Dojima-Montague Apartment, Tokyo, Wednesday Morning

[withoutverona]

Romeo's nineteenth birthday started with a package from his father containing a collection of Lord Byron's works, a dagger that was about twice as elaborate as anything Romeo had any business carrying, and a letter that suggested -- in a polite, backhanded, and elaborate way -- that Romeo was missed and should make it his business to visit Verona sooner rather than later.

There was also a large box of chocolates. They were good. Romeo ate the caramels as his breakfast. He should have been reading about the equilibrium point in supply and demand, but that kept turning into perusal of the poetry. Really, the poetry struck him as more relevant.

[OOC: For the girlfriend, or for birthday emails/calls/texts/homing pigeons.]

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[withoutverona]

"And I don't think anything would be strange for Fandom, so the world is in no danger," Romeo said promptly. "The rest of us should thank you for taking care of all the weird from the rest of the world on such a small island."

[intraspective]

She huffed a laugh.

"I don't think we had much of an option for dealing with it," Ino retorted. "And how're you? How's another birthday treated you? Happy birthday, by the way, I don't think I said."

[withoutverona]

"Well enough," Romeo answered. "Dojima's been at work, but we ought to go out later, and I got a package from my father. Chocolates, a book, and guilt about how soon I'm visiting."

"The chocolates are good."

[intraspective]

"Say hi to her for me? Chocolate is always good," she said idly. "And familial guilt is totally a common thing."

A beat.

"Is it working?"

[withoutverona]

"Christmas isn't too long to wait, is it?"

Meaning yes, the guilt was working.

[intraspective]

Ino grinned, though he couldn't see it, at that.

"Probably is," she answered. Not that Ino was the best person to decide how long between visits was too long. "Think you'll have a free weekend before that to go visit? You could always take Dojima-san and make it a mini-vacation!"

[withoutverona]

"Oh, probably," Romeo admitted. "It's just always a little hard to get Verona out of my head, when I go there. Two days are harder than a week, somehow."

He tapped his fingers against the phone. "I wouldn't mind seeing my father, though. Only son and all."

[intraspective]

"Harder to get it out of your head?" she asked, humming as she stretched.

[withoutverona]

"Oh, you know, I talk one way here and one way there, and I carry my gun there, and I smell the ocean every day, and -- a weekend in Verona is like a tease." Romeo wasn't sure how much more he could explain it. "And what are you doing? I hear humming."

[intraspective]

"I'm stretching," she said, laughing. "And at work. It's terribly exciting, you can tell. And--I know what you mean, I think, from that."

[withoutverona]

"It sounds fascinating," Romeo laughed. "It's its own world. I get homesick."

He started fiddling with his new knife as he spoke. "I talked to your friend Tybalt, while I was last in Fandom."

[intraspective]

Her eyebrows raised.

"Oh?"

[withoutverona]

"Oh," Romeo mimicked. "He's ... very much himself."

Meaning an utterly impossible Capulet.

[intraspective]

"Does that mean there was a fight and I missed hearing about it, Romeo?"

Ino was dubious, here.

[withoutverona]

Romeo scowled at the phone. "He's not dead, is he?"

... look, he had a healthy ego.

[intraspective]

"I didn't ask if there was a death," Ino retorted. "I asked if you, oh how would you put it, had words with him."

[withoutverona]

"If I fight him again, one of us will die." Romeo didn't precisely say that easily, but his voice held a certain ... certainty. "And no, I did not. I suffered through minding my manners. Things don't tend to go well when I treat him as the wretch he is."

[intraspective]

Ino... resisted the urge to facepalm at that.

Barely.

"You know," she offered, "he hasn't really done much to start fights 'round here? Maybe it's just, uh, you that he's got an issue with?"

[withoutverona]

"But I'm a lamb, Ino," Romeo said innocently, before going more serious. "It's my name he loathes. He's met me ... no more than twice. I spoke gently to him, as it may save some measure of grief in his future."

[intraspective]

"Maybe it will--but do you think you can hide the fact that you loathe him enough for him to bother considering your words?" Ino asked out, tugging at her hair. "I mean, if someone who hated me, and I had no clue why beyond the name and the fact that I didn't like those with the name as the one who hated me gave me some sort of talking to, gently, I don't know if I'd be inclined to listen."

[withoutverona]

Romeo huffed out his nose, annoyed at what he had to admit was Ino's logic. "I can hardly have made things worse. Well, unless he goes home and kills me straight off, and I've no fear of that."

Genuinely curious, he added, "Besides, what would you have done?"

[intraspective]

Uh.

"If someone I had mutual hate with showed up and I had to give them advice to fix things in their future?"

Um.

"...probably kill 'em," Ino said, thinking about that, "'cause they can't screw stuff up if they're dead, though admittedly it really depends on what the issue at hand was. If it was one where lives depended on it, then well..." She shrugged. "But if it was like, oh no, you're going to fall in love with someone I care 'bout and get them pregnant and then ditch them leaving them broken-hearted, then I might spend the weekend telling him utterly awful habits and stories 'bout the one I care 'bout in the hopes of turning them off of the other before it starts."

Ino contemplated that. "Or knock them out and make it so they can't have kids. Broken hearts are less daunting to fix when there's no children involved, I think anyway."

She should never be allowed to take a situation and run with it, no. She was also rather the pot calling the kettle black in this case.

[withoutverona]

And this was why Romeo didn't let Ino run his life.

"If he died, his family would blame my family," Romeo pointed out. "Then more people would die. Castrating him .... that's a thought."