tampered | log; in progress

log; in progress

When; Sunday, May 25th; 10 am
Rating; G (Warning: may contain excessive cute.)
Characters; Clow Reed (

i_themagician) and Hiyori Tamura

doujin_dork)
Summary; As promised, Clow shows up to squee over Hiyori's artwork and take her out to lunch.
Log;

It was a warm day in late spring when Clow arrived at the building where Hiyori lived, warm enough to prompt him not to overdress quite as much as usual, at least. As opposed to his usual several layers of silk and a cloak, he was just wearing what might be considered somewhat light Victorian English garb underneath a brown trenchcoat. Stepping up to the front door and ringing the bell, he wondered if he should at least feel nervous or something. After all, what was a man his age doing hanging around with so many underage girls, anyway?

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Nervous didn't even begin to describe Hiyori. Here she was, meeting someone that she knew was extremely powerful, a great magician, had a twisted personality, who she had essentially been watching throughout a good deal of his life, or, afterlife, as it were.

And to top it all off, he knew that she knew half of the people in the City from beforehand, but didn't know about himself. She would have to make sure she didn't slip up. He was pretty quick on the uptake, she had seen that in him before.

She gulped as she heard the doorbell ringing. "C-Coming!" Sure, she had talked to him on the network, but this was different . . . wasn't it? She opened the door to greet her guest. " . . . Hi."

Clow, for his part, knew very little about Hiyori - in fact, he didn't even know what kind of food she liked, which could prove a challenge for lunch later. He didn't eat out much himself, so most of his knowledge of places to eat in the City revolved around coffee shops and bars. Not the best places for a birthday lunch for a sixteen-year-old. What was he thinking when he had offered to take her out, anyway? Ah, he was cursed and...

... That wasn't his favorite curse, he decided. However, Hiyori was just about to come to the door in a few moments, so before he could think on the matter further he took in a deep breath and put on one of his best smiles.

"Hello~." Behind that smile he tried to think of if there was anything else he should be saying but... nothing really came to mind. At least, nothing that it was not more polite to wait until being invited inside to say.

Having mentally prepared herself for this moment, she knew exactly what to say, and how to act. She would invite him in, passing her roommate's rooms with no eye contact inside (luckily for her, Konata was over someone else's for the time being), and then inside to her room where they would look through the carefully organized and separated pile of some of her works.

Unfortunately, rehearsal and the actual thing are often quite different. Especially when that person was a lot taller than he seemed to be on the page. Therefore, it was another moment or two before Hiyori was able to try and get her brain to work enough to open the door wider, and made a hand gesture to the hallway indicating that he could come in.

Was she speechless? Clow was aware that he tended to have that affect on people, although usually only after he had done something at least nominally amazing. He stepped inside as he assumed her gesture was indicating for him to do, but then turned to her as though somewhat concerned. "Is everything alright, Hiyori-san?"

'He said your name, say something, SAY SOMETHING! Stop spazzing out at the fact he's here, CALM DOWN, ME!' She was only very glad that she had been speechless, because if she hadn't been every single word she just thought to herself would have been said outloud, and that would have only served to embarrass her further.

"Y-yeah! I'm fine, thank you, Clow-san. Just . . . uh, thinking." There was a slight pause. "Oh! Here, you can come into my room now, if you'd like?" She started to walk towards it, slowly at first, making sure that he was following.

Clow followed, still somewhat confused over why she was acting so nervous. Perhaps she was one of those shy artistic types? She seemed okay with the idea of him looking at her artwork, but a lot of people find that very personal. Clow wouldn't have been nearly so unnerved by it, but then again he didn't consider himself so much an artist as someone who happens to draw from time to time.

Once she had separated the manga piles from each other and made sure to move any incriminating evidence into another room, she honestly didn't care too much about him seeing her art. After all, as someone who would be doing this professionally, it would be a good thing. She was honestly honored that he'd want to see something that she had drawn, though, and wouldn't even care if he critiqued it; anything for improvement, after all.

"W-Well, this is my room, Clow-san." She still felt a little light-headed giddy-ness from saying the name to the actual person, after all this time in fandom. "Feel free to look at whatever you'd like!" She motioned to the pile which held some four-panel humor manga, some random drawings from here and there, some romance panels (only low-rated fluff of different variations), and original character manga. Granted, a lot of them looked eerily like some of her friends at home, but he didn't have to know that. Oh, and her sketchbook, of course.

"If you're certain. You seemed a little nervous a moment ago," Clow replied but tentatively moved to pick up the stack anyway. Looking through the first couple of pictures he remarked, "Ah, so I was curious - these are really amazing so far, by the way, I especially like the expressions - has coming to the City changed the way you draw people at all? For instance, I don't think anyone here actually looks like a manga character, so does seeing them in person change the way you think of their appearance now?"

He is certain that the question itself makes sense, and just hopes that he used the right wording. Of course, the reason why he doesn't think that anyone looks like a manga character could be because he is one. (Then again, couldn't the same be said of Hiyori? ... It's not so much a question of breaking the fourth wall, but of where said wall is, isn't it?)

She calmed down once he went to look at the pictures; she was used to this. She heard him begin to speak, and paid attention to what he was saying. Curious? About what, she wondered.

"Ah O-Oh, thank you very much- I suppose I haven't really thought about it. With what I've drawn so far, I've just drawn them how I usually do . . . but now that I'm considering it, I suppose it's something that I can experiment with, yeah?"

She chose her next words carefully, considering as she was talking to a manga character. "As far as seeing them, well, I haven't really gone out much, but I imagine it would probably change, but that whenever I thought of them I would still kind of have that picture in the back of my mind."

