AUGUST EVENT PT 2

[citta]

AUGUST EVENT PT 2

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→ 8/13-8/15 Obon Festival

Lanterns start to dot the streets, hung by the front door of each house who still have an able body to hang them. From there, the lights spread outward, neighbors visiting neighbors with lanterns in hand and prayers in their hearts that the light will be enough to guide the spirits of their ancestors home, enough to heal their loved ones and bring the health and energy back into town.

The first day of Obon passes in silence.

On the second day, the oppressive heat starts to lift, skies clear with a cool breeze that passes through the streets and rocks the lanterns at each door, which opens as people trickle out onto the street. By late afternoon, the entire town is alive with chatter and laughter, the townspeople bustling about to get their late start in setting up the festival stalls and the large stage set on the lakeside in front of the school. Some of the missing have started turning up again, with claims of having recovered from illness or returned from a trip, and more than that, visiting relatives are introduced to one another despite no car or plane ever seen entering or leaving the town. With most businesses closed for the Obon holiday, the second day is spent catching up with one another, making last-minute purchases and renting yukata, and finishing preparations so that both the spirits of their ancestors and those who have become well enough again may celebrate with all in full. By the end of the night, everybody has returned, the town restored.

Loud drumming can be heard the morning of the third day, taiko drum performances starting early and lasting late into the evening. The steady beat fills the air no matter where in town you are, but standing right in front of the stage, it can be felt in your chest, as if the entire town's hearts beat as one. Though less compared to during the tanabata festival, stalls are set up for Obon and largely consist of games and shops selling toys and trinkets, food stalls focusing on small treats rather than meals. With the taiko performance in the background to keep the rhythm, folk dances are held on the stage and in the parks and are open to anybody, participants being pulled in from the streets to join the circles to dance. Traditional clothing like yukata can be seen worn by almost everybody, from young children to great-grandparents, as they gather around the lake at sundown to say farewell to the spirits. Lanterns are lit and sent off into the lake, where they gather at the center and burn bright until there's nothing left to burn, and the town settles into warm, sleepy darkness.

When night falls and the townspeople begin to clean up, retrieve the lanterns, and go home, the breeze picks up a little, soft and cool, cutting paths throughout town much like the freezing gusts of winds that first Lockdown night. Rather than to the schoolhouse, however, the wind gently nudges you towards the forest, towards the edge of forest blocked by caution tape to keep people out of scorched earth and blackened trees. Only one lantern is left untouched, hanging on a tree branch just before this forest fire site, fallen trees cleared out to widen the path, that leads into the forest.

Soon, the full moon hangs high in the sky, shining its light straight down onto the castle ruins below.

→ 8/15 Castle Ruins and the Shrine

Carried along by the breeze that winds through the streets and blows down this path, finding your way through the forest becomes simple, and soon the trees part to reveal the castle ruins hidden away inside the forest -—at least, what used to be castle ruins. The changes come unexpected and instantly, in a blink of an eye during the day for those who still live in the castle, and a sight to behold for those who haven't returned in a long time until tonight.

Entering the castle reveals a repaired foundation and pillars which stand whole again, stairs to the second floor still broken but with all the rubble underneath cleared away, the air inside the castle no longer choking with dust. In the main hall, red candlesticks line the perimeter of the room, the glow of fire illuminating the murals that have shown up on previously blank walls, images faintly visible under a layer of yellow mildew. If you carefully scrub them clean, they depict a small village surrounded by farmland, a familiar lake at the center, flocks of crows adorning the skies with one large crow standing on the peak of the mountain overlooking the town.

At the center of the castle's main hall, a mother bear and two cubs can be seen snoozing in the middle of the room, sleeping next to a meter-by-meter square that has been cut into the stone ground. If you can get the bears to leave or are brave enough to approach without waking them up, you will see that hinges on one edge suggest it to be a door, but there is no handle and no way to lift the panel, nor can the door or the surrounding area be damaged no matter how hard you try. Upon closer inspection, there are four impressions on each corner of the door matching the size and shape of the ofuda received as a reward for defeating the dungeon boss, currently in RO's possession. Placing the ofuda on one of the slots causes the edges of the door to glow bright blue for a second before the light disappears, and the ofuda turns to stone, just like the door and the castle around them. Nothing more seems to happen after, the other three impressions remaining exactly the same.

