Let's All Make Believe

[MurderWeasel]

((Darlene Silva continued from Afterneath))

"...so then, then Snoopy thinks he's going to die, but instead because it's Christmas the Red Baron just has a drink with him and lets him go," Darlene explained.

There was a pretty good chance that nobody else here actually cared very much about the multi-part musical saga of Snoopy vs. the Red Baron, but it had been on Darlene's mind a lot for the past couple hours for reasons she could articulate and others that she could not. There was a moral there, maybe, because the Red Baron killed a whole bunch of people, and got famous for it, and in the song they counted out his kills like on an announcement, but going after him didn't really work and just got more people dead. That was a pretty pertinent life lesson! And while the Baron did in some circumstances display honor and mercy, especially when it came to holiday cheer, right now it was the middle of June and the only mascot dog Darlene was aware of wasn't here.

She'd realized, however, somewhere during the conversation, that the dog was not quite so far away as she'd thought. In all the traveling and excitement and explosions, Darlene had kind of forgotten that she'd made a big loop, and that this place now was where she and Max and Stephanie had been heading. She could, if she walked down to the shore, see the waterfall, which meant that the dog, and also Max, were up there somewhere on the slope above watching over her and the others.

She was of course totally aware of how meaningless that was. Max was not actually watching anything, because he was dead, and the dog was not actually watching anything, because it was an oversized plush toy. But she'd pretended before, for a long long time, and it wouldn't make things worse now. There wasn't a whole lot of worse they could get without someone dying or being even more horribly mangled, and that wasn't really a matter of if but of when.

"Then later there's another one where Snoopy runs for president and the votes are tied until the Red Baron votes for him, but that one's weird because the Red Baron is German," Darlene continued, "so he shouldn't, um, he shouldn't get to vote, right?"

She could hear a whole lot better now. Not perfectly, granted; there was still this unpleasant tinnitus ring that came and went, and everything was still a little bit muffled and her ears hurt, but she wasn't bleeding out of them or anything like that, and she wasn't yelling half her sentences anymore.

Darlene scooted around some on the log she sat on, because there was this one spot where a branch or something had once been and no matter how she oriented herself it was always sticking her in the leg or poking her in the butt. It was still nicer than being in the dirt, though, so she shifted and shifted, looking for the least irritating position. Sometimes, she picked at the peeling bark on the log, and then threw the flakes into the fire, after checking to make sure there weren't any ants on them first of course. The gun rested within easy reach, but she wasn't holding it just now. That felt strange.

"Anyways, do you, what are your favorite songs?" she asked, looking from Sakurako to Abe and back again.

[Sunnybunny]

She was pretty sure Darlene was the premiere Charlie Brown Christmas Special expert of the world.

"So Snoopy was turning up with the Red Baron before they committed voter fraud? I love happy endings."

((Sakurako A. Jackson continued from One Show Fits All))

Perhaps the fact that this was possibly the most irrelevant-to-their-situation conversation topic in history put her at ease. Her own holidays were typically spent doing either the Home Alone or Lost In New York thing depending on who was swamped with work that year. She preferred it in The City with her big sis, but after watching Macy's on tv their go to was Yogi Bear's All Star Comedy Christmas Caper.

Did Abe know in his soul that he was surrounded by dorks?

For her part, Sakurako had made a bit of a nest with some of the bags she'd acquired. Some lined her back, a nice mimicry of having a big spoon. Another was her pillow, and the little shopping cart was her footboard. Her mix-and-match fashion continued as well, this time with her wearing a shirt of Tomtom's and the shorts she'd arrived with. The pistol was close by, but her fingers only brushed it, and the mysterious snapback was gripped in the other hand. The night had been uninterrupted by grenades, and this morning she felt sluggish but not dead. Kind of comfortable, warm. Maybe even-

"I stay draped in diamonds and pearls, beside every man is a Bad Giiiirl."

x

"Nah, No Time is a fav cause I love how little fucks Lil Kim gave about anything, and no slander against the actual Queen Bee is gonna prosper here, but my actual favorite song is STORM by Tatsuro Yamashita. There isn't a smoother track on the planet, wish I could play it for you guys. Don't imagine Danya's going to cue it up instead of the daily drag report."

She looked to Abe, praying he wasn't one of those "I don't listen to music" pricks. She might actually attempt to walk straight into the lake if that was the case.

[dmboogie]

((Abe never knew how much lore Snoopy the fucking dog had.))

