#essia

tl;dr: Audrey will be on a hiatus until the end of May.

Text like this is me, @missphilipara, but it’s mostly notes. The normal writing is entirely Audrey or @pretty-rhythmm.

Hi guys!

I’m sorry I can’t be online cause I need to study and pull up my grades!

Our SATs are coming up soon and we have semester exams in maybe three weeks so

I will however try to write my chapters and then give them to Essia for posting.

Umm my name is actually not Essia (surprise right there) and even if it’s not my full name just call me Bella or something idk

Also I’m going to proofread the chapters slightly so sorry about that

To all you guys who might have PM me, I apologize if I can’t reply.

gah I hate spelling things with a z when I’m used to using s

Again if you wish to ask anything about the story, ask Essia. If you’re wondering how long I will be out, it’s until the end of May.

I’m also going to be leaving for the States after that for 2 weeks, hopefully I’ll have wifi there!

Are you kidding American WiFi is great it’s way better than the one here

Again I apologize for not being online. But thank you to those that have been supporting our story!

Essia

On Monday morning, the week after the dress incident, I can’t sleep. I’m in my favourite pyjamas, blue ones with the Ravenclaw crest embroidered where a chest pocket would be on polo shirts. They are my most comfortable ones, keeping me warm despite the bitter cold threatening to reach under my duvet. The wall clock reads one forty-five in the morning, and the sky is dark outside. My ceiling light is still bright, even now — I cannot sleep in the dark. I imagine things that should not exist lashing out, pulling me into their universe, a world of nightmares with no escape. Even with light, it terrifies me to crawl out from under the safety of my blanket.

I can’t shake the feeling that tonight something unpleasant will happen. There is an ominous presence in the air, as if the world itself is dreading something’ll happen. I can’t sleep because the suspense in the air is so horribly tangible that it’s almost solid with how thick it is.

I’m sent into a cold sweat, shaking admittedly a bit uncontrollably. I push my blanket off, shuddering as the first blast of air conditioner hits my arms. Tentatively, I sit up, slinging a leg off the bed. I get off the bed, almost running, trying to be quiet, trying to get to my PriPass, the closest thing I have to a phone.

I feel like a child, because I’m about to look up fanfiction for a bedtime story. If it helps me sleep, it will be worth it in the end. In the morning, I will not remember this feeling. I fumble for my PriPass under the table, mumbling anxiously, “Where is it?” I am eager to return to the safety of my bed as soon as possible.

At the sight of the silver object, I whisper a quiet “Victory!” and race back to my bed (against what?) and hide under my blanket. I pull out my PriPass, cold as the air in my room. I enter my password - leviOOOsa - and open the browser app.

I type in three words - ‘pjo drew/malcolm’ - and the browser begins searching. Just as the page loads, my phone emits the opening bars of my ringtone, Get Back To Hogwarts, and I wince at the broken silence. Who’s awake right now, anyway?

PhiliPara’s calling.

‘What on earth?’ I think, and I press the deny button. It’s most likely a mistake they made. PhiliPara isn’t even open right now. I resume browsing, finding a good-sounding story. A few minutes later, my PriPass rings again. I deny the call. Maybe a minute later, they call.

Third time can’t be a mistake, I think. I hesitantly press answer and a Meganee’s worried face appears. Her hair is perfect, her clothes are pressed. My appearance is quite the opposite, my face half hidden by a blanket. She’s frowning in concentration and she looks like she’s sweating.

“Essia?” she asks, “Essia! Oh thank—”

“Not so loud,” I hiss, “People are sleeping! Also, why are you calling now?”

“There’s an emergency,” Meganee says. She sounds so relieved, different from how stressed she was earlier.

“And how does that concern me? Is this about the glitches I experienced?” My voice is a little hoarse since I haven’t used it for about five hours.

“A bit,” she looks a tad bit uncomfortable, “But the information is highly confidential. Can you stop by PhiliPara tomorrow morning?”

“Why can’t you tell me now?” I demand, louder than I want to. It’s two in the morning, nobody’s awake, nobody will hear me!

