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Kasen Kaneda shared a photo.
9/20 near Home

San-ju-roku Kasen

三十六歌仙. The 36 Immortals of Poetry

My namesake. 歌仙. I was named after these men and women.

And that name, associated with these creators of beauty, was used to carry out an act grave brutality. All for some point I don't even understand.

I could really use someone to talk to right now. Someone who has had

seen great violence. in their new memories.

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Normal is relative. -Another sigh, rubbing at the bridge of his nose.-

How... many of us are there?

Hah, I can't really argue with that...

But, hm. There's me and Yasusada, you, Rindou, Kenta and Jirou... [Toshi, too, but he seemed reluctant to even show up to the meeting, so Kiyomitsu leaves his name unsaid for now.] And if I'm remembering things right, there were a ton more of us, too.

I know Jirou and Kenta. Jirou's a friend and model I've worked with a lot. The others... vaguely familiar? -He was mostly talking to himself, gathering his thoughts.-

To have so many people collectively remember such a specific thing...

Pretty weird, right? Especially since a lot of people here are kinda just... by themselves.

At least Jirou and Kenta have history together, as far as I know. But I never met a one of you until recently.

-But the fact they're all in the same town...-

Yeah... Yasusada and I have known each other since we were real little, but I didn't meet anyone else until I was way older. Almost makes you wonder how things ended up working out like this, right?

[Creepy as it is to think about, he wouldn't be surprised if Retrospec had a hand in their lives long before coming to Recolle was even a conscious idea in some of their minds.]

So even though some of us had connections prior to this, there was still some force in this city that drew us in, all the same. -Kasen sighed again, humming in thought.-

Are we all simply swords?

Mmmhm. That's what it seems like, anyway. ...I'm not really sure about that, either.

[A BIG SHRUG both literal and metaphoric.]

And I'm still not sure how we went from swords to something more humanoid...

Mm-- I think that might have something to do with someone I remembered, but I'm not sure. [...] I know that's super vague, but I seriously remember like, nothing about 'em or who they were or what they did. Just that they were probably important, I think?

That doesn't help much... I wonder if any of the others' remembers more?

Wouldn't hurt to ask. We only just now figured out we were all kinda experiencing the same things, y'know?

Maybe...

I don't want to sound ungrateful for your own help, though. Knowing I'm not going through this alone helps more than I can really say.

Oh— It's no problem. I'm just glad I could help even a little, y'know? Back when things first started changing for me, I was pretty much the only person I knew going through it all, so I know how much that sucks.

[To say the dang least.]

There was... so much anxiety. Like I didn't understand at all what the memories were telling me. I felt like I was going insane, suffering from severe disassociation... -Kasen sighed again, staring a hole into the table.-

[The only reason he didn't end up facing a similar crisis is probably because he boxed and shoved things away so quickly and still had Yasusada, but he can understand this, at least.]

Mm... You can at least talk to us now, if you want.

I'll keep you in mind, at least. -Well, him and Kenta, but Kenta seemed just as lost as Kasen was, at times. And Jirou hid his feelings behind a veil of booze and self-indulgence.-

I'll do my best to help when I can.

[Considering he spends like 90% of his time pretending sakura fubuki isn't weird, he's probably not a great candidate for helping either but dang if he doesn't try.]

You got any other questions, though?

Do you... have any memories of being used?

...I do, yeah. Kind of, anyway? I didn't really get that that's what was happening at first, but looking back on it, I'm pretty sure that's what it was. I definitely remember at least one person who used to, uh... own me, I guess.

[A thing that he feels will never not be strange to say.]

Do you have any memories of being used to kill, to be more specific.

—Yeah, that too.

[Though he doesn't linger on it mentally, or talk about it pretty much ever.]

That guy was pretty violent. Not really like yours, though... Mine was with the police.

Being an officer of the law would at least excuse some of what I've seen and felt, but all I know about Hosokawa Tadaoki was that he was a daimyo.

[He's looked a little bit into the samurai structure now that he knows it has something to do with him, so at least the term isn't entirely unfamiliar.]

Those guys just kinda did what they wanted, didn't they?

In a power structure like that, there was very little in terms of centralized authority to control them. From what I remember in my history classes, that was all part of the problem. But even so, as much as he came off as a madman, he fully believed in his own reasoning for what he did...

Kasen Kaneda shared a photo. 9/20 near Home
San-ju-roku Kasen 三十六歌仙. The 36 Immortals of Poetry My namesake. 歌仙. I was named after these men and women. And that name, associated with these creators of beauty, was used to carry out an act grave brutality. All for some point I don't even understand. I could really use someone to talk to right now. Someone who has had seen great violence. in their new memories.