Cursed Night Market

[pantheraliam]

Welcome

You’re not sure how you got here, but you don’t seem to mind. You feel a pervasive sense of calm with regard to your environment. You have entered what appears to be a night market. Perhaps the concept is familiar to you, or perhaps it isn’t. Colorful stalls, glowing with lantern light, line the path before you. You know what you need to do to return to where you came from. Investigate the various stalls - buy and sell what you have, until you’re able to purchase a path back. The merchants will take any currency that you have on hand. If you don’t have any, you will find some coins of an ambiguous nature in your pocket.

Rare Items

The first stall that you encounter boasts that you can buy and sell rare items. After trading a coin, the merchant hands you something - insists you take it. You don’t recognize the item, but the person behind you does. It is something extremely dear to them. If they check their person, they will find the item missing. If you attempt to return the item to them, you will find that you are unable to. Helpfully, the merchant offers that the person the item belongs to must tell the buyer a story about the item before it can be returned.

Fortunes

The second stall you encounter claims to buy and sell fortunes. Trading a coin, the merchant will relay to you a fortune, but, as you listen, you realize that it isn’t your fortune at all. With a cackle, the merchant explains that you must deliver the fortune with the person behind you. Neither of you can leave the booth until you have revealed to them their future.

Memories

The third stall you encounter claims to buy and sell memories. You can choose to sell the merchant a memory you would like to forget, or you can ask to buy someone else’s memory. Selling your memory will transfer it to the person behind you. In return, you will gain one of their memories. Buying a random memory will instead cause you to forget one of the people most important to you. In some instances, you might feel a great urgency to find someone, although you don't know who it is.

Dreams

The fourth stall you encounter claims to buy and sell dreams. Trading a coin at this stall will cause you and the person behind you to be transported into a shared dream. The dream may be about the highest point in your life or the lowest. It may also be about a close friend, there or gone. It may reveal your greatest desire or your greatest insecurity. Or any number of other things!

OOC notes

Suggestions on prompts: if you’re going to write one where someone will be seeing/receiving something from your character, it’s helpful to describe it in detail in the brackets in your TL. I know some of these prompts are probably a little confusing, but, I mean…it’s roleplay. Just fuck around. No one’s gonna police how you do things here.

Please feel free to top-level, tag in, and share this meme wherever you’d like - it is open to anyone. The four stalls mentioned are prompt suggestions, but you can go crazy and have any stall do basically anything you want. Please see/use subject line CWs. This musebox doesn’t have a dedicated rule list because it’s just for my personal shit, but please be kind, follow standard RP rules - just be nice! Do the right thing! If you have any questions, hit me up here.

code by Flyleaf ❖ inspired by event code by 10billionghosts ❖ background via unsplash

Comments

[placation]

[ Another memory that isn't his own, was never his to begin with, only ever relayed to him by Eren: A captive doctor and a patient he repeatedly risked his life for, a goodbye of their own at that same place.

The hand between Eren's shoulder blades rubs a firm circle, as much to keep Maruki grounded as him. ]

I can't tell you anything to make it better. Nothing ever will. But you...

[ He stops, mouth setting in a fine line. His head is swimming again. Breathe. ]

The things that you do for the people that you love, Eren. They matter. Saying goodbye matters. Even if it isn't enough.

[abandonhumanity]

[As ever, Eren has no right to Maruki's comfort - anyone's. His loved ones were not grateful for what he did, save for one, and he can't blame them for that. He didn't do it for praise. He knew that they wouldn't understand; none but Armin, when Eren finally got a chance to explain. Eren acts beyond others' understanding - he acts because he's decided he knows the answer, and no one can tell him otherwise, once he's made a decision like that.

[It matters because they're alive. It matters because their curse is broken. They're heroes to the world. Eren made sure it mattered, but that isn't what Maruki is talking about.

[Facing them felt impossible; leaving without seeing them again would have truly been. It wasn't a matter of bravery, really, nor kindness - Eren wanted to see them again too.