All throughout the night, the candles burn along the perimeter of the hall, one hundred in total that cast the room in warm light. Whether you remember the fortune teller's words or are simply chatting with one another and catching up on all that's happened during your time here, each time a story is shared, a light blows out, leaving the castle dimmer and dimmer as the night goes on. The darker it gets, the more restless you begin to feel, Personas becoming more agitated and prone to lash out as the clock ticks closer to midnight. Those who choose to take a walk to the shrine to cool their heads find that the shrine looks different from before too, revealing unbroken steps, a thoroughly swept floor, stone lanterns whole instead of crumbled and broken, and the water basin filled to the brim with clear water that almost seems to sparkle in the moonlight— a far cry from how broken down the abandoned shrine appeared just a month before. There's still work to be done, however: in particular, the sign- restored and painted over in pure white so that it looks almost new- still displays no name. The paint is still a little wet, so perhaps somebody is just waiting for the paint to dry...

The night seems to drag on, but as long as people keep talking, no matter where they are in the castle or at the shrine, the candle lights continue going out until they count down to zero.

→ 8/15 Welcome to the Velvet Room

When the last of the candles go out and the castle plunges into complete darkness, a bright blue light begins to shine from beside the throne, taking on the form of a doorway set into the wall. Without fanfare, two figures step out, the taller with silver hair and a kind face, and the other with golden eyes that peek past long bangs to squint at everybody inside the castle. ...The latter immediately turns around back through the doorway to leave his partner to explain things to everybody here, who takes a seat on the throne as if he belongs there all along. If you have questions, come talk to this guy; but otherwise, there's nothing stopping you from going through the doorway to follow after the other one.

This isn't the only doorway that opens up: blue light shines between the pillars of the torii at the shrine, and similar doorways appear scattered throughout town to replace your bedroom door, the bathroom stall in a store you've run into for an emergency, set into the wall in an alleyway where there was no door before, even at the first floor of the school dungeon if for whatever reason you're there. Regardless of which door you enter, stepping through any doorway brings you into a small room, a bowl of fresh fruit and a bottle of some sort of non-alcoholic mixed drink in a bucket of ice sitting on the table in the middle of the room, two chairs flanking the table and a plush velvet couch against one wall. The ground shakes and rocks as you look around, curtains pulled aside to reveal inky blue darkness, spots of light floating past the windows out in the distance like stars. Each person arrives in their own room, a placard with their name and arcana set on the door labelling it theirs.

Down the end of the hall, the door opens up into a brightly lit lounge, wide windows set along the walls although the landscape outside remains as dark as ever. The lounge is filled with chairs and couches covered in the same blue velvet as the rooms and music seems to fill your entire being rather than just your ears. Passing through the door at the end of the lounge brings you to the conductor's cab where a young man sits, changed out of his costume into a more formal uniform in dark blues with a train engineer cap pulled low over closed eyes, slouched far back on his seat with his feet up on the control panel. Despite all that, however, the train simply zips along, the rail just barely visible from the front window of the cab. The attendant tilts his head your way, looking rather irritable, silent until you speak first.

→ MOD NOTES

⬥ As a reminder, characters are more likely to lose control of their Personas around the time of the full moon (8/15) but this can also occur at any time, especially with internal conflict and during Lockdown. This is an optional mechanic. Personas will also temporarily disappear once the character enters the Velvet Room.
⬥ The two Velvet Room assistants will have their own top-levels below for those who wish to speak with them in this log, and they may be contacted at the NPC contact page at any time as well. The NPC contact page will serve as an "IC inbox" for the characters to freely interact with the attendants to ask questions, receive and fill requests, hang out, etc. Please read this page carefully for more information about accessing the Velvet Room.
⬥ While each attendant may have individual requests for those who ask for them, they will also give tasks for the characters as a whole. These general requests will be listed on the NPC contact page at the beginning of each month. Successful completion of a request will earn characters rewards, and there is no time limit for completion.

Comments

[tarotcards]

[ he's taking that attitude. he's going to be a child if he wants to be. ]

It didn't sound like it.

[reveilation]

[ Kido lobs the bottle at Souji's face. ]

[tarotcards]

[ he's ready this time...! and he takes a few steps back so she can't break his beautiful face again. ]

I'm handing you off to Minato. You're way too much of a handful to deal with.

[reveilation]

Who's Minato, huh?

[ She stoops to retrieve her weapon from the ground, not taking her eyes off Souji. Whoever this Minato bastard is, she will kill him if he's just as tightlipped as Souji is. ]

Is he your boss? I'll talk to him.

[tarotcards]

[ kido is here to singlehandedly kill the entire velvet room crew lmfao she is unstoppable. ]

He's my partner. Why do you naturally assume that he's my boss?

