Heaven's BBS | Text

[reformedsinner]

Posted: July 18
From: Li Tieguai

Good afternoon, everyone. Please excuse my change of name: this is Cho Hakkai.

I appear to have reappeared. Although I don't want to give undue hope to anyone who's recently lost a god or shinki, I'd like to announce that my classes will be continuing as usual.

To those who were living upstairs at the school the past few days, I expect you to help me clean up the mess. You know who you are.

[There are animal cracker crumbs everywhere.

And apart from that he's just not going to mention the events of last few days. At least he wasn't an actual child, but....]

Does anyone have an idea what might have caused it? I'm certain I felt something in the air for a few hours before it happened.

Comments

[erogappa]

[ Oh. ...Well.

Shit. ]

I'm sorry.

[ He still neither likes nor trusts Hakkai (going from shinki to god? There's something suspicious there), but Gonou seemed like a good kid. ]

[reformedsinner]

[He's very glad this is over text. The only thing it can't hide is the fact that it takes him a few minutes before he can type a reply. He's spending the break stroking Jeep's head with a forefinger as the dragon cheeps with concern at him and shifts around to nose at his cheek; it helps him get himself back under control.

He hadn't recognized her. That's the worst part.]

Thank you.

I hope you didn't run into too much trouble as a child?

[erogappa]

Apparently I was a tough little brat.

[ He wants to ask more about her, and about where Hakkai had been hiding his limiters as a kid -- maybe as an ankle band or something? Because he sure hadn't been wearing his earrings -- but out of pity, if Hakkai wants to change the topic then Gojyo'll change the topic. For now. ]

Thanks for feeding him. Or me. However that works.

[reformedsinner]

It was me, so I suppose it was also you.

[He's pathetically grateful that Gojyo isn't pushing it. There are so many questions he could ask, questions he doesn't know the answer to anymore and that Hakkai flinches from answering.

He doesn't know how well Gojyo would respond to some of those answers anymore. Although if he ever really needs to keep Gojyo away for his own sake...]

You weren't that bad as a child. You didn't throw any rocks at me, unlike some.

[Accusations, yes. Rocks, no. It's slightly better.]

[erogappa]

Not at you, no.

[ It's really hard, he's discovering, to stay mad at a guy so obviously messed up as Hakkai. It can't have been ten years ago (and probably fewer) that he was that young teacher with a new wife (and no limiters -- that's going to bother him for awhile, isn't it?) just starting out in the world... and now he's here, a violent self-destructive asshole. He's pathetic, and it's just not right to hate pathetic people. ]

Does anyone have any theories about what happened?

[reformedsinner]

Out of sight, out of mind?

[It's the sort of dry joke he makes to Gojyo by reflex, and he hesitates for a moment, looking at it and trying to decide if he should delete it.

In the end, he leaves it. Gojyo's not the only one he jokes to, and they're trying to lighten the mood away from the subject of Hakkai's past.]

I haven't heard any theories yet. Although apparently quite a few of the library goblins died of old age.

[erogappa]

So we got young and they got old?

[ Except Sharak was aged too, wasn't she? ]

Most of us anyway.

[ But if most of the gods and shinki got turned into kids, and most of the library goblins got aged up so far they died, then doesn't that sound like the years were taken from them and given to the goblins? And then when the goblins died, everyone's age reverted? ]

It sounds like it was a spell that went wrong.

[reformedsinner]

Not all of us got young, and not all to the same degree.

But I agree it sounds like some kind of magic was involved, and it wasn't just the new gods and shinki caught up in it. Even some of the old gods were.

[Some of the goblins could have grown younger, and disappeared from existence; or just younger and then older again. There seem to have been three successive waves. Attempts at the same spell? Or attempts to fix an initial mistake, that finally worked? And what was the oppressive aura to begin with?]

[erogappa]

[ That aura was terrible, is what it was. Whoever -- whatever -- caused this, it was building for awhile before it burst. Who knows how bad it could have been if it had continued to grow? Would they all have died of old age, or turned into babies?

But there's something else he needs to know. ]

How old are you now?

[reformedsinner]

[Hakkai blinks at his phone, doubly thrown off balance: first because he'd been idly wondering about motives and methods, and second because it's going to take him a while, he suspects, to get used to the fact that Gojyo doesn't know.]

Twenty-four.

[erogappa]

[ And kid-him had been seventeen, and didn't know Gojyo. So they'd met sometime in the last seven years of Hakkai's life. Gojyo feels the stirring wrongness of thinking too much about his past and pushes the thought aside, for examination later.

Seven years is a long time. Did they meet recently, or was it not long after... The wrongness stirs again, more sharply, and Gojyo swears under his breath. Later. He'll do this later. ]

Really? I would have guessed closer to 30.

[ There. Throw some shade at the asshole, that'll help keep his mind off how long they've known each other. ]

[reformedsinner]

Why, I'm flattered. Do I seem that mature to you?

[He'd been caught off guard, but -- why does Gojyo want to know his age? Just to guess how long it's been?

How careful should he be in answering those questions, even when they're completely unrelated to Gojyo's own life? He stares down at the phone for a long, unsettled moment, before breathing out, and hitting send.]

[erogappa]

If that's the word you want to use then sure. But only with your limiters on. With them off you look a lot younger.

[ Good, subtle way of bringing up his limiters: achieved. ]

I was surprised you were wearing some as a kid.

private; text

[reformedsinner]

[... Or he could have been working his way around to that question.

Well. At least the answer to that doesn't involve Gojyo's own past, at least, not until the very end.]

I wasn't wearing any.

[erogappa]

Yes you were. Your clan mark is kind of obvious you know.

[reformedsinner]

I was born human.

It's a long, and personal, story.

[erogappa]

That's not possible. You can't just turn into a full youkai.

[reformedsinner]

Why would I lie to you about this?

[erogappa]

I don't understand half the things you do. But I do know that you can't change your kind. People. Species, whatever the right word is. You are who you're born as and that's it, you live with that.

[reformedsinner]

Of course. Who am I to argue?

[It's shamelessly rude and dismissive, but, also, importantly: he's not about to have a conversation about whether it is possible to become a full youkai with Gojyo. Not right now and not like this.

Not when he doesn't know what changes are yet to come from Gojyo's awakening youki even if they all find their way home.]

[erogappa]

Fuck you. I don't know why the hell I ever bother talking to you.

[reformedsinner]

Serendipity?

[Gojyo's fishing for information and clearly suspects some connection between them. With so few youkai here, it's an easy suspicion, Hakkai thinks. He hasn't done the best job of concealing his familiarity. He knows exactly the knife-edge Gojyo's daring, balanced between the goad of curiosity and the terror of destruction.

Maybe it'll be easier to do this when Gojyo's already angry than it was when he wouldn't walk away to save his own life.]

Don't feel obligated to continue.

[erogappa]

[ He has to go look that first set of character up in a dictionary, and he's fuming mad by the time he's done.

He was a real asshole when he was alive, Gojyo's decided. If Hakkai and Sharak (and probably Doku, although he's not totally positive about that one) are the people he was spending time with when he got the scars he's covered in, then he must have been an absolutely horrible person.

Best thing he can do is cut off all contact with all of them. That really would be for the best.

...But he just can't resist getting the last word in. ]

Was she as big a bitch as you?

[reformedsinner]

[He gets to keep the last word, too. There's no response.]