#mmn open

[shsl-wanderer]

vicious | open

She’d nearly ripped her hair out after that trial. She’d run, not wanting to be in there and around people any longer than she actually had to. They knew. It was too much. They all knew and it was like their eyes were burning her, their presence was burning her. She just wanted to crawl into some dark cave and shut herself in, somewhere safe and secure. The social barriers she’d built had failed her, so she was going to need real barriers now.

Fuu- no, Kazae now. No, Fuu. Wanted to be Fuu. Who? Who. Fuu. Kazae. Whomever she was. Fuu was useless to her now. It had been stripped away from her, leaving Kazae raw and exposed. Names are powerful. Fuu was a lock and key and Kazae is a hurricane. 

Kazae- no, Fuu. She runs from them, spends the train ride over in tears, the only one on the train, huddled in her seat, knees against her chest, arms aching like she was trying to crush herself into a state of infinite nothingness.

Fuu- no, Kazae- finds herself in the hedge maze, wandering aimlessly through it, purposefully losing herself in the twists and turns of greenery until she’s good and disappeared. Just gone. She falls to the grass, curls up in a dead end corner, and stays there. Maybe she’ll just waste away. That sounds nice.

It was all unravelling. They knew; nobody was supposed to know. She couldn’t hear here; nobody was talking to her. It was scary. It was silent. The knowledge of the living and the absence of the dead. She imagines eyes, eyes everywhere, eyes peering through the leaves down at her, and she pulls herself tighter. Is she crying? Hard to say. So numb she can’t feel her own heartbeat.

Nobody can find her here. She’s sure of that. She’s in a secluded corner of the vast maze, alone, and she wants to stay alone. If anyone were to find her, they’d see her huddled at the end of a long corridor of leaves, disheveled hair falling in strands over her face, white knuckles clutching at her knees. But no one would find her. She’s sure of it.

[shsl123]

right turn | chapter 4 | open

It had been a while since anyone’d truly had a full-on conversation with Chie Nojima. Given her generally nervous demeanor, this wasn’t anything odd, but she seemed to be skulking around more than usual, avoiding people’s gazes. This too could have been explained if anyone’d taken a look at her code in the previous week, though, and so it stood to reason that Chie should be back in action. Normal, skittish action, and, given her sudden burst of forwardness in the previous trial (or attempted, at least), it seemed she was feeling better.

But then, of course, as soon as the new area’s opened up, Chie disappears off on her own to explore. It’s impressive, her level of wallflower-ness given her rather impressive height, but she manages, somehow, to avoid really talking to anyone. Only occasional glimpses of the calculator can be caught as she shuffles in and out of buildings.

Maybe it was the trial that was getting to her? After all, she’d been uncharacteristically instrumental in catching the killer-- but, given her talent, she was used to being useful (used, even). Then again, she’d always come off as a rather gentle girl, one who didn’t stomach killing in the least, so she’d logically be unhappy with sending someone to death. Or maybe the brash reveal of secrets the previous week had startled her.

Whatever the case, Chie tiptoes around, avoiding interacting with anyone... until she’s found standing at the entrance to the maze, staring contemplatively at the hedges. When the sound of footsteps makes itself clear, she jumps slightly and turns, automatically hunching her shoulders down to make her height smaller.

“Ah... Ah, h-h-hello. I was thinking of going in... if you’d like. Like to join m-m-me? I’m usually pretty goo... goo-good at mazes, but. If you’d rather not be bounc... bound together, that’s un-understandable.”

Was that a joke? Hard to tell.

[shslnun-blog]

Various Storms & Saints † Ch. 4 † Open

The supermarket is the next best place to refill on her various medicines. Snow falls, and winter begins in the town. Agatha finds with winter, her gardens die and she has to begin anew once the weather lifts up. Sadly, Agatha did not start any garden here. Well, asides from some plant box she holds in her room near the window, but she supposed with the sun going away, it will die too. 

