bloodbound. (earinor & akira)

"I won't!", Yujin insisted. There was no telling if he really would or wouldn't, in the end, that wasn't for him to decide and just saying something like that wasn't magically going to fix an injury he sustained some odd years ago, something that quite obviously impacted his short term memory enough so that he wouldn't quite remember anything after a few weeks. Sometimes it felt unfair to be subjected to something like that, maybe even somewhat hopeless when he thought about it for a bit too long, but no matter what, it all wound up the same and the single thing that he could reassure himself was the obvious - he was fine as long as he could try, even though he knew himself that the blank memories that resurfaced every blue moon were his and he'd simply shoved them aside, not forgotten them entirely, but they'd fade into absolute obscurity soon thereafter. "Hm, does sleeping with Quan even count as having sex?", he asked, not meaning it, then shaking his head. It counted, but then again, sleeping with Quan had always been something and he wasn't even sure if he'd done it more than once. Instead, he thought about it for a second. "Mh, it happens around the same as I have sex when I'm drunk, I guess? Not that I know a definite number anyway." Besides, why would he keep track of the times he slept with his girlfriend? That'd be ridiculous.

"So do I, but I can try!" Still, asking Muhan would be the right course of action, or - if anything - asking an instructor. Shuren wasted plenty of ressources on his and his siblings upbringing, so of course it would only be fair to waste some more when he picked fighting up as a hobby, right? When was the last time he had indulged in something like that anyway? Definitely not recently, but he'd blamed it on his leg and ... did he even care after that incident of his? Yujin didn't have a damn clue. "So what you are saying is, your father never fought you and your grandfather didn't quite take you seriously?", he summarized as he got his horse moving, leaving deep imprints in frigid snow as they moved on - this wasn't anything odd, but who knew how tall the blanket of snow was that they assumed to be a sturdy floor - maybe something lay underneath. "Time and practice." That wasn't wrong, not by far anyway, but the wolf had neither of that - he was out of shape, yet Richard called him good-looking at some intoxicated occassions, or at least eyed him like he was the best thing he'd ever seen, though, didn't that just go for those stupid, blue eyes? "Of course, it's always the same direction, why would we be going anywhere else?" That was silly and yet, he knew that many different paths could have quite a few different outcomes - and thus, they did ride off, to where the sky seemingly made the frosty earth, only to realize that this strip of land went on and on and on, without a single sign of changing. Yujin stopped at some point, when he could spot two dark splotches on the horizon, far apart from one another and barely able to be seen yet. "See that? Those are some of the outposts, so if we just keep going straight ahead, we should be good." He could see them, they couldn't see him just yet - and if they didn't take a detour, they never would.

Theoretically speaking, none of his ideas were quite feasible just yet - Yujin knew that it didn't matter if he insisted on remembering or not, his brain made the rules without him and whenever it felt as if none of this information was particularly imporant, it just vanished into the thin air that it came from. Whatever the case, the wolf knew that he could have tried to force himself to remember, could have forced that wreckage he called a brain to recall something of the more recent incidents, but he seemingly couldn't and instead found himself riding a horse out here, in Silesses wilderness, far away from the place he called home, yet not entirely lost in obscurity. What came next was a step in either the right or the wrong direction - if he were to trip over his own feet, he thought, he'd land headfirst against a piece of ice, maybe even in one of his fathers traps and then this journey would be over in no time. Still, he could spot the dark figures on the horizon, lean and mismatched, with pieces of cloth probably swaying in the cold breeze, gnawing itself through everyone and everything that it could take ahold of. There was silence for a while, at least amid all the howling wind and cracking snow beneath them, but even that came to a halt when he stopped and had opened his mouth. "The traps don't start anywhere near here, actually. Or rather", Yujin turned and pointed at someplace, some odd, old trees standing a few meters away from them.

"There's the first one, there's wire between those trees", he told Richard, before he moved on ahead, his tempo having drastically slowed, despite not getting off of his horse. Out here, anything could happen and with the change in temperature that would transpire sooner or later, one could see that everything outside of Silesse wasn't made of eternal, ancient ice. There was nothing much here, yet, if he went slow and didn't direct anyones attention towards him, he wondered if he could just avoid all of those traps altogether. Getting past them had always been a pain, yet, nobody dared to dismantle them and if one kept careful watch, they could most likely find bits and pieces of discolored, rusty looking snow - an indication of fading blood, soon to be swallowed by new snow. "There should also be some other traps, littered around at random, but if you take the obvious path, nothing much will happen, really. Also, considering how the snow is giving in right now, there isn't much to worry about." Not that that meant they could be careless, by the gods, no, but it wasn't much of a help to get off of their horses and slow down to a literal crawl when they wanted to be back before anyone found them. Still, what else could he do? "Besides, I know where those traps are." ... If only he could memorize that, though. Thiis was going smoothly, it would be fine soon thereafter and even now that he wasn't so sure himself, he figured that ... those were traps made for humans, their horses would be fine and even if not, that'd be his own mistake, not Richards.

