Destined for Greatness - A Togiri Fanfiction

Chapter Two - Lavender

"Do you need something, Kirigiri?" Byakuya said coldly.

"I was just going to search for some information in these files," Kyoko said while making her way past him to the back wall of the small room.

"Yeah fine, just don't get in my way." He warned. "This room is tight enough and I don't need any other useless distractions."

Kyoko didn't respond and he watched her as she slid a box labeled 'School District Records' off a high shelf. Why was she here? Was she looking for the Hope's Peak school records? He thought.

Byakuya had been puzzled by her from the moment this killing game started. She never spoke a word and only passively watched from the sidelines. Even her ultimate talent was a mystery. She refused to share anything about her past and that only made her a larger candidate to suspicion. The strangest thing is though, that during the last trial, everything that she showed herself to be was practically thrown out the window as she precisely broke down and pieced together that murder case. She led the entire trial without hesitation and yet here she is again, in her brooding silence.

He wondered what went on in her head.

What am I thinking? Why am I wasting my precious time thinking about her?

He then took the file he had been reading from the ground and while finishing up the last page, he walked over to the shelf it was originally placed on. And in that whirl of a movement, he saw a flash of light hair and before realizing it, collided with Kyoko who had been moving the same direction with her eyes averted to the file in her hand as well.

In that crash, he caught the slightest hint of a certain and very familiar scent. Lavender? It had been a while since he'd detected such a nostalgic scent and immediately, it resurfaced memories of his butler, Aloysius, who used to grow lavender in his yard when Byakuya was younger. Aloysius would always take a few and bottle them in a simple glass vase, then place it in Byakuya's room. He remembered how the scent would fill his room with a thin layer of tranquility and how at night if he couldn't sleep, sometimes he would take a bud and hold it in his hands to keep the scent strong and near him.

But that was long ago.

Nonetheless, it served as one of the few things that could calm him down. So smelling that scent once again, even in the minimum that it was supplied, relaxed his entire body for a moment.

For a while, he even hadn't taken notice of Kyoko's state, who had been stunned from the fall. She had crashed against some other files from the impact, littering them across the floor with their contents sliding out and crafting a sea of paper within the archive.

Byakuya just stared at her.

Maybe it was the very sudden flow of deeply buried memories or maybe it was the fact that they would have to clean up that colossal mess between the two of them, which could take quite a large portion of their day. He couldn't be certain. All he knew was that his entire mental state took a halt.

Kyoko stared back too and furrowed her eyes almost as if she were trying to figure out a tough math problem. They were unreadable. And after what seemed like forever, she jerked her head away to avoid any more eye contact and picked herself off the ground dusting her skirt and smoothing out her hair.

Byakuya, finally somewhat reorganizing his mind and repositioning his glasses, turned to face away from her to the wall behind him in a retreat and begun to sort out the disarray of files that had spilled everywhere and crouched to the ground.