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 Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2022 7:25 pm
Quote: Prompt 6 (Mysterious Mail): The mail is always bad this time of year, but it seems like something's gone a little extra wrong. You’ve received something that’s not quite right. Maybe it’s a box that looks like it’s from a completely different era, wrapped in brown paper and tied with dark twine. The box has scuffs and scrapes and a yellowed name tag--with your name and address on it. There is no return address and no indication where it came from. If you open it up you will find some sort of timeless item that feels as though it is easily decades old. It may not be particularly valuable, but this item seems to have been lost to time--and somehow ended up in your possession. Any time you look at it you are filled with the same sensation of timelessness. Maybe it’s an old letter with no return address, no name on it; it's impossible to tell who it is from or how it got there, given that it might have arrived in your mailbox, your front door, or maybe it even just showed up inside your house. If you open it, the letter is dated from decades ago and contains some surprising information; it is a letter lost to time and contains some secret. The content of the letter is up to the player; it might contain a confession of love, an admission of guilt, the secret of some crime--no matter what the letter contains, it leaves you with news to reflect on. Do you try to seek out anyone mentioned in the letter? Do you investigate or try to hand the letter over to someone else? Does the content of the letter reflect your life in some way? ...Do you have to worry about someone breaking into your house to leave strangely coded messages? Maybe you’ve gotten both and really need to phone up the post office to see what’s going on. Haruhi was pissed the absolute ******** off. The phone had been ringing off the hook all day with people bitching about mystery mail they were getting, as if it was any of nis problems. The post office just gets what's put in the mail and as long as it's been paid for properly, none of them give a single <********> who was sending s**t where. Unless someone reported a bomb or anthrax in one of these, the postal inspectors didn't give a flea fart about what people were sending each other. Oh no, someone sent them some kind of prank letter about being in love. Now, Haruhi was certainly of the opinion that it should be investigated so the instigator could be told to KNOCK IT THE ******** OFF. As if the post office didn't have enough problems during the holiday season! ********, when nis hour lunch finally came due, ne was in a very, very stormy mood, and almost dissed nis own cousin when Reiki came up to the counter and asked for them to come out from the back for lunch.
"Reiki, today has been absolutely horrible," ne groused immediately after clocking out, having zipped up nis nondescript jacket to cover up nis uniform so ne could b***h without repercussions.
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Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2023 3:23 pm
Delays in Haruhi getting out from the back for lunch were almost never good things. Partly, waiting just made Reiki antsy in general, but far more pressingly, he simply didn’t trust it not to be some kind of problem, whenever Haruhi got held up in accessing the break for lunch that ne was federally required to take.
In fairness, Reiki might have been overreacting and had she been present to do so, Hinami probably would have scolded him for letting his imagination run away from him into all kinds of worst case scenario situations when it was honestly probably nothing. He didn’t know for sure that Haruhi was in trouble, or even simply being inconvenienced, so why bother thinking about bad things that only might have happened.
Sure, maybe Haruhi fell and twisted nis ankle, but maybe one of nis usually-more-tolerable coworkers had decided to be obnoxious when they only got so long for their lunch-breaks. Maybe ne had run afoul of a youma and needed to power-up at work, but maybe something mundane was broken that only Haruhi could possibly fix because of reasons or something, like nem being the only one who knew this exact trick to make the system work. Maybe something even worse than a random feral youma had happened—like, maybe Arsenolite had proven smarter than Reiki gave him credit for, found out about Toráin planning to leave the Negaverse, and come to lash out at Reiki by harming Haruhi because, well, Reiki had actively encouraged Toráin in getting out of that toxic cesspit that he hadn’t wanted to be part of in the first place.
But on the other hand, maybe a lot of plain, simple, distinctly non-Negaverse-y things had decided to happen all at once and of course Haruhi got swept up into the worst of the riptides because of course ne had—of course ne had. Of course reality had chosen to pick on nem like that, as if Haruhi didn’t suffer enough.
