luckless | [RYSLIG] IC Inbox

[He can't tell, but she's smiling a little on this end.]

good. that's the right choice.

[Beat your own fears or die trying. It's not her motto, but it's pretty fucking close to it.]

you come up with a signal then, whatever you want as long as it's not weird enough to stand out, and i'll be ready to fake a shark attack. [just kidding? or not?]

[He's smiling, too. Lila is nice (biased).]

Don't joke like that... knowing my luck, I really will get attacked by a shark.

Or be the only merperson to ever drown.

[But as for signals...]

Do you mean like a bird call? I can whistle, sort of. It's a bit pathetic, but it's something. Or I could just tell you I want to leave.

[Lila is nice (derogatory).]

no way, the shark would attack somebody else. whoever's annoying me that day.

[Reluctantly, she realizes that. He has a point. Damnit.]

i guess it would be fine to just tell me, i'll probably be right next to you anyway. how do you know how to do a bird call? what bird? [Probably one of those ones that can imitate a chainsaw.]

[Can Lila command sea creatures? Does she control the sharks?

Can she control him, since he's technically a sea creature now??]

Did you know Barn Owls are one of 3 types of animals that have a call that sounds uncannily like someone screaming?

[Tanaka told him that. It was an interesting conversation.]

So if I scream, you'll know to come rescue me!

[No, no, and probably.]

thank god you told me, otherwise i'd have just heard you screaming and assumed you were fine.

[Of all the people she's ever met, he seems the most likely to just scream out of nowhere for shits and giggles. She can't put her finger on why, but the vibe is real.]

hey, btw. thanks for being honest. i know there's more, but it's not my business unless you want it to be. so if you want it to be [. . .] scream then too, i guess?

Yeah, my cries of distress are pretty easy to ignore, honestly!

[He kinda pauses though, because he's... not really sure about what to do with that gratitude.

He's also not sure about telling her everything—mostly because he wouldn't even know where to start. After the last time he saw her, in her apartment, things have been a little different. He feels like he can trust her, but he's also not used to trusting people. He didn't get the chance to explore that further with Hinata.]

[.....]

How do you scream through text?

asshole.

[It's barely even an insult. She barely even registers the hesitation. It's harder to recognize the difference between Komaedaisms and actual issues over text. That, and she's trying pretty hard not to think about other stuff at the moment. For once, she's trying to focus on helping, which comes so unnaturally to her that she's shutting off other parts of her brain.]

uh i guess you could go AAAAAAAAAAA or [scream] or something. i don't know. i never really thought about it. i don't do a lot of screaming personally.

oh, or one of those ugly emoji things.

I don't really use emoji. I wonder if I can get it to work?

[Well now he's going to try, because she put that thought in his head.

His next reply comes after a few minutes of finagling:]

[○･｀Д´･○]

oh shit. i didn’t mean like that. i didn’t even know that was a thing. i was talking about one of these

😱

but yours is way better. it looks like the painting

[Does it??]

How were you able to use that emoji with these old clunky laptops? The one I used is a Japanese emoji...

[But anyways, now they're getting side-tracked.]

Lila-san.

[He's not really the forward type, when it comes to talking.]

Thank you for looking out for me. I'm not used to people caring about someone like me. If you have any questions... or anything... I don't mind answering them.

idk i just found it. there's a dropdown somewhere

look

[Ugh. She's not good at talking about this shit. The fact that she's even considering trying is evidence of the fact that he's important to her, especially considering the last time she talked about her feelings with fucking anybody, they were pulled out of her without her consent, and she's still not even sure they were her feelings.]

[Just because she's trying doesn't mean it's gonna come out right. She just can't guarantee that. It scares her.]

the fact that i know anything about your life at all isn't because you decided it was okay. it's because this place cheats. stuff you want to keep secret gets thrown out for people to pick over whether you like it or not. you couldn't stop that other version of yourself from telling me shit, because it didn't feel real to him. that's cheating.

i just

[ugh]

if it had to happen i'm glad it was me, because i'm not like some of these people who think it's only fair to spill your guts to whoever happens to be sitting next to you on the bus. i wouldn't have EVER brought it up if you hadn't gone all weird and quiet when we were talking about it.

so — do you want to tell me? like actually want to. if you do, then i want to hear it. but i don't want you to tell me just to satisfy my curiosity. that's not what [caring about someone means] i want.

Edited 2021-04-30 04:41 (UTC)

[It's alright if what she says isn't perfect, because neither of them are perfect people. Far from it. But Komaeda recognizes her efforts, even if he can't see the way she frowns or how the white holes for her eyes go squinty—he can still feel it in her words—and that's more of an encouragement than she understands.

