Day 60: Sun Room (Third Shift)

[lovecrafty]

> 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

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[fuukaenbujin]

Kurama blinked at her response. He hadn't expected that, he supposed. Being the sort of place this was, he might have expected a different sort of attitude from a fellow patient, but apparently not.

"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.

[she_is_ruin]

“I am,” she confirmed, “but I appreciate your politeness.” Yes, he was so very polite about it, which was worth a smile. “Which do you prefer? Minamino? Or Shuuichi? You’re Japanese, aren’t you?”

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.”

[fuukaenbujin]

He'd offered his name, but she hadn't offered one back herself. There was no particular need to know her name or whatever name she might have chosen to give, but it was something he took notice of and wondered about. Kurama wouldn't question it, though. He was in a position where he needed something from her. There was no need for her to exchange the same courtesy of giving him a name to address her by, and there was no need for him to request it.

"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?

[she_is_ruin]

“I am,” she repeated with a smile. “The Kanto region, to be exact. I’m Yomi. That’s a coincidence, Shuuichi-kun, the both of us coming from the same place. Oh, but that’s right… I’m getting ahead of myself.”

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.”

AND I AM SUPER LATE, but yes. ;A; hi....

[fuukaenbujin]

Yomi. ... Hilarious. Entirely coincidental, even, but the irony wasn't lost on him. Of course the first person he meets here would have the same name as the last person he'd been dealing with back in his own world. ... But no, this really did seem like an actual coincidence here, as much as it felt like a bad joke, especially after Kurama had only just realized exactly what his 'name' was alluding to.

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?"

IT'S COOL, IT'S COOL.

[she_is_ruin]

Something unbelievable that reluctantly had to be believed? Haha, that was Landel’s Institute, all right.

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.”