The Exposition Dragon

THE PERSON HER HONOR NEEDS PROTECTING FROM IS YOU

After plundering her embarrassing secrets against her repeated verbal wishes and completely humiliating her, you actually think you're doing her a favor by not publicly shaming her too?

"They" here defined as your mom in secret when her bosses weren't watching.

I doubt it was. Your mom was testing on you as a last resort, but if it had actually worked, I doubt she would have eagerly gone, "Check it out! I made a super-soldier. Alright, let's ship my daughter off to die!"

More likely, you would have been the prototype. A proof-of-concept that she's perfected the procedure before other super-soldiers were created in your place to go fight in the war.

That you're standing here now is a product of the extra choices she never intended for you to make that came about in response to her death. She gave you these abilities but you were the one who brought those abilities here, and I wish you could see that part of yourself.

Was this supposed to be your 6-Star Bond Event? The one that's only available during Second Scenario/Rebellion Route after the ultimate truths are uncovered? Because that line clearly indicates that you know we're Artificial Futurans.

You know, it's funny that you're the Default Love Interest in all routes and yet your 5-Star Bond Event is the least "Let's you and me couple up and love each other for all of time" out of any of them so far.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING

Was it not clear from context that Tsubasa didn't want anyone to see what was inside of there!? This is a violation of her privacy!

And reading it aloud like this is actively bullying. Gaku's not blackmailing you anymore, Takky. You're not supposed to keep bullying SDU women. You're doing this for love of the game now.

While also willfully disregarding her repeated requests for you to not do this. This is malicious.

And yet you continue.

Tsubasa, I think you should go get Nozomi. Takky needs another 48-hour marathon scolding about the way he treats women.

You wrote it while you were in the simulation, which means these poems are data stored in Sirei's mainframe. It would have been a trivial matter to just 3-D print a copy of it.

I could say that Sirei's using his powers for evil but he's already an engine of colonialism and genocide. Sirei always uses his powers for evil. This is just a more personal cruelty.

I don't believe you. You shouldn't have opened it in the first place and even if that was a mistake, you should have stopped at the first shriek. You were having fun. This apology is hollow as shit.

You did this, Takky. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Sirei already told you that that's what this was. Pay the fuck attention to the goddamn plot.

RED ALERT RED ALERT RED ALERT RED ALERT RED ALERT

WHAT!?!? WHAT'S HAPPENING!?!?

I estimate an 85% chance that Sirei's setting up for a joke in order to trick us into laughing so BE ON GUARD.

Has anyone ever told you that you're kind of paranoid, Kay?

Yes, several times. I prefer the term overly cautious. I have an overactive sense of anxiety. It has its upsides and its downsides.

You know, Tsubasa, this is kind of your fault for reactivating him in the first place. I'm just saying, if you left him dead, this wouldn't be happening.

I guess we're doing this now. In fairness, Takky, you are Team Leader. Dealing with troublemakers like Sirei on behalf of your bullied staff is kinda your job.

Upstairs.

Classroom.

Is someone talking?

Third floor.

Bingo.

Maybe it has compromising doodles of you in it, Takky. I'd be down for another Tsubasa Romance. The last one went great and the one before that was pretty good too.

Oh, he played us. We're part of the punishment. Sirei wants us to know what's inside the notebook.

Simple enough. On to Day 65.

Oh, here we go.

Yeah, I know you have good intentions here. You want to understand the world outside your ivory tower. But I have to caution you that there is a limit to how much you can actually learn by poverty LARPing.

A billionaire dressing down can never experience true poverty. This is because a large part of the experience of poverty is fear, it's desperation, it's hunger, it's not knowing how you're going to pay your rent and not knowing how you're going to survive if you don't. These are terrible motivating forces, they're not a good thing, but understanding them is inextricable from the experience of being poor.

A billionaire wearing poorface can never experience that desperation because at the end of the day, it's just playing poor. You will always know, in the back of your mind, that if things don't work out then you can just go home to your thirty acre estate. You won't be in any real danger if you lose your job because you have an eleven-digit net worth, and that will influence you to make choices that a person actually living in poverty would not.

What will you do if this actually endangers your life? What if you come down with a serious illness or get badly injured? Are you going to be willing to suffer life-threatening complications and potentially permanent, lasting harm because you're too poor for healthcare? Or will you retreat to the finest medicine money can buy, and then put your Poverty Mask back on once the emergency's over?

