Tangent | Soukoku; AU [✔]

57 ➳ trial and error // d.o

two days prior...

"i see, you do seem more tired than usual, ren," i gave it some thought to what xyren said. she must have been set on finding out about my past to validate her feelings. "you've just been in the team for a week or two, and yet you're already feeling what i felt for my entire two years there."

"i'm... not used to people and emotions." xyren mumbled through the microphone for some reason; maybe she didn't want to be heard by someone in her room.

our game got dodged and we have to wait for another queue, it's as if the universe gave us more time to talk about this. here goes another ten minutes or so, who knows if we'll even be able to get a game, or are we just gonna talk for the rest of the call. i don't mind either, but i just want to play a game with the challenger support, you know?

xyren, in the best of her abilities, tried to lay out everything that she has witnessed from chuuya - from not listening to team communications, repeatedly being told what not to do, so on and so forth. i am all too familiar with it; in fact, so familiar, that i can even see the imagery in my head.

ugh, such bad things to let live in my head rent fee.

"well, i'm not sure why i'm telling you this, dazai," the woman concluded afterwards, snapping me off those horrible memories of chuuya. "it's not like you can offer any advice since you had to endure that for two years and nothing worked, but i guess it was nice to let it out."

"i'm glad you trust me with that, ren," i smiled, clasping my hands in flattery. "you're right though, nothing worked, but we can formulate things you can try to get around him."

xyren let out an audible 'hmm' before going completely silent again. i waited patiently for her to respond again, while also waiting for this queue to give us a game already. it was silent for a solid five minutes that i failed to notice it until i checked our queue timer already running at 20 minutes.

i was about to call out xyren through the call, but she spoke once more to break the silence between us - save from the occasional static that i can hear from her microphone.

"have you ever tried sounding serious to him? like, serious serious?"

i feel like a flash of lighting passed in my head upon hearing those words. that's when it occurred to me - i never really have tried doing that during my time in port mafia. for the entire two years that i was there, i have always imposed my words in a 'serious jest' way, wherein i'd sound serious at first and then pass it as a joke to enlighten the mood.

it was just... so amusing to see chuuya's angry reaction after.

but then again, maybe it's the reason why the hat rack never learned his lesson. now, their new member has to suffer from that habit of his.

"well, honestly no," i chuckled, followed by a bright idea that came to me. "you can do your own experiment though, ren. go ahead and see what works with him."

"you mean... what exactly?" i can practically see the confused look on her face, despite not seeing her in actuality. how cute.

"whatever will work to get through his head, darling. i believe in you."

and with that, the universe wanted to end that conversation between us, as we finally found ourselves a game to play.