gitanes | ic inbox ( ryslig )

[A few days after his talk with other Yugi, and also a lot of overthinking, Komaeda decides to finally message the woman in question—]

Lila-san... are we dating?

[12:46 AM, a specter stands before apartment 701.

Or at least, most would believe as much, what with Nagito Komaeda having disappeared from thin air for over a month. The reality of his situation remains on his chest: Y-shaped, closed but the angry reddish purple of a still-healing wound. His energy, too, remains sapped. It took everything just to revive—and even then, he's two fog cycles late.

Yet, he doesn't stand before his own apartment, or yearn to crawl into his own bed. Instead, as despair swirls within the very depths of his soul, Komaeda wants for nothing more than the warmth of a barely-there static-charged embrace.

How long has it been since he saw Lila? Months? He doesn't remember—too lost in his own feelings for weeks before he even disappeared. It doesn't matter now, though. He raises a hand, then taps the raw knuckles of it quietly against the front door. Whether she answers right away or not, Komaeda turns and slumps his back against the doorframe to wait.]

[So, a lot's happened since prom.

Like, a lot.
And they've only just finished dealing with the most recent thing, and they're probably both tired from chasing little kids around, but - well, the Fog's dissipated again and Mukuro can finally shift back to her 'normal' forms. Rather than being stuck choosing between a nightmare creature or a dog. She doesn't want to waste this chance now that she knows it could happen again, it feels like - it's urgent, somehow. It's such a dumb, little thing, except it's not, because Lila is important.

Which is how Mukuro ends up knocking timidly at her door this evening, with that pretty red dress hung over her other arm.]

There once was a boy who was a Halloween fanatic. He loved dressing up for Halloween, he loved pulling pranks and watching horror movies, and above everything else... he loved candy. One fateful year, while he went trick-or-treating, he visited a house. This house was creepy as hell! It was big, it was old, it smelled like a grandmother and it was owned by a happy, old rich couple. The boy came here thinking that he would be handed out big chocolate bars, because it was a rich person's house but when he knocked on their door... he was handed a bag of that shitty candy that nobody likes! Tootsie rolls, shitty flavoured dum-dums, those weird... peanut things... needless to say, the boy was heartbroken. He was so heartbroken that he died, right there on their porch and now, every Halloween he goes out and finds people to curse. He wants everyone to suffer the same way he did!

Everybody is already suffering from his curse!! Send this to ten people to break the curse, or to avoid getting cursed, or you'll be stuck looking freakier than usual for the rest of your life!!!!!!!!!!

[ Lila... picking something out for Lila isn't easy.

It's as he's going down the list of basic things he could get a girl he only kind of knows that he's forced to acknowledge just how much stuff there is that shades can't enjoy the same as everybody else. Makeup, no. Bath products, no. Cute random scrunchies and shit from Claire's? Lila doesn't seem the scrunchie type, but no.

He struggles up until the moment he stops thinking generically. Then, go figure, he finally has an epiphany. When did he last see her happy as hell? And who was she with?

On Nattensfest Eve, Steve drops by 701 to deliver a couple of things:

A cherry slushie for now and a bottle of cherry vodka for later.

A Nattensfest card with a Polaroid tucked inside of it. It's one of Lila's successful photobombs from Halloween, specifically the one with Mukuro front and center in her sheep costume. It's just a hunch, but — he thought she might like to have it.

The card itself contains some penned in well wishes for the holidays. More interestingly, he mentions in a P.S. that he got a firepit for the roof. He's stocked it with firewood if she wants to hang out with anybody up there.

Steve hopes they'll all be able to make use of it come New Year's Eve, but for now he's only told Lila about the building's new point of interest. ]

[Lila is one of the harder people for Celeste to decide what to gift. Being a shade certainly isn't easy, and it makes gifts a bit harder, especially since she knows that touch is something Lila struggles with.

Celeste wants to impress her, she realizes eventually.

But eventually, she realizes that perhaps throwing money at the problem isn't quite what she needs.

It's a package, wrapped with a level of meticulousness that few people can achieve, with a massive bright green bow on top. Green isn't one of Celeste's colors, which is perhaps is the first hint.

A plastic ziplock sits inside- strange at first, but upon closer inspection there's a sweater. A familiar dark muted green sweater. Preserved. One of the few belongings Komaeda had in general. Celeste had packed up some of his clothing but kept it in the closet to save from moths.

But perhaps Lila would like to have it more. It still smells like him. It won't last, but Celeste felt it mattered.]

With Care. Celestia

Edited 2021-12-26 03:18 (UTC)

[Lila is the first to receive a gift from Mukuro this year. Christmas is for couples where she's from, after all, and she would rather die than disappoint. So. While she did not bring it with her the night before, she does manage to scamper back to her floor and back before Lila's fully roused on Nattensfest morning (or more likely evening, since they both trend more nocturnal.)

The box is wrapped meticulously, every fold perfect, in shimmering ink-black paper, and tied with a pure white ribbon. (It took Mukuro several attempts to learn how to do it with claws.) Inside sits a poseable wolf toy, made of dark polished rosewood - among other things. The fangs are real carved bone, the claws are cool metal, and a pair of yellow glass eyes round out its fierce little face. There's a mane of soft dark fur running down its spine and spreading into a fluffy tail, and soft leather makes up its squishy pawpads. Little white spots have been painted where they belong on its snout, shoulders, and so on. While it makes for a very charming display piece, it's clearly been designed to be handled, with its variety of textures.

