Kuno had to make an effort not to yell right back at the prince. He didn't know? Know what? The good side of the dead queen and king? Of course, he didn't. It had never existed for him. "I am no god. I only know what I have seen." Kuno turned and started leading Kenji towards the doors of the library. "Right. So lucky." He opened the doors, giving the guards another nod.
"How'd that go?" One of them whispered, glancing back into the library at Kenji.
"Leyi vin-ka li jena," Kuno answered, gritting his teeth.
"That bad, huh?" The guard shook her head. "Sorry, res-Kuno."
"It's fine." He took a few steps out of the doorway and turned back around to wait for Kenji. He wasn't going to risk letting that man have more than a few seconds out of his sight.
Kenji took his time with following after Kuno, purposely dragging behind just to get on the male's nerves. He apparently had to do this, so he would make it as annoying and frustrating as he possibly could. He ignored Kuno as he held his hand up to his face, tutting softly to Brazil. He threw a look to the guards, giving them a proud and careless sort of smile. "Say, do you people let weed in here? Probably not him, though he could used a blunt to loosen up," he started, addressing on the guards and obviously meaning Kuno when he said 'him'.
Kuno let a small, calming breath out and slowed his pace slightly until he was walking even with Kenji.
"Hana da vin-olum-ze yele ule han inpa," The guard who had spoken to Kuno said, glaring at Kenji. What she had just said was quite the insult, and Kuno couldn't help but smirk a little at that.
"We do not, at least not to the likes of you." The other guard answered Kenji's question, lip curling a little in disgust. Kuno knew that both of them had suffered during the war, so their reactions were expected. It was just the thing he needed to get his mind off how annoying Kenji was, at least for a little while.
Kenji sneered at both of the guards. He had no idea what the one guard had said, so he glanced over at the other one. "Well, better start then, big man," he hummed, grinning smoothly to expose his cunning smile for the first time he had been at the castle. He turned away and kept walking ahead, brushing past Kuno for a short moment. "Can you hurry up? Goddamn, you kind of suck at this tour guide thing," he commented to Kuno, throwing a glance over his shoulder momentarily.
Kuno sent a silent prayer to Sol pleading for enough patience to deal with this absolutely terrible person and sped up slightly. He led the way through the hallways, making his way towards one corner of the palace. Kenji's room wasn't terrible, aside from the add-ons designed to stop him from getting out of there. It was a prison, but a very nice one. One could hardly even tell unless they were trying to get out. Kuno pulled a small ring of keys from the pouch hanging at his waist and unlocked the door. Through it was a small, open-air courtyard, the rest of his rooms branching off of it in the style typical to the country. "Your room." Kuno stepped to one side of the doorway and waved Kenji into the courtyard.
Kenji could very quickly tell that it was something like a prison. His nose scrunched up as he looked at it with disgust. This felt completely inhumane. Why was he being locked up when he didn't even do anything to deserve it in the first place? He would surely raise hell in the palace in return for that. He narrowed his eyes at Kuno, brushing past with his head held high as he stepped into the courtyard. At least Brazil would enjoy this open area. Maybe he could get himself more snakes or arachnids to fill the space so no one would come and bother him.
Kuno entered after Kenji. "Your things should be coming shortly. While we wait, would you like to look around the rest of the palace?" He sincerely hoped that Kenji wouldn't agree. That way, he could get back to his own things and forget he ever had to meet Kenji. Hmm, maybe he could head to the gardens and practice the new spell he'd discovered recently. It might be very useful in the coming days, and even if it wasn't, it never hurt him to learn a new spell. And he needed to get some more things for spells from the market. He was running low on golden dewdrops.
Kenji could tell that Kuno wanted to get away from him, and as much as he wanted to do the same at the moment, he also wanted to keep pushing Kuno's buttons. "Actually, I would love if you showed me around a bit more," he hummed, a sly smirk twitching onto his lips. He reached his arm up, allowing Brazil to slither off of him and up into some tree branches in the courtyard. "But if we come back and my snake is dead or some shit, I'll kill every single one of you and burn this whole place to the ground, m'kay?" he hummed, raising his eyebrows.
"Alright." Kuno turned away from the prince, letting his face settle into a scowl for a second. "Don't worry, no one is going to come in here except for the people with your stuff. As long as your snake stays out of their way, it should be fine." And he was dreaming if he thought he would be able to get very far with his plans to murder everyone with Kuno there. "We'll go to the gardens first." He started down the hallway. If he had to deal with Kenji, it could at least be in a nice place. Maybe he could drag him down to the beach as well. That was somewhere he totally needed to see. All those steps would be a nice workout.