Still, this moment, even if it's over text, it feels right. Not like when he was in the grape house with Hinata, where starvation and imminent death meant if he didn't tell someone beforehand then his legacy (pathetic as it is) would die with him. He would only be remembered for what he did, and not who he was.

This time feels different, because he wants to share it with her without some looming threat over their heads.]

Well, yeah, we weren't ourselves there. But I had plenty of chances to tell those dreams to other people and I didn't. You were the only one.

[Because regardless of what names they bear and what lives they live, Lila is important.]

Because of this luck of mine, I've always been alone. Either people around me died because of it, or people avoided me because their luck would always go bad when I was around. I got used to it, I always expected to be alone, but a few people in my life have been persistent about getting close to me despite all of this bad luck that follows me.

Despite me being a guy like this... you make me feel less lonely. So... I want to tell you things. I want you to know me.

[Oh.]

[It's . . . a lot to take in. Overwhelming enough that it's fortunate she's sitting on the couch with her feet up, because by the time she's finished reading all of this her laptop has fallen through her legs. She picks it up and puts it on the coffee table instead, and reads the whole message over.]

[The thing is, she didn't know he hadn't told anyone else about the dreams. That's new information. And nobody's ever said that to her, that they wanted her to know them. Back home, you don't say that to anybody, and you certainly don't expect it. So it's disorienting, but not . . . bad.]

[She doesn't tell him it's true for her too, that she feels less lonely with him. She can't do that yet. Maybe she won't ever be able to. The impulse is there, but if she thinks about actually doing it, she feels like she's being strangled. She just has to hope he knows already. She's pretty sure he does, given all the shit he said when they were high.]

[No, she's putting that away. Okay—]

i think guys who get followed around by bad luck follow me around. you're the least annoying so far, though. you haven't done anything awful to me or whatever. [Mm, no, that's not right either.] i don't really care about bad luck anyway. definitely not worth avoiding you over.

. . . all i know is what you told me there and what you told me just now. so i guess the game happened first, and then things went bad — worse — and you killed yourself after. when we were in the other place and you were telling me about it, you said you felt good. confident i think is the word you used. but i don't know why, and i don't know what happened before.

i honestly don't know that much about you except how you've been around me. i don't usually ask people a lot of questions.

[It's definitely a lot to unpack, and Komaeda isn't really sure where to start even if he did. So maybe it'll be easier to just... start at the beginning. Or at least the beginning of what he told her in that other world.]

When we were trapped within the killing game, a lot of things happened. Before, during, and even after I died. First... our memories were wiped before the game started, so we didn't even know each other entering the game, despite having been classmates for years beforehand.

[It's kind of fucked up, and he doesn't even know if that makes sense to Lila, but he continues.]

I... found out the reason behind the killing game. I found out who we were, who I was, before that game took place. And with that information, I decided to create an unsolvable mystery to stop the game.

The game worked on a system of murders followed by murder trials. If the killer survived the trial, well, everyone else would die. But if the killer was discovered, they would be executed.

So, I devised a plan where I would use my Ultimate Luck to get someone to unknowingly kill me. I suppose it was more of an assisted suicide, but it worked. It worked too well, and my plan actually failed, because my classmates were able to figure out how my luck works, and guessed the killer correctly.

[She reads two sentences of this calmly, and then the lights go out.]

[Which is actually probably a really bad way of describing it. Maybe it's more like: the second she reads our memories were wiped, an arc of static shoots from every pulse point into the closest available socket. Something pops, there's a bright light behind her, and then dark.]

[She blinks in it, steaming mad and now inconvenienced on top of it. There's a bland humming noise, and the power cuts back on.]

[Uhhhh.]

hey you still there

sorry, i think i did that. reading the rest of this now

[??????? the fuck]

[The lights go out, and suddenly, Komaeda's heart rate shoots up. He remembers to breathe, because he's not on Jabberwock island anymore. He's not in the simulation right now. He's alone, in his room, with Mukuro and Celeste asleep in the next one over. They likely didn't even notice the power outage.

But then the lights flicker back on, and Komaeda exhales the breath he hadn't realized he held.]

I didn't know shades could do that.

Are you okay?

[Something he asks, instead of thinking about his own past memories.]

i didn't either. it's been a while since i got that mad, so, surprise.

[It sounds curt, but if anything that's just because she's trying to get her own heart rate down. If she pretends she's just angry it's easier, because that means she doesn't have to think about the possibility of someone like Barron on the other side of the wall taking his gloves off. That's not real, it's not here, and she's going to find out who did it and take them apart.]

okay. i think i'm following. two questions. you wanted everybody to die — is that because of what you found out about before?

second question. tell me who fucked with your memory.

