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[dollmaxing]

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Hiiii! You've reached Ichinose Kuon, head of AI research and development. Leave a message and I'll get back to you!

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[takutomaruki]

His hand sinks to the side, mind straining but attentive to every word being spoken. Even through the haze of the alcohol, he finds himself listening to every word she speaks and every statement she utters, clear and direct- like it was a simple existence that didn't need anymore of an explanation.

"She determined that people could thrive and be happy when giving up their pained hearts, and trusting EMMA to guide them in life. That many people are better off without hearts."

Isn't that what...he's doing? He's guiding them to a path to salvation while snipping away the tethers of their pain. Is EMMA really right in that distinction? Or is he the one who is wrong?

"If someone else is in physical or emotional pain or both, and I don't feel anything... just idly think, 'ah, that's unpleasant to look at'?"

And if...that's really the case then- then, what she said earlier was..? No- did he hear that wrong then? He palms his face, cigarette dangerously close to his face before he places it on his lips so that he could run his fingers through his hair before finding themselves looped in their tangle, eyes closed as he remembers their conversation that occured just an hour and a half ago.

"Ha...did I end up drinking too much?" He shook his head. "Or did you just...lie to me, Kuon?"

[dollmaxing]

"Lie to you? I don't think I did," she blinked in surprise, watching Takuto get... worked up. Like she was a difficult puzzle to solve - like she was truly, deeply vexing him.

Why? What had she said in particular...? Where was her lie? Can you even lie without realizing?

[takutomaruki]

"You don't think-?" he blinks at her in shock, cigarette once again tended to in his hand. He scoffs lightly, like trying to laugh at a joke which isn’t funny.

"My desires matter to me," he starts and heaves a deep breath- if only to regulate his emotions. "My heart is the only thing that keeps me going. When the mind and the practical experience leaves me behind, I am nothing."

If she isn't lying to me, if I am the exception, then that could only mean she's hurting.

"...if you still had EMMA, would you steal my heart as well?"

[dollmaxing]

"I wasn't stealing any hearts. Nor was EMMA. People who wanted relief gave it willingly, they've been begging for her," Ichinose corrected, leaning back a little as she inspected him.

"It didn't seem to me as if you wanted to let go of your heart. But maybe... if you finished your work, and you were satisfied... if you didn't need to continue adjusting or changing things, and everyone was healed... would you still keep your heart? If you could finally rest after all of that. Or are you the sort of person who can't imagine not working?"

Then, how many decades would it take to change that? If Azathoth kept him healthy, how many hundreds of years?

"No, never mind that question - I remember now, you would perform your own open heart surgery. You're ambitious like that. --That isn't a backhanded compliment, by the way. I find it admirable about you, that you're driven like my EMMA to fulfill your goal."

[takutomaruki]

Begging for EMMA.

They gave it up willingly because their salvation was coming in the form of an answer that would rest in the palm of their hand. The idea was simple.

He wanted to revoke the pain so people could seek the lives they wanted, finally within their grasp. Bring their happiness to the palm of their hands.

They were similar but...just different. Maruki loved people. If he could only fix those aspects of their heart and change their lives forever by creating a world of paradise where they were free to do what they wished for; their hearts would be free. They would be happy.

Still, the idea of someone else thinking about him-?

The cigarette was running out. Lips tasting of fumes and ash, parted in disbelief as his eyes widen, moisture building up on his lashes as he heaves a quivering breath. It felt absurd.

If the subconscious shares the same sentiment, the fabric of reality will shift to its favour, and that's what he wanted to change. If the masses wished for it, he would take care of them forever. With their hearts entrusted to him, he would fix it all.

Right...he had to have reached that point by now, given he remembers the depths of Mementos. He had touched the root of all cognition. The phantom thieves entrusted their trust to him, and he stepped forward to take the torch.

"If things go according to plan, the collective consciousness would keep me alive," he answers after a while. "My limitations...they would be far beyond any human scope so working would become as easy as breathing. Or sleeping. Cognition doesn't differ between human, machine or animal."

