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Tweak says, "Twinkle, twinkle little bat,"

Ito Keiichi (伊藤慶一) (keiito) wrote in disappear_rpg,
@ 2010-01-19 09:59:00

Entry tags:

keiichi

Keiichi and the Couch
WHO: Keiichi, the Couch, and other denizens of the Butterfly Room
WHAT: Ongoing Introspection
WHERE: The Butterfly Room
WHEN: Varying times.
WHY: Raising of the World Social Link.

((OOC: This thread is for Keiichi's ongoing introspection posts that will be done on the Couch and serve as his raising of the link with said couch. I will move up the date every time one of these is done. Thanks, and enjoy!))

Late August, post Obon...

For the most part, Ito Keiichi avoided the Butterfly Room. It tended to freak him out a little bit, what with the hands and the hugdolls and all of the swag the team had accumulated from going back into Paradise.

Even so, he found himself in the Room. It was a rare occassion, because there was no one else in the room. Seated on the couch, Keiichi looked around at the odd environment; the bonsai tree was placed up against the far side of the couch, and the hands had brought two of the hugdolls up to him, helpfully depositing them in his lap before going back to their epic, never-ending tea party on the floor of the Butterfly Room.

As he looked down to see what the dolls had brought him, Keiichi face-palmed.

Kozue-doll and Misaki-doll sat side-by-side in his lap, giving him a mental image that almost made him pass out before he regained control of his faculties.

Relationships were a lot harder than he'd thought they would be. He had a reasonable understanding of the basics: be nice to your partner, treat them well, and things would proceed from there. Of course, his father had explained to him some of the more...sexually-oriented things, and Keiichi was positive that no child had recieved a more scarring explanation of the birds and the bees than Kenjiro using suplex innuendos.

Regarding Keiichi's *mother.*

That aside, Keiichi found himself looking down at the two dolls, and longing that he could combine the two people that they represented. Such a Mizue, he decided, would be the perfect significant other.

They were both nice people on their own. Kondo-san was a bit practical, and Aoi-san was a bit...not practical. Kozue seemed to enjoy sex, and Misaki he was convinced would, but he always felt bad bringing the subject up with her. Too innocent.

And yet, he was fairly sure that neither was quite who they really were with him. Kondo-san was more so, it seemed, since they'd broken up. He appreciated that. Blunt honesty was easier to deal with than distortation of the facts. Not that he thought Misaki was blatantly not being honest. Sometimes, he simply wondered if Misaki knew who she was, or wanted to be, or any of a number of similar queries.

Kondo-san seemed more confident, at the least. Misaki seemed constantly worried that he'd run off, what with the recent questioning about Sonozaki-san. He looked up, almost as if worried that the hands would drag *her* hugdoll into the mess, too, but the dolls continued to play tea party.

Exactly what Aoi-san was, he wasn't sure. But he'd seen her shadow, and more than before, he was convinced that a far less...violent version of that existed inside of her. It had never been brought to bear against him, but the entire mess with Akuba-san and Satou-senpai told him that it existed.

People, he'd decided, especially from this whole Paradise thing, were multi-dimensional and far more complicated than he'd ever believed.

He liked Misaki. He knew that much. He cared about her a lot. But, ironically, the man who'd told Kozue that he loved her in a moment of desperation wasn't quite sure if he loved the bubbly, pink-haired girl who might be repressing the desire to murder people.

Sometimes he wished he hadn't screwed things up with Kozue, and yet, at the same time, he was pretty sure they wouldn't have worked out long-term. To be brief, this was all...confusing.

"You know," he said, the first words since he'd made it into the Room, to no one in particular, "I see why everyone comes here so much. This couch is comfy."

It had been a long summer thus far, with lots to think about. Surely no one would mind if he took a quick nap?

Almost as if sensing the second-year's doubts, the Kozue hugdoll latched onto Keiichi's leg as he stretched out on the couch. The Misaki doll clambered up and over his body, trying to press itself between his chest and the back of the couch.

Sighing audibly, Keiichi wrapped his arms around the Misaki doll, and closed his eyes.

Only once Keiichi's first snore rang throughout the Butterfly Room did one of the hands pick up the Renju doll, drag it over to the couch, and drop it triumphantly on the sleeping form of Keiichi before returning to the tea party.

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	World Link 2 - Following Crimson Lotus Academy keiito 2010-06-15 12:57 am UTC (link)
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Re: World Link 2 - Following Crimson Lotus Academy

keiito
2010-06-15 01:51 am UTC (link)

Death was not something that Keiichi had ever really had to contemplate in any degree of seriousness. He was young, after all. His dad's obsession with pro wrestling had led to Keiichi suffering some bump and bruises, and even a broken nose or two, but nothing more serious than that.

Keiichi's second year at Nanakamado, however, had changed that irrevocably. "Having a magical headgod changed that," Keiichi pointed out, to himself, stretched out on the couch in the Butterfly Room, looking up at the ceiling.

The headgod, at first, had brought simply pain. Being in paradise had resulted in him being smacked around by Toru's shadow's tentacles. His own impetuousness had gotten him roasted to a crisp by Kiriko's shadow.