[That's not a question, Lila.]

[Lila is mad. Got mad. It worries him, and for a moment, his kneejerk reaction is to return to the age old just kidding and isn't that a funny story I just made up?

But then he realizes that she's not mad at him... she's mad for him—and that's different. That isn't expected. He expects misunderstanding and insult for being confusing.

Lila never gives it to him, though.]

Yes.

And...

The person who did it was Junko Enoshima.

[Was because she isn't around, she's—]

She's already dead, so you don't have to worry about her.

[Junko Enoshima.]

[She gets up. Gets a pad of paper. Writes it down on the first sheet. Hesitates, then under that writes "MW — Ko". Flips to the next sheet. Writes the same thing. A third sheet, the same again. Peels them all off, folds them up small, and stalks around her apartment, jamming the folded paper into crevices. Behind her bed, between the microwave and the wall, at the bottom of the cheese drawer. Stomps back to the laptop and sits down again.]

[She wasn't lying when she told that guy on the network she didn't think it would help. She still doesn't. But he was right, too, that it's better than doing nothing.]

don't tell me what i have to worry about. i'm a big girl. i can handle myself.

what happened before that sucked so bad nobody could come out of the game alive?

[Objectively speaking, Komaeda feels guilt. Retroactively. But not over what he's done—no—he feels guilty for stooping to the levels Junko wanted him to. For muddying his quest for hope and succumbing to the thought that perpetuating despair would bring it, and—

No, he needs to just tell her, rather than run these mental circles like an exhausted rat on a wheel.]

Junko Enoshima murdered our friend in front of all of us, between being forced to watch and manipulation, we all became her envoys of despair.

The short of it is that we essentially turned the world into the kind of dystopian you would only read about in books.

We were terrorists who burned entire cities. Incited wars between countries. Murdered millions...

We deserved to die.

Edited 2021-04-30 07:40 (UTC)

[As she waits for his response, she pulls the pad of paper onto her lap and starts furiously scribbling nothing. Little tornadoes between the college-ruled lines that spiral out across the page the more frustrated she gets. The words he sends her are difficult to read, but not for the reason he expects.]

okay
don't freak out, i'm still here. just thinking a sec

[Deserved to die. Deserved to die. What does that mean? She can see it, sort of, if she puts it up on the mantle and stares at it long enough that her eyes start to water. That's the kind of thing that a certain kind of person would say warranted a penalty of death. Like Daneca — no. Not like Daneca, but someone with Daneca's mindset minus the mercy. Some weird merger of her and Daneca, maybe. She believes in the death penalty if it's her finger on the trigger.]

[The thing is she doesn't care. She doesn't care about entire cities, or countries, or millions. She cares about Lila. This . . . this isn't meaningful to her. And that's why she's frustrated, because she doesn't know hot to explain that. Not when he's so firmly dug into his position.]

[Her head is starting to hurt. She shakes it fiercely and reaches for the laptop again.]

can you explain it? why you did all that. was it just because nothing mattered anymore so fuck it all? did she make you that crazy? or am i missing something?

[This is the hard part, Komaeda thinks, it's the part where he feels like he's explained himself well but apparently he hasn't. It's the confusion of others that feeds his own confusion. It's how Junko made him feel like he was less alone, because even if she didn't fight for hope she understood him. Their motivations were the same but opposite. Order versus entropy, order built from entropy.

He has to take a breath just to not fall into his usual rhetoric. He has to force himself to remember his conversations with Souda and how his eyes opened with them. He has to remember that Lila... Lila wasn't there, so that adds an extra difficulty to all of this.]

It was for hope.

Hope and despair are like opposites. If you destroy despair, then hope will flourish. Think of it like black and white, or, yin and yang. They work off of each other, and need each other. I know now that you can't completely destroy despair. But before when I was in that game, I thought that if I killed all of us emissaries of despair, then the world would heal.

We were a disease that needed to be destroyed but... that isn't the case now. We're atoning for what we did by helping to rebuild the world instead of continuing to destroy it. Or at least, the rest of my classmates are. The ones here with me... well, this place is basically like a jail cell for us, but that isn't a bad thing.

At least here in Ryslig, we can't hurt the world more than it already is.

[He pauses, but then he continues.]

Honestly, I was one of the few people that Junko didn't need to manipulate. She... saw me. My loneliness. She gave me what I wanted the most: a purpose.

So, I guess... I've always been like this.

