ic inbox.

[potentialman]

Comments

[potentialman]

I...hope not.

[ He's not sure Ivan would complain too obviously, though, even if he were. ]

[opheliac]

... Maybe I oughta ask him sometime. I haven't been a great friend to anyone lately. You know, with. Checking up on 'em and junk. Maybe that's why everyone hates me now.

[potentialman]

I don't think people hate you.

[ Megumi has hated people, and he's also told people he hates them when his heart isn't actually in it, and the main thing he's taken out of the experience is: really hating someone is hard work, and it's honestly something most people aren't prepared to actually invest the emotional energy into. ]

[opheliac]

How do you know?

[potentialman]

I don't know for sure, because I can't read minds. But I've seen a lot of negative emotions. [ Comes with the territory, when you hunt curses. ] And...I think a lot of people mistake other things for hate. Anger, frustration. Things that don't last as long, or run as deep.

I've made that mistake myself, even. And then I learned the hard way that I wasn't feeling hate at all.

[opheliac]

Whaddya mean? Who did you hate or... thought you hated?

[potentialman]

My sister and I used to fight a lot.

...mostly my fault.

[opheliac]

[ she finds herself laughing; maybe it's inappropriate to, but to think that megumi has a sister... ]

Wooooooah! You just blew my mind. Big or little?

[potentialman]

[ Why are people always so surprised by it?

(Because you don't tell people things, Megumi.) ]

Older than me, just by a year.

[opheliac]

Hmm.

[ which seems as though that's all she will say until: ]

I have a big sister, too. Four years older than me.

[potentialman]

...do you get along?

[opheliac]

We did... then we didn't. Then we did again, but now? Probably not.

[potentialman]

That sounds like you two have a chance to patch things up.

[opheliac]

Nah. I think we're pretty dunzo, but... I'm okay with that. She can hate my guts all she wants as long as she lives happily in my book.

[potentialman]

...that takes strength.

[ To be okay with that, he means. He's spent nearly two years running himself ragged over the possibility that Tsumiki might still think he meant it, when he said he hated her. He can't stand the thought of leaving things badly like that between them.

Not that he could do anything to change it, in the end. ]

[opheliac]

Ha, really? I dunno, I've been feeling pretty pathetic lately. I don't know what's up with me. I'm just so...gunked up.

[potentialman]

Accepting things is harder than people give it credit for.

[ can confirm, have lived in deep-ass denial. ]

[opheliac]

Someone should say that to all the idiots around here.

[potentialman]

Well. It's still easier to say it than to live by it, so I'm probably not one to talk.

[opheliac]

You're not half baked after all, Biscuit.

[potentialman]

Thanks, I guess.

[opheliac]

Can I ask you something?

[potentialman]

Yeah, what is it?

[opheliac]

Do you think if I were to leave here tomorrow or died permanently, anyone here would notice?

I mean, I'm no Kalmiya who is everyone's best friend or lover. She gets a scraped knee, and I know the whole town will riot.

I just think, I dunno, if I'm lying dead in a gutter somewhere, it'd be weeks until anyone says something.

cw: suicidal ideation

[potentialman]

People would notice.

Maybe not as many people, but that's okay. We don't all have to be Kalmiya. [ God knows he doesn't have it in him. ]

I don't think the number of people is what's most important. [ He wouldn't admit this to many people, but he also wasn't expecting this kind of vulnerability from Jinx, and if hearing it might help her... ]

I almost gave up, once. I wanted to give up. What brought me back was knowing that I'd be making the one person who was most important to me miserable.