in which the narrator prepares for the dark secrets episode | Rumi
At last, a captive audience! She felt like she’d been in response limbo for days and days, hearing that but not quite sure how to react. “The Narrator leans all the way back in her seat in Shaft Head Tilt fashion—anatomically possible but still weird and uncomfortable as hell—and waves in a much more regular fashion at the new arrival. Heyooo, Nyoomi-chan. She doesn’t suppose you have something cool and terrifying in your tragic backstory, right? Those kinds of theories.”
Stopping just before she toppled all the way over, she whipped back up into a normal sitting position. She still sat on the chair the wrong way around because that was how you demonstrated effortlessly that you were a cool kid. “Because, really, the amount of people who have secrets worth revealing is obviously going to be larger than the amount of secret slots there are. And all characters secretly need their past bee-ess dredged up for the good cheer of whoever anyway, right? So we oughta get started.”
She couldn’t possibly mean… “She can’t even remember how well this works out in the past. The Hope’s Peak game it didn’t because it was a single all or nothing, but a one at a time thing means a ton of people are going to get nonsense out anyway, and also because she feels like she’s in a shitty sequel where people are more willing to bend the rules. She stands up with an ominous clattering of chair, facing Nyoomi-chan with all…165 centimeters of her! With possibly an extra ten for hair voluminousness. And then she pokes at the scar under one eye, because serious scars and the seriousness attributed to genre-savvy people with unserious scars is serious business.”
…Wait, she wasn’t actually going to explain anything, was she. She just remained standing up, poking herself in the cheek, like she was poised on the precipice of some great speech but the teleprompter just broke. “So, is Nyoomi-chan gonna make a guess about who’s coming next, or possibly a guess at what Dragon-Lady-chan assumes her biggest secret to be? Either way is probably gonna be really hilarious in hindsight.”
Audience? Yes. Captive? Not really. She came there out of her own volition, sat down out of her own volition, and spoke to Ameya out of her own volition. That head tilt was making her uncomfortable, though, and obviously it made the Narrator uncomfortable too. The entire situation was just very uncomfortable.
Rumi soon became less tense, though. She was waiting for someone to ask her something like this. "Nah, I don't have a tragic backstory!" she answered with confidence. "Those are usually reserved for the edgy characters who think friendship makes you weak. I, on the other hand, am a class act huggable cutie who thinks friendship is pretty great." The waitress paused briefly, her hand over her heart. She quickly snapped out of her 'moment' though. "Oh god. You might just be rubbing off on me." She shook her head a little. Anyway...
"Wait wait wait wait Matsura-chan. You're--Uh. Moving reeeaaally fast. Too fast for Ru-me, Nyoomi, even though one of my specialties is my ability to go fast. What you just said was like a tongue twister somehow pulled off perfectly and tongue twisters never make much sense themselves." Rumi took a few seconds to rub at her temple in confusion. So... Something about a scar, genre-savviness, (whatever the hell that was) and seriousness? Or was it unseriousness? That was a very important detail.
After a while, it did finally click that Ameya was talking about the scar under her own eye, but she wasn't really sure what it meant. It was so... Tiny and insignificant to her appearance. She decided not to comment in favor of addressing her next question. "Well I'm not psychic," she shrugged. "There could be something related to the fear rooms we encountered in the team challenge before the last one... Urgh." Good job, Rumi. You reminded yourself of your own failure. "Sorry. But yeah, there are some people whose rooms seemed really personal to them? I mean, of course they're all personal. But I mean extra personal. Like, stuff way beyond stage fright and... Haunted houses." More shuddering. If there was one thing she wouldn't miss about the world she had been used to, it was Halloween.













