[You know that feeling when you're really ill and you go to the doctor and they prescribe you antibiotics and you take them and suddenly you just feel great. Like wow, compared to how you were feeling before, this is just so much better, and it's such a high to be able to do things other than slowly perish in your own sweat under a blanket.
That is more or less what Souji has been experiencing after having gone from almost dying of fever in the jungle to getting treated at the hospital. The contrast was so sharp, he felt practically healthy there for a while, and he'd been able to actually do things like help out at the dojo and even go to work a bit at the tea house. The freedom of it, after the misery of doing nothing back home, is quite hard to comprehend.
And of course, he doesn't want to lose these privileges now that he's gotten them. Which is why, when he does feel a coughing fit coming on, he presses a sofa cushion to his face in a desperate attempt to muffle it. It's not the most stellar plan, and it also leaves a pretty big blood stain on the cushion, which he gazes down at apprehensively once the spasming has stopped, thinking no one saw that and no one is there to witness his shame.]
Ah, I should... put this in the laundry, maybe. [Which is why he's talking to himself about his cover up plans.]
ii;after the latest arrivals
[The thing is, it's disconcerting.
As flippant as he tries to act about it, the existence of not one but two other versions of himself in Cerealia gets to him - just like the presence of the other Hijikata really gets to him, but he was trying not to let it show.
It's like getting teasing snatches of home but they're all subtly wrong, and they only serve even more to make him long for something... well, real. Or maybe not real, because those other iterations of the Shinsengumi are just as real, aren't they? They're just not real to him, not the way his comrades at home are.
The point is, it's confusing. And upsetting. And honestly, Souji just tries not to think about things like that most of the time, but he doesn't have the same things to focus on here that will keep his mind off it. It's kind of like a terrible feedback loop of not knowing what to do, and possibly that is why Souji gets the bright idea of trying to temporarily solve it with alcohol.
That's what plenty of other people do, right?
Except he only gets through about half a glass of strong liquor before he more or less gags on it and starts coughing, and has to set the rest down rather urgently.]
Gross. [He's honestly feeling so attacked right now, staring down at the other half of the glass - which he'll optimistically call half empty - and then at the bottle.] I'm not sure I know how to get drunk at all.
OPEN both pre and post the Soojpocalypse
[You know that feeling when you're really ill and you go to the doctor and they prescribe you antibiotics and you take them and suddenly you just feel great. Like wow, compared to how you were feeling before, this is just so much better, and it's such a high to be able to do things other than slowly perish in your own sweat under a blanket.
That is more or less what Souji has been experiencing after having gone from almost dying of fever in the jungle to getting treated at the hospital. The contrast was so sharp, he felt practically healthy there for a while, and he'd been able to actually do things like help out at the dojo and even go to work a bit at the tea house. The freedom of it, after the misery of doing nothing back home, is quite hard to comprehend.
And of course, he doesn't want to lose these privileges now that he's gotten them. Which is why, when he does feel a coughing fit coming on, he presses a sofa cushion to his face in a desperate attempt to muffle it. It's not the most stellar plan, and it also leaves a pretty big blood stain on the cushion, which he gazes down at apprehensively once the spasming has stopped, thinking no one saw that and no one is there to witness his shame.]
Ah, I should... put this in the laundry, maybe. [Which is why he's talking to himself about his cover up plans.]
ii; after the latest arrivals
[The thing is, it's disconcerting.
As flippant as he tries to act about it, the existence of not one but two other versions of himself in Cerealia gets to him - just like the presence of the other Hijikata really gets to him, but he was trying not to let it show.
It's like getting teasing snatches of home but they're all subtly wrong, and they only serve even more to make him long for something... well, real. Or maybe not real, because those other iterations of the Shinsengumi are just as real, aren't they? They're just not real to him, not the way his comrades at home are.
The point is, it's confusing. And upsetting. And honestly, Souji just tries not to think about things like that most of the time, but he doesn't have the same things to focus on here that will keep his mind off it. It's kind of like a terrible feedback loop of not knowing what to do, and possibly that is why Souji gets the bright idea of trying to temporarily solve it with alcohol.
That's what plenty of other people do, right?
Except he only gets through about half a glass of strong liquor before he more or less gags on it and starts coughing, and has to set the rest down rather urgently.]
Gross. [He's honestly feeling so attacked right now, staring down at the other half of the glass - which he'll optimistically call half empty - and then at the bottle.] I'm not sure I know how to get drunk at all.