15strangers | W͜͏̶Ę͏E͝͠K͝͞ ̧1̵͟

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[The national council just announced the blight to the country.

There was no sugarcoating it anymore. This was a critical time. Saving all of the vines is paramount, but what does one do when the blight hits? It keeps encroaching on the grapes, day by day. Entire clusters, entire bunches, dead and rotting, while allowing the blight to spread, and the leading botanists and viticulturists cannot identify the origin or the cause. They can't even successfully isolate the culprit in their labs; it seems to disappear like air no matter the precautions taken.

It is a catastrophe that seems to be beyond science, and it will result in the complete collapse of the entire country's wine industry. Already, embargoes on this year's crop have forced other grape-growers to close shop for the year after they'd sold their previous stock; it is all too possible that no grapes might ever be grown here again if a cure cannot be found. The tourists have stopped coming. The towns have grown silent.

You, meanwhile, are devastated. With the way your business is going, it will be on the brink of bankruptcy within the year. You will soon have no choice but to close shop and let every grapevine die, let the land go fallow. There must be a cure for this, there must be. Yet everything that can go wrong is.

Then, as you watch the news, it happens. Breaking news. The blight has been found in another country.

It is a pandemic-and it is only getting worse.

-

Well. This is...what else can can anyone say? You all know the deal. You all know what situation you're in. All that is left is to figure out what you can do about it. If there's anything that can be done.

You still feel that compulsion to distrust. To know you cannot win. To know that only the hosts have your best interests in mind. It would be easy to just do all that. But would it be the right thing to do? You can't be completely sure. Indeed, nothing is certain here, except for that damned ticking sound. If only you could stop it.

But you can't stop it. It is inevitable.

There are 15 strangers in this place.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Okay, at least he's not getting followed in here or something, but this is...questionable?]

You, uh...you doing okay there...Nanashi?

[…he didn't look at this guys profile for that long, okay?]

Hmm...?

[It takes Nanaki a few seconds to look over at King. He certainly does do things at his own pace...]

Oh, yes, I'm fine. I decided I'd like to do some exploring today, so I'm trying to sustain some kind of conversation in hopes it helps me stay awake.

[...Given that he's fallen asleep mid-conversation before, it's unknown how he thinks that's gonna work out, but, you know.]

Kazuaki Nanaki, by the way. I'd say it's nice to meet you, but, well. Not the best of circumstances, is it?

[Okay, staying awake, what was that one called...]

Right, narcolepsy. The one where you might fall asleep at bad times. So...yeah, that’s a fair thing to do.

[At least he’s pretty sure it is. The last time he heard about narcolepsy was some game spun-off about being a lawyer.]

King. Last name’s technically Milton, but I don’t use it really. And yeah, the feeling’s mutual.

Right, right. I don't particularly want whatever punishment they hand down for defying their rules.

[...And he follows that up with a yawn.]

Hm. It's strange to think to call you Mr. King rather than Mr. Milton. But I guess if that's the way you'd rather have it, then I don't mind.

Yeah, only one guy got punished during the train from my...incident, I guess you’d call it, and the results were...uh, not good, to put it lightly.

[He shivers at the memory of The Conductor scratching up Zack, but he quickly shakes it off.]

You can just call me King. You don’t have to put Mr. in front of it.

[Apparently this is round two of “You don’t have to call me Mr.” or something.]

Are you sure? It's only polite...

[He just kind of. Sloooowly tilts his head, questioningly.]

You had a whole train for your incident... how lucky. They just shoved 15 of us in a small home, for mine.

Yeah, I’m sure. I’ll call you Nanaki if you want me to, but I’d prefer to just be called King if you’re alright with that.

[He can deal with it, but he just feels weird about it.]

And I guess we were. I think I would’ve liked staying in one place, myself, though. The sights we saw weren’t the nicest.

[Fake Egyptian Pyramids were alright, but the prison had soul eating monsters, so...yeah, not his cup of tea.]

I'll try to keep it in mind.

[That's not necessarily telling one way or the other, but it's not a refusal, so.]

Haha. At least you had room to stretch your legs. I think that's how Miss Bright would put it. But I suppose, depending on what you saw, that's merely a minor blessing.

[Hey, at least he’s trying, which is better than some people...probably...]

Yeah, I guess you could say that. It did have it’s upsides, even with all the downsides.

[The last normal stop, while weird, probably helped some people feel better about what had happened to those that died, which was nice.]

[We'll go with that...]

I suppose I could say the same for the house. On one hand, being in such a small space with so many people isn't exactly pleasant... and neither was having the thing on the television tell us to kill each other. Or the girl dying.

[...]

...She got better. But anyway... all of that was awful, but I don't regret the people I met there, however briefly.

Yeah, exactly. I...hated going through most of the stuff that happened on the train, every murder included.

But...I’m glad I met the people I did. I made friends there that I never would’ve made otherwise. And I don’t think I could’ve helped some of the people I did.

[He’ll always be happy that he met people like Caleb, or Ris, or Mithos, or Towa, or...pretty much everyone from the train.]

Mm. [He nods. At least with this, he seems a bit solemn, like he does actually understand the gravity of what they're talking about.]

I'm sure, then, that you must feel the same as I do. That it's a joy to see some of those people again, but a worry all the same.

Exactly. It’s nice getting to see Caleb again so quickly, and I might actually get to know McBurn more with him being here, but...the circumstances are not good in the slightest.

[Back to worrying about the people he cares about possibly getting hurt, or worse.]

Right. For me... having Miss Bright around is a lot like being back in the classroom again. They look different, of course, but her energy is a dead ringer for my student's.

I can only hope her energy pulls her through this, like Miss Tosaka's has.

[There’s the smallest reaction to that description. The tiniest wince. He thinks about someone for a second, before he let’s that thought go somewhere else.]

I’m...not sure who Tosaka is, but I can only hope the same. I’d prefer we get out of this alright, for the most part.

Miss Tosaka is one of my students, back home. The only human at the academy. She's vivacious, to be sure.

But you're right. We should hold out hope for all of us to make it through this.

[He tries to smile, but this time it doesn't even quite make it as far as his lips.

Hope is a foreign concept, now.]

Ah, okay.

[Just not going to question the one human student thing.

At the second part, he smiles as well...but like Nanaki, it doesn't quite reach his eyes.]

When it's all you've got, that's all you can do really.

[He's not even sure if he can do that much now, though...]

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