worldbent: (1 2 3 1 2 3 drink)
的場静司 | Matoba Seiji ([personal profile] worldbent) wrote2024-01-01 10:26 pm
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GOLDEN PEACOCK: INBOX+OVERFLOW

@matoba
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@kuromisa
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[Matoba is running 2 separate network accounts. Please specify which of his inboxes you are PMing! :)]
[Open Season profile/inbox are here.]
paperpusher: (what are you wondering?)

[personal profile] paperpusher 2025-06-09 10:39 pm (UTC)(link)
[Natori can't very well complain about Matoba sitting on the bed-- after all, there's nowhere else for him to go, unless he wants to make like Shuuichi did in high school and lounge on top of a pile of books in his crowded storehouse-- but he does appreciate that they stay at right angles to each other, as close to a business meeting as they can manage in the circumstances.]

Six... [he repeats thoughtfully. He expected each of the suits, and based on what was described to him by some of the others that he's met here, expected to hear about the hotel itself-- but this last one is a surprise. Or rather, that there's a distinction is a surprise, though it sounds like he's hardly alone in that one.]

--Some of the people here have "won" the game already?
paperpusher: (this、my surrender、)

[personal profile] paperpusher 2025-06-09 11:22 pm (UTC)(link)
[Implying, maybe, that there were some who chose not to stay, and thus, if the rules of this place could be relied on, were allowed to leave. Which would also track, ayakashi being bound by the rules of their self-imposed games even if it goes against their interests.]

The message board... in the lobby? [The bulletin boards, he thinks at first, but then "account" sets in.] Oh-- no, the message boards. [He shakes the wrist with the Watch on it for clarification, looking vaguely annoyed about it still.] Alright. I'll take a look at it.

[And maybe go to speak to her, once he's out of research mode and ready to do more field work. Especially if she's the one who is not like dealing with another exorcist.]

Hm. So, what'd he charge you for the information about "the house"?
paperpusher: (what do you know?)

[personal profile] paperpusher 2025-06-09 11:58 pm (UTC)(link)
[All of this is just to say that Mingming-san is definitely the one he would rather talk to-- not only because she sounds infinitely more tolerable, but also because she's the one who provided the information??]

Noted. [But still, even if it's with a gamble instead of a straightforward cost, his assumption that Jester would be the one making a transaction out of everything was the correct one. As would only be expected of the one who's behaving most like another exorcist-- or like an ayakashi, apparently.] "Value" meaning more than the chips or... the rest of what this resort is obsessed with?

[Oh, but no.] Or is that part the house?
paperpusher: (I hope it's one where everyone has fun)

[personal profile] paperpusher 2025-06-10 01:01 am (UTC)(link)
Ah, [Natori says to that, which is really all that needs to be said-- not shock or alarm, just the sound of someone being neatly fit into the box of "oh, one of those."]

Hmm. But still, the house and the resort are different-- which was it whose heart you found recently?

[He uses the plural "you," Matoba inclusive-- because he cannot imagine a world where a bunch of normies stumbled over the heart of the thing trapping them in an ayakashi realm, and Matoba Seiji did not.]
paperpusher: (it's probably something that)

[personal profile] paperpusher 2025-06-10 01:20 am (UTC)(link)
[Unsurprising, then-- that one of the two 'winners' of the game they're all playing has been here long enough to become something more, something less, something other. At least one. He was hardly the only one, only notable for what he'd managed to accomplish along the way.

Natori waits, inherently understanding that this is the sort of thing that will need to be spoken around, something that needs to be said without looking. Natori studies the miserable little ceiling of his miserable little room as Matoba finds it, leaning back on his hands in consideration.

He turns that over in his mind.]


...A parasite, then? Or a warping... where it was once just the "resort"?

And then last month it lashed out.
paperpusher: (and big and small again)

[personal profile] paperpusher 2025-06-10 01:40 am (UTC)(link)
[That last comment, serious as it is, is what makes Natori sharpen up, snapping his attention back to Matoba. It's not as though it's unexpected, given... well, given everything about Matoba. How very like him. He thinks of Matoba at the heart of that doll, stubbornly pushing through until it was almost too late; he'd like to think that Matoba is thinking the same thing, though of course probably all backwards, about what might have been if Natori hadn't 'interfered.'

He sits up straight, eyes automatically falling to his makeshift wards as if double checking that they're there. Eventually, he says]
But you are still observing. For now.

...What did it do? ["to you," he means; he knows about the "punishments" that people received for looking at it, and knows that Matoba can't have been immune.]
paperpusher: (head held down)

[personal profile] paperpusher 2025-06-10 02:04 am (UTC)(link)
[Fine. He's not 16 anymore; he knows when he's not going to get anything else from a line of conversation. He gives himself one beat (why would he have expected otherwise? Asking Matoba Seiji to be vulnerable inside an ayakashi's domain?) before he goes on.]

So. What should I know about Spades.
paperpusher: (bury a friend)

[personal profile] paperpusher 2025-06-10 02:34 pm (UTC)(link)
So the same advice as last time, huh.

[Just like last time, he knows Matoba means it. But it's a little more annoying the second time around.]

That's hardly specific to Spades, I would think. Unless Clubs doesn't act like a normal ayakashi?
paperpusher: (was destroyed by global warming)

[personal profile] paperpusher 2025-06-10 03:10 pm (UTC)(link)
[Oh. So maybe it was more informed advice than last time after all. That, or Matoba had already expected that Natori would be "chosen" by Spades at the time-- which, of course, is what Matoba's been implying all along.

Natori thinks of choking in that room in the Miharu mansion, as Matoba stood strong.]


I see. [He does not look down at the new mark on his left leg-- the one place he's never seen a black shape before arriving here. Natori hadn't thought that was a coincidence before now, but at the same time-- knowing just how targeted it might have been still feels like an escalation.

Troublesome. Dangerous, even.]


...If they've "claimed" us... [They've been singled out by a particular ayakashi? Are the emotions they're generating fed straight to that ayakashi, or is it to the resort? Or the house? He passes a hand over his face, pinching the bridge of his nose in thought. (There are five pairs of designer glasses somewhere in the pile, but he hasn't bothered to fish one out for this conversation.)] Have you seen it? Clubs itself, I mean. Not just its influence.