Pink Was Never Really My Color

## Roleplay

Mei Ming looked extremely distraught as she wandered around the courtyard in search of Cerise, she had never looked so sad before, her silver eyes showing immense sorrow which after a while she made attempt to conceal. Her walking was a bit off as she tapped her cane and seemed to be making a few mistakes while walking as she puckered her lips in a whistling like manner in order to use her semblance. "Cerise?" she managed to call out softly, after much failure.

Cerise didn't exactly have anything to be upset about, in fact a lot of things in his life were really starting to look up! Neeru was back to being on good terms with him, Mei Ming had returned, and Zaffrea had even come out of her coma, or so he heard. But... despite all this.. it was all a little overwhelming. His heart leapt up when he overheard the news that morning about Zaffrea, but something was keeping him from actually going to check in on her himself. He never got the chance to ask for Mei Ming's permission to be involved with her, and he was still tangled up with Neeru as friends with benefits, although he knew that that Neeru wanted something more. All of these conflicting affairs led him to become somewhat secluded, avoiding the three of them (or rather four) for the time being.

Now that it was night time, he was wandering around the courtyard aimlessly; he couldn't go back to his dorm and face Zaffrea. He was so used to having either Nur or Neela, usually Nur, constantly following him around though that now suddenly going a day without it was leaving him rather lonely... that is, until he heard Mei Ming call out his name, instantly lifting his spirits! "Oh!" he said, turning around towards the direction Mei Ming had called him from. He instantly forgot all about avoiding her, just happy to hear her voice. Walking over to her, a little too quickly and eager to be exactly graceful, he held a genuine smile. Once he was close enough though, he noticed her eyes were back to being silver, and his smile faded a little. Was she blind again? "Mei Ming..." he said softly when he reached her, cupping her face gently. "You know, I really meant it when I said your eyes were beautiful... The moon is really bringing out their shine tonight.." Her eyes also looked... sad.. but Cerise knew better than to make Mei Ming feel weak by pointing it out.

It was night time and Mei Ming was feeling a little drained, being weak in general and not used to activating her semblance constantly again she deactivated it for a bit so she could rest, blackening the world entirely. She jumped slightly at the sudden appearance of Cerise, cupping her face as she was unable to detect his presence but relaxed knowing it was him. She smiled slightly and failed at disguising her sadness at his comment about her eyes. No matter, she never felt the necessity to hide her true self from him. She did feel a little lighter however he was here, that didn't stop however from being harsh, "Well, look who finally decided to show up," she softened her gaze a bit and sighed twirling her fingers through her now black hair, her cane was placed at her side safely, "Thank you, dear.. pink was never really my color anyway." She was now smiling at him and carefully running her fingers through his hair, safely away from the area of his head that was still budding his flower. "So.. where have you been anyway?" Despite sounding like she was going to scold him initially, she was definitely taking a lighter tone, treating him more like the delicate flower that he was instead of verbally often accompanying physically punishing him.

"Pink is a lovely color, but I'm glad you're leaving it for me to pull off. You and me make a much more attractive than I and Mólí, if I may say so myself." Cerise said, reaching out for the hand Mei Ming was using to twirl her hair and stopping her, holding her hand gently instead. He was getting a little bold with his touches to Mei Ming, but she seem like she needed the attention, so it was worth the risk. "I've been.. here and there... Just around. What is it, did you miss me?" Cerise said with a flirty smile, loosening up a little himself at seeing Mei Ming become a little softer. It wasn't often that she softened up like this, but when she did it was really nice... He knew this kind of softness usually only accompanied sadness for Mei Ming though, so he started to feel a little guilty for enjoying it... "Is there... something I can maybe do for you? You know I'm only here to please you." he said, voice now a little more submissive as he tried to shift the focus onto her to compensate for his guilt.

