( CLOSED ) shoujo confessions or nothing

[cordated]

Who: Makoto Tachibana (cordated), Vietnam (hoasen), Rei Ryugazaki (theoreitical), Zack Fair (reenacted), Oona (mermaiding), Miles Edgeworth (prosecutory)
When: POST EVENT 20.
Where: Various locations around the colony.
What: Makoto's solicitations are met with varying degrees of success and failure. Life goes on.
Rating/Warning: None.

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(Individual starters in the comments below!)

Comments

ZACK FAIR

[cordated]

[ it's just another afternoon. makoto's en-route to home after buying groceries, which explains the plastic bags clutched at his sides. for no reason in particular, he's foregone taking the trains back, because apparently the long-winded scenic route holds more appeal for makoto when he isn't half-dead overworking himself. the jungles might've taken a toll on him, but so does everything else, so he's just mincing semantics.

there's no denying that cutting through the gardens is a largely self-indulgent move on his part. he can't pin a name on all the colors of the wind, but the air isn't so rarefied and mechanical as it is through the metropolitan districts, so it's easier to breathe. for a time, makoto (uselessly) wanders about, stringently avoiding anything that even coincidentally reminds him of water with pressing absorption.

it's in this convoluted meandering that he finds zack doing squats in an open clearing for no discernible reason.

makoto comes to a standstill, slightly weirded out but mostly confused when he eventually speaks up. secondhand embarrassment has nothing on his current state of mind. ]

Er ... Zack?

[reenacted]

[Back home, his weird "obsession" with his workout would be something inspired by boredom, or maybe (if he could find a willing victim), something spurred by "friendly" competition. Here, however, what started as a way to pass time has become something of a habit, an innocuous action turned into a coping mechanism and a nervous habit, even if he would say he's never nervous.

And maybe he hadn't been. Before Cerealia.

Now, he's a nervous wreck, breaking down at the edges, and desperately trying to hold it together before he starts to not feel like himself anymore. Each squat is another force of effort, something he can focus on as real.

He barely looks up, still going on like a madman as he talks (it's a learned skill).]

Everything okay?

[Because why wouldn't that be the first consideration?]

i'm really sorry for the wait! feel free to handwave or drop this and no worries either way

[cordated]

[ Pour another shot out for this neurotic wreck, Zack. Makoto's not anywhere close to recovering even when he's on the emotional rebound, movements too blocky, mechanical.

He almost walks past him at first, for all the expediency of getting from Point A to Point B in record time, even if there's nothing in particular waiting for him anywhere. Haku, maybe, even if his cat hasn't stopped yowling since Haru's disappearance. He hasn't heard from the others since, but that's largely his own fault — a severe disinclination to check his CereVice for anything at all.

They disappear with their names. The very first time, it'd been like Rin and Kisumi never existed, their names and belongings erased, residence hollowed out like a tomb.

Rin was the first to go, but the rest of them fell into step like a neat, neat line, Gou, Haru, and Rei —

Coming to a standstill, Makoto stares with a vacancy to his gaze, only to soon avert his eyes. ]

Yeah! Yeah. I mean, why wouldn't it be?

[ A pause. ]

What about you, Zack? Have you been doing alright?