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]

Do I?

[ She's not sure that she does, actually. Because here Aventurine is, a man who has never truly been free- not from his past, nor his present - with an opportunity to emancipate himself with a wish. To do so in the company of, with the support of friends who have come to know who he is outside of his role and his fate. Of someone who has come to love him so wholly.

Why can't he see? That he's not alone. That they're here, too. ]

I guess I get it. But I also think it would be pretty idiotic to waste this opportunity. You'll never know what your freedom might be like if you never even try. You're not alone anymore, Aventurine. You're not the sole survivor, or whatever the hell your job title was. You're you. So let others help you, for once.

[gamboler]

[ ...You're you.

She makes it sound, once again, so simple, when he's spent so much of his life pretending to be something he isn't, wearing what he needs to be as protective armor to survive. To win his way to something that always escaped his grasp at the last moment. But here, he isn't just the last Avgin, he isn't one of the Ten Stonehearts. He'd felt guilty for that at first, like he'd been hiding that side of himself, but when she puts it like that...

He hasn't really been Aventurine, here. From the first moment, it had been different. A mini fresh start, like Maya had called it.

...Maybe his profile was onto something. ]

...Would that be a gamble worth taking? For you.

[ For her, for Nico, for anyone who's decided to care about him. ]

[irreversal]

[ High risk, high reward. He should understand as a gambler, shouldn't he? ]

For something that valuable, isn't it worth the risk?

[ If they play their cards right this weekend, then Aventurine will have been given an incredible chance at his own freedom - his own happiness. Why wouldn't it be worth the gamble? What's the alternative, anyway? For him to return to his old life, more miserable for what he tasted while he was here?

Yeah, no. She's not going to tell someone to go back to that kind of life. And she's not going to stand idly by and let it happen, either. Not again. ]

I'm sure as hell not going to tell you to go back to your old life, either. I don't think anyone here would let you, anyway, least of all Nico-san.

[gamboler]

[ In an alternate timeline, Nico wound up carrying him over his shoulder back to Vampire France when he tried to go home instead...

It's a little sad, perhaps, how even after Nico had given his invitation, Aventurine hadn't really pictured himself making that choice. If he couldn't get away from the IPC before, why would this time be any different? Even the various new factors at play hadn't been enough to convince him.

...But something else might. Something that comes from within, that has brought him so close to this group who were perfect strangers to him only a few weeks ago. For something that valuable, isn't it worth the risk?

It feels like a more dangerous gamble than he's ever made before...but he's nothing if not committed to his aesthetic. ]

Well, who can say what will happen when it's time to go home? If you all form a barrier around the door and I can't go through, then that will just be that, won't it? It'll be out of my hands.

[ Because...he doesn't need to do this all on his own anymore. ]

[irreversal]

[ She can't help but huff at that, amused, but also a little relieved that Aventurine - or whatever his real name was on his profile - relents at last. Shoko lifts her free hand to rub at her temples. Her stress levels.... ]

There's a bunch of you all that we need to form barriers for, I think.