With this news, she prepares to buy some new things. Some more medical equipment if allowed, the clinic still provided no use for her. A useless place was not ever meant for Agatha, so she goes to the supermarket. 

Going down this path, she recalls the storm that took place. Things are mainly in repair, she inspects by walking down to the supermarket. Insides of places must be a little messy, and when she enters the supermarket, she finds it is. Shelves knocked over, the ground is stained with the water that probably flooded through and cracked pieces on the surface.

She immediately takes a mop, and some cleaning supplies to restore the area. Agatha takes off her scarf and gloves, putting them with her bag on a shelf as she cleans up an aisle. Cleaning is no chore for Agatha, she’s quite used to simple tasks like this. In fact, this is just the same as cleaning up the chapel. She doesn’t mind, exactly. 

As she’s mopping up, she hears someone come over the corner to the aisle she’s cleaning up in. She couldn’t find any warning signs for wet floors, but she calls out before the person can go too far into the dirt mess that accumulated from her cleaning. 

“Watch your step before you continue. The floor is wet, I am not risking anyone falling and getting bruises. Perhaps, cracking your head open. I don’t own any remedies for that.” She stops mopping to lean on the mop, staring ahead, hoping the person would show themselves.

“State your purpose.” 

[shsl-wanderer]

weather report | open

The first snowflake lands right on the tip of her nose. Kazae looks up, up into the greying sky, grey with the density and multitude of snowflakes. She exhales. It feels like forever since she last saw snow. And it snows in the winter, in her prefecture. Northern Honshuu is like that. It reminds her of home, now that she thinks of it. She hasn’t thought about home in a while.

She shakes her head. She doesn’t like it. It’s abnormal and when abnormal things happen in Tiramisu Town it means bad things happen. An unexpected thunderstorm meant two deaths. What does an unexpected snowfall mean? Three deaths?

Not to mention it’s unusual for this time of year. Snow in... wait, what month is it? She’s not sure. She’s not sure how long she’s been here. She lost track of the days a long time ago. Sometime around when Ene died.

Well, if the weather’s weird, there’s a weather-related place in the new district of town. She heads toward the weather station, not at all sure what she’d find inside.

She’s... recovering from everything. She’s less shaky now. She still gets upset when she hears her name, but the pain isn’t sharp anymore. Dulled. Recovering. The wound is slowly closing. That’s good, right? She hopes so. The temptation is always there to retreat completely, but she knows she shouldn’t. She has to push forward. Somehow, anyway. But that’s what she’s always done, is push forward.

She makes it to the weather station and pushes it open. Immediately she gets the sense that she doesn’t want to be here. The sense of bad things. The sense that pervades all of Tiramisu Town, but has been dulled by repetition and adaptation. But for some reason it’s fresh here. Like the weather station is trying to tell her something.

There are ghosts here, in Tiramisu Town. Not just Kirihito and Haku and all the rest. Other ghosts. She can’t hear them, but she can feel them. And they do not feel good. There must be ghosts here too.

She looks around, first finding the lights. Cabinets, papers - is this really a weather station? 

[justkeepingthisforoldtimessake]

File #010 [The Missing Persons Incident || Open]

Well, this was a twist alright.

A fresh new face... seems like she was no worse for wear but man, this poor thing’d gone right from the frying pan into the fire. Did she even know about the whole ‘let’s kill your friends, it’ll be awesome’ part? He was guessing not. Lately he’d felt less and less charitable so the others could catch her up. Honestly they were probably still willing to deceive themselves with this friendship game. He had too, briefly, but that’d been nipped in the bud recently. All the better. He would look into mystery girl’s story later but for now he wasn’t in the mood to go through all the preliminary conversations. As soon as those were out of the way, he’d have time aplenty for her. He probably wanted to be alone, he knew that much, but wasting time with self-pity was... well, a useless past time, and one he’d mostly left in the past. So the least he could do was make himself useful. Sure, maybe the chickadee was the key to this mystery but until he questioned her more he wouldn’t know. So for now he’d keep a cool head and have a look elsewhere. The weather station seemed as good a better as any so to the grey sad looking building it was!