[It's still confusing. With most people, she'd already have given up. She gets the sense that he would have, too. That bolsters her, although only about halfway because she's honored by it or anything like that. She's just too stubborn to fail to understand when he's led her this far.]

[She's on the verge of asking another question when the last part comes through, and that . . . that does clarify some things. What she really wants to know isn't about hope or despair or saving the world from destruction, it's about Komaeda. Why did he cause all that damage? Now she knows.]

[He was lonely. He wanted a purpose, something to throw his whole life into. Even if it's not something she can entirely identify with . . . yeah. It's very human. She can see parts of herself in it, like patchworks of skin overlaid on her mental image of Komaeda.]

[She reads the whole thing over again with the image of a lonely kid adrift at the front of her mind, hand still moving absently on the paper. When she looks down, it's a small, messy drawing of a cat. With a sigh, she puts it aside.]

i think i get what you're saying. most of it, anyway.

i don't really know what to say, though. like, i think you're expecting me to condemn you or something, but i'm not going to. maybe that's fucked up of me. it's objectively bad that you did all that, but i don't really care about that. i'm pissed somebody used you and i'm pissed that you killed yourself and it sucks that you still think you're better off here than somewhere better, but that's

i mean, that's it.

[Is he going to hate her for that? She doesn't even think of it until she's sent it. A dull resignation settles heavy in her chest like an infection. He would have found out eventually anyway. There's no point stopping.]

maybe it's because i don't really believe in hope. or trust it, or something. and i don't care about most people. i care

it just sucks that you thought you had to die to fix things for everybody and i wouldn't give a shit if millions of people died but i'd care if you did.

[Komaeda reads her words, and then he reads them again, and then he reads them a third time. They stick in his mind, unyielding. He's remembers Junko using his loneliness as a weapon. He remembers Hinata getting angry at him for being confusing. He remembers too many times where people have taken his pain and separated him from it. Dehumanized him for their own benefit.

But Lila doesn't. She sees it, she sees him. He doesn't even realize he's begun to tear up until they're already streaming down his cheeks and he has to push his laptop off of his lap to rub at his eyes. It's different this time. It feels different, and warm, and perfect like when they kissed on her sofa.

He never knew how badly he wanted to be seen like this, for no reason other than just being known.

It takes a few minutes before Komaeda can compose himself enough to reply, and when he does, his fingers tremble across the keys.]

For a long time, hope was all I had. My Ultimate Luck is... extreme. It's like a super power. But it cycles. Extreme bad luck and extreme good luck.

When I was in elementary school, I boarded a plane with my parents at San Cristóbal Airport. The same plane ended up being hijacked, which was the worst luck... but then, a meteorite fell from the sky and pierced the plane, instantly killing the hijackers. Which would be good luck... but it also killed my parents too, which is bad luck. Afterwards though, I was orphaned with a huge inheritance. I gained my freedom and enough money to do whatever I wanted... so in the end, the whole thing ended with good luck.

Things in my life have always happened in this cycle. Getting kidnapped, winning the lottery, being diagnosed with a deadly disease, and getting into the elite Hope's Peak academy... Whenever bad things happen to me, good things surely follow.

So... if I hold onto my hope, I know everything will be okay.

[It's a lot to take in. Not the luck stuff; that actually makes sense, is close enough to the rules of work that she knows to feel easy to grasp. No, what's overwhelming is having years of life events pushed at her at once, great and terrible yanking her in one direction or another. For someone who deliberately distances herself from almost everyone, empathizing this hard all at once is exhausting. It was exhausting even reaching out. Now she wants to sleep or scream or go find him or hide or something.]

[But when she pushes through, she gets it. Finally. She sees the difference. Closes her eyes and feels herself ease, tip to toe, with the relief of a problem solved.]

i get it. i get it now. why this didn't make sense to me. it's because i've never had anything bad happen to me because of bad luck. when bad things happen to me it's because somebody decides to do them. when good things or neutral things happen it's because i got out of the way, or decided to do something myself. that's why.

but if things happen to you like that, it makes sense that hope matters. because it's a cycle. you can just outlast the bad shit. right?

Edited 2021-04-30 20:23 (UTC)

WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, NAGITO KOMAEDA. FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE 004.28.777.00 * MrBrightside has joined 004.28.777.00 <MrBrightside> Hello there! This is Komaeda. <MrBrightside>** I'm grateful that you want to talk to me.

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cw emotional abuse

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cw suicide (again)

cw: memory loss mention, manipulation, assisted suicide mention

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cw: murder, kinda brainwashing, terrorism mentions

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