2025-12-17: Reasons
- Log: Reasons
- Cast: Myunghon Yeo, Tsumugi Kujaku
- Where: Cardboard Dragon, Hirasaka Ward
- OOC Date: December 17, 2025
- IC Date: August 27, 2012
- Summary: Myunghon cancels on their plans with Tsumugi following their self-poisoning, but the purveyor of Peacock Silk visits them in intrigue instead.
<Pose Tracker> Myunghon Yeo has posed.
Myunghon Yeo has had a very difficult couple of days -- in no small part because they made a mistake and hurt the people that'd come close to them. The next few days have been one of recovery, and at some point they did remember that they had a date set with Tsumugi and ended up texting them:
> sorry, feeling quite ill due to... reasons
> i'm not certain i have the strength to go out
Their recovery's been slow and laborious since then, and they've been focusing on trying to rest downstairs at the Cardboard Dragon itself because it's been pointed out multiple times that the mouldy hellscape of the third floor isn't actually going to be conductive. The rumourmonger is splayed out on the couch with a blanket with a large mug of piping-hot tea next to them on the couch, slipping in and out of sleep with their breath laborious. They have a surgical mask on from where they suspect that they might've caught a cold from their vulnerable state.
They don't have their binder on and has a roomy t-shirt long enough to be a gown, with an anthromorphic mug holding a mirror that says: I AIN'T THE ONLY ONE WITH AN UGLY MUG
<Pose Tracker> Tsumugi Kujaku has posed.
Reasons.
There's reasons for everything, isn't there? Even the most seemingly irrational acts have some manner of reason compelling them forward. To say something happened for a 'reason' is just about as close to absolute vagueness as one can get while still, technically, being honest.
But someone claiming something happened for 'reasons' always, inevitably, invites a singular question, asked or not.
There's no answer to Myunghon's texts. Given the ecclectic behavior of Tsumugi Kujaku, it's an open question if they ever saw or read them. And so Myunghon is left to their own devices in the Cardboard Dragon as time ticks closer to the appointed hour of their failed date, with only their slowly cooling tea and blanket to keep them company.
In and out they drift, between consciousness, not, and the liminal spaces 'twixt the two.
And it's as their eyes shut, as they fall towards sleep for who knows how long how who knows how many times today, as their eye slowly creaks open from that fitful slumber...
They'll find Tsumugi Kujaku, upper body draped over the top of the couch, their red sleeveless button-up and black slacks combo tailored to sleek perfection, with black suspenders to stylishly support it, staring down at Myunghon with those unblinking, green eyes, one hidden partially by the gravity-assisted hang of their bangs.
A black tie, striped down the center in gold, dangles a few inches from tickling the tip of Myunghon's nose, but they remain silent until the exact moment that wakefulness compels Myunghon's eye open. And then?
"What reasons?"
They ask that singular question they were invited to.
<Pose Tracker> Myunghon Yeo has posed.
For Myunghon, it's one of those moments where the lapse between wakefulness feels like mere seconds -- and such where they lull into sleep one moment and then find Tsumugi there the next, in what almost feels like the purveyor of the Peacock Silk teleported into shape, they startle rather easily and nearly take a rather hapless swing with their sleeve and stop midway through. Their bandages aren't as well-assembled as they'd like, revealing the extensive scarring underneath.
They're still wheezing, a mild dyspnea still persistent.
Myunghon's arms both rest, with those hyperlong sleeves since the T-shirt is one of those long-sleeved ones where a different fabric exists underneath, on Tsumugi's shoulders, as if they can trace the line of their collarbone against their button-up.
They look gorgeous as always...
"... I tried to kill myself again," is weak, unvarnished truth Myunghon goes with. No more Magic River Teleportation. No more joking around. People are hurt because of them now... this is their truth.
<Pose Tracker> Tsumugi Kujaku has posed.
Arms swing out. Tsumugi doesn't flinch. Doesn't blink. Doesn't move.
