hadriel | 004 [Text]

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004 [Text] | Late 4/8

[Hopefully everyone has recovered from their hangovers and energy drink comas by now, but if not he's using text to be courteous. Also because it's really late, and because this message works better in text anyway.]

So this isn't exactly a huge important development or whatever, but if your usual texting back home involved emojis I'm sure you'll be ecstatic to know that you can send them here now, too.

[There's a link to install a small program on the phones, which enables a smiling face, a scowling face, and a hand giving the finger.]

Options are kind of limited to happy, unhappy, and pissed off, but never fear. Any additional emoji requests can be submitted to Emily, who I'm sure will totally love fulfilling them for you since she's the master artist here; I just do the scripting. Definitely request as many inane emojis as you could possibly want. Make sure to ask her every time you talk to her if they're done yet, too.

[Sorry Emily. Harmless revenge is sweet.]

So yeah. Have fun.

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Emoji? That looks like a Japanese word.

[ Or a combination of two Japanese words, really, but it's not one that Miller has ever seen before. ]

Yeah, I think it is. Em can explain it better than I can though.

Em? That's a friend of yours?

When did these emoji become popular?

[ Kaz is downloading the program now... ]

Yeah, she's a friend from home who's here too.

I dunno, a few years ago? They just sort of phased into use so it's hard to say.

Was she the one who changed during that wendigo mess?

[ They hadn't talked about it much, but Miller remembers angry yelling coming from behind a closed door during that announcement. ]

And what year is it where you're from?

[It takes a short time for him to answer, but it isn't really a secret so--]

Yeah.

It was February 3rd, 2015.

You did the right thing, making sure she couldn't get out and hurt anyone.

[ That would explain why Kaz had never heard the word before, but that seems a little less important than what they're discussing now. ]

[There's a longer delay this time, because he's not sure what to say. He's well aware that Emily can read this, which won't matter too much if he decides to brush off the comment, but if he tells the truth...

He really doesn't want to talk about this at all, but he also doesn't want to lie to someone who's been helping with figuring things out here.

So after a few minutes of nothing, he switches the connection over to private.]

I'd say thanks, if that was what I actually did.

Kind of fucked up that plan halfway through the whole thing.

Edited 2016-04-09 23:26 (UTC)

[ It looks like Miller just stumbled upon something. Then again, that's part of the reason why he bothers with interactions like these. Sometimes it leads to information, and while this is veering toward something much more personal, he'll see how far he can get with it.

Still, he can't say he's entirely surprised. If someone isn't trained to deal with a high-stakes situation like that, a lot of the time emotion will get in the way.

Not that he's in any position to make any remarks about controlling one's emotions. ]

She got out?

Yeah. Fully transformed wendigos aren't exactly stopped by wooden doors.

[The situation at their house had been a mess; with Sam disappearing part of the way through the event, that left only Chris and Mike with experience in handling wendigos. Ashley was from too early on in the night back home to have encountered one yet, and both Emily and Josh had been transforming.

Combined with Hope's promise of a cure, there had been a lot of risk-taking and some of it had gotten out of hand. It isn't exactly Chris' fault Emily got out, though he'd been directly responsible for Josh doing so. The chance to cure a transformed friend instead of having to kill them, as had been necessary at home, was too great not to try.

And of course, that hope had meant they had also decided against killing the wendigos before they had completely transformed.]

[ Well, that probably shouldn't come as a shocker. Wooden doors wouldn't stop a Skull, either.

It's possible that Chris' friend ended up hurting or even killing people after she got out, but since Hope makes a habit of bringing people back from the dead, it's hard to know for sure. And Kaz doesn't know if he should push this any further into uncomfortable territory.

He can ask a less direct question, though. ] Were you able to cure her? [ Emily's responding to his messages too, after all. It must have worked itself out somehow. ]

[The whole topic is definitely uncomfortable but it's okay to talk about it, at least as long as it stays in the realm of facts.]

