reveilation | IC INBOX

[ Terry is a fool who doesn't believe Kido when she says that the only thing she needed from him was to be there... Her default state is irritable and prone to tears anyways, and it's difficult to console anybody dealing with loss. Upon waking up, even, she was on the verge of going through the five stages of grief, with the first being anger.

Kido is very good at anger.

But the first thing she feels when she wakes up is the weight on her chest, the warmth, and the slow, uninterrupted rumble of a purring cat, and all of that anger dissolves away. One or two of the cats meow when she sits up in the bed, and the one lying on her chest slides off, to curl back over by her side. Hana-chan? Aiko? One of the black ones, but she can't remember their names, it's been ten years. But they seem to remember her, and Ami lets Kido bow her head and press her face into the soft fur on her back; she doesn't cry, just breathes and listens to the rumbling, and remembering Seto telling her that the purring of a cat is at the exact frequency to help heal wounds. Remembering how Kano used to turn into a black cat and prance around for her and Seto to cheer them up. Remembering them and missing them but she doesn't cry.

Maybe she's getting better. Maybe this is helping. It doesn't have to be direct to be thanks to Terry. ]

[ If only Terry knew... alas, this is his first time dealing with anything related to this. There's a first time for everything? Terry is still busy cleaning the house, but no longer with a broom this time. The sound of running water can be heard in the distance. He's probably washing something.

Ami is the true mother of this household, taking care of all these children. She doesn't mind Kido planting her face into her fur and keeps purring. Maybe she recognizes Kido's pain, like how the number of her children was originally five, but one was born weak, and so that one had left first. It sure has upgraded her motherly instincts, even extending that to the humans that she is more familiar with by now. She wonders where the yellow one has gone (Rei), but hopes that she will turn up soon. Hi I'm Haki and all I do is play cats in Cetana now.

In the meantime, Hana-chan bumps her head against Kido's when she bows down and purrs while nuzzling against her hair, even batting at it with its paws playfully. ]

[ Terry's doing fine... Also I can't believe one of Ami's kittens had originally died, why is this the first time I'm hearing about sad cat death oh my god

Kido turns her head so that her ear's left pressed against Ami's back, watching Hana-chan chase after her hair when it moves away, pouncing but not managing to catch any of the strands because they're too short. ...It's only then that Kido realizes how much shorter her hair is, because she hadn't looked at herself in a mirror in all this time. Reaching her hand up, she smooths out her hair— it's the same length in the back, because most of it had been tucked away in her hood when she was out there in the dungeon, but the hair that always falls on either side of her face regardless of if her hair is tied up or hidden away, it's shorter now, the tips brushing her shoulders instead of being all the same length reaching the middle of her back. It doesn't look bad, and she doesn't have the same hangups about her hair as Rei does, but it's important to her for a different reason: she and Ayano had promised to grow out their hair together, so they could match as sisters and Kido had kept it going after Ayano died. Seeing her hair now is like breaking a promise, losing her sister another time. ]

...There's nothing for me to go back to, over there.

[ She mumbles, holding Hana-chan close to her neck when the kitten nuzzles against her, pawing at her hair. At least somebody still likes it. ]

But I haven't lost everything. I have you guys, right? And Terrence. And...

[ idk yet if Kido and Rei talked before discharge or only after, but if they somehow didn't talk because Kido was asleep all week, she probably believes Rei had died back there in the fire and only Kido had made it back alive, RIP Rei )': ]

[ I can spin a tale for every single batch of cats I get, Card. We can maximize the sadness of this Black Cat household one day. :')

The other black kittens yawn, stretch, and all topple onto Kido's lap. Umi looks at the kitten pile and goes to join in. She was always a weird one, but it looks like she cares about Kido too, despite the number of times she judged her in the past. Imi, Emi, and Omi bundle around their mom, but they eventually find the courage to go over to Kido because they want affection too. It's funny how they're going about it, because they're stepping all over Ami. lmao. It doesn't look like she minds though, because she's staying still and letting Kido use her body as a pillow of some sort.

Hana-chan meows at Kido when she leaps to try and catch her hair again but tumbles on top of the other kittens on Kido's lap.

They love Kido a lot...

Meanwhile, Terry stopped walking with a bowl of chicken noodle soup on the tray that he's carrying, several steps away from his room. With the door open, he can easily hear things, but he wonders if he should go in yet...

...

He'll wait a little more. ]

[ Are all the black cats are also unwanted children? where is their mother, Haki???

It's hard to be sad when surrounded by so many kittens jumping around like that, and Kido moves so that she's lying down on her right side, bringing her knees up a little so she can form a little half circle and attempt to hug as many cats as she can in her arms. She loves them a lot too, and doesn't think about anybody doing something rude like eavesdropping outside of the room, so she just continues to talk quietly to herself. ]

I don't know what to do now... Why did we all have to die, anyways? All we wanted to do was live... We kept to ourselves, never made trouble for anybody...

