She continues, <span class="mu-i">“C’mon, the others still think I did something wrong. If you shed some light, they’ll understand-”</span>
<span class="mu-s">“I don’t want to.”</span>
Peppa blinks. “What?”
Her cousin explains, <span class="mu-i">“I don’t want people to know about my punishments. At least not now, not until they see the results. They’re an important part of the process, and right now they are still shameful. They’re a record of my failures, but just like them, over time they will heal once I’ve overcome them. Then, and only when I’ve done that, can I look back on each one with pride and display them.”</span>
Peppa sigh, and wearily says, “Izumi,"
https://youtu.be/X76lu7TCvOgA jolt goes down her spine, clouds swell, and her body tenses. The squeeze moves her sweat glands to distill some cold, but her body is not hot, so it feels gross. That ickiness percolates across her body. Her body is icky. And cold. She shivers.
In that same instant, she hears a gasp, and looks over to see her cousin, a grimace on her face and squeezing her arm.
Izumi’s hand clenches down on what Peppa knows to be wounds even if the sleeve and bandages cover them up. She squeezes a few times, timing it with her breaths, and gets calmer.
Peppa, on the other hand...
Through clenched teeth and hyperventilated breaths, she keens out, "What is this, what's going on, what did you do to me, why can't you help me out, everyone hates me now because I covered for you, Izumi why-"
-SMACK!-
...Peppa rubs her cheek, where pain is. She looks up at Izumi, who stares back.
"Peppa?" she asks, breathing heavy, eye twitching.
"...Izu-"
Her cousin places a hand over her mouth. <span class="mu-i">"I'm going to tell you this once."</span>
Muffled, Peppa stares at her cousin, in shock.
Izumi tells her,
"Keep my name out of your mouth."Peppa's eyes narrow.
<span class="mu-i">"Does it hurt?"</span> Izumi asks. <span class="mu-i">"Where I hit you?"</span>
Peppa growls at her angrily.
Izumi lets out a sigh of relief. <span class="mu-i">"That's good, that's how you control it, you collect it all in one place."</span>
Betrayed, but also confused with that sentiment, Peppa's face falls as she stares at her cousin searchingly. <span class="mu-i">"Then, that's what the pain is for?"</span>
Izzy nods. <span class="mu-i">"All those feelings bundled within you, unraveling across you, you nip them and concentrate them into one thorn. That thorn is still there, but it's only in the one place. It's manageable."</span>
<span class="mu-i">"But you have several places?"</span>
<span class="mu-i">"A new thorn for each time it happens. And when we review tonight, and I still can't get trig down, well. New thorn."</span>
...it's all so unbelievable, Peppa has to recap it out loud. "...your teacha does THAT to you, and you let them, and the only way they gave you to help with it was pain..."
"They're good teachers."
Peppa can only shake her head. "This isn't going to work, pain can't make you stronger-"
Izumi flippantly waves a hand, declaring in monotone, "Says the Saiyan."