"Which is why...we would be at odds with each other," he chuckles lightly, like it is some joke. It certainly feels like one. "Because I knew someone who begged for me as well. She desired her life back by forgetting her pain."

[dollmaxing]

Honestly, if anything, Kuon's running theory is that the Maruki of her world had either stumbled and failed somewhere, had been stopped, or simply hadn't won the trust of the masses yet. And even still, she knows that not all would have trusted Maruki... it is so much easier, after all, to entrust oneself to an impartial machine.

He thinks, though, of someone that begged for him before. Desired her life back.

...Was that...?

"Your fiance?"

1/2

[takutomaruki]

The cigarette never made its way back to his lips again. It hung there, fire burning through tobacco and paper.

His gaze wavered, looking ahead at the dark sky above. He wondered if her parents were there, amongst that sea of souls or far above in a land that was plucked out of human hands. The question was...well, it almost left him speechless sometimes- even when he told himself to prepare for it. His mind swims and drowns and pulls itself back up.

"Not anymore, remember?" he corrected as he raised his left hand at her, the one hanging off the bench, showing off his bare ring finger. There's no mark anymore.

That hand sinks inward as he fully leans back on the bench again- shrivelling away from her.

[takutomaruki]

"Rumi."

He finally says- not even caring about the fluff bunching up in front of his eyes. "Her name was Rumi."

Instead, he simply looks down at the tobacco flickering in and out of its life.

"...she wouldn't have liked me smoking this much."

[dollmaxing]

Rumi. That was the mystery fiance's name. It hurt him, still... deeper than anything else.

Zenkichi had talked about going deeper into Takuto's palace, plying for his secrets. But... why would she need to? At his own pace, in his own time, Takuto has been sharing more and more of his heart - all because Kuon has been curious and willing to look when offered. Maybe he thinks it's to help her understand that she might have one, too? Even if that can't be the case.

Kuon's body language shifted - she uncrossed her legs, but turned to listen, giving him her full attention while he shared his heart with her. Even being heartless, she recognized how special this trust was - and she did want to peek in, to understand, somehow.

"I imagine she would've been concerned for your health," she posited, even if it was the simplest guess in the world. "What happened to her?"

[takutomaruki]

She would've... During times when he was still busy with his thesis and found himself staying up for nights on end, she would be there, scratching his head until he found himself being lulled back to sleep in her arms.

He didn't look away from the cigarette, staring at the hand that held it. No ring on next to the middle finger for it hovered right above his heart. Concealed from the rest of the world...as things should be.

"...what didn't happen to her?" He found himself asking as he closed his eyes, one hand fidgeting with his collar, feeling at the chain under. "What happens to a woman you've known for almost all your entire life, fearless, kind...passionate and reckless, lose everything in one night?"

He cuts himself off right then, lips quivering like he just came back from a marathon. There's a sigh, followed by the silence where he allows himself to settle into his thoughts.

"It happened on February 3rd, the night when we were celebrating her birthday and announcing our engagement to her parents," he smiled as he stifled a chuckle. "I was so...nervous that time. I remember picking up a cigarette before turning to her and just telling her outright that I was terrified of her parents. I was worried they might not want her to settle with a small-time researcher like me."

"She said- I worry too much, and laughed a little. She...I loved her laughter," he looks up to find Kuon's eyes staring at him, smiling like a man gushing about his wedding that would happen the next day. "Even if some part of her didn't understand where I was coming from, given that I have made way riskier decisions in life, for a moment it felt like I would be able to sleep on it."

[dollmaxing]

Like a curious cat, Kuon's head tilted as she listened to him talk. Talk about the person he loved with all of his heart - someone that can't be replaced.

Has she ever felt that way about someone? So afraid to make the right first impression with relatives... no, she hadn't once even thought about prior partners' parents. She'd gone ahead and been courteous and friendly as always, and gotten the same reaction as always - why would she expect anything else? There was no desperate need to be accepted... something deeply a part of Takuto's heart.

