WEEK 1 - MINGLE

[foundationmods]

WEEK 1

You've found a safe haven from the wind and the snow - yet, perhaps you're not quite out of danger yet. The Resort Staff are odd, but seem harmless - jumping to any whim you might have, if it doesn't make them oddly lock up.

The weather all week is perfect - the perfect temp and snow for plenty of skiing. The firepit in the courtyard is always lit too, with ingredients for smores and hot chocolate always available in the lobby. Though...in the halls, a strange bunch of songs keep playing from the hotel's sound system. Is whoever runs this place a weird cover song enthusiast?

So far, everything seems fine....but there's a weird sense of unease lingering over the Resort as everyone wakes up Monday Morning. Maybe that has something to do with that strange memory that popped in your head when you woke up? Or maybe it's that all of you woke up in the middle of a snowstorm, with no memory of how you got there?

In the end...even though everything should be fine, why does it feel like this is only the prelude to a nightmare...?

PRIVATE CONVERSATIONS | MURDER PROPOSALS/VOLUNTEERING | LOCATIONS

MONDAY | TUESDAY | WEDNESDAY | THURSDAY

Comments

[latebluemer]

Oh, you too, huh? I honestly don't know what's going to happen at school after this...

[A deep, deep sigh. But she's already done her time grumbling over this, so instead she swivels right around to the better topic.]

Still, I'm going to try and go traveling, too. Maybe we'll even run into each other. It's a small island.

[It is a big island, but she's messing around.]

[dereban]

Honestly, I'm betting that the club is getting nothing done without me. [ She sighs before shrugging. ] And I dunno, maybe. I was gonna go to Port Island and maybe Tokyo, myself.

[latebluemer]

Oh, what club? The club I'm a part of never gets anything done anyway. It's the most useless dueling club in all of Japan.

[She doesn't seem too put off by this, though, somehow.]

I was hoping to go overseas properly, but I don't think nii-sama has enough time off for that. [and neither do the crazy folks in Link VRAINS, but let's not get into that right now] I haven't heard of Port Island, though, is that in Japan?

[dereban]

Well, my club isn't exactly interesting either. It's the Student Cultural Society club.

And yeah, it is-- it's where Arisato was before this place, apparently? He said he was going going to take me and a few friends to karaoke after all of this.

[latebluemer]

But there's a reason you're there, right? What kinds of student cultural things do you all do?

[She's honestly never been a part of any clubs apart from the dueling club. See: kind of shut-in problems??]

Oh, Arisato-kun. Come to think of it, with the number of us from Japan, it could be a travel itinerary all on its own. Visiting everyone.

[It's purely rhetorical on her part. She hasn't been invited over to anybody's anything in long enough (outside that one club) that she's mostly forgotten it was a thing.]

[dereban]

At my school, attending a club is mandatory. Me, and four other freshmen didn't have a club to join, so our homeroom teacher and club advisor made us create a new club. Which is this.

[ She waves her hands in a rather dismissive gesture before continuing. ]

As for what we do, it's more or less similar to a newspaper, I guess, but with less "current events" and more about the things we like and all that. We're obligated to write articles and release a gazette each month.

[ She's never been in a club before this either, because she's a semi-shut in herself, so. ]

Yeah. I still think it's kind of weird there's so many of us from Japan. . .? I think it'd be pretty fun to visit everyone. If it's possible? I mean. It should be, right? Since we're here now.

[latebluemer]

That's somehow a lot of freedom and yet not at the same time. I didn't know a school would let you do something like that. But... you must be pretty close, if you've been in such a small club together?

[It's definitely a question.

Her club is tiny, too, but none of them... are close at all. Maybe it's just down to the personalities involved. Maybe duelists just suck at this. She doesn't know.]

I wonder about that. It's nice to think about.

[But there's still alternate Japans, time travel... Also the true 'if' of them getting out of here in the first place. It's a funny balancing act between her too-realistic side and going with the flow of sleepover bubbliness.]

[dereban]

It's honestly a lot more freedom than you'd expect. The gazette doesn't have to be especially long, and it's easy to print as long as an article is written. Besides, Gotou -- that's our club advisor -- he's never in the club room, so a lot of us kind of just slack around for the most part? We only have that one stipulation since we need to do something to make us look like "an actual club that means something for the school", really. [ She shrugs at that second part. ] We've only known each other a few months, but I guess you could say that we're kind of close?

[ They got too close, during the personality exchange. In ways that she didn't expect, much less want. ]

Yeah, it is. I heard good things about where Arisato's from on Monday, and I've always wanted to visit Tokyo. Apparently our ghost friend is from that area, too.

[latebluemer]

Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen our club advisor. It's a big school with a lot of clubs, so it's not surprising, but we don't really even have any stipulations for what we need to do.

[Not to mention that she's literally just cheesing the whole thing, but that's just the nature of the dueling beast. Getting too close or really showing her hand would just be inconvenient. Maybe the club thing is her fault after all.]

... Even the Apprentice is from Japan? I didn't... expect that.

[That's almost more surprising than the ghost thing. Somehow.]

[dereban]

It's possible that they might be advising another club most of the time. Ours does, anyway.

