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"You can't join ZECT," Dousouji said with no preamble. Kaga Bishin had been wondering why Dousouji had silently followed him home, but he kept his expression neutral as he set a bowl of miso down in front of his guest.
"What do you know about ZECT?" Kaga Bishin asked, taking the seat across from Dousouji and steepling his fingers.
Dousouji ignored the soup. "Enough to tell you that joining would be a very bad idea." He pronounced each word clearly and distinctly, lacing them with a double meaning.
"If I want to keep you as a friend, you mean."
"We're not friends," Dousouji snapped.
Kaga Bishin hid his wince completely as he shrugged, opening his posture and leaning back in the chair. "So then, what's to stop me from joining?"
"You don't know what they're like." Dousouji looked sullenly downwards, taking out his fury at the injustices of ZECT on the vegetables in the soup, stabbing viciously at them and then swirling them around to dislodge them so he could stab them again.
"No, I don't." Dousouji wasn't really testing Kaga Bishin's patience, his morning meditations kept him supplied with more than enough, but something about the situation was still rubbing him the wrong way. And Kaga Bishin trusted his instincts. "Honored Grandfather says food is not a toy to be played with but a gift to be cherished."
Dousouji's chopsticks abruptly stopped moving, and his head snapped up as if he was going to say something, but then looked slightly repentant and properly drank the soup. "This is really good." He didn't mask any of the surprise in his voice.
Kaga Bishin merely nodded at the compliment.
Dousouji went back to the soup, finishing it quickly and handing the bowl out towards Kaga Bishin expectantly. Kaga Bishin rolled his eyes but got up to get the other man seconds.
"My father runs ZECT," Dousouji said at a normal volume in the other room. From the kitchen it sounded almost like an intimate secret. Kaga Bishin stood still waiting for him to go on. "That's why I'm telling you, you can't join ZECT."
Kaga Bishin brought the soup in and set it down in front of Dousouji, who didn't look at him. "I'm thinking," he said after a moment, "that I won't join ZECT."
Kaga Bishin saw Dousouji hide his smile behind the soup bowl.