It's not like I'm killing him, I'm just telling him he sucks.

[ i guess i appreciate the concern, though... ]

I feel like he needs to hear it specifically because he has so many people supporting him.

[ memshares this ]

... It does feel like an echo chamber of sorts, but it's hard to see it as anything but coping.

[ ...hm. yikes. but it... looks like that was a curse, probably...?

(also isn't that the random guy who showed up in the airport that one day, wtf) ]

Echo chamber's probably a good term for it.

[ shakes his head. ]

Some of these other teams really have pretty messed up dynamics.

[ THAT'S OUR TILL!!! ]

I do agree... I heard someone say they'd sacrifice their team to save one person. Sure, we can all sympathize, but it's a bit much to vocalize where several people can hear it.

[ who said that??? ]

Jeez, I was thinking of the opposite situation where some of them are too weirdly attached for their own good, but I guess it goes both ways...

[ sips his drink. ]

I feel like our team has been both civil and mostly sane the whole time, so I'm glad for that even if it got us last place.

They're extremely attached to another version of their old gang, I think... But maybe they've figured themselves out by now. I don't know. It's not my problem and if they make it my problem I'll make sure they regret it.

[ Drinks a lot. ]

Australia doesn't really matter. We're just getting points to make living comfortable and what can producers do if they're dead?

[ ah, okay, that does kind of give him an idea who...

anyway, he nods. ]

That's definitely the best approach. On both counts. Just get through this with at least a few shreds of dignity intact without getting caught up in other people's bullshit.

[ he has... kind of failed the first half of that already but through no fault of his own!!!! ]

Do you just go home and forget all of this happened?

[ like


how do you cope? he's curious. ]

Mm...

[ he takes a slow sip as he thinks about this. he's not really the best person to ask, probably, but. ]

I guess it depends on what kind of place your world is, and what the situation is at the end of the game. Like, with some of these other ones, they had phones they could message each other on afterward, or really easy ways of instantly traveling to see each other. So I'd imagine things might have changed more for them, if they were looking to stay in each other's lives. And if you've got one of the incentive items, or you get some kind of wish or something at the end, you might be able to make a big change to your world.

[ ... ]

But for me last time... yeah. I pretty much just went home and didn't talk about it too much, because I didn't want to deal with the questions. I thought I'd changed a lot, but it turned out to be easy to fall back into the same routines and habits.

[ and there's a brief memshare from a conversation from his last night in scawwy. oof. ]

... I come from a regular world, one that many would consider modern. Smartphones and computer are not strange to me. My immediate goal is to further my career and claim my promotion.

[ So, like he's normal or claiming to be. ]

I do not think Heaven allowed people to visit each other, but frankly... I do not think I care to see anyone. [ Though his emotions harden when he says that, steeled. ] They have their lives. I have mine. I wouldn't have known anyone there or here before these series of events.

[ He watches the memory, frowning. It's actually a sweet one. ]

What's stopping you from trying again?

I mean, you saw—

[ hm. ]

Wait, were you still conked out during my execution too?

... I was a bit out of it and Gaston being there didn't help.

Your life's a sitcom or something, right? That's what it was trying to say?

[ aw... that worked out perfectly, then, but i wish i'd gotten to see it. ]

Yeah, in the most literal sense. Like— okay, I know this sounds like I'm cursed with delusions or something right after I talked about us being the sane team, but I was ten years old for like, thirty years until we got a reboot where we were older. And I've just been nebulously "over twenty" since then.

We can't deviate too far from our established characters or the comedy premise, so actually trying to do something with your life and be a better person is out of the question. Any significant progress we make always resets for the next episode. I thought maybe I'd be able to get around that when I made all that progress somewhere else, but I didn't. So to try again, I have to change the way my world itself works.

[ Okay... Well. This explains some of Todomatsu's insane memories, mostly the plane crash one is what Jacopo is thinking about. ]

It isn't too farfetched honestly. There are some strange people here, from strange worlds. Some people are book characters.