"You never know until you meet one, though," he mused. He paused at a particular picture to admire it, cocking his head to one side, before adding, "... I must admit that I'm not going to be able to tell the difference between original characters and fan art with most of these, unless they're of people in the City."

"Eh-heh, yeah. I suppose not. I guess I'll find out." She was nervous when he paused, after all, he had figured out that she knew people of the City with barely any evidence at all, and she wasn't exactly being the smoothest talker here right now. She was relieved when it was something on a slightly different note.

"Ah, yeah . . . well, ah, I don't think there's anyone in that pile that's in the City, from what I know." This was true, at least. The fact that she had purposely made sure to separate anyone she had seen in the City and especially anyone from CLAMP in a different pile was a completely different story.

"The way you say that, it almost sounds as if there's another pile somewhere~." So what if there was? Clow wasn't particularly looking to find out if he was a manga character in another world - after finding out that it might actually be possible to find said manga somewhere in the City, or at least in the library, he had made the conscious decision to avoid doing so until he could convince himself that it would not mean that he is fictional, just that there happen to be stories about his world. However, as with when he guessed that she knew about people from the City in advance, Clow felt that he should inform Hiyori that she needed to be more careful with her secrets or else they wouldn't last long at all - especially if she was to continue associating with him. Trying to keep the conversation from going too far in the wrong direction for him, he chuckled and added, "The only reason I made that observation is because I was wondering which of these are of original characters."

Crap. "Oh, does it?"

It's not that she wasn't trying to hide it, in fact she was doing her best to try and hide the fact she knew some people's canons- er, backstories- but she couldn't help wanting to chat with characters she liked. And so far no one but Clow had noticed.

"Oh! Well, I could tell you, if you'd like?"

"Would you?" He asked, handing her the stack so that he could look over her shoulder. As tall as he was, it was easier than angling the pictures so that she could point at stuff.

As she remembered what had gone into the pile, she realized she had mostly Original Characters in there, and would have to say something in addition than just saying 'original, original, original' over and over again.

"Ah, that one I came up with for a specific manga plot," turn "I invented her when I was in my sixth year," turn "I just kind of wanted to design a character like him," turn. This was a tough one. Granted, they weren't manga characters, but their originality was to be debated. "U-uh. Well, those aren't exactly original characters."

"Oh, are they from a manga, then?" he asks, as that would seem to be the only other possibility!

" . . . Uhh. W-Well, they're kind of my friends from school." Of course, as she had only been commenting on their originality, she neglected to realize the situation of said characters that were on the page. It's not that it was necessarily an inappropriate scene, but it was pretty clear that she had somehow forgotten to take this page out of the pile.

"Hndaskihblrps." was possibly the closest way to describe the sound that she made shortly after her epiphany.

"Ohh." Clow looked at the page again, turned just a fraction of a shade more pink, and then looked back at Hiyori to ask in the most innocent voice possible, "Do they act like that in real life?"

Ohgodohgodohgodohgod. "E-Er. Not exactly?"

Why, why, why did she have to have drawn her friends with perverted eyes!

The expression on her face was just perfect and he couldn't keep from laughing no matter how much he tried. Clow ended up sort-of-covering his face with one hand and snickering, which really wasn't any better than just all-out laughing.

"... Well, that's a relief. I..." he hesitates and blushes a bit more, this time out of embarrassment. "I thought that I had corrupted you with how perverted I am."

He . . . was laughing. That was laughter, right? Yes, that was most definitely laughter she was hearing. That was good, sort of.

"Hahaha . . . yeah." Now she laughed, too, but it was more awkward-sounding, with a whole lot of relief. Wait, what was this he was saying? He thought that he had corrupted her? Well that was unlikely. Especially with what he thought was 'perverted'.

"You mean your post about the flavor curse? Oh, no, that wasn't anything too bad. Don't worry about it~!"

"Really? I think that would have gotten me slapped or maybe ostracized in most circles..." in 18th-century Europe, that is. "Then again, people are obviously a lot more open about that sort of thing nowadays."

Of course, that post was really the tip of the iceberg when it came to how perverted he really was - but she was never going to find out about those Japanese rope-bondage books. For now he just turned the page to the next picture, which wasn't shouojo-ai.

"Hah. I know the feeling. Although, it's more of specific people as opposed to in general."

It wasn't exactly as though that was her worst picture, as far as content. Of course, she was definitely not showing him any of those. She wasn't showing practically anyone those. She didn't care how perverted he acted; she doubted he was bad enough to have done anything too serious.

After they went through a few more pictures, the pile was done. "Well, that's it, I suppose."

"Well, some people are more conservative than others, I suppose." The thought that Hiyori might just be more perverted than normal of course didn't even cross Clow's mind.

"So it is~," he said with his usual cheerfulness. There was really little else to say as he had probably commented on almost every single picture, especially towards the end as he grew more comfortable doing so. "Shall we, then?"

"Yeah, that's true." Either that or they just didn't like having not-quite-normal pictures drawn of them. Well, at least when they realized how bad some of the situations they were put in actually were.

She had really enjoyed his commentary, really. It wasn't exactly constructive criticism, but he was fairly specific in what he said, and it was overall, well, sweet. "Sure! . . . Uhh, you mentioned that you were picking the place, right?"

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log; in progress

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SORRY! Got a horrible case of writer's block on this post. @_@ That's also why it sucks.

STFU, you're crazy; this is fine, and adorable.

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<3

<3<3<3