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[knifemonopoly]

WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, PLAYER1. FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE 10.11.0.0.01 *** PLAYER1 has joined 10.11.0.0.01 <PLAYER1> If you're looking for someone you knew as Yugi before June, you've found him! It's Atem, leave a message.

Main handle: < Player1 > Anon: < turtleluck >, < actuallydied >, < burner >

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cw intrusive thoughts, teen murder talk

[isawallflower]

[ The video. He looked at the laptop, he looked at the articles, he looked at everything—

And he doesn’t know. He still thinks what everyone things, she’s a victim, a harmless kid, a person who doesn’t solve problems with violence, by ripping apart innocent girls who were her friends.

He’s trying so hard to be soothing. And yet all she hears are Farrah’s desperate pleas for someone to help her, all she sees is the way Chess looked at her, shocked and scared and fucking concerned. She’s hid it so well (she’s a ticking time bomb why the fuck did no one realize does she have to scream—)

Riley doesn’t look away from him, even though she barely focuses on the here and now. There are so many things she could say, so many innocent or innocuous things, but she’s falling apart. She’s been falling apart since before she got here and just never realized it. ]

Don’t… Don’t tell anyone. [ She has to work so hard, to keep her voice even. ] And never come in here again.

cw murder ideation

[knifemonopoly]

[He can respect that request.]

I won't.

[...but, why is it that he feels even less like he understands her than he did before? Why is it that his feelings fail to reach her every time, even when he thinks that, this time, he's sure he's got it?

He's got pieces, but he can't see what shape they go in. And, until he does....he'll continue to upset her, and she'll continue to shut him out, and he's not sure what to do about that. She is so terribly brittle, right now, and what's left of what had been between them -- someone he treasured, someone he trusted, someone whose feelings he wanted to protect enough that he learned how to lose for her -- feels like one of those scrolls so ancient they dissolve when they're touched. How could it have gone this sour this fast?

Is he going to lose her? Will this Aunamee guy get her, and he'll never know? The idea makes him want to put a fist through a wall, or tear open the throat of someone he's never seen -- it fills him with the same hot rage he can't let Riley know about.

There's nothing else he can think of to say that won't damage things further.

What is he missing?!

Damn it!

He puts his fists in his pockets, and he leaves.]