week four | mingle

[marriagebroker]

Final week at the estate! Final week with your friends. Final week with your beaus. Time to make the most of it, everyone!

In fact, to celebrate this fact, today there is a cake. It's nothing special, just a nice little cake to enjoy with your morning coffee or throughout the day. Yay, cake!

And when Wei Wuxian arrives that morning, he is going to call out once again for everyone to join him, near the cake.

"Everyone, I have another announcement!"

Hell yeah, announcements.

Boom Boom Room | Dates | Property Damage
Truth Booth Voting | Match Ceremony Voting

Comments

[beatmatching]

[ fistbumps serpilia

okay no he doesnt but he does in spirit. ]

I have the most exclusions along with you, too.

[embellwish]

That's true. It would narrow things down even more. But you also seem pretty confident it's you and Yi Sang...

[ so.... maybe luka doesn't need the hint???? ]

Do you want the hint?

[beatmatching]

I wouldn't say I want it.

[ that's too lofty an ask and he doesn't feel that strongly about it. ]

If my match is male, I'm pretty confident it's Yi Sang. But if it's not, then I could see Shoko too.

Realistically, we should be trying to figure out the last male-female pair.

[embellwish]

In that case, knowing something about Serpilia's match might be the most helpful...

[ who knows what the hint might be, though! it could reveal gender, but it could also reveal something arbitrary about them. ]

I wouldn't say we're lucky we have the most exclusions, but we really benefited from going first. Now that we're at the end.

[ Otherwise, they might've wasted time theorizing about their potential match up. ]

[beatmatching]

[ luka nods with a small hum. he doesn't regret going into the booth first at all. ]

Do you really think your match is Poppy?

[embellwish]

[ At that, she hums. ]

I think we have a chance. She's hardworking and really wants to help me, [ Which is very sweet. And comforting, because her solutions feel much more tangible and hopeful. ] And I think I can make her feel more confident.

Although... Yi Sang and Odile, and Edamura and Rom, seem to know each other better.

[beatmatching]

So? Outside of the week one lights, I don't think "closeness" might matter at all.

[ honestly he kind of doubts Makoto and Rom because it seems too convenient, in the same way where he didn't think him and maya were matched. but he has no desire to fall on that sword right now. ]

[embellwish]

I mean more that they might have more insight on whether they really are a match.

[ Yingying likes Poppy a lot; she's adorable and fun to tease, earnest about her work, and clearly has a genuine good will. But she can't lie and say she knows her as well she knows, say, Luka, for example. ]

[beatmatching]

I don't think Yi Sang and Odile are a match and I told him as such. But he picked her anyway out of courtesy.

[ he's a little bitter about it, oops. ]

[embellwish]

Out of courtesy?

[ She blinks, wanting him to elaborate more, since he seems to habe some Feelings about it. ]

[beatmatching]

Feelings, emotions, whatever you want to call it.

[ he is one to talk! he also is however, one to Play the Game at all costs. even if this to some degree, does involve his own emotions too. ]

[embellwish]

Did you feel betrayed, then, when he didn't pick you?

[ Yes, he must have told him all this for the logical sake of the game. But, it seems there were feelings of a kind involved too — even if those feelings were simply having a kinship with someone, however strained. ]

[beatmatching]

Yingying, do you think that we see each other? Not all of ourselves [ an impossible ask in four weeks, no matter who you are ] but more than most.

[embellwish]

...Mm, I see you.

[ She can't speak for him, but she can lay out the vision of him that she has. Candidly: ]

The real you isn't very much like your image at all, [ That's what being in his position necessitates, right? She could understand that, saddled with the weight of everyone's prayers and hopes for their Fairy. There's a level of distance erected between the self and others. ] There are probably few who see that.

[ To the eyes of the others, on the surface level, he really must be the perfect idol, charming and put together, prepared and in control. But in her own eyes... there's something boyish about him, assertive and forceful in some matters, but also innocent and naive in others. ]

[beatmatching]

Yi Sang and I aren't close [ they won't ever be close and if there was a universe where it happened it would have been an exceptionally turbulent one. ] but I didn't think we needed to be to see the shape of each other.

That's all. [ simplified, overly so.

the betrayal if you would call it that is that being everything that he is, luka rarely speaks as all of him. his talk with yi sang had been an earnest attempt at that, and the result is as she knows.

who he is isn't pretty, isn't kind, and so many other things that she can see, so many other things that he's told maya. but it is who he is and luka knows at his core, how far that sets him apart from everyone else. ]

[embellwish]

[ It was a rejection of sorts, then. Not the romantic kind, but a rejection of his very self that he'd chosen to bare. Of course it would sting his pride. Yingying is the empathetic type, and can understand, intimately, why such an unfolding of events might make him feel even more alone.

Because he is — that's the crux of the matter, that she doesn't think a lot of people are aware of. His boyishness, his naivete, the way he talks about his fans and career, yet never anything about himself... it all points to someone who is alone on every level, and perhaps always has been.

Yingying hums, the sound melodic and soft. ]

It's painful, right? Not being heard very well. [ In a different sense, Yi Sang had failed to listen and understand her, too, though she imagines the pain she felt from it to be much more trivial than his. She lays out the feeling candidly, wondering if despite the sense of security he's projecting now, if he even understands that part of what he's feeling right now is hurt. Reaching out, she brushes her knuckles against his cheek affectionately, her fingers cool. ] I suppose not everyone can be so clever as me and Maya.

[beatmatching]

[ he doesn't answer because she's right, it is a type of hurt. one he's reticent to call as such and one he doesn't fully recognize as such either. but he does lean into her touch, closing his eyes with a slight smile. ]

They can't even begin to compare. But that just makes you both even more special.