“Confidential,” she repeats, her voice unwavering, “Can you come—”

I’m slightly delirious from lack of sleep, and I know what she’s asking. I don’t know what prompts me to be so rude, but I say “No,” firmly.

“You didn’t even know what I was going to say!”

“No, I’m not going to PhiliPara tomorrow morning.”

“It’s an emergency!” pleads Meganee. She sounds so worried now, but I remain stubborn.

“I’m sorry, no,” It comes out cold and aloof, like I really couldn’t care less. That’s the truth, really — I can’t care less.

I hang up the call, turning off the phone. I want to ignore the sinking feeling in my chest so, so much, but it stays.

And it is with this guilt that I finally fall asleep that night.

}|{

In the morning, I wake at ten. I’m happy to at least have gotten eight hours of sleep, and I barely remember what happened last night. I reach out for my PriPass on impulse, wanting to finish the story I was reading. When it turns on, I have seven missed calls and three texts. All from the same person — Audrey.

Audrey is one of my best friends. She cares for PhiliPara the most out of the six of us, and she’s a higher rank than I could ever hope to be. Audrey is one of the prettiest, too. She has light brown hair that falls a little past her shoulders. It’s styled in a sort of lazy hairdo in which uneven parts of her hair on opposite sides are tied in high ponytails. It suits her, I think. It does not suit me, at least.

Her eyes are the sort of eyes someone would write poetry about. They’re dark blue and mysterious, wide open in what seems like perpetual curiosity. Her eyes are the kind of eyes that seem to have no end, draining you, your soul, and everything in between. I say her eyes are dark blue — her eyes look like if you looked carefully enough, you could find a galaxy.

An anticlimactic description — Audrey is a Pop-type idol.

She’s a girl who chases after fun, very bubbly and easy to get along with. If you get close to her, you’re sucked into the tornado she is, and you always have to try to keep up. Audrey is a mystery to me, most of the time.

Audrey seemed to be having a bad day, based on her texts.

Two missed calls from Audrey

Audrey: ESSIA WAKE UP

Three missed calls from Audrey

Audrey: ESSIA PLEASE ANSWER

One missed call from Audrey

Audrey: ESSIA PLEASE

Audrey: ESSIA ITS AN EMERGENCY CALL ME WHEN YOU WAKE UP

One missed call from Audrey

I stare at my PriPass.

It’s an emergency. Those are the same words Meganee said to me at two am that morning, before I hung up on her. The sinking feeling returns, and it pulls me down with it, anchoring me to rock bottom.

No. It’s too much of a coincidence that these two statements are interrelated, no matter how similar they may be.

My finger hovers above the call button. I press it, and Audrey answers on the second ring. She is flushed and  she looks like she’s just run a marathon. I turn my camera off.

“Essia,” she says, “Essia. PhiliPara’s closed,”

“So?”

“Don’t so me. I got the call too,”

My blood feels like it’s freezing in my veins. I inhale sharply, and if she hears it, she doesn’t point it out. I steel my guts and lie coolly, “What call?”

“Stop playing dumb, Essia. Meganee called me too. PhiliPara’s in danger. She asked you to come now, it’s an emergency,”

“And what do I care if PhiliPara’s closed?” I reply. My voice quivers and I hope she doesn’t notice it.

Audrey winces, “Look, Essia. I’ll owe you. Big-time. Just please, come, like she said,”

“Audrey,” I say again, “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,”

It’s a lie, and she glares at me (her PriPass?) because she knows it is.

I look at the background surrounding her. She’s outside Prism Stone, the entrance to PhiliPara. The windows are dark and several confused little girls are whispering outside.

Meganee warned me, I think. I didn’t listen. The sinking feeling drags me lower than I’ve ever been, down into a dark grave I dug deep into for myself. There is no way out. PhiliPara is closed, and it’s partly my fault. I have nothing to do today; why not attempt to fix PhiliPara (and then accuse people of trusting me when I can’t get it done)? I like being right. I am a little bit narcissistic. I will do anything to prove I’m right. So I will go and prove that I can’t do it.

