Day 58: Sun Room (Second Shift)
[From here.]The room was mainly empty when Michael reached it, which was fine by him. It wasn't that he didn't feel sympathy for the other patients, but he also didn't know if it would be helpful for him to talk to them. The staff seemed to think that forming bonds amongst themselves would lead to recovery, but to him it felt more like they would
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"Mm," she hummed shortly, and with that clever commentary, turned her head just enough to give the girl a proper glance. "You actually get much use out of it?"
... She had to ask, even if she too had at least been able to catch up to speed with someone else a time or two. It just-- wasn't really serving the purpose she felt like she wanted, and chafed to the bone she didn't really feel like hiding that. More importantly, she didn't understand the purpose of making it all paper, if there even was any beyond just annoying them all.
Though considering the apparent handwriting skills of most of the board's current participants, perhaps most of the people here really were used to it...
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"Kinda. It was a lot more useful a few weeks back, before they started censoring it all. There used to be a ton of more useful information that people shared," Utena answered candidly. She thought back to her own journal full of notes taken during her first few days, like she had been studying for a full-blown Landel's exam or something. Guilt struck her a little at the thought, and she almost made a face. Utena knew she ought to be copying more stuff down than she was; her memory for details really was awful sometimes, especially under stress. But note-taking had never been a big habit of hers, much to the chagrin of people like Wakaba and Miki, so that habit carried over to the Institute, it seemed.
"Looks like that freedom's sort of coming back today, at least. I don't see as much talk of dreams and stuff, anyway," she continued, giving a little grin. "Heh, it's kind of silly to think: the whole shared dream thing can get just as fantastic as some of the stuff that goes on at night, and yet that's the thing the nurses thought was believable. Weird, huh?"
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"I've only been here a few days," she admitted, but then coincidentally, just then happened to lay eyes on a schedule that had been posted prominently and yet somehow managed to escape her previous attention. Perhaps she'd been too dismissive before or--
... Yeah, seven days, although Lightning was quick to keep herself from trying to stand there and remember how many times she'd pulled herself out of bed and the activities that had followed afterward. On one hand, she knew it wasn't a good idea to just go and space out, and on the other... she wasn't sure she even wanted to know the answer anyway.
"Why would they even bother trying to hide it?" Again her question was half-rhetorical, her voice low as she mused. It was that put with what seemed like a hundred other things that didn't make sense- the fake names, the point of the obvious pushing... the people whose minds had been rewritten....
Even though it was noticeably brighter than the hue Serah's hair had, bulletin-girl's pink locks sent a tinge of something vaguely painful in the pit of the ex-soldier's stomach. She crossed her arms tighter, the gloveless skin of her hands feeling weird where they pressed against her arms.
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She shrugged at the question. "They wanted to make everything seem like a real mental hospital, pretty much. Like they figured they could make us believe our stupid 'real life' stories or something. Guess the military doesn't really need to do that anymore," she said, making a face both at the mention of the military and their "real" lives. Ugh. The less she had to think about being "Yomi" again, the better. "Hopefully if it stays this way, the detailed info starts going up again, at least."
Her arms lowered as she began to stretch them behind her back out of habit. "I'm Utena, by the way. What's your name?"
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The days did kind of run all together, though, and put with the hours she kept getting robbed from her that she could have spent otherwise, perhaps it wasn't that strange after all. Of course, she also wasn't doing much of anything here.
Was anyone, regardless of what 'Utena' vaguely implied?
Doubtful. The situation was... very in-hand, right down to the suppression of magic. Of her and Snow's Eidolons, even!
"Lightning." The response to the girl's introduction was flat, automatic... and also strangely defiant, in a way. Not at the younger woman, but at the powers responsible for treating her this way. All that they had done, and yet they still hadn't stolen her name from her. The name she'd chosen herself, almost six years previous.
That was important.
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