Claret could hardly fathom the idea of being able to do something like this herself. She didn't know much at all about Renbu, really, other than that it's some force that flows through everyone. She thought only certain people were able to manipulate it-- people like Five who could control the kinetic energy of his knife with his mind, or those vigilantes on the news. For some reason, she thought there was some sort of pre-disposed element to who could control their Renbu like that. Something genetic or dependent on outside factors. She was clearly wrong though. He must've known much more than she did, because she had no idea she could potentially learn this insane skill. If he attempted to teach her, would she develop something akin to telekinesis, like his seemed to be? Or would hers manifest into something else? She'd read about numerous different instances where Renbu manifested in different ways, but she had no clue how any of that actually worked. She supposed the best way was to just... find out.

"Yes," she spoke, trying to regain her composure. She needed to be cool. She needed to not get excited and creepy with him. "Hell yes. That'd be epic."

She let go of his hands, moving back to lean against the counter again. "How'd you learn? How long have you been practicing?" 

Claret couldn't control her own curiosity. She was probably bombarding him with more questions than he was used to being asked, but his ability to manipulate Renbu was something she was in complete awe of, shamelessly fascinated by. She didn't even care if she was being annoying. He was the one that had to live with her and deal with her questions and he couldn't do a thing about it. Of course she was going to use his position under her to her advantage, even if it was to sate her own curiosity.

And boy was she curious.

It was as though suddenly he was the most interesting thing in the room. All her skepticism had been swept away, the void being filled with confidence and amazement in him for reasons she barely understood herself. She wanted to know everything about him. 

His upbringing did seem incredibly strict. Things started to make sense to Claret, but she probably had to think about what he's told her about his life in order for her to really digest the concept of him having been raised like that. It didn't seem human to her-- undergoing strict training all your life, being named a number, living your life as a fixed facet of some... unit. She couldn't call it a family.

Claret welcomed the idea of being able to learn how to manipulate Renbu in a more relaxed setting. His powers seemed so surreal to her still, but she couldn't lie and say she wasn't immensely excited at the prospect of it all. A few minutes ago, she had no idea he was a Renbu user, and couldn't in a million years have guessed that was the case. Now he was offering to teach her?

This was going to be a lot more fun than she ever could have anticipated. 

"That I do," She said, smile still beaming and inviting. Oh, she had him to herself, alright. "I'd say I'm super lucky to have a bodyguard who's cute and willing to teach me all his cool tricks." Though equally flirtatious, the statement was more teasing and friendly.

"But you can show me more of what you can do later." She changed the subject. "I should probably leave you to get changed and unpack and all that. Unless you wanted to inspect the place, first. Up to you."

"Yeah," Claret spoke, "That's correct." It wasn't like this place was big. She had more fingers on one hand than rooms in this house. Even if he stumbled into her bedroom, the bathroom had to be the other door.

The bathroom in question was nothing spectacular. It wasn't messy or gross, since it was just her who used it (and she was a fairly clean person), but it was clear that it was lived-in. The towels weren't perfectly folded, she left cosmetic products off their bins and shelves and on the counters. Jars of strange substances of varying colors could be seen about-- some clearly being homemade candles, others looking like creams and concoctions. The bathroom itself was incredibly spacious given the size of her home. Most of the tile was a pale blue color, even the bathtub and the toilet. It had a separate glass-enclosed shower and a large, circular bath-- the products on the edge of the tub led one to believe that Claret probably preferred baths to showers. There was enough room to walk around the room comfortably, and had a large mirror that took up much of one wall. Though the counter only had one sink, it had a wide surface that allowed for the placement of more objects. The red dye stains indicated that the magic behind Claret's hair probably happened here.

Like most of the house, this room was dim by nature. Unlike the other rooms, however, there was a normal LED light in the ceiling, and a switch near the door for the odd occasion that Claret had to stomach real light, probably for instances where she had to dye her hair or clean. 

While Five was off getting changed or whatever, Claret would plant herself down on the couch with her iced tea as she continued watching Forensic Files. Lord Byron would curl up next to her, appearing to be watching it with her.

Nice bathroom was a suitable response. "Yeah, it's not half bad," she joked. "I don't know what the previous owners were thinking when they decided to renovate the bathroom into something of that size, but hey, I won't complain." The original blueprints of the house showed the bathroom at a different location, cutting partially into the current living room, and the current bathroom having been an additional bedroom of sorts. Seemed like they knocked down a few walls and redid the piping, but Claret wasn't about to criticize their decision on indirectly giving her a spa at home.

