RP Two Ships Passing Each Other on the Dark Side of a Moon

Takashi visibly enjoyed watching and listening to her talk. He didn't relax, exactly. His posture was tense when either of them was speaking, and every moment in between. But when he was speaking, he seemed tense and nervous, as opposed to when she was speaking, when he seemed tense and excited. It was a subtle difference, but clearly visible from the expression on his face. Whenever she was talking, it was like he couldn't help but smile. However, when she mentioned modifying her body, he looked away for a moment and his brow furrowed. He seemed pensive even as he resumed looking at her and listening.

"No," he replied quickly. "I don't have any siblings."

"Although," after a quick thought, he put on his foolish grin and continued. "Maybe they'll try again after I failed so spectacularly. They're not that old, I don't think."

He didn't let the moment linger on this for very long before he resumed his pensive look.

"I've never thought about it before," he looked away and seemed to relax now, deeply in thought as he talked. "But if I donated my genes to create a new person, then that new person created a new body for themself, I would probably feel a little hurt. Like my genes weren't good enough. Why else combine genes with someone else, except to say that you think your genes are worth passing on to a new generation?"

Takashi looked up and seemed to suddenly remember where he was.

"Please don't take what I said the wrong way, I think you are beautiful and that any modifications you made are the truest form of self-expression." Takashi was back to his old nervous self. "You've literally expressed yourself by changing yourself. Maybe to make your external form match how you see yourself? I don't know. That feels a little presumptuous on my part. Anyway, I support your decision. I was just trying to think about how I might feel if I were in your parents' situation."

Kozakura wasn't sure how to react to the notion that his parents might try again because he had failed. It was sort of sad, but she also didn't really see him as a failure. It was difficult to reconcile those two things and form an appropriate response. She sipped her hot coco for a time to buy some moments for her to think upon it further. "You're doing more with your life than most, I'd hardly call that failure."

When he began to speak of how her parents might have felt about it, well it really felt familiar in a way that hit home. She stared at the dark liquid in her mug for a moment, before looking up and smiling at him. "I suppose I had a myriad of reasons for why I did it, I only know now that I can't imagine looking different so I must feel at home with this appearance." She paused for a moment and then thought to interject some humor or at least a fun fact to help him relax, "The tail took me forever to get control over though. I used to trip over it all the time."

Takashi didn't find her fun fact to be humorous or amusing, but it did catapult him back into a state of excitement.

"I'll bet! I can only imagine how big of a change it was. It must have completely changed your body's centre of balance. Is it prehensile? Like, could you pick something up with it? Could you grab on to something and hoist yourself up?" His questions came faster and faster as he entered a self-reinforcing feedback loop of curiosity. "Or would it detach like a gecko's tail when it's caught by a predator? Can you use it to turn around in mid-air like a cat? Can you lean back and balance on it like a kangaroo? Or..."

The young nearly-scientist with a passion for biology would have continued, but his mind quickly turned to curiosity about other things that she could do with her tail that didn't make it past the self-censorship feature of his speech buffer. Instead, he just froze mid-sentence and suddenly blushed very deeply.