week 3

[jinglehellmods]

WEEK 3

Another week gone and it's still Christmas! Or is it? The paint on the walls is beginning to crack and fade, with especially large chunks in character's bedrooms revealing scratched words like "cantgetoutcantgetout" and "god help me i just want to go home i miss my home i miss my mother i miss" etc. Yikes! The locations page might be updated throughout the week as characters discover more. Seems like now's the perfect time to investigate and hope you'll get closer to finding out what's going on here. There's always more places to look and more things to find!

As a reminder that this week's activity check is now live! And as usual, it's never a bad time to submit threads for regains! Have you been naughty or nice? Naughty children still get presents too, don't worry. And if you'd like to check-in on Thursday night, you always can! You never know what fun you might run into.

So go exploring, find something new and pay no mind to the creepy writing on the walls. We're sure everything will be fine! After all, nothing ever goes wrong on Christmas, right?

sunday | monday | tuesday | wednesday | thursday

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MONDAY

[jinglehellmods]

[jinglehellmods]

[ This morning in the foyer you'll find the tree trimmed with care. Have we mentioned it's huge? It's pretty out there. But what should you find, mounted high on top? Why, an Angel, of course, whose heart has been stopped.

Angel is dead, that much is clear. How the tree hasn't fallen, that's neither there nor here. Merry Christmas! ]

[thedifferencebetween]

[Jack is still in the foyer, even after the gristly discovery for today, but...not near the tree. He also seems to be having some sort of a very violent breakdown.]

[He has a fire poker. He's knocking things over and flinging whatever knickknacks are nearest to him, not caring at all about the mess he's making. He's yelling but it's...a very controlled and tight sort of yelling. This is a man who's tethers with sanity are very much loose at the moment.]

Whoever did this is gonna pay! Get out here and face me, you fucking coward!

[Handsome Jack isn't having a very good day. And seems to be intent on destroying the foyer unless someone stops him.]

[starblessed]

[It's. Probably not a great idea for Lunafreya to step in here, but guess what she's gonna]

Jack! Stop this!

[They haven't talked much, but there's still a marked difference between her usual tone and her voice here--Lunafreya is louder and forceful, striding toward him without any hesitation whatsoever.]

You're playing right into the hands of whatever forces are at play here!

[thedifferencebetween]

No, that's what I have been doing! Playing their stupid little game and doing what they ask and now my daughter is dead! She never hurt anybody in her life! She had a shitty life and she gets her first chance to be a real kid and someone killed her! She was the only good thing....

I'm not stopping anything I will bring this whole fucking house to the ground!

[Yeah, he's pretty wildly swinging that fire poker. He's not calming down easily. There are precious few things Jack honestly cares about, but Angel holds the highest honor among those scant things.]

[starblessed]

[It brings Lunafreya up short. His daughter? She hadn't known there were people with family here. How quiet had they been about it?

But that's neither here nor there.]

And I shall help you! That this house must burn is obvious--but if we are to destroy it, let us do it in such a way we can be certain it will exist no more.

[She's staying out of reach of that poker, not wanting to risk being accidentally hit in his tirade, but Luna's not backing down either.]

I am sorry for your loss, Jack. I did not know she was your daughter.

Investigation + ota sads

[transparentanswer]

[Things aren't any better than they were two days ago. Ries is dead, Kido is dead, Hans is dead, Diana is dead, Kantera is dead.

And Shintaro Kisaragi killed Lena and Arai.
Yet here he is, alive and unpunished. He spends most of his time in Room 5, staring up at the ceiling and staring at a particular picture on his iphone. He's covered in pine needles because they just keep falling and he doesn't even care anymore. Though, if anything strange is starting to happen in the room, he'll certainly notice it.

Later on, you'll find him in the kitchen, sitting down with his hands buried in his arms––tightly gripping his phone from which soft music is playing. If he doesn't eat, he dies. But what's the point? Even the soda doesn't taste good anymore. There's an untouched sandwich on the table next to him. He doesn't want to go into the foyer, where his guilt is written on the walls, or the dining room, where he destroyed two lives––so staying here will have to do. If you catch him looking up, you'll notice heavy, dark bags under his eyes and light bruising on his hands, in addition to the healing burn from last week.

Late night, unable to sleep, Shintaro will brave the Library, spending most of the night lounging in a comfy chair by himself, stewing in his own misery. As his insomnia persists, he'll start halfheartedly looking through the many tomes for anything that particularly catches his eye. Pick up a book, flip through it's pages, set it back down. Repeat. What's the point? He really doesn't know––maybe he just wants to avoid being a complete waste of oxygen...although that ship probably already sailed when he sent two people to their deaths.