But that's not all! It's sitting atop a thick folded blanket, made of luscious plush fleece dyed midnight blue with similar white pinprick spots, made to look like a starry night sky. Finally, folded inside of it, there's a bundle of a variety of scented candles and a very nice lighter seemingly made of black nacre.]

[Oh no oh NO?! Ryou didn't even think to get Lila something, and she'd gone to the trouble of sending him along a gift. This just won't stand!

Rushed it may be, but Ryou's present is still thoughtful--a bottle of sweet red wine because he's honestly a soft ~~little bitch~~ who absolutely wouldn't feel right giving a lady hard liquor.

There's also a thank you card taped to the bottle.]

Please excuse the late delivery! I truly appreciate your gift, it's very comforting and I will wear it as often as I can. In turn, I hope you enjoy this, I know it isn't much.

- Ryou Bakura

P.S., I can assure you've "loosened up" several times in recent memory. :) If I go any looser I might fall to pieces!

[He saw what you put with the vodka bottle, Miss Zacharov. He can be sassy too! But he means it in good fun.]

[The message arrives late at night:]

Lila-san, are you awake?

[Stupid, he knows she's awake. Actually, do shades even sleep? Wait, never mind—]

I want to talk to you about something... it's not that important though, so don't worry about responding to me quickly!

[Somehow going out for ice cream with Lila has been the most surreal part of this whole experience. Part of Maya had even been expecting for her to maybe start scolding her out of nowhere, but no— the scolding never comes. They really do just go out to get ice cream, at the place Maya suggested, even. Post-sunset is kind to shades and to ice cream cones, at least.

When they leave the shop to find a place to sit in just the right balance of light and dark outside, Maya trails behind Lila, watching her, stopping after a pace or two grows between them. She stares from Lila to her ice cream, takes a lick, and then prompts—]

Hey— um. Lila. Before we hang out, and stuff.

Can I say something? Not about today.

About— the last time we talked.

hey

komaeda s gone
i guess for the second time in this place

ikusaba mightve already told you

just wanted to make sure you knew though

[Someone's clearly dealing with it well.]

[It had taken a few days to fully phase back into reality, and physically spending a week where he could barely interact with the world around him had sent him places he never thought he could return to, emotionally and mentally. The sensation of being nothing more than a cloud of manifested feelings had been one he wasn't all that conscious of until the very end—when reality finally sunk its teeth into him, and the harsh truth of how little influence he could really have on the world made itself known. To have so many emotions with not outlet to them had been exhausting.

Though he knows he could talk to just about anyone who had just experienced what he had, to feel a little bit more at peace with the experience, he returns to what's always been familiar comfort instead. He knows that everyone else is out of the apartment at the moment, that it's only him and Lila, but he still knocks on the door to her room all the same before opening it. Just so that she isn't caught off guard.]

Hey, Lila... can we talk?

[He trudges his way to her bedside, looking exhausted but not all that worse for it—but it's likely a familiar sight for her as well. When he collapses at the edge of the bed, it's with his cheek falling onto his folded arms to look up at her with tired, admiring eyes.]

A bit about what happened last week, if that's alright.

[For Fugo, the pulses go like this.]

[They are an echo of his final transformation to an arachne. They shiver through the air, an invisible force that claws at his mind and his heart. They are a whisper in his ear: Suffer, it hisses, suffer like I have, like all the rest before me and all who will come after. Fugo sets his jaw, so tight it makes his molars ache, and uses a handkerchief to roughly wipe away the smear of blood that drips from his nose.

It's been a bad fucking week. Basil is gone, disappeared into thin air. So many of his friends have lost their bodies, isolated and alone, struggling to keep their heads above the riptide of hatred and resentment that wants to pull them under. And Fugo wants to hurt people.]

[Left unoccupied, when slighted and in a dark mood, his mind inevitably wanders to violence. He daydreams about snapping necks, throwing annoying coworkers out the third story window of Kaumro Holdings, of slamming his fists into the faces of scowling old men who wear their steely gray hair combed back and away from their sharp profiles. Over and over again, until his knuckles are black and blue under the slick of their blood.

The worst part is that this is nothing new. Fugo has always wanted to hurt people. If anything, this is the second closest he has been to Purple Haze since being brought to Ryslig. None of it surprises him. He shoves it all to the back of his mind and buries it. But the grave is too shallow. It keeps coming back.]

[It keeps coming back.]

[In the dark of the night, approximately fifteen minutes after the latest pulse, he can feel it inch closer and closer to a breaking point. He can't let it. Something has to give, but he absolutely cannot let this take him.]

zacharov

[There is a long pause.]

you awake?

[On the morning of the 14th, and every subsequent day after so long as the groundhog week persists, Lila will find a box of chocolates (homemade, if the char is anything to go by) and red roses on her pillow, along with a card that reads:]

Happy Valentine's day Lila,

I'm realizing now that I'm about two years late on giving you a proper Valentine's gift, but I hope that this, as well as the following years, will make up for it. I don't know where I would be in this world without you. Every day, you inspire me with your strength, and make me happy that I woke up sharing the same cabin with you in that freakish cultist town.

I love you, Lila. Please enjoy these homemade chocolates, I tried my best, but I can't guarantee they'll taste good.

-Komaeda Nagito

WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, ZHAR-PTITSA. FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE 66.234.111.217 * ZHAR-PTITSA has joined 66.234.111.217 <ZHAR-PTITSA> Well? <ZHAR-PTITSA>** Hurry up.

<MrBrightside>

[ACTION] Forward-dated to the 6th

9/22, 8pm

<CANDYCURSE420>

no subject

Nattenfest

nattensfest.

Nattensmas!

<MrBrightside> backdated to before the mod plot