Week 5 → SOME DAY? Monday evening?!?!

[minogame]

( Some time after the motives have been announced and emotions have had a chance to wind down or something, Urashima will come over towards Break and Gilbert's room. Break will be able to recognize his footsteps easily enough in the hallway-- they're light and fast and as energetic as ever but he passes Gilbert's door and slows down just as he gets to Break's.

I'm assuming the door is open here or something so he sort of just hangs out there for a solid few seconds before knocking quietly and poking his head in to see if Break is resting like he should be. He won't complain if Break is sleeping! Honestly, it's not like he's checking on Break because they're super close or anything... but the man really keeled over Sunday??? And he's Gilbert's friend??? And really, being a suspect is stressful (he knows, he's been there twice). )

... Mr. Break?

Comments

[minogame]

Some times things get lost in history. People lose treasure and important things and can never find them ever again. It isn't special or strange when it happens... people are just really careless sometimes.

( Urashima laughs a bit at that because it really is funny how bad people lose things all the time, )

I don't really remember when or even how it happened but I got lost with my brother. That wasn't really normal. We didn't end up in the ocean or forgotten in someone's storage; we ended up in a different place. I don't remember a whole lot because there isn't really a lot to remember... but it was a dark place between space and time. You can't tell even if you're there for an hour or centuries because there isn't any time in that place either... except there's also all the time in the world. ( He's really no good at explaining kebiishi void one part because it's vague as hell but also because it's one part straight unexplainable and another part not a good memory, even as vague as those memories are. ) For the most part, it was just me and my big brother! But sometimes we'd sense something else in there.. something really empty. Even emptier than the place we were in.

Anyway, I was rescued from that place. I didn't know it... but that empty thing we sensed were other spirits called, "kebiishi." Uhm... I'll talk more about them in a little bit but after I was rescued, I was summoned by our master to fight in his army and help with his mission.

... And that's how I started traveling back in time. Back home, there's an army of spirits that want to change the past. We call them the "Retrorgrading Army" and they're.... really sad. ( Says Urashima who is kind enough to feel pity even for his enemy, ) They're sword spirits like me but they're so sad and angry they've fallen into despair. They lost all of their humanity and all of their reason and all they want to do is fix the past because they think it's wrong. They try to save people who shouldn't be saved and kill people who shouldn't be killed... but they can't do that. So me and my friends fight to stop them and even after they're destroyed... they keep coming back and trying again. They're really mad. ( In the insane sense, that is. ) And anyone can become one of those spirits.

It's really hard for some of my friends, you know? Sometimes we end up in a place where they have to watch their loved ones die again. We go back to those exact moments where we can change everything if we really want to. We can save someone we love or get revenge against someone who wronged us... and it's really painful to see. ( "to see" because Urashima himself is blessed and has had a lucky life. ) And that's when three things can happen.

( Not that Break can see but Urashima holds up a finger for each point as he makes it, )

You can fall into despair and become a corrupt spirit. ( Two, ) You can forget all of the pain and become kebishii- emotionless and detached from all humanity. ( And three, ) Or you can keep fighting.

But once you change history, you become the first one. Your soul inevitably becomes twisted and rotten. If you're lucky, a friend will notice in time and destroy you because it's better to die than to become corrupt and keep fighting for something you can't control anymore.

That's why... even when you said you wouldn't change the past, I couldn't just trust you when you've already done it before. I don't know you... or your spirit well enough. I have to think, "History will repeat."

[crazily]

[ Break listens to the story in silence, and really, there's no real change in his expression. However, it's not out of disinterest. It's exactly the opposite, actually, because this is familiar, yet foreign all at once. There are similarities in the situations this story lays out, but there are great differences too. Urashima's story, he decides, seems a bit more literal.

The options were the same, after all. When Kevin had tumbled out of the Abyss, he had faced those same three options, but they were more metaphorical for him. It gets him to laugh, but it's soft and warm, because though it's something that seems ironic and something that he should feel bitter about... He doesn't. The memory of his choice on which path he would walk down was one bathed in golden light, after all. ]

It's not too different. But I picked my path fifteen years ago by now, so at the very least, despair and detachment are rather far from me by now~. If I hadn't succumbed by now, it would be very anticlimactic if I did in the last part.

