[ attached is a photograph of haru, taken at an angle. or half of haru, at least: he looks to be fading, the lake visible through his incorporeal body. ]
this the friend you were talking about? he's disappearing.
[ it's roughly been an hour since his return, and makoto's still rattled by the glassy lights and strung-up bodies. in the end, he hadn't encountered either rin nor haru there, only kisumi held above in lifeless catatonia and slipping through his fingers. the gradual corruption, the slow, slow fade — and then broaching awareness, back in tellus with incorporeality swapped out for exhaustion.
dully lit by his cerevice, rin's mind games are still as unintelligible as ever. having previously been afflicted with the same effects haru sustained, however, makoto doesn't mind taking a shot in the dark this time. ]
[ this place just keeps getting better and better.
rin is at the pool, sitting at its edge and staring across its placid surface, lulled into quiet by the ripples that begin and begin and begin and never quite end. he nearly jumps out of his skin when his cerevice notifies him of the new message. it's a moment of blank reading and rereading until the words solidify into meaning.
i messed up is what he types out, then deletes the message with a few violent jabs of his thumbs. it's an odd reversal of the first conversation he'd had with makoto, tellus's reality making truth and fiction the same. ]
that's not fair it's not like i wanted to forget him
[ he doesn't know how much makoto has figured out. doesn't know where haru is. doesn't know whether he should go searching for him in the first place -- he'd seen that spark of genuine fear in haru's eyes. maybe it makes him a coward, but he's not ready to face it again. ]
[ it's unwieldy how things have turned on their head. again, makoto finds himself to take his own advice, but it's nothing so overt as denouncing their friend as a literal stranger in broad daylight. surely, haru fled soon afterwards (something about his eyes, the spasming dread caught under lens indicating as much). when it counted, he's always been a mouthpiece for what goes unspoken in his best friend. even in cohesion, falling away from their usual synchronicity, it doesn't take the keenness of perception to detect guilt. ]
i know
[ unwritten: not much, but enough. if the situation was vaguely normal by tellus's standards, he would've already hightailed it to each of his friends' respective locations and never rescinded his sight from them again, but as he's lately found, circumstances turn on a dime.
out in the gardens, the cerevice is just one pinprick of small, polarizing light. ]
i'm not the one you should be admitting this to rin
[ but makoto does, because rin's frozen to the cement edge of the pool, water sluicing between his toes. there are truths and there are truths, but this is one that remains paramount in the present: fearless rin matsuoka swallows down wave after wave of fear and still can't rid his mouth of the taste. ]
i just if all our memories are just bits and bytes why are they doing this???? why make my memories disappear why make your BODY disappear i keep thinking about what would happen if i go see him and i i don't know i remembered him before he showed up what if i see him and i forget again
[ the conversation they'd had only days prior. makoto paralyzed, rin the goading force. now the world is on its back and the chlorine rises in his lungs and rin's not certain of anything but his own powerlessness. it's an ugly feeling. an old feeling. ]
[ rin's fear is panoramic, insatiable: it alights and festers through the text, the fractured semantics of his concern shot through with incontrovertible dread. conflicted as he is, makoto isn't so callous as turning a blind eye to consternation. his gaze is heavy, lidded with internalized dissension.
but he accedes, because even when bereft of the right, makoto's always been selfish enough to hold fast to the people who matter more than anything else to him. ]
go with you. to see him when you're ready. if you forget i won't leave you alone until you remember again no matter how scared haru is
[ disarmed, he considers his words, tiredly rolls them over and over in his mouth like some muted charm. he can count the number of times haru's ever been well and truly terrified with his fingers, but one aspect remains the same, no matter the iteration. ]
[ rin spends the next hour rolling his words around in his palms, feeling their weight and jagged shape, judging them insubstantial again and again. but this is makoto, who wouldn't judge him for it.
who loves haru just as rin does. more than rin does, if such things can be assigned value. ]
yeah okay fine just let me know when thanks
[ a simple end to their conversation, one that he might've left as such. rin thinks of the way makoto had ushered him into his apartment, the hush of his gaze. the way something in him had trembled, even as his hands remained steady.
he picks up his cerevice again. ]
and the thing you said about haru not hating me?? you know same goes for you
[ and he abruptly shuts off his cerevice, shoves it into his pocket with excessive force, one hand curling into a fist even as the other slackens. the gardens are amass with shadows, all cobbled lights and stagnant pollen, but for once makoto isn't afraid of what lies in the darkness. he doesn't feel much of anything until he's out on the streets on the long way back, and by then it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
either way, as long as rin and haru reconcile, everything's bound to end alright.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
late 2/13
this the friend you were talking about? he's disappearing.