They just continue watching Myunghon with that quietly intense stare as hands stop just shy of striking them.
No; they only move once their question is answered, with the shallow cant of their head as sleeve-drowned arms fall on their shoulders.
"..."
As ever, as always, there's no outward reaction to Myunghon's confession, bald-faced as it is. Stripped of the grim mirth of the Cardboard Dragon owner's typical entendre. They just consider Myunghon's pallid features; the scarring half-hidden beneath loose bandages; the weak quaver of their words. The soft wheeze of their breath.
"Again," they repeat, hooking on to that final, revelatory word. The word of a pattern.
Overlong fabric drapes further over Tsumugi's shoulders as they press inward on the top of that sofa, drawing closer to Myunghon. Their necktie pools in black, layering loops just over the image of that anthropomorphized mug the closer they draw inward.
"Are you trying to escape, Myunghon?"
The other question that follows in the wake of the 'reason'.
Why?
<Pose Tracker> Myunghon Yeo has posed.
Myunghon pauses and leaves their mouth half-open at Tsumugi's pointed question. They're used to the way the extravagant owner of the Peacock Silk presses upon them by this point, but it takes them quite a bit to consider and try to collect their thoughts ta this point.
"You asked me if I was alive, when we first met," they mumble quietly, nestling their head and nest of white hair down on Tsumugi's shoulder. "Perhaps the answer is that I wasn't... I was always suffocating," they echo the question they had last time, "Trying to escape..."
They grow a little limp in their presence. Despite everything, Tsumugi is warm, because like the last time they spoke: they can get sick. They can suffer. They can cry. ... they can lose.
Just like them.
"... I became attached to so many people in such a short amount of time. You among them..." Myunghon murmurs. "I can't just let them down anymore. But I did."
There's a timorous little chuckle as they say, "Even only a few months ago, before June, I was much more alone. Ready to disappear... It has been an eventful summer..."
Hazuki Nakao has arrived from Historia: The White Chronicle.
<Pose Tracker> Tsumugi Kujaku has posed.
They are warm. The pallor and fever that reigned over Tsumugi the last time they met is no longer there, but it only serves to underscore the memory, in many ways, and their words.
They can suffer. Cry. Lose.
It's the human condition.
"It's the privilege of the living to seek desperate relief from their condition, Myunghon."
It's the consequence of life.
Their words are distant, like the sharpest contrast to the warmth of their bodyheat as Myunghon nestles in against their shoulder. So too, is the warmth of their fingers as they find their way winding 'round Myunghon's forearms, as if to brace them in that position they've currently adopted as the rumormonger speaks.
And as they speak of the many connections they've made in such a staggeringly short time, green eyes hood.
"... And now you're wrapped up in a tangle of threads," they say, simply, in the waning moments of Myunghon's quivered chuckle. "Thinking that you have to live up to our expectations. But you don't.
"Living for others isn't living. It's just a death of a different kind."
They fall silent, again. It's a silence that lingers for six heavy seconds before they ask something, abruptly:
"What does the best of all possible worlds look like in your eyes, Myunghon?"
<Pose Tracker> Myunghon Yeo has posed.
Tsumugi's words are distant, but they're a familiar kind of distance, at this point. They understand the way they perceive relations, and how one should strive to live for themselves, and not be fettered to another. And yet... ...is that entirely true? They wonder about the decision Tsumugi's made to come here after they sent that text.
Perhaps they could deflect and say that it was the 'reasons' that intrigued them, not that they were worried they were sick. They don't think there'd be much point going down that discussion route, they can gauge how it'd go.
But that silence does fall heavy.
"That's a pessimistic way of thinking about it, but..." Myunghon murmurs, but then pointedly gazes towards Tsumugi's green eyes, still enraptured by them.
"... but ..."
A longer pause, as they consider the question, but instead says:
"... you choose life every time, don't you, Tsumugi Kujaku? When you urge me to grasp at true power, when you tell me to be free of my gilded cage, when you ask me to imagine the best of all possible worlds..."