[ She finds one of Ami's front paws, and nudges her finger under it. Toe beans have magical healing powers. ]

So, whoever that was... why did he have to kill us? Why aren't we ever allowed to be happy? I don't get it...

[ They were all smiling and laughing and on the way home from the amusement park, thinking of nothing but the new friends they had all just made. And then seconds later, a stranger pulls out a gun and starts shooting everybody down. What the hell? ]

[ Their mom is frolicking somewhere in Hirajiro, living the childless life because she ran away from her duties and ditched her babies. :'( Then humans fed them, so that's why they like people. Now they get to pounce on a bed.

Tsubomi "I can hug all the cats" Kido. Sugoi ne.

Since Ami only has one foreleg, she just lets Kido play with the little toe beans. It looks like it's pretty hard to bother her. She's a hardened mom cat with a soft center for her family. She's already lying down anyway, so the touching doesn't knock her off balance or anything either.

Terry thinks that's enough so he knocks on the wall after making himself seen near the doorway. ]

Hey, I brought soup. Are you hungry?

[ Black cat mama, let the humans adopt you too ):

And Kido can absolutely hug all the cats, just watch her. Or- she wasn't expecting anybody to be watching, missing Terry come in but looking up when he knocks and her hand slips out from under Ami's paws like she doesn't want to be caught doing something embarrassing. It's just kind of hard to pretend she's not curled up on her side like a cat herself, with nine other kittens lying around her. ]

Oh. Not really...

[ She can't remember if she ate in the hospital. She probably had to have some sort of feeding tube in if her throat was burned the first few days, she thinks she might have had apple sauce or some other soft thing that doesn't take too much thought or effort to swallow down when she doesn't feel like eating. It'll take a while before her appetite picks back up, and being a sad sack all the time doesn't help either, so it'll probably go hand in hand, she thinks. Eat, and have the energy to get better, and so she nudges the kittens off her shoulder and side so they won't be knocked off all of the sudden when she sits herself up slowly. ]

I'll have some, though. Soup's best when it's hot... Did you already eat?

No, but I will soon. I just wanted to get this to you first.

[ Terry looks over at the kittens that are rolling around and smiles. They're so cute. He thanks them in his head for taking care of Kido. ]

Here. You can eat on the bed with the tray.

[ There's a spoon with some napkins in the corner of the tray, the soup filled into the same ceramic bowl that were used to contain gyudon earlier in the month. ]

Let me know if you need anything else.

[ He says that, but he keeps himself seated on the bed, near Kido. ]

I'm not eating on the bed.

[ It's a nice gesture, but Kido shoots it down immediately haha... It's just that it would be an absolute pain to clean up if something spills on the mattress, and a tray's not going to help if there's a dozen cats romping around where she sits.

She's careful to take the tray and hold it up out of the way while she slides off the bed and onto her feet. ]

If you haven't eaten yet, let's go to the living room and eat together.

[ And maybe feed the cats so they don't go pawing the soup if left unattended for half a second. ]

Sure.

[ Terry also gets off the bed and goes get some soup for himself in the kitchen. There's some more left... he tried to make it pretty healthy with less salt, but with more flavor. There's no table yet in the living room... but since they managed to get a nice house, there's a counter near the kitchen and chairs high enough to sit on, so Kido doesn't have to sit on the floor. He sits on the chair next to her when he's done.

The cats follow Kido out, but careful so that they don't get in the way of her balancing act. ]

[ She makes it to the kitchen without incident, taking the bowl off the tray so she can set it on the counter to eat, but doesn't start eating until Terry sits down too, swinging her feet a little under the chair so the kitten have something to bat at and paw around. Head bowed over the bowl, she tucks her hair behind her ears so they're not in any danger of falling into the soup, though it's too short for that anyways. ]

...What were we doing before this? What... do I need to be doing?

[ It's been ten years. Most of it she can't remember, bits and pieces of the most important memories from her time in the orphanage to living with the Tateyamas to moving out with just her siblings, and everything from Hirajiro had fallen to the side like a dream she's struggling to recall now. Even this house, while familiar, has that strange dreamlike quality of being more like a home from her childhood memories than one she'd recently moved into. ]

I can't remember a lot of things.

[ Even though it hasn't been ten years for Terry, he also feels like what happened felt like so long ago. He waits for his soup to cool down a little after mixing it with his spoon and considers what to say. ]

We were summoning Personas to fight Shadows in Dungeons. We mostly did that so we could take their loot to sell for money for the house and the stuff we need for it. Several days before it [ them dying ] happened--

[ ... ]

We gathered people in the house so that we could discuss what's going on in this place and stuff like that.

