beachepisode | [ week one: overflow ]

MINGLE LOG

The way you arrive might vary from person to person. Perhaps, you wake up on the beach, with your pet cat licking your face. Or you wake up tucked away in your bed, an item of yours nearby and a card on the bedside table reading your name and Welcome to the manor!

Either way, you end up in a modern mansion on a empty, lonely beach, with no explanation of why you're there or what's going on. In the driveway, there is a car with keys in the ignition but, unfortunately, no gas in the tank. In the living room, there is a touch screen television featuring a variety of profiles featuring you and the many other lost souls trapped in this mansion alongside with you.

There is also a camera crew. A camera crew? Really? But following the characters along are blank faced mannequins in a variety of colors, dressed in all black, operating cameras to film them. If you try and talk to the crew, they say nothing (as they have no mouth or eyes or... anything) and just continue to film them. Trying to touch them results in the mannequin falling over and going immobile, only to be replaced by a new one that appears from... somewhere? Weird.

The kitchen is fully stocked. There are spare clothes in the closets. There's even a few video game systems with games in the living room as well. There are books to read in the library. There's writing and drawing materials in the office. There's things to do. Just... why? To what end? What's going on here?

For those intrepid folks who decide to walk as far as they can away from the manor and the beach will find themselves blinking at one point and suddenly being back in the front yard of the manor. Huh. Strange.

Answers don't seem to be coming anytime soon. You might as well just... settle in?

—

PROPERTY DAMAGE | PRIVATE CONVERSATIONS

♥

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ claps a hand on his shoulder! ]

Glad you could join us! [ no! ] What's better than sharing a drink and opening up your heart in the company of friends, right?

Literally anything else. [ yves. buddy. ] You think this will work?

And if I said it already has?

[ people are actually answering him out of the blue which is kind of insane. even yves thinks this. but perhaps it is because he is just so unassuming and milly is so beautiful they are entranced by her

that's what he thinks is happening anyway

but if he's not being rebuffed, he'll let his arm fall around junpei's shoulder ]

You don't want to play around with us at all?

[ yeah this is also why he's here because he also thinks people answering out of the blue is insane. it says a lot about the people here though, so here he is. observing. yves why are you so tall and french. ]

I think I'd like to hear your answer to your own question, actually. [ what is the question? well who knows. ]

[ he really isn't that tall but he is very french! ]

Sure! Which question?

[ he's asked like twenty but he's pretty easy to get to know, he thinks... ]

[ i think he's taller than junpei even if it's not by a lot is why. ]

What's your type?

[ let's start easy then and maybe that'll be satisfactory. ]

[ it won't be because yves is so annoying ]

Oh... I'm not sure I have one?

[ (me voice) he does and it's 'counterproductive' ]

I think there's something endearing about just about everyone... I've never met someone that I felt like I couldn't love.

[ this feels like a cop-out, he thinks. ]

Then when's the last time you fell in love?

A few years ago... I loved a girl that I was seeing for a bit. We met at the marché when her father hired me to fix up the stall her family worked and she happened to be there that day... I stopped by everyday after, just for the chance to hear her voice.

[ . . . ]

Well, things don't work out.

[ and this is why you don't always get close to people. ]

No, I suppose they don't. [ ... ] Did you ever at least find out why they didn't?

Mm-hmm.

There are some things about me that people just can't bring themselves to accept.

[ but he at least won't leave junpei in the dark about what—yves will make a gesture to his own face, the side that's obscured by his mask... the patch of skin around the eye that pokes through, reddened and scarred ]

I don't love her any less for it.

[ he glances at the mask, and the skin beneath it, and he frowns a little. ]

That's it? That's the reason?

[ sorry he suddenly sounds so offended, what do you mean someone who supposedly loved you just bounced because of your phantom of the opera cosplay? ]

[ the offense is fair, yves thinks. hugo and adolphe would get this way too, every time yves slinked himself sadly back to them after drinking his woes away.... but also

[redacted] ]

.... it's okay. [ pats junpei's shoulder from where his arm is still slung around him ] There's no way to make someone love you, right?