Or, somewhat more concerningly, maybe everything in nis work life was once again going to Hell in a handbasket because that’s the true meaning of Christmas when one works for the United States Postal Service.
Waiting for Haruhi to get out there and join him, Reiki rocked back and forth from the balls of his feet to his heels. The boots he had on today, he’d chosen more for the weather and the snow than for how cute they looked (though they did look cute with Reiki’s thermal tights and his black-and-purple plaid pleated skirt), so it was significantly easier for him to do so than it would’ve been with most of his other shoes.
Strictly speaking in terms of necessity, Reiki probably could’ve gone without swanning down here and dragging Haruhi out to lunch. He could have gotten away with staying on campus for that. Arguably, he should have done so, just because finals loomed large over Destiny City University right now and Reiki’s undergrads probably needed, more than usual, for him to translate Obaasan’s requests and feedback into Normal People. Not that the actual language was an issue—Obaasan’s parents might have come from Osaka, but she’d been born after they’d settled in California and had grown up, like her children and grandchildren, speaking Japanese and English more or less equally—but Obaasan had ways of expressing herself that didn’t always make sense to people who didn’t know her very well.
For example, Reiki understood perfectly that ordering him to leave campus for his lunch-break today was only Obaasan thinking about his own good, about making him take some breathing room and also better care of himself than she (not incorrectly) thought he’d taken lately, and about wanting her baby to be well. But the specific way in which she’d told him to get his jacket and go for a walk had still made some of the other graduate TAs in their shared office stare at him bemusedly, wondering why a professor was talking to him so casually but also so sternly.
Either way, he breathed a sigh of relief when Haruhi finally emerged. Only the sheer number of people in the lobby prevented Reiki from linking his elbow with Haruhi’s—and given how rude some of these assholes were being, he stayed solo mostly as a matter of practicality. Easier to maneuver out of here if they stayed unlinked.
Once they hit the sidewalk, though, he gave Haruhi a painfully earnest pout of concern. “‘Horrible’ seems like a polite understatement on your part, Ruhi,” he said. “What the Hell is all those people’s collective problem? Because even by holiday season standards for rude bullshit, that feels……pretty bad in there.”
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Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2023 10:45 pm
"People don't understand we're not gods," ne said tersely. "That we do not and can not know every little thing ever about every package ever, that we can't just yeet your one supew speshul mega awesome package across the country to get it there in 12 hours, that's just not how it works, and—" Ne made a frustrated growling noise. "Not to mention every idiot that doesn't understand how to put a label on a package, or the assholes who chuck their fifty million daily Christmas cards to every single family member no matter how distant they are into the PARCEL DROP instead of the letter drop!" Ne buried nis face in nis hands and took a deep breath. "Anyway, yeah. I just want to scream. Cry. Whatever. Once I'm back, I only will have an hour left, anyway. I'm glad I'm getting a slight break with some sanity with you, Kiki."
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Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2023 9:13 am
Given Haruhi’s current state of upset and exhaustion—which was, honestly, only going to get worse as the holiday season wore on, Reiki knew all too well from previous experience with observing this process—Reiki took over steering the both of them down the street. Pretty much anywhere that Haruhi might’ve wanted to go for lunch sat more or less in the same direction. If ne wanted to go somewhere down the opposite path, then they could just turn around and get in a good walk. Having to push parcels around meant Haruhi didn’t necessarily need the walk for exercise reasons, but the fresh air and moving around in a less stressful way might have helped nem to calm down.
“This is why humanity invented a name for the concept that we now call ‘cousins,’” Reiki said as they stopped at a crosswalk. Gently, being careful not to overwhelm Haruhi any, he patted nem on the back, between the shoulder-blades. “Not that the modern postal system existed back then or anything, obviously? But, y’know, there were probably all kinds of equally stressful things that smart, long-suffering Neolithic or Bronze Age proto-Ruhis had to deal with. And so, they needed the tender loving care of their corresponding Neolithic or Bronze Age proto-Kikis, who could take them to get lunch at restaurants where the stoves were fueled by saber-tooth tigers running on treadmills.