There wasn't much except the howling winds and for a moment, Yujin grew worried that Richard had maybe been swallowed up by the hollow world below, but the sounds that their horses made were quite far from terror, which seemed to be a good indication of nothing important happening, let alone them being in danger. What would come after that was, actually, up to the indications that the wire at the watchtowers would give them, or rather what lay below the snow ever so slightly. Surely, they were better off if they ran and ran and ran, but even he was able to navigate himself around some stupid wiretraps and it wouldn't be incredibly hard to get a feeling for anything else either. "Because he keeps us all locked in here?", Yujin asked eventually, as if he needed some sort of confirmation on Richards part and if he was quite honest, he wasn't sure himself. Shuren was a man of many mysteries, some of which he would never tell anyone, but even then, it felt as if he had only done what he wanted to. "Not that I recall, I think that he just likes having total control over a situation that, by any means, isn't supposed to be controlled. I don't know what he fears, but you can't get anything out of him either way." What was Shuren afraid of anyway? Nothing much, not that Yujin knew and for some reason, it seemed futile to ask his old man either way - the day he'd actually give him a good reason, he'd probably be on his deathbed.

"You don't sound like you trust me all that much!", he whined, but he knew that his memory wasn't reliable, at least not the recent one. Sure, there wasn't much that changed out here since the war ended, but they did go slower for a reason - but then again, those wires had been out here before he had ever gotten into that accident and he also had gone over this border before the accident, so there wasn't going to be anything different. They rode ahead, past what Yujin deemed to be a minefield of messy, frozen snow instead of actual traps and once they passed it and the outposts turned bigger and bigger, then got swallowed again at their sides, he realized that those weren't even manned. Red fabric flickered in icy wind, with Richard trailing after him and Yujin stopped his horse, didn't move much further than that - instead, he stayed where he was and eyed what he could see. There seemingly wasn't much wire here, which was odd in the first place, but ... he hadn't been out here in a while, maybe his father had changed his stance on the borders all of a sudden. Any thrian knew how to get in anyway and anyone who wasn't invited in just wouldn't make it that far ... so where on earth was this stupid wire? The wolf got off of his horse and extended his hand, but there obviously wasn't much there - and there was nothing that seemed to be in the snow, either. "This is odd ..." Something was off.

Taking precaution would have been necessary earlier, way before they had gone out here, but instead, Yujin hadn't and now he was unsure if he regretted it or not. Should he have asked Muhan for any kind of information, or would that have blown his cover way too much? Whatever the case, even if he wasn't quite sure what it was that felt so odd about this situation, he couldn't quite understand and any attempt at doing so felt almost futile. There were steps he had to make if he wanted to catch up to that almost foreign experience that he had when he ran past this border alone, but now that he stood there with Richard, something irked him. "There's no wire here", he answered eventually, once more grasping at thin air and taking a step ahead into the right direction, just to be sure. His memory was faulty, especially after his accident, but none of these puzzle pieces seemed to make much sense in the first place. What was he trying to make fit into an empty spot right now? "The outposts I showed you earlier, they start a line of wire. Those logs of wood over there", the wolf said and pointed at seemingly frigid poles, covered in snow, but still standing guard like ancient soldiers. "Support them, but there is no wire here, there isn't even torn wire here, this doesn't make much sense to me. Something's wrong, I just don't know why or what it is to begin with."

Was he talking too much, interpreting too much into a situation that would yield no results anyway? They could have taken it down, just in case that someone would be stupid enough to try and pass through here, to come running in search of something and find themselves taken apart by a piece of thin, sharp wire - but that seemed almost unlike. Where did it all go? Did his father know? Whatever the case, it didn't stop a cold shiver from running down his back - and he got back onto his horse, just because they weren't here to waste more time than they already had. "It wasn't before the accident, I have normal memories from before it happened, you know?" That was no lie and as he saddled in again, he thought about it for a second. The last time he had come here lay too far back, he was quite sure of that and there was no indication of anyone manning the outposts recently, too. Had his father just given up on keeping people in and out of Silesse? At least that'd explain why Nayantai and Richard got over the border, but the old wolf probably knew about this bullshit setup if he was from here. "It's just odd. I vividly remember falling on my face and cutting my hands open the last time I came here and I aimed for the exact same place too. Something just seems off, but I couldn't tell you what it is for the life of me. It's not like my father to just dismantle something that he was adamant about keeping up for so many years."

