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Ru Li      Oh, how Ru Li wished so very badly that you could erase stupid messages you left over the telephone.

     Last night he was informed of just *how* disastrous his failure to understand phone etiquette was. That leaving a businesslike message was pathetic, silly, and incompetent, that asking her to call 'at her convenience' wasn't polite courtly language but saying that he didn't take the situation seriously. Lilian explained to him in *great detail* how he had fucked up, and explained to him how to *un*-fuck-up, and once again he felt somewhat ashamed for needing to rely on her. But this is one of *those* cases, those cases where he couldn't do anything *but* rely on someone else. Just...never again. Not for *this*.

     So, because he is the kind of person to follow good advice instead of the kind of person too proud to do so, he showed up at a place he knew she liked, casually rather than aggressively. No flowers (he still didn't understand why one would bring flowers for this sort of thing when it isn't courtly), no chocolates, no silly gifts. Just Ru Li in...

     Shockingly *casual* clothes for the god, actually. Like...normal human-people clothes. Yeah, it's a black tee-shirt and jeans, but seeing Ru Li like this is just...bizarre.

     Normal. He had gone *all the way* with normal, just like he did with everything else.

     "...hello," he says, awkwardly, though in the way he is always awkward around Futaba, "Do you, erm...w-would you like to go somewhere to eat and catch up? I do not really know what is tasty in this area..."

     "...but I would like to know how you have been."
Futaba Nuki Voice mails aren't anything new for Futaba, and seeing one more tick on her notification bar doesn't catch her attention until maybe halfway through her temple work for the day. She very nearly dismisses the notification, too, but seeing the name attached to it has her stopping in mid-swipe to peer, stare, and mull over who could be trying to fake that name of all the names that a telemarketer could've used.

Curiosity drives her to actually listen, and she's left standing around for a while to proces just what it is she's hearing. She hadn't heard from Ru Li in ages, after all, but hearing him speaking so business-ly is both familiar yet worrying. Did he get tired of keeping in touch? Has she truly become that forgettable over just a few years? Hell, has it already been years? Is he mad that she hasn't reached out to him this entire time?

Overthinking her own response for once in her life, it takes until the end of that same work day for Futaba to finally send a simple return text message back (after typing it up in two minutes and agonizing over proofreading it for an hour before hitting send):

'Let us meet in the food court nearest Sotenbori's warpgate.
                            Sincerely,
                            Futaba Nuki'

That should sound sufficiently formal enough and impossible to interpret as dismissive, right? Probably. After making sure she hasn't been followed from home, Futaba arrives at the food court, dressed in a slightly more fashionable than usual brown jacket that's more cardigan than hoodie, and a striped shirt and long pants under that. Her hair isn't in its usual messy orange ponytail, either, but straightened out and very brown!

The tail is still a dead giveaway, of course.

"Hey, Ru Li!" The potential tension in her message isn't reflected in her physical reply, of course, as she brings up a hand in a quick wave of greeting that's still a smidge more upbeat than her usual. "Sure! Dang, it's been forever, huh?  Oh, there's a solid gyro place around here that's got a buy 1 get 1 free deal. Just need to wait a couple of minutes for the deal to start since they cater to the office crowd and close in 45, you know?"

She's talking a little fast, too, like she's trying to cover for her own nervousness. "Kind of weird not to just stay open for the folks hanging out, but it's... Ehm. You know, they run it how they like." She laughs, then coughs lightly and rubs her neck while looking off to the side.

"I.. Er. I've been alright, I guess. You been holding up okay? It's been a... A hot minute, for sure."
Ru Li      "That sounds very nice."

     As they walk towards the Gyro place, Ru Li laughs. "That precisely? To the minute? I think I rather like them. At least, I respect them. Incredibly funny."

     Of course a clockwork bureaucrat god would find that funny.

     He scratches the back of his neck and looks at her. She already knows it's a pointless act - he could see her perfectly well already - but his eyes are locked on hers because he doesn't want her to think his attention is anywhere else. In fact, as they're walking, he rams into a pole. He's trying to restrain his senses so she's the *only* focus, and, well, as soon as he rams into the pole, she can tell. He's forgotten how to restrict his senses, and trying, well, it's important to him right now.

     The pole takes a *lot* more damage than he does, though. He'll pay for that, of course.

     "Miserably. I have been trapped in a massive chamber with the other ninety-eight gods, most of that time spent in silence as we debated in the manners most appropriate to us - painting, flower arranging, board games, music compositions, poetry..."

     "...over whether or not I am allowed to remain the ninth Ru Cheng god."

     "And...I could not send messages. Or leave the Chamber. Or even speak. I missed the wedding of the Mrs. Rooks. I missed meeting Riku and being able to help Belial."

     "I missed *you*. Terribly."

     He sighs. "...Mrs. Rook told me not to say anything like that, but we both know I fumble over everything."

     Then he smiles. "I'm glad," he says, dropping the formality, dropping the precise language, "That you're doing alright. I was worried about you. So much has changed."

     "What have you been doing? What have you been working on?"
Futaba Nuki "To the minute!" Futaba confirms, snickering lightly and flicking he rphone out to check the time. "Gives poorer folks a way to pick up stuff for cheap so they don't need to throw anything out, and it gets them fans to come back during lunch time."

Unlike Ru Li, Futaba doesn't have eyes on the side of her head (usually) (she could if she wanted to) (she's just not doing it right now). She's busy looking around, gesturing at various other places in the food court that are good and bad for all their reasons, doing anything but looking too closely at Ru Li's face and risking getting self-conscious about it. She does catch him looking right at her whenever she gestures closer in his direction, though, and she also catches when he walks into the pole just a bit too late to warn him about it.

"Heh. Smooth." She comments with a snicker, as though she wasn't totally guilty of doing that on the way here. It's just easier to hide the bump on her forehead as a shapeshifter that can move it somewhere else instead of her face.

Hearing that he's been trapped for so long, though, assuages some of Futaba's fears and worsens others. "So you weren't avoiding... I see, I see." She murmurs quietly with a relieved nod, wrinkling her nose a little at hearing just what it is that Ru Li had to do that whole time. "Silence and... No contact with the outside, even? Dang, that sounds miserable, yeah. If I was stuck doing nothing but that for so long..."

She pauses, then taps her chin. "Well, some of 'em don't sound too horrible, but years is too much. And in SILENCE? Ugh. Well, at least you're done with all that now. They're not going to lock you up in there again for another debate anytime soon, are they?" Futaba asks, finally looking right at Ru Li with a half-worried frown while making a little show of pulling up one of her jacket sleeves.

She even has a little Popeye-bump for emphasis! It's on her forearm, though, because her jacket sleeve is kind of hard to pull all the way up to the shoulder.

"I... Uh. I missed you, too." Futaba mumbles shortly after Ru Li says the same, far quieter than everything else she's said. "I was... Ergh. Kind of worried you had gotten bored, or grossed out, or... Something, seeing the way I've been and all." She continues while slumping a little in place and not looking nearly as unflappable as she often does.

"I've been doing alright learning plenty of the home work, but the... Doing the hero thing's been kind of rough. I wish I could say I've been working on something more impressive." She replies with a weak laugh, then rubs her neck while looking off to the side again. "But... Eh. I've just been stuck in this rut for a while, you know? Like... I'm going through the motions, and everyone else has been blasting on ahead. Doing... Way better as heroes, or changing things and becoming better than they were a week, a month, a year ago."

She pauses again, then laughs again apologetically. "Sorry, sorry. Ah... Right, you wanna get something to eat, then? We should be doing something more interesting, eh?"