[video] forward dated to 9/13

[appraiser]

Ryoji Mochizuki shared a video.
09/13 near Apprassage

[ The video starts up, dark, silent. A bedroom, if an empty desk and neatly made bed and too many cardboard boxes count as a bedroom, and then the view flips over with a soft ] Oh. [ as the user finds the front-facing camera instead of the rear that he always uses on his phone. ]

Hi... It's been a while.

[ The bottom half of the screen blurs as Ryoji draws his knees to his chest where he sits on bare floorboards, phone in his hands. He doesn't introduce himself— doesn't need to, when his name is up there for people who don't know him, his face right here for people who do: the people he's recording this video for, whispers in an empty room. ]

I'm back. I know there are probably questions as to why, or how... and I can't really explain it well myself. But I'll answer the best I can, if you want to ask, texting or in person.

[ Ryoji sits up a little straighter now, looks a little more serious. This is what he meant to say: a confession. ]

But before that, I want to say that I'm glad to be back, however it happened... a second chance like this. I also want to be more upfront about myself, and there are things I want to say to a lot of people.

There was a time in the past where I was a monster: I'd hurt a lot of people, and I ran from all of that, hid myself away, and pretended it hadn't happened. The memories I've been experiencing, I kept the good ones close, the bad even closer, pretending they weren't real and that they have nothing to do with me. I thought... that it would be better to forget about all of that and return to a simpler time. Unconsciously, I think that's what I did. I went back to before everything happened, to start over, and do better this time. But I got it wrong. I made myself forget, but I wasn't forgotten...

[ He's rambling now, a little, so he turns his eyes away from the screen, staring off at something in the distance- it's the moon reflected in his eyes, only half. ]

There's somebody I still need to say goodbye to, but after that... I want to see so many of you. I owe a lot of "thank you"s and "I'm sorry"s and "I love you"s, and I want to be with people again. I don't want to leave this world or its people ever again.

So... I'll see you guys soon.




( ooc: forward dated to 9/13 to give myself a buffer. replies can be via text, or an in-person if you want to fast-forward to ryoji showing up at your character's house/class/chance meeting at some cafe/hi roommates/he'll be finding people around town somehow. for his cr, please assume he checked up on them, whether it's handwaved or not! )

Comments

[liberal_arts]

Truth be told, I've never done it before either. At least not consciously.

We'll start with something simple, though. A basic white canvas... -Kasen gestured at the one laid out on the floor, before picking up a fairly large brush and black paint pot.-

And black ink.

[appraiser]

[ Ryoji takes the pot in his hand, along with the brush, but doesn't make a move yet to do anything. With the canvas on the ground rather than leaning against an easel like he'd expected, the nostalgia comes in waves- him as a child laying flat on his stomach, drawing on white printer paper right on the ground. With nostalgia, there's some agitation, because that child was him for all of two weeks and he'd caused a lot of trouble just being him. ]

...I kind of want to smash the pot on the ground. On the other hand, maybe you should hold it.

[liberal_arts]

-Kasen didn't move to take it. In fact, he gave Ryoji a very pointed look.-

Why would I stop you from smashing the pot? I'm not here to interfere with how you choose to express yourself.

[appraiser]

[ Ryoji's shoulders drop when faced with that look. It's expressing, but this isn't- ]

Because I don't want anger and spite to be emotions I express, at any given time. They're not good feelings to have drive me, even though they would have helped, back then...

[liberal_arts]

Anger doesn't go away simply because you reject it. Identifying emotions in simple, morally simplistic terms limits your ability to express yourself in a meaningful way.

Anger isn't the problem. It's how the anger is directed. How it is channeled.

[appraiser]

[ He knows that. He knows that very well, bottling up any negative emotions and letting them fester forever until he tires himself out instead of addressing it. This isn't really addressing his anxieties and frustrations either, but staring down at the pitch black ink, at the very least, it's facing it. That's the first step.

The second is lifting the pot without another word, and dashing it right across the ground, where it hits the canvas and shatters, ink spilling out and staining the canvas black, white here and there where the surface is protected by the very shards of pottery that once housed the ink. ]

[liberal_arts]

...

-Kasen stands there silently, letting the moment rest and breathe, before finally speaking up.-

What do you see in the blackness?

[appraiser]

[ ...Ryoji kneels, lifting the larger shards of pottery he's able to without cutting his fingers, and sets them aside. ]

It's not total blackness. It reminds me of space... the overwhelming, infinite emptiness of space, but at a single glance, there's light to be found as well.

[liberal_arts]

That light. It's fleeting, isn't it? It sounds worth clinging to...

[appraiser]

Yeah, but it doesn't last.

[ Even on the canvas, however much the paper tries to hold the ink there in its fibers, it spreads and eventually fills in all those white spaces. ]

...There isn't much else I can do with a completely black canvas. Do you have white paint?

