idolpro | TEMPTATION OF ANGELS, which is named KHRYSAOR: A Heart Game (I)

[ wait.

this is just the dorm? this is just the dorm.

on the off-chance there's someone here, though... she's going to go look in the kitchen. ]

There's no one here.

—But wherever they've gotten off to can't be far, if the state of things is any indication: there's a whole row of spices out on the counter, some already in a mixing bowl, plus a pot of rice on the stove.

From the look and smell of the spice selection, curry is on the menu. Next to the ingredients is a handwritten recipe in what you recognize as a combination of Silk's and Lumen's handwriting.

...huh.

You'd think it was just a normal day.

[ she taps her fingers on the counter, and thinks. ]

Hello?

No answer—though you feel sure that everyone only stepped out for a little while.

There are wild roses in here too, twining about the cabinets and even knocking over cookware in places, as if they grew so quickly they knocked these things over themselves...?

[ well, it'd be a shame if this burned for carelessness. and honestly, she knows she's not the tidiest, but this is kind of a state, isn't it?

she's just going to check how the rice is doing, and finish mixing up the rest of the ingredients for the curry, while she's in here. ]

It's simple, relaxing work, especially with the recipe right there for you to follow.

You're checking the rice when you feel something delicate brush against your wrist, and with it split second of something like longing—

...Oh. It's another wild rose, just barely opening on its thorny branch. It's not doing anything beyond, well, being there (and seemingly full of some sort of emotion?), but it certainly did grow ridiculously fast while you were cooking.

[ she looks at the flower— ]

...do you want some?

I mean, you're welcome to try, I can't eat it.

It's a flower.

—Which is to say: it just bobs in the air a bit.
As you study it, though, you start to feel something:

You are different—something that has never fit in. But has anyone here in this new Familia really fit in? You wouldn't be Familia BAD END if you had.

So why is that now you feel.... longing?

There's still that distance between you and them, after all—and for the first time, you have reason to wonder at what you have been missing…

[ she thinks back to that first conversation they had— ]

It'd be a little... difficult, to be someone who's never been a person at all, wouldn't it.

As you consider the flowers, you realize you can recognize them more fully: Wild Rose, Key of Something Different.

Caring about "difference" at all, though... that's the sort of thing you can only feel if your difference matters; if it is part of the story of you finding your place in the world.

[ in the kitchen, ]

Um - excuse me, Hope ... ?

Oh, Aradia—

Someone left this cooking, I suppose, so I thought I'd finish it.

That and it seemed like an obvious task to do while I'm thinking over how I got here. Did you also have a strange experience...?

Mm.

[ is all she seems to care to say about it, at least immediately ]

Um, if it's okay, then I'll do my best to help ...

Many hands make light work.

...and I suppose part of the joy of cooking is companionship, either in the making, or in who's receiving.

I think so too. I don't think - um, well, of course I have amnesia too, so I'm not sure ... it would be a little strange if I had never learned how to cook, but the "me" that I've remembered so far - I don't think she really knew, so Luci and Doodle and Glory all helped me learn ...

Do you like making things?

I suppose I probably learned growing up—helping around the house. There's a certain satisfaction in it, isn't there? Being able to make something that can help sustain others, or that inspires happiness.

Mm! That part is really nice, isn't it...?

[ but there's a pause, as she looks over the ingredients ]

Does -

[ and another, as she recalls how she got her, her expression darkening just briefly, ]

Um - it's Hellfire's, isn't it... does she like curry?

You know—I'm not entirely sure. She eats a lot of snack foods. It's the sort of thing Silk makes often...

...I wonder if she feels a little bit like an outsider, for not being able to appreciate some things in the same ways. Hellfire, I mean.

Mm ...

[ and glancing to the wild roses, next ]

Those flowers . . .

Of course, there's nothing wrong at all with being different.

...they feel like a sort of longing, though.

... Do you think that we should get rid of them?

It's a sort of wish to understand others better, I think. So I wouldn't.

But it does seem like it's getting a bit untidy. Maybe it needs an outlet.

Then, instead, something like -

Replanting them somewhere else...?

[ reaching for the recipe, holding it up ]

Like this?

...ah, that's not a bad idea.

If they learn how to do it, and she's able to learn how to help, then that might help her feel better too, right?

Well, I'm not sure how we would do that, though ... They won't all fit on this paper, will they...?

TEMPTATION OF ANGELS, which is named KHRYSAOR: A Heart Game (I)

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