[His hand grips Maruki's shoulder. There are never words to speak to this. Life is unbelievably cruel. Sometimes, that weight alone is enough to make Eren want to fall to his knees.

[That grip tightens. They can ground each other. For the majority of their many, varied relationships, that's what they've done.]

I couldn't leave without. [Honesty unbefitting of this Eren, this voice - but not with this man, this friend. Maruki knows it all. There's no reason to hide. How beautiful a bond like that is.]

It was selfish. [Not self-deprecating really. It's light, somehow.] But...

Despite everything...

They wanted to see me again too.

[thebomb]

[The way Armin has to blow his nose isn't exactly flattering, but at least he turns away (Eren wouldn't). Maruki's last few words make him laugh as he's pinching the last traces of emotion from his nose. He still sniffles as he rests his hands in his laps, tissue balled up in his fist.]

He's not always a flattering person. [Armin doesn't mean to speak as quietly as he does. He clears his throat, tries to sit up a little straighter.]

It's not fair, really. I know nothing about you at all.

What does he say?

[abandonhumanity]

Obviously.

"maybe" this whole thing was a scam

[sadpoem]

Was this...a beverage heist...all along?

[Why does he wanna bring drinks home so badly? Isn't the point to get home at all?]

[placation]

[ Warmth floods every cell of Maruki's body like radiant golden light. That gentle smile turns positively beatific. ]

You heard correctly. My name is Dr. Maruki. Do you want to come tell me what's troubling you?

[ The collective unconscious is lost to him here. He can't fix anything from the boy imagining it alone, he does need to ferret it out. But if he's eager for help, then it shouldn't be hard. Maruki gestures toward one of the benches beneath a string of lanterns, starts to walk off in hopes that he'll follow. ]

[placation]

[ Lifetimes across just a small handful of infinite possible realities should by all means separate them, and here they are. Holding one another fast in a strange market, baring their souls under dim light. As ever, as ever. ]

I'm biased, of course, but... If they got something out of it as well, then it wasn't entirely selfish, in the end. Maybe your motives were, but the act itself wasn't.

[ It's all about perception, after all.

He knows he doesn't have to explain that to Eren. They helped one another to understand a lot of concepts like that, didn't they...

There are memories in Maruki's head that he doesn't think he's actually lived. Vivid bright, but hazy. Sharp at the edges, but dimmed. A frigid night above Odaiba. A photo taken on a sunny day outside a school. A taxi pulling up just when needed. A darkened nurse's office. He remembers.

The words come out slow and unsure. He has to chew them over as he speaks them, and they're nearly disconnected, like he doesn't know where each thought is going until it gets there. He's unpracticed at this – sorting through so many lives reflected endlessly, like two mirrors facing one another. ]

There were situations where I succeeded. And I was never able to say goodbye. Everyone forgot me. I think I was– not happy with that, but at... No, not at peace either...

[ Resigned to it.

He stops, sighs. ]

I don't know. I just think that you were able to say goodbye, so they never forgot you. That's a beautiful thing.

[placation]

Oh, you know...

[ Maruki makes a weighty hand gesture and laughs a bit. ]

On the one hand, we're both incredibly intelligent. If you consider yourself a strategist or a tactician, I wouldn't be surprised. On the other hand, apparently we both have a tendency to downplay our own feelings.

[ He drops his hands then and leans back against the couch with a little oof. ]

I don't suppose you frequently stop yourself from saying what you really feel to say what you think someone should hear instead, do you?

[thebomb]

[Well. He's never had it put quite so plainly before. In fact, after a moment's stunned silence:]

I can't say that I realized Eren had noticed...

[No one ever mentions it...]

It's been a necessity. [Excuse.] You could call me a strategist, I guess - people have. I'm the Commander of the Scout Regiment now. [Strange. Wrong. A mistake.]

So. [He looks down at the tissue in his hands, uselessly weighing it up and down.] A necessity. That's all.