"It's a bit much for me, honestly, but I do enjoy it. At least it'll get more use now with someone else in the house. The bath is really nice, and I have bath salts and soaps for whenever you want to chill in there. I don't mind." Five struck her as being more of a shower guy, but she figured she'd extend the offer anyway. She felt like there was some unspoken rule regarding staying at someone's house and being too scared to take advantage of their bathtub, and she can remember all those times she envied her best friend's luxury bathtub in high school but always thinking it was way too awkward to just ask to take a bath whenever she slept over. Maybe it was an intimacy thing? Weird how you can shower in someone else's shower but you can't bathe in their bathtub. 

Shit, that just reminded her.

"I actually forgot to put towels in there for you-- Let me go do that real quick." She got up, making her way past him as she went to a small linen closet in the hallway, pulling out two blue towels that she thought suited him. This shade of blue really wasn't her color, anyway, so these towels didn't see much use. "The blue ones are yours unless you feel like buying your own," she'd call out. She took them over to the bathroom, setting them on the counter for him to use later. 

That's when a phone by the sink caught her eye. Oh-- this was his. Five must've just left it. She picked it up for him, but like many smart phones, the screen lit up as soon as she had it in her hand.

She almost didn't know what she was seeing.

Or maybe she just knew too well.

It was a photo of herself. A flattering one, thankfully, but not a photo she'd uploaded to her public accounts. No... while this was one of her more PG images, it was definitely one of the ones that only paying fans had access to.

She felt a variety of things in that moment.

The first thing she felt was discomfort. He'd just met her, and he had a photo of her on his lockscreen? Not only was it creepy, but it was entirely weird. She barely knew him!

The feeling that immediately followed was panic. Wait-- if this was one of her more exclusive photos, then that meant he had paid for them or knew someone who did. Was he a fan? One of those fans? She just invited someone into her home that had potentially seen her naked--

Oh. That explained it.

The last thing she felt was an overwhelming sense of smugness and pride. This was the reason he was so visibly flustered around her, wasn't it? Not only was he a fan, but he actively paid for her content. That was as devoted a fan as devoted gets. Her cute bodyguard, with cool powers and a sharp mind, was blushing around her because he regularly paid to see her adult content. He'd seen her god damn boobs and he didn't even say anything.

How long would he have been willing to pretend he knew nothing about her? She thought she'd been playing him like a fiddle, but he already had some sort of attachment to her that she couldn't have possibly expected. Did that make him more susceptible to her influence and all her teasing? She could imagine that might be the case.

For what felt like an eternity, she just stared down at his phone like it was a strange, foreign object.

How the hell do you bring up to your new roommate that you now know he's seen your p*rnographic images? There's really no way to approach the topic in a way that wasn't incredibly awkward.

But if she already had him under her thumb, then that opens up a plethora of different ways she could go about this.

"Fi-iiive~," she called out in a sing-song voice.

She made her way out of the bathroom, closing the door behind her as she made her way back into the living space. She leaned against the wall, a smug smile on her face. When she was sure she had his attention, she'd hold his phone up for him to see, tapping the screen awake. "Do you feel like explaining this to me?" There was a flirtatious hint in her voice, something confident and affectionate and deceptively sweet. She knew exactly what was going on here, she just wanted him to say it out loud.

Claret loved when she was right.

It was funny to see him stammer and fumble over his words like this, but also really sad. God, she couldn't imagine the hell he must've been feeling to have been found out like this. The poor guy probably thought his entire world was ending. Claret started to wonder if maybe she shouldn't have said anything at all and kept her knowledge to herself, but she realized that she is way too confrontational for her own good and she wouldn't be able to stay quiet about it if she tried.

"No, I still want you to stay." Just because she found out he'd seen her nudes didn't mean she didn't still think he was cool and wanted him around. "You could have just told me from the beginning. I would've appreciated the transparency," she spoke as she went over to the couch, sitting down and crossing her legs. She smiled something inviting. It seemed genuine.

"You can come sit over here, Five. I promise I'm not mad." Her statement was wholly honest. It was cute that he was a fan, really. It definitely shifted the dynamic a bit, and gave her way too much power than she should have ever been entrusted with. Still, she wanted to be friends with him. She wanted them to hang out and make this situation as comfortable as possible, and if that meant they had to confront the elephant in the room first, then so be it.

Whether or not he sat on the couch with her wouldn't change what she asked next.

"How long have you been a paying fan?"