
#extradirty
Cosmic Funnies
wallacepolsom
Peter Solarz

祝日 / Permanent Vacation

JVL
styofa doing anything

shark vs the universe

PR's Tumblrdome

@theartofmadeline
Three Goblin Art
Not today Justin
occasionally subtle

Origami Around

oozey mess
Xuebing Du

if i look back, i am lost
Show & Tell

roma★

★

seen from Philippines
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Germany

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from China
seen from Colombia
seen from United States

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States

seen from Malaysia

seen from Türkiye
seen from Germany

seen from Netherlands
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seen from United Kingdom

seen from Croatia
seen from Germany
@unholybinds
“ do you think it’s smart to wander around so much, shin-chan? “
a hand clamps down firmly on the boy’s shoulder, squeezing ever so gently. midori walks around the other’s petrified body as if he were going around back for a party. jovial, tranquil and smooth, it doesn’t seem as if the man has a single worry in the world.
maybe he doesn’t. this place is his stage, after all. a domain delicately constructed from the depths of everyone’s memories to create a perfect misery, so sweetly satisfying in it’s melancholy. the smile remains firm on pale features, his thumb rubbing spine-chilling circles into the liar’s skin. “ i had heard that everyone was supposed to walk around in pairs. is it wise to be alone? you might just die all over again. “
“ unless you were looking for me, of course. “
“ have you figured out how you want to kill me yet? “
( @unholybinds. )
sou swore that he meant nothing anymore — to the face that greeted him when he awoke from one nightmare into another, under his breath as the rules of this new , a whispered promise to do exactly as he had instructed — to kill him at the first given chance. that things were different now.
and yet that touch left him frozen just like it always had. midori had called out for shin and that’s exactly who he was all over again, fighting to quit trembling just from being in the man’s presence.
it takes just a beat too long for shin to find his voice again.
“ joe isn’t that far. if anything happened, i could just call out and he’d come running, along with everyone else nearby. ”
the words that felt as cold facts just moments before start dissolving as soon as they leave his tongue, and he bites it to keep his own resolve afloat. it wasn’t the only uncertainty coming to light with midori’s unprompted visit; despite all his promises, shin didn’t know how to kill the man yet.
but don’t let him know that.
“ what do you want? ”
joe.
it’s the last comment he would expect to receive. for all he’s shown this sou since they reunited, how could he say such a thing? the downtrodden expression that has surely taken over his face unintentionally this entire time, how sad his eyes have seemed at any time joe’s been investigating and briefly glancing into a reflective surface, quiet answers…
( hey, does this sou know joe’s letting the original down? does he care? )
joe doesn’t understand. maybe his words have had more of an effect, maybe sou can sense the genuineness he’s attempting to put out even now. he comes to a total pause as the other walks past him and he only stares at sou from behind, mouth slightly agape and words once again catching themselves at the edge of his tongue.
as much as it makes him want to cry, joe opts to smile. there’s not as much force behind it as before, the feeling of a small weight raising briefly from his shoulders allows the edges of his lips to curve the same.
it’s not bad to have someone believe in you, right? joe catches up after what feels like a lifetime of standing still, eyes a touch brighter and a subtle pep added back to his step. “ it’ll be fine! if we don’t figure it out now, i’m sure someone else can and then we can all share info, ” he comments, approaching the door and taking a moment to press the wall in various spots.
joe cranes his neck to peer at the sign above, furrowing his brows before reaching up and touching it with his index finger. “ … you think this might be important? ”
sou’s gaze flashes from the wall to the boy briefly, and it’s clear something has changed. he looks a bit more like the joe they first met ( and while sou hated it before as a pretense, it’s not so bad now; it’s one last thing to worry about, at least ). a soft sigh escapes him before teal eyes flick back to the door, then up to the sign.
“ hm… probably. it’s the only thing around here aside from this door, so it has to be some kind of hint… ” it did sort of look like a sign for a bathroom, but sou already knew that couldn’t be the case. the door itself didn’t look like anything the would be displayed for a public bathroom, but the sign itself was off too. what kind of bathroom sign had two people? and holding hands? what kind of room had that?
then the color starts to drain from his face.
“ w-well… maybe this isn’t something we can figure out on our own... ” his voice is small and uncertain, almost unfamiliar to him after the time spent in this game. sou can’t leave, of course, and part of him really doesn’t want to; behind that door was something they were all missing, some information vital to their progression and to his cause. now that he had a good guess about how to get in, he didn’t really want to let someone else get it first — if they could at all. no, that was all too much to leave to chance for sou.
but he wasn’t supposed to be sou, was he?
