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Tweak says, "How do you do, fellow kids?"

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
2010-06-03 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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