[Anything that can get someone to just... throw away their life is incomprehensible and terrifying, to Shin. The idea of Kanna being voted for and dying... was incomprehensible and terrifying.]
It's not like I knew it was possible at the start. Ahaha, she was ever so careful to never outright lie, too... like that even matters.
[It's a tactic he knows well: Huh? I never said anything like that, Shin. It's rude to just assume things, you know. Why did he fall for it again?]
'Nothing happened to Kanna'... [His voice twists into exaggerated mimicry, and he has to cough again.] Of course it didn't.
[It's a shared heavy bitterness, acrid like tar on the tongue, in the air between them like miasma. And yet something in him unclenches, just a little, in strange relief, the way something long dried and desiccated uncurls when a drop of water lands on it, or a muscle you didn't realize was cramped unlocks. Ranger gets it; more than gets it, feels the same way, and Shin can have a few guesses as to why. Shin shies away from trusting the feeling, but that doesn't mean it doesn't linger.
...Can Ranger even throw up? Well, if he can eat, maybe. Shin laces fingers in his hair, beanieless, snarled in the strands.]
...you get it, then. Why I may not have been exactly calm at the time... but this was more than disproportionate. She just attacked me...
[From the local tit-for-tat expert. It had just come out of nowhere... once second cutting the conversation to a close, the next being flung into the snow, like he'd just lost cutscene protection.]
no subject
It's not like I knew it was possible at the start. Ahaha, she was ever so careful to never outright lie, too... like that even matters.
[It's a tactic he knows well: Huh? I never said anything like that, Shin. It's rude to just assume things, you know. Why did he fall for it again?]
'Nothing happened to Kanna'... [His voice twists into exaggerated mimicry, and he has to cough again.] Of course it didn't.
[It's a shared heavy bitterness, acrid like tar on the tongue, in the air between them like miasma. And yet something in him unclenches, just a little, in strange relief, the way something long dried and desiccated uncurls when a drop of water lands on it, or a muscle you didn't realize was cramped unlocks. Ranger gets it; more than gets it, feels the same way, and Shin can have a few guesses as to why. Shin shies away from trusting the feeling, but that doesn't mean it doesn't linger.
...Can Ranger even throw up? Well, if he can eat, maybe. Shin laces fingers in his hair, beanieless, snarled in the strands.]
...you get it, then. Why I may not have been exactly calm at the time... but this was more than disproportionate. She just attacked me...
[From the local tit-for-tat expert. It had just come out of nowhere... once second cutting the conversation to a close, the next being flung into the snow, like he'd just lost cutscene protection.]