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Dancing at Dawn; [Invitation Only - see associated Plotting thread linked in first post]
Topic Started: Dec 24 2017, 01:26 AM (989 Views)
The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
This thread takes place immediately after The Honeypot: Side A and is a continuation of the event mentioned in this planning thread.

---

Eri hadn't even gotten her daughter up one flight of the small office building's back stairs when Kyo slumped against her, losing her footing on the stairs and sinking to her knees. Kyo made a sound that was somewhere between a groan and a growl, and tried to push herself back to her feet. Eri hefted the girl up, and whispered, "Quickly, now. We're almost there, Kyo-chan."

"You haven't called me that in years," mumbled Kyo, her voice barely audible... and sounding a bit sleepy and drunk all of a sudden. "Not since I cut my hair and broke the dye bottles..."

It was almost enough to open the floodgates and reduce Eri to a blithering mess of wailing and helpless tears. Almost. But she kept it together, somehow. Kyo had told her in private about how Chika had thrown herself on Nana's corpse and tried to resuscitate it, and how Kyo had been forced to keep it together so that she could help Chika get it together. Eri imagined that at the time, Kyo had felt something like she did now.

Eri wasn't sure how, but they reached the office door and Eri managed to open the door. It occurred to her that she hadn't locked it on the way out, and she felt a momentary thrill of terror at the thought that Control could have beaten her here and destroyed the computer... but everything was right where Eri had left it, including the chair, which had somehow managed to prop itself up diagonally against the wall. Eri gently guided the incoherently mumbling Kyo into the second chair to one side of the desk, sitting her down and making sure she was steady, before righting the main desk chair and looking at the screen.

It was still recording, even though the voice chat had ended. Eri reached over with shaky hands and hit the "stop" button, and then, as quickly as she could (she missed a few times and caused unwanted properties windows and other functions to trigger) set the recording program to export an uncompressed audio file of the recording. Her first priority should have been her daughter, she told herself internally... but her daughter wanted her to see to the audio as quickly as possible.

So as the file exported, a quick enough process since it was an uncompressed format, she pulled out her mobile phone, extracted a charging cable from the desk drawer, and plugged it in. Setting her phone to USB file transfer mode, she quickly navigated to the export folder and copied it into her phone's badly-neglected audio folder. That done, she opened another drawer and pulled out a battery-powered block of plastic that Kyo had told her was a fairly loud audio speaker that could be plugged into a phone's headphone port. It was meant to let you listen to your phone as if it were a radio, she'd said...

Kyo groaned again, and a sliding sound brought Eri's attention back to her daughter. Eri gasped and rushed over in time to catch Kyo before she slid out of the chair. Kyo's chin had dropped onto her chest and her eyelids were drooping.

"Kyo-chan? Are you alright?"

"Head hurts," Kyo said, or rather, slurred. "Sleep. Needta sleep..."

Eri nodded, gripping Kyo by the shoulders. "I'll get the cot out," she said, and stood up. Seeing that the phone transfer was done, she snatched up and unplugged her phone from the computer, opened it as she walked, and hit Maki Yamada's number on the speed-dial.

Eri did not give Maki time to say anything when she heard the other woman pick up. Her words came out rushed, desperate, angry, and commanding all at once the moment the sound of Maki picking up met her ears:

"My Kyo found Control. He hurt her. Please contact Inspector Imoto as soon as possible and come to our office with him. This can't wait."

She hung up without waiting for an answer, stuffed the phone violently into her pocket, and opened the side-office closet, withdrawing a thin, metal-framed cot, blanket, and pillow that Kyo had stashed here in case she needed to pull an all-nighter. After setting it up, she turned to tell Kyo she could lay down... only to find that Kyo had already passed out with her chin on her chest in the chair.

So she had to pick her daughter up and put her on the cot. Kyo was a lot heavier than she'd been the last time Eri had needed to carry her anywhere.

---

When Maki and Shin reached the office, they would find the door had been locked. They would need to knock. Eri wanted nothing better than to sit by her daughter's side while she slept off the effects of whatever it was that Control had done. But Eri had so much more clarity now. Instead of sitting beside her daughter and fretting, she had put her headphones in and listened to the audio.

