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

[irreversal]

Something on my mind, huh...

[ Reaching into her pocket, she pulls out her card. It's been crumpled by now, but remains legible all the same, as it tells of someone suturing their friend's corpse, allowing a student to take it over. ]

I guess when it comes to questionable ethics in science, you're not alone.

[poans]

[He looks at the card, crumpled in a way that he imagines reflects a certain state of Shoko's heart.]

. . . For what reason did you do it?

[irreversal]

[ Crumpled by way of Edamura, too, and his response to reading Shoko's card, but perhaps it's not wrong to think of it as a reflection of her own mangled feelings, too.

Even though her answer comes almost hoarsely. Exhausted. As if this reminder has placed her squarely back into the stress of that moment. ]

We were fighting the King of Curses named Sukuna. So we needed our strongest sorcerer, only he'd died fighting Sukuna, too. It was our contingency. A monster to fight another monster.

[ A beat, before she adds: ]

He was the white-haired guy you saw, that one night.

[ Her classmate. Her friend. ]

[poans]

Mm . . .

[The pale-haired boy who'd lost as Shoko had in their earlier years. While the exact details of the story elude him, Yi Sang can ill bring himself to repeat her words and call the man's remains monstrous, regardless of the horrific things done to them.]

Then . . . he might have been prepared for such an outcome. Is that not so?

[irreversal]

[ She nods. ]

I don't think he thought he would lose, but... we were prepared for it. I also—

[ She takes her cigarette out from between her lips, sighing smoke up into the air. ]

I thought he would win. But there's no changing the outcome now. We all did what we had to.

[poans]

[In the end, the King of Curses must have been defeated, else the world would not be in the stage of recovery.

How Shoko must have suffered. She likely continues to feel the ache of handling a friend's body in such a manner in addition to the weight of his death. When time momentarily stops for her here and there, do her hands that have touched both life and death appear stained?]

If you will allow me to inquire, what was his name?

[irreversal]

Gojo.

[ She'd always called him by his surname, as did most other people. But when they were young, he and Geto used to call each other by their given names, didn't they? Even their teacher... Perhaps she'd felt she'd drifted too far from him to ever call him by this name in their adulthood, but in the end, he was more than just 'Gojo,' who was the strongest sorcerer, wasn't he? There was still someone beneath the monster that was Gojo, bearer of the Six Eyes and Limitless. ]

...Satoru. That was his given name.

[poans]

[This Gojo was once a boy. He was someone's son and another's friend. He was Satoru, a person cherished by Shoko, however tall the walls between them had become.]

Irrespective of what transpired, he was a dear friend of yours. Let us not refer to what he left you and your companions as something monstrous, and instead remember him as Satoru, for such an essence is immutable.