idolpro | Eclipse's Heart Game ☉ Session #4

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!heart games

Eclipse's Heart Game ☉ Session #4

You drift like you're floating in water. It's almost relaxing, actually. As long as you don't think too hard that what you're floating in may be bottomless, because under you lies only a deep darkness that only the ocean can provide.

Then something grabs you and drags you deeper, down, down, down into the abyssal depths. You can't breathe, but that's not on the forefront of your mind now, is it?

There is a mounting sense of anxiety and dread.

Who do you want to become? Will you even get to see tomorrow? What if all roads lead to ████████? Can you still stay '███'? If people see the ████ you, will they think less of you? Will they feel cheated?

You want to live. Even if it's a ███, even if your hands must be covered in █████, you want to live. You want to be '███'.

Finally, a voice pierces through the darkness. It's a woman's voice.

"My, how unfortunate. Your journey ends before it even begins."

"... Just kidding. That would be terribly boring! I suppose I can do the boy a favour just this once."

You feel someone grab your arm and pull you up to the surface.

...

When you come to, you are standing somewhere else.

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Numbness washes over you when you walk into this room. As you breathe in the stale air, a slight bitterness forms in the back of your throat. It smells faintly of rot.

The room seems to be an approximation of the conference room in Heart Soldier's dorm, albeit in ... a pretty terrible state. The spinny chairs have been left on their sides on the floor. None of the buttons light up or function at all, even uselessly. Some display monitors are smashed, glass shards scattered on the floor. There's a pretty thick layer of dust on everything.

Besides the destruction however, the room is pretty bare. There are no decorations, and only a few items that stand out. There's a broom and dustpan, like someone thought of cleaning the place up but then just ... didn't do it.

On the conference table is a notebook and some pens. Next to them is a wall scroll laid out across the table, with cursive calligraphy. On the far end of the table is a locked box.

[He takes a set in one of the broken spinny chairs and pulls the notebook close to start flipping through it]

The front pages of the notebook have been ripped out. The first page that comes after is filled with words and sometimes whole sentences that have been completely blacked out with a pen, rendering the text illegible.

There is one bit that isn't scratched out.
Not worth it.

[Is there a pen available nearby?]

There are some pens on the table, yes.

If it's not worth it, leave it in the past.

The future is the only thing that matters.

Letting go of the past is turning out to be the hardest thing, as he's been learning.

But the words sit fresh on the page, a few more lines that aren't just redacted emotion.

[Hope you weren't expecting anything more than clinical advice.

Now.

Moving on to the wall scroll]

Would he expect anything else from Intensity.

On the yellowing scroll, peeling off its backing, is a poem:
Once, there was a maiden...
....who was always looking forward to the way things would be.
She said, "Someday, I'm getting out of this place."
"Someday, I'm going to kill that boy that put me here."
"And while I wait, I don't much mind,
'cause it's better to dream tomorrow than to be there."
....
"I'm holding at bay," she said, "what I know to be true."
"That I'll never get out. I won't let my dreams die!"
"I'll hang on to hope," she said, "until Time itself ends. But--"
"There's always an ending," said Time.

All of you are so fucking dramatic.

[Says the pot calling the kettle black as--

WITH A GREAT SIGH--

He moves to hang up the wall scroll somewhere that's not completely trashed.]

Intensity, please.

There's some space on the back wall, like that's where it should have been put up originally.

Edited 2021-01-30 04:02 (UTC)

[He hangs it up before moving toward the locked box.

Intensity is going to take care of all these paladin issues if it's the last thing he does.]

It's a metal box that wouldn't look out of place in Heart Soldier's dorm. There's a huge padlock closing it shut.

When you pick it up, you can get an impression of its contents. What's inside is -

Disillusionment (you shouldn't have put faith in them); anger (why did you have to pay for their actions?); regret (maybe you should have just said nothing); guilt (you aren't kind or gentle); inadequacy (you are not and never will be noble of heart); loss (you never belonged) -

Probably, there are many reasons this box should stay locked.

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[All right, so cleaned up, that's fine. Probably can tell a bit, with broken stuff, can only clean up the break, can't fix the broken so easily.]

[He'll take a look at the Wall Scroll and the Notebook.]

The notebook has this, along with some new lines added by Intensity.

The wall scroll has been put up on the back wall.

On the yellowing scroll, peeling off its backing, is a poem:
Once, there was a maiden...
....who was always looking forward to the way things would be.
She said, "Someday, I'm getting out of this place."
"Someday, I'm going to kill that boy that put me here."
"And while I wait, I don't much mind,
'cause it's better to dream tomorrow than to be there."
....
"I'm holding at bay," she said, "what I know to be true."
"That I'll never get out. I won't let my dreams die!"
"I'll hang on to hope," she said, "until Time itself ends. But--"
"There's always an ending," said Time.

[....Hurricane, what the fuck did your team do to this boy.]

[Okay.]

[He is going to take a seat at the book and flip through to a blank page. Test first.]

'Eclipse, can you read this?'

There's no response in the notebook itself, but there is a sense of acknowledgement, somehow.

[Hmmm]

'Do you think Forgiveness is the same as Reconciliation?'

You get the sense that he interested in neither of those things, actually. He kind of just wants to forget about it.

[He nods and that's not surprising. Something to consider in his Experiments.]

'Would I be able to close this box if I opened it?'

Please don't open it at all.

It took him fucking forever to lock the damn thing.

'Is there a place to learn more of what happened to make these emotions?'

There's this weariness that weighs down upon you.

Please. He doesn't really want to revisit that, least of all let you see them.

[He's silent a few moments, pencil tapping the desk.]

'If I had this much weight bearing down on me, would you be willing to walk and leave me alone?'

'Could you when I was asking for help?'

'I just want to understand better so I can help.'

Edited 2021-01-30 07:15 (UTC)

There's a long pause.

Then, from downstairs, he can hear the sound of his mom playing the guzheng, like she's trying to call him down.

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