janescayre | Duocaeli Inbox

[Now that the endless rain has ceased, Dodo appears to be in high spirits. The stairs straighten and floors shift as his spotty memory tells him they tend to do. In one instance of the latter he stumbles into the divination tower instead of the hallway that divides the suites, which is just as well when he spies a familiar face over the humble bed of flowers tied together at the stems in his arms.]

Ah, there you are.

What?

[She looks up from her impromptu nest of books and papers. She had retreated here in hopes of actual privacy. A resource sorely lacking in Dodo house. Fukawa's nose wrinkles as she looks Roland up and down, lingering on the flowers.]

Did you get lost t-trying to find a date? Or did someone die?

I was searching for you.

[Roland walks on over, gaze sweeping over the books and papers as he does. Unlike him, she isn't here by accident.]

It was not my intention to come this far, but it seems Dodo saw fit to aid me in this task. [With both hands, he extends the yellow-purple bouquet of goldenrods, irises, and corianders.] These are for you.

Huh?

[She looks to his face. Then the flowers. Then back to his face.

She goes white as a ghost.]

What? What?

[Excuse him?!

She skitters backwards from her nest, almost crab-like, thunking against the wall with no trace of grace. Her glasses slip down her nose and she flings up an arm in self defense.]

No! No they're not! D-don't you lie to me! Get those away! I w-won't stand for such humilation! You can't fool me!

[SOMEONE HELP]

[His smile falters and brow furrows in concern when she goes pale. Is she feeling unwell? Lowering the bouquet, he takes a tentative step forward.

No one can help her now. (He would like to, though.)]

I assure you that this is no jest. . . . Do you dislike flowers?

[If so, his ignorance has a way of striking around her. Perhaps he should've consulted her first.]

Of c-course not! I just — you c-can't — that's f-far too intimate!

[They've spoken exactly twice and only once that he remembers, plus he'd personally stamped out any flame that may have sparked between them. Why would he take the extreme effort of arranging a bouquet and delivering them to repugnant sea slug of an acquaintance like her?!

Fukawa straightens against the wall, lowers her arm and takes in the bouquet with shell-shocked eyes, tracing the plump petals, the sumptuous colors. It's a really lovely arrangement. How dare he.]

And...and I'm already s-seeing someone! [Who is not here (and is also not interested. Vehemently so.)] I told you! There's no future for us! So it's n-no use buttering me up now!

[Roland cants his head to the side. Goodness. Did she think he was trying to tempt her into infidelity? It's no wonder she's so put off by him.]

Apologies, Fukawa. I did not mean to overstep. I merely thought to repay your good will with some of my own.

[Having said that, he holds the flowers up again without approaching. It won't do to corner her with her back already against the wall.]

It gladdens me to hear that you have someone. Will you take these as a gift from a friend?

[He's really determined to see this through. Good god.

Fukawa's lips seal shut. One hand plasters to the wall, then the other, and she is slowly hoisted to her feet by little will of her own.]

Th-that's still much too presumptuous. No one is friends after meeting three times. [And yet she reaches for the bouquet now. Slowly. Growling low, lip curling, this is clearly killing some stubborn part of her that has no wish to die.

Yet once it's in her hands she clutches it to her chest and studies the blossoms with devastating intensity. She worries a corner of the wrapping between her finger and thumb, shooting him a quick look. Hard to say what she's thinking.]

...What do you want?

[There's a hidden motive here, isn't there.]

[That can't be right. There's such a thing as fast friends, after all. However, as he has yet to remember having friends in his own life, Roland is unable to refute her claim with as much certainty as she poses it.

What he can say with certainty, though, is that he's happy when she accepts the bouquet—until he blinks, confused all over again.]

What do you mean?

[Sounds fake.]

You just said you w-were looking for me. [Come now. Some of her pallor is returning, her fit now fading in favour of the usual foul mood.] Did you suddenly remember something, or forget even more?

[Ah. The biggest reason he sought her out was to pass on the flowers. Now that she mentions it, he's reminded of the other as he straightens.]