[ a moment later -- ]
think he has a problem with me
post-nexus code
dully lit by his cerevice, rin's mind games are still as unintelligible as ever. having previously been afflicted with the same effects haru sustained, however, makoto doesn't mind taking a shot in the dark this time. ]
you've always been at odds with him, remember?
no subject
rin is at the pool, sitting at its edge and staring across its placid surface, lulled into quiet by the ripples that begin and begin and begin and never quite end. he nearly jumps out of his skin when his cerevice notifies him of the new message. it's a moment of blank reading and rereading until the words solidify into meaning.
i messed up is what he types out, then deletes the message with a few violent jabs of his thumbs. it's an odd reversal of the first conversation he'd had with makoto, tellus's reality making truth and fiction the same. ]
that's not fair
it's not like i wanted to forget him
[ he doesn't know how much makoto has figured out. doesn't know where haru is. doesn't know whether he should go searching for him in the first place -- he'd seen that spark of genuine fear in haru's eyes. maybe it makes him a coward, but he's not ready to face it again. ]
no subject
i know
[ unwritten: not much, but enough. if the situation was vaguely normal by tellus's standards, he would've already hightailed it to each of his friends' respective locations and never rescinded his sight from them again, but as he's lately found, circumstances turn on a dime.
out in the gardens, the cerevice is just one pinprick of small, polarizing light. ]
i'm not the one you should be admitting this to rin
no subject
[ but makoto does, because rin's frozen to the cement edge of the pool, water sluicing between his toes. there are truths and there are truths, but this is one that remains paramount in the present: fearless rin matsuoka swallows down wave after wave of fear and still can't rid his mouth of the taste. ]
i just
if all our memories are just bits and bytes
why are they doing this???? why make my memories disappear
why make your BODY disappear
i keep thinking about what would happen if
i go see him and i
i don't know
i remembered him before he showed up
what if i see him and i forget again
[ the conversation they'd had only days prior. makoto paralyzed, rin the goading force. now the world is on its back and the chlorine rises in his lungs and rin's not certain of anything but his own powerlessness. it's an ugly feeling. an old feeling. ]
you don't understand. he was terrified
no subject
[ rin's fear is panoramic, insatiable: it alights and festers through the text, the fractured semantics of his concern shot through with incontrovertible dread. conflicted as he is, makoto isn't so callous as turning a blind eye to consternation. his gaze is heavy, lidded with internalized dissension.
but he accedes, because even when bereft of the right, makoto's always been selfish enough to hold fast to the people who matter more than anything else to him. ]
go with you. to see him when you're ready.
if you forget i won't leave you alone until you remember again
no matter how scared haru is
[ disarmed, he considers his words, tiredly rolls them over and over in his mouth like some muted charm. he can count the number of times haru's ever been well and truly terrified with his fingers, but one aspect remains the same, no matter the iteration. ]
he could never hate you
no subject
who loves haru just as rin does. more than rin does, if such things can be assigned value. ]
yeah
okay fine
just let me know when
thanks
[ a simple end to their conversation, one that he might've left as such. rin thinks of the way makoto had ushered him into his apartment, the hush of his gaze. the way something in him had trembled, even as his hands remained steady.
he picks up his cerevice again. ]
and the thing you said about haru not hating me??
you know
same goes for you
no subject
[ and he abruptly shuts off his cerevice, shoves it into his pocket with excessive force, one hand curling into a fist even as the other slackens. the gardens are amass with shadows, all cobbled lights and stagnant pollen, but for once makoto isn't afraid of what lies in the darkness. he doesn't feel much of anything until he's out on the streets on the long way back, and by then it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
either way, as long as rin and haru reconcile, everything's bound to end alright.
it has to. ]