[liberal_arts]

-He didn't want to mention that he could have stopped it. Practically or metaphorically, that wasn't a productive line of conversation. Instead he silently nodded, taking up another jar, another brush, a pure white, and handed it to Ryoji.-

[appraiser]

[ He could have, but he didn't. That's his problem, he thinks as he dips the clean brush into the white ink, and holds it over the canvas: he hesitates, and doubts, and all the while, time marches on and his indecision is every bit a decision in itself. Even now, just standing there, paint drips from the brush and splatters white on black, and they lie there in contrast, too thick to blend into grey. ]

...I still don't know what I'm doing. Being impulsive... isn't a good thing. But neither is doing nothing. [ He stands there, and flicks flecks of paint off the brush, letting them speckle the black like distant stars. ]

[liberal_arts]

You'd be surprised how much of the creative process is following impulses... But at least this is the sort of impulsiveness that makes something new, something unique and interesting.

[appraiser]

Is it very unique and interesting? To me, it's white paint, on a black canvas, something anybody could create.

[ This is why he's not an artist by any means, overly critical when he doesn't need to be. ]

[liberal_arts]

What do you think, then, that *you*, specifically, need to do in order to make it worthy of your own respect?

[appraiser]

...I don't know. I want it to mean something, to somebody else. I think I can stand here and find meaning in anything if I tried hard enough, but to have somebody else look at my work and understand something about me, that would be amazing.

[liberal_arts]

I think, first, you should find what it is about yourself you're trying to express, then.

[appraiser]

[ That's even harder. What he wants to express is...

Ryoji frowns, grip tightening on the jar of paint— and then he dashes it onto the ground again, watching the paint splatter and run all over the paper. This time, it doesn't soak through, the paper already saturated with black paint and unable to hold any more, so the white pools and spreads, some getting onto the floor but he'll offer to pay for cleaning services later. ]

Frustration. Above all, I'm so frustrated. At myself, at the entire situation, at how I wanted to start all over and not worry about consequences.

[liberal_arts]

-This time, Kasen didn't flinch.-

There we have it... How do you think your friends and family will react, if they knew that frustration, how deeply it ran?

[appraiser]

[ but Ryoji does, hand stilling over the mess ]

...I fear they won't like me anymore, if they knew.

[ If they knew he had the capacity to be angry and violent and all these terrible human things. ]

[liberal_arts]

...

In all brutal, selfish honesty, I can relate. But not in the way that may seem normal or empathetic of an artist, or even a friend.

-Kasen stepped beside Ryoji, looking over the ink below, how the white and black always seemed to bend together, never melding into grey.-

And yet knowing your feelings, and what you've been through, perhaps your honesty with your frustration will make you better than us all. I don't think I'm ready to face the truth of myself being suggested at the edges of my consciousness. I know for certain no one I know is ready for it either.

You have every single right to be frustrated. And your worries on how people will react are not unfounded. But in the end, I don't think we can ever be anything other than ourselves... Even if what we are is not congruent with who we perceive ourselves to be.

[appraiser]

[ He's so unsure. He's told people before, about how he hated what he'd become— what he's yet to become— and he's met with the same sort of answers: he will always be him; the him here and now is the one that's real.

Ryoji shakes these muddled thoughts out of his head, placing everything down onto the ground so his hands can find his pockets and not do any more damage that he already has done. ]

It's hard accepting everything, when there's always an urge to fix what's wrong. But it's not wrong, is it... It just is what it is. The same with you. Can I ask what your "truth" is?

[liberal_arts]

...

I am a tool for killing.

-He was a sword. There really wasn't any dodging around that truth any longer. He'd felt it for some time, but the visions that had come to him most recently only confirmed it. He did not see events through the eyes of Tadaoki Hosokawa. He was not that man, and did not live his life.

He was a sword. And swords only existed for one purpose.-

[appraiser]

[ Ryoji looks up sharply, clearly rattled by the admittance. As a Persona, Thanatos could be seen as something similar— but in Minako's hands, he is a partner, not a tool, and although he also killed, he did it for her. He accepted that, and was okay with it, but Kasen said he couldn't accept this truth just yet. It's no wonder why. ]

You mean... like an assassin? You don't have to kill here. You have your own free will, and...

[ He's mumbling now, trailing off, because after everything that Kasen had told him, he surely knows all that already. ]

[liberal_arts]

-Kasen raised a hand, waving off Ryoji's words. They were platitudes, they both knew it.-

"The purpose of swords...
is to cut in each motion...
What am i to cut?"

The very meaning of a tool's existence is defined by what that tool is used for. A sword is a tool of killing, it can serve no other role. That's is an intrinsic part of Japanese warrior philosophy. I may have focused on the arts in school, but I remember going over that much in my boyhood.

And I... am a sword.