That's right. I've remembered some things—your face among clothes, foremost . . . and a castle on a river.

[SOUNDS FAKE.]

A r-river, huh? [Okay, she'll bite. Though she definitely pulled a face when he mentioned recalling her. How wonderful, she's the coat rack kook once more.] That's good. Then m-maybe the rest will trickle in naturally. Or you'll just remember patches of things. You'll have a m-memory like holey cheese.

[Why is she spouting tired cliches? She must still be flustered. There's a petulant scoff and she fidgets, then gently sets the flowers aside on a shelf. It's too awkward to hold them while looking at him.]

What triggered it? Were you d-doing anything specific?

[His gaze is drawn to the shelf by her motion, and then to the surrounding books and papers. He's curious, but it won't do to change the subject so quickly when she's the one doing him a favor with all of this in the first place. Keeping that in mind, he searches for Fukawa's eyes.]

I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary. They simply . . . came to me.

[As she's said, they might really just be trickling in.]

But there have been times when I would feel something unexpected, depending on the place. When I first glimpsed the ocean at the coastline, I found myself at a loss for words. It felt as if I had never seen anything like it until that moment . . . for even the castle on the Norzelia River wasn't nearly as vast.

So there's a n-name as well. Good. [Not one that she recognizes of course, but specifics are important to the process. They helped her some. Her own memories aren't perfect now, may never be. She's made peace with that.

But she only lost a portion of a life, not the whole of it.]

How do you feel when you think about the castle? Is it comforting? Or foreboding?

[Oh. She's right. There's a name that tumbled out as naturally as the river flows. Talking it out was the correct choice, then.

He closes his eyes in thought for a moment, visualizing the castle in his mind again.]

It feels . . . familiar. Like I'd roamed its halls many a time before, though I cannot say why.

[He shakes his head.]

I'm afraid that is as far as I can recall.

Something like home?

[Being as it was the first thing to come back to him. She begins to gnaw on a hangnail, lost in thought.] Though as a m-monk, wouldn't you be living in a monastery? Or maybe it was a place you spent your childhood in. Or you were posted there after your training...

[Many possibilities. She leaves off for now, waving her hand as if to brush the thought from the air.]

D-don't push yourself. It'll take a while, probably. [Then, after a tense moment of studying his deep, mournful eyes, she makes a decision she's sure to regret.]

...Mine did.

Edited 2023-05-12 19:17 (UTC)

[His brow creases faintly amid pondering the possibilities. What she says makes sense. The castle residence contradicts his background. He's inclined to believe that it was a place of interest in his childhood, given fragments of his recent memories, which leads him to wonder: before a monk, what was he?

The wave of Fukawa's hand pulls him away from his thoughts. His troubles fall to the wayside when the harrowing tale of friends taking one another's lives bubbles back to the surface. It makes him unbelievably sad as he holds her gaze, comforted though he is by her reassurance.]

. . . Was it difficult?

[Her mouth twitches. Good, he's not badgering her for the dirty details. They're useless here. It's the specifics of the condition that matter.]

M-more that...just reconciling. [Even having the gap explained to her didn't put a salve on the steady drip of recollections. That was partly by design, those days were siphoned away for maximum misery, for the betrayals to cut deeper once they knew what they'd done.

That fucking bitch. She didn't get to see her die, but no matter what happened it was better than she deserved.]

Even when you kn-know what's missing, it's weird to get it back again. You m-might become a different person before you remember who you were.

Indeed, there is that possibility.

[It makes him think. Based on what little he's recovered, he isn't sure that he wants to be that person again. There has to be a reason, and yet . . .

Roland shakes his head. From the sounds of it, Fukawa has been through her share—and more—of troubles. He ought to listen before leaping to conclusions.]

Would you say that you changed?

[Fukawa fidgets. He's a little unnerving. Maybe that's the religious training, all that theological reflection seeping into his most minute motions.

As for her own reflecting? She fidgets even more.]