[ But... ]

You got one of the items, right?

[ some of them sure are book characters...

he nods. ]

That's what I'm going to try to use it for, so we're not all stuck in this meaningless loop forever. Just hoping it actually works the way I want it to, and that I don't end up regretting it.

... To be honest with you, Todomatsu, I had figured you could have been lying when you posted your confession. Rosamund wrote a very thorough explanation of what happened to her, so it wouldn't be difficult to fabricate it.

I have nothing against lying. Sometimes, it's to survive and I get that may have been why you did it, but you could have just kept quiet and the payoff would have been the same. It's a bit annoying that you could have been fishing for sympathy you don't need.

[ ... ]

But I do genuinely pray this works out for you. I think you can step up to be more than the character they wrote. You already are.

To be clear, I specifically didn't say things happened like they did for Rosamund-san; I always told everyone I never got a phone call like she described or felt like I stopped being myself at any point. None of what I said was technically a lie, it was just phrased to prompt people to fill in the blanks in a certain way.

[ because he really did feel like he was stuck in a loop he couldn't control and that was the only way out. and like it had to be yoru in the stupid taco place to make his story plausible back before they knew how this stuff really worked. ]

...I also thought people were a lot closer to figuring it out than they actually were, so if I'd known at the time how bad we all apparently were at solving murders, I might have handled that differently.

[ but also maybe not because he was still sure they'd all immediately find out it was him when yoru mailed him a beehive or some shit.

sighs. ]

But thanks. I hope it works out too.

It still felt you were drawing out a specific response, regardless, but if that wasn't your intention then I'll rescind my words.

The formula did add up, didn't it. Early in the game, ambiguity, and struggles here and there on Saturdays. The rate wasn't too bad, I think. We could have done worse—I expected worse.

[ eric why do things happen to you when i am out, even during the totty murder confession i was out and came home to see it ]

If it doesn't, will you stop trying?

I mean, I was, but the only response I was after was one where people didn't feel inclined to murder me over it.

[ ...and i also didn't want to fuck up the way the people from the spaceship saw their version of me too much.

he still really doesn't understand how that one ended up so much less shitty of a person than him. it's made his own relationships with the sprace cast here more than a little uncomfortable, when it seems like they're constantly expecting him to be something he isn't.

he considers the question for a moment, frowning. ]

...I'll stop trying until I end up in another one of these games and get a chance to try something else, I guess. Not saying I'd consciously choose to do that, but... if it doesn't work, I know that's what's going to happen.

[ Totty. Scawwy's development really did something to you. ]

Have people not tried visiting you? Unknown factors and variables could break the formula, possibly...

[ He doesn't want Todomatsu to just stop trying. Even worse that it will end up being out of his control. ]

[ honestly it's more like sprace was a perfect storm that made him a better person than he would usually be... that version is the outlier ]

They haven't, as far as I know, but I never really invited anyone either. [ because his life is embarrassing!!! ] It's really awkward since we didn't have any kind of communication device, so you can't ask someone if it would be okay to come over until you've already shown up at their door.

Hopefully this one will be better for that kind of thing, since we... actually have technology here.

[ oh wow... well happy for him. ]

Just travel? [ THAT IS AWKWARD. ] It may be worth experimenting... People coming into your world could interfere with the script or force it to improvise.

[ But that's just him navel-gazing. ]

In Heaven, we only got the phones, so if the travel agency kiosk does end up working, it'll be interesting, though strange.

[ scawwy continues to suck even when it's long over!!! ]

Yeah... Maybe.

[ there are some people here he'd be more okay with having in his world, at least, now that everyone kind of knows about it anyway. ]

Do you remember things from Heaven now? Or do you just have this phone full of contacts you don't know?

[ he believes in you!! have the spirit of resistance! ]

... Been remembering since the week of memories flying everywhere.

[ Sometimes you just go along with people assuming you don't remember. ]

They're still contacts from a thousand years ago.

Because the memories are more like secondhand ones, you mean? Or has it actually been a long time for you?