soul_campaign | [video] 2/6, evening - Megumi vs. the modern HMO

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[video] 2/6, evening - Megumi vs. the modern HMO

[The video feed comes on to the office Megumi has now occupied in the General Hospital. You can see tatami flooring and a pot simmering on a hot plate. A timer dings in the background and there is the sound of her speaking:]

This is ridiculous. What is the need for all of these papers, I'm up to my ears in them. Taking the time to fill them all out takes time away from where we should be-- the patient's bedside. And why is this "medical board" having us perform so many tests on each patient even when the diagnosis is already clear? No one gets better from running all of these unnecessary tests, but we have to bill them anyway. It's a waste of time and money-- ours and the patients'.

[A man's voice can be heard, it's an NPC supervisor] That's not my concern, Doctor Tanaka. Fill out the files or-- do what the rest of them do, get yourself an assistant and make them do it. I don't care, just get it done. Good day.

[The door closes and Megumi turns around and shuffles back towards where the communicator is. She can be heard cracking an egg into a bowl and muttering something that sounds very much like:]

It's Takani, you stupid ass.

[She cracks another egg for her tamagoyaki, and that's when she notices the mirror was on that whole time.]

Hmph. Figures.

If you are out there, and you're injured-- and I know there are many of you after all of that. Come to the clinic at the hospital tonight or tomorrow. I won't give you the same nonsense or run-around that they are recommending us to. It's my job to get you well and back home.

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[He set the chopsticks down, his stomach doing too many flip-flops at this point to really keep an appetite. He slouched with his elbows on his knees.]

It ain't complicated, damn it!

[Kanji paused, clamped his mouth shut a moment, and tried again once he calmed himself down. His eyes turned to the food, making no move to look up from the spread.]

...I-I dunno. Maybe it is. 's just this thing I've had a while. I don't wanna bottle it up. A man's gotta be up front about how he feels, but... this person's hard to read sometimes. What if I screw up what we got, th-this person says no, then they don't wanna be friends anymore?

Edited 2012-04-16 01:25 (UTC)

[Megumi looked at Kanji with the utmost empathy in her eyes.]

I..... know exactly what you mean.

You have a nice thing going with a person, but their true thoughts are always just out of reach. If you say something. Make the wrong move. And lose that small something that you do have together... you'll feel completely and totally alone in the world.

[She put a hand to her heart and looked down at her tatami floor, thinking of her last days in her world before coming here. She was sure her heart had broken so badly-- but she'd kept it together and hidden everything behind herself, for everyone else's sake.]

Edited 2012-04-16 02:40 (UTC)

[As she fell quiet he followed, taking a moment to think. True thoughts... he'd seen Naoto's real thoughts, dressed up in an overlarge lab coat, standing before a hellish contraption. It was a full minute or two before he looked back up.]

...'f it were me, and I had someone fessin' up? I wouldn't ditch 'em.

[He shook his head.]

Sure, maybe it turns out I don't like 'em the same way... but so what? If we were friends, then why the hell would I wanna give it up just because they started likin' somebody like me?

[He cleared his throat then, looked away.]

I dunno if Nao-- my friend or the person you're thinkin' of are the same way, but I don't wanna be a chickenshit n' hold back, y'know?

Y'don't know what'll happen until you just... do it.

[Megumi smiles softly, impressed by the strength of Kanji's words, and the sincere light in his eyes.]

[She wonders what it might have been like, to be sixteen and have friends and feelings and such things around. She missed those years, trying to survive on her own. It sounds like a life tinged with sweetness that she can't... really bring herself to imagine.]

[She hopes that he'll at least live his to the fullest.]

I'm sure your friend Nao-san is quite fortunate. Because if you care about your friends enough that it wouldn't change in such a situation, that's the real thing.

It looks like you've already found your answer. If holding back is not your style, then don't do it. Why should you? It's you that your friend became close with, so you shouldn't try to hide your true self-- if you do, it's like cheating your friend. Think of it, you're holding back the person that they really trust and need from them.

