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open //
Who: Keigo, et al.
What: gestures broadly
When: end of may
Where: gestures broadly again
Warnings: none yet
...
They spend a long time in that mirror room, sinking down onto the floor at rubbing at their wrist as they stare at the mirrors around them, gaze lingering on dense forest and wooden floorboards, flicking this way and that around halls of the school as if trying to find something— someone. It still feels like winter with how cold it is despite long sleeves and pants, breath fogging the glass even with them sitting an arm's length away, red ribbon loosened then removed from around their neck to replace the empty space around their left ankle.
Muddled memories aside, they're certain they've never been down here before, neither the mirror room nor any of these other rooms in the basement once they finally tear themselves away from the mirrors, letting out a terrified scream when something grabs at them when they try to leave and possibly shattering a mirror or four in the process of getting away, but if they don't turn around and look to confirm then it didn't happen and they don't get bad luck, they decided this rule just now.
Not even going to look inside the bloody summoning room, why is there a summoning room.
The hidden entrances and exits are still hidden to them, but hallways only have two ends: one looks like a shaft they're certain they don't have the upper body strength to climb up more than several meters without handholds, and the other leads out to the forest where they're going to walk out into and get hopelessly lost and eventually make their way back to campus maybe if they're lucky.
Then they'll be around wherever and whenever convenient. ]
What: gestures broadly
When: end of may
Where: gestures broadly again
Warnings: none yet
...
They spend a long time in that mirror room, sinking down onto the floor at rubbing at their wrist as they stare at the mirrors around them, gaze lingering on dense forest and wooden floorboards, flicking this way and that around halls of the school as if trying to find something— someone. It still feels like winter with how cold it is despite long sleeves and pants, breath fogging the glass even with them sitting an arm's length away, red ribbon loosened then removed from around their neck to replace the empty space around their left ankle.
Muddled memories aside, they're certain they've never been down here before, neither the mirror room nor any of these other rooms in the basement once they finally tear themselves away from the mirrors, letting out a terrified scream when something grabs at them when they try to leave and possibly shattering a mirror or four in the process of getting away, but if they don't turn around and look to confirm then it didn't happen and they don't get bad luck, they decided this rule just now.
Not even going to look inside the bloody summoning room, why is there a summoning room.
The hidden entrances and exits are still hidden to them, but hallways only have two ends: one looks like a shaft they're certain they don't have the upper body strength to climb up more than several meters without handholds, and the other leads out to the forest where they're going to walk out into and get hopelessly lost and eventually make their way back to campus maybe if they're lucky.
Then they'll be around wherever and whenever convenient. ]
no subject
Keigo takes Subaru by the shoulders and buries their face against his chest. ]
Are you sure they were real? [ Are you sure they weren't fake? How's a super cute and smart and amazing li'l shopkeep supposed to get their hands on billions of dollars worth of gemstones in the first place ]
Are the current shopkeeps cute and smart and amazing? You're not going to get swindled by them, are you?
no subject
[... oh but that's, that's a little much for a rock talk,]
A-Anyway, the current keepers aren't my type, so they won't be able to peddle things like that offa me. I haven't really bought anything for a while anyway. Do you wanna see my coolest set of rocks or not? I got 'em for free.
no subject
Okay. Impress me.
[ Rock peddler challenge, let's go. ]
no subject
subaru glances up at the brightness of the suncatchers, of the sun, and lets go of keigo entirely to grab his blanket off his bunk, throwing it over the other and then lifting to come inside himself. good enough, we sit we sit, get comfy.]
You see, I have here a prize fit only for the most careful of eyes -- ones that would know my rocks' worth, and those would be your own! Still a little light for the best effect, but s'okay.
[he can make do. it's been too hot to keep them in a jacket, but thankfully they're small enough it isn't too bad to still keep them at hand; from each pocket he produces a palm-sized, smoothed quartz, slightly scratched from wear but nonetheless, nonetheless important. subaru holds them up, flat against his hands, then out to keigo.]
Feel how smooth they are! Almost soft, y'know? But the coolest part, that I... I haven't shown anyone, [because amami doesn't seem to remember shit and that was the one person he had,] but it's got a neat trick to it. Do you know what it is, Keigo~?
[how much rock lore did they keep...... but it's also very much asked the way someone would to engage an audience regardless, asking for their best guess.]
no subject
What is it...?
[ Doesn't look like they recognize the rocks, or any special properties of them. Subaru's going to have to be the school's resident rock guy from now on. ]
no subject
and rather than be sad or frustrated that keigo doesn't know, subaru feels... warm, a softer smile wriggling onto his face as he cups his hands around the other's to put the rocks together. maybe it's because he can give back a sight that'd enamored him for ages to the person who showed him it in the first place, maybe it's something else. but he doesn't mind it, sharing memories like this.]
