass a little bit.
"I don't plan on breaking it- I plan on keeping others from breaking it! But that's always a risk when you fight for a living. There's nothing like it, though. Stepping into the ring, one on one. Just you and them, and the best man always wins. Ha! Every win is an affirmation for everything you've worked towards, and every loss teaches you something you need to know in order to become even stronger. And really, there's no limit to how good you can become. There are men alive today who can fight entire armies alone! And women, too." Rick smacks the bottom of his fist against his hand while grinning, getting fired up a bit just thinking about it.
He then looks to Kazue and gives her a thumbs up, "Just find the thing that makes you feel alive and go after it. You haven't had the chance to start looking, but now that you do that's what you should focus on. Chasing after what it is you love is the easy part, it's finding the thing that fires them up that most people have trouble with. And hey, you have me to help you! That should make it a piece of cake, right?"
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Log created on 15:27:06 06/13/2011 by RickKnight, and last modified on 15:37:52 06/13/2011.