“I’m coming,” I reply, in a resigned tone of voice.

}|{

I dress in my oldest, softest sweater, with the famed scar-glasses logo in front, printed in silver on the purple fabric. I’m wearing scruffy sneakers and jeans with it, and my hair’s left loose because I don’t see the point in combing it.

I’m bringing the bag I bring every day with me, my PriTicket bag, my PriPass (and its charger), and a book I was reading. I figured that if they’ll make me wait (which they probably will) I may as well entertain myself while they did.

PhiliPara is a fair distance from my house, closer to Audrey’s, and she lives about maybe five blocks away from the back of my house. PhiliPara is about six. I’m partly annoyed by the fact that I have to go so far to help them, especially when I normally go on weekends — never mind that today is a holiday, Monday is not a weekend, thank you very much.

When I arrive there, Audrey is pacing nervously in front of the entrance. She looks a bit like a loner, I think, because there is no one there with her. The children have left. Audrey’s hair is tied up fully, messy parts dangling to the side. She is wearing a blue summer sweater with Bubbling Note embroidered on the front over pale blue denim shorts. Her sneakers are neatly laced up, and this fact makes me look guiltily at my left foot, where my hurried ties have come loose.

“’Sia,” Audrey greets, “I knew you’d show up,”

I quirk an eyebrow up, “Did you now?”

“See what I mean?” she gestures around her. The parasols on the cafe tables are neatly folded up, the chairs backwards, leaning on the table. A window has been tied shut with a glossy azure ribbon, its opposite tied with a pale pink one, frayed at the edges. PhiliPara is in disrepair.

At two in the morning, I wonder, was it like this too?

Audrey lifts her palm to knock at the door, one, two, three, and a male answers. He is wearing a dishevelled blue suit and looks about ready to scream at her. But when he sees it’s us, he calms down.

“Audrey,” he says, “We’ve been expecting you. Essia. Not so much. Meganee said you weren’t going?”

I scowl, “I can change my mind,”

Meganii nods, “Please, come in,”

We enter, and there is a hollow click of a lock behind us.

It’s dark is my first thought. It could’ve been abandoned for centuries and nobody would know the difference. The shops are closed, the semitransparent (but not quite translucent) shutters pulled over their displays. The entrance to PhiliPara, normally teeming with life, is something of a black hole. It’s intriguing — I want to get closer but I want to stay away.

“Question,” he says, “Do you want to go—”

“To Hogwarts?” I finish, “Of course!”

Meganii gives me a dirty look and I am mildly disturbed (less so than I should be), “On an adventure, I meant?”

I act slightly put out. I am not the adventurous type, that’s Aoshi.

“Yes!” Apparently Audrey too, it seems.

“Are you willing to save PriPara?” he continues. I note how he uses PriPara, not PhiliPara. As if it concerns the whole PriPara universe. Audrey is blind to this, I think. She is overwhelmed by the chance to be a hero, it seems.

“Of course!” Audrey exclaims. She looks like all her dreams have come true in that split second, in those six words.

I’m more of a coward, I think.

Meganii looks appreciatively at her, turning to me, “Essia, are you willing to save PriPara?”

Audrey has noticed.

“PriPara?” she questions. Nobody answers.

“No, I don’t think so,” I say, my voice steady except for a little crack at the end. Why am I such a coward? “Ask someone else, like Ausete or Aoshi or Imabo or Aaaaa. I don’t want to have a part in this,”

“Apologies, then, Miss Essia,” Meganii says smoothly, “You don’t have a choice.”

I am pushed into the PhiliPara portal, the black mass of seemingly nothingness, spiralling through time and space, eons of dust and galaxy forming. I don’t think I’m still on Earth.

“Essia!” Audrey shrieks, and I can hear it faintly, though we may be millions of light years apart, “Where is she? What did you do to her?”

