InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Veeee~"

kondo kozue | 近藤梢 (anthesphoria) wrote in disappear_rpg,
@ 2010-04-27 22:51:00

Entry tags:

kiriko, kozue

Who: Kozue and Kiriko.
When: Shortly after the dungeon.
What: Talk about some stuff. Probably it's important.
Why: Otherwise living in their dorm would be really awkward, if they never talked.
Where: Their room.

When Kozue had come back from Paradise, she had crawled into bed and collapsed; her suitcases remained unpacked and she was still wearing the bath robe, wherever it had actually come from. And everything felt awful. Physically, mentally, emotionally, all those other -llys that she could muster to think about herself in terms of. She was reeling. She told herself, several times, on the walk back, that sleeping it off would make things better. It was just like a hangover, right? A supernatural hangover composed of your psyche rebelling against you and trying to kill your friends and then being forcibly shoved back into your mind?

Yeah.

You could sleep those things off. You had to be able to.

She was not sure how long she slept for; when she woke up, she was curled in a tiny ball underneath the covers, knees tucked almost all the way up to her chest, completely enveloped in darkness and safety. She stayed that way for a long time, though she could not find a suitable explanation for herself as to why she did it. Much of her did not want to. After some time had passed, a span she could not quite decide the length of, Kozue slowly peeked out from underneath her blankets.

The psychological hangover was smaller, but not gone. Curses. She peered around the room fixing, after a moment, on Kiriko; the other girl was there. They should... Well, either they would talk about this now or they would sit in awkward silence for the rest of their lives, because the moment had come and gone and nobody had said anything. So, taking a breath and scooting even further out from underneath her covers (so that her head was actually visible), Kozue spoke. "Hey. Good morning." A pause. "It's... morning, yeah?"

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apathyisboring
2010-04-29 12:36 am UTC (link)

"Afternoon, actually." The response was accompanied by a wry little smile that faded as soon as it appeared. Kiriko sat on her bed across the room, her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms draped around them. The TV was on, but apparently she had only been watching it with passing interest, since at her friend's reawakening she hunted out the remote from under a rogue pillow and muted it.

"It gets a little better," she offered when she looked back to Kozue. "Especially as things keep moving. People forget."

She unwound her arms from her knees and leaned back on her palms. It had been bothering her. What might things have been like if she and Kozue switched places? Kozue had what she wanted, and apparently all that led her to was panic. It was strange. For most people she'd probably feel angry and tell them to get over their stupid problems. Right now, though, she didn't know what to feel - or, more importantly, what to say.

"I guess I didn't know you as well as I thought, huh?"

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anthesphoria
2010-04-29 01:05 am UTC (link)

Only a small part of Kozue's attention flickered to the TV; whatever was on, it was something they could OVIT, or something that didn't matter all that much. She looked back to Kiriko, and fished for something to say; "Ouch, afternoon?"

That was what came out first, and Kozue winced a little under her covers. "I guess my sleep schedule is messed up. I..." She wanted to address Kiriko's reassuring words—and really, they were reassuring, mostly. She knew, sensibly, that Kiriko had been here, or somewhere like it; so many of her friends had. But knowing and feeling were so far separate sometimes, and they had been especially so over the last week or so. It was the last thing, the last comment, to which Kozue's mind turned, instead: "Everybody hides stuff. Especially the things like this, that make them feel so... Well, you know. Everyone kind of knows."

It was the One Big Truth she had taken away from the entire psychotic turn her last few months had taken; everybody hid things they were ashamed of. And where did it get them? Well, in this case, thrown through doors by unknown murders, supernatural creatures, or disco balls, on a one way express to crazytown. Maybe hiding things wasn't the best of plans.

So, in the interest of that... "You know, I wish I was more like you."

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apathyisboring
2010-04-29 01:49 am UTC (link)

"You do? Why?" She tilted her head back. "Well, I guess I can see why. But this whole thing just reminds me how abnormal I am, or whatever." Not that it was a bad thing. And not that she'd trade it. And not that it meant that she still wouldn't enjoy lounging in a hotel and eating strawberries, but there were just so many things she'd rather win than a prom queen's crown.

"You probably don't want to talk about it, but I don't think you're totally good-for-nothing." She couldn't name anything in particular that Kozue could aim for, but she was still fairly certain of this for the simple reason that Kiriko was not inclined towards being friends with good-for-nothings.

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anthesphoria
2010-04-29 02:38 am UTC (link)

"But I should talk about it. I mean. Isn't that kind of the point of..." She would have waved her hand in an illustrative gesture, but it was tangled up in her blankets and all she ended up doing was jerking it slightly. "You know. And I know I can't handle it completely by myself." But everyone had said--Kiriko had said she'd help.

"You don't think I'm more the abnormal one? I spent my whole life hating her and what she did with... well, me, my whole family, and my whole life, and--and wishing she'd die." It all came out in a bit of a rush, and then Kozue shrunk back under her blankets just a little it. "Then as soon as she dies, I can't cope with it. That's messed up, right?"

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apathyisboring
2010-04-30 10:35 pm UTC (link)

"I guess." Not that that had ever kept her from talking about it. There wasn't really much of a point, in truth, it just sort of became impossible to ignore and so you were forced to act on it, somehow.

"I don't think you'll have to handle it by yourself. Everyone's offering to help you. Some of it, though, seems like you've got to do it on your own."

She watched the muted screen blankly, not really paying attention to what was transpiring in front of her while she listened to Kozue.

"I guess it is. I don't understand it, to be honest. But I do know what it's like to be afraid of uncertainty."

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anthesphoria
2010-05-01 04:27 am UTC (link)

Kozue continued moving slowly under the covers, trying to organize herself a bit more; finding her knees, and then sitting up without being tangled, these were challenges she felt up to facing. Not the things beyond and outside. She looked back at Kiriko once she was about halfway to sitting up. "And now things are... I guess just as uncertain, and somehow I'm supposed to cope with that better than I did before."

