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[ also i guess this can happen after he and gray move in

The loss of his home along with Gray's points to the disastrous aftereffects of the quickly multiplying roots, which point Sooyoung towards the obvious fact that her business is probably going to be next in line if steps aren't taken to preserve it. And since Eustace is her ~~only~~ favorite employee, who else gets the privilege of being dragged along as they go scope out possible ways to keep the building intact. ]

You really think there's something we can do?

[ If he sounds dubious, it's because they are but two people and the building is but only concrete in the face of freak weather and insanely overgrown roots. But, well, he did say he would help her out and maybe more important, Dokja happens to be the co-owner and he owes Dokja a whole fuckton by this point, so here he is. ]

[The city is really going to shit, huh.

Maybe Sooyoung should care more about Springstar and its many inhabitants, but as always, all her concern is focused on a very narrow slice of the city: the house she lives in, occupied with people she cares for (not that she'd ever admit it), and the small business she'd started on a whim. She stares at the shop, tracking the already obvious cracks digging into the sidewalk, comparing their progress from yesterday's. The conclusion is obvious. Maybe the building will escape being cracked open like a egg, but there will be damage. Extensive damage.

...But for now, the building remains standing.]

...No.

[the answer is decisive, matter-of-fact. Maybe she should sound bitter or resentful, or at least sad. This is her business after all, her name is on the office door. But Sooyoung has lost so many things, she'd go insane if she cared about them all. ]

None of us know how to stop the roots, which is the only thing I can see helping at this point. [more than good intentions, at least. She props open the front door with a loose piece of rubble,] We're just grabbing what we can for now. The books will do in a pinch if the shitty weather keeps up.

[a nice fire, funded by yaois]

[ It's alright if she doesn't feel any sadness, because he'll feel a thin sliver for both of them. The store might not be his, might not be anything more than a place where he'd spent some of his days, but during the time he'd worked there he'd been weirdly at peace. For a brief period of time in his life, everything had been normal. Uneventful. The type of life he might have enjoyed living, in another timeline.

(For a guy that pretends not to care most days, he sure does care a whole lot sometimes.)

Still, he also knows better than to get sentimental at a time like this. It's just a building. It can be rebuilt. There are plenty of things that can't be, things are more irreplacable. It's those that need to be saved right now.

Not the yaoi though. ]

I can grab those. You can head for your office if you need to.

[ Said as he steps through the door and towards the nearest shelf - unfortunately the mecha section and not the BL section. Maybe she has important shit she's squirreled away up there. ]

[That's called being a tsundere, Eustace?

Something Sooyoung also has in common with him, if not for the little book café she's spent the past few months in. She glances up at the stairs leading to her office at the mention, and maybe she has a sliver tucked away in her tsundere soul too, because she climbs up the steps and heads on over.

It's a tiny room, made more cramped by the stacks of paper littering the floor and the writing desk Cetina had given her, months ago. It's too big to try and bring back, that and Yoo Joonghyuk isn't around for her to bully him into carrying it for her. ...The thought makes her pause. As unattached as she is to this place, she still has memories. Kim Dokja holed up in a corner, taking refuge from the other customers. Yoo Joonghyuk looming over her shoulder, criticizing every other word on the page. The manuscript is still there, marked with neat notations in red. She'd thrown it in the trash after YJH edited it, annoyed at his interference.

She fishes it out, smoothing the crinkled pages. She can hear his sneer, sentimental, and for what?]

I don't want to hear that from a bastard who just up and left.

[But carrying on a conversation with the figment in her mind is a hobby she likes to indulge when she doesn't have anything else to do, which isn't what's happening at this moment. Sooyoung balls up the paper again and leaves it on the desk, exiting the office and heading down the stairs, where Eustace is sadly not in the BL section. She props one hand on her hip as she watches him work, then]

Maybe I should turn this place into a restaurant.

[ HSY sure would know, being the Number One Tsundere in the land around these parts.

But it's fine, she is thankfully safe from any prying eyes (and minds) as she gazes longingly at her desk and thinks of a sad gay who is no longer here. (The sad gay population truly struggling in these trying times...except not really, because there are still so many sad gays left.)

Sad Gay Number 3 (because Dokja is Sad Gay Number 2) is currently piling the non-yaois into a box for easy transport later, though he looks up as soon as HSY comes back downstairs, hands pausing and nose wrinkling at her sudden announcement. ]

Do you know how to cook?

[ Not that she needs to know how to cook to run a restaurant but like. Surely she should know something about food??? Do either HSY or Dokja know anything about cooking tbh when YJH has been feeding them this entire time. ]

[The Number One Tsundere and the Sad Gay Number 3 being pals, hanging out.

Sooyoung stops posing like a bad kdrama villain and starts on the next empty box, piling books in without rhyme or reason. She'll make Dokja organize them later, as is the duty of the Sad Gay Number 2. If she were more honest, then she'd admit that she just wants to keep him busy. Better to keep that empty head of his occupied, instead of lingering in the dark corners of his mind, especially without the Fourth Wall to occupy him.]

Just basic stuff. Like gutting a fish, or roasting the monster of the day. [foraging, boiling water, etc.] I stopped being picky during the apocalypse.

[some of the books jut out awkwardly from their pile in the box. Sooyoung commits the gravest of book sins and starts bending spines and folding pages back to make room.]

Plus, there was that time when all I could eat were Stories.

