A little heads up I think I forgot to toss out here: exams are happening these three days and I'll probably not be around much until this weekend starts. I believe I've wrapped things up alright with the last post for both Ruée and Gabe to react now, and I anticipate their responses. But for now, excuse me for a moment please.
*runs off to attend exams*
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Fox of Spades said "Fuuuudge, that sounded a lot like the bookshelf..."
oh no.
Posted! Sorry for the delay.
I'm leaving what they find at the end of the stairway for Fox to flesh out because I'm running out of time. I anticipate to see what the mansion has in store.
Meanwhile, in return for Riley mistaking Leila to be courageous, Leila now thinks Riley a genius because she deduced the location of the secret switch instantly.
I'm leaving what they find at the end of the stairway for Fox to flesh out because I'm running out of time. I anticipate to see what the mansion has in store.
Meanwhile, in return for Riley mistaking Leila to be courageous, Leila now thinks Riley a genius because she deduced the location of the secret switch instantly.
"Hey Leila, why did you get on the train?...C'mon, spill it.”
Riley grabbed Leila by the shoulders from behind and asked enthusiastically, while shoving her chin onto Leila’s shoulder and somehow managing to deliver a piercing stare into her eyes from that angle.
Leila’s mind went blank for a moment.
“I-um…”
Why did she get on the train? Leila questioned herself, and almost came to suspecting that she herself didn’t know the answer to that question anymore. She tried hard to remember. Maybe she was just zoning out at the moment and accidentally stepped in. Perhaps it was one of those no-brain “why not” moments that she had every once in a while. Leila speculated, but she knew clearly that it was something else. Something...
...Why did she get on the train back then? Days...weeks ago? How long ago? What train? Where? Some questions she couldn’t find answers to and others, the questions themselves were pointless. She’s forgotten a lot since she ended up here. But of all that the one thing she wouldn’t forget...
...It was hard to think looking into Riley’s anticipating expression. Leila shifted her eyes to avoid eye contact. When Riley’s followed, she would turn to look in another direction, in a way that would remind one of someone who did wrong and was struggling to lie in the face of an interrogator.
Eventually, the little lapses of time of not being under the thought-halting stress were collectively sufficient for her to compose a coherent response:
“I - I saw … an … an answer.”
She uttered as her sight dropped to the floor and stayed there for a while. And then, silence.
Coherent? Probably, just barely. Informative? Questionable. It seemed enough to satisfy Riley’s curiosity at least temporarily, though.
Leila allowed her heart rate and breath to restore themselves to their normal state - having Riley so eagerly look at her for those few seconds happened to somehow be more frightening an experience than the surprise she pulled earlier when approaching her.
The two of them then resumed examining their surroundings. With Riley as a companion and her jar as an additional light source, the area around them was lit up more clearly, they could see further out, and the atmosphere suddenly became much less intimidating.
Still, she had no clue what to do now. In fact she had not thought about it thoroughly until now - being too absorbed in the atmosphere of an ancient library didn’t leave much time for that. So once again they split up to look for clues in this mansion...but where to start? Extracting any traces of information they were looking for from the amount of data this library contained must be centuries of processing work. Certain things can be prioritized and others can be ruled out to increase the efficiency of such a search, but still the feasibility -
"That looks interesting," Riley noted as she proceeded to pull one of the books out from its place on the shelves.
Before Leila could bring her attention back to what Riley was doing, she heard the click and the sound of machinery. The entire floor rumbled as the bookshelf, with all its weight and its height reaching near the ceiling, moved. The two girls made way as the shelf pushed itself forward, rows of books wobbling and dust projected into the air around it as the shelf vibrated, until it had enough space to start sliding sideways. When the shelf came to a halt and Leila was done coughing from the tickles sent up her nose by the particles in the air, the area behind where the shelf once stood was revealed to be a gateway, opening into a staircase downwards into another impenetrable darkness.
"Should we take a look? It could lead us to some clues..."
The two of them descended, glows from the jars illuminating the path. The hallway was tall, but was only wide enough for one person to go through at once. Leila walked in front, not having thought about it much when she walked through the entrance first when Riley suggested they do so. The two of them did, as an afterthought, went back up after going down just a bit, and shoved a volume of one particularly large encyclopedia at the entrance, and another behind the tilted book on the shelf; in hope that those would keep the gate open and leave a way out, lest the shelf decides to fall back into its place, by the time of which it would probably be too late if they realized they couldn’t find a switch from the inside.
Locked from behind them. In a dark, restricted space like this one. One end sealed and the other leading to who knows where, and how long it’ll take to reach -
- Leila preferred not to think about it.
