2025-07-10: The Secret to Happiness, and Other Things
- Log: The Secret to Happiness, and Other Things
- Cast: Reiya Aomori, Minato Arisato
- Where: Port Island Station, Tatsumi
- OOC Date: 2025-07-10
- IC Date: Thursday June 07 2012
- Summary: Minato and Reiya are a real mirror match.
<Pose Tracker> Reiya Aomori has posed.
SCHOOL has gone on, and despite returning to the dorm in the late hours of the morning, Reiya Aomori has resolutely stayed awake in class. Indeed, he hasn't shown any signs of being sleepy at all!! This could be youthful stamina, or it could be secret training. It's hard to say for sure. But in any case, Reiya was suddenly there in Minato's path before he left the classroom today.
"..." Reiya looked into Minato's eyes.
"Since we live in the same dorm now," Reiya says, "We should hang out."
That's how it works. But hanging out is not done at the classroom. "...Let's go back together."
Assuming that Minato says 'yes', because if he doesn't then this scene is very different...
Port Island Station is an important stop on the way back to the dorm for more reasons than one. As they arrive at it, Reiay pauses, and lifts a finger. "There's a secret inventory in the vending machines here," he says. "You have to hit the buttons in the right order..."
He leads past the Cinema towards the vending machine down the way, hidden by the wall. He walks up to it, and begins to press the buttons with expert timing.
Two cans of 'Happiness Water' drop out!
"It's good," Reiya says.
...This is the most social he's been through most of their class time, actually.
<Pose Tracker> Minato Arisato has posed.
Minato walks out of class.
Reiya appears in front of Minato.
Minato pulls up precisely five point six centimetres from Reiya's person.
"..."
He stares back.
"Understood." It's like yes.
The compact is sealed, and lo: they walk back together. (Minato does not remain five point six centimetres close to Reiya as they leave, disappointing the one girl in the crowd who reads a particular type of manga.)
Minato pauses, when Reiya pauses. Reiya says that there's a secret inventory, and a cut-in screen of Minato's eyes appear, as if he were about to execute a flawless blow. "All right."
He watches Reiya's sequence intently...
And...
Rattle, clang!
They receive happiness.
"This is it," Minato praises Reiya, as he takes a can. Crrrk-pssssshhht, glug, glug...
For precisely five point six seconds, Minato smiles.
It tastes like happiness, you see.
<Pose Tracker> Reiya Aomori has posed.
Reiya waits. And then--it's close enough to yes.
They can disappoint that girl. She wouldn't be the first!
But Minato learns the secret that he otherwise would have to pay some guy at the club for, and they do receive happiness. Reiya also takes his can, and nods firmly to Minato when he is praised. Glug glug...
Reiya also smiles.
Then he is back to his usual stoic approach, holding the can and its remnants as he looks out over the station. "I wanted to show you something good," he says. "...Because I'm not unreliable. You'll see, when we work together."
A pause. "If you don't remember my name that's OK," he says then. "I'm Reiya Aomori. You wouldn't have seen because I didn't get back until late last night... But I live in the Iwatodai dorm now. On your side." Obviously.
Then he steps out onto the stone floor towards the steps. He turns back to Minato. "There are a lot of secrets like that around here. ...It's a good place to live."
<Pose Tracker> Minato Arisato has posed.
Reiya is proving himself to Minato, for... some reason.
No, for a specific reason.
Minato takes on this knowledge, and nods, firmly.
Should he be surprised, to find more members of SEES? Should he feel bad for them? Should he have any reaction at all?
He napped through it. He does that. Now Reiya is working with them. That's logical.
"Minato Arisato," he introduces himself, in turn. "Operations leader, with Minako Arisato." Twins!
"Our current mission is to investigate the disappearance of Fuuka Yamagishi," he reports, despite the fact that they're still just standing out in the middle of the street. "We must determine whether she has become a vengeful ghost."
Beat.
"The mission is ongoing."
<Pose Tracker> Reiya Aomori has posed.
Reiya only joined very recently anyway--and directly through Ikutsuki, rather than meeting the entire group like some new members have. It's fine though. He's here.
