And the World Shall Forget You

[Zach Kaiser]

"Bye." Eld hadn't intended the comment as a threat--at least not one of physical violence, at least. But the fact that Toushikyo had gone through the trouble of sending Oboreru to give him the false message suggested that if there was one think he didn't want right now, it was for Eld to come and visit. But if he didn't come see him, Eld would have to do just that before long.

Though if Eld thought at all that his lack of communication was hurting his sister, he wouldn't balk at knocking some sense into him, either.

With Oboreru gone, Eld returned to his room, intent on poring over the book--not realizing that Etsu had been looking through it while he was gone.

[Nayt]

Etsu was already sitting at Eld's desk. She had the history textbook wide open on the desk and a sheet of paper next to it. There was a pen in her hand, and she was currently scanning the top of one of the pages. She was silent in study, reading, jotting down something on paper, flipping the page, and repeating the process.

She barely even heard Eld come in.

For Eld-- whether he recognized it or not --this would be the best possible glimpse into Etsu's school (and home) life. She had a practiced way about her right now, the way she sat crossed-legged even though she could have rested her feet on the floor, the way she arched her back when she leaned over the desk, and the way she methodically scanned every word on the top of each page, slow but sure, and glanced over to her paper to take notes. She'd spent many a night in her life doing just that, and with formal education in her town extending as far as the tenth grade, she still had a couple of years of study ahead of her.

[Zach Kaiser]

Etsu was busy at work; for a moment Eld was less interested in what she was doing and more interested in how. It was something that slipped his mind often, but she attended school at her home, and unlike him she still was. She was clearly used to studying, and he suspected from the methodical way she was working that she was quite good at it.

"Finding anything?" he asked at last, walking up behind her. He wasn't really counting on Toushikyo heeding his message and coming to talk to him, so right now the book was the best lead they had.

Assuming there really was some kind of message in it and it hadn't been a hopeful fabrication of a couple of fatigued minds.

[Nayt]

Etsu perked her head up when she heard Eld's voice. She really hadn't noticed him come in. Oh well. It wasn't startling. In fact, it was kind of expected. At some point he was going to come bug her, especially considering what she was going over. Oh well. This was pretty much for him, anyways. He was allowed to bug her if she was doing something for him. Though, she really had no idea at this point why she was going out of her way for him right now. Maybe it had something to do with last night. With the way he talked to her when she was less offensive to him. Or maybe it was when he thanked her from the bottom of his heart.

"Hai," she nodded her head. "I am not done, but . . ."

In fact, she was only half-way through the book so far. Granted, she was only reading the tops of each page, but it was pretty methodical work, especially since she was trying to make sense of what she was finding as she was finding it. That was probably the hardest part.

She wriggled and turned around in the chair until she was sitting with her chest pressed up against the back rest. Once there, Etsu reached back to take the paper she'd been jotting notes down on and handed it off to Eld.

"It is . . . ver-y odd," Etsu said as she handed it off.

Etsu's writing was fairly legible, but she kept notes in an eclectic way. All over the page, there were whole sentences written and scratched out, likely from times she was looking at the wrong words, and even in the large text she'd written in the center of the page, there were numerous scribbles and scrawls where she'd made mistakes and had no room to fix them. Eld would only have to decipher it for a moment to see exactly what she was writing:

This text is your first warning. You are curious. You think you need to know. But in your pursuit of knowledge, you will forget the consequences of your actions. If you open the grave of memories, there will be no turning back. You will dredge up conflicts best left unresolved. You push the world into Repeat, and by this you will perish. You will become a figment, and the world shall forget you. But if this was a fault not of your own—if the world has cycled into a Repeat by another’s hand—then attempt now to calm yourself and plan for your coming hardships.

[Zach Kaiser]

Eld's stomach twisted a bit; he didn't know what he was expecting, but it wasn't this. This sounded...really really serious. If it was to be believed. There was no longer any doubt that this was a genuine message, and it hardly seemed like it was a joke. Or if it was, it wasn't a good one.

"The graveyard of memories..." That particular line struck him. "Is that the graveyard we found?"

