[An argument could be made Ryuji's coping with this bogus event better than most. He doesn't bother guarding his room, or even putting a lock on it, going about business as usual as best he's able.
Alice had been right--the scene playing and replaying in his room is a time when he'd felt his lowest, he knows it as well as if a mirror had been held up to the inside of his heart--but his childhood hiccups are a drop in the ocean of troubles. If he had to guess, his pain wouldn't even make the top thirty of terrible moments on display right now. That helps put the event in perspective, if not make it entirely comfortable.
And it also serves as a reminder others have much darker demons to wrestle with, as if he could forget. He's seen some of them in person. Stood close enough to smell the fresh blood.
He asks around with that thought in mind ("have you seen any super jacked dudes with hair like thiiis?" with a hand motion indicating some severe growth from the forehead a doctor might want to check out). People are feeling brutally honest; if they've seen him, they'll let Ryuji know.
And some have. Directions take up upstairs to the floor above his own. Try the door handle or knock?
He knocks. This isn't an infiltration--not in the traditional sense.]
28th | Closed to Mondo
Alice had been right--the scene playing and replaying in his room is a time when he'd felt his lowest, he knows it as well as if a mirror had been held up to the inside of his heart--but his childhood hiccups are a drop in the ocean of troubles. If he had to guess, his pain wouldn't even make the top thirty of terrible moments on display right now. That helps put the event in perspective, if not make it entirely comfortable.
And it also serves as a reminder others have much darker demons to wrestle with, as if he could forget. He's seen some of them in person. Stood close enough to smell the fresh blood.
He asks around with that thought in mind ("have you seen any super jacked dudes with hair like thiiis?" with a hand motion indicating some severe growth from the forehead a doctor might want to check out). People are feeling brutally honest; if they've seen him, they'll let Ryuji know.
And some have. Directions take up upstairs to the floor above his own. Try the door handle or knock?
He knocks. This isn't an infiltration--not in the traditional sense.]