Day 41: Women's Showers

[roseoverture]

Utena was very, very glad that the patients were finally being allowed to go to the showers. Even for a girl more used to sweating than many in her gender, two days without a shower was definitely enough to make her feel stickier and stinkier than she preferred to be. Especially after all the running around and tearing apart of rooms she, Celes and

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[thecamellia]

“Not the town,” answered Tsubaki with a headshake, “just the forest. It’s hard to imagine a place not being creepy at night; everything‘s so unnatural outside.” Ruins of a town more so, though. It was a sign of life that was kind of unsettling. She got the impression that their reason for heading that way was something important between Yukari and her friends; friends from home, it sounded like. Her focused switched to that. “Senpai? Do you know a lot of people from your home?”

It’d be pretty unfortunate to find one’s friends here, but Yukari had familiar faces to travel with at night… Drawing her fingers through her hair, she continued to wash out shampoo from the long locks before applying conditioner. If the luxury was there…

Her gaze flicked to over Yukari’s face from the corner of her eye as the other girl thought about the trip happening the next day. Thinking about the future beyond the next nightshift was definitely a struggle sometimes. “Is there anything fun to do? I didn’t see much of it last time.” Which brought back memories of the initial shock she’d felt at seeing this place’s sun for the first time, and bumping into Yukari by mistake… Tsubaki smiled a little sheepishly to herself. “At least we won’t be eating cafeteria food,” she offered.

[remedying]

"No kidding," Yukari agreed with a sigh. "Before that it was all the fog; I've never seen so much in my life." She fell silent for a moment, rinsing herself off underneath the water before she spoke up again, this time more thoughtfully; "I wonder what happened out there... It's like everyone just up and left all of a sudden ages ago."

Her mind wandered elsewhere entirely, failing to come up with a scenario that sounded right before realizing Tsubaki had asked her a question. "-- Oh, yeah, kinda," Yukari replied absentmindedly, brushing a hand through her hair. "Some of them are here. We've been trying to work together on a few things lately."

It made her wonder what they were going to try to do this night. She'd have to let them know she had other plans, before Mitsuru decided to come up with something for her to go out and attempt to finish.

"No idea, but there's gotta be something worth seeing there," Yukari said, and maybe she finally sounded a little eager about it, too. "It's not the first place I'd want to visit, but it didn't look all that bad."

[thecamellia]

Yeah, visibility was awfully poor in all directions outside the walls, and there hadn't seemed to be any change in thickness. Just cold, quiet, misty ground. Tsubaki rubbed conditioner into her scalp slowly, unable to help thinking about the reasons for an abandoned town to be out there, either. But the explanations she could imagine had dark ends--there were too many ways to wipe out an entire population, she'd found. She smiled slightly instead, masking her thoughts. "I don't know, it's a mystery to me. Do your friends have a theory?" Upperclassmen implied one or more went to school with Yukari in... Iwatodai, wasn't that right? "It must be a little reassuring to have people you know around. I hope they're doing well, too."

Everybody was working hard in their own ways, so progress would happen one way or another, even if it was only a little. Even if the answers, like the truth behind this place and the outlying land, weren't going to be pretty. But that was getting ahead of themselves.

Tsubaki mixed conditioner into the rest of her hair, then twisted most of it into a loose rope so that she could bring it back over her shoulder and rinse. "The townspeople might have something to say," she added lightly. They could provide a little enlightenment about Doyleton, maybe, even if it didn't seem like getting the day to wander the town had helped much in learning more about their situation. "It should be a nice break, anyway. No sitting on couches in our uniform."

A chance to get out and walk around without it being nightshift was something small to cheer up about, right?