2022-11-23: Defect

• Log: 2022-11-23: Defect
• Cast: Akane Shinjo (ft. Alexis Kerib)
• Where: Tsutsujidai
• Date: 0096-11-23
• Summary: Akane Shinjo hasn't left her house in days. Hasn't picked up her phone. Instead, she's done something she hasn't since the modern world began to tilt on its axis: slept.

---

Kabukicho's Theater Square. She'd been twice; the first to see a Tarabaman movie at the historic theater. The second...

And now the third? She stands outside it, waiting patiently for a grand reopening. Properly lowering the kaiju statue back onto the top of it will signal the formal reopening; she's waiting with bated breath. There's a special re-showing of the Hammer movie, which she still hasn't seen...

"Hey, do you think we can get away with streaming our reactions?"

"What, get real. They'll kick us out if they even see us pull out a camera. C'mon."

"I bet we could get away with it if we had someone sitting in front of us do it -- maybe hook it into the back of their shirt or something?"

"Hm, that's an okay idea -- hey! Akane, right? From the concert! You've got a hoodie -- do you mind doing us a favor? All you have to do is let us put one of our phones in your hood so it can video us for --"

Akane freezes. They're still talking, but she's not processing any of it anymore -- it's just... this is impossible. They're dead -- aren't they?

Her breathing hitches. She feels like she's suffocating in one of the garbage bags in her room. (Given where she collapsed, maybe she is.)

She feels the crowd shoulder past her.

Every face is familiar.

Every face was.

---

Akane's in class. She must have been daydreaming. It's fine; she looks out the window, catching her breath. "Ahahaha... jeez."

"Ahhh, shoot -- it's gone! Is it mixed in with your stuff?"

She startles. It's... Ako? Right. Her friend.

"I said it's not..." Oh, right. The college guidance printout.

"What are you looking for?"

"The college guidance printout!"

Akane hears voices coming from outside the classroom; they're talking about... missing the school festival? That's not that strange. She missed that --

-- too...

"There's always next year."

"Aren't you picking science next year, Tonkawa?"

"We might be in different classes! They kept everyone together this year, but how long is that gonna last?"

"We can just participate as a group."

What are they doing here? Akane stares. Again...? Familiar faces...

"What can five people even do?"

"Yeah. Just five's no good. Want in with us, Akane?"

An invitation -- from --

Akane feels the classroom filling up -- and not just with other students. She draws into herself -- she can't let herself see their faces, or --

It doesn't matter. Her memory -- for clothes, for context, for grievances, for escalations -- has always been stellar.

If every face in Tsutsujidai had been a real person after all -- the sort of person who needed just a little bit of care to push forward, to become self-aware, to become someone who is loved and loves in turn --

How much blood has Akane spilled for her selfish happiness?

---

Akane lets out a small groan, her eyelids fluttering open. How long has she been dreaming...? How long has she been drifting alone through the night?

"I saw... a dream."

Alexis stands over her -- the light in an unlit room. Smoke billows from him.

Surely he'd been in here before -- to let Anti in -- but had she ever actually shared the space with him, physical and real?

"Real humans don't actually sleep," Alexis reminds her.

Akane wonders what that makes her. Her narrow understanding of the world creaks as she tries to accommodate it.

"More importantly, hurry up and make your next kaiju."

Right. Her... purpose, to...

... kaiju.

Her eyes rest on the wireframe skeletons, the outgrowths of a kaiju's heart, the tools. The tools. The yellow knife calls to her, in all its regret, all its fear and jealousy.

Her hands come to rest limply on her desk, then lazily take hold of clay. Why bother hiding the fingerprints, the lumps, the countless marks of her hand in the work?

Everyone else knows it's there, anyway.

The knife can wait.

"... why do I have to make kaiju again" she drones, expressionless.

The darkness gives her no answer.