InsaneJournal

WHO: Renju, open.
WHAT: Reading.
WHERE: The Butterfly Room.
WHEN: Mid-dungeon break.
WHY: Renju has a lot on her mind studying to do.


Renju rarely spent much time in the Butterfly Room. Apart from using it to actually enter Paradise, and for the occasional meeting (when they bothered; lately they hadn't, which seemed to be for the best), she tended to forget it existed most of the time. Even when she was there, the hands made her wary, and the dolls still brought up some unpleasant memories (she kept far, far away from the Kiriko doll).

After everything with Tom, though, she'd been feeling restless. Nanakamado was almost too quiet with summer approaching, and her dorm was even worse. Lately she'd only been going back there to eat and sleep, instead doing her studying elsewhere since it was far too easy to start thinking about things she'd rather not in that quiet. And so it was that, for lack of options, she'd ended up here, sitting on the couch (hadn't this belonged to a Shadow? Remembering that black gunk that Shadows seemed to be composed of, she pushed the thought from her mind) with a short stack of books next to her and a notebook on her lap, reading. The phonograph, one of the few things there that didn't unsettle her, was playing some Western classical music at a low enough volume not to bother her.

But she couldn't focus. She kept looking at the rest of the room rather than at the book in her hand. More of the pictures were becoming clear; if it hadn't been obvious before that they represented each person's place in Paradise (she didn't like the word 'dungeon' that some of the others used; it carried all the wrong connotations for her), it certainly was now. She didn't much like looking at them, though. They brought back things she'd managed to push past in Paradise itself by keeping her attention on their duty, but that she wasn't sure she'd be able to outside it--not without that single-minded focus to keep her distracted.

She could use some of that right about now though strictly speaking she had it, just with the wrong thing. With a noise somewhere between a sigh and a growl, she spun around to lie back on the couch and shoved the book in front of her face. If all else failed, maybe she'd just fall asleep this way. Hopefully the hands wouldn't snap and strangle her though it wasn't as if it would matter if or something if she did.