Believing Richard was an easy task, under normal circumstances at least and Yujin hated himself for being unable to do that right about now. Nothing had changed, he was the same person as before and the slow feeling of guilt that inadvertedly crept up his throat was taking him over from within, as silly as it sounded - this was not how he imagined this trip to go down, even though he himself knew that nothing was ever happening in his favor anyway. What was he supposed to do, if not watch himself struggle and figure out what it meant to be someone that he barely could be anyway? "I didn't mean the rust in that sense, I thought I saw splashes of old blood earlier, but then again, it might have just been another mirage." Much like anything that he experienced out here seemed to be and he hated himself for his own closemindedness. What else was he supposed to do, if not believe himself and have some faith in his own, man-made confidence? Nobody was here to crush it, Richard was just here to deny him that and tell him it was alright to feel different, to feel like somebody else and even if he couldn't make much sense of that statement, he ought to believe him and keep himself huddled up in his own, almost too comfortable dreamworld. "Even if someone broke into Silesse, I doubt they'd go unnoticed for so long. My father hates rats", Yujin merely said, forcing air out of his lungs.

"I don't want to turn back, I'm just bummed out about having shoddy memory and thoughts all over the place", the wolf groaned. Richard had to think that he was acting irrational, almost like a little kid that found himself faced with a situation he didn't want to be in - and it didn't help that there was a distinct lack of comfort. Once he stepped outside of those boundaries, left the imaginary wire behind, the world seemed endless, despite the fact that nothing had really changed, or had it? There wasn't much, only more snow as far as his eyes could see, but at least no more pesky traps, at least not any obvious ones that were actually meant to harm somebody. "I don't know if it was a year, that's just the one instance I partially recall. My memories are a mess, but you do know that." There was nothing new, nothing quite snazzy about this and the sole thought that he found himself enthralled with something like his own doom, his own way of not knowing any better than this, was already enough to send him flying off of the edge. "I'll ... thanks, Richard", he mumbled, almost embarrassed about the fact that he needed some reassuring, but he did ride ahead, not too fast or too far, he just pointed the way. There was no sound of waves, crushing and burying eternal ice under themselves and there was no distinctive trace of animals - this place was void of life and endlessly long, filled with some odd trees here and there. "Is there anything you're afraid of anyway? You tend to be so calm and collected, meanwhile I grew up here and I'm creeped out by the silence."

"A wolf? I don't ... nevermind, you're right, it probably was a smaller animal getting killed by a larger one." Whatever the case, in the end, it never mattered - whatever had gotten those mice or rabbits would come for them eventually if they left behind reasonable traces and none of that was going to help their cause. If Yujin was honest, this trip was a mistake and he was fairly certain that all of the fan-slaps his father could offer weren't enough to atone for the sin he was committing by simply being out here, by daring to disobey his old man. Where was this going to lead him? Straight to hell as it seemed, even though Thria wasn't exactly bordering a flaming hellpit of fire, Adrestia came close, at least from all the things that Shuren did tell him about the hellscape that Richard hailed from. "It's silly anyways, I can see that now." Not seeing it would have been more of a mistake, more trouble than it was worth and the sole thought that nothing could happen to them was, by far, a silly one - something so incredibly silly that learning from it was a good first step in a right direction of his own choosing. What would he do after that, though? Richard wasn't here to stay, he remembered him making that clear, but Yujin also knew that he was fine with not coming out here ever again and burying his nose in books in the castles library - as sad as it sounded, he maybe wasn't made for adventures, not of this kind anywhere.

"You're right, I can't change that. But I can at least overstep all those boundaries." What if he remembered all of this wrong and his father had never locked him up in the first place? It seemed silly to question himself now, but maybe he'd do that for a while from here on out, now that Richard had begged the question if those memories that he actually relied on could be fake, too. Yujin disliked the thought of it, that was for certain, but the further the went, the easier it was to see the outposts again once they, too, were about to disappear on the endless horizon - something that seemed vast and blue and all sorts of uncanny as bright white snow reflected itself on the few rays of sun that they were granted. "And we're still out here", the wolf merely stated before eyeing this place - there was nothing, absolutely nothing, which was why he pointed in a direction that Richard had to go to - finally something else that wasn't straight ahead. "If you don't want to keep the tempo and start going faster, we're off to this direction, I'd race you there if you want." None of the odds were staked against him in this case, yet, it all depended on their horses and that meant that he was probably proposing something very, incredibly, stupid that was only going to get them into more trouble thanit was worth. "Oh ... I ... sorry for the question, I didn't want to dig that deep."