Instead of showing you what it's like to live on the other side, this actually puts you in danger of overconfidently thinking, because you worked at a McDonalds for seven months, that you know what it's like to be poor. That you understand the struggle. And there is nothing more dangerous than a billionaire thinking they perfectly understand what The Poors are really like.

Even just the way you phrase it shows me that you're going into this with the wrong assumptions. You're looking at this as a financial self-imposed challenge. You want to prove that you can Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps and weren't just born lucky. That you deserve to be a billionaire because you have the "merit" to make it on your own.

Do you want my advice, Kurara? It's this. Don't focus on work. Don't focus on building up your name. Don't focus on surviving and proving you can get a job and pay the bills. Don't make that your metric for success at Living Poor.

While you're doing this, make sure you talk to people. Make friends. Build relationships with sincerely poor people and listen to them when they talk about their struggles. Don't focus your energies inward. Focus them outward, on being part of a community of people who are struggling.

Do what you can to help them. And then when you go home to the extreme wealth you were lucky to be born into, think about everything you learned about the way people live, and about how you can use that wealth to alleviate the harm that our society has created for them.

Do we know that? I can't really think of a single time when we've walked into the cafeteria and the conversation was like

Kurara: Confound this wretched coffee maker! Why do they have to have so many confusing buttons!? How on earth do commoners work these complex devices!? Nozomi: Has no one ever shown you how to make coffee before? Tsubasa: Where she comes from, a coffee maker is probably a person. Kurara: His name is Hiroto-- SHUT UP

Like. That's pretty much a staple of "Rich cast member" comedy, but have we ever done even a single bit along those lines? I can't think of any off the top of my head. So no, I'm not sure what you mean by this.

Oh, that's not going to work that. Takky is a C- student who has spent his whole life being emotionally unavailable and generally uninvested in anything and everything that happens around him; He is not the Guru of the Common Experience.

He knows less about how to survive on his own than you do, Kurara.

Yes. I propose that you marry Kurara and escort her through her poverty LARP.

You think Kyoshika knows how to live as a commoner better than Kurara or Takumi does?

It's nice to have reminders sometimes that sleeping in after a battle isn't just an us thing. Other SDU members do it too. Sometimes everyone but Darumi, whose insomnia gives her something resembling an immunity to post-battle exhaustion.

It's also nice to finally have a timeline where you actually recognize Gaku for the weird creep that he is. I guess you actually care this time because you were one the people affected by it.

That sounds like Gaku's voice. I vote we ignore it and continue to breakfast.

I vote we go kick him while he's down.

Normally, I would agree with that, but not when I'm hungry. The last thing I need to see is Gaku's stupid face before breakfast.

Clearly, Gaku failed Sirei's Try-Not-To-Laugh Challenge and is now reaping the dire consequences that Sirei warned us about. But, you know, fuck him. It's fine. I want breakfast.

So you're saying you are not curious about what the consequence is?

...

You're fine just not finding out?

...

Potentially never knowing what Sirei had in store for those who failed?

...

Oh, goddammit. FINE. Breakfast can wait. Let's go see what that's about.

Well, that's seared into my eyes forever. I regret everything. Let's go to breakfast.

Push him. Push him really hard.

Oh no, nobody told Gaku about the Try-Not-To-Laugh Challenge. So yes, this is a challenge failure punishment.

Yep. Glad we're on the same page. It'll save me some grief from watching you struggle to understand this.

Takemaru, you're hit or miss sometimes but today you are a true hero. Forever will we remember your boldness, your courage, and your willingness to be physically near a naked Gaku.

I mean, he didn't really. This isn't punishment for what he did to the girls. This is punishment for laughing.

We should actually be very disturbed by this. It boils down to the matter of universal human rights and why they exist even for the worst kinds of people. If we accept the premise of this on the grounds that Gaku is a huge piece of shit, then we'll have accepted the premise of this.

It might not feel like a big deal because it's happening to Gaku and Gaku sucks. But if Sirei can do this to Gaku then he can do this to any of us.

But that's a really easy thing to not think about because of how funny it is to watch Gaku scream and flail. He sucks so bad.