"I see," Reiya says, and nods. "I was told we had two field leaders..."
Current mission. Minato reports it, and Reiya nods. "Yamagishi-san's been out of school..." He considers. "Do we deal with a lot of vengeful ghosts?" he wonders.
The mission is ongoing.
"OK," he says. "I'll report when I have more information. But..."
He considers. "...I can also research countermeasures for vengeful ghosts."
He pauses. "Regardless, I will protect you on the mission, so that you can focus on leadership. Count on me."
He looks down, then, out over the station.
"Should I stake out Yamagishi-san's house?"
<Pose Tracker> Minato Arisato has posed.
"No," Minato says. "We deal with a lot of Merciless Maya."
That's a type of Shadow in Tartarus, by the way. Just so you know.
"But Takeba-san appears to be weak to ghosts, so it's possible ghosts are electrical in nature." Minato pauses. "Unless 'ghost' is a new element," he adds. "More research is needed." A mission for Reiya has appeared...
He nods, when Reiya asks him to count on him. "Understood." He does not tell Reiya how pointless it is to jump in front of bullets for him when his entire bit is jumping in front of bullets for everyone else. He might not even fully grasp the thing he's agreeing to, given no one is presently about to die.
Her home...
"I don't know where she lives," Minato realises.
Oh no.
<Pose Tracker> Reiya Aomori has posed.
Merciless Maya!? "The illusions of this world are strong," Reiya says, because he has never met a Maya and so he is thinking Minato means something about Buddhism. And for some reason he knows about that.
He has never been to Tartarus. Yet.
"Is she?" Reiya wonders. "...She won't appreciate being guarded by me. She doesn't like me. But that doesn't change our duty." A pause. "...I'll look into it." The element, that is.
Reiya does not yet know that Minato is going to jump into bullets. It's fine, though. That will be a problem for later.
"Hmmmm," Reiya considers. "..."
"That's not a problem," he decides.
<Pose Tracker> Minato Arisato has posed.
"You'll need to get along with Takeba-san to be cured of illusions," Minato informs him. It is neither kind nor unkind. It's just a delivered fact. "She's our primary healer."
He pauses, looking down at his can of happiness.
"I don't know if she likes me or not," he admits, contemplative, and that one isn't just a fact.
...
"All right," he nods, when Reiya says it isn't a problem, and is just a little too thick to realise that Yukari definitely wouldn't like THAT.
<Pose Tracker> Reiya Aomori has posed.
Information...
"I see," Reiya says. "Then I'll have to be careful. She thinks I'm unreliable..." He shakes his head. "She doesn't understand." But he doesn't know...?
Reiya tilts his head. "Have you asked her?"
This is a great idea.
But Reiya finishes his can of happiness and says, "I'll take care of it."
He looks over to Rafflesia, across the way, and looks stoic about it. "...Takeba-san doesn't like me because I was going out with her clubmate and now I'm not," he explains.
"...But that doesn't affect our mission."
He turns back to Minato. "Is the other Operations leader your sister?" he wonders.
<Pose Tracker> Minato Arisato has posed.
"So that's why you wanted to establish it," Minato observes. "I understand."
Does he really???
But Reiya suggests just asking Yukari if she likes him...
... and Minato shrugs. "That's too much effort."
If Minato cares whether or not Yukari likes him -- then he cares about whether they might get close. If he cares about whether they might get close, it might happen. If that happens --
Minato, emphatically, does not care whether or not Yukari likes him. He's not tangled up with any of them. It doesn't matter to him.
"She can feel how she feels. Either way."
Minato's a man who's never invested into anything, huh?
He tilts his head, though, looking sidelong to Reiya. "How long were you going out?" He wonders, even though it doesn't affect anything.
And to his last question, he nods. "We're twins. I'm the funny one."
He hasn't shifted his expression from his flat face once, aside from that soda imposing a brief miracle.
<Pose Tracker> Reiya Aomori has posed.
"Yes," Reiya answers Minato's observation. He gets it. Reiya appreciates that: it means he doesn't have to try to explain it any further than that.
...he does, right???