[ ...Yeah, with words like Personas and Dungeons and images of monsters, it's really no wonder Kido's subconscious mind chalked it all up to being a dream and didn't dwell any more on it, with more pressing matters for her to deal with at the time instead. ]

So? What's going on in this place?

[ As hard as she tries, all Kido can recall is a sense of being together with a bunch of people, like how it was the morning before she woke up in the hospital, surrounded by all these new friends, and old ones too. But really, did they actually figure anything out, besides naming the gang and having eating contests?? ]

I didn't catch everyone's discussions, but what I got out of the whole thing is that the crows in this town are weird, even though... they're normal crows. Kinda like... maybe they're physically just normal crows, but they were trained to not act like a normal crow.

[ Hm... ]

Now that I think about it, crows following one specific person for a week straight is pretty weird itself. One of them even dropped this on my head when I was cleaning outside.

[ He pulls out the shiny rock from his pocket. ]

I can't find out where the crow got it from, but I doubt crows can open the offering box on their own and I don't think they can coordinate something like that, but what I do know is that this isn't some copy, but it's definitely the stuff that Shadows sometimes drop when they die.

[ He got Kido's omamori too, but... that's for another time. He was also about to bring up how crows could cross worlds to bring items that belonged to them or acting as messengers, but Kido doesn't need to hear about more possibilities on going back either. ]

[ Crows are just weird animals, though. If Seto were here, he'd be able to speak with the crows directly and answer a lot of those questions, but he's not and he won't ever be around anymore to do that sort of stuff, and there's that pang again that closes up Kido's throat and makes it hard to swallow. ]

Crows are smart. Seto... he said that all the time. That if you're nice to them, they're nice back, and sometimes bring you gifts.

[ A small stone like that definitely looks like the sort of gift a bird would drop, anyways. Saying nothing about personalized omamoris or something ridiculous like motorcycles or beds. ]

I wonder if someone dropped theirs and the crow picked it up...

[ That could be a possibility. He was nice to crows before, but they stole his food. His outlook isn't very good on crows now... ]

I'll think about it later. Other than that, there wasn't much else except for foxes showing up at the school just because they can.

[ Yeah, maybe crows dropping things on people's heads is them being brats, not friends. ]

...Is it weird for foxes to show up at the school?

[ Kido doesn't know anything about foxes, and Seto hasn't imparted any particular fox knowledge as far as she can remember ]

Yeah. I went to check that out too, but it's a pretty normal fox, just like the crows. Maybe the animals in this place are just weird...

[ He grumbles. His strong dislike towards foxes hasn't changed, and it probably won't in the future. Terry finally begins eating his soup. ]

[ Kido could probably agree with that much, seeing as how all the cats at her feet are overly friendly, but they're domesticated animals, unlike crows and foxes. ]

Essentially, we didn't learn anything concrete, huh? Would it be too soon to call everybody back for a meeting?

[ She stirs her soup instead of eating, staring at the countertop and trying to figure out what the hell she's supposed to be doing right now. There are thoughts to sort out that she doesn't want to touch just yet, and it was always easier giving herself a "mission" to absorb herself in when she wants to ignore something else. ]

It's only been around two weeks. I don't think anybody found anything new in particular by now...

[ Maybe he can just make Kido do housework that only requires one hand while she recovers... She seemed to be interested in just staying indoors anyway. ]

It's been ten years for you, but you still look the same. Is there a reason for that?

[ Lots of things can happen in two weeks!! But maybe life gave them all a break, considering there was a handful of dead people.

At Terry's question, Kido sort of frowns to herself and shakes her head, because that's such a weird discrepancy that she can't make sense of either, yet another reason why this place has to be a dream. ]

Did I look just like this...? Are you sure? I remember... dying, with my sister. Being swallowed up into darkness, and then this place. [ The dream. ] After that, I woke up surrounded by a bunch of rubble, and ten or so years passed. I should have been around six years old, the last time I was here.

[ .......................

Is she saying that he loved a six year old. Terry nearly drops his spoon in disbelief. chotto matte ]

You did not look six. You didn't act like six either.

[ ???? WHAT IS GOING ON ]

[ Yeah, that's it. Sorry you're a pedo. ]

Seven?

[ Since she's seventeen right now and will be seventeen forever. It's like a different sort of immortality to Terry's. ]

[ espurr.gif ]

No! There's barely any difference to that! You looked the same! Did you go back in time or something?!

[ ... ]

No, I'm telling you, all that happened when I was a kid.

[ She looks uncertain, not because she doesn't trust her own memories, but because there's no proof of anything she says. Terry has physical proof on his side, though, if he calms down and remembers about it. ]

I died in a fire when I was little and woke up in the ruins of that castle, then died in a fire here and woke up in the ruins of my house.

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