“Should be the other way around with them staying out of her way, you know,” Kenji started. “She’s pretty calm most of the time unless strangers get all up in her area. She’s not venomous or anything, but she’s a constrictor, so someone could sure as hell still get strangled to death.” He stopped talking after that, realizing he got a bit caught up in talking. Snakes were a big interest to him. He knew a lot about different kinds of snakes and often hyper fixed on them. “Gardens, that’s kind of boring,” he said after a moment of silence.
"I'm sure they'll know better than to go poking around a snake," Kuno answered, finding it interesting that Kenji had broken his 'being annoying as he could' in order to talk about snakes. Maybe he could distract the man every once in a while by mentioning snakes. "They are beautiful, though." Kuno shrugged. "Besides, I'm the one leading the tour. And I say you need to see the gardens." He shrugged slightly and continued towards the nearest entrance to the gardens. They were quite large, and he'd almost gotten lost the first few times he'd gone in them. He'd gone there so many times since then that he could probably find his way around there in the dead of a moonless night.
"Ok, fine, I will rephrase what I said. The gardens are nice looking. You are boring," Kenji retorted, looking around as they entered into the gardens. He would most likely bring Brazil out there at some point just for her to have even more breathing room. Maybe he would even find another garden snake out there that he could take in so it wouldn't get its head chopped off with the end of a shovel. "Are you going to show me any of the interesting and useful places?" he pressed.
"Oh, thank you for that clarification." Kuno shook his head slightly and friend to focus more on the gardens than on Kenji. "What do you have in mind when you say interesting and useful?" He asked, leading Kenji further into the garden. It was quite full of beautiful plants, and relatively empty, as per usual. Right now, while everyone was getting used to the new way of life, not many people had time to come here. "Because I clearly have a different version of interesting and useful than you do." He glanced over at Kenji. "So?" Kuno hoped that wherever he said was somewhere Kuno couldn't take him, so he could still drag the prince down to the beach.
Kenji hummed at the question, thinking to himself. "Got a wine cellar or anything here? You know, a place where you keep the liquor?" he asked. He had to stay occupied some how if he were to be trapped up in his little area of the palace all day, every day. "Really anything along those lines would be interesting to me." He glanced Kuno over skeptically before continuing to speak. "Do you even drink? You give me the vibes of someone whos sworn off alcohol."
"We do." Kuno nodded. "But… it's all being saved for the taveni-holu celebration later this week. Not even the queens are allowed to go in there." The celebration he spoke of was a sort of huge party, celebrating the end of the summer year and welcoming in the winter year. It would be the first one anyone had celebrated in a while that wasn't reserved due to being in the middle of a war, so it was understandable the queens would want everything to go perfectly. And it gave him no small amount of satisfaction to deny Kenji's request. "I have not sworn off alcohol. But I know it's best to drink in moderation. Now, I think you definitely need to see the beach next." Kuno turned abruptly, heading down a path that would take them towards the cliffs.
Kenji huffed in annoyance. Guess he would have to wait until later in the week to black himself out. But then, he had a thought. "Am I allowed to get visitors or something if I'm not allowed to leave? Would love to see my brother and friends, you know," he hummed. If that was allowed, he knew his friends would surely smuggle things in for him. They were just about as bad as he was with those sorts of things, maybe even worse. At the mention of the beach, his brows raised a tad. He enjoyed swimming, so that at least peaked his interest. "We going swimming or something?"
"Hm. I suppose you would be allowed some visitors." Kuno nodded slightly. "You would have to ask the queens, however. But they'll probably agree." He himself didn't think allowing visitors was such a good idea, but the queens would probably be kinder on that topic than he was. "You could go swimming. The water would still be warm enough." They reached the edge of the gardens. Beyond that was a small expanse of wild grasses, and then the edge of the cliffs. Kuno headed straight for them, turning at almost the last second to go along the edge. Most people preferred to go to the docks first, to avoid the cliffs, but this was the fastest way. "This way." The cliff mellowed out a little there, enough for a stairway to be carved into the rock. He started down, glancing over his shoulder to make sure Kenji was still following.
