cursed

  it’s the last comment he would expect to receive. for all he’s shown this sou since they reunited, how could he say such a thing? the downtrodden expression that has surely taken over his face unintentionally this entire time, how sad his eyes have seemed at any time joe’s been investigating and briefly glancing into a reflective surface, quiet answers…

  ( hey, does this sou know joe’s letting the original down? does he care? )

  joe doesn’t understand. maybe his words have had more of an effect, maybe sou can sense the genuineness he’s attempting to put out even now. he comes to a total pause as the other walks past him and he only stares at sou from behind, mouth slightly agape and words once again catching themselves at the edge of his tongue.

  as much as it makes him want to cry, joe opts to smile. there’s not as much force behind it as before, the feeling of a small weight raising briefly from his shoulders allows the edges of his lips to curve the same. 

  it’s not bad to have someone believe in you, right? joe catches up after what feels like a lifetime of standing still, eyes a touch brighter and a subtle pep added back to his step. “ it’ll be fine! if we don’t figure it out now, i’m sure someone else can and then we can all share info, ” he comments, approaching the door and taking a moment to press the wall in various spots.

  joe cranes his neck to peer at the sign above, furrowing his brows before reaching up and touching it with his index finger. “ … you think this might be important? ”

   sou’s gaze flashes from the wall to the boy briefly, and it’s clear something has changed. he looks a bit more like the joe they first met ( and while sou hated it before as a pretense, it’s not so bad now; it’s one last thing to worry about, at least ). a soft sigh escapes him before teal eyes flick back to the door, then up to the sign.

   “ hm… probably. it’s the only thing around here aside from this door, so it has to be some kind of hint… ” it did sort of look like a sign for a bathroom, but sou already knew that couldn’t be the case. the door itself didn’t look like anything the would be displayed for a public bathroom, but the sign itself was off too. what kind of bathroom sign had two people? and holding hands? what kind of room had that?

   then the color starts to drain from his face.

   “ w-well… maybe this isn’t something we can figure out on our own... ” his voice is small and uncertain, almost unfamiliar to him after the time spent in this game. sou can’t leave, of course, and part of him really doesn’t want to; behind that door was something they were all missing, some information vital to their progression and to his cause. now that he had a good guess about how to get in, he didn’t really want to let someone else get it first — if they could at all. no, that was all too much to leave to chance for sou.

   but he wasn’t supposed to be sou, was he?

      he spends the moment hemming and hawing, adjusting and readjusting his scarf and beanie as he tries not to solve the puzzle of how to get in, but if it was really worth this. after all, this could just be an empty room here solely to make them all uneasy ( the justifications keep getting weaker and weaker, huh? ). 

  hey, why couldn’t you just let sou rest? why did you bring him back like this?

  there’s no doubt about the guilt that ties his nerves and binds his tongue. it doesn’t matter if sou has no memory of how he wound up where he is, how the main game slipped through the holes in his memories while a video rebuilt only the minutes prior to death.

  that’s not true at all. call all of his previous actions as a leader proof, but he can’t bring himself to even imagine he’s done a good enough job. sou’s always been steps ahead, someone who could see a route and chip away and find something–

  joe doesn’t have that insight. it shouldn’t be this way.

  “ i dunno what you mean by that, but… you’re smarter than me. if you have ideas, i wanna hear them, okay? ” joe replies, taking a few cautionary steps in the direction of the red door. “ if we look at it longer, i’m sure you and i can figure it out together…! ”

  he needs to keep positive. if he doesn’t have that, then what the hell does he have to offer anymore?

   sou can feel the guilt coiling around joe and holding the younger back as if it was his own. there’s a part of him that finds it a relief; even as joe tries to reach out with never-ending faith and camaraderie, it lacks the usual intensity, being chipped away as it fights through this tangible awkwardness to reach him. it gives sou a chance to breathe, if only a little.

   ( there’s a part of him that finds it sad; though never-ending, it was so subdued that it hardly felt like it came from the same boy at all. and after all the trouble sou had gone through to help bring him back? a full recovery was never expected, and until recently, a development like this would have only brought some small hope back to sou — but something about it now weighs on him. )

    “ … you’re a pretty hopeful guy, huh? ”

   sou leaves those words as his only reply as they head off toward the door in question. he hoped it would be enough to keep joe from prodding — or from trying to fill the weird space between them with yet more optimism — because he honestly wasn’t sure how else to respond. in the end he swore to start believing in joe, but that didn’t mean everything else had to come with it. belief certainly didn’t smooth over all that they had done and kindle a new friendship between them.

   maybe belief was all he needed for now, though.

haha and then what ;)

rp w/ me too