But that was pain. Pain Keiichi could handle. Pain was something he was at least familiar with.

Really, the first time anything catastrophic had happened was in the toy box. Being sealed in a glass coffin, with limited air, was something entirely different.

Different still from that, though, was why he was here now.

"I think I almost died twice in twenty-four hours," Keiichi observed, the memories still there, and still bad. Best he could tell, everyone else had been similarly traumatized by the shadow taking them on a journey through what Kondo-san had told him were some of the Buddhist cold Hells.

That had been bad, absolutely. It wasn't, though, what was really bothering Keiichi.

What WAS bothering him was the way he'd nearly died before that. Alone in Paradise (and whoever had named it that, Keiichi wanted to have a nice long talk with).

It had been his own fault, yes. It usually was. Keiichi wasn't so dense as to not realize that. But he could have bagged the shadow. Somehow gotten it to take him to Renju. What he'd do AFTER that he hadn't known, because one on one against a Shadow was bad odds.

Keiichi sucked in a deep breath. Given what the Shadow had brought to bear against the team, going against it one on one would have been practically guaranteed suicide.

He would never forget being thrown into Paradise. Into a desert of ice, alone, utterly. He would never forget wandering around, exercising every few moments in search of something. Anything.

The hands were giving him far more distance than they ever had, Keiichi noted. Perhaps they'd noticed the seriousness on his face. He wasn't joking today.

Meeting Renju's shadow in a barren icy wasteland had altered him, irrevocably. At the same time, though, it had changed absolutely nothing. He would, and in fact was, much the same person afterwards. The jokes were still there. His use of humor to cut the tension in a room would always be there he figured, and probably would always be not appreciated by his colleagues.

The shadows usually seemed to appreciate it. They enjoyed banter, for whatever reason. Renju's, though, had shown no mood for his antics. No mood for his coping mechanisms.

And she--it--whatever had left him alone to die.

At the time, he hadn't realized why it bothered him so much -- beyond the obvious. As he crawled his way towards the tree by the Sanzu River, scrawling out his goodbye to the team in case he didn't make it, he still hadn't figured it out.

It was only now, with his adrenaline back to a crawl, looking around at the unsettling atmosphere of the Butterfly Room that he realized what had truly bothered him.

The Shadow's dismissal had conveyed one message, loud and clear.

He didn't matter.

At the end of the day, it had denied him the only thing he truly wanted.

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	World Link 3 - Following Ito Brave New World keiito 2010-06-15 12:59 am UTC (link)
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Re: World Link 3 - Following Ito Brave New World

keiito
2010-08-25 01:35 am UTC (link)

Even now, he could still see it so clearly that it was painful. The buildings of Utopian Iburi, the castle that perched above the rest of the city like a bloated spider, and the embodiment of his own inner turmoil, sitting on a throne, giving out orders to his minions.

"One day," it had said, over and over again, "you will rule this land. And when that day comes, you will have to be prepared."

Ito Keiichi shook his head. He had spent a few days in his room recovering, but once able to leave, he had decided to come here. The hands and hugdolls somehow made him feel much less lonely. Right now, they were conducting yet another tea party, seemingly content to leave Keiichi alone with his thoughts.

Sitting in the throne room with his Shadow, he had been awed by the thing's complete inability to accomplish anything. Constant reports had been made back to him of the team's progress, and yet time and time again the Shadow had ignored them.

Keiichi had expected the team to crush it easily. But when it came time for the battle, the creature had proven itself to be far, far more formidable than anyone could have ever imagined.

"That was...inside of me," he told himself for the umpteenth time, still finding it hard to believe. The Shadow had been strong, intelligent, and dangerous. It fought with the conviction of its beliefs, throwing attack after attack after the team, coming as close to victory as had any shadow except likely Sonozaki-san's.

And then, even at the brink of death, it had pulled out one final gambit. Keiichi could remember clearly the Shadow charging Kozue, sword drawn, and dropping her to her knees with three quick slashes.

That should have been all, by most accounts.

But she survived. Held on by a thread, and went right on healing everyone. The Shadow went on and successfully killed Tom, but even Keiichi could see that something was wrong.

The Shadow itself confirmed it when he charged Kozue again. Same three strikes. Same result.

And in that moment, Keiichi could sympathize with the Shadow. Not because it, too, had failed to finish off Kozue Kondo when it mattered the most, but because failure was an emotion Keiichi knew all too well.

He had failed in his father's eyes for wanting to be a chef.

He had failed in his own eyes for being unable to lead the team, no matter how much he wanted to.

He had failed at making the Cooking Club anything resembling successful.

And now, even the mighty Emperor of Iburi within couldn't defeat the team. No amount of its attacks, well-thought out as they were, were enough.

He had blacked out after that.

Only when Toru had come to him a few days later to summarize everything that had happened was Keiichi able to take a sick sort of pride in how close his shadow had come to taking the team down.

After all, the shadow had come closer to succeeding at something than Keiichi himself ever had.

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	World Link 4 - Following Nanakamado Prom keiito 2010-06-15 01:08 am UTC (link)
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