002 ✿ Dream [Interactive]
Warning: None? This is a dream, so I doubt any hypnotism she might do will actually carry over into reality. :|a If headcanon counts as a warning, then, yeah.
Effects: Interactive!
( Welcome to tonight's show! )
Effects: Interactive!
( Welcome to tonight's show! )
The problem is Ken is already standing up.
Not because he got out of his seat, mind - never that. The problem is, he doesn't think he had a seat in the first place. Ken is standing at the back of what appears to be a TV studio, surrounded by an audience he can only half-believe in. They're faceless, almost shapeless humanoid blobs in a uniform dull gray and something about them is creeping him right out. He doesn't know how he got here - not at all. He's never even been in a TV studio, not like this: still less has actually sat down and watched anything being taped. Why would he suddenly have fetched up in one now, not even knowing how he was supposed to have got there?
He wants to just turn around and leave, but he can't see where the doors are (are there any?) and it's bad enough to be standing up when the girl on the stage calls for volunteers in a suspiciously chipper TV-hostess's voice. No need to compound it by acting like he really ( ... )
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"Ah, yes... How about that that young gentleman standing over there?" She motions towards where he stood and, predictably, the spotlight was soon all over him. There was no escaping the inevitable now, regardless of how confused or eager to leave he appeared to be. "Please, come on down and take a seat! I promise this will only take a minute of your time."
Time to see how, exactly, this would all work out.
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Ken blinks as the spotlight is shone on him, his eyes going wide and his body tensing - perfect rabbit-in-headlights frozen panic. Oh, great, this would mean I'm on television--Kritiker were going to kill him, if the embarrassment didn't get to him first. Hi, mom, Ken thought inanely: too bad she wasn't going to be watching and of course she damn well wasn't! Right, now he'd got that out of the way any minute now something large and heavy was going to broadside him and he was not going to like it.
Which meant the only polite thing to do would be to excuse himself as quickly as possible. Say he had a medical condition or something and needed to go-- go do something medical. In the men's room. So, not here.
(Yeah, Hidaka, you really need to get better at coming up with stories on the fly.)
"Um," he managed. "Okay?"
... which was of course the precise opposite of what he'd been trying to do. God but he was brilliant. Ken would have cursed, but... live TV, or something, and probably no transmission delay for something as ( ... )
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Obviously, she did not.
Instead, she continues smiling at him, as if she were oblivious to his discomfort despite the obvious look on his face. He seemed to be a rather ordinary person, there was no outward sign of him being one of those who she could easily manipulate with her hypnotism, which meant she had to rely on either pure luck, or a little bit of cooperation here.
"Unfortunately, I can't reveal that just yet. It would spoil the surprise for the audience, after all." And then she gestures to the gray mass that was meant to pass off as her audience. She didn't really care spoiling it ( ... )
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There is something very wrong about this and he doesn't understand what - he knows it's not the faceless, formless mass that is the crowd; it's not even winding up in a television studio when he could have sworn he was just trying to go to bed. It's nothing he can put his finger on, he just knows that nonetheless It Is There. He knows that he wants to get out of here, and he knows that he can do nothing of the sort.
Story of his life, he guesses. Ken simply stands there smiling like an idiot while the little hostess talks. She's telling him absolutely nothing that's at all reassuring - the audience, he wants to shout, isn't even damn well real! - and all he can do is nod and grin like he's got a vacancy in the top storey of the tower and wonder why in the goddamn world there don't seem to be any doors out of this place. He can't even work out how he'd go about getting off the damn stage without ending up back in the audience and what good would that do ( ... )
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...Speaking of which, if those suspicions existed, she would need to ease them soon. They would be rather detrimental to her act if she did nothing about them.
"I see." She says, as if she were thinking about his name for a moment, before continuing speaking. "Thank you, Ken-san, for being my volunteer for the night." And then the so-called audience begins to clap, this time a little bit louder as if they were applauding him for being brave enough to volunteer for this ( ... )
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And then the applause began, and Ken's eyes widened, just a little, but surely enough that the girl had noticed. Okay, now that was eerie. He'd thought the silence from the non-audience was on the weird side, but having the damn things actually applaud was somehow only worse. They were,'t real, so what the Hell was making the noise? It was all Ken could do not to flinch, and only remembering - yeah, hi mom - that he was being watched and then some kept him from it ( ... )
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Once he is sitting on the plastic chair, gripping the sides so he could easily get back up on his feet and away from the stage if it ever became necessary, she smiles and turns away from the camera and towards him. A horrible thing to do and completely against basic stage ethics, but it wasn't as if her audience would care.
It was all part of the show, either way.
Rei leans over, closer to him, until her mouth is close to his ear and out of the audience's sight. If he was observant, perhaps, he could see her expression immediately shift from the confident, upbeat one she had been using this whole time to a somewhat ( ... )
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It's an odd word to choose, or Ken thinks it is. His brows quirk upward.
(Maybe it's just because she's a teenage girl? Ken's never been good with girls and would be the first to admit that he's absolutely no expert with things like this, but... He thinks back to Sakura, and to the little group of high-school girls who'd haunted the shop back home, and maybe in context of that it doesn't seem quite so odd. Girls' minds can tend to run to things like that, when they hit their teens. Sometimes.)
He didn't really notice the shift: Ken's observant but only up to a point, and reading a person - rather than a mood or a situation, or a strange environment - has never been one of his strong suits. On some level, though, he notices the change.
Because the girl sounds different all of a sudden, and not nearly so sure of herself. Maybe she doesn't want to be on TV either? It's a dream, right? And lots of people dream about doing stuff they'd never want to do for real and the whole point was you just stood there and had to make it up on ( ... )
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And then it's the audience's turn to laugh. It sounds fake and forced and similar to those laughing tracks they used in old TV shows. It's more than just a little bit creepy, but Rei doesn't really care. She pretends to not notice how disturbing it all sounded to a normal person, and continues with her performance.
The audience eventually quiets down, just as they should, and Rei turns to face Ken once again. She had already given him the instructions, now it was all up to luck. He could play along, leave her to embarrass herself, or, perhaps, it could work ( ... )
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Yeah, that was going to be a lot easier said than done in this situation (and he still had no idea how he'd gotten himself into it, did he?). The girl might as well have asked him to grow an extra head, it was just as impossible to imagine successfully doing it, still less that it might actually help things along at all. If he could just work out where the goddamn door was-- the audience laughter doesn't help ease his mind at all. It sounds wrong, forced - fake, like something that could be switched on and off at will. He winces slightly, turning back to the girl.
(Ken doesn't want to be relaxed, is the truth of it. He just-- he's alone on unfamiliar territory, and look what happened the last time he tried that... He doesn't want to, not under these circumstances. It's not a good idea and that, Ken tells himself, is where it ends ( ... )
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