honestyandpluck | kaisou inbox.

Things like a magical crystal tower full of monsters appearing, or suddenly gaining super strength, those were so absurd that Meredith could almost shrug them off. Or at least not think too hard about it long enough to have some time to sift through it all.

Seeing the all-too simple and all too real video that had just gone up on the network, however? That was deeply disturbing. No sooner had she seen it than she was heading for her cousin's room.

"Lulu? If you haven't yet don't look, but did you see what just got posted on that app?"

Maybe, if she were fast enough and a little lucky, she could spare her the sight.

Too late. Lucy'd seen it, and the shock of it had her sitting in her bed long after the video had stopped, replaying it inside her head, looking through the public responses. All these people coming to Blade's rescue, yes, but also the sheer, blatant horror of it all.

It took a knock on the door for Lucy to shake herself out of her stupor, and she looked up to see Meredith coming in. Gave her a tight little nod. "I did," she said. "It—was rather hard to miss."

So much for warning her cousin and sparing her the sight of it, but at least she tried.

"A magical monster-filled tower was one thing, but now there's someone posting--snuff on the app?"

Well, that sure came out a lot sharper than she'd intended. Clearly Meredith was rather deeply disturbed by it, herself.

"Sorry, that's--I don't know. This is a little much, I was hoping to catch you before you saw it, too."

"It really was filled with monsters?" Lucy asked, surprised. "I thought the cat-man on the network was just being a little anxious. You went to see it?" She moved over on her bed, patted the space next to her. "Take a seat," she said, "hard things are easier to digest when you're sitting."

Like monsters, and murders, and demons that sat in the back of one's head and plotted.

"Thank you for trying," she said. "I—Oh, my god, those poor people. That poor girl."

"It was, and I did." Meredith answered as she sat. "Monsters and rooms with puzzles and--it was alost like something out of a game of some sort."

Not that she knew enough about videogames to be more specific than that.

"But this is--I wish you hadn't had to see it. I wish I hadn't seen it."

"I think they call that genre survival horror," said Lucy, distractedly, twisting the hem of her sleeve in her fingers. The knife, part of her contract price, was strapped to her thigh underneath her sleepwear. She couldn't part with it, not if she wanted to keep her end of the contract, and now it felt even more like a heavy weight on her than usual.

She was silent for a long moment. Then, after a breath as she looked down at her hands: "I wish so as well. I can't help but worry that—that it might be me, one day, on the network. Or whatever's left of me."

Which was the first time she'd ever spoken, out loud, to Meredith about who else was riding along inside her head.

Maybe that was the genre, Meredith didn't know and so didn't really have anything more to say on that point. The silence that followed was unsurprising, though; for her part at least she was still incredibly shocked by what she'd seen. Enough that she doesn't quite immediately register the full implication of what her cousin said next.

"That it'd be--?" She glanced over at Lucy, clearly a bit puzzled as her mind tried to catch up with what that meant. "What--Do you mean....?"

She let out a breath.

"I don't like talking about myself," she said, finally. "Especially not this. I—I have been possessed for a while now, Berry. That's what I mean."

She lifted her head and traced a thumb over the edge of her phone. "This," she said, "is one price you might pay for breaking a contract with something possessing you."

"You..."

Meredith had never considered herself a great wordsmith, but now she found herself particularly speechless. Much as she'd been trying to cope with all this notion of magic and spirits and such being real, it had still felt somewhat distant from her, things that primarily happened to and affected other people.

At least, until now.

"Lulu, why didn't you tell anyone? Surely there must be--something that can be done to help...!"

"I didn't tell anyone because I didn't want to burden anyone with my problems," said Lucy, shaking her head. "Especially if there were so many other things on their plates, and before I moved here it wasn't like anyone would believe me. And..."

She tucked stray strands of blonde hair behind her ears. "I'm not sure," she said, "but the demon might be holding back something worse. Something far worse. I don't know how to explain it, it sounds so absurd, yet it's the truth." She looked Meredith in the eye, and said, damn near scared out of her mind that her cousin wouldn't believe her, "I think—my past life, after she died, she came back. But she didn't come back right."

Were it anyone but her cousin, Meredith would probably have so much more to say. A protest of how it surely can't be that bad, perhaps, or generalized disbelief of it all. But it was Lucy, and there was no question she was telling the truth so far as she knew it.

Which didn't make it any easier to take in, even so.

"... I think it's safe to say that, if that's the case, finding a way to deal with it before it gets worse wouldn't be considered a burden." There was something almost bitter in her tone as she made an irritable noise. "And what right does someone long dead have to mess with your life now...!"

As if she really needed more reasons to hate this whole 'past life' thing on principle.

"She isn't messing with my life," Lucy said, shaking her head. "It's as you say, she's long dead. Twice over. It's...hard to really explain, but she'd been preyed on by this—this thing that turned her, after death, into a monster. She had to die a second time, so she wouldn't hurt anyone else."

She went quiet again, and said after a moment, her thumbnail scratching over a knuckle, "I—didn't want to die. I still don't. Even more than that, though, I don't want to die and come back a monster, like she did, and the demon that took up space in me knew that. Knows that." She sighed. "I want to find some way to deal with it. But what if, in dealing with it, I unleash something else? What if I turn, and hurt people, and someone has to come deal with me in so final a way once more?"

"Something is messing with your life, if you have to worry about... this!"

To say Meredith found the whole situation frustrating was putting it mildly. If anything, it made her angry. At the demon, and at whatever it was about this place causing these things to happen to begin with.

"... I'm going to see if there's anything I can do to help with the... situation in that post. It sounds like at least one person has an idea what's going on, maybe I can learn something you can use once it's settled."

"But it's not her," said Lucy. "It's the demon, the vampire, it's—" Dracula, she didn't say, but bit off the name before she could spit it out, because she knew it would sound too fantastical, too insane. "I'm managing it," she said, instead. "It's—It isn't okay right now, but it usually is. I just try not to stress myself out so much."

Unless, of course, it was one of those unavoidable life-or-death situations people in Kaisou sometimes found themselves in the middle of.

"I'll ask someone on that post as well," she added. "But please don't take this on as something that you have to solve, Berry. Please come back safe."

As far as Meredith was concerned, making that distinction was splitting hairs; either way it was a past, long dead life intruding on the current one. But that wasn't the main problem here, so that topic could wait for some other time.

"I'm not planning to just rush into the thick of things, don't worry."

kaisou inbox.

Action because they live in the same house, just after Blade's post

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