[sadpoem]

[Sunny can't seem to answer, but Dr. Maruki doesn't make him; he begins to walk, and Sunny follows. Standing before the bench, he anxiously fiddles with the hem of his vest for a few long moments before quickly sitting down.

[He has no idea where to begin. He looks to Maruki, as if searching for that answer.

[Pathetically, all he manages to come up with is:] Something...something...terrible...happened...

[orange8ro]

[A beat.

[Another one.

[Kel clasps his hands together. Points at his not-customer.] You. [Himself.] Me. [Back and forth between them.]

Combine dosh.

[abandonhumanity]

What?

[orange8ro]

My coin, your coin.

[Pointer fingers up. Then together, towards the counter.]

We combine our coins and buy a way out for both of us.

[abandonhumanity]

Or. We combine our coins and you use them to buy yourself a way out. I get it. [He could have said nothing and done that instead, but he didn't think of that, did he?]

[orange8ro]

It is now!

[It has not even dawned on him once that Sunny’s “You think we can take it with us?” was not, perhaps, a request to do just that.

[Anyway, they’re not bringing these drinks. Milk. Kel fishes crumpled receipt and pencil stub out of his pocket, writes a note for the original vendor on it, and slaps it on the table. Sorry, man; your substitute is at another stall.

[He brushes his hands, swings around to Sunny’s side, and offers an arm for hooking.] See anything you like out there, Sunshine?

[orange8ro]

Aww, you really think I’d stiff ya like that? [It’s not a bad idea, actually. But Kel only “borrows” cash like that from good friends! He’s nice to strangers!] Nah, it’s both of us or nothin’, now. We’re in this as a team.

gag?

[nomori]

[He’d stiff a stranger, Eren. Do not believe his lies.]

[abandonhumanity]

[To be forgotten...

[Eren told Mikasa that that's what he wanted. He told her to throw away that old scarf once he died, and to forget about him; of course, she never could. Part of him knew that, maybe, but...

[To Armin, he cried. He told him that he didn't want Mikasa to forget him. He is, before anything, a selfish, sobbing child. He knows it.

[And he's a paradox. He wanted both, in ways. He wanted her freedom, but he wanted her endless love too.

[He couldn't have been forgotten by her, or by Armin, or by anyone - anyone, and he made sure of that; ever selfish, yes, and far from beautiful...

[Eren's nervous habit, the clenching and unclenching of his hands, works into Maruki's shoulder now. There's only one thing he can say, really - one promise he can make without any doubt at all.]

I won't forget you. I haven't.

[sadpoem]

[Oh, Sunshine, Sunny's beloved, Kel-specific petname. He might dislike it from anyone else; presently, it makes his stomach flip. He hooks his arm with Kel's, then takes a moment to scan the market. Someone is selling boba tea...

[He points.]

gag?

[abandonhumanity]

[INSTANTLY EMBRACING, KISSING, AND CARRYING AWAY SUNNY.]

lmao I'll move toward a wrap here - fuckin' silly thread

[abandonhumanity]

I never agreed to form a team with you. I don't even know you.

I'll find the path home on my own, thanks. [One last glance over the dairy stand.] Good luck with your...milk. [Not at all genuine. He moves to take his leave.]

o7

[orange8ro]

Team-work makes the dream—! […work.

[Oh. He’s walking away.

[Kel huffs a little sigh. Ah well. Can’t win ’em all, heh....]

Good luck, buddy! [But that’s genuine.]

[orange8ro]

[You know that one manga panel of Kel pulling Sunny onward to a new adventure? He’s gonna manifest that right now immediately: spots the boba tea, tears off right towards it. Not so fast he’s dragging Sunny, of course, but juuuust a little past Sunny’s speed limit for a good ol’ dose of adrenaline.

[Either way, they’re gonna be the first in line. Kel slaps his whole one (1) entire saved coin on the table.]

Twooooo cups’a boba, please!

[captainspaceboy]

[The merchant observes the coin.]

Two cups of boba? One coin? You dare insult the dastardly Space Merchant?!

this is all you get

[orange8ro]

Captain Spaceboy?!