thinking about @starrycat123-blog's baby darkness au where soleum is considered a baby in darkness's, like with hungry hangman where the darkness is like "we can't play the game this guy is too little to know the alphabet"
i'm not sure if this au specifically only applies to kse bcz he's. nonhuman. but i'll look at it from the view of age regressors in general being affected by darkness's like hungry hangman (<- kse would have more leeway in many darkness's for being months old but i think in a darkness like hungry hangman where it's kindergarten themed regressors would have more influence generally instead of just. baby darkness's...)
so imagine after kse successfully clears hungry hangman and saves everyone by being so very baby that's added to the record as a way to clear the darkness. like the higher-ups start doing experiments with sending age regressor employees into hungry hangman to see if it works and it Does and obviously they need to take advantage of such an easy way to get dream solution
and because there's probably not That many age regressors in daydream (or, rather, not everyone knows what regression is and may not know they regress even if they do), that leads to general education about regression
similar to fox counseling office maybe there's a room installed for regressors too. and anyone is encouraged to try it out and see if regressing is something that works for them
not only does it lead to more regressors able to clear darkness's similar to hungry hangman, it also just leads to a boost in company morale overall because these traumatized workers need healthy coping mechanisms so badly
and then also imagine that somehow during the time of daydream experimenting with how regressors affect darkness's, the bureau also gets wind of it. maybe soleum mentions it at some point or they just find out by word of mouth
then the bureau also starts encouraging regression as a means of coping for their staff and begins to test out how it could potentially be useful regarding disasters
^^^ kse is probably the pioneer of this. or like. the mascot. he openly carries around a plush bunny with him everywhere... people probably start following in his lead at some point
okay that's all this is my wish fulfillment "regression is normalized" gsgw au bcz i think like honestly everyone in this novel would benefit from some baby time. they need to have playdates too. give kse friends. even if it doesn't stick i think they should all try it at least once please and thank you