It's another hard day.]

kitchen

[doublesmall]

[well. they already had one talk about this in the kitchen, didn't they?

chuuya's just here to eat, not to talk to him, but it's a little hard to ignore someone just... sitting there ignoring food. he's not exactly nice, but he's not totally heartless either, and besides-- if one of them is in this sort of state, that's one less pair of eyes focused on whatever weird shit is going on. they need everyone they can get, with so many already dead.

so he'll just lean against the counter nearby, watching shintaro for several moments before he says anything.]

So much for not running away from things, huh. You're still taking it personally?

[it's not too hard to guess at, after what shintaro said about how taking or not taking that knife would be the reason for lena's death.]

[transparentanswer]

It was me all along.

I got them both killed.

[He doesn't have the energy to speak any louder than he is, or with any conviction, or to turn and look at Chuuya.]

I didn't forget what you told me. [But that doesn't make it any easier. To just push on and forget it all. He spent three years trying to forget that he killed someone he loves––and now he's done it again.]

Am I guilty, Chuuya?

[doublesmall]

Mm, guilt's subjective. If you really want to see it that way, then yeah, you're gonna keep finding reasons to think so.

[he shrugs, there, pausing a second before he continues.]

If you didn't try to take the knife from him though, someone else probably would have. If you took it out of here that night, someone would've insisted on seeing it. You probably would've had to tell them where it was to clear your name. There's a lot of ways we could've gotten the same result, yeah?

[transparentanswer]

It was inevitable all along, huh?

[His head slowly starts to tip backwards.]

You can't change the future without going back in time...

[He digs his fingers into his hair.]

I just––I fucking...I promised to protect her, and I ended up getting her killed. Even if it was always going to happen, it happened because of me, she died stepping into trouble that I created.

We'd be better off if it had been me instead. She knew that knife was going to kill her, and she put herself in that position because she saw me challenging a guy twice my size. It's so stupid, it was so stupid...It wasn't worth it.

[doublesmall]

What, and hanging around waiting to starve to death or something is worth it?

[he leaves the counter, moving to stand closer, one hand set on his hip.]

Yeah, it's stupid. A lot of shit here is. Maybe it shouldn't have been her. But she knew, and she did it anyway-- so did she die for you to just hang around wasting time on nothing?

You can't change it. All you can do is live with it.

Kitchen

[acherontiastyx]

Look.

[...i mean, it's hard not to put two and two together here as he makes some freakin' cocoa.]

If he just gave you the knife like a reasonable person none of this would've happened.

[transparentanswer]

But he didn't.

There was another way I could have handled things. There must have been.

[toneless, he mumbles from the inside of his arms.]

[acherontiastyx]

[...it's hard not to feel like kind of a hypocrite talking about it like this given how he feels about losing, but.]

Nah, I don't think what you were doing was wrong. He should've given you the friggin' knife.

[transparentanswer]

[It doesn't mean much. It should, but it doesn't.]

Thanks, Guzma.

[He doesn't really sound sincere.]

I could've destroyed the knife the night before, but I didn't. I should've destroyed all the knives.

[acherontiastyx]

There have been knives floating around outside of where they should be since about day one, dude. Don't put this all on yourself.

[jinglehellmods]

[Those pine needles flutter down continuously, but there's a particular tree that seems intent on shedding a lot. Maybe he should look closer?]

[transparentanswer]

[Is it slowly dying the way that he is? It's weird enough that it gets him to roll out of bed and take a closer look at it. If it's going to do that for the foreseeable future, it's going to get annoying so...

What's weird about this tree?]

[jinglehellmods]

[There's a piece of folded paper there. It's yellow and soft with age, so handle it carefully!]

[transparentanswer]

Oh.

[Shintaro picks up the paper, carefully unfolds it, and reads it's contents. Somberly.]

[starblessed]

Shintaro.

[Lunafreya finds him in the night--fitting, she thinks, for the weight in his heart, even if she'd rather see him without it. She approaches quietly, but her voice is similarly quiet so as not to startle him.

There's no sense in asking him how he is, and so she doesn't. Instead, she'll take a seat on a stool nearby, folding her hands in her lap and watching him intently.]

There is no shame in grief. But if you allow it to shadow your heart, soon the darkness will be all you can see.

[transparentanswer]

[He can't look at her. He just...can't.]

I told you before, it was my fault.

Now, again, I'm responsible for the death of someone I cared about.

I'm sick of living with my rotten heart. It's been shadowed since the start.

[starblessed]

This was not your fault.

[It doesn't matter if Shintaro can look at her or not. She'll remain.]

Even Lena knew that you weren't responsible--why else would she have gone to such lengths?

[transparentanswer]

I...Lena was an incredibly kind, strong person. I don't deserve any forgiveness she may have given me.

She's dead because of me. That's a fact, and I have to live with it.

I hurt everyone that tries to show me kindness. And I'll hurt you too.
I promised to protect her, and I destroyed her instead.

[Tears are forming in the corners of his eyes, and he digs his fingernails into his wrist.]