Has she ever loved how someone laughs, finding so much comfort that it soothed her anxieties? No... she's never felt anything that strong. A little passing fondness, the same spark of her mind piquing interest in a puzzle, but nothing like that.

"That would be because that decision mattered more than the others, right?" she asked, keeping her tone soft and kind for Takuto, in thanks for how kind he always was to her.

1/2

[takutomaruki]

It mattered.

So much.

It was the one decision in his life that he was completely sure of on the day when he decided to get down on one knee and make sure everything went according to plan. He couldn't let his clumsiness get in the way of it.

The light chain felt profound under his fingers. Soothing. Calming.

"It felt like a decision I was waiting to make for a long while," he admits. "I just didn't want...anything to go wrong, you know? It was right there. That night we had even planned to light up sparklers in her parents' back garden."

[takutomaruki]

His expression falls, remembering the sparkles replaced by gunfire. Sometimes he thought he dissociated so much he couldn't even recollect the event, sometimes it felt like he was still living it.

"When I was with her on February 3rd, tragedy struck her and her parents," he says pointedly, never bringing himself up. "A burglar broke into the house and...killed her parents right before our eyes," He murmurs like they were still there with him. That he could get shot for pulling the wrong move. "He attacked her when she confronted him and...hah," He chuckled lightly, fingers shaking so much that his cigarette dropped from his hands. Open and bare and useless.

He tried to conceal the act anyway, rolling his heel over the cigarette and trying to soothe his left hand by palming with his right.

"I could only just watch from the sidelines before ...deciding to stay back to try and patch any of them up. See if I can save anyone...there was so much blood..." The last few lines were too quiet, almost like he was talking to himself.

He hadn't even realised he looked away from her again, so he forced himself to keep eye contact. "Haha pathetic...right?"

[dollmaxing]

That sort of story is shocking. Something just-- unbelievably unheard of, a sort of tragedy that's impossible to imagine oneself in.

...Well, no. She can imagine one part of it. The sound of gunfire next to her ear, the barrel pointed at her head, and feeling too paralyzed to run - having to think as fast as possible on what to do and coming up short.

And she hadn't even gotten shot.

While she didn't know if the gesture would be comforting, Kuon tried anyway. She placed her hand on Takuto's back, holding it there. Something people did for her at funerals, or what the shadows did for her after she got away from Zenkichi. Hopefully it's the right answer, here.

"Not at all," she shook her head.

tw: slight toxic masculinity thoughts but also not really

[takutomaruki]

Even though the gesture was familiar, it was as comforting as holding an umbrella over a drenched cat. The idea of her reaching out was enough.

His skin jumped when he felt her hand make contact, but his expression remained the same. Distant. With the slightest smile on his face.

"It's alright, you don't have to pacify me for the sake of it," he shook his head. What kind of man was he? If he was so weak and helpless in the face of danger like that... "I promised her father I would take care of her," he says. "And, I did try after that. Soon, around the time when her parents' passing was announced, she was admitted to the hospital. Thankfully, she didn't have any physical injuries that would have proven to be fatal- she was always strong like that."

"But her mental scars...they broke her. Her future was stolen from her by some cruel twist of fate and forced to suffer for the rest of her life," he exhaled a shaky breath. "Depression. Anxiety. Catatonia. PTSD. Days and nights in long-term care, barely acknowledging the world around you."

"I would have given up anything in those 15 months for her to smile again. Anything."

[dollmaxing]

"That makes sense," she immediately responded. And it did - she was heartless and even still, she wanted to help the man that had helped her. The real version of that emotion must be even more powerful, powerful enough to wish with all of your heart.

Her hand didn't move, and she scooted just an inch closer. She wasn't pacifying for the sake of it. She felt motivated to do it, so she did.

"Was Azathoth the one who answered your heart's desire?"