humiliatious | Cursed Night Market

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ The hesitation from earlier drops to the wayside.

Wordlessly, Maruki gets up from the chair and settles himself down onto the sofa next to Armin, not too close, just enough to be able to rest a hand on one shoulder. An anchoring strength that's hopefully more comforting than it is strange. Maruki does feel like he knows him, in a way, even though it's their first meeting. It's an untenable grief that he's dealing with, but if he can, he'd like to be able to give him some measure of support through it. ]

He knows that just as well as you do. It's a horribly unfair thing, I won't pretend that it isn't. I'm sorry. You don't...

[ A beat where his mouth presses into a thin, thoughtful line, and then he shrugs, softens his tone even further. ]

You don't have to talk, if you don't want to. You can simply– sit with this. I get the feeling you haven't really been able to yet, and it's what I'm here for. So... Please.

[Maruki sits beside him, and it's a comfort. Armin doesn't hate people the way that Eren does - he hates them, but not the way Eren does. He wants to be close to people - even people he doesn't know. He wants to love, he wants connection--

[The point is...it's a comfort. Perhaps too much of a comfort. Maruki says, "You don't have to talk," - he says, "...you haven't really been able to yet," - he says, "...it's what I'm here for," and there is so much devastating, overwhelming, consuming compassion and kindness to all of this.

[Armin's always believed in kindness. He'd like to be a kind person. He'd like to be. He really would...

[He tastes blood and pulls his teeth out from the flesh of his lower lip - licks it and curls his lips inward, shaking his head.

[Then, at long last, a sob. His body lurches with it, bent over, mouth hanging open, spit pooling and sliding out of his mouth. He looks like he'll throw up. He cries without sound, like a prolonged gag that brings up nothing. His body jerks. He puts his hand in his hair. He shakes his head, closes his eyes, but it's all real, and Eren is gone...

[Gone. Eren. Gone. It's impossible. It's just not possible.]

[ That will always be the catch with Maruki: Such an overabundance of kindness that it hurts in the end, one way or another.

He stays settled next to Armin, a pillar for his grief to rail against, unmoving but far from unmoved. He's been there... or somewhere similar enough. The hand at Armin's shoulder moves to rub up and down his back, slow and steady, as those sobs tear through his body with a violence.

It doesn't matter how long it takes. Maruki won't move, won't say a word to try to put a stop to it. He ought to be allowed to feel this, wretched as it is.

One thought does float through the back of his mind: It wasn't long ago that such a display would have him mentally scrambling to root out the cause of the suffering. Things really have changed. For the better? He's still not sure. ]

[It takes a while. It doesn't take as long as Eren - not even close. Armin's never been the same type of crier that his beloved, cherished friend is. He sits up. He wipes his bloodshot, aching, burning eyes. He lets out one last high-pitched gasp, then sucks it in, shaking his head.]

I'm sorry. [He'll get it together. He has to.] I'm sorry. You don't even know me--

Thank you...

Don't apologize. Please.

[ Soft, but earnest. Maruki knows it will likely fall on deaf ears. Because, well– ]

No, I don't know you... But in a way, I feel like I do.

[ He leans forward to pluck tissues from the little table in front of the couch and hands them off to Armin with a smile. ]

He compares us pretty often. Sometimes in unflattering ways.

[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?

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?

[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.

Of course. It's a necessity for me too.

[ Also an excuse. He recognizes it in both of them, but he'll let Armin have it. It's only recently that he's begun to face these truths about himself, he isn't about to force someone else to do the same. ]

I know that it's strange seeing ourselves through the lens of those who love us most. But you might be surprised by what he noticed about you.

[ Which, well. ]

I'm curious. How do you see him?

[How does Armin see Eren Jaeger?

[It's an impossible question. How does someone describe what water tastes like when you're thirsty? Eren Jaeger is a natural consequence of being alive, as ubiquitous as breathing. He is not a monster, but he is a plague. He is a person. He is a child, and an orphan, and a wound. Up until the very last moment, he was hope. He was salvation. He was a victim; of the world, of himself - of Armin too.

[He is a storm trapped in a glass bottle, but the bottle never breaks - the world just gets sucked into its mouth.

[He is a captive. He was born too big for his body; grew tall, but never tall enough. Eren is the ache in Armin. Eren is the void. Eren is impossible, and perfect, and pitiful, and wretched.

[He is adored. He is mourned. He is hatred. He is love. He is war. He is Armin.

[Surely, some of this does not have to be explained. Anyone who meets Eren must, at even first glance, come to realize, somewhat. But Maruki can never understand. It doesn't matter what Armin says. It doesn't matter how well he knows Eren.

[Silent and useless, at a complete loss, Armin smiles down at his hands, teeth bared like an animal.]

Oh, he's...

Selfish. Reckless. He only sees what's in front of him, but he can't...

[Armin shrugs, but it's hard to pick his shoulders up.]

I...see him as the most remarkable person to have ever existed. [Does it sound fond, or bitter? He can't tell.

[Fond. Of course it's fond. Armin hears the sob trying to escape before he can force it fully back into his gut, but he tries. He twists the tissues in his hands; tears at them.]

He's my best friend. [The words all come out in a desperate puff of air, like someone's just pulled a gag out of his mouth. He chokes on it.] He's Eren. He's beautiful, and he's funny, and he's not--

[Armin bites off his tongue. He shakes his head.

[Not what? Not evil? Not terrible - not completely?

[Not gone?

[Not...]

Here...

That's...what I can't imagine.

Cursed Night Market

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the way I literally have an icon for this - ugly crier armin arlert real

gently puts a mcrib in his mouth

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