Day 38: Patients' Library

[emotionl4arobot]

The intercom rang out, disrupting what had turned out to be a rather pointless breakfast conversation, at least in Brainiac 5's eyes. He couldn't wait to put more distance between himself and Scar's blather of how logic, of all things, might not work the same way in this dimension. It was almost enough to make him believe that the man may very well

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[tyki_pon]

There wasn't a place where a hobo couldn't be more out of his element than a library. Most hobos couldn't even read, and even if they could they had other things to worry about than reading interesting novels. But Tyki was different. He was probably the only hobo to ever walk the planet that actually enjoyed reading a book once in a while.

But he admit, he probably wasn't just your regular neighborhood hobo.

Even if both of his lives were separate, most of the more simple pleasures still overlapped. Smoking, playing cards and even reading books. It just so happened his black side was more suitable for such a thing, but it didn't stop the Noah to keep himself occupied right now.

He looked at the various books on the shelves, actually recognizing some of the titles as something he had read at some point, before finally pulling out 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' by Oscar Wilde.

Good thing his friends weren't here to see him, even though their shocked expressions of seeing the Tyki they knew with a book would be amusing enough. Maybe he

[mind_the_sukima]

Breakfast had left Yukari in a fairly good mood. There really were all sorts of interesting people here. She'd seen the Sun Room and Arts and Crafts yesterday, so when given the choice, she decided to go to the Library

[tyki_pon]

Tyki hadn't gotten much further than the second page when a woman sat down and, so he noticed when he looked up from his book, watched him curiously. The smile she gave him was an interesting one, though. People who smiled mischievously were usually interesting people.

"What's up, lady?" he greeted while grinning back at her.

[mind_the_sukima]

"Nothing much," she replied. So, he was game for a little company. Good to see not everyone was too busy being horribly trapped in space and time to smile once in a while. "Just people-watching, lazing about, being trapped in an inter-dimensional institute of hell, the usual. Well, I guess I should say person-watching."

She paused then. It would be fairly pointless to ask what he was doing, as it was obvious that consisted of either "being interrupted while reading" or, more likely, considering his good humor, "chatting up a fellow patient".

"I guess this is the part where I'm supposed to say, 'My name's Violet, Violet Cloud,' and we become great buddies that help us through whatever mental delusions they have us locked away for," she said flippantly. "But I prefer 'Yukari Yakumo', the name that makes the nurses frown and click their tongues. You don't mind, do you?"

She still found this whole "fake lives" thing very amusing and wasn't about to pass up any opportunities to poke fun at it.

[tyki_pon]

Tyki liked her attitude.

"Before we get to the buddy part, I probably should be sayin' my name's João dos Santos." he answered, grin still present on his face. "But I guess I like 'Tyki Mikk' better. It's a lotta easier to pronounce anyway." He wondered how many people would end up raping his "real" name to something unrecognizable. The least Landels could've done was thinking of something more practical. Not everyone could speak Portuguese after all.

He laughed, a little mischievous glint in his eyes that his glasses weren't able to cover up. "Where's the fun in doin' what the nurses say, anyway?"

[mind_the_sukima]

That certainly was a mouthful, Yukari had to agree. What was it, Spanish or something? It'd been a long, long time since she'd had anything to do with the Old World, so her knowledge of those trivialities was fuzzy at best. Ran would probably know.

Tyki Mikk, on the other hand, didn't have any particular outstanding connotations she could recognize.

"Well, Tyki, while they do seem to be a bunch of stick-in-the-mud's, it can be relatively fun to do what they say," suggested Yukari. "After all, I imagine it's much less fun to spend a shift sedated than playing along with their game, at least a little bit. Have you ever had that opportunity? I could be wrong; maybe they give us the fun kind of drugs when they do that."

Well, half-sedated patients certainly were fun, but that was from an outside perspective.

[tyki_pon]

"Heh, who knows?" Tyki laughed at the suggestion of the staff using 'fun' drugs. "It could actually work, ya know. Maybe we should try it sometime." The nurses weren't that difficult to provoke, anyway.

"We just gotta be careful we dun' get solitary. They got padded walls and sweaters that tie yer arms up." Or at least a normal nut house had. Maybe in this one you would end up on the operation table?