The phone was on its charger as she listened. It was imperative that it have as full a battery as it could when it was needed. They knew the Black Hoods' tactics too well to rely on any device that needed to be plugged into a power socket to function. To that end, she had powered down the computer. Its part in this plan was done, and if the Black Hoods cut the power it might just corrupt or damage something.

She had listened to the recording twice now. It was only on the second viewing that she had realized that the reason Kyo had a strange bleeding wound on her neck was because she had put it there herself, a means of describing Control's scar in a way that could get around both the limitations of a covert audio recording and the problem of memory loss. Oh, but she was so smart, her Kyo. So clever, her Kyo-chan was. So crafty, and so... so...

...so...

Eri was in the middle of fighting back yet another burning wave of tears that she refused to cry when someone finally arrived at the door.
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Nonsequitur
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Yellow Bubblegum
Maki Yamada's life had lately become bleak. States of constant vigilance and attempts to grasp at something, anything that would stem the tide of disaster that Nagashima was plagued with. Her investigations bore no fruit, she grasped at air. But she kept trying, because the alternative was worse. Every day she kept trying until her body would bear the exhaustion no more.

This continued in a cycle for as long as Maki could remember. impotent labors and crash as frequent and sure as day and night. She was in a state of 'crash' when Eri called.

Despite this, she was ready, armed and out the door within ten minutes. Shin had been informed five minutes after that. It only took her as long as to realize that Control would not let an opportunity to take down such a 'high value target' slip away that she also informed Fujiwara. His attitude around Kyo was unforgivable, but he was too versatile to neglect considering

--

Dressed simply in a rumpled pantsuit and a jacket, she was armed and expecting trouble. Eri would have an announcement of her arrival in threefold: She had sent a text confirming she had a arrived, simply the word Present.

The other two heralds were obvious and physical. Several forceful knocks at the door, and she spoke clearly though the door. "Charinko-san? It's Yamada."

The woman behind the door looked somehow much older than the woman that Eri had first met. Pronounced frown lines and a lack of luster to both her brown skin and red hair, a distant hard glint in her eyes that was never there before a waver in her voice.

One day, the world just refused to work the way she'd known it to. Clearly she wasn't able to adapt. She was handily outdone by a mouthy college student, and for that the girl paid in blood. Maki had reached a state of numbness on the way there. Someplace beyond apologetic, lower than despair, where sorrow couldn't reach and where panic couldn't fly. She was a vessel forcibly hollowed out with nothing left but what she had been taught was proper were just pushing her though on autopilot.

But hollow legs could move, hollow eyes could still see. Hollow hands could still make fists and hollow chests could still draw breath. She was there, no doubt precisely as Charinko had planned out. Well within Control's expectations, too. But even a pawn could advance.
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
The text alerted her and it was a welcome distraction. Eri stood up and walked almost jerkily to the door. Her face was dry when she clicked the lock open and pulled the door inward to allow Maki into the office. But, tellingly, there was no sign of make-up and her eyes were looking a bit red: she had slipped into the bathroom and washed it all off in anticipation of the inevitable storm of tears, whenever it came, because at the very least she could head that problem off and preserve some of her dignity by not allowing her face to turn into a smeared, tear-streaked mess of ruined cosmetics.

"Maki..." she sighed in heavy relief when she saw the detective at her door.

It was the opposite of the brusqueness she had spoken with during the call, but at this point, everything was ready. All the calls that needed to be made had been made, and all messages that needed sending out had been sent out. Kyo and Eri had brainstormed at length about how they should respond if they acquired damning evidence on the Black Hood leader. What Eri had never expected was not this situation, but what exactly the evidence would tell them. She also hadn't expected to be the only one left in charge of implementing the plan; Kyo, on the other hand, seemed to have fully expected that.

Eri should have known. If Kyo had thought for a moment that she herself would be in charge, she would have tried to keep Eri away, not plan for her participation. Damn her, but Eri couldn't help feeling a treacherous swell of happiness even then at knowing her daughter had felt she could trust her with this.

