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ofmanydevices (ofmanydevices) wrote in disappear_rpg,
@ 2010-08-24 20:58:00

Entry tags:

kozue, tom

Who: Kozue, and Tom
What: Tom goes to visit the Princess in her tower
When: While Kozue is in her hotel
Where: Fancy pants hotel
Why: Why not?

Tom shifted slightly as he knocked on the door to Kozue's hotel room. He looked back and fourth down the hall conspiratorially. Certainly the hotel would not have frowned on him brining Max in, but best not to risk it. The tiny puppy was all bundled up in Tom's long black coat, which Tom was now holding closed. Despite that he couldn't resist trying to claw and pull his way free, first so he could lick Tom's chin, and then so he could see what had made the noise.

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anthesphoria
2010-08-26 11:20 pm UTC (link)

After a few minutes, the door opened, and Kozue peered out; she hadn't been sure what to expect, but nobody really ever expected Tom. Which was probably, she realized, something he had cultivated for years. "Hey," she offered, with a faint, tired-looking smile. All in all, Kozue had managed to spread a thin veneer of polish and calm over her exhaustion.

Thin and slightly obvious, unfortunately.

"Do you want to come in?"

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ofmanydevices
2010-08-27 12:59 am UTC (link)

The puppy bulge in Tom's coat began to move furiously at Kozue's appearance. Max desperately tried to climb out to reach the small blonde. Tom tried to hold him in place as he nodded and smiled at her a bit.

Once he stepped in, he made his usual sweep of the place, locating exits, chock points, hiding spots, both for surprise attacks and locating attackers. Once he was certain the room was clean, or as clean as it would be without a thorough sweep. He couldn't quite understand how people lived when their rooms could be full of bugs and tracking devices, but he felt Kozue would find it inappropriate if he looked.

Once he was inside, he opened his coat, and let Max down. The small dog went running toward the nearest piece of furniture, and jumped up, looking at kozue with a wagging tail.

"So... why the hotel?"

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anthesphoria
2010-08-27 02:25 am UTC (link)

Kozue smiled, more honestly, as Max tumbled out of Tom's coat and jumped up onto the sofa. Tom had been serious about bringing the puppy, then. Kozue headed over, sitting down next to Max (although there was not all that much space, as a good portion of the couch was taken up by room service platters and a huge shopping back Kozue had brought back and neglected to find a place for). She put her hand out and, after a moment, started petting the dog.

The room was in more of a mess than Kozue usually tolerated, certainly; usually, she tidied, not obsessively, but regularly. Here, in the hotel she seemed to have lost all need and desire to do so; it was someone else's space, so it was someone else's problem? That, or she had other things pressing harder on her attention than the mess around her.

It wasn't awful, at any rate, because housekeeping did tidy some of it. They just couldn't keep up with the amount of stuff, material and edible, that went in and out of Kozue's room.

After properly greeting Max, Kozue looked back up at Tom. She pursed her lips, thoughtful, but with more pressure between them than normal; the thoughts were not pleasant. Why was she in a hotel? Why did Tom care if she was in a hotel? After letting the pause hang in the air, Kozue finally sighed. "I needed a change of scenery. Why?"

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ofmanydevices
2010-08-27 04:20 am UTC (link)

"And your change of scenery is the same place as what Paradise became when you were tossed in?" Tom glanced around and looked at Kozue. Max on the other hand, seeing the all the platters laid out on the couch nearby quickly sniffed, and then began delicately removing food then eating it, causally glancing up as he chewed.

"Not that I'm judging... I'm just curious as to the purpose of your actions I mean... there's a reason right? People don't just do things without a reason." The less sentence sounded less like a declaration and more like he was looking for some kind of confirmation.

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anthesphoria
2010-08-28 04:29 pm UTC (link)

"Max-kun, don't eat everything," Kozue chided, but since she made no motion to stop him, it seemed it was a hollow order. She leaned back a little, took a long breath, and looked up at Tom. "Are you going to sit? There's a clear chair."

It wasn't an answer to his question. She fiddled with her hands a moment, before settling them on her lap, crossed over each other. "Just because someone has a reason doesn't mean they understand it, Tom. Or that they can talk about it. This is..."

Once again, she interrupted herself to resettle, trying to find the most comfortable place to speak from, as if physical comfort would make understanding easier, or make the words come more quickly. And who knew, she thought briefly. As far as the Other Kozue had taught her, maybe it did. But she had to explain herself, at least a little, and she could see in Tom's face, and in all the past of their friendship, that what she'd said wouldn't cut it. (Especially since he'd brought up Paradise.)

She bit her lip. "Yes, it's a lot like my Paradise."

"You don't think that makes sense? It became the place I wanted the world to be... the safest place for me. I wanted to be somewhere safe." She looked aside, briefly. Somewhere safe, and somewhere she could… no, that hardly made sense, even when she said it in her own mind.

