>_

This is sort of a follow-up to the entry I posted earlier today. It's based on this previous snippet here, and hopefully will make it to full ficdom. (So few of mine rarely do...;_;) I've had the idea for this one for a while now, and just couldn't find a way to make it work. I'm going for little to no angst in this one, as I just really, really really wanted to do a fluffy thing with as little ripping out of hearts as possible. I need that kind of thing at the moment.

Anyway, it's a really, really rough version of what I have so far that I wrote this morning before passing out from lack of sleep. I'm off to go get something to eat now, as it's...seven something and I haven't eaten anything yet today. :(






Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate. - Sun-Tzu (~400 BC)
==========


Tatsumi had had no idea what to make of it at the time, absolutely none at all. One day he’d walked into office to a neatly folded slip of paper on his desk. Upon opening it, he had been presented with a a single message in elegant handwriting:


To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme
excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
- Sun-Tzu


When no one had come forward to admit to having placed the note on his desk, Tatsumi had been determined to discover the writer of said note. He had just begun to make a mental list of potential perpetrators when he was faced with a deluge of paperwork in the form of operational reports, requisition forms and a million other equally irritating things that needed his attention before they could be passed on to Chief Konoe.

Nearly a month later, and still bogged down in paperwork, Tatsumi had forgotten about the note entirely while Watari had made his presence known in an increasingly baffling manner. Not that Tatsumi could find fault with any of it, as Watari was getting his work done, it was simply...confusing to say the least.

Every day after lunch Watari would come into Tatsumi's office, laptop in hand and seat himself in the chair across from Tatsumi. He would offer a friendly - if come what distracted - smile and mutter something about a personal project he’d been working on for a while now, if Tatsumi had heard correctly. Tatsumi had no idea what the project was exactly, only that it seemed to have become top priority in Watari’s mind. Added to that the fact that Watari had taken to ensuring that Tatsumi actually ate lunch on a daily basis when he was busy, as well as doing other small things for Tatsumi here and there when the occasion arose.

Tatsumi couldn't say that it was unusual in any way, as Watari had often done those very things for him in the past, it was simply the frequency of the small kindnesses that caught his attention and made him wonder. It was far more likely that Watari would be the one to lose track of time while working in his laboratory; Watari who would forget to eat, forget to take a few moments once in a while to take a break and perhaps even a short walk outside.

Still...the past few weeks had been incredibly busy for Tatsumi in particular, and he found that Watari’s company while he worked was an oddly soothing one. The soft clicking of the laptop keys beneath Watari’s hand sounded almost like the gentle patter of a light rain, strangely relaxing in the way it offered familiar background noise. And if were to be truly honest with himself, he’d grown somewhat used to having Watari so close to him. He even looked forward to it, and was unable to do any sort of meaningful work until he heard the soft knock on his office door announcing Watari’s arrival.

He should have been concerned by that - he knew he should have - but for some reason he couldn’t really muster up the necessary apprehension the situation called for. He was certain Watari would have mentioned something if he felt Tatsumi had been acting decidedly out of character - he was disturbingly observant when it came to things such as that.


==========

~soooo bad...>_< ~