yogen | harvest moon: yogen

WHO: Gardening Club
WHAT: Did you know the roof has gardening plots?
WHEN: Before bodies start dropping, September
WHERE: The roof!
WARNINGS: Hopefully not.

One meeting after school, Nene announces that with access to the school rooftop granted, there's been a delightful discovery: rooftop garden plots! The first time she leads them up there- careful as they cross through the fourth floor's right wing, because it feels wrong to pass through a graveyard so carelessly- it's to survey what needs doing- it's been left alone for a long time, after all, and she'd hate to find damage in it too late. Once everything is correctly examined, Nene puts together a list after consulting Lucifer a little, and announces that on the following Sunday this September, because I definitely didn't die from the sleepover and stuff last month, the club will work together to fix up the rooftop gardens and plant some fall vegetables that the shopkeeper helpfully provided seeds for. As a matter of fact, they even made a special request, and Nene will see it through.

Fall Seeds:

Onions (red, yellow), Garlic
Root Vegetables (beets, carrots, radishes, turnips)
Leafy Vegetables (spinach, lettuce (variety except iceberg, which i have a grudge against), cabbage)
Snow Peas, Snap Peas
Shopkeeper's Request: Mung Beans

It's time to get to work! (Thankfully, cold drinks are also prepared and hauled up, as well as plenty of rice balls and other snacks.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh, fish would be really good too! It's safer, too, I think.

( as a member of the cooking club, she's seen quite a few things in that fridge, and made a few requests of the teacher herself- the fish doesn't look like... uh. yeah. it's. it's clearly fish. no need for elaborating. )

Ohhh... you're right. We have nori, but it's not the same...

It's really not... [Well, he hasn't tried it much but.] Maybe we could get one of the students here to do it. Get the fresh stuff.

[Since they can "leave" the "school".]

There's the student store but...

[The feeling of having to look someone in the face after having bankrupted yourself buying rocks from them. Agony. It's bad enough just getting the occasional essential.]

... Spent all your merit points on the gacha, didn't you , Hiyori-san?

( despite the teasing tone, she's giggling though- but this is why she makes sure to save and track her points meticulously. )

The home ec teacher will bring in different ingredients if requested, it's just... that fridge.

( everything is wrapped safely, separated, there's no contamination possible. but. but. )

... When they do, I tend to move the stuff I asked for to the dorms instead.

[How did she know!?!?!?]

I don't know what you're talking about.

[He says, like a liar. Him? Noooo. Change of subject, quickly.]

...so that's where all that's been coming from.

[He knows food doesn't grow in fridges (turning into a horrific fuzz that'll permanently learn you to clean it aside) but he hadn't known who was putting things there beyond 'the others, probably'. Mystery solved... weird afterlife logistics aside.]

The home ec. teacher... Can't help but hope they've just been making it from nothing somehow.

[Because THAT FRIDGE he feels you Nene.]

( listen... she plays mobage too... there's a reason she has a strict allowance. but more importantly... )

Who knows...? Maybe there really is more to this place than what we're limited to, here. ... Maybe somewhere in the Far Shore, there's a farmer making spirit crops. It's a big world, and a bigger spirit world.

[It's strange to think, the idea that the school is just one part of a bigger land of the dead but... it makes sense, there's only so many petals that can fit on a tree. He has to wonder why he ended up specifically here, then. Was it just chance, or something else?]

Ahaha, that would suck, wouldn't it? You die, and then you're stuck doing the same thing you did when you were alive forever...

[He says this, while taking on a programming job just recently. Retail though... nope. That would be actual hell.]

I guess if there were parts you liked, and it's all those parts... if it were like this, maybe, I wouldn't mind.

[Honestly it says a lot that he's even making this kind of offhand remark; without fear of someone later trapping him in his own words.]

The Far Shore, huh...

( she almost says something about how having a boundary dedicating to farming might not be so bad, since that's a sign of something you likely love- or is closely associated with you. But Shijima-san hated drawing, actually- even if the sketchbook was her most treasured item, she didn't want to paint and draw and haunt the art room at all. so maybe shin's right. )

Ehehe, maybe since it's their boundary, it's the parts they like most.

... And, yes. That's how I know the afterlife. The Near Shore, where those with life are, and the Far Shore, the realm of spirits and supernatural beings. People with high spirit power or... or approaching the Far Shore... those are the ones who could see the supernatural, back home.

I was the latter.

...

[That... hurts, a painful pang, the kind Shin is discovering where you know a pain and both wish and don't wish that people know what it is like, where the relief of that shared knowing is soured equally by it. Everyone's dying, in a way, but that's different from knowing viscerally, and immediately, your time is numbered... He guesses they really don't share the same world.

She's telling him this for a reason. She wants him to know.]

...How long did you know?

[Not have, because it's easy to assume she's at the end of it. It's soft and quiet, his clumsy attempt at gentleness, at meeting this in the middle without tipping too far into the terrifying kind, the prying kind. He's sort of pushing away the part of his brain going 'so ask her what dry land is'. He glances down, hand returning to his scarf.]

S-sorry, you don't have to answer... it's not great, is it? Knowing that...

[Seeing the supernatural is kind of small compensation in his eyes.]

An hour. It- I learned while dealing with ghost stuff, and when that was done, laying on the floor in a bit of a daze. And then I woke up here. ... They all said I had about a year, if that, left...

( her voice wavers a bit, and she stares at her hands, clutching a watering can. she can see the water tremble within- is she shaking a little? ... all the fear and distress she hadn't allowed herself to feel, locked up in that tower like a princess, is finally catching up to her, it seems. )

I- I don't want to die here. If I have to, I don't want it to be here--

Nene...

[Oh no... he was trying not to do this, no. His hands hover in the air, unsure, before carefully taking the watering can and helping set it down with a strain somewhat incongruous to the mood, returning to that hovering, leaning over like a concerned tree.

What can he do? What can he even say, as someone who the fangs of fate really did close on in the end? What can he offer that would even help, because the things he tried didn't work, and it's one thing to say things will be fine and another to believe it... but then again he's a liar, isn't he?]

I-I... i-it'll be okay, we're trying to find a way out, aren't we? T-this isn't the only place here, like you said...

[So maybe there's a way out that way. And... he did manage to achieve at least one thing, at the very end of the wire.]

You won't die here, okay? I-i'll make sure of it.

[How, he doesn't know. There's so many things that can go wrong, so many dangerous things and people here, and him with... not much in his own corner. But she wants to stay alive too. That's something.]

I- I know. I'm sorry.

( if there's a bit of a sniffle as she tries to straighten back up, no there isn't. but this isn't what she wanted to think about- she hates those quiet moments of doubt and fear, worries about what the gap between escaping the painted world and waking up in this school entails. but once the far shore came up, she couldn't stop... )

I don't know what came over me. ... B-but you're right. We're gonna get out okay.

harvest moon: yogen

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