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Herculean

@inspirenjional-blog / inspirenjional-blog.tumblr.com

Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of your fist
independent Renji Abarai roleplay blog
Private
Canon divergent
Written by Kat
See rules for details
Keep on Lovin'
Keep on fighting
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He really put his foot in it this time, didn’t he?
Izuru is used to discomfort — welcomes it, even — but this just takes things to a whole new level. Granted, it’s been years since they were close enough to consider each other the best of friends, but those years counted for something, right? They can pull it together, right?
To be fair, one person’s rejection is another’s gay epiphany. Someone had to take the leap and bite the bullet, or else they would’ve been in this for another fifty years. He certainly wouldn’t have pinned the poem to Renji’s door if zhe hadn’t gone out of zher way to confess to him. 
Written it, probably. Submitted it to the Communication, most likely. But he’s only ever as direct as he has to be.
“Well, alright,” he says. Takes the poem, looks it over. Sets it down. Can… can he really do this? “When… when I write a haiku, I usually try to stay away from symbolic representation. It’s really supposed to be representative, taken literally, rather than capturing greater truths or anything like that. But sometimes–”
Oh, fuck. That’s the opposite of explaining. He’s obfuscating. Furthermore, he probably sounds condescending. He ducks his head. “That’s not helpful. I’m sorry.”
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Look upon him in wonderment, Renji. This is the man that you confessed to having a crush on. 

If zhe wasn’t still reeling with embarrassment, Renji would almost be impressed with zhimself. Zhe hadn’t been interested in dating anybody for a pretty long time, let alone doing something as characteristically impulsive as trying to court a close friend. 

Maybe that was to be expected. Izuru had this way of making Renji a little more brave about expressing zhimself. He never made Renji feel stupid for reaching out or getting a little touchy-feely, and there was something kind of cool about that. 

There’s probably a fine line in every friendship. A point where touchy-feely is crossed and goes straight into one-sided pining territory, and Renji is dangerously dancing all over that line. Can’t catch me, gay thoughts.

“Look, Kira.” Zhe says bluntly. They don’t even have their food yet, but maybe the sooner they can get this out of the way, the better. “You don’t have’ta... be subtle about all this. I’m a big boy. I can handle the truth.”

Izuru doesn’t have romantic feelings for Renji. It’s dumb for Renji to assume that this poem thing meant that he changed his mind.

Even though zhe still hopes.

“You can just say what you wanna say.”

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          Kisuke held back a laugh. Zhe had that one? Oh dear… no wonder zhe was having trouble.
          ❝Ah, well… that model you have there is definitely supposed to behave that way. As you can imagine, Ginnosuke-san isn’t all that popular. We do have a catalogue somewhere around here… excuse me for a moment.❞
        Turning away from Renji, Kisuke rummaged through the drawers under the counter, explaining as he searched through stacks of paper, pens, and other such items. ❝I don’t know if you know about our return and refund policy, so I’ll go over it once. If you bought it here at the Urahara Shop not long ago it will still be fine; you can return it and we’ll refund the full price. If it’s been over a month, or if you bought it elsewhere, we’ll gladly take that Soul Candy off your hands if you’d like, but you’ll have to buy the new one full price anyway. Ah, here it is!❞ he loudly declared heaved a large, dusty, yellowed catalogue onto the countertop. He coughed and waved his hand as the dust billowed up, then looked to Renji with a grin.
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        ❝In this catalogue is all the products that we carry. The list for Soul Candy is near the front of it, I believe. It has more information on each type’s personality than I can care to remember. Why don’t you look through it and see what kind you’d like while I go take care of a few things? I’m afraid we’re quite busy this lovely time of year~❞

At Urahara’s description, Reni raised an eyebrow and observed the candy dispenser for a closer look. The toy, as expected, looked pretty goofy. It seemed oss that the R&D department would make an already difficult task such as blending in with humans even more painful, but that was the 12th for you.

“So it’s s’posed to be like that?” Zhe wondered aloud. “Why would they give them difficult personalities in the first place? That seems counterproductive.”

Still, only more reason to get rid of it, so Renji shuffled towards the counter top with curiosity. The tome that was presented looked thick enough to injure an innocent bystander if dropped, and zhe eyed it suspiciously from above. 

Ah, reading. The math of letters.

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Getting comfortable at the counter, Renji dutifully began the process of peeling apart the stiff, starchy pages and flipping through until zhe found a table of contents to begin from. Quite a bounty of options to peruse. 

(Zhe might normally be a little bothered by somebody leaving zhim swimming in a confusing sea of information, but that was pretty much par for the course with the shopkeeper. Renji couldn’t find it in zhimself to be surprised, so neither could zhe be annoyed.)

“There’s a warranty or something, right?” Renji asked warily, eyes looking back up to Urahara before he could slip away. “The last time Rukia bought a soul candy from you it ended up being faulty. I didn’t even know Mod Souls were still a thing...”

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