[mind_the_sukima]

"We could go dancing on the tables at lunch, perhaps?" Yukari suggested with a smile. "As long as we're not too rowdy about it, we should be fine. I'd rather avoid solitary too; that would be boring no matter how many funny drugs they give us."

"Of course, it could just be easier to go looking for recreational medicines at night," she offered as an alternative. "In the supply rooms, of course. Even if I haven't met one yet, from what I've heard, I'm pretty sure the dark nurses don't use fun drugs."

[tyki_pon]

"Can't dance." Tyki admitted with a sheepish grin. Well, his white side couldn't dance, and the Noah would rather avoid such activities as much as possible. "Besides, they're probably just gonna warn us 'cause dancin's pretty innocent, right?"

He paused for a bit. "We could try a food fight?"

Just getting them at night seemed a less bothersome activity, even if it'd bring some complications because of his....situation. Keeping both of his sides separate was a lot more difficult here, which annoyed Tyki to no end.

"There's gotta be a pharmacy 'round this place, right?" he suggested. "And of course not, they probably just got stuff in their needles that makes ya sleepy."

[mind_the_sukima]

"I think I saw one yesterday; might be cliche if we did it again so soon," said Yukari with a shrug. Considering they were mental patients, she doubted the nurses would try a progressive punishment scale, such as "first food fight is sedation, second is solitary", as that would be assuming the patients were smart enough to learn, which seemed unlikely as most people assumed any sort of mental illness constituted full-on retardation of all intelligent capabilities, but there was still a chance starting a repeat performance wouldn't be taken in good humor. As for the night nurses

[tyki_pon]

"Yer right, didn't think of that." Tyki answered sheepishly, holding a hand through the black mess that was his hair. They'd have to come up with something more original then.

Coincidental or not, the Noah still found himself blinking at the choice of words.

"Black 'n white, huh? That's a pretty interestin' way of puttin' it." There was no denying the truth, though, because Landels also had a white side and a black side. Just like Tyki Mikk. Only having a monster-infested hospital wouldn't be interesting enough without the lighter side to accompany it, Martin Landel was probably thinking along those lines.

Only the line between Landel's sides happened to be even thinner.

[mind_the_sukima]

"Or light and dark, whatever you prefer," said Yukari, not thinking anything of the man's surprise. When her tendency to categorize things into separate opposite, into borders, gaps and lines, crept into her turns of phrase, it often garnered such responses.

"But that's the premise of the game, isn't it?" she continued. "The juxtaposition of a facility here to ostensibly help us that denies our powers and a prison that means every harm to us and tests those very powers. And having to live in both every day. It's having the two, or rather the border between the two that keeps it from all blurring into one long ordeal. Plus it accents the patients themselves. I imagine many of us act differently at night than during the day, yes? Our own black and white sides."

The duality of human nature, what people did in front of their peers and behind their backs, she had seen this for centuries and still it never got old.

[tyki_pon]

Tyki laughed at the suggestion of acting differently during the night. "You sure got a point there, lady."

Yukari probably didn't even realize how right she was with the comment, considering Tyki himself crossed the border frequently himself. Having one without the other simply wouldn't be as entertaining. It was living in two complete opposites that simply brought him so much pleasure. But if they weren't kept separate, the thin line that kept them from blurring together would break and everything would turn into a shade of gray. There was no fun in that.

There also wasn't any fun in telling of his own situation, though Tyki liked the view they seemed to share. Light and darkness or black and white, whatever a person wanted to call it, it's concept remained the same. And it was one that had the Noah's interest.

"Two sides 'o the same coin, they say." he eventually answered, making sure not to give anything away about his own two lifes. "I gotta admit, it's an interestin' subject, no?"

[mind_the_sukima]

"Isn't it?" she agreed with a smile. She herself was a little like that, living both inside Gensokyo and in the Outside World, slipping between the two effortlessly, almost like stepping between the past and future thanks to Gensokyo's timeless state. Trying to explain that whole situation seemed troublesome though, so Yukari left it at, "A dual life is certainly more fun than a single one.

"The trouble's when the two intersect," she continued, though she seemed more amused than troubled by the idea. "Though there's a certain rush in trying to keep it straight while it all falls down around you."

Even better when it was falling down around someone else and Yukari was causing the falling.