2025-06-30: Do You Dare
- Cutscene: Do You Dare?
- Cast: Suzume Fukura
- Where: Port Island Station Men's Bathroom
- OOC Date: June 30, 2025
- IC Date: June 03, 2012
- Summary: Suzume takes the Mementos Dare.
"I can't believe you're doing this," Jiro said, as he stepped in behind Suzume, looking around slightly worriedly.
"Maybe if you had said something when Kimura was giving me shit about acting like a girl - said that I didn't have guts. You don't actually believe the rumour, do you?" Suzume stepped further into the empty room. The lights weren't on but some came in around the corner entryway; she could see even if it was dim, and nobody was likely to see her from outside.
"No, not that!" Jiro raised his hands. "I mean breaking into a bathroom. Anyway, you are a girl."
Without turning around, Suzume elbowed Jiro, hard enough to break his stride but without intent to injure; more of a shove than a strike. "Don't you start," she says, warningly; if it hadn't been Jiro saying it he wouldn't have gotten the warning. "And it's not breaking in if it's not locked," she pointed out. "It's just closed for maintenance. I didn't even open a door."
And, indeed, it was. Port Island Station's men's public washroom had been having some trouble lately, opening and closing. The reason it was closed right now was obvious: half the sinks were missing as part of whatever repair they were up to. But the only thing actually keeping people out was a little waist-high sign, which Suzume had looked at, read, and proceeded to simply walk around. Technically she was breaking one more rule than Jiro: it was a men's public washroom, after all. But Suzume wasn't going to let a little thing like that stop her. When opportunity knocked she intended to answer.
The two of them couldn't look much more different even though they were almost exactly the same age, separated by less than a week. Jiro was a tall, slender artist who always seemed to know how to present himself perfectly; Suzume had heard him called a pretty boy, and the description wasn't wrong. Even she'd noticed.
Meanwhile, Suzume was... not that. She was short (not just in comparison with Jiro, but in general), she tended to hide herself behind drab clothes, she didn't use makeup or style her hair much beyond keeping it at a convenient length - she didn't put a lot of care towards how she looked, really, preferring to make herself comfortable. Her parents were pushing her on that. Her mother had told her that morning that she should take more care, and that she'd probably like the results if she did, which is why she'd dug in even harder; her top was rumpled and a little too big for her and she'd taken the little studs in her ears out. She hadn't quite had the courage to lose them - money was tight, again - so she'd 'lost' them instead, tossing them into her pencil case.
"So why isn't Kimura here instead of me?" Jiro started to fumble around for the light switch until Suzume blocked it with her own hand - turning on the light would give them away.
"Because he has some special training for a boxing event, like you know perfectly well." Suzume says, before adding, "He'll believe you if you say it, anyway. Probably."
Suzume Fukura, Jiro Yamamoto, Daiki Kimura and Hidemi Ito - the four of them had been pretty close friends all through middle school. But Hidemi had transferred out to Shujin for high school, and things started to change around then. Before that it hadn't been weird that Suzume was the only girl in the group. She'd played the same games, gone to the arcade to waste time, been interested in (and participated in) the same sports; she'd even roughhoused with them.
These days... things were different. Hidemi, of course, simply wasn't around as much between schoolwork and travel times, though she kept in contact. Daiki treated her differently these days, alternately like she was delicate or like he was thinking about hitting on her but didn't quite have the follow-through. Jiro mostly didn't, for which Suzume was grateful, though she could do without the (sometimes mean-spirited) gossip around her and him; her denials only seemed to make things worse. (She did kind of hope that nobody had seen her, and that 'Suzume snuck into an empty bathroom with Jiro' didn't start a whole new line of gossip, but too late now.) The group was falling apart, really, but Suzume wasn't ready to let go of it.
"Suzume," Jiro says, drawing her attention back suddenly. "I really think we should head out. We should just get out of here before transit security hears us or something."
Suzume glared, looking up at him. "Don't tell me you're the wimp here. He said I wasn't brave enough; he'll laugh at you if you're the one who isn't. But relax. It'll be fine."
"I don't know. I heard that a student said it and they didn't find him until the next day and he was in Shinjuku and couldn't say how he got there - "
"Earth to Jiro," Suzume interrupted, waving her hand in front of his face. "We are in a train station. Trains go to Shinjuku. He probably just didn't want to say that he'd hopped on and stayed out all night at places he wasn't supposed to be. Don't be a chicken."
"But - "
"Can't hear you," Suzume sing-songed, as she stepped up toward where one of the sinks currently wasn't, facing the mirror behind it. "Mementos."
"Mementos."
"Suzume..." Jiro sounded - stressed. Not quite afraid, but not entirely not, either. Suzume at first thought he was faking it to get her to turn around, and then she decided that he must have heard someone coming, and that she'd better finish quick.
"Mementos - "
A pulse; a feeling in her ears like she needed to swallow to equalize the pressure. The light was already bad, but Suzume had the impression that everything had tinted reddish, like she was getting sunset light even though it was far too early for that. She tasted copper in her mouth, enough that she actually stopped for a moment, the distant blare of a not-quite-understood announcement coming on.
"Mementos," she said, tension building as the red light washed out into shadow for a moment, then back to red. She had goosebumps all down her arm, and a feeling of... Suzume wasn't going to let herself be afraid. She was just on edge because Jiro was freaking out for no reason. But she had the feeling that something was pushing her to say it, like the word was pressure building up inside her and if she didn't she'd burst -
"SUZUME!" Jiro raised his voice behind her, sounding more afraid than before, but Suzume swallowed, and spoke once more:
"Mementos!" she finished, somewhere between blurting it out in haste to get it over with and a triumphant shout.
...
...
Moments later, station security flipped the light on in the bathroom, as there'd been reports of some students sneaking in and noise coming from inside.
But, on finding all the stalls empty, no vandalism and no litter, he left again.