The green-haired woman, whose hair was looking messier than normal alongside the absence of make-up, which made her resemblance to her daughter almost uncanny, stepped aside so that Maki could enter. She closed and locked the door behind Maki, and said in a slightly croaking voice, "Recordings. Audio. I'll play it back when Inspector Imoto gets here." Pause. "Kyo scratched her own throat. I took a picture of it. There was something about Control having a scar on his neck. I think she wanted to tell us what the scar looked like."

If the woman inside the office was in any state to notice the outward signs of Maki Yamada's own troubles, that penny had not dropped just yet.

Eri did not move from where she stood by the door, but her eyes drifted to the side-room. If Maki proceeded inside it, she would find that it had become home to a computer desk, two chairs behind the desk and a third in front of it, presumably for guests... and a cot. There was a slight ding in the paint on the wall behind the desk as if someone had stood up quickly and knocked the chair violently into it; the color of it was such that it jumped out the moment someone so much as glanced at the wall. But it was not as eye-catching as the girl who lay on the cot.

Kyo Charinko lay motionless except for slow breathing. Her leather jacket had been removed and hung on a hook in the still-open closet on the side of the room. So the girl lay with her hands neatly placed on top of her belly-button, still wearing that butterfly-design tube top that she had taken a liking to over the last few months, still wearing her cargo pants and green-laced boots. There was none of her gung-ho attitude or deadpan don't-be-an-idiot staring when she slept, though. When Kyo slept, her face tended to melt into the innocence of a slumbering child. There was nothing about her condition that accounted for her being out like a light, and if Maki were to attempt to wake her up, there would be no response whatsoever.

There was a bandage on Kyo's neck, a small square of gauze held in place by a thin, flexible, but tightly-pulled wrap. On the desk, Maki would see Eri's phone on the charger, next to a sizable portable speaker device that looked like it could put out some serious volume if pressed into service. It seemed to be designed to connect to a phone via its headphone jack, but on closer inspection, there was a Bluetooth logo discreetly displayed on one corner of the front face. The speaker device seemed to be on a charger, too.

Why Eri had felt the need to do this would be obvious enough even without context. The Black Hoods' M.O. included cutting the power and deadening signals being sent within a given area. But such a device, powered by its own batteries and connected by way of a wire, would be able to operate in spite of that. The computer was powered down. Apparently the audio to which Eri had referred was already on her phone.
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Nonsequitur
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Yellow Bubblegum
She stepped inside and examined the office and Eri's condition. Obviously, it was rather hard on her. What sort of mother would be able to keep their composure when their child was hurt and they were only able to watch on helplessly. The place looked the same, but the atmosphere was worlds different than the last time she had visited. Everything felt quite different.

"Fujiwara will also be coming. Should I ask him to come and treat her?" The question was asked with Kyo's condition sight unseen. As a precaution, she didn't ask Seiji to come directly, he was waiting at a nearby vantage point she had noticed when they had come. Not any of the nearby adjacent buildings, but close enough that he could monitor everything around the office i he had to.

She was taken to see Kyo and she stood there with nothing to say, she was left just waiting for Shin. She was largely the same as Eri in that respect. Her phone gave a small tune to a text alert and when she looked down she recognized the name.

SNS
 

>Where is Kyo?

>>In front of me, can't you detect her?

> No, in the office all I can tell is you, her mother and someone without a Persona.

>>Understood. Just send periodic short messages and I'll respond in kind. If it's more than a few minutes between, assume they have jammed wireless communications and act accordingly.


"…according to Fujiwara. Kyo no longer has a Persona." It was a plaintive explanation as she stared down at the girl. It was pointless to demand to know just what had happened. She would know as soon as Shin had arrived regardless.

What she even was even capable of doing with that sort of news was an absolute mystery. Helpless, to really do anything about it, she supposed.
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
Eri seemed to spring to life the moment Maki mentioned Seiji Fujiwara. But it had nothing to do with the friction between her and that boy the last time they'd met. Her eyes sharpened and she appeared to be doing some very quick thinking. When she stepped into the side office, it was as Maki was relaying what Seiji had texted.