[ THIS IS AN IMPORTANT PART TO DISCUSS BECAUSE :T!!!!!! ]

[reveilation]

[ Somebody has to throw her out of her room before she destroys the Velvet room. ]

Because... when somebody is causing trouble and you can't handle it, naturally, you call for somebody higher up to help.

[ It's because you gave up so easily, Souji. It means you're the lackey. ]

[tarotcards]

[ he's not the lackey :( he just cleans and cooks and takes care of everything around here while minato just sleeps.......... ]

Uh huh, orrrrrrr I just want to shove you onto my coworker.

[reveilation]

[ Souji......... ]

A coworker... who's more experienced and capable than you. So he's still the boss, just not by name.

[tarotcards]

[ looooooooooong groan. ]

Okay, okay... what do you want?

[reveilation]

[ Oh, right, she forgot that she's supposed to be angry and intimidating, but she's tired now so she just places her hands on her hips. Hard to look scary when you're wearing pajamas. ]

I want to know what this place is, if there's anything shady going on about it, and how make it go away so I can access the bathroom to brush my teeth and sleep.

[tarotcards]

This is the Velvet Room, the only shady part about it is the corner that Minato likes to sleep in, and sorry to hear about your bathroom troubles?

[ does that cover everything? ]

[reveilation]

[ Kido gestures up and down the hall. ]

This isn't a room.

[ It's clearly a train. Stop bullshitting her, Souji. ]

[tarotcards]

I'm not the one who named it.

[ he shrugs. ]

[reveilation]

Tell Minato he has bad taste...

[tarotcards]

Sure.

[ minato didn't name it either but he'll just pass on the message, haha. ]

Anyway, you can go back through where you came from and leave, but your bathroom will probably be inaccessible for a little while.

[reveilation]

[ Minato is going to look so scandalized later haha ]

-— Wait, what? No way, you can't just take away the bathroom like that!! Am I supposed to just cover it up? I can't let anybody else see this!

[ She absolutely cannot let her two kids anywhere near this degenerate standing before her. ]

[tarotcards]

[ maybe if you change the music in here, minato, your tastes won't be as bad. ]

Unless they're Persona users, they won't be able to enter or even see anything other than a normal bathroom. They'll be fine.

[ so everyone else can use the washroom but kido hahahahaha ]

[reveilation]

[ Minato would rather fight a bear than change his music.


but also WHY JUST HER oh my god, she's about to scream some more at Souji, but the mention of that word "Persona" catches her off guard. ]

What? How do you know about— Do you have one of those too? The charms?

[ She pulls back her sleeve, showing him the one tied to her wrist like a bracelet. ]

[tarotcards]

[ oh good. minato can be eaten by the bear and then souji has free reign over the music. ]

[ souji leans in forward a bit to look at her charm. also i'll say that his nose has stopped bleeding by now but gross... he wants to wipe his hands and face. ]

Oh, cute, you've wrapped it around your wrist so you don't lose it.

[reveilation]

[ Souji does the same deflecting thing as Minato and it's infuriating. Kido wants to punch him, pulling her hand back a little and also leaning away from him. ]

It's— [ cute, yeah, she thinks so too, so she can't get the words out to deny it ]

It's convenient this way, instead of having to reaching into my pockets all the time. Are you going to answer my question?

[tarotcards]

[ souji pulls back and lets out a small smile. ]

Mm, in a moment. I have to get washed up, but if you tag along, I'll answer your questions.

[reveilation]

[ squints at him suspiciously because he's clearly okay to talk if he's talking to her right now ]

Fine...

[tarotcards]

[ look, he just wants to get this blood off his hands and face. he also wants to check out the damage in a mirror so he'll walk down the hall and towards a little tiny bathroom that can barely fit two people in it, much less one comfortably. ]

[ he places one hand on the edge of the sink as he leans in to check his face in the mirror. the other hand hovers over his nose and when he pokes it, he hisses. ]

Man... you got one hell of a swing.

[reveilation]

[ Souji's out there acting like some great god-like being but he's just WEAK

Too bad Kido immediately looks guilty and concerned, leaning around Souji to look in the mirror so she can see how bad it is. ]

Geez, is it broken? Hey, turn your head here so I can see.

[tarotcards]

[ i'm going to have rei swing a bottle right at minato's face. let's see what he says. i'm coming for you as soon i finish some more tags. ]

[ anyway, souji just likes acting like a big baby sometimes. he turns and leans down a bit for kido to examine the nose. it's not broken but it's just... really bruised, laughs. ]

It hurts...