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ofmanydevices
2010-08-28 05:56 pm UTC (link)

Tom lowered himself to the clear seat slowly. His mouth cocked to the side, and he seemed almost confused.

"I suppose... I had thought you would return here to confront any lingering fear or anger left over from our trips in. I've never really felt entirely safe some where. I always look for ways in, or spots to get attacked from." He crossed his arms over his lap, and leaned forward.

"I guess I've always tried to face the dangers, since I never thought i had some where safe I could go to."

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anthesphoria
2010-08-29 04:09 pm UTC (link)

"Confront?" Kozue pursed her lip, and paused; she, too, was confused for a moment. "I... no, it's more like letting them go. Not fighting them, but healing them. That's how I work, I guess." Which was proper for her idiom, for the thing that, according to her Persona, she was best suited for. "It's like a detox diet," she continued, perhaps unnecessarily: "You take in good things until the bad things are flushed from your system, like, fwoosh," she punctuated it with a gesture. And that made sense, now that she had put it into words, certainly more sense than 'I'm going to hide in a hotel'. Was this actually what she was doing, or was she just covering herself?

Kozue wasn't entirely sure; but when was she ever sure?

"Wait, you never thought you had somewhere safe, at all?" She furrowed her brow. "Well, what... what would it mean for you to be safe?"

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ofmanydevices
2010-08-29 04:51 pm UTC (link)

Tom put a hand to his chin, and tilted his head slightly. He sat quietly for a moment. He glanced toward Max once or twice, then finally leaned back in his chair.

"I don't know. I think... I felt it when I was younger. But definitely not since I moved to this country." He titled his head back and looked at the ceiling. "When Seiko... when I'm holding her, or hugging her I feel something... it feels good, but I always feel like I need to be on guard, because I could lose that." He shook his head and sat up. He came here to help Kozue, not dump his own issues. For half a second he realized he hadn't really talked about his time in Paradise with anyone yet.

"I guess you're kind of... experiencing positive stimuli in a place resembling your time in Paradise, thus allowing your mind to associate positive sensations with those memories, instead of negative ones." He nodded, it did make a kind of sense.

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anthesphoria
2010-08-31 03:01 am UTC (link)

"You can't put that in plain Japanese, can you?" Kozue sighed, tipping back her head and looking upwards. "No, you probably can't. Don't worry. I think I get it, although I always thought stimuli meant something different. Which."

She paused. "There aren't any naked boys hiding in the bathroom, if you were wondering."

Her head was still tipped back, eyes scanning the ornate ceiling; the plaster was shaped like flowers and fruits and other semi-Grecian elements. She could spot a pair of daffodils, and cherry blossoms, quite out of place in the otherwise Western designs. "Why don't you think there are parts of my time in Paradise that were the positive stimulus? Stimuli? Is that really the plural?" She furrowed her brow, and, finally, looked back at Tom for confirmation.

What he'd said earlier remained in her ear; "... how're things going with Seiko-chan, by the way," she ventured, carefully.

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ofmanydevices
2010-08-31 03:20 am UTC (link)

Tom put a finger to his chin, and cocked his head to the side.

"I'm certain I would have noticed naked boys in the bathroom when I examined the room for hidden enemies. I suppose they could come from paradise through the bathroom door, though the odds that the shadows would be those big mostly nude men are fairly low. And they wouldn't even be naked."

Max stared at Tom as he spoke, then looked at Kozue for half a second before going back to trying to pick up a food item that was at least as big as his head.

"I don't... actually know how things are. I've no frame of reference to compare it to. We haven't had time for a date or anything like that, and she's been occupied. But I find I enjoy the time we spend together. I feel motivated to do things to make her happy, and i have begun investigating methods to do so.." Tom frowned slightly, and hesitated. "Is... that normal?" He leaned forward, fully resting his head on one hand, the other moved to his hip.

"I picture kidnapping with intent to murder as being a bad experience. Most would associate it with a negative situation, even if the time between kidnapping and murder was enjoyable, the two events are so upsetting that it seems natural that they would be difficult to reconcile long enough to enjoy the experience. I... I suppose it's true that I... liked the world I was put into. Where good wins, there are no laws or rules holding back the heroes from fighting the bad guys who are always easily distinguishable. How all problems can some how be resolved with a punch to the face. It'd be an easier world to live in."

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anthesphoria
2010-08-31 11:48 pm UTC (link)

Kozue blinked flatly a few times. "When did you even check my bathroom. There could be ten naked men in there and you'd never know. It's a really, really big bathroom." By then, she couldn't stop herself from laughing at her own claims; she reached out and tried to help Max with his giant piece of food, at least in getting it off the plate and to a place he could gnaw in peace.