"I meant an actual wolf as well, not all thrians are rabid, but I don't have to explain that to you." Not only that, Richard probably had heard plenty of stories about who his father was, how he acted like and what made him who he was - in the end, explaining anything to him would be rather misplaced, after all, Richard knew those people best and who knew if it wouldn't just piss him off if he heard another half-lie about a man that was very much alive, living, breathing and out here, trying to defy any of those odds stacked against him. "I'm not worrying or nervous if you think that's what's happening", Yujin clarified. That wasn't what was sending him off the rails like that, giving him a vague idea of how sheltered his life had been up until now, but Richard was most likely right. There was nothing out here, which - in turn - meant, that there was nothing to worry about either. Whatever or not he went for, it would all turn to dust sooner or later and while he had the chance, he'd probably be more appreciative of it being with him in one piece, not being torn in half by a rabid animal that toured the night, in search of something to satisfy its grotesque, ever-growing hunger. "Mhm, will do."

Having the blonde ride behind him, unable to see any movement in that face of his or discern any reaction except from his seemingly unwavering voice wasn't much of a help, but he couldn't quite lead the way with him so close by his side and his thoughts elsewhere, preoccupied with things that hadn't even happened just yet. What was he thinking? The conditions for their little trip were perfect and nobody had trailed after them just yet, which meant that they were as fine as they could be - and that they could go anywhere they wanted for now, without many hindrances. "Yes. These plains don't belong to Silesse anymore, in theory at least, so nobody cares about them all that much. There shouldn't be any traps here, much less somebody we could run into." There never was, anyone who was insane enought to try and get to his family found a different way in, or at least tried to and died that way, but nobody was camping out here - and if they were, they were family, or at least Yujin liked to believe that. "It doesn't?", the wolf asked, confused, but he knew that these confusions weren't going to drag their goal, either. "There's a formation of steep hills nearby, you might want to stop at the dying trees there, or else you might slide right on down. It's some sort of valley, but there isn't much there besides a cave, some dead and living trees and a bunch of lost memories, I suppose." That was their final destination anyway, but it was a good chunk away from here.

"Have you seen silessian wolves, Richard? That's literally the last thing you want to meet out here", he answered, his voice was sounding kind of silent and almost getting swallowed by the goddamn wind when he talked like that, as if somebody could hear them and would unleash a beast like that onto them. Sure, some things out here probably went against the laws of nature, but then again, who'd be a better match as a king if not his father in a case like this? Whatever, it wasn't important, they weren't going to run into a pack of those hungry, pesky bastards - Yujin wanted to stay positive and he knew that there wasn't going to be anything serious happening out here, yet the freakish possibilities piled up. What was he, a pile of playing cards, waiting to cave in with one more blow? "Look, I am antsy, but maybe telling myself I'm not and not focusing on the topic might help", the wolf sighed. There was nothing to take his mind off of things, not out here, not when he couldn't even look at the blonde and he felt incredily stupid. This wasn't the adventure he wanted it to be, he felt sick to his stomach still, yet not at all and the only thought that came to mind was coursing through it in circles, faster and further. "So a race might actually be good, you know?" That was one way to focus on something else that he abrely had control over anyway.

"No matter what, you can't escape it, huh? Shouldn't it be my job to distract you then?", he inquired, but he knew the answer anyway. Richard didn't want help, he seemingly almost never did and on the rare occassions he took it, he was out of it, one way or the other, or just so goddamn done with himself that even someone like Yujin seemed to be enough for him. Wasn't that a vile thought? Whatever the case, he'd had it with all of this anyway and once the blonde did agree to the race, it didn't take him long to get a move on - and now, Yujin was the one trailing after him. "As if that's going to happen, dream on!" He'd won the last time and it would only be fair for Richard to win this one, then pick prize and after that, they could return, set up camp and then get back home - but that didn't exactly mean Yujin would let him win. Their horses would be doing most of the work, which meant that it really just depended on strength and skill, but not their own, that was just luck that they either had or didn't have. The further they went, or rather got, the more it dawned upon him how far away Silesse and the ocean had to be by now. Was his father scared of being somewhere he didn't want to be, too? No, that could hardly be it, actually - but no matter what, that wasn't important, he just had to catch up to Richard, somehow.