he spends the moment hemming and hawing, adjusting and readjusting his scarf and beanie as he tries not to solve the puzzle of how to get in, but if it was really worth this. after all, this could just be an empty room here solely to make them all uneasy ( the justifications keep getting weaker and weaker, huh? ).
“ ... Joe. I think... ” he takes another breath, and instead of finishing the sentence, holds his hand out limply as his gaze passes over joe to look directly back at the sign.
joe.
hey, why couldn’t you just let sou rest? why did you bring him back like this?
there’s no doubt about the guilt that ties his nerves and binds his tongue. it doesn’t matter if sou has no memory of how he wound up where he is, how the main game slipped through the holes in his memories while a video rebuilt only the minutes prior to death.
that’s not true at all. call all of his previous actions as a leader proof, but he can’t bring himself to even imagine he’s done a good enough job. sou’s always been steps ahead, someone who could see a route and chip away and find something–
joe doesn’t have that insight. it shouldn’t be this way.
“ i dunno what you mean by that, but… you’re smarter than me. if you have ideas, i wanna hear them, okay? ” joe replies, taking a few cautionary steps in the direction of the red door. “ if we look at it longer, i’m sure you and i can figure it out together…! ”
he needs to keep positive. if he doesn’t have that, then what the hell does he have to offer anymore?
sou can feel the guilt coiling around joe and holding the younger back as if it was his own. there’s a part of him that finds it a relief; even as joe tries to reach out with never-ending faith and camaraderie, it lacks the usual intensity, being chipped away as it fights through this tangible awkwardness to reach him. it gives sou a chance to breathe, if only a little.
( there’s a part of him that finds it sad; though never-ending, it was so subdued that it hardly felt like it came from the same boy at all. and after all the trouble sou had gone through to help bring him back? a full recovery was never expected, and until recently, a development like this would have only brought some small hope back to sou — but something about it now weighs on him. )
“ … you’re a pretty hopeful guy, huh? ”
sou leaves those words as his only reply as they head off toward the door in question. he hoped it would be enough to keep joe from prodding — or from trying to fill the weird space between them with yet more optimism — because he honestly wasn’t sure how else to respond. in the end he swore to start believing in joe, but that didn’t mean everything else had to come with it. belief certainly didn’t smooth over all that they had done and kindle a new friendship between them.
maybe belief was all he needed for now, though.
“ well, ” sou’s voice cuts through again, hoping for a firm topic change in the door that now stood before them. “ we’d better start now if we plan on trying to figure it out before the— ” he stops himself and tugs his scarf over his collar. “ before time runs out. ”
@unholybinds
so, this… is awkward. by awkward, he means terrible.
there’s plenty that joe could say in this moment in the downtime of searching the fourth floor. all the words in his throat, the ones that work their way to the tip of his tongue before subsequently dying are stuck in his head. he fiddles with his tie, focuses on anything besides sou and forces himself to calm down, remember that running off to be alone might kill him, and breathes.
“ so, uh… ”
god, it’s like having a knife driven in. he knows sou, he knew sou, saw so many sides of the man that he shouldn’t feel like he’s wandering unfamiliar territory by trying to talk. joe shoves his hands into his pockets and keeps his gaze lingering on sou’s collar as opposed to his eyes.
“ did… you wanna look anywhere specifically? i might’ve missed somethin’ that you saw, so we can go back to wherever you want. ”
awkward hardly begins to cover the mess sou’s found himself in now. he wishes what he felt now was merely awkwardness.
like the boy besides him, his eyes strayed anywhere but to his newly assigned partner. sou had harbored his own doubts before on whether these assignments would truly be random, but fate and midori both were cruel enough to place him right where he was in this moment — right next to the one who sentenced him to his botched death.
“ u-um, well— ”
now was not the time to get lost in thought; the lies sou had balanced before were trivial to what he had to deal with now. he never thought he’d have to see joe again, and he certainly didn’t make time before to process any emotions about his death. there was a certain reprieve in this forced deceit, in joe not expecting or suspecting anything — and yet, it settled so uneasily in the pit of sou’s stomach.
“ well, in the end, I should be following your lead, right? in this case, I think I know less than you do— ” his hat is pulled firmly down over his head, passing off the lie as a mild chill at most, “ —and I’d like to keep my head. ”
an expecting silence settles in between them, and for once, its presence fills him with a certain dread.
“ we could try that red door again. not really sure what else we could do about it, especially with me around, but it’s the only place we haven’t gotten a good look at yet. ”
monsterofamom replied to your post: rp with me
haha and then what ;)
come a little closer so we can find out
helpfulhands replied to your post: rp with me
rp w/ me too
rp with me
do you know what a majority vote is?