"That was part of it, Tom. Because I could ignore the awful things as long as I had what I wanted—food, luxury, someone..." She waved her hand vaguely, unsure how to continue, precisely. To characterize her relationship with herself? How she had, in fact, been so easily able to make herself convincingly content with those things? How she had been so ready to throw everything else away, because pleasure in Paradise had been so automatic and accessible? "I could check in here and make someone take care of me and never check out again."

And god, but that still was appealing to part of her. It was the same solution as letting her grandmother take care of her, or a husband, or letting Kiriko or Tom or some boyfriend make all her decisions and following along mutely and agreeably as long as there was pleasure to be had there. She laced her fingers and glanced down at the leftover room service. She'd ordered that. She'd picked it out specifically, and specified the amount and the preparation. She'd chosen the room herself. (She could have insisted on a penthouse suite and had decided not to.) "But I'm not going to stay here forever. It's kind of like I hope you're not going to go around punching people and expecting everything to be solved."

Hopefully.

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ofmanydevices
2010-09-02 03:18 am UTC (link)

Max happily sat, gnawing on the piece of food until he managed to eat most of it. As he chewed he glanced back and fourth between the two of them. Finally when his food was finished he hopped down from the couch, and began sniffing at other parts of the room.

Tom folded his hands in his lap, listening contently to Kozue's description of the hotel room. He reached up a hand to his head, and scratched behind his ears.

"I realized long ago that problems would not be solved by simple violence. I mean on occasion some people just deserve to be hit, and it... feels really good to hit those people. But I realize that just as often it encourages our enemies to continue or increase their activities, as much as it might discourage them. The cowards run, the actual dangerous people, people with a mind set like Shirai... well them I have to watch more closely." He shifted slightly and glanced at the floor.

"Deep down I wish it was as easy as my dungeon. Screens that let me see everything, heroes and villains... but I knew that world was a lie, it wasn't rational or logical, and that's why I tried to escape it. It..."

Tom opened his mouth to speak, but then it struck him, that Kozue had refereed to him as Tom, for the second time in this entire conversation, meaning it was not a slip of the tongue. He struggled for words for a moment.

"You called me Tom."

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anthesphoria
2010-09-28 06:56 pm UTC (link)

"You just noticed?" She asked, a smile creeping onto her face; warmer and more at home than it had any right to be, given how she'd behaved and felt for the last day or days or however long it had been. "I did."

Maybe a few months ago, she would have retreated from the familiarity, apologized, or appended some sort of suffix. But a few months ago, she had not cared about people enough to want to address them like that. (Even in the throes of passion, in what some people considered the most intimate of moments, boys were senpai or kun, never completely themselves.) And she had not been as sure in herself, not sure in herself enough to risk saying how she felt—even in quiet terms, she was putting it plainly.

"I always thought it was strong of you, that you tried to escape your paradise."

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ofmanydevices
2010-09-29 05:34 am UTC (link)

"Was it?" Tom cocked his head to the side and looked at her. After a moment, he folded his hands up in his lap and looked toward the floor.

"Brave possibly... foolhardy, distinctly. I don't think it was very strong. The truth is..." Tom glanced at Kozue.

"The truth is that I tried to escape because I thought there was at most a fifty fifty shot anyone would actually fight all the way down to the shadow." He shrugged slightly. After a moment he realized he should admit what he was thinking.

"I was proved wrong. On numerous accounts. You and Seiko and... everything. The team has changed so much for me."

"...I suppose in retrospect, given what we know about the shadows, trying to escape, or fight it on my own would be a form of running away, and not helpful."

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anthesphoria
2010-09-30 12:09 am UTC (link)

She nodded, pulling a hand through her curls; "I said it was strong, not necessarily... right, or smart." But he had covered that. "I know it's nothing you would have listened to, but we'll always come for our friends, no matter what. Even...." She gestured, freeing her hand from her hair. Her creamy white hands with the light pink nails recently painted fluttered in the air for a moment, moving rapidly, haphazardly, but they found it an inescapable task to describe what had happened in that last place in Paradise. And Kozue sagged back, eyes drooping.

"Well, with what happened in Reizo-san's place, and I know that if someone else on the team went in tomorrow, I'd go back." She looked away, feeling the same sick sort of lethargy stealing over her, the one that she had been drifting in and out of ever since leaving the wolf's den. "... I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought that up, it's insensitive. It was worse for you, I'm sure."

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ofmanydevices
2010-09-30 07:40 pm UTC (link)

Tom nodded, leaning back slightly to look at her. His mouth hung open for a second as he thought about what he wanted to say. After a moment he frowned, then his expression softened.

"I… back then I didn't think I had friends. I suppose that was obvious though…" He glanced away, and a smile crept across his face as he thought about what he had now.

"I think that's really strong. I spend… more I used to spend my evenings running around, picking fights, doing dangerous things, it's nothing new. You weren't used to Paradise and you're still willing to go back in." Finally he shrugged. "I only died, it seems to happen to me a lot in there."

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