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The Creature in the Well (9) : While Destiny City has a modern water system, it’s not uncommon to see decorative wells around the city. Often in parks or around gardens, they grant a peaceful, countryside flair to the otherwise busy metropolis. Most days, they blend into the background. Not today.
Maybe you heard a powerful, fierce splash, like something smacking violently against the water, or maybe it was the unnerving croak that echoed from deep below, but something has clearly gotten trapped in the well. Sometimes, there’s the distinct sound of something clawing, scratching, climbing–desperate to get out. The noise its making is deep enough to vibrate through the ground. If you go to investigate, you’ll see nothing but a pair of golden, snakelike eyes staring back up at you.
Whatever it is, its body is completely submerged under the water, but just looking into its eyes is enough to petrify someone. There’s something hypnotic about it, something that seems like it’s drawing you into the well. And why shouldn’t you climb in? What’s stopping you? Danger is forgotten; the creature in the well has made a target of you.
Hopefully you have someone to pull you out of the trance–or, maybe if you’re strong enough, you can do it yourself. If you lose the battle with the creature, you will fall unconscious just as you hit the water in the well; you will feel the sensation of something coiling around you, crushing you, and then–blackness. You will wake up in a hospital with a day lost and no memory of what happened in the well, or how you were pulled out. You only have bumps and bruises, and when you close your eyes you’re haunted by the chilling golden eyes in the well. If you return to it, you’ll find nothing but a strange, croaking echo.
Maybe you heard a powerful, fierce splash, like something smacking violently against the water, or maybe it was the unnerving croak that echoed from deep below, but something has clearly gotten trapped in the well. Sometimes, there’s the distinct sound of something clawing, scratching, climbing–desperate to get out. The noise its making is deep enough to vibrate through the ground. If you go to investigate, you’ll see nothing but a pair of golden, snakelike eyes staring back up at you.
Whatever it is, its body is completely submerged under the water, but just looking into its eyes is enough to petrify someone. There’s something hypnotic about it, something that seems like it’s drawing you into the well. And why shouldn’t you climb in? What’s stopping you? Danger is forgotten; the creature in the well has made a target of you.
Hopefully you have someone to pull you out of the trance–or, maybe if you’re strong enough, you can do it yourself. If you lose the battle with the creature, you will fall unconscious just as you hit the water in the well; you will feel the sensation of something coiling around you, crushing you, and then–blackness. You will wake up in a hospital with a day lost and no memory of what happened in the well, or how you were pulled out. You only have bumps and bruises, and when you close your eyes you’re haunted by the chilling golden eyes in the well. If you return to it, you’ll find nothing but a strange, croaking echo.
“So you were friends with this guy before you purified out of the Mirror?”
As he asked the question, Liánlí hoped that it wouldn’t sound like he was judging or anything negative like that. Waiting in one of the fine city parks with Kiyoshi, so he could introduce Liánlí to another friend of his (who wanted to play D&D with them under Yuki’s dungeon mastery) was something exciting and positive, all around. Liánlí simply wanted to understand what the shape of the situation was. Whom was he meeting today exactly, how did Kiyoshi know him, etc. etc.
When Kiyoshi nodded, Liánlí grinned broadly. Hands curled around his cardboard to-go cup of green tea, seated on a bench near a little well, he said, “Well, I’m glad you two found each other again. And to meet more fellow chess pieces.”
Despite his excitement about getting to make a new friend, Liánlí kept his voice down because one could never be too sure who might or might not hear one. Even agents of the Negaverse needed to take days off and power down, so one of them might’ve lurked pretty much anywhere. Getting anybody exposed to them through a careless mistake like that wouldn’t have been good. Unforgivable even, or arguably so.
“Yeah, so am I,” Kiyoshi said earnestly, with a soft sigh. “Leandro’s a really good guy, I think you’ll like him.
Not that that really needed saying. Honestly, thinking about introducing Liánlí to most people, Kiyoshi struggled to imagine them not getting along.
Liánlí Huang was a very positive person, almost to the point of delusion (which Kiyoshi had absolutely no right to criticize in anyone else, and yet, Liánlí sometimes gave him the room to do so). One of the pieces of content that he’d talked Kiyoshi into making had been based on the concept of getting up in drags and reading [hypothetical] people to filth for their choice favorite Pokémon. The first video had included Shedinja because Liánlí had revealed that it was his personal favorite.
On the subject, Kiyoshi had said, “Everyone thinks you’re delusional and often off-puttingly optimistic as a coping mechanism, and you are, but joke’s on them because you choose to be that way. If you ever choose to stop, I hope that I am at least three-thousand miles away because it will not be pretty.”
Pretty much proving his point, Liánlí had laughed delightedly and clapped, thus leading him to suggest the videos in the first place.
For now, though, Kiyoshi tried to calm himself, relaxing on the bench as much as he could without letting go of either his tea or the pumpkin spice latte he’d picked up for Leandro. His nerves wouldn’t fully settle down until Leandro got here and he could get the difficult part of the introductions over. Granted, sitting so close to a little well wasn’t helping. After the incident he’d interrupted that had preceded Lionel’s purification and the house acquiring a new member, Kiyoshi didn’t trust the cute, decorative wells all over the various city parks. Sure, that time had ended up okay, but it seemed all too likely that someone else’s situation might not.
“Leandro’s basically family,” Kiyoshi said, trying to think about literally anything else. “The only reason he didn’t know about what I did ahead of time is that I didn’t know for sure he wasn’t involved on one side or another.”
“Good thing he turned out to be on ours, then,” Liánlí said, still smiling. A chilly breeze rolled through, scattering leaves with it. In self-defense, Liánlí zipped up his top-layer hoodie and wrapped his scarf around his neck a bit more tightly. He thought to say something about the whole friends as found family thing, but also in self-defense, he kept it to himself. Couldn’t figure out exactly what he wanted to say, for one thing.
For another, implying anything too much about family—whether as a concept or about Liánlí’s own family specifically—around Kiyoshi had a tendency to make him get……weird. Not so much in a good way, either. And to make him start asking questions. All of them of the sort that Liánlí didn’t much desire to answer. According to Yuki, Kiyoshi had more than once made the face that indicated he wanted to tell Liánlí where to find Kiyoshi’s own blood family—aside from Kyoya, the cousin-turned-sibling-by-purification—and Liánlí couldn’t really decide if that felt like a threat or not.
Probably, it wasn’t meant as one? But Liánlí couldn’t be sure, so……better to avoid it being an issue, he thought.
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