singlet ablation (youth unbound)

"Ahhh, there they are," Gustave crows. Chiaki turns to look behind their back on instinct, even though they know that Aogami is with them, and this slimy shopkeep is most definitely able to tell so as well.

"Keehee! You think I mean to trap you?" The rings on Gustave's fingers clang against bony jasmine as he claps with delight. "I want nothing but your Macca, Nahobino. Oh, and a little something else, but we'll come to that once I see what you have in store for me."

"Young one..." Aogami's voice echoes in their head. "I do not believe this demon means us any harm. As we have no need of any of his wares, might I suggest that we hear out his request and then excuse ourselves?"

Looking for Gustave's truant, if not to say derelict, employees? It seems a benign (if not to say banal) enough task. It also gives a good opportunity to make amends and apologize to Gustave for the implied suspicion, should he be in need of or even blithely interested in such a peace offering. Chiaki sets their mind to it without another pause, once they exit the leyline's pocket of the netherworld.

There's a buzzing in their head, though, separate to the usual (as much as it could be, by this early point) activity of Aogami's quiet, staunch, constant presence.

So Chiaki stops walking and squats down in the sand - the white-blue heels, which are deceptively not razor-thin, they have in this form do seem to help with this perenially awkward posture at least a little bit. Their hair pools around them, floating by barest infinitesimal separation above the ground, and the surrounding sand shifts obligingly.

If Aogami can be reticent, so can they.

"Is something amiss?"

So Aogami takes the bait. But Chiaki shakes their head - their head, the conjoined monstrosity curtained in an impossible energy river.

Whatever they were at Jouin, they are now something completely different, left in conscious charge of their own body only by the measured grace of Aogami's chivalrous detachment. So what does it do to dwell on what people - demons, if that - think of them?

Chiaki Tennosuke has never been one with enough popularity and/or friends to warrant hearing their own self referred to in the third person while they're yet present; no one offers what Tennosuke has spoken of or plans to do at a brief quarter turn to another individual who's actually paying attention.

Then, Amanozako speaks mostly in "hey you" and Pixie seems equally content to accept the Nahobino, her savior, as a boy or a girl, based almost purely upon how they present.

But the gods of law and chaos are male. Megami are merely accessories. And all the Lady demons...don't act very ladylike. Not like what Chiaki had observed in Jouin, anyway, from teachers and best-behaved classmates.

As if the ides of best behavior should apply among demons. But if Chiaki is here, having no recourse but their own...

Well. It's nice to be properly ungendered, then, isn't it?

"Aogami..."

There is the mental invocation of an inclined head. Of course.

"How did you decide what to call me?"

And now there is nothing. Aogami is generally brusque, but thoughtful, if not merely contemplative. Unless he is meaningfully interjecting his thoughts on the current matter at hand, he doesn't make his presence known. He lets Chiaki feel the course of his power without undue tutorial. There is, indeed, something so tantalizing about the imminent crackle of Zio when unexplained.

"It is simply what you are."

"Yes, but..."

But in Tokyo, it's "young man" instead, when it's not Tennosuke-san (and that feels, for whatever reason, a little more discomfiting than it should? as if every youth coming of an age doesn't one day appear to be solely the family scion). Androgyny is not coded by soft, straight bangs and unblunt chin, but by plaid-checked pants - never mind the floral - versus frilly-pleated fuku skirts, in a uniformed educational institution.

Something about that feels hand-wavey, but Chiaki supposes they're in a position to do at least a little bit of that. It's not like they cared enough about school to make more than a generalization of its policies, so removed from it as they now are.

When they go back...well, are they ever going back? Do they care? What attachment do they have, when they have virtually no friends and haven't seen their parents for months?

Chiaki stops that train of thought before it can reach Aogami. "Did you see Atsuta-san?"

"A classmate of yours?"

"Yes." Simply that. "He was with me when the tunnel collapsed." Never mind about Dazai.

"As I have not seen any other humans, it is likely that your friend will have been found, and possibly recruited, by Bethel."

"Bethel?" A religious organization of some sort? Chiaki can't say that they've ever observed Atsuta to be particularly religious, but he is adaptable to any situation, and certainly could excel. But they don't exactly feel like telling Aogami this.

"A worldwide force of angels whose purpose is to quell the appearances of demons in the real world. They are responsible for your continued peaceful existence in Tokyo, unaware of this world below the Shekinah Glory."

Ostensibly, an institution of great efficiency. And Chiaki, the meandering, has never belonged in such places.

"We don't need to look for him, then."

Aogami doesn't respond immediately.

Then: "Young one, you have yet to fully regain your bearings and stand steady in the netherworld. I would advise that you focus on locating more leyline founts, and what Miman may accompany them, fighting demons as necessary."

Miman, errant and wayward - and dreadfully genderless, Chiaki finds. There are some with binders, some with lipstick. All are unpursuant to social cues and delighted by their own carrot of offered information.

It's really not such a horrible place, and that must be a horrible thing to say. But Chiaki is happy to chance it, here.

i did some research to see if any of this would actually be relevant in a japanese high school classroom, etc. but it seems not, so this is just a eurocentric perspective on the localization (and i do see why most fanwork calls nahobino kei) since i couldn't even find what aogami says in jpn