lovecrafty
in
damned
Day 60: Sun Room (Third Shift)
> Rose: Be the magic girl
You are the magic girl. It's you. Except that she could not be the magic girl she was looking for, since she was already herself, also magic, albeit reluctantly. Sometimes. When she wasn't so busy doing ridiculously cool things with magic that she didn't stop to think about the part where the world ended and the ( Read more... )
You are the magic girl. It's you. Except that she could not be the magic girl she was looking for, since she was already herself, also magic, albeit reluctantly. Sometimes. When she wasn't so busy doing ridiculously cool things with magic that she didn't stop to think about the part where the world ended and the ( Read more... )
The route hadn't been a complicated one; in fact, he hadn't many turns to memorize at all. If anything, the reason for the duration of their trip was because of the size of the corridors they went through. It seemed this institute was a rather large one, just judging by how wide the hallways were and what he saw on his way to their destination, which must be only a fraction of the whole, he imagined. Perhaps something valuable to note, he thought. One of the first things a wise thief did was scope out the site. The environment and the setting was important to take note when one wanted to find the most effective way to break into a place. Or to break out of, in this case.
The nurse took him into what seemed like a central room with open, double doors. Looking back down toward the end of the hallway, Kurama estimated that he was probably at about the halfway point of the building.
"This is the Sun Room," the nurse informed him as she led him inside. It was a large, brightly-lit room. The far-away reaches of the ceiling was actually several windows of glass, spanning the expanse above him, which explained the lighting. The sky above was clear. There was no way he could tell where he was just from the afternoon sky alone, anyway. There was a balcony that went all the way around the room on the second floor, he noted. So there were at least two floors in this large building then. The ceiling was still quite a ways from the balcony though, he realized. There was a possibility there were more floors then. He wouldn't be surprised, seeing as the place looked like a large institution. It was hardly unexpected for a building such as this to have several floors. Which meant the roof might be a point from which he could escape, if given the chance...
But there was no use considering that right now. His nurse was still sticking close by and there were a few nurses and doctors up on the balcony, observing. It wouldn't be wise to pull anything right now, especially if they already had reason to keep a close watch on him.
His nurse was handing him a brown paper bag, which held the contents of what was to be his lunch, Kurama realized. He'd heard it from the announcement just now, hadn't he?
"Chicken, please," he said, without being prompted. His nurse, after looking surprised for a moment, had him a wait a moment longer as she switched the bag for another, then returned to give it to him. Was he being too much of a model patient, perhaps? The woman had seemed surprised.
"Well, here's your lunch, Seimei! Please stay in the vicinity of the Sun Room and all its connected rooms in here. You may also go outside to the courtyard or the rec field, if you like! I'm afraid I have to leave you for the time being, but go make some friends!"
With that, she walked away and finally left him alone. But not completely alone. There were still many nurses and orderlies wandering around everywhere, not to mention the people up on the balcony. Kurama wasn't completely free to wander yet. He'd have to see if there was a gap in the surveillance for that, or whether he'd have to resort to creating that gap himself.
Now then, what to do? Kurama would have asked the nurse for more information if she hadn't left. While he hardly had a reason to trust her, she'd let him see his file easily enough, which meant it would have been possible to extract bits of information from her. Going outside right now to figure out where exactly he was would be another option, but would that be such a good idea right now, so soon after waking up here? No doubt, they would probably be watching him closely in case he had any ideas, right? Perhaps not right away, then.
His first priority was information-gathering, in any case, which was possible from anywhere so long as he had the access, but the question was, which source would be the most trustworthy and which would yield the most valuable information?
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Which meant that his best bet would be either gathering information on his own or asking someone with power on his own level -- that is, a fellow patient. On the off-chance that another patient here was in the exact, same situation as he was, he could gain insight into the system and could additionally form one alliance he might be able to place some trust in. If not, at least he'd be able to understand more about the place from the point-of-view of someone in his position. Either way, there was profit to be had in this option.
Kurama looked around. There were a few patients in the large room -- the Sun Room, he corrected -- with him. At this point, it hardly mattered whom he talked with. The first person he found who was alone and approachable would be fine for his purposes.
This person happened to be a young woman somewhere close to his human age, sitting at one of the tables with her lunch. She seemed to be examining her bangs, bored perhaps. Kurama walked over to the round table with his lunch bag.
"Excuse me?" he began, using Minamino Shuuichi's polite demeanor to give his first impression. He had no idea what kind of people were in here, after all. It was better to default to acting like just a harmless, human high-school student. "May I join you? I saw you were by yourself."
He placed a hand on the chair farthest away from her, but didn't sit down yet. If she refused, he'd go find someone else to talk to.
"Actually, I'm a bit confused about this place," he admitted. "I think I arrived yesterday and they didn't really tell me much. I was wondering if I could ask you to help me answer some questions I have?"
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“Yes? Excuse you?” she replied, an easy-going note to her voice. “For what?” Playfulness, of course. She dropped her hand and fixed the male with a small, complacent smile.
True, she had been by herself, but now she definitely wasn’t. Someone wanted to talk with her. How grateful she was! But just as with Saber, “I think”s poured from his mouth, which were more revealing than anything else he could say.
Another one? Lucky me.
Her smile had a knowing air about it. “I happen to do that a lot,” said Yomi. “Go ahead and I’ll see if I know the answers.”