She didn't look surprised. For all Maki could tell, maybe she had just added a count of months to a doctor's tentative diagnosis of a fatal disease.

"No," she said softly. "No, I imagine she doesn't."

Eri drifted over to the cot, laying her hand on Kyo's forehead, brushing some of the green hair out of her sleeping face with a tender finger.

"Tell Seiji-kun to get out of range..." Eri said softly. "Control will probably attack this office as soon as he can get enough people together to do it. He won't want the evidence getting out. He needs to think we're vulnerable, and he might go after Seiji-kun if he senses him hovering nearby..."

Eri lowered herself onto her knees and leaned on the side of the cot, her fingers still caressing her daughter's hair.

"She asked me when I stopped dying my hair," Eri said in a voice barely above a whisper. "She's hiding her accent again... she knew it was going to happen and she let it, just to expose what he is..."

Even now, after she'd listened to it more than once, Eri could almost imagine there was a faint, unholy pulsing energy emanating from the phone on the desk. It contained everything she needed to relive that memory in perfect clarity, and she would have to play it back again twice more before the day was done. And then she would have to make it available on Bedlam. Oh, but not before cutting off the long silences at the beginning and end. But before she did that, the trap needed to be sprung. Control doubtless thought that Kyo's plan had only extended as far as their encounter. She was smart, but she was poor at communicating it. It gave her a brash, reckless image in the eyes of others. Kyo's intention was to use that. He would assume her ego had gotten the better of her, that Eri herself didn't know what to do... that Maki and Shin were here to figure it out...

Ha... and even if they failed what they set out to do, the audio file had probably uploaded to the cloud by now. Chika had access to it. Kyo had given Chika access to her own and asked Eri to do the same. It would be a good way to back up and share information, Kyo had said.

Yes. It was a good plan. Eri would never have thought about it. Modern mobile phones really were versatile tools, though... they could do anything these days... she had used to think it was overwhelming, but... Eri didn't think she would ever grumble to herself again that it was simpler when phones were just phones. Not after this.
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Nonsequitur
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Yellow Bubblegum
Call,
Answer


"He likely already is." She answered coolly and didn't look up from the phone. "It's not nearly as far reaching as Bedlam's head administrator, but he boasts a truly exceptional range of his ability to scan,
among other things. Control's attention will be here."


Call,
Answer


"Besides. He does claim having some experience dealing with hostile people using analysis against Nishiyo Sadako. I'll have to defer to his expertise in that, too. If he pays a steep price for that then…"

Call

She closed her eyes and sighed. She followed Eri to the cot and hovered over it. "…nevermind. Can you show me a picture of this supposed injury Control had?"

Answer

Meanwhile, outside and on the roof of a building too far to make out the details of the office, Seiji sat and Seiji waited. The hour and the altitude meant it was bitterly cold up there, and he wasn't dressed for it at all. But he was summoned with no notice.

Not even time to complain. He just set out his net as wide as it would go and ping-pong back messages. When there was no answer, he knew what it meant.
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
Eri's shoulders sagged in slight relief at Maki's reassurance that Seiji's range was such that he was probably safe. "I hope Control doesn't have the ability to notice when someone is scanning, then," Eri said quietly, and she stood up. "It's not just his safety I'm worried about. If Control suspects another trap, there's a chance what I need to do won't work."

She moved to where her phone sat, noting that it was at a little over ninety percent charged. She still didn't remove it from the charger. But there was a small plastic thing she had set next to it. It turned out to be a cheap stand for the phone. She took this moment to plug in the speaker device as well. Running her finger over the fingerprint-scanner inside the middle button, she opened the screen. It was still on the camera app, the photo she had taken. It was a photograph of Kyo's neck, a bleeding scratch that had been cleaned but left exposed so that Eri could snap a picture. The shape of the scratch wasn't particularly noteworthy, but if Kyo had indeed scraped it into her own skin, the message was clear.