It felt kinda cozy, like when he watched some random asshole do a thirty-minute deep dive on weird media shit no one had ever cared about, like an awful licensed game boy game based on some fuckin’ Disney Channel original movie five people watched.

Darlene’s delivery and ability to stay on topic were about average for the genre, which was pretty sad, but like, he’d take it, she’d have a promising career in Peanuts-based trivia if she wasn’t going to die in a few days.

He just had to remember that. He’d never planned on spending the night with another group again, and let’s be real, he wasn’t hating the experience, but this wasn’t the dream and it wasn’t worth dying for. At some point he’d find a handy way to excuse himself and if he ever saw them again it’d be through iron sights.

But also, like, who the fuck wanted to go anywhere in the morning before the announcements even played, that was like the official sign that it was time to actually start your day. He could just chill and shoot the shit about tunes for a while longer. One hand on his gun.

He nodded at Sakurako even though he’d never heard of literally anything she was talking about, and then it was his turn.

“I like a whole lotta shit but there’s a special place in my heart for folk punk, y’know, just some asshole with an acoustic guitar and a whiny voice yelling about communism or whatever the fuck. One of my favorites is two dudes called Andrew Jackson Jihad but like, they rebranded to AJJ for some reason, doesn’t really matter, and a nice little ditty they have is,” he took a deep breath.

“I could go off the deep end! I could kill all my best friends! I could follow those stylish trends, etc etc.”

Too soon? Maybe that was too soon.

“That was probably funnier in my head, haha? Anyways I also dig Modest Mouse because the vocalist guy is just like absolutely incoherent a lot of the time and I vibe with anyone who makes a career outta that.”

[decoy73]

((Christina Rennes continued from Go Let It Out, Go Let It In))

That had been an awesome nap. A stupid nap, but an awesome one. A stupidly awesome nap in the middle of this idiotic game. So now she was wandering around, alone, again. She'd actually woken up at night, so she'd been walking around much more blindly than usual - her flashlight only gave her a limited field of view in the dark, and the moon wasn't much help, either.

Going off that, it was a ... relief? That she saw a fire. Fire meant people. People meant an alliance. People meant weapons. Weapons meant getting shot at. Again. It was a gamble either way - she could step forward and take a chance hoping that she could get in good with them, or she could step back and go it alone.

Fuck it. She stepped forward, flashlight in front of her. If anyone there did turn out to be hostile, she might be able to whack them hard enough to get away or steal something.

[MurderWeasel]

Darlene clapped a little bit when Abe sang his snippet of song, even though he wasn't very good and the song itself was more than a little uncomfortable. She always did her best not to be a snob about music, even though singing was one of the small handful of things she would categorize herself as at least a little above average at, because really the most important core thing about singing a song was that you were enthusiastic and meant it, and Abe had that going at least.

And it certainly sounded punk! Darlene's concept of what precisely punk was was more than a little hazy; probably the clearest idea she had was that punks were usually disagreeable, often wore black, and tended to curse, yell, and smoke cigarettes. Enough of these traits applied to the boy before her that she could see it, even if it wasn't her thing. This beat where she stood with Sakurako, which was that she didn't have any idea what the girl was talking about aside from that wish to share, though that was enough for this second.

"I wish I could hear it," Darlene said quietly to her. And then, to Abe, "You're good at that. And, and I like Modest Mouse too, I really like Float On."

Float On was in fact the only Modest Mouse song Darlene could for sure identify and it was a little bit weird for her because she thought it had this sort of desperate, resigned character to its optimism. It wasn't a song like "Life is gonna be good and you'll be okay no matter what," precisely, so much as it sort of went "Sometimes when everything's terrible you just have to lie back and hope fate cuts you a break," which was a philosophy Darlene found eminently agreeable but also rather scary to vocalize. But she could almost hear those bright plucky notes and strange, barked vocals, and it was some comfort.

She always got Modest Mouse confused with some old cartoon character she'd heard of. Not Mickey Mouse (obviously, because probably even hermits living in little shacks up in the Alps knew who Mickey Mouse was), but some other M mouse.

These were among the ideas and musings running haphazardly through Darlene's head. Another was this: why was it that, for years and years, her suspension of disbelief in the Royal Guardsmen's Peanuts-related musical saga was threatened by the fact that the Red Baron, a German, was allowed to vote for the President of the United States, but not by the fact that Snoopy, a beagle, was allowed to run for that office? It had just never crossed her mind that that was at least as weird, right up until she was trying to explain the whole thing to these other people.

