Chapter Text
“Excuse me!”
Izumi, busy wearily checking over the guestbooks for the inn, looks up at the sound of impeccable, if accented, Japanese. A pair of foreigners greet her sight, both thrumming with anxious energy. Izumi vaguely remembers her sister complaining about them sneaking out of the inn in the middle of the night, which boded just great for her. “Yes?”
“Hello, I’m terribly sorry to bother you, but I just wondered if you could pass on a message for us?”
A message? Izumi thinks grumpily. What do they think I am, the post office? But of course, she doesn’t say that out loud, and instead plasters an accommodating smile on her face and replies to the orange-haired woman.
“A message? I’m sorry, I’m not quite sure what you mean.” Please take it back, please say you don’t need anything anymore or that you were mistaken, please I’m so fucking tired, please please please–
“Well, we were waiting for our friend here, but an… emergency is forcing us to leave. If– when, when he comes, could you please tell him to meet us at Conomi Town, and that we’re really sorry we’re forcing him to do this? Er, he has black hair and black eyes– and his name is Ray. Is that… is that okay for you to do?” The woman fidgets anxiously, the white-haired man behind her seemingly just as nervous.
Izumi keeps her frozen smile in place, inwardly screaming into the void. Curse this excessively polite woman and perfectly reasonable request! And the lackluster description didn’t do anything either, not when the obviously foreign name was out of place in Japan as her sister in makeup that didn’t make her look like a freaking pig, seriously Mikuni why would you use that lipstick, why don’t you ever listen to her and actually use the lipstick she’s been telling her to use since she was twelve, and she was seriously getting off track and shoot they’re still waiting for her response nooooo she’s gonna have to take the stupid ass request, would they believe her if she said she couldn’t–
“Of course!”
GODDAMNIT.
Two days later, a man with black hair and black eyes arrives asking for an orange-haired woman and a white-haired man, but he introduces himself as Tomioka Giyuu first, and therefore, Izumi completely forgets about the request made of her until he left dejectedly, accompanied by an orange-haired swordsman. (No, she wasn’t distracted by how fucking HOT they were, that would be silly.) She mentally apologized to the orange-haired woman but went about with her day anyway.