"She said he had a mark on his neck and that there was something odd about his voice," Eri said as she sat back, leaving the phone on its stand with the slightly grainy phone-camera photo on display and closing her eyes. "I only saw him through the cheap cameras we set up around the office to watch for him. He seemed... unremarkable. There wasn't much to identify him by. Just a regular-looking Japanese adult man with glasses. So Kyo wanted to make sure we knew about the scar. Short of describing him in detail over the wire tap, like she tried to do with his Persona at the end... and I only saw him for a moment. He teleported away before I could do anything..."

She trailed off, hanging her head.

"How soon will Inspector Imoto be here? I want to make sure that anyone who attacks this office hears what we recorded. If they know what he is, some of them might abandon him. It's... it's the first chance to strike a blow against their organization that we've had since this started."

Eri opened her eyes and looked to Maki, her eyes hollow and lost.

"You'll understand once I play it back for you. If his followers hear it, it will put him in doubt. Some of them might even surrender outright. At the very least, they might not be willing to trust Control." A pause. "I'm so angry at my daughter for forcing this on me. But... I truly believe it will work."

Angry. Yes, she was angry. It was simmering there underneath the sorrow. She had been pushing it down, refusing to admit to it, because she knew in her heart that she would never forgive herself if she let this opportunity slip by. Her brain told her that there were probably five or six other options that Kyo could have chosen, ones that might have been cleaner. Kyo probably hadn't attempted them because she had known that all of them ran a risk of someone other than her being in exactly her position right now.

Eri wanted to have a long, angry talk with her daughter about that. The worst thing was knowing that this, too, was a door that had probably closed forever.
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Czernobog
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Best Influence.
As if summoned by Eri's question, her phone buzzed with a message from Shin, which read simply "I've parked."

Outside, he began climbing the stairs. He had been making the rounds, picking up relevant files in hard copy from a koban eastern Nagashima to take downtown. Physically moving the originals was a key element in controlling the flow of information without ordering the destruction of anything -- it was necessary to prevent too much information from leaking out, though it was a component of the current problematic situation.

He climbed to the top and looked around -- there wasn't anything that immediately stuck out to him. Still, they had to be on their toes. He took out his phone again, and sent a text message.

text message to Naoya Imoto
 
Keep your eyes on the blotter. I think something bad might happen. If any of your staff is there, then let them know, too.

There was a flash of motion in the bottom right of his visual field, and he turned to look -- but there was nothing there after he looked. Perhaps he was jumping at shadows, perhaps he had caught some sight of an incoming attack. His heart rate was elevated. He could feel his blood singing in his veins -- though perhaps it was a blood sugar issue. Perhaps he hadn't eaten recently enough and he was just getting lightheaded and irritable. That was also a possibility: a false positive, while not as dangerous as a false negative, could just as easily have a detrimental outcome.

Of course, Kyo Charinko would get involved in something dangerous and stupid like this, though he would keep his negative assessment away from the girl's mother. It was foolish of her to have gone off and faced the enemy leader like this. Why did all of these young people have to take unnecessary risks like this? Were they so convinced that they were the only ones who could make a difference? He wished that a more...cooperative...spirit had taken hold among the users of Bedlam. Chances were he was part of the problem, there. When did the public stop trusting the police, he wondered. Why did they feel it was in there best interest to hide things?

He sighed. Most likely the situation was more complicated than he acknowledged.

He knocked.
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"I don't know when Inspector Imoto is coming." She didn't mean to say it so bluntly, but she was too tired for niceties. The anger and frustration and everything else would not be contained within her, so there was no helping it


When she sent the message again, there were two questions this time.

The answer would take a bit longer, and Maki had taken to pacing. Not focusing on any one thing in her field of vision as she did. The response took a short while, but the few minute it required felt like days to her. Finally, her phone chirped again and she looked down to read them out.

"Apparently this affect is only observed when two people with scanning are within each other's field of detection. He says he's prepared to move as soon as he notices an unfamiliar Persona and before he is noticed." The second question had nothing to do with Eri's concern about spoiling the costly plan.