Reiya tilts his head. "I guess it would be," he muses. But that's because he thinks she's prickly and hard to talk to. His statement about how she feels...
"It doesn't affect the mission," Reiya agrees. Either way, however she feels. It doesn't affect that. Minato seems to understand a lot of important things.
Minato asks a question, sidelong, and Reiya looks down to the ground. "Almost a year," he answers, and if Minato cares to think about it, he may notice that there's a little extra gloom in Reiya's voice about it. It's subtle, though. He might miss it.
But, "Oh." Pause. "Are you? I didn't notice," Reiya reflects without rancor. "That's good. It's good to make people laugh."
<Pose Tracker> Minato Arisato has posed.
Probably. There's a reasonable chance Minato understands an amount of the things he takes on.
There's also the chance he's dissociating wildly and he understands nothing. Don't worry about it.
"A long time," Minato says, and it's easy to imagine his neutrality as sympathetic. Even if he's still deadpan as he says: "Must have had a good reason to stop. Right?"
He's not asking what the reason is, of course.
But, well, if Reiya is the kind of guy who likes to lead girls on, Minato might need to reassess his reliability for the wellbeing of all the girls in his party.
He doesn't dwell on it too long, though. "Yeah," Minato agrees, when Reiya says it's good to make people laugh. "I'll work hard. One day, I'll achieve it."
......................................
okay that joke was kind of funny though
<Pose Tracker> Reiya Aomori has posed.
"Yes," Reiya agrees. And then Minato asks the question, and Reiya nods. "Yes," he says, though he doesn't explain what that reason actually was at the moment. Instead he says, "It's important... to understand what you can and can't do."
Still, Minato says he's working hard. And Reiya nods. "Yes," he answers. "You..."
Pause. "Oh."
Reiya laughs. "I get it," he says. "You are funny."
He then turns back to Minato. He seems to think better of something he said or didn't say earlier, because, "...Have you kept secrets from people you care about?" he wonders.
"That might sound like a weird question. Ignore it if it does."
A pause. "...We should go anyway. There's still a ways to walk..."
<Pose Tracker> Minato Arisato has posed.
"So you were recognising your own limitations," Minato fills in the blanks. "I'm satisfied with that."
It's important to figure out if a girl is ready for a serious relationship... but that doesn't mean it's not important to know whether the boy's ready for it, either. If he wasn't able to handle it, it would have been bad if he'd pretended he could.
But then --
Maybe Happiness Water really is a canned miracle.
For the first time in existence, someone laughs at Minato's joke.
And Minato replies, in that same deadpan: "I did it. Mission complete."
Was that really a mission?!
(Somewhere, Elizabeth's icon lights up. It seems one of her Requests was just fulfilled...)
He doesn't seem to think Reiya's question is weird, though. "People seem to think so, since I don't talk much." Wait, is that a yes or a no?!
He looks out, to the path to the dormitory.
"It'd be quicker if we ran," he suggests. "And if you do that enough, Sanada-senpai will like you."
See? He's helping him figure out the social balance. He's helping.
<Pose Tracker> Reiya Aomori has posed.
"Yes," Reiya answers. "...I couldn't do what she wanted."
But Reiya did laugh! He's very good at humor actually. So when he says he did it, Reiya nods firmly. "You accomplished your goal," he says. "That's good."
Minato, though... Minato says people seem to think he has secrets. But that doesn't mean whether he has or hasn't. "People assume a lot of things about people who don't talk much," Reiya notes.
And the path... the dorm. They can run.
"OK," Reiya answers Minato. "But..."
"I won't lose."
<Pose Tracker> Minato Arisato has posed.
"Live strong," Minato advises him. "There'll be a next time." One day, he'll be ready! ... or something like that.
And Minato is happy to see that Reiya appreciates his accomplishment. Of course, his expression doesn't shift at all.
... how many things do people assume about Minato?
How many things do people assume about Reiya?
Well, here's one assumption:
"Let's do it."
Minato might look like a nerd who spends all day inside playing video games, but he's also part of the track and field team.
It means they'll get back to the dorms pretty quickly, at least.