They lean forward and seek out a kiss.
If they do find purchase, it's one that's borne of more than a little neediness, grasping at that collarbone and rounding towards their back.
"It..."
They let go, because they find their lungs constricting right now.
"... it would certainly be one with you in it."
A pause.
"Because you have no interest in a corpse, do you?"
<Pose Tracker> Tsumugi Kujaku has posed.
Is it entirely true?
Was curiosity the sole compulsion that brought Tsumugi Kujaku here?
Their own 'reasons' beg those two questions of what and why -- and yet no answer is truly forthcoming. Nor would it if they were asked, really. Like so many of their encounters, like so many personal things about Tsumugi, there are only glimpses to be interpreted.
Even now, when Myunghon Yeo is so open in starkest contrast.
That's a pessimistic way of thinking about it, but...
Green eyes stare into that single grey, unblinking.
"'The basis of optimism is sheer terror,'" they recite within the trail of Myunghon's thoughts, a dovetail into that thematic throughline they so often discuss, if this time via a different author, from a different era entirely.
But it's a quote that whispers in the scant space between them and then vanishes, entirely, forgotten by the moment Myunghon's lips find Tsumugi's. All that lingers is that one question:
... you choose life every time, don't you, Tsumugi Kujaku?
It's a kiss that lingers in short-lived need. Physiological demands ensure it cannot last as long as it, perhaps, wants. Their lips remain parted for a moment as Myunghon lets go, and offers a glimpse of their vision of the best of all worlds.
A world that has Tsumugi Kujaku in it.
"..."
They have no interest in a corpse. Their eyes shut. And when they reopen, they fix forward, staring at the distant wall.
"There are people in your life who have expectations of who you are and what you could and should be. The people of the Cardboard Dragon. The people inspired by Rumormonger Merry. The men and women who work for you. Your mother. Me."
Hands on Myunghon's arms glide down, their touch warm and certain as they settle along the Cardboard Dragon proprietor's shoulder blades.
"Who you are. Who you're expected to be. Who you want to be. Only one of those really matters. You're suffocating because you've never dared to draw your first gasp of oxygen on your own."
Thumbs rest on Myunghon's spine, lost in a drench of voluminous fabric spilling around their fingertips as Tsumugi's gaze returns to Myunghon's own.
"That's what I want. I choose life because it's more compelling. Because I don't think a sudden end is what you really want. If this is the shape your first and last gasp took... I'd respect it."
A second's worth of silence comes and goes, before dark lips part.
"... But the world would be a less interesting place without you in it."
<Pose Tracker> Myunghon Yeo has posed.
"'We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us,'" Myunghon whispers half-breathlessly, breaking back from that kiss. "Was that the world you escaped from, Tsumugi Kujaku...?"
It does, in many ways, feel like the world they escaped from. Their entire life has been nothing but appeasement of one person or another, has it not? One mask to fit the other, whether it is their father and their academic grinder and pipeline to corporate murder, or their mother and their designs to slot them into a criminal mastermind, or even now...
That gaze of Tsumugi's is distant. It feels meaningful, when they choose to not look at someone.
Where is it that they gaze? They can't trace the line and triangulate. That space is entirely for their own. Yet...
They coax, with their own fingers, Tsumugi's chin to look back towards them, while they speak of the people in their life that have expectations of them.
"I chose life on that day, when the snow turned to rain, when I awoke to the truth of the world... but in many ways, it doesn't feel as if I've meant it, has it?"
Tsumugi's assessment is blunt. But it doesn't feel particularly damning. Myunghon's come to realise there's a comfort in that detachment that one could find cold, but they find... soothing, perhaps, the way that they can't seem to meaningfully disappoint or elate Tsumugi, only intrigue.
(Then, will the day come when they become unintriguing? the nagging voice whispers.)
Tsumugi does point out that they'd respect if if this was the first and last gasp they took, in this shape.