[ Thank god he's from ye olde generic gacha fantasyland, because the mention of gutting fishes and skewering monster parts to char over the fire don't faze him in the slightest. Sure, monster guts aren't his preferred meal, but sometimes there's no other choice and he'd rather be a live man eating questionable monster meat than a dead one not eating anything at all.

Although.... ]

Stories?

[ His eyes go reflexively to the books in his hands, the sudden image of HSY just chowing down on one of them filling his mind. Surely that can't be what she means.....? Then again, he knows a dude who eats glass so like, please explain before he really just assumes she eats books for a living. ]

[A DUDE WHO EATS GLASS? IS IT BELIAL?

Sooyoung looks up at him, and it's like she can read ~~bracket text~~ minds, because she immediately prods one of his muscle-y biceps with a soft paperback,]

It's not what you're thinking.

[she takes a moment to think about it........ hmmmmm]

Actually, the concept's basically the same... Has Kim Dokja ever mentioned Constellations to you?

[ no because belial eats ass instead of glass

Anyway, it's really funny that Sooyoung would think they're close enough that Dokja would just tell him random shit like this. (Denial is a river in Egypt....except Egypt doesn't exist in GBF.) Eustace just looks at the paperback stabbing his arm, and then back up at Sooyoung. ]

I'm guessing you don't mean the stars in the sky.

[ That capital C, man, he can hear it. ]

[Sooyoung's about to change Dokja's title from Sad Gay Number 2 to Sad Useless Gay Number 1. Her brow wrinkles, but it's true that she's not surprised that Eustace doesn't know. She hasn't told anyone else in this world about the place she came from, and Dokja is even more close-mouthed than she is. Still, what with all the funky memory shares, past selves, and mirror clones out there, maybe some information has slipped. Maybe these two have connected (teehee) with each other in a way Sooyoung can't (bc she doesn't have a k***).]

Stars can be Constellations too. Anything that has its own story can become one. The simplest example would be gods from myths or famous historical figures, those with well-known stories. But even if they were human once, they're another being entirely once they become a Constellation. So naturally, there has to be a change in diet too.

[she stops poking Eustace with the paperback,]

That's what I meant when I said I used to eat Stories. As a Constellation, I couldn't just eat regular food anymore. Kim Dokja was the same.

[ He quietly works on packing more books into boxes while he listens, because if there's anything he's good at, it's not talking while someone else does too much talking. At least this time he's interested in what's being said, partly because it relates to someone he (sort of) cares about and partly because it's so different from what he's used to.

There are plenty of inhuman creatures in the skydoms, and even a few select humans who become inhuman over the course of their lifetimes, but nothing quite so extreme as this, to the point where their diets and lifestyles warp completely. Although: ]

Used to?

[ Are they both back to normal now? ]

We were stronger as Constellations, so a lot of that's gone now that we're here. It's a pain in the ass.

[There's a lot about being a Constellation that Sooyoung doesn't miss, but the power that came with it isn't one of them. Why else would she have put herself through all of that, if she didn't think the end result would be worth it? But whatever, she can handle being a newbie again, she's done it before.

That doesn't stop her from grumbling though, but at least she's working while complaining.]

We've got demons and other weirdos here too -- so why the hell am I nerfed?! I can't do a tenth of what I could before either -- and I still can't! The level up system here is shit -- 'you can get stronger if you devote yourself to the cause` my ass...! How do they even judge that? Do I have to kill people and announce that it's all for Meridian while stabbing them or something?

[ She is definitely talking to the wrong person if she wants more Meridian kool-aid to drink. Then again, it kind of sounds like she just wants to complain for the sake of complaining. Which, if he had an endless cache of powers at his disposal and suddenly had them all taken away, he would also do. But alas, he's always been a normie, so he can't relate. ]

Have you tried doing that yet?

[ The stabbing people thing, that is. He's not actually serious about it, but given that he knows as much as she does, it's not like he has any better ideas. ]

You've read stories. [ Zillions of them, apparently. ] How do these things usually go in those?

Edited (MY ICON) 2023-05-08 22:30 (UTC)

[me putting hsy on hiatus so she can stab people while on autopilot -- no,

She thinks on Eustace's question, mentally rifling through every isekai webnovel she's read for .2 seconds to recall the usual plot regression....]

Are you saying that I should act like a protagonist?

[She's not Dokja with a main character complex, thank you very much. Neither is she like YJH, imagine choosing to act like an edgelord.... couldn't be her (it is her)]

They usually end up getting attached to their new world. It's easy to get stronger if you're fighting for the sake of your friends.

[ looks at my character, who is also an edgelord—

Anyway, I think Sooyoung should get to do a little murder while on autopilot hiatus, as a treat, ideally in the name of Meridian but also just because is fine. Maybe Eustace doesn't think so, because he's not exactly an advocate of unnecessary death and murder, but who cares what he thinks.

What he thinks right now though is: ]

Why not?

[ It's not exactly as though they have a wealth of ideas to work from right now and while he thinks trying to act like a hero is honestly kind of stupid, there are plenty of people in Meridian who do exactly that and seem to vibe just fine. ]

You want your powers back, don't you? [ He would, if he were her. ] Find a reason, any reason, and stick to it. Aren't you and Dokja [ hmmmmmm what was the word again ] companions? He said he wanted to move forward. You can't exactly help him much the way you are now.

[ Maybe it's a little mean to say so bluntly, but he's never had a very good bedside manner. ]

Edited (MY TYPOS) 2023-05-12 21:09 (UTC)

kenos inbox

april event, pt 2

smooches u

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