Though I can’t see it anymore, I feel as if Meganii shrugs, before she jumps in of her own accord, and suddenly Audrey’s falling, falling next to me. If I had any sense and my acrophobia wasn’t acting up (I can hear Aoshi saying scornfully, “You’re scared of everything, aren’t you?), I would make a space pun about us being shooting stars.

But as it is, I can only think of Meganii’s last words to me: You don’t have a choice.

And as I’m plunging, down into what I can safely call “No man’s land,”, because I am certain no man has ever been here, I wonder about his statement, and I can confirm that if I was ever given a chance to respond, I would ask if I ever really had one.

I hit solid ground, and the impact shatters my vision and fades the whole world (galaxy?) into black.

Essia

On Saturday, at precisely three twenty-five in the afternoon, my hair turned bright blue. This would not have been so bad had I not been in the very centre of PhiliPara, in a streetside café. It was a particularly nauseating shade of blue, so bright and obnoxious that it forced passer-bys to look at it and stifle their giggles. It was blinding, but they couldn’t look away.

Aoshi and Aaaaa thought this farcical and told me I should let my hair down. I did in fact let my hair down, before flipping it and slapping them in the face with it. It would not have been important so much had the blue colour not been hair dye that had not fully set yet. As a result of this, Aaaaa had a blue stain on her cheek for the rest of the day.

My hair reverted to normal at six eighteen in the evening, just as I was about to leave. Apologies from the staff and promises it wouldn’t happen again were given to me, and I said okay, I believe you this time.

Oh how wrong I was to believe them.

On Thursday, just as I had let my guard down enough to enter PhiliPara again, I underwent my PhiliPara change like always.  When I entered the idol universe, my clothes resembled that of a Jane Austen novel — too much lace, more petticoats than I ever needed in my life, a corset that choked my ribs, and to top it off, an outrageously outdated hat, complete with an overlarge hot pink ostrich feather.

As you can probably guess, that was not my regular outfit. It was far too impractical to be my normal outfit, seeing as I kept tripping over the skirt every other second. Aoshi and Aaaaa were not with me that day, but Imabo was, and she was worse than a million Aoshis and Aaaaas. Imabo took photos.

And that, my friends, is how I decided I’d never go on stage again. I’d be forever remembered as the ancient stepmother from Disney’s Cinderella. I couldn’t dance or sing or idol anyway, so what was the point? I decided it’d be better to just stay on the sidelines and enjoy the best food PhiliPara had to offer. The staff apologised over and over, and said they’d try to fix it. I was almost sick of it.

I never got rid of that dress, so I manually changed into the standard training outfit (which I personally find disgusting, I mean, everybody wears it. You don’t know who wore the one you have on, because they’re for rental) because there was a costume mishap. They couldn’t find my idol outfit.

I made my decision there - I didn’t want to enter PhiliPara ever again. In my idol career I have had four glitches, which is four more than any normal idol experiences.

Maybe I’m just unlucky, I reasoned, but nobody can be that unlucky.

The truth was, the glitches I experienced were only the beginning. They were all part of something bigger, something I never expected to be a part of. Something that could potentially infect every PriPara computer, no matter how well hidden or protected, all over the world.

No. It was all part of a plan, a plot that could possibly go deeper than PriPara itself. Past its ancestor the Prism Shows. It could possibly destroy the whole world if the enemy played their pieces right. And they did. This plan had not been impulsive. No, this plot had been planned out for a long time now.

We were just pawns on a chessboard to the mastermind, who could outwit even me (shocking, right?). But what happens when pawns fight back? What happens if they don’t follow the rules? We were supposed to follow the rules. I don’t think we did. 

