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Who: Kanji [

cuteshit] & Souji [

eatsyourscience]
Where: Souji's room (for once, not the diner)
When: June 30
Rating: PG? Because Kanji cusses sometimes
Summary: Souji needs some assistance with research
The Story:
Awhile back, Souji had talked to Princess Bubblegum about the memories Wonderland has stolen from him. There seem to be so many--and in most cases, he has no idea what he's lost. After thinking about what his events actually were, he knows he's going to need help figuring out which words he can't remember.

Luckily, there's a Kanji for that. It's not that Souji wasn't happy to have Kanji in Wonderland--he was pretty ecstatic, actually, though it would have been hard to tell. But this really makes him appreciate having someone from home, especially someone from the investigation team.

He'd asked Kanji to come by his room sometime soon to help him with a project. He hadn't been too specific about what the project would entail--it would be easier to explain when they actually met up--but did mention it was about the events from their world. Souji thought that, if they managed to get through what he was hoping to accomplish, they might brainstorm about what other events might come from their world. It would be helpful to have some ideas about what might be coming.

After figuring out when to meet up, Souji makes sure he's actually there when the time comes. The room is almost identical to his room at his uncle's house, with the exception of the small, but fat gray dragon that's napping on his couch. He's sitting on the floor in front of the couch, folding some paper into origami butterflies--he's trying to branch out from cranes--with his back against the front of the couch and the dragon's sleeping breath occasionally ruffling his hair. On the table in front of him is a notebook and pen, along with a few snacks, just in case.

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He hadn't even been trying that time, and he feels his stomach drop as he realizes he'd hit on another one. Oh.

"Yeah, o-okay," Kanji confirms, scribbling it down in the notebook beside the word campout. "Crap. These are really startin' to add up. I mean, that ain't too big a thing to miss. Actually, you're probably better off not remembering..."

Souji grimaces. "I can still remember the food." Just not the nickname they'd come up with for it.

He's quiet for a moment, thinking as he taps at the table surface now with one fingernail.

"There are three others."

He's starting to think they should just stop, though. This is getting depressing.

"Three, huh."

He frowns as he tries to get a good read on Souji's face, wondering if he's really feeling up to finding exactly what's been taken. It's hard to say what's better. Pacing yourself, or getting it all over with at once?

"I can stay to help as long as you want," Kanji goes on to offer, brows knitting together briefly. "You wanna keep going?"

Souji has to think about that for a moment. Really, honestly think about it. He hadn't anticipated how difficult this would be for him, and he's tempted to quit now.

Quitting isn't a habit of Souji's though, and the idea isn't appealing. It's especially unappealing when it's in front of one of his friends from home. He'd lose face if he quit now, or he feels like he would. Objectively, it's unlikely Kanji would think any differently of him. But Souji can't bring himself to do it.

Nodding, he orders his thoughts, and speaks calmly, his voice bordering on casual.

"We're halfway done. We might as well finish."

"Right. Okay." Kanji won't second-guess him, just shifts his weight to make himself more comfortable as he prepares to tackle the next three events that Souji lists. "So what's the next event you remember?"

Souji gets up for a minute, crossing to the closet. He needs something to drink, just to give him something to do other than pick at the table. He brings something back for both of them--he'd picked up on Kanji's preferences back home--and sits down again. The delay gives him a moment to think, too.

"There was one based on when we did the speed dating cafe at school. And the beauty contests..." He remembers the details perfectly--all of the weird, awkward details--be he noticeably leaves out the actual name of the event. This time, though, it doesn't occur to him that he's omitting it.

"Hey, thanks."

Talk about handy. Kanji's still getting used to the closets and all they have to offer, in some ways, but the ease of reaching in and pulling out a cold drink without having to actually go somewhere and pay for it is a nice perk. He looks thoughtful as he pops the tab, pursing his lips a little bit as he thinks it over-- the word comes to mind almost immediately, but he doesn't seem to notice that Souji's been leaving it out, either.

"Right, the culture festival," he says darkly. The date cafe had been more awkward than not. "Kind of a fun event, compared to some of the others you could've had."

Souji hesitates as he recognizes that blank in Kanji's speech again. Man, Kanji is good at this. Souji's grateful for that--it makes this whole project easier--but it's also a blow each time they find another word or phrase.

He steps over the blank space for the moment like he would a gap in a sidewalk. He'll put it off a moment so they can just talk first.

"Yeah. It was pretty fun. The school was a boarding school, and all of us were students."

Maybe "fun" isn't quite the right word, but it was nice in a lot of ways. It was only an imitation of home, but he hadn't known that until the event was over.

Like most things Kanji is good at, he doesn't really think much of the fact that he seems to have effortlessly hit the nail square on the head the last couple of times-- the words are coming to him naturally, the memories they belong to still vivid. Souji's been here a long time, but all of the memories these events are linked to are still pretty recent for him.

"It's like Wonderland gave you the good parts of school without you havin' to worry about grades, or staying awake in class." Or, in Kanji's case, attending class in the first place. That had been a problem, for awhile, although his senpai had all been positive influences on him in that respect. "Kinda sorry I missed that one."

Edited 2016-08-12 18:24 (UTC)

"We didn't have to worry about some of the more...interesting instructors." Kashiwagi-sensei, you are a strange and somewhat terrifying woman.