He pushes the doors open and winces a little at the musty decor. The grey clashed against the white that was not all around his feet. Hard to tell if the place had been touched recently but... one thing was for sure, it didn’t really fit in with the usual town’s fare. Which is why it was interesting, really.

Much like himself, really.

And perhaps much like his position among his peers.

The truth of it was returning, being alive as a whole, would only trouble people. It’d certainly ruin his family’s story of him being tragically killed in the riots... and the people he worked with? Hell, they’d either find another broker or cheer the demise of another lowlife. So where did that leave him? Well, it left him wanting his survival. For no one but himself, he supposed. Did that new girl have people waiting for her? He didn’t know her, didn’t even get the name, but she probably did. They all did, no doubt. So they might be fighting for their own life even harder, with a passion he couldn’t possibly empathise with. Quite the disadvantage.

‘A brave mask for a weak little man’, was it?

Weak was a stupid word for it, in his eyes. Sure, people can hurl their stones and call him this and that. It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t disappointing she thought that, either. He was simply being smart. It was fine like this. Their fault for thinking sticking around and being supportive meant something. It was as he told Hina. Those who want to believe you will. Even if all the evidence says otherwise. That’s what a bond should be. A best friend. A girlfriend. A parent. Two parents. A whole school. How many people would abandon him? People were the worst. He was just making use of them, like they made use of him so where was the harm in that? There was no way he could just stick around and believe in someone sincerely, not anymore. Bearing your heart or whatever, it was impossible. Hell, he wasn’t sure he had anything left in him to give, anyway.

At this point, Suishou just shrugs off the intrusive thoughts. They won’t help him. And help is what he needs about now if he wants out of here. The group is thinning and if he doesn’t want to be next he needs to hurry up and MacGyver something that either makes him useful or gets him out of here. Honestly, preferably the latter. He peeks into one of the file cabinets and flicks through some of the envelopes before hearing the door creak open once more. It’s a good thing it’s so loud. He regards the person with a look and then tilts his head almost shrugging before going back to his searching.

“Ah, if you’re here you can pretend I said something very clever or charming I’m sure. So-rry, too busy to really think of something good.“

[tothefuckingmoon-blog]

... i just saw you three hours ago | open

Being Eita Tsukino has been difficult recently, Eita thinks to themself, although they soon realize that it’s a very unproductive line of thought since there is nobody else that they could possibly be. Eita Tsukino, a stupid, unfortunate, unlikable, annoying... human. No. They couldn’t possibly accept it, not in a million years. Because if they were human, it would mean that they just didn’t understand, that they were just stupid and weird, that their human parents were their real parents, and... no way. It was impossible. 

They had to take their mind off that, off of the whole, the whole, the whole everything. And usually, they’d like to be alone when they were trying to take their mind off things, but now they weren’t so sure. They missed Katsumi, they could admit that even if they couldn’t admit that they were a stupid human (because they weren’t). Just maybe, they thought, it would help if they could make another friend. But they were not good at friends, or at people, and so they decided to compromise. They would go somewhere and be alone, and if a person arrived, Eita would try and be friendly.  

So here they are, sat on the floor of the aquarium, surrounded by paper, ink stains on their fingers, appreciating the shadows that the water casts on the floor. “Hello,” they say quietly when they notice somebody come in. “How is existing turning out for you today.” 

[justkeepingthisforoldtimessake]

File #009 [The Rock Star’s Incident || Open]

It was hard to put the feeling into words. Any word that came to mind seemed too strong for the sensation. Disappointment was so... expectant... sadness, way too gloomy, way too strong... maybe the word was just... tired.