[ Break pauses and seems to consider something, but his smile turns a bit softer. He shrugs and still tries to dismiss sentiment with his weird, clownish gestures, but it's still clear that this is a serious topic all the same. ]

It doesn't really bother me if I don't consider my word trustworthy. I'm not a very trustworthy person~! But know that even the accusation that I'd consider something like changing the past is what makes me angry. It was never being accused for being the killer, since that evidence was fair enough. But I picked my path to fight, even in the face of the punishment I bear for that choice. I won't abandon it so easily.

[minogame]

( It isn't even that Break is sketchy as heck, though, because besides that huge blemish on his track record, Urashima would trust Break completely like the naive spirit he is. Honestly, as long as another time changing motive doesn't come up, he'll keep trusting Break too. Maybe not as much as Gilbert because Gilbert is a better turtle than Break but a friend of Gilbert's can't be a completely awful person. He thinks. )

Then you can be mad.

( Because he stands by his accusation still. Their decisions are influenced by their past experiences and more than anyone or anything here, Urashima can trust those. But there's something else that Break says that really catches his attention here.

Urashima is young by spirit standards and certainly he's naive and innocent but he isn't oblivious. Break is sick. He'd collapsed after the trial and really, Urashima had thought he was going to die. He's never been a war sword and he's never watched someone be killed but he's seen plenty of people die. )

But what do you mean by "the last part?"

[crazily]

Hmm~?

[ Break's tone is light and dismissive, which might be about what would be expected from Break. Even not knowing him very well or for long, it's likely clear enough that his clownish mannerisms are often used to dismiss troublesome things. Apparently this is no different. ]

And here I thought it must be obvious by now~. I really would have preferred to keep it a secret, but these things are stressful! That, and those after effects when our corresponding team mates get killed is very harsh on a poor constitution!

[ His tone stays just as flippant, but at least for the last part, he gets somewhat more serious. It's uncomfortable for him, but he still tries to hide that under his dismissive, flippant way of speaking. ]

I'm an old man, and my body is failing me. You're smart enough to figure out the rest.

[minogame]

( Was it really that obvious or did he just miss it out between all the actual dead, everyone else's death shocks, and the stress and grief people have been going through... )

... You're sick.

( He says instead because he doesn't really want to say dying. It's a trait he's picked up from other humans. You don't say dying and you don't say dead if you can help it. People are sick, they're ill, their "time" is running out, they "pass."

Urashima doesn't waste his time with questions like, "Are you okay?" Not after Sunday and not after seeing how seriously Gilbert treats this. Gilbert knows too? He must. He doesn't ask how long either because it isn't like they're close so instead he opts to ask, )

Will you be okay here?

( Here specifically where their days are numbered and he supposes Break's are doubly so. )

[crazily]

I am. But I have been for a very long time. It's my punishment, probably, since my Chain is incredibly useful, but I pay for it appropriately. The Mad Hatter is a Chain that exists only to destroy.

[ That part he had come to peace with long ago, because it felt fitting. Making a contract with the Mad Hatter was something that was never really done because of the high strain that it placed on the Contractor, but Break hadn't hesitated at all. In a way, it felt right to him. He could never call it atonement, but there was something he had always found fitting in how his Chain worked. However, that second question gets Break to pause for a bit longer.

If he had only been "kidnapped" to this a week or two earlier, it wouldn't have mattered. He was frail and had been for years, but his condition worsening was tied to using the Mad Hatter. It was predictable and calculated. Each time he brought his Chain forth, he knew it was eating away at his life. However... That last time he had summoned it, he knew it was different. The fight with the Baskervilles was intense, but not an impossible one, even blind. Yet he had felt exhaustion creeping into every bone and muscle of his body, and though he hadn't said anything before he had passed out, he had wondered if that would be his end.

So, now... He knows the next time would be the last. His poor health is something he goes through great lengths to hide, but he always feels it now. He's used to ignoring it, only allowing himself the time to actually show and bear that pain when he's alone, but still, it makes that question a hard one. The silence lingers a little longer than he would like, because in truth, the answer to that question scares him.

Yet, even so, he just smiles calmly. He answers the question on the surface, though he also avoids it in his discomfort. ]

I have no intention of dying just yet, don't worry~.