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"Well, I didn't want to disturb you if you wanted to be alone," he said, without missing a beat. "But since you seem to be fine with it, I guess I'll go ahead."
He pulled out the chair and sat, setting his lunch on the desk. Something occurred to him -- should he risk eating food that was provided by the staff? Would it be alright? Currently, he couldn't find any sort of reason why they would want to drug him with the food when they'd gone so far as to imprison him already. If their aim was to drug or poison him, they could have done so without the hospital act and setting. But still, perhaps he should wait to make sure. He set the sack on the table, but didn't make a move to check its contents otherwise.
She'd said, she 'happened to do that a lot,' Kurama noted. What was that supposed to mean? Answering questions? Or answering questions for newcomers, specifically? Either way, it seemed to imply she had information about this place. Things were going just fine.
"I'm--" Since he was adopting Shuuichi's mannerisms, he might as well take on the persona in its entirety. "-- Shuuichi, by the way. Minamino Shuuichi."
"... The nurse never actually told me where I am," he continued. He wondered if the girl had arrived here just as he had -- awoken in an unfamiliar room with no memories of how she had gotten there and fed lies about all her previous memories and identity -- but there was no way to know right now. Whatever was the situation to her, Kurama had no way to phrase that question without having it sound strange. If she pointed out the strangeness of that question -- why would someone who had been admitted to an institution not know where he was or what the institution was called? -- he could pretend it was a side-effect of his medical problem. He was supposed to be someone with MPD, wasn't he? He might as well use it.
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In a manner of speaking. They all had their masks to wear.
As he went on, Yomi merely sat patiently, letting him work through his thoughts and present her with the final product. She could be polite, too, but saving him from himself was a bit too nice. Why make it easier on him?
“Ah, that’s right,” Yomi said. “The nurses. They don’t always see the importance of sharing some information, but most of them mean well. You’ll get used to it. Allow me to be the first one to welcome you, then. This is Landel’s Institute.”
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"Ah, I don't mind what you call me!" he said, playing up the act of innocence and giving her a smile. "We seem to be around the same age, so Shuuichi is fine, if you prefer. And yes, I'm Japanese; if I'm not mistaken, so are you?"
Since she'd asked which name he preferred to be called by, he thought it safe to assume such. Other Asian cultures also recognized the social importance of using last names and first names, but he might as well try for a common link with his first acquaintance. In a place such as this, it would perhaps be beneficial.
In any case, he'd been given his first bit of new information to digest. Ah, that made sense, about the nurses. His nurse had been helpful to a degree, but perhaps questioning her for other details might not have yielded the best results after all. Good to know.
"Landel's Institute?" Kurama repeated. He didn't recognize it, of course, but he'd been right about this place being an institute. "Doesn't sound like the name of a Japanese institute..."
So where exactly was he, if not in Japan? The nurse had looked foreign, but, while it was unlikely to see a foreigner working in a Japanese medical institute, it wasn't a ruled-out possibility. Kurama had wondered about it, but hadn't taken it to mean he was most certainly in some other country. But then he remembered the strangeness of the way she'd addressed him...
'Mr. Abe,' she'd first called him, as if she were addressing someone in the Western way. But she'd been speaking perfect Japanese, so why would she use a Western title, and then ask if she'd been pronouncing his name correctly? And the file had been written in Japanese, hadn't it? It was almost as if everything the nurse had said was being translated into Japanese from English for him alone...
"... I might have a strange question," Kurama added. "What language am I speaking right now?"
He'd assumed he was in Japan up until now, so he hadn't thought twice about talking to the girl before him in Japanese before. The fact that she had understood him and was speaking Japanese back hadn't seemed weird to him then. What was going on?
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As if this was all a delicate secret. But for now it seemed they were still tip-toeing around the subject, so she acted as if this was a awkward subject to be getting into, and not simply an undisguised state of affairs.
“Promise you won’t think I’m weird if I tell you the truth? The hospital probably isn’t from Japan, but you’re speaking Japanese to my ears. It’s complicated. Supernatural, you might even say. People don’t really know where the Institute is. Or how people come to be here. They just kind of show up, from all over.”
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Instead of showing any of this, he shook his head in reply to assure Yomi that he wouldn't think her weird at all for explaining the truth to him, and leaned in to listen.
"That's... unbelievable, really. But it makes a strange sort of sense," he said. "I thought it was strange when I spoke to my nurse. Is this common knowledge? Or are we in the minority about being in the know?"
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Yomi smiled, humoured, but externally it appeared as a gesture of some relief and gesture that dear Minamino-kun hadn’t called her crazy. It was an inconsequential little game, waiting to see if or when the other prisoners she interacted with realized that her true self didn’t match her outward appearance. Sometimes it seemed others were so busy passing themselves off as a normal human that they remained oblivious to the fact they were talking to a non-human. Rose was one of those others. Minamino was starting to seem like another, but it was too early to tell.
Ahhh, but playing nice was still boring, though.
“I know, it’s like the world has gone topsy-turvy on you. Nothing’s really what it seems,” agreed Yomi. “Oh, all the prisoners know there’s something very wrong about this place. You know, the people wearing the uniform we are. The nurses will call you a patient, but ‘prisoner’ is closer to the truth.”
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