She wrapped her arms around the glowing jar as she stepped carefully down the stairs. The air inside the passage was stale and very dry, which made Leila quite uncomfortable. It was also slightly chilly in there. Leila looked like she was hugging the jar to try to warm herself, even though the jar didn’t emit heat as it did light. The actual reason she was doing that, though, was probably her intention to protect the jar in the case of her slipping and falling even at the cost of cushioning the impact with her own body, for they couldn’t afford to lose their source of light in a scenario like this.
And so they walked. Once in a while Leila would turn around just to make sure Riley was still there, although she dared not do it for too long, in the fear of situations suddenly arising in front of them.
To be honest Leila felt the urge to just drop the light and cling to Riley and do nothing until something happens or someone gets them out of there. But then that is utterly unproductive, so she resisted.
She counted the steps as they walked, perhaps only to provide an indication of distance because time was unreliable, and there was no distancing entrance to look back towards for there was no light source back there once they left - and the other end of the staircase, where it led to, was still nowhere in sight.
Leila also pondered about Riley, and how she managed to identify the book that was the trigger to that entrance. How did she know? Did she know? The odds suggested - wait, flawed premise. Who knew how probability worked in Nowhere? But then - the question turned into gauging the possibility of a different mathematics against that of just accidentally hitting that one book - Leila still decided she had strong enough evidence to believe that Riley knew something - no, that Riley knew much more that she didn’t, and that she must ask her about it when she had the chance.
Eighty five, eighty six...
Ugh, I seem to always get sick at the most inconvenient of times.
Will toss a post up before this day ends, though, or in the worse case before tomorrow - if that happens there'll be a notification. Post will probably be short, but will be there so things can move on. Plus I need to answer Riley's questions.
Will toss a post up before this day ends, though, or in the worse case before tomorrow - if that happens there'll be a notification. Post will probably be short, but will be there so things can move on. Plus I need to answer Riley's questions.
ERode said
Bookman is actually the name of the most badass ugly American in all of anime.Bask in his gentlemanly dancing skillz.
Spectacular.
Also, post thrown up for both Julia and The Librarian. Sorry for the delay!
The Apartment | Julia Castor
Julia lay face-up on her bed, legs dangling from the side and swinging idly, as she flipped the piece of paper around in her hands. The terms and conditions for this particular work of handicraft were absurdly cryptic - she considered that interesting, although she was still having a hard time figuring out why molesting a keychain would be significant enough a concern to have explicitly included. And then she heard a voice speaking inside her room.
”S-salut.”
“Uh?”
She shot up from the bed and looked around the room for the source of the voice. The speech was full of pauses and the lapses of silence made it take a while for Julia to eventually narrow the search range down to the corner of her study table, upon which her cellphone lay.
”You’re...Jula, I think. My name’s Ruée...”
It came...from the speakers?
Replacing the weather, calendar and news feed blocks on the start screen of the phone was - for what she could make out from her sitting position a short distance away - a figure of a young girl who was supposedly who was talking.. Interest sparked, Julia stood up and walked over to her desk. With her spine not exactly comfortable from sitting in an unhealthy posture for all that early morning, she broke into a yawn in the middle, straightening her back and stretching her right arm into the air as she picked up the phone with her left hand and moved flipped it upright, moving it closer to her face so she could see the screen clearly.
The girl on the screen paused bit in her speech, and at the same time did Julia in the middle of her yawn.
Oh snap she’s pretty.
How absolutely impolite is it for one to be in this state when first meeting someone! Especially someone that was so formally delivering a self-introduction. In a panic Julia nearly had the phone fall out of her grip, which wasn’t firm in the first place. She managed to get hold of it and set the phone down on her desk as she hurried to straighten her collar and tidy her hair, and to brush out the few of the eyelashes that were stuck together or discomfortingly sticking to her eyelids.
Brushing the last strands of hair out of her eyes, she set the phone upright, grabbing the bookend - the only item in reach for such a purpose, to support it so that the front camera faces her properly - as the line of originally well-aligned books on her desk cascaded into a mess on the desk. Julia herself collapsed into the chair into a straight sitting post, as if a video conference was going on and she had rushed into it after realizing that she was terribly late.
The girl in the phone was probably rather frightened from all this. Julia regretting not having thought through all of this earlier when she first hear the sound. But then, it was probably only when she saw the video that her subconsciousness realized that it wasn’t pre-recorded but instead that the girl on the screen could actually see and react to her. Either way, her actions made it rather clear that Julia was giving her best try of being apologetic that she could deliver; although that was much hard to hold together under the influence of her excitement regarding this entire series of events.
