[They'd both been brittle from long hardship... their jagged edges had caught in each other and splintered like two sawblades touching.]
...
[There's a sea of ellipses, a silence of two minutes scrolling worth. Akari... it takes a while to place that as the school nurse's name. And Safalin, well, there's a reason he and Kanna had been in the infirmary for her to try and offer her machine to begin with; it was extremely easy to get scraped up in the Attractions, and no other recourse, which in Shin's bitter hindsight appears to have been the point. Not that he wasn't suspicious then, either, and that's carrying through to the now. But of the other options he knows... Elizabeth is gone, dead, and Clamor... well for one thing he'd have to leave the room.
Shin doesn't know how much medical knowledge Ranger has for sure although it doesn't sound like he's wrong to Shin's chagrin; there was already a scary point where his throat felt the size of a straw. He hadn't really touched Ranger's memories or stored data when working on him, focusing primarily on the base code; it... didn't feel great, the idea of snooping more than was necessary, in strange contrast to when he'd first gotten his hands on the chip. But even then he'd been focused on something particular.]
...Wait there.
[There's the sound of shuffling from behind the door, a couple flares of light from under it, and after a bit more time's worth of final contemplation, something rectangular and probably familiar slides out from under it.]
Here. You owe me after all, now don't you?
[Transaction... So he can call it or some of it in, and pretend that was his plan all along... with the clasped implication of no further help on being burnt. The screen currently shows a photo, of Shin's bare angled neck, cut off at the jawline at the top and the sallow skin around the hand shaped blotch, raw red scratches from clawing at said hand, and raised ring of old healed chafe-scars looking even worse from the lightsource being the phone's flash in a dark windowless room.
There's a pointedness on the last words, a rattlesnake's defensive tail. It's not unlocking the door and coming out or letting Ranger in, but if Ranger has access to Asunaro's everything on his life, and isn't that one of the many thoughts that continues to make him ill if he lingers on it, then he'll know that he's not giving even a faceless picture of himself lightly. If Ranger does look through the other photos he'll find pictures of the white cat and then, chronologically later, pictures of the school Shin used as reference when making his maps... plus more pictures of the white cat being particularly cute.
This is also the phone with Kanna's last message in the notes app. He knows Ranger didn't make it that far to knows it's there, but it has him tense and staring hard at the door, fingers curled. He wants it back already. He removes this from his voice before speaking. That'd just make it clear it's useable as a bargaining chip.]
no subject
...
[There's a sea of ellipses, a silence of two minutes scrolling worth. Akari... it takes a while to place that as the school nurse's name. And Safalin, well, there's a reason he and Kanna had been in the infirmary for her to try and offer her machine to begin with; it was extremely easy to get scraped up in the Attractions, and no other recourse, which in Shin's bitter hindsight appears to have been the point. Not that he wasn't suspicious then, either, and that's carrying through to the now. But of the other options he knows... Elizabeth is gone, dead, and Clamor... well for one thing he'd have to leave the room.
Shin doesn't know how much medical knowledge Ranger has for sure although it doesn't sound like he's wrong to Shin's chagrin; there was already a scary point where his throat felt the size of a straw. He hadn't really touched Ranger's memories or stored data when working on him, focusing primarily on the base code; it... didn't feel great, the idea of snooping more than was necessary, in strange contrast to when he'd first gotten his hands on the chip. But even then he'd been focused on something particular.]
...Wait there.
[There's the sound of shuffling from behind the door, a couple flares of light from under it, and after a bit more time's worth of final contemplation, something rectangular and probably familiar slides out from under it.]
Here. You owe me after all, now don't you?
[Transaction... So he can call it or some of it in, and pretend that was his plan all along... with the clasped implication of no further help on being burnt. The screen currently shows a photo, of Shin's bare angled neck, cut off at the jawline at the top and the sallow skin around the hand shaped blotch, raw red scratches from clawing at said hand, and raised ring of old healed chafe-scars looking even worse from the lightsource being the phone's flash in a dark windowless room.
There's a pointedness on the last words, a rattlesnake's defensive tail. It's not unlocking the door and coming out or letting Ranger in, but if Ranger has access to Asunaro's everything on his life, and isn't that one of the many thoughts that continues to make him ill if he lingers on it, then he'll know that he's not giving even a faceless picture of himself lightly. If Ranger does look through the other photos he'll find pictures of the white cat and then, chronologically later, pictures of the school Shin used as reference when making his maps... plus more pictures of the white cat being particularly cute.
This is also the phone with Kanna's last message in the notes app. He knows Ranger didn't make it that far to knows it's there, but it has him tense and staring hard at the door, fingers curled. He wants it back already. He removes this from his voice before speaking. That'd just make it clear it's useable as a bargaining chip.]
Well, what's your verdict, doctor Ranger?