open //

[cambium]

Who: Keigo, et al.
What: gestures broadly
When: end of may
Where: gestures broadly again
Warnings: none yet

[ Keigo opens their eyes to find themselves standing in the mirror room, staring at their own tired reflection a large mirror — with a pounding headache and the last vestiges of vertigo before the world rights itself again. Thinking back, the last thing they remember is being warm and comfortable under the covers on a cool winter night, the taste of hot chocolate still on their lips, the sound of a movie still playing in the background growing more distant and the lights dimming as their consciousness fades. Their joints are stiff and their mouth dry, their wrist sore from the extra tally mark now etched into it.


...


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. ]

Comments

[cambium]

[ They laugh, hitting the rocks together again, preemptively apologizing to Amami in their head if he comes home late at night and hears weird clacking noises from underneath the covers. ]

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. ]

[starrypoint]

That's fine! Call it your welcome back gift if anything, though I guess most people wouldn't wanna be welcomed back here.

[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.]

[cambium]

It's not my diary, is it...

[ 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 ]

[starrypoint]

That depends, what's your diary look like?

[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.]

[cambium]

[ It looks like whatever I said their notebook looked like before, I can't remember, they were always writing in it and putting it away when customers entered their store. Nothing important, and they wonder if it even exists anymore without their little private writing place just for them. ]

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. ]

[starrypoint]

[how subaru wants their diary so bad he's so nosy about his own involvement in people's lives now........... but they won't give up the goat on it if they're coming up, so he scoots back to give them space among the various oddities he has up here, including a medium-sized shiba inu plush. it looks well-loved.]

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.]