We tried, we just couldn't get her to the Temple.

[It had been too difficult. Emily had tried--more than tried; she'd been incredible--controlling the wendigo urges, but it was just asking too much of her for her to do so the entire distance they needed to travel. That she managed to resist killing Chris had been a miracle on its own.]

[ Miller feels like he's got to wring every additional detail out of Chris about what happened. A decent person probably would have eased up, but Kaz's desire to know about what goes on around the city outweighs any sense of propriety. ]

And did she attack the rest of you?

[ If Chris died in the process, then Kaz is going to have to ask him about the revival, so that he can compare it to what Big Boss went through. ]

[So far the questions aren't that out of the ordinary, at least not enough that he thinks much about Kaz asking. That doesn't mean he's interested in giving many details, though, so his answer is short.]

Not really. No one got seriously hurt.

[They could've been, easily, but aside from a few bruises from the partially-transformed Emily knocking him down no one had really been hurt at all.]

Not our first go-around with wendigos anyway so we kind of had an advantage.

[They'd known exactly what to do, and even if being able to actually do it isn't exactly as simple they'd at least had better chances. That might be why there had been no casualties among anyone from their house aside from the wendigos themselves.]

i'm here

yes, it's japanese. it's 絵文字 (e mo ji). it means "picture character"

it's exactly what it sounds like

[ Someone else who knows Japanese? Well, isn't that a nice surprise. ]

That was my guess, but thanks for the clarification. [ Smiley face goes here. ]

Are you from Japan?

my mother is. i've been but i grew up in LA

why, are you?

[She would ask if he's one of those freaks who thinks Asian girls are fuckdolls, but given he seems to know his shit (or at least enough to be able to recognize the language, UNLIKE SOME ASSHOLES COMMENTING TO THIS POST), she refrains from doing so.]

Half, yeah. I grew up there, only ever made it to the States when I was a teenager.

[ Miller's mother was Japanese and a prostitute, which is how he had come about, but that's not the sort of detail he needs to get into with someone he's only barely met over text message. Suffice to say, he's the last person that would fetishize someone Asian. ]

[That makes her feel the tiniest bit less alone. Emily isn't loud about her mixed heritage, but it still matters to her. It's just not worth bringing up all the time, in part because it attracts weebs, but mostly because she doesn't want to have to explain things to people who wouldn't get it anyway.]

what's your name? you already know mine

[Some part of her wants to have this conversation in Japanese now, just to fuck with everyone else, to have a public-private conversation. To be a little shit, basically.]

[ Kaz certainly wouldn't mind shifting into Japanese, seeing how little he gets to make use of his native tongue these days. He's taught himself how to speak English and sound completely American, but he still misses speaking Japanese at times. ]

Kazuhira Miller.

[ He writes it out using Japanese characters, a mix of kanji for the first half of his name and katakana for the second, Western half that comes from his father. ]

It's nice to meet you, Emily. If talking over text messages really counts as meeting, anyway.

ka zu hi ra?

[She writes that out in hiragana to confirm the reading of the kanji, because names can get confusing.]

my middle name is RIN (ri n)

[See, her name isn't completely Western.

She continues in Japanese.]

it counts, and we'll probably end up meeting in person at some point. this shithole city isn't exactly big

[ It looks like both of them have a need to use Japanese now that they have the chance. Miller doesn't know if it's Emily's first language or if she learned it alongside English, but it doesn't really matter.

Either way, he also continues on in Japanese. ]

Yeah, you got it right.

And it isn't big, but I think a lot of us also keep to ourselves instead of meeting in person. Where do you guys live, anyway?

[She'd learned them both together, but her English has outpaced her Japanese. It's only natural, growing up in the States. She's missed it, being here. It's the little things.]

we're in like the middle of the first spiral. i've kind of been exploring the city more lately, though. where are you living?

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004 [Text] | Late 4/8

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[text] she just swoops in here

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