“This is very serious and absolutely definitely happened,” Reiki deadpanned, playfully nudging his shoulder at Haruhi’s. “You can trust me. I am a historian. And not one of the fake ones who go on TV to make arguments like ‘People living in Ancient Africa and Latin America obviously could not have done any technical accomplishments despite the clear evidence that they did. It must have been ******** aliens.’”
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Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2023 1:28 pm
Haruhi coughed a bit, rolling nis eyes at nis cousin before giving him a small chuckle out of pity. Pure pity! Nothing more, nothing less. "Heh. Well, at least saber-tooth tigers running on treadmills Freddy Flintstone style would be interesting," ne said as they shuffled down the sidewalk. Hmm... What sounded good today? "Ugh, you pick, my brain is not turning on," ne finally groaned, gesturing down the road to the restaurants.
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Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2023 2:45 pm
As a matter of courtesy, Reiki just sort of accepted that sometimes, you needed to give Haruhi room to do something that people might have considered nice—i.e., chuckling for nis cousin’s questionable sense of humor and dubious attempts at cheering nem up—and just……not call nem out on it. Ne had a certain mental image of nemself that ne didn’t appreciate having challenged—and Reiki felt nem on that, honestly, as someone who really did not enjoy it when reality did things like reminding him that his personal limits were more like actual rules than a loose set of guidelines. So, especially in light of how garbage the customers had been today, Reiki was perfectly content to just smile gently and let Haruhi have this.
“Hmm, how about that pizza place like a block down? Yuki loves them. Plus, they’re usually fast without skimping on the quality.” That, and Reiki appreciated their eclectic flavors: sure, they had your standard pepperoni-mushroom, meat-lovers’, vegetarian, Hawaiian, “build your own,” and so on options, but also weirder fare like teriyaki chicken, Thai peanut chicken, breakfast pizza (or the option to put a fried egg on top of any other recipe), eggplant parmesan, and more.
Also, they knew how to make a thin-crust pizza without it spilling the toppings all over everything. Very, very important skill.
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Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2023 9:25 pm
Haruhi sighed, mostly out of still being exhausted than out of anything else. It was days like this that ne really hated nis job, but really loved nis cousin. "Yeah, that sounds good. God, now I really want pizza. Slathered in extra cheese and, uhm, hm, if I have their chicken that last hour of work will suck even more, something about it just sticks in my throat..." Ne hummed in thought. "What do you think?" Ne stretched out, groaning as nis back popped pleasantly. "Whatever you want, I'm down."
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2023 7:46 am
Reiki hummed, nodding as they made their way down the block toward his Yuki’s favorite pizza place. He had a lot of ideas for how to split things up evenly between his own tastes and Haruhi’s in a way that would, ultimately, let his cousin have some nice comfort food. Ne needed it more than Reiki did right now (though he did still want some comfort for himself in here, considering that he’d certainly had A Semester, and when he got back to campus from lunch, he and Obaasan had some Certain Paperwork to fill out, specifically about Reiki taking a personal health reasons leave next semester).
“Maybe……oh, what about their spin on a cheeseburger pizza? Where they do it like a bacon, mushroom, and mozzarella cheeseburger?” Lean ground beef, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, (crucially for Reiki) a distinct lack of pickles, and (crucially for Haruhi) more mozzarella cheese than your body had room for. “If that sounds good? I’ll order it for us when we get there, then get our drinks, and you can sit down and get off your feet sooner.”
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2023 7:45 pm
"Yeah, that sounds great. Thank you, Kiki, for making an awful day so much better," ne said, standing up on nis toes to press a kiss to Reiki's cheek. "You're the actual best."
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