[...Fortunate? Kanji's eyes turned back before he realized, and as he listened, he found himself nodding once, twice. Had he really found his answer? Could he really just... do it?]

[No, that was stupid. Of course he could do it. Kanji Tatsumi was a man, damn it, and he'd just have to find a way to gather up his courage and tell the truth. When, he didn't know, but everything about Megumi's words seemed to temporarily brush away that weighty doubt and fear that pressed on his shoulders practically every time he talked to this friend of his.]

Hell no! It ain't my style at all! I just... gotta figure out how to say it.

[He peered searchingly at the table a moment.]

That holiday's comin' up, ain't it...?

I'm guessing the way you think of first is the best. You have a way of being direct that's refreshing.

Holiday....?

Re... refreshing? [Well, he'd never heard of his ways being described that way, before.]

Yeah, y'got V-valentine's Day on the 14th. In Japan's future, girls come up to boys n' give store-bought or homemade chocolate to friends or people they like. Then a month later on White Day, boys return the favor.

[He scratched his head sheepishly. He'd never received a giri nor a honmei choco before. People were always too afraid of him to even think of him in that light.]

This country does 'em both at once. Easier to remember, I guess.

[OF COURSE refreshing.]

Oh? Is that so? Goodness, things have changed, by then, haven't they. That might have been pretty scandalous in my time.

No one has a problem with it? The parents don't object?

Ain't seen anybody's folks throwin' a fit over it, but I guess if their kid's got a thing for somebody that's got no business with 'em, they might.

[He shrugged. Parents will be protective. He had to wonder what his friends' parents thought of him, but as quickly as he had the thought, he'd decided he didn't give a shit.]

[He selected another piece of the tamagoyaki, helped himself.]

...If they ever find out. Most parents don't know half of what their kids're doin' anymore.

Well, there's nothing wrong with young people having some harmless fun. Passing each other sweets sounds kind of.....

[She smiles wistfully, sweetly, staring off into her bowl of potatoes. a finger makes it almost to her lower lip before she murmurs.]

Like it might have been nice.

Well, y'got a week now! 'f there's somebody you wanna pass some sweets onto, it's comin' up.

[And he maaaaaay have something planned for you, Megumi.]

Kinda curious what Death City might be cookin' up for the day. All the skulls everywhere kinda cramps the whole theme a bit.

[She jerks back at that giving someone sweets comment, as if stung.]

I can't.

[And then she changes the subject immediately.]

I suppose they'll just have to decorate the skulls so that they look to be in love, perhaps.

[A blink. Oookay. Perhaps this was another subject to avoid. Kanji quietly sighed... he had to stop triggering people.]

[He looked down at his sweatshirt, at the skull printed on the front.]

Maybe... but how? There ain't any eyes or nothin' that can show off some kinda emotion.

[Megumi shrugged.]

Draw some things around them, or maybe in the eyes? I see that "heart mark" --which doesn't look anything like a heart at all-- everywhere in the decorations around. Why not that?

Why the hell would they put a real heart shape on somethin'? Our guts look kinda gross.

[Ah, the anatomy talk reminded him.]

...I should take you up on that stitchin' demo so I see less of 'em, huh?

Well why would they put a fake heart on things? I don't even know where that shape comes from. Who decided that odd thing should mean "love"?

Ah, yes, that's so. Let me get what you'll need.

[She stood up and went to get her surgery kit and some supplies from her medicine box. When she's turned away, she says to him:]

And-- the sweets, I didn't mean to bite your head off. I apologize.

[A beat.]

There's someone. But it's not a situation that I could give him a thing like that-- not if he knew what it was. He'd never accept it.

...Shit, I dunno where the shape comes from, either.

[When she got up and her back was turned, he made the shape with his hands and looked at them. It was kind of symmetrical, right? Same on both sides? Maybe that was it...]

[But then he looked up as she spoke, lowered his hands. Furrowed a brow. They fight or something?]

...Y'sure about that?

[She nodded, her voice grim.]

He'd make fun of me. We don't have that kind of relationship. And... we haven't spoken much since he got here. He seems very occupied. Training, perhaps.