This was a local book, written in Hillcrest about Hillcrest. The chances of there being some other mysterious graveyard in the area were slim, he figured. "How long do you think it will take?" he asked. "Or do you want me to take over?" He was perfectly fine with the latter, but if it was the former he thought he could start investigating something else.

[Nayt]

"I do not know," Etsu shook her head, "I do not under-stand any of it."

After all, she hadn't gone to the graveyard. That was Eld and Akizetsumei's journey. By now, though, she was curious enough that if Eld were to ask her to join him in going to the graveyard, she'd have readily accepted his invitation.

Etsu reached out to take her notes back from Eld. She didn't outright snatch them from his hands, but she did sincerely want them back. She wasn't done with this, and she was clearly going to see it through until she deciphered this entire message. Hopefully by the end it would start to make sense. Hopefully.

"I am onr-ry har-rf done," she reported as she turned around in the chair. One again she set the paper down by the book. She might actually need some more paper soon. That would be unfortunate. This single sheet was hard enough to find. "It may take me hour or two."

Not that she minded. This was a hell of a lot better than just laying around doing nothing. This was actually interesting to her.

[Zach Kaiser]

"Alright. I'll leave you to it, then." Etsu clearly didn't want to leave the job half-done. Or perhaps she didn't think he was up to it. But either way, it wouldn't do to sit and pester her while she was working. He handed her notes back to her.

"I'm going to head out for a bit...the message seems to assume you already know something about this...Repeat. I'll see if I can dig up some information on it."

Of course, he already knew there was nothing about it conventional books around. Anything on it would either be in a book he'd never seen, or in another hidden message. He couldn't even fathom where to begin with the latter, but the former gave him an idea.

Which was why after he cleaned himself up a bit better, he found himself knocking on the front door of the house of the Takamine family.

[Nayt]

Maya Takamine's parents were out of town for the next couple of days, which left Maya the house to herself. She lived near the center of town in a moderate sized brick house. Just across the street was the church that her great grandfather founded years ago. Her father was the current head priest. In general, it was commonplace for a male heir to inherit the church-- which meant that, unless her parents were to have another child and that child were to be a boy, the burden of producing a son was somehow going to be forced on Maya at some point in her life.

That was a thought she kind of dreaded. Incidentally, this was a fear that only Eldridge Tsukimono knew about. It was one of those things that she'd shared only with him. He might not have known this, but Maya hadn't even told Sarah or Toushikyo, either.

She answered the door by cracking it half-open and peering out from behind the crack. Once she saw it was Eld, Maya pulled the door open a little wider-- surprised, but not uninviting. She felt under-dressed immediately, what with her tank top and sweat pants and all . . .

That had her flushed a bit already.

"O-oh, um, Tsukimono-san, I wasn't expecting any company," she said at first, only to realize her manners a second later. "I-- I mean-- hi."

[Zach Kaiser]

"H-Hi. Umm...sorry to drop in on you out of the blue." Which was a stupid thing to say, given that they were supposed to be friends. But it was also stupid that they were so awkward. And that they had been for the three or four years it's been since they dated.

The fact that they went out of their way not to be alone together for all that time was, come to think of it, downright pathetic.

"I'm...kind of researching something, and I thought it might be something you've come across at some point." Straight and to the point--that was the best way to avoid awkwardness. Yes. Especially, it was the best way to avoid thinking about how close she'd been getting to Toushikyo.

That the fact that he was holed up and probably not seeing her either was some solace to him made him feel a bit guilty.

[Nayt]

Maya tilted her head to the side.

"Oh?" She asked rhetorically.

Well . . . Maya was always one to help out with educational and literary matters. When it came to research, she was the most willing to help out (and arguably the best source, though she was incapable of recognizing that fact), going so far as to lost sleep just to help someone else along. It also meant that she could forgo a small fraction of her conservatism, if only to invite Eld inside. It would be much easier to talk whilst sitting down than it would be out here at the door. There was a part of her that screamed at her for even considering it, but she was deaf to that internal protest. For now.

So she opened her door up for him.

"Y-you can come in, if you want. I just brewed a pot of tea."

Which was to say that Eld was invited to come in, sit down, share in some nice and relaxing tea with her, and chat it up with her about this topic he was interested in.