Myunghon can't help but feel a smile come to their lips. Is this what Yanagi found comforting, when she said that it's freeing that she knows they wouldn't mourn her when she goes?
The feel of the tailor's thumbs on their spine is electric, as they struggle for breath once more. "I want to take that first breath. I want to stop suffocating. I want air..." they murmur, in reflection.
"Where... did you first turn to, when you first realised you wished for that?"
<Pose Tracker> Tsumugi Kujaku has posed.
Is that the world they escaped from?
A world where people bind others within their noble virtues for the sake of their own self-preservation? Where one's worth is only in the benefit they can offer others?
The words of Wilde's first and last novel hang in the air in the space between that question and Tsumugi Kujaku's answer.
"It's the world I'm still escaping from," they say simply. There's no frown on their lips. No narrowing of their eyes. But there's no smile, either; no twinkle.
"Every day is another day still trapped in it."
Like someone living in another world, as a matter of necessity. After all...
"And every day is another step towards escaping it."
Myunghon wears the scars of their life writ large on their skin. Tsumugi, in contrast, is unblemished, striking, unapproachably pristine.
So what kind of life could leave a mark like that?
Leave a stare so cooled as that...?
That stare fixes on that unknowable distance, until the moment pale fingers swaddled in oversized fabric find their chin. They don't fight the coax of those fingerpads that draw them face-to-face once more with Myunghon; by the time they're gazing upon the rumormonger's loosely-bandaged features, as they offer another glimpse into their own past -- on the day they woke up to their Persona.
And the way they still feel so stalled, despite breaking - even on a symbolic level - the chains that bind them.
"Because you're afraid to take that next step," surmises Tsumugi. "Afraid of embracing that simple truth.
"'In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.'"
Maybe it is freeing, in a way. There's no expectations on Tsumugi - none that they profess to, at least, and indeed it seems true on the face of them, their words, their actions. No expectations - just interest. No judgment - just curiosity. Tsumugi will not mourn Yanagi, and so Yanagi does not live in fear of the pain she'll leave behind when she passes.
Tsumugi does not judge Myunghon, and so there is nothing they cannot do that would disappoint in Tsumugi's eyes.
In some ways, it's a liberating, intoxicating feeling.
In others...
There's one of those smiles, those oh-so-rare smiles, touching a shallow touch at the corner of dark lips as Myunghon professes to wanting to draw in that first, great, burning gulp of air. The electricity of Tsumugi's touch rises towards the base of Myunghon's neck.
Where... did you first turn to, when you first realised you wished for that?
And then pauses.
There is a moment of silence. Hesitation? No; it's something else. That green stare seems almost searching, for a moment, watching the contours of Myunghon's expression. And then:
"... Someone who betrayed me with their last breath."
Someone who freed them with their betrayal.
"Without them, I would have never opened my eyes. The only value you can be certain of is your own, Myunghon."
Everything else can only ever exist as much as it benefits you, or wants to benefit from you.
<Pose Tracker> Myunghon Yeo has posed.
It is a surprise, to hear Tsumugi say they are still escaping from that world. In so many other facets they seem so certain about the finality of their escape -- when they speak of the best of all possible worlds, when they appear so... seated, in where they desire to be. To hear them admit it's a work in progress is...
...
Appealing, perhaps. It's an admission of something-- that they work towards, that they don't conceal behind that effortlessness in which they do, on many regards.
But there is pain too. They can see that much, through their one eye, in the way emotion drains from their face.
Their breath is taken away, again, when Tsumugi confides in how they opened their eyes when someone betrayed them with their last breath. That was a difficult thing to confide in. Freedom came at the cost of betrayal. Myunghon has had an inkling of this someone -- a woman -- in Tsumugi's past, but the relation they have to her is still unknown to them... but it is unmistakably one who has an enormous, outsized imprint upon them.
"I only took my first breath through betrayal," they whisper in turn.
The collapse of Frey Pharmaceuticals. The betrayal they made to their own father, who, to this day, employs agents and harrassment to try to rope them back in. Their mother's own desire to manipulate them and shape them to her own ends. All the forces acting upon them, and there they are, adrift as if a leaf on the wind...