Check out hers here.

outside PriPara// Essia is socially awkward as heck. When she’s uncomfortable with someone, she’ll either stutter a lot, ignore them, or exaggerate talking to them to impress them. She likes very few people other than her family (so few I can count them on both hands and still have fingers to spare), but is generally pleasant to everyone, if not a little distant. One rule: Never, ever disturb her while she’s reading. She’ll threaten to whack you with her pan (but tbh she won’t actually do it, she’s too much of a goody-two-shoes), snap at you, sass you, or glare at you like do you mind sir I’m reading. She follows rules religiously (except the ones she deems unnecessary), sits properly, and keeps her posture immaculate. Essia is really polite, even when she’s mad.

inside PriPara// She’s outgoing. She’ll wave at people she doesn’t even know and skip around. She’s also polite, and a bit ladylike in terms of posture, but here she doesn’t care much for rules - “We’re inside a computer animation,” she argues - and when she’s mad (which is rarely) she gets dangerously calm. She doesn’t use things she sees no point in having - which is probably why she had no manager her first few months (she liked managing herself but she got too busy haha). She will abandon everything for black tea or hot chocolate (with whipped cream, marshmallows, both or none, she doesn’t care) or soya milk. Did I mention she’s vegetarian? Both inside and out? I don’t think I did lol anyway. She barely performs for lack of self-confidence and that she can’t dance haha but she’s really competitive. She tells people who annoy her to fight her (ex: “You want this seat? Fight me,” and that comes off quite intimidating but since I’m she’s a generous soul she’ll give that seat to them unless it’s someone she really doesn’t like wow this is a runon sentence D: 

She has no crush unless fictional characters count. Every woman for herself.

Essia likes logic and philosophy, which seems kinda boring, but it isn’t. So, so much. She loves to think. She walks around and thinks a lot, stopping dead in her tracks. This is why she can’t dance - she stops and thinks about the anatomy of the dance and the best possible way to do things.

In PhiliPara she’s thinking of loosening up her hair but for now it’s a side ponytail. It’s hazel. Her eyes are naturally amber and she wears glasses but inside PhiliPara they’re grey.

She wears her own brand (proudly Cosmo-free. she’s also a little bit hipster and embarrassed about it) called Moonlight Parade.

but if you want one i guess i can write one for you. i don’t really have much to do

~ intro part 1 (i said that bc there may be a part two. i’m not rly sure if ill continue) (idk who person at the end is feel free to volunteer *nobody volunteers* oh lol i expected that) (this looks like an rp starter)

The sky is gold in the first hours of morning. The sun is rising, and with it rises Parajuku. PriPara has been open the entire night, and it’ll be open even now. The people are on the verge of waking up or fast asleep.

A few streets away a girl sits up in bed. The brown bedsheets, artfully aged, fall away as she swings her legs over the side of the bed, stretching and yawning. As she gets up, the quilted comforter, stuffed with feathers, spills over the edge. Her pillows are fluffed and her tousled hair, loose, wavy, hazel, cascades down her back like a waterfall, stopping a way past her shoulders. She’s wearing a pajama shirt and bottoms, purple, decorated with tiny whales spouting sea water and various facial expressions (her favourite is the one that looks midway through horrifically angry and mildly confused).

Her eyes are the amber of the aged fossils, which is probably not the best description, but it is the most accurate. They’re dark and heavy from waking up so early, but they still (although noticeably less prominent than later in the day) dance with poorly disguised mischief. She has freckles, exactly twenty-one of them, but they aren’t very visible.

She walks into the restroom, and when she comes out, it’s with her hair dripping onto the wooden flooring and a toothbrush in between her teeth. She pulls on a navy sweater over black denim and well-worn sneakers, picks up her bookbag.

The girl glances at the clock. It’s six eighteen and it’s still ticking. She’s still alive. She has time, and time has value.

She scribbles a quick Mum I’m heading out on stationery, hastily putting it on the kitchen countertop, before pushing open the door. It locks as she slips out. She doesn’t want to be noticed, she really doesn’t. The girl pulls out a book and walks down the four-and-a-half blocks to Prism Stone.

She knows the roads, but she still looks up while crossing them. The sidewalks are a very different story - she reads while walking, making berths around people she sees. Prism Stone is just across the road, and she’s also near the end of the book. She decides that she will sit in one of the benches outside and finish it before entering.

She’s nearing the crossing when suddenly a person taps her on the shoulder, voice hoarse from the cold morning, and whispers-no, says-her name.