I-I... [Her throat feels a little thick. It's so easy to spit platitudes and dire warnings at someone else. She's rarely ready for a volley back. No one's asked her if she feels different. Of course they haven't, she doubts they care much. She was difficult before and she's difficult now. Any shift was a matter of degrees, and the greatest change she's had came after she left Hope's Peak.

And yet her stomach turns. She remembers running in relay teams once. In bursts, nothing much of the race itself. They'd found the photo after to prove it. Everyone sweat slicked in their gym uniforms, four flags hoisted for four places. She'd been holding the flag for first, and she'd been smiling. Not even to the camera — to the people around her.

It made her feel like she'd been possessed.]

For me, I think...it w-was more that I can't think of anyone the same way. In one life we were one thing, and in another, we had to be s-something else.

[Body after body after body. Denial, rage, ego and schemes. How is an idyllic school life supposed to outshine murder?]

I don't think I can forgive them.

Edited 2023-05-14 04:13 (UTC)

[Roland's eyes narrow at the gravity of her words, uncertain yet intense in their finality.

In a way, it's not so different from the false memories of Crane City—only, both sets of memories are real. Reality, it seems, isn't always kind. If he's already this uncertain of himself in his current state, he can't begin to imagine the depths of Fukawa's agony at the hands of untold cruelty compounded with remembrance.]

. . . In the end, our relationships suffer the most in the absence of memories.

[Perhaps he's known this from the start. All he left behind for himself was a name. But what of everyone else? One name doesn't justify anything. He can't look Fukawa in the eye and assert that he made a calculated choice to forget her and remember someone else—that forcing her to bear the weight of their transformed relationship was an acceptable consequence when he made the decision on his own.

How awful, all of this. The resultant betrayal upon learning the truth must have been excruciating. That resentment . . . ]

It must weigh heavily on your heart.

Gaaaah. [She cringes suddenly. This is too much. Far too much introspection with too strange a man.] It d-doesn't matter now. And we weren't all buddy-buddy in the first place. It was just a stupid, messed up scenario! That's all. What are you, a m-monk or a psychiatrist?!

[No use dwelling on it. She'd only wanted to shake some sense into him, relay some hard-earned wisdom. Not pry back the layers of her own skin.]

And to th-think, I'd dragged myself all the way up to this kitschy tower to figure out what the hell is going on here.

[Neither, he almost says. The words sit on the tip of his tongue. At this moment, he's a friend.

But it would be gauche to push this matter now. She's had to revisit some unpleasant moments in her past, which is sure to have been exhausting for her heart. Glancing around the tower's interior, Roland turns his attention to the notes and books around them instead.]

Are you in the middle of an investigation?

[Very wise to hold his tongue there, she'd definitely scream at him again if he busted out the "f" word.]

I d-don't know if it's even worth being called that. [She pries her glasses off for a moment, pinching the bridge of her nose.] I thought m-maybe there would be a clue with this telescope. Or at least, if I looked at enough star maps I could f-figure out if we're somewhere that could be s-seen from home. A neighbouring galaxy or...oh, god, I feel so stupid.

I don't know the first thing about astronomy. I mean, sure, I know the myths behind all the c-constellations, that's practically kindergarten stuff for any writer. But to try l-looking for that crap for any other angle?

[What a damn headache. What a hackneyed attempt at sleuthing.]

I might as well b-be reading Ancient Sumerian. It's useless.

[If she doesn't know the first thing about astronomy, he may as well be a monkey next to her. Context clues help him to keep up, if barely. She can stand to be more confident in her ideas, but he thinks he can understand the lack of confidence in an area outside of her specialty. So she's a writer . . . ]

Give yourself some credit. Your idea is sound. If it's a matter of expertise, we can always enlist the aid of someone with the knowledge in question.

[Because he definitely knows nothing. And there's no shame in not knowing, so she shouldn't feel stupid.]

What can I do to help?

action;

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I'm sorry

sweet(?) summer(?) child(?)

sweats profusely

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more dangan spoilers

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