#ae-jung

There were few better ways to soothe the mind than with a nice, rousing strategy game.

Time felt as though it could never close the moments she wished would just end. Every living second was dripping with paranoia, overcome by this neverending concern that at any second one of them could drop like a fly. While she herself knew that the odds of raising a finger in malevolent intent against one of her classmates was slim in her case, how could she guarantee that all nineteen others would steadfastly refuse to harm anyone?

Every nerve in her body was on edge, overly reactive to any sensation that she happened to come across. She was even more overwrought with anxiety than usual, and that was a dreadful sort of accomplishment on its own.

So, with her mind operating as it did, her first solution was to throw herself down onto a couch in the living room of the Bates Motel, her tablet in hand, and flick open to Fire Emblem: Heroes.

Thankfully, despite everything, she could still get a solid connection! She figured it had something to do with the fact that there was no way to communicate in the game-- thus, preventing her from lingering around with some semblance of hope that she could contact that outside world.

Everything seemed to be in place-- her main team was still set to go (Julia, Effie, Olivia, and Sakura-- her girls!), and all of her orbs were still in place, so she didn't feel completely beyond hope. As long as she had something to keep her brain active, she was set to go.

However, her soothed nature was an exercise in brevity as she heard footsteps sound behind her.

"Hm?"

The gamer glanced back to find a vaguely familiar individual standing not far behind her, eyeing her with a certain degree of...confusion. Black hair, blue eyes, and that trademark turtleneck--

This had to be Itachi Noda, right?

"Anyeoung," she chirped, managing a brief little wave to the escape artist, trying to keep the building nervousness in her heart at bay. If she recalled correctly, Itachi had been the one who had broken into a yelling spree with the vocalist the day before...

Ae-jung was not one for yelling. She supposed, as long as she didn't say anything that upset him, she'd be okay.

Kazuhisa may not look like it, but he is an early bird. Waking up at six in the morning everyday, it is natural for him to wake up at the same time without an alarm here. But why do he has to wake up early? It was none other than his morning routine: morning jog. Usually, he would be jogging around the academy, but since it was his first morning here, he had no other choice.  After jogging for around half an hour, he went back to his room to take a shower. Upon drying up, he strided to the restaurant, with a rumbling stomach. When he entered the restaurant, it was empty. Well, it was early in the morning. Perhaps everyone was sleeping soundly due to occasions that happened yesterday. It’s not a dream, huh? When he was reminiscing those events, the door opened suddenly. He turned his head to see who it was. Of course, it was one of his classmates. But this one… he has never talk to her before. That didn’t stop him from greeting her, though.

Caffeine was the lifeblood of any gamer like her.

It was a familiar basis-- few individuals on this earth achieved the beautiful ideal of adequate sleep. Many made their endeavors to accomplish anywhere from eight or more hours of delightfully thoughtless slumber, but it was a quest very few could complete, and fewer still reaped the rewards of such an objective.

So, it was no surprise that an unrelenting lethargy overwhelmed her throughout the day and met no pretty resolution. Fatigue was a status effect that no item could perfectly remove, no matter how much anyone wished it. While it certainly beat anything like a Doom or Charmed effect, it was still the prime opposition of satisfactory, and was particularly frustrating when there were other objectives to be completed.

So it was no wonder that Ae-jung automatically praised the devisor of caffeine-- a legendary item that could temporarily quell the nightmare that was Fatigue.

The second the competitive gamer realized that there was, in fact, a coffee shop here, her feet had moved faster in that direction than humanly possible. She'd spent amplitudes of time trying to conclude why she and her fellow classmates ended up here, not to mention how. But she knew that standing around and interrogating her future Social Links was futile-- the setting was solid, and the plot was soon to follow. All she had to do was wait, so what was the crime in exploring a little bit?

Channeling her inner Lara Croft, Ae-jung approached the coffee shop with her bag brandished as a temporary weapon...just in case. Uncertain circumstances were prime for attack from any predatory enemies, and the competitive gamer was prepared to display that she was no beast's prey. Although it was a rather...arbitrary suspicion, the strangest things had saved her in the past.

She didn't want to take unnecessary risks.

Ae-jung sauntered into the coffee shop, eyeing her surroundings with a circumspect eye, her hands tight around the strap of her messenger's bag. She was wholly prepared for anything--

A cold hand landed on her shoulder.

...except that.

  "Heok-!"