She read it, and read it again. "…I see." Eri said he teleported away. Seiji had informed her such feats were almost unheard of among Persona users: He had his for almost a year's time and didn't notice anyone with that ability until one Shizuka Setsuko had evidently returned with it. All he understood about it was it was a rather advanced trait of Persona.

To get that far without getting noticed at all… "I wouldn't count on that, Eri. Most likely he's been using this ability to manipulate memories to remove any contradictions in the narrative he presents. I wouldn't even be surprised if we all had met him several at several points with no ability to recall anything."

She had already come to all those conclusions long ago, Maki was now only catching up and with having to had it pointed out to her, first. Exactly what good was she?

The thought may as well have assumed a physical shape. A hard, dense lump that lodged itself in her throat. What an idiot she had been. The 'right' way was just the way that got results, the rest was just a waste of her time and energy.

And it hadn't been the first time she'd been restricted so. It was better to obliterate problems like this early and absolutely. She didn't intend to make that mistake again. There was no 'bringing to justice' for Control.

She resolved to absolutely kill him at the first presented opportunity.

There was definitely a change in Maki, but it wasn't apparent at first. Something inside of her was lost, or something else gained. It happened in an instant, in less time it took for her to unlock and open the door so Shin could get in.

She stepped aside without a word and once he was in, she closed and locked it again.

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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
Eri winced, just a tiny bit, at Maki's tone. She knew the probable cause: there had always been friction between Kyo and Detective Yamada, which had begun with Maki encountering Kyo in her Archangel guise and being forced to shoot a criminal dead during the encounter. Things had become still more complicated when Maki had been called in to help Kyo when she was assaulted by a drunken male officer. The result was a strange relationship between the detective and the college girl: Maki seemed to regard Kyo as a troublesome loose cannon, while Kyo had confessed to Eri that she wished she could undo what she had forced Maki into that night... because it was that above everything else, she felt, that prevented her and Maki from truly becoming friends.

Detective Yamada was probably not going to be endeared to Kyo any more by today's events than she'd been by what Kyo had done that night, but there was another problem. Depending on how much Kyo had forgotten... she may not remember Maki helping her anymore. For that matter, she may not remember any of the events that had taught her to trust even the few police officers she did like, for all Eri knew.

When Maki expressed doubt that anyone would abandon Control, Eri shook her head.

"He's sown paranoia in their hearts. If they learn that the one they follow may have been manipulating their minds, at the very least some of them will try to get away from him. There's more to what I want to do, but..."

She shrugged faintly. She had glanced at her phone while talking, seeing Shin's message. But Maki responded to his knock first. When Shin stepped in, Eri was waiting by the side-room door.

A faint, thin smile that didn't reach her eyes was her greeting. She beckoned him in, and retreated into the side-room as she spoke.

"Now that you're here... Kyo-chan and I recorded the entire encounter, the same way we did the talk with Miss Gold... Mana Kogane-san, that is. She's asleep for now, and... well, you'd best listen to what happened. Detective Yamada already has the basic idea, but I didn't want to listen to this more times than I need to tonight."

She waited until Shin and Maki joined her in the side-room, which they had not used the last time either of them were here. Kyo continued to sleep peacefully on the cot by the wall with a bandage around her neck, undisturbed by the activity around her. Were it not for the bandage and the slight singe to her clothing, it would have looked as if she were taking a nap.

Once they were in that room with her, Eri didn't hesitate. She reached over to the phone on its stand, tapped here and there to navigate to the audio app, and then tapped "play" roughly enough that the phone-stand slid back several centimeters across the desk. She turned away, took two long strides to close distance between herself and the cot her daughter rested on, and knelt next to it, closing her eyes.

The audio emitted from the speaker-device connected to the phone clearly and at quite a respectable volume. Eri had set the play time to skip all of the silence and road-noise that had been recorded prior to the encounter. So the audio began with Kyo's monologue in the old playground, exactly as Eri remembered it. For as tumultuous as that experience had been, she looked oddly serene as she listened to it again. But her fingers gently stroked her daughter's hair, anchoring her to that calm.

Kyo still did not stir.
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