"Yet, I wasn't ready," they continue, still searching into those verdant eyes, like they can get lost in them all day.
"I've met people with a much greater sense of self than I," they ruminate. "I still question what it is they have, inside of them, that I do not." That's formed a bunch of the conflict that they have with So-young.
"Making the choice was the first step. But I ignored how much I wasn't ready to adjust how I wanted to live my life," Myunghon reflects. "The third floor of this building is but a reflection of that... it was never a matter of 'want'. Many things here in the Cardboard Dragon, I did because of what another would benefit from..."
A longer pause, as they close their one eye and breathe in, gently.
"But..."
Then they've locked eye again, shifting in their positions on the couch.
"We wouldn't be here, like this, if I didn't reach out and desire it. None of these various times..." Myunghon has a quiet smile. "That time I frightened that man away by sitting on your lap. The reason why that poker table cracked under our weights."
Myunghon rises quietly, still just dressed in their overlong t-shirt and leggings.
"... spirit me from this place, which right now reminds me of my failings."
They put their hands behind their back.
"Take me out on a date, like we were supposed to."
<Pose Tracker> Tsumugi Kujaku has posed.
Parallels.
Unexpected, isn't it, the similarities we find in people who seem at their face, so different? In personality and outlooks, Tsumugi Kujaku and Myunghon Yeo run perpendicular courses: one divorced of all consideration save their own, and the other struggling to define themself outside of others' considerations.
... The life of Tsumugi Kujaku was far from the gilded cage of Myunghon Yeo.
And yet, every now and then, there are beats that resonate.
Awakening in betrayal.
The outsized impacts of others on their lives.
The suffocating nature of family.
And now here they are, delivered to this moment on parallel tracks, one resolved to hold only their own self-interest sacred, and the other living so completely in the service of others. As Myunghon rises, Tsumugi soon follows, the slow stretch of their graceful silhouette up to a full stand a laconic, indulgent thing. It ends with hands tucked smoothly into pockets in a pose fit for some counterculture fashion zine, head tilt at a thirty degree angle and asymmetric locks of raven black spilling loosely towards the side as they watch Myunghon speak on how little their life sense awakening has been dictated by their own wants with all the curiosity of a piqued cat.
A life defined by the needs and desires of others. It's so alien a thing to Tsumugi. 'Self-sacrifice.'
Maybe that's why Myunghon intrigues them. Maybe that's why they need to reach out, and prod.
And what happens, when they see what they want to see? ...
But...
That smile returns, placid yet magnetic in the way it sharpens at the corner of Tsumugi's lips.
Myunghon still has that spark inside them, even now. That ember defiantly crackling in the guttered pit. Is it only defined by Tsumugi, or is there something more?
The proprietor of Cardboard Dragon makes their wants known.
Take me out on a date, like we were supposed to.
And once they do?
The purveyor of Peacock Silk maneuvers around the couch with graceful, slow, stalking stride. The click of their heels is not nearly as profound here as in Peacock Silk - it never is - and yet it still rings out all the same as if every step is a profound statement.
It's understated yet dramatic at the same time. The way they approach. The way they suddenly drop to one knee in front of Myunghon, like a knight in front of royalty.
The way they offer up one pale hand towards them, with that shallow smile that never quite reaches their eyes still enduring.
It's a dramatic gesture delivered with stoic perfection that couples with their distant tone in such a strangely sublime way as they offer a simple promise:
"If that's what you want, that's what you'll have, Myunghon."
What will happen, when Myunghon Yeo no longer intrigues them?
It's an important question. A question that gets lost in the moment. Within a simple, shared note in their pasts. Within the rush of the present.
Who knows what tomorrow will bring, after all? For today -- for today, there is still so much about Myunghon Yeo that intrigues Tsumugi Kujaku.
And the world of today would still be a less interesting one without them in it.