Ae-jung threw her arms up in front of her, constructing a temporary blockade as she backed away from her sudden company, expression wrought with fear. Her breathing was brisk and heavy, and her entire being bristled defensively-- until her eyes landed on the person who'd taken her by the shoulder.

A fairly nonthreatening individual stood before her-- lavender hair pouring over one side of their face, with sharp features and a towering build. They seemed...surprised at her outburst, and guilt welled up inside her. She hadn't want to freak anyone out, especially someone she just met.

  "Joesonghada," Ae-jung said, bowing respectfully to the new person. "I overreacted, I just...wasn't expecting you."

She managed a brief, sheepish smile at the much taller person, trying to clear the air.

“Ex-fucking-cuse me?”

The syllables were laced with venom, spat out into the open air like a particularly disgusting taste left to linger on the tongue. All of the resigned sadness that had burned in Ae-jung’s face was gone, replaced instead by a strong, implacable sense of not-so-tranquil fury.

She fixed Pietro with a look that might have killed him had she the capacity to will it so, her fingers tightly grasping the rim of her podium, white-knuckled and enraged. And yet she remained still, frozen as the words floated out into the atmosphere, the truth observationally scrawled in the margins of that goddamned stupid-ass file.

She wanted to scream.

She wanted to fall to pieces,

She wanted to slam down on the reset button and will it all away, to go straight back to chapter one and not have to face the truth. She wanted to delete every save file in the book until all she had were blank slates and more blank slates.

But she couldn’t find the delete slide.

“I…wha…”

It was all so whispered, the confusion whirling in her countenance and her voice quiet, as if she didn’t believe this was real. Her death grip on the podium lightened, some of the color rushing back into her knuckles, but her expression was frozen with shock.

And then she whirled around to Sekai, more furious than she’d ever been before.

“Would you like to explain this shit to me? Wanna maybe explain why that fucking lunatic is listed as an interest?!”

She looked about ready to claw someone’s throat out, and it was just fortunate enough that she didn’t have a gun because she probably would have taken the shot somewhere.

TW: referenced abuse and sexual harassment

“So this is the part where I say that the numbers don’t matter– where I cackle like a maniac and say that I don’t regret a thing.”

Her tone was low and sorrowful, almost unfitting for the words leaving her lips. Her eyes lingered on the floor, unable to meet those of her friends competitors in the game of death she’d played a role in devising. She didn’t want to face a single one of the survivors– she couldn’t anymore. How did a murderer face her attempted victims?

“But this isn’t a fucking video game, and I’m not some one-dimensional disc-one final boss.”

Ae-jung adopted the venom of a snake, every little nerve within her suddenly roaring to life. Her countenance was grim and full of hatred, but for whom was uncertain.

She wanted to scream, to claw away at all of the monsters inside her that kept on saying that this had been a good idea, that lighting the whole world ablaze and letting it rise like a phoenix from the ashes was something she could live with even if she held the matches. Her heart pounded, raging within its cage of bones because it wanted out, wanted out wanted out wanted out–

She couldn’t even breathe over the intensity of her own panic. Anger bristled and blossomed within her veins, her entire being alive with a strong and unruly hate.

“Do you have any idea how many times I ask myself that question? How I can’t even look in the goddamn mirror anymore because of how sick my own reflection makes me?”

“Of course I think about it all. But I just keep telling myself that it’s going to be worth it– that I’m erasing everything wrong with humanity and how it puts kids like us on goddamn pedestals and breaks us down with camera flashes and expectations. I hate how extreme it is but I have to keep believing that somehow it’s going to pay off and that I can make a better world out of this– this mess–”

She inhaled sharply, burying her face in her hands and taking a moment to sob. Her entire body trembled with the weight of her own heartbreak, guilt tearing her apart underneath it all.

A moment later, she lifted her head back up, sniffling slightly and tearstains still lingering on her cheeks. Her voice was still shaking.

“I was fifteen– fifteen – when my sponsors started expecting more out of me. They looked at this international champion in all kinds of games and said ’needs more sex appeal.’ They wanted me to dehumanize myself and act like this cutesy, perfect little dating sim character so I could get more views and donations.”

“Do you know how it feels? To get all kinds of messages about things someone your age shouldn’t hear? To be sexualized when you’re still technically a kid? It’s humiliating, it’s– it’s wrong. I wanted to be recognized for my gaming and for being strong, n-not that–”

“But I couldn’t refuse or else they’d take away my sponsorships. I had the choice between my mother or myself.”