When you clack 'em together, you can make light. Just this sort, though, not all rocks do it.
[not that he's tried. anyway he'll let go again, clearly the go ahead for keigo to try it.
... it really would be more effective someplace much darker, but this'll do, this'll do.]
no subject
The first clack of rock against rock is soft— just the tiniest of flashes— but it's enough to make Keigo's eyes grow wide and hands come together to make the rocks strike against one another in earnest this time. ]
-—Subaru! Look, it's triboluminescent!!
no subject
he thinks of the two of them in the janitor's closet, how he'd peeked without meaning on the way to but not on the way back, the flashes of light dazzling him for nights after the day he learned their name. boss around others, keigo with just the two, the many names they had and the ones they chose to give out, the faces they chose to show. how maybe most of it was that shopkeeper mask they had then that day, but the very real want to connect to someone else all the same.
he thinks of how he showed the same to amami, two boys in a pool with the words i want to be friends with you suspended in the off-tasting water, how it felt important to share something he hadn't shown anyone else and how bitter the words taste in his mouth now. it's faded, that acridness, but he hasn't tried again -- amami doesn't seem to remember anything, from what he can tell, but part of him wonders if it won't just end up the same way.
they're just rocks. but it was nice seeing amami's face change at the wonder of triboluminescence, just like his own must've.]
Yup. ♪ I've aaaaalways kept 'em on me, and even in the darkest nights they've given me light. Just like your suncatchers!
[little bits of proof they were here, they existed, that no matter what happens or happened that fact couldn't be taken away. it's a little sappy though, he thinks of how "his" friends would laugh acting like this, talking like this, and scratches his cheek as he turns his face away and leans on his knee.]
Keep 'em. They're quartz, so they won't break too easy or anything like that.
no subject
Are you sure? I don't have anything cool to give you in return...
[ Not yet. They could make something— they're great at making things and maybe they'll make Subaru an eldrich horror deer thing after they find one with Noah later. ]
no subject
[f to amami. but he can deal ♡]
I dooooo gotta return something else to you though, Keigo~. Hope you'll forgive me for lookin' through it before you were done.
[that scrapbook... it's in his bunk, so he's escaping out of the blanket without another word to retrieve it. it's keigo's, so he has to return it. fuller than before, but still made up of things that were important to them.]
no subject
[ Because they were absolutely keeping one, if Subaru has their diary they're going to murder him, blankets pulled back over their shoulders like a cape and dragging on the floor as they follow, just in case they need something to smother Subaru ]
no subject
[because he wants to find it. up he goes... under his pillow... careful as can be, he's gonna hide the book behind his back until the other answers.]
no subject
None of your business.
[ They stick their tongue out at him, and Subaru can't pull the "tell me or I won't show you" card if Keigo climbs up there with him and tries to grab at the book themselves. ]
no subject
Mean~, don't grab at it! It's, uh, well... I mean, I've taken care of it, but maybe I've flipped through it too much.
[but he'll give them the thick book once stored in a cabinet surrounded by cascading green plants, edges rounded by someone's finger rubbing against them thoughtlessly. within it are two to three polaroid photos each, taped down with care and have spaces beside each for thoughts or drawings or anything at all, and it starts out with just parts of the school. these might be familiar, maybe, to keigo, as may the pictures of those and that which were important to them, perhaps...
... but there's still a thickness to the scrapbook, two to three photos stuck on each, doodles of shiba inu (Round) and flowers (simple, messy) and spirals and stars decorating the rest of the pages from there on, that show a similar pattern of the photos before. more pictures of those already taken, of the suncatchers in day and at night, a near-black with only the pale moon, so on and so forth. some creeper shots of keigo's dear sister chiaki, of their dear brother rokuro before he graduated, because there was no way subaru could have ever approached them after what had happened.
there's even a clearly printed out picture of keigo with a wide grin, thousands of new stars glittering behind them, the glean of futuristic metal only in memory now. it'd been one of the ones that subaru'd asked natsume to print out for him, along with some of saransk when they visited back down to earth -- the sights and sounds realistic but faded, a quiet yearning digging deeper each time subaru revisited simpler, happier moments where yogen and all its particulars were so, so far away.
... ... ...
but keigo's allowed to peruse it as they please, in the latter half has some notes here and there about the particulars of the day. nothing too important, but the smile subaru has is a little more subdued and painful.]