Night 53: M61-M70 Hallway

[arc_wrench]

Well! For once Landel said something worth listening to: revealing a potential weakness for exploitation! Now! What to do with it. What should he do to completely ruin Landel's bright and shiny plans for a wonderful day, toppling them like a small meatbag kicking over a carefully-constructed sand structure, making sure to get the constituent

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[thecamellia]

[from here]

After knocking three times at the door of M61 and waiting for someone to answer her, Tsubaki finally opened the door.

As she’d thought, there was no one there, just the darkened room with its familiar set of furniture. She took a step inside. There was only one dinner tray, however. Although such a thing didn’t by itself confirm her fear, combined with what the nurse had told her, the reality pointed to Takashi being gone. Hesitation gripped her, given that she was in someone else’s space.

About to invade that space.

She needed to check, however, and proper etiquette couldn’t stop her. Sending silent apologies to whoever might currently be staying in M61, Tsubaki took another step forward, crossing into the half of the room where no dinner tray had been handed out. What now? The best thing to do would be to check for personal items, she thought. If the room had been stripped for someone else, the signs would be obvious. With a mixture of sadness and anxiety, she started at the place where she stored a lot of her things: the closet. The moment she saw what was inside, she felt certain this was, or had been, Takashi’s side of the room. There were only standard hospital items inside, but when she took a piece of clothing in her hands and spread it out, she could easily see it was all for someone over six feet tall. She was met with the same thing when she pulled open a drawer.

The room looked halfway between deserted and occupied, like a prisoner who had been here as long as Takashi had never set foot inside, yet still with some of the basic things he would’ve used. By tomorrow morning, what would it look like…?

Tsubaki turned, looking around her uncertainly. The only place she hadn’t searched was the desk, but was she starting to doubt she’d find anything of her friends that she could pass on. It was unbelievably dismaying, the idea of doing this each time someone disappeared.

What should she do?

Eventually Tsubaki did reach for the desk drawer, only to be met with another dark surprise. There, sitting amongst the neatly stocked supplies, was a ring of the exact size and appearance as the one Fai had. One of those teleporting ring. For a long few moments, she look at it, hand resting on the drawer handle. Had this been part of Takashi’s belongings? If it belonged to his roommate, it didn’t make sense that it’d be on the opposite side of the room. Should she leave it? Take it? It wasn’t hers, and not having one of her own wasn’t didn’t overly bother her, but they did seem to be limited in number… If she left it and no one else found it by morning, would Landel reclaim it? The idea of taking something that Takashi might not have even owned didn’t sit right with her. The only thing she could think of was taking it for safekeeping and returning it later, if the room was reoccupied between now and then.

She would have been happier with finding Usa-chan, something both Honey and Takashi had shared. Even so, wasting something that could be useful to the prisoners wasn’t smart.

Having tucked the ring away in her pocket, when there was nothing more to do but leave Tsubaki carefully closed the door behind her on the way out. First thing tomorrow, I’ll ask again about Takashi, she thought. Maybe I can track down his roommate.

[to here]