sorry for your loss

[cuteandinnocentpet]

[When people are returned to the main floor, they will find a trail of cupcakes from the elevator to the dining room. There is a table of drinks, pills, and cupcakes and cakes from the automat.

And on the table, in the center, is this asshole, with a party horn in its mouth. Despite that, it talks into everyone's mind.]

As you strangers tend to have a tradition of parties after an execution, I took the liberty. The plates and cups are over there.

[. . .

be merry I guess]

Comments

[poorlovefool]

[Don't look at him like that, it's a figure of speech!!]

...Aren't you more of a swimmer?

[He doesn't know much of anything but like. The swimsuits, man. He sewed seven of them.]

[mermaidkin]

[A FIGURE OF SPEECH THAT BECAME POPULAR IN CERTAIN SOCIOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENTS WITH SPECIFIC VALUES ABOUT AND DEFINITIONS OF MARRIAGE but that he clearly meant in a purely figurative way so it's fine.]

...the company has boats.

[poorlovefool]

[Is he talking about tugboat golf courses??? ...Eric doesn't care.]

Oh, whatever.

[mermaidkin]

I mean that it's not efficient for me to remember how to swim. If I want to engage in recreational sports... at least there's still golf.

[poorlovefool]

It's NOT? But what if you fell off your tugboat golf course?

[he's just decided it's that kind of golf. Don't make him think about drowning any more than he has tonight.]

....And what if there are no golf courses where you're going?

[mermaidkin]

Then I'd just...

[there's a lot to unpack here. but he smiles]

...find some other way to be happy. Listen to the radio. Read a book.

It's not like it would be my first time keeping myself entertained. I moved from Japan to the US and back again. This has been the easiest time, though!

[poorlovefool]

[...Eric is the last person who can try to pep talk him back up on the virtues of swimming, honestly, but he finds something to zero in on with that last assurance.]

So this is your third handstand. Guess I was right after all.

[mermaidkin]

But it's by far the easiest one. The only one where I've had actual support. Many hands, light work.

[He raises his eyebrows.]

That applies to a lot of tasks, doesn't it? Like cooking pies.

[poorlovefool]

[Eric's eyes widen in surprise when he mentions that, and then he leans over the table to keep his voice down to a whisper.]

Do you realize every time you compare your situation to that, it only makes it sound worse? I was miserable back then. And I was the only one who made it out alive, until I brought them back.

cw suicide related topics

[mermaidkin]

Of course you weren't doing it for fun. [Hiyori says after a step into this redefined narrow space. He tilts his head like Eric is using terms of multivariable calculus.]

It seems easy to say your problem was not being trained to think it was fun, but your entire point is how bad that also sounds... [He looks closer, intensely curious.] What would you have done differently? Ignore the idea in the first place?

[poorlovefool]

[is he leaning into his lean? that's kinda gay... no, this is just respecting privacy, it's fine!!]

T... They completely lied to me about Mira even being in trouble, so of course I wouldn't do-

[He has to think about this though, because she might have just had him killed there, or if he hadn't been there in the second trial, Babette might have just let everyone including him get misvote executed while she was an invisible unknown...]

...Well. Messing with the past is probably a bad idea here. But anyway, I thought I would be laying my life down for Mira after Farkas died. I don't see how me thinking it was fun would make it any easier to commit.

[mermaidkin]

[Hiyori reacts remarkably impassively to Eric's startlement at the closeness. Whether that's less gay because he's not paying attention to the other man's movements or more gay because he doesn't mind invading, who knows.]

But you'd already made your commitment. You and Mira—oh, right, you didn't remember that part at the time. [Thin smile. He really didn't think of how that'd sound at the beginning, but he's still pretending to have twisted the knife.] Still, though. Weren't your choices commit and be miserable, or commit and be happy? ...that doesn't mean there was no good reason to be miserable. We just want to know if there really was another choice.

[poorlovefool]

[The impassiveness makes it simple to get used to, but he's still pretty sure Fie would tease them if she was here.]

I thought we were friends. I'd still have done anything for her, though....

[Eric's fingers flex on the table as he thinks about this. This possibility that he could have done everything in the Depths with a smile, with ease in his heart. It really would have made that part of it easier.]

.... My misery left me with a lot of wounds in my mind that wouldn't have been there if I had just been happy. But Mira saw how broken I was and did what she could to heal me....

[You know what though, he's not going to go into detail on that, and he desperately hopes Hiyori doesn't actually know even that much to begin with. Moving on.]

She also listened to me, out of her interest in me. If I was happy when I was d-doing all that stuff, I wouldn't have been me.

[mermaidkin]

So a reason you cared for her was because she listened to "the real you". And she got to see the "real you" again...

[This is giving him a lot of thoughts. He's looking deeply at the foam on top of Eric's beer. Mostly, he feels like the acceptance Eric's describing isn't possible in the world in general, yet Mira's current commitment to him is undeniable. Hiyori takes a deep breath and offers a thin smile.]

Well, you are married now. So it seems likely enough that if you really do get out of here the way you hope, that process will start all over again. But we don't think escape will be that easy. Very best of luck accepting your fate.