aerodynamic | INBOX for purgastory

[ it kinda does because dead people live there... ]

Who's we? Did you guys find anything?

Soo-won, Lucien, and Mitsuba.

They started wrestling with corpses and it went downhill.

[ oh my god. his expression also seems to say "oh my god." ]

Were the corpses wrestling back. [ this is a sarcastic question but he seems to pause as if recalling something from his own exploration and it suddenly feels less like an impossibility. ]

They started it. [ ... ] I believe so, anyway.

[ his hand is starting to feel... slightly warmer... ]

[ go warm your hands with elysium... 🥺 ]

Back up for a second. What happened that the corpses needed to be wrestled with in the first place? What were you doing there?

[ i refuse to be yaoi ]

We were looking around. But I am not sure what Mitsuba and Lucien did to trigger the corpses. I was in a mausoleum.

You were... in a mausoleum? Don't tell me you got stuck there.

No. There was a coffin, and... someone I know was inside.

Some sort of illusion, of course.

Like the casket in the funeral parlor? [ he's getting really tired of this place using illusions to freak them out. ] ... be careful out there. I don't know if Elysium told you what we found out in the fog.

[ assumes that since thorns mentioned him once he and elysium are friends enough to share notes. ]

He did not. He is actually not that forthcoming with information, despite what he seems like.

[ that's the bestie... very rude. ]

Seriously? [ ohhh my godddd. ] Okay, well, there are monsters out in the fog that will stalk you and wait for you while wearing the skin and appearances of people you know before they attack. So... be aware of that.

... Sure. Why not.

[ why is this place so terrible. ]

Has it happened to you?

Me, Elysium, Tokinaga-san and Dahut. [ why does only tokinaga get the respectful honorific. ] We were looking around PECS to grab some supplies, but when I looked out at the fog I saw something following us. When we left... the thing had the face of someone I knew, the hair and tattoo of Dahut's boss, the stomach... face... thing of Tokinaga-san's neighbor, and the tail of Elysium's captain somehow.

Like some sort of chimera?

[ why is that description kind of horrifying. okay. ]

It didn't attack you, did it?

[ there's a nod. and he looks unimpressed by this. ]

Elysium and I killed it. [ so yes it attacked and yes he hates that. ] Right before it attacked us though, it said "finally." Like it had been waiting for a while, and maybe it was since it followed us and waited outside.

... I think the worst part, is that I can't tell if that's genuine or if it's just another way to get into our heads.

[ they hear so many weird things that it gets difficult to differentiate what might be real or just trying to get under their skins. ]

It's possible it's both, isn't it? Something that's real, but it manifests as what would bother us the most. We kinda thought about that, too. Like it was always there but then it only turned into a physical form when I made eye contact and it noticed we were there.

And I guess if it didn't look the way that it did, you all may not have been as incentivized to fight it.

[ there's an offense at seeing something steal the features of people you care for, otherwise you could just easily have run away. ]

Probably not. I mean it was sorta in our way so we couldn't leave anyway, but... I was definitely getting tired of this place using Saki-senpai's face to try and freak me out. She would've hated seeing herself like that, too.

I see...

She's a friend of yours, then?

Something like that. She mattered to me. [ knowing what he knows now, it's hard to call saki a friend mutually even if he would say yes. ] She was murdered last spring, we spent the last year trying to solve the case and catch the serial killer.

Ah.

[ yosuke is so young. ]

Did you?

[ somehow that's always the response that seems to get. but he nods slowly. ]

It took us months, but we stopped him from getting other people killed and beat him. He's been arrested and he's waiting for his hearing still.

... The system shouldn't have failed you for it to come down to you to figure it out.

[ thorns doesn't think the youth is incapable, considering his own upbringing, but having to solve your friend's murder at any age is rough. ]

[ this is probably the first time someone has actually phrased it that way, so there's a blink of surprise before his expression grows quieter. ]

At the time, with the nature of the crimes? We were the only ones who could. But it didn't help that the cops had someone among themselves working against them. [ ... that aside: ] This part of the maze seems to keep wanting to remind me of her. I don't know about the other three and how it might've changed things for them, but for all we know it went back to respawn in the fog for later.

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