If the positions had been switched, would Hokori Aoki given him the time of day? Most likely not. That’s what Suishouryuu figured. The mighty information broker now given a human, mortal name... well, he always had one, really, it just... he seemed less grandiose now, somewhat. It wasn’t just the name, it was the feelings he had to juggle. He hated those. He’d much rather everyone look at him with disdain and distrust. That he could deal with. It was predictable, effortless and easy to handle. You never had expectations with people and in riling them up you often got more information than even they’d realize. It was perfect. But these days it wasn’t so simple. If he pushed too hard in this climate, he was dead. Hell, he was half-sure some people still wanted him dead, people like Tadao Myojin. Others he was sure would be more ambivalent. Hina would probably cry but geez, that girl’d probably cry over literal spilled milk.

So where did that then leave him, the boy who loved to get people angry at him? Nowhere nice, that’s for sure. He found himself reaching for a non-existent pendant on the journey home, looking through the window in a clearly non-committed fashion. He had to regroup and figure out some good tactics here but more and more people were dying; faster than he’d expected, actually. He was smart, sure, fast too. But others could overpower him and hell, luck’s always a part of this.

Mr. Mayor hadn’t even done them the courtesy of informing them of the new area. Actually, after getting TKO’d he’d been rather quiet, something Hotaru took as rather negative rather than a boon. He was annoying but he provided some reference point. Him being quiet was probably a bad sign. It was a good thing he checked out the train sign. He hadn’t even checked out the housing accommodations. Honestly, he’d deal with that later. Right now he wanted to do something so going to this new area would have to do.

The cursory look gave him nothing, really, more of the greenery, more of the saccharine pleasantness. Same old, same old. His eyes guided him to the first building of superficial interest; the aquarium, in fact. Somehow being here does wonders for his mind. Maybe it’s a  good thing he wandered off here. Being surrounded by all this water, the teal-blue ambient... the lack of noise... it felt like time somehow stopped. Like no one’d really died. Good. Maybe this was the perfect place to regroup.

He falls back to lean on one of the walls as he takes in the scenery.

Hotaru Sumino, the failed former genius musician with the goddamn messed up hand. If he did get out, his family’d probably find some way to screw him over. After all, to them, their poor boy already died ‘tragically’. Good god. Well, he wanted to live, that much was enough. But did he want to do that on his own? ... That... should’ve been easier to answer than it was right now.

Whatever, it was fine. He needed to re-bandage his hand later and check on the housing situation. For now though... for now... he’ll just relax here. Or he would’ve, until he heard the footsteps. He lazily flicks one eye open to check on the situation and offers and half-hearted wave. If there’s one thing he has the energy to do, it’s talk. He has always has the energy for that.

“Small world, my friend, small world. Not sure about the usage but I can learn to appreciate this place.”

[hayashidatrims]

belladonna | chapter three | open

Deadly Nightshade (belladonna): silence.

This would be fine, he was sure. He had little to hide anyway. The code had to be something bearable, right? 

Wrong. 

His green eyes widened at the instructions, even if the Mayor wasn’t even finished with his tirade yet. How could he control that, the only trait he’d ever stuck with? It was such a vague code that he couldn’t understand either. If he felt a bit of a pang, even just a passing thought of that, would it trigger? And how would someone even measure such a thing? Maybe the bracelet was the key, but he just didn’t know. It unsettled him greatly.

Heck, Daiki wasn’t sure if he could keep his secret away from the world for long. But it would be okay, right? he thought desperately to himself. The world wouldn’t care about just one humble topiarist’s dark secret. It wasn’t worth knowing. Yet the neighborhood itself couldn’t know lest they start avoiding him more. Maybe the secrets should have been revealed to the world first, he thought. 

The topiarist left toward the train, not really into it due to how lost in thought he was. He was intending to go home, but.. looking up from his code when the train landed filled him with great dread. Indeed, Daiki paled.

 Because this wasn’t the main area. This was PuriPuri Land.