Reflections [Locked to Myself]

[koiwamizuiro]

This is a thread where I'll post IC reflections of Ai Nanasaki. It'll contain thoughts about what's been happening to her in Luceti lately, how she feels after certain events have transpired, what she'll be up to in the future, how she's influenced by her experiences in the village... Things like that.

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[Backdated to the 10th of March]

[koiwamizuiro]

So, after what had been a pretty overwhelming day for her, Ai was finally catching her breath in her bedroom at night, sitting quietly on a chair by the window and inspecting her journal, sometimes idly as she simply thought. She was wearing the long-sleeved black top and the jeans she had gotten from the clothes shop before, having discarded the white sundress she came here with a while ago.

Everything else that had just happened aside, it sure felt nice to have her own apartment – and on an entirely empty floor too, and get some time just for herself to think. It was not a bad apartment, either – fairly spacious and with a nice view of the village, or most of it anyway. She had studied the map of Luceti beforehand and judged that the second Community Housing Building would be the best place for her to move in, and she had turned out to be correct. It sure was a nice location; it was close to the river that ran through Luceti as well as the teleporter to the hot spring, and the actual center was not too far either. The fact that the floor she was on was virtually empty was a nice bonus for her – and it was indeed pleasantly quiet here, just as she had been told.

Luceti was a very strange place to be, though. On the outside, it looked like a perfectly normal village, like a place one would find deep in the countryside, far away from everything else, tranquil and serene. This one, however, was full of all kinds of people from tons of different worlds, and they all shared the fate of being trapped here, for there was a bubble surrounding the enclosure that prevented anyone from getting out. Not that they would be able to escape from the world itself even if it wasn’t there – but, perhaps, they would have still managed to make contact with some of the other villages that were somewhere out there in the very same world. Their inhabitants were all marked as prisoners with the barcodes on their necks and the pair of wings that she still had trouble with sometimes, especially when she wanted to get comfortable on either her chair or her bed. It would take some time getting used to having them on her back, not to mention that she had to always be careful not to break them, otherwise she would apparently die - a temporary death, yes, but she still didn't want to endure anything like that. At the very least, her feathers were of a nice black color, and they didn’t look so bad on her.

All in all, it was not a pretty situation, especially with the Malnosso potentially abducting any resident of the village for their experiments. Their presence in this world unnerved her, especially when she got to read what kind of things they were capable of from the guide in her journal. Supposedly they were trying to take people back to their worlds and were trapped just like they were, but Ai didn’t trust them or agree with their methods. Reading about what they could do only reaffirmed her belief that they should work together with the residents of the villages to discover a way to go back to their home worlds, not virtually attack them. She could only hope she wouldn’t have to face a member of the Malnosso during a potential abduction but if she did, she certainly won't be inclined to be friendly to them, given what she knew. After all, they would want to perform an experiment on her or some sort of Shift, and she still couldn’t see how that exactly helped their agenda. Ai wasn’t particularly thrilled about the existence of the Third Party organization either – they may have thought that they were doing the right thing, but she did not have any desire to die as part of a ritual sacrifice that was supposedly carried out for her own sake.

Because at the very least, actual life in Luceti didn’t seem so bad to her, if she ignored the problem of the Malnosso looming over everybody in the village. Everything was free and there was a ton of facilities available for use that she had yet to explore and take advantage of. The girl would eventually want to check out the school, for one thing – maybe give those world sharing classes a shot, and ask more questions about the sports that she could take part in there. Even if she couldn’t find any information about Luceti itself from the library, she’d want to make a visit there too, and see what kind of books were available and whether she could continue her studies on her own somehow. Maybe some fictional book about another world would pique her interest, or an informative one - either could work since both would provide unique insight for her. A trip to the Tsukino Shrine also sounded good to her, and apart from the fact that it was maintained by Rei Hino, it was just in front of her apartment building regardless. When it got warmer, Ai would be able to swim in the mountain lakes as well, and that was something she’d look forward to if she found herself staying here for that long.

Apart from all the things she could do here, there were also a lot of interesting people living in Luceti from many different worlds that Ai was put in the same situation in. She had yet to really get to know anybody, but so far she had been able to speak with a talking pony by the name of Twilight Sparkle, an actual orc called Garrosh Hellscream, the Pokémon trainer Diamond, the master of four elements Aang and a shrine maiden named Rei Hino. All of them were wildly different, but still welcoming and helpful to her, and she guessed that most villagers here would have been the same way as well if she had stumbled upon them instead. She couldn’t help but be immensely curious about what other people she could meet and learn more about where they came from. The mere concept of other worlds existing had baffled her before, but with time she had slowly processed it and accepted it, and was eager to find out and discover while she was here.

Ai put down the journal on her bed and stood up from the chair and began walking through the floor of the apartment building with her hands in the pocket of her jeans. One thing was for sure - the Malnosso did their best to make this not feel like a prison, and for that, at least, she was glad. Especially as she took it all in now, checking out the kitchen that was right on the opposite side of her room and the many empty rooms around, all of them furnished. And to think that she could go out there and get more things for free… Well, yes, there were some amenities that she couldn’t quite get without taking on some missions for the Malnosso first which were said to help in that aspect, but even what she got now was still really nice.

The girl leaned on one of the windows on the opposite side with a view towards the seemingly endless forest surrounding the village, with some mountain peaks visible in the horizon. The pleasant view made her smile, but her mind was still full of thoughts, some of which were saddening her a little, her expression at that moment appearing conflicted. The thought of her family and friends was a particularly sensitive one, along with the fact that she was now away from them all.

Thankfully, Ai had found out that time had apparently stopped back in Japan, so whenever she got back there, she’d return in the bed of her room, exactly where she fell asleep the night she was taken. Neither her relatives would have to worry about her now, and she probably wouldn’t remember any of this for that matter either. Still, she missed a lot of people like her swimming team – her classmates who she had been tutoring for a whole year now, if not even more than that. She also wanted to hang out with Mia and Sae again, her two best friends there, and hear what they had to say once more. Mia would always amuse her, and she would often be full of stories about her brother, who sure sounded like an odd person, apparently unpopular in his class, unlike his sister. The two of them would also occasionally help out Sae with her troubles, more often than not getting her to open up to more people than just the two of them. Her family was what she missed most, though – her parents and her little brother, with whom she had talked to every day at home. This night was one of the very few when she found herself unable to do that.

New experiences were ahead of Ai, though, and she had to focus on the positives, and try to get the most out of living here. Even death didn’t seem to be an issue – for even if it happened to her, there’d be a way for her to return here with her memories perfectly intact. It was just a matter of time before she’d go back home – it was just a question of when. She wouldn’t let her mind linger on such thoughts, even if she still realized that it would be difficult to do so, especially at the beginning. She would concentrate on living her life here in Luceti instead and take advantage of the opportunities it offers her.