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]

[ She hadn't quite expected Rom to tell her to be a little more selfish and take care of herself. She can't help but be blindsided by it in the best way, to hear it coming from the man she'd seen nearly succumb to the heat time and time again and who hasn't seemed all that relaxed over their time here in the least - until this week, perhaps, but still.

At length, a laugh just bubbles up out of her. ]

...You know, if they watch this, I imagine they'll probably nod and yell along in agreement with you, actually.

[ Is he wearing his hat? If so, she'll be leaning and reaching over to tug it over his face a bit. If not, well, she's ruffling his hair instead. ]

You're a good guy, Rom. No matter what anyone might have said or how they might have treated you. You're strong for having endured all that and still wanting to do the right thing, too.

[phenomerom]

[ deletes rom's hat from existence for this scene so that he can get a hair ruffle 🥺

Rom just blinks when he sees that hand reaching over, and even leans in a little to make Shoko's job easier -- mostly expecting a shove to the face like Edamura seems to favor, only to receive a pleasant surprise instead. He gives a very soft, very deadpan 'ah' under his breath when he feels fingers scuffing through his hair, and straightens up with another owlish blink only after she's done.

It's just a little softer, a little more sincere than usual when he smiles. ]

I'm glad, then. That you're in good company. I hope you'll take their words to heart.

[ He doesn't bother fixing his hair, letting errant strands stick out in weird directions from the ruffling as he toys with the handle of his cup. ]

... and thank you. Though I'm just doing my job. It's just that I've been following my mentor's teachings -- I'll be sure to pass your words along to her.

[irreversal]

[ She gives him another solid pat on the head to punctuate the hair ruffling before drawing her hand away from him.

His mentor, huh... ]

Your mentor, huh? She must have meant a lot to you. [ She can relate, somewhat. ] Maybe she even felt like more of a parent to you than your actual folks...

[ She'd figured that one card was his... ]

[phenomerom]

[ ... yeah. He imagines most people would have been able to guess that one was his. Rom only gives one of his usual wide-eyed blinks before smiling. ]

She was the one who raised me. I was quite young when my parents ... [ abandoned me ] hit their limits. I don't have very many memories of them.

[irreversal]

You don't need to hold onto memories of people like that.

[ She says it plainly, in that level tone she always gives. With the implicit understanding of someone who's seen this kind of scenario before. In fact, when she thinks of her own schoolmates and the current students... It's actually tragic, how so few of them have functional relationships with their families. For many of them, it's their teachers who fill that void, much like Rom's mentor seems to have. ]

People are always afraid of what they can't understand. It's human nature, but they don't even realize they curse they make of themselves when they do something like that.

[ abandoning their child... awful. ]

[phenomerom]

[ There's something kind of comforting about that -- the fact that Shoko immediately understands what happened. It's a grim reality, of course, but there's a bleak solidarity to be found in the fact that he doesn't need to explain why he was abandoned.

Rom breathes a soft exhale before taking a sip of his coffee. ]

Of course. I'm sure it was terrifying for my parents. They were normal people -- all they knew was that their son kept talking about horrible monsters. I don't particularly blame them, at this point.

[ A pause before he gives a wan laugh. ]

-- ah, though they really should have given me up to an orphanage properly. They just left me in some apartment and told me to stay there. I probably would have died if Towako-san hadn't saved me, haha!

[irreversal]

[ ...Yeah. This hits close to home. Shoko gives a wan laugh of her own, shaking her head. ]

You really could have ended up at Jujutsu High with me, huh... You would have fit right in.