Mei Ming chuckled softly, "You're pink?" she asked curiously. She had no memory of his appearance and did not understand colors beyond black and white associating "pink" with her previous aura as Mólí but not fully understanding it. Mei Ming titled her head slightly closing her eyes to enjoy the Cerise's touches, his words were nice .. until the very end. She frowned a bit and let go of his hand, grabbing the cane by her side and tapping away to a nearby bench where she sat down and rested her head on her chin, sighing, but was more more than a few steps away from Cerise, "Yes, of course you are," she said referring to him being "only here to please her". At any moment she would be thrilled by his submissive and her respective control over him, but at this moment as she felt weak it only made her feel worse.

Upon Mei Ming expressing dissatisfaction and even outright walking away, Cerise became.. confused... but his dedication to her had him wanting to do whatever he could to correct whatever mistake he made anyways. Mei Ming usually loved it whenever he would present himself to her like that, as lower, as someone who's just her toy. Maybe he was just... doing it wrong? Walking over to sit next to her, he took a hold of her hand, bringing it up to his neck. Mei Ming's receptiveness to his touches, even though they were unprompted, made him a little more confident in continuing to touch her without explicit permission. Her hand was so soft... It's softness even rivaling Cerise's own! It was appropriate for her elite background; they were living proof of her limited experiences with physical labor or combat. This could be seen as a symbol of nobility, of being high up enough that she didn't need to use her hands, but they could be a sign of weakness, at least in the combat academy setting. Feeling it softly graze against his neck though as he guided it, none of this was really crossing Cerise's mind, his attention just focused on how nice her fingers felt against his skin, trailing over the very faint scar he still had from the incident involving Grim's eye from a couple weeks back. "Mei Ming... I want you to know.. that I'm yours no matter what. I belong to you. When you took me to the warehouse and plucked my flower, I was so scared... but I was also.. prepared to die for you... Well, maybe I wasn't exactly so prepared at the time, I was hysterical! But... if you wanted to do it all over, and slaughter me, I'd let you." He pushed Mei Ming's hand firmer to his neck now, into a chocking position instead of the gentle touch that he had her hand doing before. "If you wanted to kill me right here, right now... I'd let you.... because I love you.."

Nur was just pacing/jogging around the courtyard. He wasn't LOOKING for Cerise or anything. Okay, maybe he was, but it was in good reason!!! Zaffrea really wanted to see him, and he thought maybe if he kind of gently encouraged him, maybe he'd feel up to go talking to her, he knew Cerise well enough that he'd pretty overwhelmed to on his own. The courtyard wasn't so big, but it wasn't necessarily that easy to find Cerise, he felt like he hasn't seen that much of him after his and Neela's date where they changed up their wardrobe and a bit which was absolutely AWESOME. He felt much more comfortable in his red tank top and shorts instead of that old and disgusting Indian dress. He caught Cerise hanging around Mei Ming in some sort of odd tanglement, half gentle, half menacing? Least that's what it looked like, what with her looking like she was going to choke and him looking like he was inviting it! Kinky..? With absolutely no consideration or half a thought really he jumped up in front on them, hoping to startle the living daylights out of the two, "YOOOOO," he toned down his annoying side a little too much around Cerise, time to bring that back! He chuckled loudly, not really fully touching them but getting VERY close to their faces to basically intrude on whatever moment they were having, "Hope I'm not INTERRUPTING anything, but you seriously weren't gonna leave me out anyway, right~? Welllll I THOUGHT I recognized those lifeless eyes! I'm sorry did I say lifeless? Meant to say USELESS. What, Mei? Couldn't pull off cute and clueless so you had to go back to being goth? Tsk tsk tsk, you know it's actually quite a shame." He was still laughing as he spoke, using an incredibly annoying tone of use.