Something else was on the tip of her tongue; an apology? She stopped, frowning. Apology for what? For Kiriko not understanding? Was it her own responsibility to... Kozue shook her head. And tried to articulate something else, or to articulate herself better, or... or else she wasn't quite sure. "It's not knowing what's going to happen, and knowing that whatever I do, if I choose it on my own, it's going to be messed up—or at least thinking that," she corrected herself, looking down. It sounded too much like the Other Her.

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apathyisboring
2010-06-01 02:54 am UTC (link)

She pulled her own knees up to her chest and wound her arms around them, settling her chin on top and looking up at the ceiling. Some days, she felt like that. But it was hard to imagine feeling that way all the time. From what she could tell, though, Kozue didn't try too hard at much of anything - for much different reasons that Kiriko had initially thought.

She turned her head and lay her cheek to her knees instead, looking over at her friend.

"I don't know what you should do. But I think telling you would probably be defeating the point. You probably aren't going to go out and... ace every test from now on, or figure out what you want to do for the rest of your life, or whatever, but if you ask me..." her eyes moved down and back up again, "You can't really be happy living only as much as somebody else tells you to."

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anthesphoria
2010-06-03 01:38 am UTC (link)

"No," Kozue replied in a small voice, looking away; her hands gripped the edge of her mattress, one that had been brought from home specifically to replace the too-thin dormitory bedding. It had real goose down. Her sheets had thread count higher than she could remember at the moment. That sort of happiness, material happiness, it was all around her. And she shook her head a little, before continuing. Her voice was still subdued. "It's not like I ever expected to be really happy with the parts of my life she chose. It's just the part you have to accept to get everything else..." But chasing shallow happiness was part of the Other Her, too, which meant...

She sighed, and looked for something—anything to put in her lap, keep her hands busy, output the sort of sick, nervous energy she was feeling. "Maybe I should just... Try really hard to pretend everything is normal. Does that work?"

Pretending everything was fine had worked for her in the past. But things hadn't ever been quite this bizarre, if nothing else.

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apathyisboring
2010-06-03 07:51 am UTC (link)

The last line actually drew a smile out of her. It widened, and for a moment, Kiriko looked ready to laugh. She shook her head and lifted it off of her knees again.

"I tried that, remember? I think most of us did." Eyes downcast, she tucked stray hairs back behind her ears. "It didn't really work out so well, remember?"

She lifted her gaze back to Kozue, and after a moment's hesitation, uncurled herself from the position she was in. Her legs stretched out in front of her and then fell over the side of the bed as she turned, sitting slouched forward and clutching the edge of the bed.

"Okay, so like..." She rocked slightly, looking imbued with some new-found energy. "I spent... forever, just trying to accept that sometimes you can't have everything you want in life, so you just have to get over it and move on, but when..." she shook her head, made some vague hand gestures obviously meant to indicate her dungeon, "You know, when it happened, I realized that I don't. It's my life, so why should I have to compromise about it if it's only going to make me miserable?

"I mean, sure, maybe it won't all work out the way I want it too," another flippant hand-wave, as if this was the furthest concern from her mind, "But that doesn't mean I shouldn't at least try to force it when it comes to the important stuff. I think you're lucky. Maybe you don't know what you want yet, but now that your mom's in charge, you get to figure it out. I'd kill for that, you know? I'd be halfway to being your brother right now!" She grinned.

"So no, don't try to pretend everything is normal. I mean, the part about being... supernaturally kidnapped or whatever, yeah, don't worry too much about that part - but Kozue - Now that she's gone and your family isn't going to pull the rug out from under you, isn't it at least worth thinking about what you can do that will make you feel worthwhile?"

Her head rose from the interested incline it had assumed, and she smiled a little self-consciously and shuffled back on the bed, looking a little surprised that all of that had come flowing out of her. For now, though, she was suppressing her embarrassment and trying to keep her eye trained on Kozue, waiting for her reaction.

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anthesphoria
2010-06-03 11:44 pm UTC (link)

Kozue, as Kiriko had talked, had seemed to flutter back and forth between several sets of emotions—sympathy, amusement (Kiriko would make a funny brother, surely), self-consciousness, they battled for dominance and none really seemed to win. When there was silence again, she laced her hands in her lap, and, instead of staring at randomly-selected objects around the room, turned to look at Kiriko.

"Things to make me feel worthwhile? I need... Yeah." There was an inordinate amount of pausing in her speech today; it still felt like she was coming down from an awful hangover, in a way. "I need goals. A goal. At least one honest to goodness goal. I guess it could be to buy something from every season that Comme des Filles has been designing, but that's easy. It wouldn't really do anything for me, although I'd have a lot of great stuff afterward." She stopped herself; that thought was becoming too tempting, already.

"But it's not like I can decide I want to be really good at school—that's never going to happen." She sighed again, and switched around the position of her fingers. "I just can't see the middle ground between them." She had to believe there was one, but she couldn't see it for the life of her, right now. She continued talking, mostly to keep the thought at bay. "You're right, though. I can see, better than I could right after she died, that having to pick for myself isn't awful." She could see it. She wasn't entirely convinced of it, emotionally, but she could see it. "There's a lot of stuff I'd like to be good at that won't ever pan out. Like tennis." Math. Fighting. English. Cooking. The list went on and on. And thinking about it, enumerating the things in her head, threatened to bring her down again and send her, feet tucking to her chest, to hide under her covers and wallow.

"... thanks, really. For trying to understand. I never really thought you would." She paused, and a smile passed over her face. "... You'd be a pretty funny brother, but I don't think curly hair would suit you."

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