“That’s what the entertainment industry does to you– and that’s why I wanted to destroy it and build it from the ground up. No more disrespect or gross expectations or ignoring the health of their stars in favor of views and money. No more making you sacrifice your dignity and ignoring your cries for help. No more expectations that make you feel so unclean that a shower can’t even help, no more brushing your mental and emotional problems under the rug, no more people like Jae-Sun Lee preying on your insecurities.”

“That’s why. That’s why I did all this. I don’t feel good about it and I don’t know how I’ll live with myself, but I refuse to let a world where the things that happened to me happen to more and more people go on.”

In the same flicker of a second where her heartache bled through, Ae-jung immediately stiffened all over again– the cryptic smile making a shining resurgence, that same oddly gleeful gleam manifesting in her downcast eyes. She offered a shrug and an empty chuckle, waiting for the situation’s tension and anxiety to fully set in–

and then she was facing down the point of an arrow aimed by someone she’d grown to appreciate, one of the people she had prayed from the beginning would last to the end, and she couldn’t hide the shocked sorrow that overwhelmed her features.

“…”

But then it was gone.

“Go ahead and take the shot, dangshin– makes my job a whole lot easier. I’m not afraid of you and I don’t have to be. Keep in mind you’re aiming at a dead girl walking as is.”

She planted her hands on her hips in some falsified display of confidence. Her entire aura seemed uneasy and scripted– like she was an actress delivering the most unconvincing monologue of her entire life. The tremble of her arms as she shifted positioning, the twitch of her eyes as she conjured up sardonic joy, the blinking that indicated she was fighting back against her own emotions–

it all made for one pathetic and underwhelming performance. ‘Twas kind of ironic, wouldn’t you think?

Even so, it didn’t stop her from trying.

“Oh, Pietro– forgive the lack of an honorific, but I’m sure you understand– maybe I’m tired of fighting back. I’ve been keeping this in for longer than I anticipated and I’m tired of keeping my mouth shut.”

“I think I’m…just tired.”

She lifted a hand to twist a stray spiral of auburn hair around her finger, one arm secure beneath her chest– as if she was holding onto herself, anchoring herself to reality.

“Look. I owe you all an explanation, and the least I can do is give it. Still, Cheshire-ssi, if you wanna go ahead and snipe me at any point, go for it. I’ll even refrain from making jokes about you being a Hanzo main.”

She sighed, loudly.

For what felt like such a fleeting moment, the whole world seemed to go blank.

The ground beneath her feet disintegrated, little fragments of color and life floating away into a milky void, leaving her standing alone and motionless. The entire world, every little thing she took for granted and always trusted to be there, to exist as solidly as her own body, seemed to shatter like a fist against a mirror. Crevices spiderwebbed their way across the entire universe and everything started spinning, spinning, spinning out of control--

"I'm sorry, what?"

Ae-jung's countenance, formerly domineered by the loneliness she'd adopted in the wake of their circumstances, bloomed suddenly into an unabashed smile. Her brows furrowed upward, this undeniable flare of amusement commanding her features.

"Are you accusing me of what I think you're accusing me of, Pietro-ssi? Because that's pretty fucking funny. You wanna know why?"

"Because you're right."

A newfound frigidity blistered through Ae-jung's entire aura, her shoulders falling slack and her lips curling into some mockery of a smile. Whiteness overlaid the peach tone of her knuckles as she gripped her podium, pink eyes going wide, foreshadowed tears stinging the edges of her eyelids. The silence of the room was only fleeting, frequently infested by the shallowness of her breathing.

Every little bit of joy in her face was so evidently feigned, her surge of confidence stolen. Even though she smiled,

the air was nonexistent, replaced by an implacable toxicity that wrapped around every face angled toward her

even though her every motion suggested remorselessness,

the world was in uneven fragments at her feet, layers of colors broken beneath her pink-veiled toes

even though she seemed like a video game villain straight from the files,

their eyes were unyielding and unblinking, fixated on her with expectations, expectations, expectations--

it was all too unconvincing.

"..."

The machine is glad to have you back here. You throw your coins and it spills its almight contents on you!Clang!

[Boohbah] A fuzzy, furry, gumdrop shaped creature. Its fur sparkles and shimmers with tiny lights, and its head is hairless with big eyes and a row of lights for eyebrows. When squeezed, it makes a horrible squealing sound.