[She gives a shrug, quite obviously trying to appear as if it doesn't bother her. She brings over her supplies and sets them down before Kanji.]

Or perhaps he's from a different time. And he's met someone.

[It was a little strange to think that someone like Megumi was having similar troubles to his own. He wouldn't lie... she was... y-y'know, really pretty, pretty fiery. He didn't know who this dude was that Megumi was talking about, but he sounded like kind of a dick.]

[When she brought the surgery kit and bits n' bobs around, he turned his attention to them. What a weird-shaped needle...]

...So beat the bastard with your geta if he tries pickin' on you over it. Or I will! I got a pretty good throwing arm.

[She shakes her head, looking down at her supplies, straightening them. She grabs the cushion she'd been sitting on and folds it on half lengthwise, matching the edges together.]

Things like that don't work on him. It just makes me look more and more like a mean old shrew that nobody could love. Men like women who are always gentle and sweet and quiet. Who keep their mouths closed and their heads empty, who sit and look pretty. I try to, but I just can't pull that off. I always ruin it.

Here's your needle. Before you use it, you'd need to wash your hands, then disinfect it. But for now, just thread it.

Edited 2012-04-26 06:27 (UTC)

[He did recall he always heard his classmates talking about their ideal girls: Quiet, shy, sweet, 'someone they had to protect'. Despite all that...]

The hell would you tell me not to hold back for when you're just doin' it yourself?!

[He frowned, and without even looking, threaded the needle.]

Shit's changed now, and people find out if you're fakin' it.

Be Megumi, damn it!

You're lying. They haven't changed that much, I can see it. Either you're a girl who gets everything and everybody loves you, or you're leftovers, who missed their chance.

And it doesn't matter if things have changed now if it's a man from my own era!

[As she was speaking, she whipped out her thread with a flourish and made her beginning stitch, very slowly so that he could watch how she made the stitch so that it would stay in place instead of unraveling. She was using her stitch to sew the two open edges of the folded zabuton together, holding it closed with her fingers so that she didn't need to pull on the thread to get the two edges to move together-- that would obviously cause pain.]

You go from that corner. [She nodded to it.] Use your other hand to hold this "wound" closed here.

Edited 2012-04-27 18:08 (UTC)

[His eyes turned to her hands as she demonstrated, and a corner of his mind noted that her stitchwork was almost... artful, in a way. There was a sense of urgency in her stitching, but it didn't sacrifice the strength of the threading or the neatness in the stitchwork. Megumi had a hell of a lot of practice. Kanji followed suit, holding the edges on his practice piece together. He recalled how roughly that doctor held his forehead closed before stapling the wound closed, how much it hurt on top of having a split-open head in the first place... and made a note to be a little gentle.]

[His stitching was slow and a little messy - he was unused to a curved needle like this - but with practice he would only improve later.]

Why the hell would I lie about that!? Yeah. Yeah, y'got people who draw other people in. They make it all seem easy...

[The stitching quickened, but he seemed to jab the point of the needle at this point. Perhaps he shouldn't be doing this while agitated, but he'd swear he would be more careful if this was on an actual person.]

...But wishin' you were one of 'em, callin' the rest 'leftovers' ain't gonna get you jack shit! You make 'em get to know you, damn it. The real you. Havin' a brain in yer skull, standin' up for herself don't make a girl a shrew.

Society thinks they got how people work all laid out, what makes a girl a girl and a man a man... screw 'em.

[Megumi scowled at him, not wanting to admit that if he were talking to someone else, she'd agree that he was right.]

What a silly idea, how would could I "make" someone get to know me? If they don't think of me in that way, no amount of forcing it will ever change that.

People's minds change. People change. [And he felt he was a living example of this.]

When I first met you in the park, I thought next to nothin' about you. We argued then, remember?

Then... the invasion happened. The cave happened. I got to learn a lot more about Takani Megumi than I thought I ever would, y'know? You were yourself; you weren't tryin' to be one'a the quiet, empty-headed chicks.

I was in hell, but I made a friend.

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