”Y-yes, I’m Julia. Julia Castor. Ya. Nice to meet you! Eh-”
Her speech degenerated into incoherent snippets of stuttering, which would probably only make the girl on the screen even more nervous, if anything.
”-and no, not at all! Ruée, right? Rue...eh? You-you’re...French? Like….French? Where are you from? Wha-”
She should probably just call her Lucie in the future.
”-oh, right. Key App. Username. Key…-”
Gabe’s place | The Librarian [music]
Should I go for a set that matches that dark longcoat hanging by the right, or should I go for a lighter set, with a white top and suspenders?”
Gabe said as he turned the screen of the digital device to face his closet.
Oh well, that’s new. The Librarian smiled as he had no choice but to look blankly at the man’s wardrobe. He’d had people being confused about what was happening, people bombarding him with questions about the Key Shop, people having no clue whatsoever, people just freaking out entirely and tossing the phone into a fish tank - that was unpleasant - but the asking about advice on choice of attire? That’s a first.
The man’s wardrobe was composed of nearly nothing but buttoned shirts and trousers, though. There was also an abundance of neckties.
It also then came to the Librarian’s notice that the device he was now residing in seemed to be populated by an excessive amount of fighting games. He recognized a few titled from the last time he was around, and there were a few he never seen before.
Interesting.
Before The Librarian got back to the clothing problem the human proposed, Gabe spoke again:
“And what do you recommend for breakfast? I must admit that I don't have the faintest clue at the moment. Today's been an odder day than normal, with people invading my phone and free keys going up for...sale? Charity?”
Why would the items be free if it were for charity? Or did he mean that the charity was directed at himself - then wouldn’t one expect things that are a bit more...practical...than pretty crafted keys?
He then realized that he just implied that Keys aren’t useful, which is a silly idea.
Meh, logic.
“That shirt over there. The white one. And those trousers, probably.” In response to the human, The Librarian started composing casually what would be a usual human outfit, only for the whole sentence to be revealed as an absurdly chaotic and slightly comedic statement: “...and do you have a fluorescent green necktie anywhere around? No? That hotpink one over there will do then. And we're all set! Uh...well, allow me a moment while I come up with what you should wear. Feel free to enjoy your breakfast first.”
Humans considered clothes not to be edible? Too bad.
“Gabe Makoto, sir,” He said, this time slower and in a more sincere tone, but no less cheerfully: “I’m afraid that this is hardly the most important issue at the moment...”
He hesitated for a moment and decided not to pull the information-dump-about-things-I’m-not-supposed-to-know trick, as the results are usually extreme and often involve free-falling cellphones. Besides, it never was polite to flip through a filesystem without consent of the owner. He indicated Gabe that he had to make his own decisions about his wear and his food, and carried on:
“Allow me to direct you to the Key App.” He said as he rearranged Gabe’s desktop a bit so that his image wasn’t obscured by the blocks that were various applications, and the Key App icon was on the screen where it would seem like The Librarian was pointing at it when Gabe turned the phone around.
“The interface is pretty much self-explanatory,” He said, still putting up the business smile. “Information is available on request.”
The Apartment | Julia Castor
River North II. was the username she eventually came to choose. Julia was never the best with coming up with names, yet she settled on her decision this time rather swiftly. She was actually satisfied with it, really.
“...there.”
She said as she confirmed the information on the app - now that the initial rush had faded, she acted much more composed and less of a frantic, although she still gritted in her heart about how the first impressions ended up.
She’ll have to live with that, she guessed.
"Bookman" sounds more reasonable than it should. Radiant.
Typing up the next post at the moment. I'll leave the final call to Gabe when he gives the name then.
Typing up the next post at the moment. I'll leave the final call to Gabe when he gives the name then.
Weh, sorry for absence! Was occupied with a number of other writing projects.
Expect replies from both Julia and The Librarian before the end of tomorrow, I guess.
Also, ERode, I might need to discuss with you Gabe's name choosing. Got any ideas at that moment?
Expect replies from both Julia and The Librarian before the end of tomorrow, I guess.
Also, ERode, I might need to discuss with you Gabe's name choosing. Got any ideas at that moment?
That gif pretty. And creepy at the same time.
Really excited about this Midnight game thing.
Also, have an amusing out-of-context quote.
plot twist 1 out of every 2 Lost Souls die here.
Really excited about this Midnight game thing.
Also, have an amusing out-of-context quote.
Fox of Spades said
...no one ends up keeping their partner.
plot twist 1 out of every 2 Lost Souls die here.
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