Mei Ming frowned slightly as Cerise joined her and pulled them closer to touch. It was nice … comforting almost. But she really didn’t want to hear about anything involving the whole warehouse incident though … she wasn’t really ready to think about it, then when Cerise outright began provoking her, it was all just too much. She felt ready to burst with anger, sadness, and guilt all rolled into one, but suddenly a loud exclamation jolted her to let go of Cerise and gazed up at the newcomer who she wasn’t able to detect with her semblance as it was partially deactivated. She cursed softly in Chinese as she recognized the voice, however. She composed herself, and grabbed her cane, using the end to roughly shove Nur away by pushing on his chest until he was at a less intolerable distance. “Runt, I thought I made it clear about the MANNERS and the NAME,” she hissed lightly though appeared to be mostly chastising, she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of reaction to his idiotic comment, so instead she continued, “Or is it just in your nature to be so distasteful? Oh, you poor, uneducated slob. And there is just no hope for you either anyway, isn’t there? Mental wrecks like you just have no place in society. The other doesn’t even make up for your instability, he’s a forgetful mess himself, the real clueless one. A waste of breath really. Well you both are. But I know how it will end up anyway, your mind will eventually destroy itself, and you’ll destroy each other. So do me a favor, will you, dear, and be incompetent elsewhere.” She waved him off.

By the end of his speech, Cerise was... a little sad? But more so than that, he was eager to be payed attention to and praised by Mei Ming, to the point where it was overshadowing the more negative emotions so that he didn't quite notice them. When he saw Mei Ming respond by just frowning even more though, he began to feel more heartbroken than anything.. "Am I... not good enough-" he began to say, voice obviously on the edge of sobbing, before Nur came in and interrupted. Oh shit, fuck, he was doing a pretty good job keeping the two apart up until now as to not upset Mei Ming, but it looked like that was quickly coming to an end. Nervousness quickly replaced most of Cerise's sorrow; he would usually get annoyed with Nur when he got like this, but right now he was way too preoccupied with getting Mei Ming to love him, or at least maintain his status as her loyal pet.

"Ah.. Nur!" he called out, standing up quickly after Nur's initial "greeting", but didn't get the chance to say much else, with the two outright insulting one another. He'd seen this side to each of them plenty of times before, but seeing the people he deeply cared for now on the receiving ends, it was very hard to witness... Especially on Nur's end, being verbally abused by Mei Ming...! He was on alert when Nur was provoking Mei Ming, but didn't jump into action, already knowing that Nur wasn't at all a threat. But seeing Nur being treated that way, like an animal to the point where he was even pushed back with her cane, Cerise's feelings shifted to feeling more defensive for Nur, to the point where he was even starting grow angry at Mei Ming.. Nur had protected Cerise so many times in the past... so maybe now was his turn to protect him!? Not that he was exactly keeping tally or anything, but all of the times Nur had protected and cared for Cerise had built up into him sort of mirroring the feeling of caring for the other.

With Cerise's feelings already all over the place, all thoughts of wanting to please Mei Ming were completely forgotten, as Cerise balled his hands into fists, further tightening them with each of Mei Ming's words. By the done she was done talking, he couldn't hold back any more and outright slapped Mei Ming across the face...! Cerise wasn't especially strong, so it couldn't have hurt too much, but you could definitely feel the lack in hesitation. Only a couple of painfully still seconds after the deed was done did it fully sink into Cerise what had happened, and upon said realization immediately dropped to his knees to beg Mei Ming for forgiveness. "Mei Ming... I'm sorry... I.. don't know.. why... I don't..." he sobbed out, not exactly able to speak in full fledged sentences.

Mei Ming felt a bit satisfied with herself, getting a little kick of energy from degrading another person. Felt as though she won, and things were starting to look up with Cerise too, he was completely loyal to her, and she appreciated all the genuine effort he was putting in for her. She wished she could return his feelings, but she did find them very nice and felt as though she could grow to love him. He could maybe be more than her pet... of course she was getting very ahead of herself as her thoughts were suddenly halted by a sharp slap. It wasn't very powerful, she's withstood harsher attacks, but she could tell he wasn't holding anything back with it. He hit her because he was angry with her. Cerise hit her. He hit her. So much for all that talk, Mei Ming discarded any softness she felt for him, ready to discard him entirely as she sharply got up, "Save it," she said with no emotion, "We were never going to work out anyway." She walked passed Nur and left the courtyard fully intending on ending her relationship with Cerise and making her words were blunt enough to get that point across.