Kenji rolled his eyes to himself when Kuno said he would have to ask for permission to have friends come see him. They were treating him like he was a child asking to have a sleepover, it was ridiculous to him. They headed to the cliffs edge, and he took a moment to pause near the edge and look over it. His gaze was curious, and he would have loved to look more, but he didn't trust Kuno enough to know he wouldn't shove him off of the cliff. He headed over to the stairway, following after Kuno at his own pace. "Good to know."
Kuno made sure to descend at a safe pace– not too fast, but not too slow, either. The stairs had no safety rails and nothing to stop him from falling. The steps weren’t that slippery, but one could never be too careful. He eventually stepped onto the sand at the bottom of the cliff. The beach was sunny and completely empty. There was a large pile of rocks separating it from the beach nearer to the docks, probably fallen from the cliffs a long time ago. “The beach,” He said, waving his hand at the expanse of sand and water. “Feel free to do whatever.” Kenji had appeared to want to swim, and generally swimming meant not talking to him, so Kuno was happy to let him. He slipped his shoes off, not wanting to get sand in them, and headed towards another clump of rocks nearer to the water. He could sit there, take in the sun, and ignore Kenji with all his might. Perfect.
Kenji was not as careful as he was going down the steps. He walked at a quicker pace than Kuno, but was thankfully more graceful on his feet than he appeared. When they arrived at the bottom of the steps, he paused to take in the view. He had not been to the ocean before, so this was actually an enjoyable experience for him. If he would just pretend like Kuno wasn't there, then it would be perfect. He did not bother with his shoes, strolling out onto the sand and towards the water. He stood out by it, hands resting on his hips as he looked out into the ocean.
Kuno settled down on the rocks and pulled a journal from the pouch hanging on his waist. Someone who didn't know the magic of the pouch might be a little confused as to how he did that since, at a glance, the journal appeared too big to fit in there. It was an eternity pouch, woven with magic and able to hold more than it appeared. Kuno had made it himself, although one could buy one almost anywhere. It had been something to do, though, and a good way to practice magic as well. He flipped open the journal to a bookmark and started to read. This journal was where he kept all of his favorite spells, as well as wrote down ones he wanted to learn. The spell on the open page was one he hadn't quite gotten the hang of yet. He would have liked to practice– Kuno glanced up at Kenji and sighed– but he didn't want to do anything of the sort in front of the prince.
Kenji kicked off his shoes, letting them lay thrown aside in the sand. He took a few steps deeper into the ocean water. It was cool against his skin and soaked the cuffs of his loose fitting joggers. He did not mind getting his clothes wet. It was not like he was going to strip out of them right there in the open with Kuno only a couple of yards away. He stepped a little farther out, looking down at the water that was now up to his calves. A few little fish swam around a foot away, and he watched them with strong interest.
Kuno glanced up at Kenji, finding that his back was turned to him. Maybe he could practice a little. He wouldn’t see it, anyway. He consulted the journal, then set it in his lap and held up his hands. The motion for this one was a bit tricky, and he needed to know it by heart. Kuno did it a couple of times, lips pursed together. After he felt a little more confident about it, he moved onto the words.
“Yujie rei,” Kuno whispered. He repeated the words a few times, eyes glued on the journal. This spell was one used to influence minds, and thus very hard to get the hang of. He also couldn’t really practice on anyone, which made it all the more difficult. It was an interesting spell, though.
Kenji waded a bit deeper in the water, letting it reach up to his knees before deciding that he did not want to be there anymore. He would go again if he ever got his alone time or with actual friends. He was bored, not having anyone to fuck around and have a good time with. There was Kuno, but he had his nose stuck in some random book. Kenji rolled his eyes to himself, turning and headed back over to the shore. "Hey, I want to go back!" he called over, brushing his hair back when it got all messy because of the wind. "Seriously reading when you're on the beach? What could be that interesting?"
Kuno quickly looked up and closed the journal. "The beach is a wonderful place to read." He slipped the journal into his eternity pouch, not wanting to talk about magic with Kenji. Normally, he absolutely loved talking about magic and explaining how it worked, since it was as absolutely fascinating in his opinion. But this was Kenji. He would probably say something stupid about it, and Kuno didn't want to hear it. He pulled his shoes back on and stood. "Very well. I think this tour is over." Kuno gave the sea one last look, then headed towards the stairs. He could now say he'd given Kenji a tour. It wasn't a good one, but it had happened.
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