"Write down the name of the event we were doing at school. That was the word I lost."

Okay, that came out more bluntly than he'd intended it to, but at this point, he wants to finish this whole thing. Then he can play with Tefra or make a model of...something or really do anything to clear his mind a bit.

"There are just two more after that."

Though he doesn't know it, Kanji's unexpected forgotten-word-finding skill probably won't work quite as well with these two.

Kanji frowns again before nodding in confirmation, the mention of interesting instructors immediately bringing Kashiwagi and King Moron to mind as he writes culture festival beneath the other events listed, grateful he'd never had to deal with them quite as intimately as senpai and some of the others. Beside the word, he writes out a brief description-- 'karaoke, speed dating, beauty pageant.'

"Okay," he agrees, grimacing, "Two more. Hit me."

Souji nods. He's got the next one locked and loaded. These last two were the least benign of all of them.

"One of them started with fog. The kind of fog we had at the end of everything that wouldn't go away."

It was the same fog from the TV world, the fog that had made Nanako so sick. He didn't have fond memories of it.

"After awhile, a lot people were either paranoid or didn't care at all about it. Those people turned into Shadows. Not the kind that came from them, but the kind we always ran into in the TV world."

His frown pulls even deeper as he scribbles down a description of the event, trying to think of what word might have been pulled from it. He can just imagine Wonderland covered in fog, the same way Inaba had been blanketed with it, the memory of people talking each other into worrying about extremes still fresh. His mother had been forced to ask a patron or two to leave over that crap.

"They turned into Shadows?" he echoes, his eyebrows shooting upwards. "Did they start attackin' people?"

Souji rests his chin on his hand and makes an affirmative sound.

"They were exactly like real Shadows." He lets out a slow breath. "It was what Ameno-Sagiri was talking about. The fog would turn everyone into Shadows and they wouldn't have to deal with suffering."

His eyes widen as the realization of just how terrible that would be fully dawns on him. Real shadows. The fate Ameno-Sagiri thought mankind was best suited for.

"Shit," he says eloquently, grimacing. "That's-- what happened then?"

"It didn't really have a conclusion. Things got worse over a few days, and then went back to normal suddenly."

It was just like so many events. They start out seemingly innocent, if not irritating, and then get much worse one way or another, and then, usually, they're just over.

"The last one had the other kind of Shadows. They just followed us around and let people know what we were really thinking all the time."

"Just-- talked?"

It almost sounds too good to be true. Annoying as hell, sure, especially considering some of the thoughts most people kept to themselves, but at least nobody wound up dead-- at least, not from the sounds of it.

"Alright. So we gotta figure out what memories went missing for those two. Obviously it ain't the word 'Shadow,' you remember that just fine."

"That's all they did, but it was a little more complicated for the people who had to listen to it."

Who wants to be confronted with the worst parts of themselves? Perhaps even worse, who wants to be confronted with the worst parts of someone close to them? Or what those people really think of them deep down.

"Right. With the others, there was usually some gap when I tried to explain it." That clearly isn't the case with these two.

His frown pulls deeper as he leans forward to hunch against the table, folding his arms in front of them and resting his weight against the surface. "If they ain't leavin' any gaps, then how are we supposed to figure it out?" he thinks aloud, although the question is rhetorical at best. If Souji knew, he wouldn't need Kanji's help in the first place.

He grunts softly, staring down at the notebook in front of him as though it might offer answers. "What about-- places? Like where things happened back home? You remember 'Inaba' and 'TV,' so the fog thing didn't take those away, but maybe something else?"

Perhaps surprisingly, Souji hadn't thought of that. He gives Kanji a small smile that's both praise and gratitude, then holds up a hand and uses his fingers to tick off places in Inaba first. He'll move on to the TV world after that.

Starting with his right thumb, he puts fingers down as he starts his list.

"There's Yasogami high school, Yasogami shrine, Okina City, the Samegawa, Junes..."

He's run out of fingers and looks up at Kanji, expectant. It's not that he has no more places to name, but that he doesn't want to leave Kanji out of the process.

Kanji mimics Souji's own behavior, ticking locations off his own fingers after scribbling the list Souji had already offered at the bottom corner of the page in front of him.

"Uh, the train station," Kanji supplies, looking upwards for a brief moment to collect his thoughts before continuing. "Then the stuff in the TV world! Like, uh, the castle, or that weird video game, and that messed-up Inaba."

He'll just avoid mentioning the bathhouse for now.

Souji nods, trying to think of what those places had actually been called. The castle was easy, and the game was the Void Quest, and the messed-up Inaba was ▓░▒░▓▒▒

It was ▓░▓▒▒░▒

"Do you remember the name of that last place?"

That's a red flag if he ever-- heard one? Was that even the right way to put it?

"Uh," Kanji starts again, stalling out a little as he echoes himself. "Lemme think. Not like, bizarro-Inaba, or Shadow Inaba, it was something like... Mugatsu? Magatsu Inaba?"

Damn it.

"That has to be it."

Still, he's a little proud they got that one. Kanji's got great intuition about this kind of thing.

"Then there's only one more. The one with our own Shadows following us."

If nothing else, Kanji is good about following his gut. He exhales, settling into another frown. That one is going to be tough.

"Alright. Shadows. ... not even sure to start with that one."

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