[ But he's also a slacker, so there's that, too. . . ]

He is. I asked him to make sure, but the markings in his room that denoted how many days he's been dead was decisively Japanese tallying. Which is different from how other countries do it.

I'm still wondering where this is, though, because even if he's from Japan, I'm pretty damn certain that this place? Isn't Japan.

[latebluemer]

I really don't think I want to see a dead person's room, especially one I'm living next to...

[That's more to herself, a disgruntled sort of mutter because she also knows that in the present situation thinking that way is more of a luxury than anything else. It's just not great to have to wrangle her own thinking when things keep... escalating.]

But it would make sense for this to be overseas or somewhere far from Japan. The style, and the writing, and even the food, I think. Did the ghost not know, either? Or did he just not tell?

[dereban]

That's fair. To be honest, it's probably a lot worse than you'd think, since it doesn't look like the room was really. . . fucked up, I guess?

[ It could have been worse!! ] Yeah, I noticed that. The building itself, not to mention the writing and even the television channels. They're not Japanese. I'd assume we're probably somewhere in America, really.

Now that you think about it, I didn't actually ask him.

[latebluemer]

But a lot of people have looked at it already, right? Hopefully they got everything. There's booby traps, too.

[And there's no need for her to hike up her poofy skirts and go trawling in a room that has ink and glitter exploding in places. Worst case scenario, they find another dead person's room and she has to sacrifice one of her more low-key outfits. Or she asks the staff for a spare work outfit. Who knows.]

I wouldn't know what America looks like... [never been, she is regretting her sedentary lifestyle a little bit these days!] But maybe we should ask him. There are a lot of things he won't answer, but still.

[You never know!!]

[dereban]

Hopefully. . .

[ She can't help but sigh yet again, pinching the bridge of her nose. While she's not high about looking through a dead person's room for clues, it does look like they don't have much of a choice in this matter. ]

Well, I just know what I've seen on TV myself, really. I can definitely try asking, though. Probably won't hurt, at the very least.

[latebluemer]

[Hopefully they won't have to look through any more dead people's effects or whatever. There's so much hope here.]

I think it's a good idea for us all to put our heads together on this. [a pause, and then she smiles a little] It's still a little weird. A ghost in the machine. I don't really know what to think.

Though I guess he's not really in the machine anymore.

[See: ghost at the sleepover.]

[dereban]

[ Inaba has zero hope for this... ]

Yeah, it still kind of- [ it freaks her out? she doesn't like supernatural things?? ] It's weird.

[latebluemer]

[Look, she only has experience with VR mindgames, sometimes CTRL + V or ESC still works.]

It's definitely weird. But it's still better than having to deal with the skeleton, or -- or the death. I'd rather deal with ghosts than that.

[Also typing to a ghost has a peculiar sort of intrigue.]

[dereban]

Ghosts kind of deal with death, you know. Because ghosts are inherently dead.

[latebluemer]

Of course I know that. I meant more... when he died.

[Dealing with fresh bodies. Dealing with all the blood and the messiness and the funerals, not that funerals are probably a thing in this neck of the woods. Being left wondering afterwards. Though of course, they're left wondering anyway.]

This way, he's just kind of disconnected from his body, I guess? It's not as bad, somehow.

[dereban]

[ Inaba shrugs her shoulders a bit a little helplessly, because. . . what can she say? She doesn't think it's any better or worse, whether it's a ghost or not, but that's mostly a hangup on her end than anybody else's.

Ghosts just have a different set of things that bother her. ]

I mean... I guess? But just thinking about it is honestly just a constant simple reminder that, "hey, there's a dead guy talking to us"!

[latebluemer]

That's true, too...

[To be honest, she's not arguing so much as trying to sort through their current situation of communicating with ghosts via text and hanging out with other ghosts in the corridors. Hm. But since Inaba doesn't seem into sleepover ghost stories--]

But he's still the only one who can talk to us. The jacuzzi monster, and the rats, and the... moose? For some reason, the staff can understand them.

[Actually, she's not sure about the moose. But maybe?]

[dereban]

. . . The jacuzzi monster?

[ Why is this the first time she's hearing about this. ]

[latebluemer]

The jacuzzi monster. I thought everyone knew about it by now.

[She's certainly made no secret of it, and the other two aren't exactly the quietest people either.]

There's some kind of invisible oil monster that likes to take naps in the jacuzzi outside. Um... It doesn't leave unless you call the staff on it.

[dereban]

Well clearly I didn't!

[ Just going to throw her hands up in the air a little overdramatically. She's not actually frustrated, though. ]

That's... definitely something. I kind of wonder what it is. I mean, if there's a nue here, maybe that invisible oil monster has some sort of designation? Like maybe an ikuchi or something.

[latebluemer]

I did think about putting up a sign.

[But seriously, that's not her job, and so the jacuzzi goes unlabeled for now. Inaba's theatrics go unremarked upon, though they do get a little smile.]

You think this is something like a youkai inn? [how much more anime can we get here] I mean, an ikuchi sounds pretty close, but it had hands.

[This poor monster is now this.]