[Zach Kaiser]

"S-Sure, thanks." She was always polite, of course. She never actually said anything, but there was always this wall between them. He suspected she didn't like him much anymore, and just put up with them because they were in the same group of friends.

Which made this even more awkward, but she was the only person likely to know about this, at least the only person he could talk to.

It had been quite some time since he'd set foot inside the Takamine residence. None of them came here often, since Maya wasn't too keen on her father interacting with her friends. Eld really couldn't blame her for that.

He allowed himself to be led inside, sitting wherever Maya indicated and would wait politely for the tea before getting down to business.

[Nayt]

Maya led Eld to her living room. It was the first room on the right from the front door. It was a large space filled with chairs, a long, comfortable couch, bookcases, and glass coffee table set right before the couch. Maya bent down to collect a couple of cup holders from the bottom of the coffee table and set one before Eld and another at the other end of the coffee table. They might share the same couch, but Maya was more than likely to sit on the opposite side of the couch and leave a great deal of space between their persons.

She went to the kitchen (the first room on the left from the front door, and easily the largest and most ornate room in the entire house) following this. It took her a minute to get everything ready, but Maya inevitably returned (carefully-- very. very. carefully.) with a tall teacup in each hand. She set one down before Eld and the other down on her cup holder.

Maya crossed her legs and blew at her tea. She wasn't lying; she'd pretty much finished brewing this just seconds before Eld showed up at her house. It was a home-brew, too. Maya's mother rented a small piece of land from a center-town farmer where she grew and treated tea leaves by herself. Sometimes Maya helped her, but farming wasn't her strong point. It was no surprise that this was home-grown, though. All the consumable goods in the Takamine house were made from scratch. All the consumables. All of them.

"S-so," Maya wet her lips with initial nervousness, but relaxed as soon as she took in a breath of relaxing tea. Her mother was the best at growing and treating these plants. Maya leaned back. "So-- what are you researching?"

[Zach Kaiser]

Maya's house always made Eld a bit envious. Not only it's size, but it's style; it had a kind of dignity about it that he felt his own small abode lacked. Not that he was ashamed of his own home or anything, but the cost of running the clinic meant they didn't have a whole lot that wasn't necessity.

Upon sitting down and being served his tea, he mimicked Maya in blowing on it. While she sat on the same couch as him, she made a point of sitting on the other end. Guess it wouldn't do to be too close to him, he supposed.

"Something called a...a Repeat." The way he emphasized the word made it clear this was the name for something and not just the word. "It's mentioned in something I read, but it assumes the reader knows what it is already. It made it sound bad though...catastrophically bad. Since I hadn't heard of it, I thought you might."

[Nayt]

Maya listened to Eld's research topic, but regarded him with a look of confusion shortly thereafter. She waited for a moment to see if there was anything else, but when there wasn't . . .

"A . . . Repeat?" Maya asked.

She paused to think. Maya already knew what she was going to say, she just needed to word it correctly. Make sure it wasn't rude. Make sure it was at least somewhat helpful. The major difficulty was that she couldn't think of anything helpful to say on this topic.

"That's . . . really sort of a broad topic, Tsukimono-san," she said, priming him for disappointment. "I assume the author's referring to something that occurs in intervals? A lot of things happen in intervals, both good and bad. Weather patterns repeat, patterns in music repeat, history repeats . . ."

Maya stopped there in order to take a sip of her tea. It had cooled down enough to have a few little sips here and there, which Maya took readily. Her mother prepared the best tea. It didn't even need any sugar.

[Zach Kaiser]

Eld resisted the urge to sigh; it didn't seem like Maya had any more idea than he did. He figured he'd try one more time to prod her memory. "I know, but this is different. The book had it in capital letters...it talked about 'triggering a Repeat.' It made it sound like it was something very, very bad...something life changing. Maybe even world changing."

He frowned into his lap; he didn't know how else to put it. The concept of the Repeat the book mentioned was at this point more a feeling than a real idea. He didn't know what it was, only that if he was right it was something to be avoided at any cost.

"Can you think of anything like that? Or...maybe there's a different name for it. Any catastrophe that cycles, or has been triggered more than once? Even if you thought the author was a crackpot, I'd really like to know..."