While she sometimes looked at them when they spoke, or when she spoke to them, mostly Darlene watched the sticks and logs and bark burning in the fire or else stared out into the woods. She was keeping an eye for any sort of trouble, she told herself, but actually mostly she was looking for interesting animals. There had been goats before, with Amelia, and she'd caught glimpses of monkeys and strange birds now and then, and finally she was feeling relaxed enough to take a more active interest in these things, notwithstanding that it was still possible Sakurako might abruptly die. But at least for the moment life was relatively okay, though the light from the fire messed with Darlene's distance vision in the early morning gloom. As she looked around, an afterimage of the light moved in the trees, almost like it was coming towards them.

Darlene blinked, slowly, letting her mind actually register the sight of the blackness behind her eyelids. There was no afterimage there. And yet, when they came open again: light. Moving closer.

She had the revolver in hand by the time the shape of the new girl clarified behind Abe. She didn't point the weapon just yet, though. Yesterday on the beach, or if she was alone, well, it wasn't worth thinking too hard about that but probably she would've been shooting already. But here and now they were talking about songs and things were mostly relaxed and that let Darlene take it nice and slow and see that there were no guns on display besides the ones her group had, which meant they didn't have to be too afraid, right?

"Hello," she called loudly, waving with the non-gun hand and squinting real obviously so Abe would know someone was coming up behind him.

There were probably other things to do to move the greeting process along, but Darlene was drawing a blank.

[Sunnybunny]

She had to slow clap at Abe's choice of lyrics, it was amazing in the tackiest way possible. This guy was truly barren of fucks, and it was refreshing in a way that the water had been. It was so much easier to know where you stood with someone like that. Now, she suspected Darlene was hyping his ability up a la Paula Abdul, but every trio needed a Paula. It was just science.

In that moment of peace, of talking about nothing, of course someone would just show up.

Her heart started to race, her hands began to sweat as she, slow and easy, got a bit of cloth from inside one of the bags to wrap around the bottom part of her face. That snapback was placed on her head as if a hat could save her, a helmet against unwanted curiosities. Rehashing questions about yesterday just wasn't on her agenda right now.

She smiled all the same, despite the ache it caused.

"Folk punk, who knew? But Darlene, you never told us your favorite. That's cheating!"

Float On was nice to think about, though. Ups and downs, such was life, and Sakurako found herself humming a little before addressing their new interloper. The soft click was on time with her musical styling, just another part of the song.

"You have a favorite song, Rennes?"

Which Rennes she didn't know, and she was focused on a more important coinflip right now.

[dmboogie]

Abe smirked as the girls clapped for his half-assed, yelly performance of what hadn’t been the most stunning display of vocal talent even in its original form. Darlene probably woulda earnestly clapped even if he’d decided to break out the Mindless Self Indulgence, but it was kinda endearing how stubbornly she clinged to politeness like it fuckin’ mattered anymore.

Sounded like Sakurako genuinely appreciated the joke at least. Abe was glad he’d gotten the chance to vibe with her for a while, especially now that he was pretty sure she wasn’t gonna die. Well, she was still gonna die, obviously, just, not right then. Her speedy recover made him think that she couldn’t have been hurt that badly in the first place, because there’s no way a dipshit like him could have actually saved someone’s life, right? Absolutely no way, but was gonna milk the good will from his ‘you showed up’ prize for as long as he could.

Abe shot Darlene a thumbs up. Everyone and their fucking mom knew Float On, but that was cool, he wasn’t a goddamn hipster, he wasn’t too good for Float On, it was a jam even if it’d been overplayed to hell and back. He was just more of a Bukowski guy himself, ‘cause you were right, Mr. Mouse, who would wanna be such an asshole?

Anyways the whole thing was like a discount version of when he and some buddies would get blazed and just sit around for a couple hours taking turns playing music for each other, just, y’know, without the actual music. Be nice if they had even a shitty MP3 player to pass around, but no nice things until the finish line, he was toeing the line enough as it was.

And of course, just as he was thinking that, there came proof that he’d been getting fucking complacent. Someone was behind him, and he hadn’t realized until Darlene did her whole exaggerated Darlene thing and drew his attention. He coulda died, right there.

He wasn't dead, obviously, but of all the people on the island he didn’t wanna see, the twin was right up at the top of list. He was pretty sure it was the same one he’d scared off with Forrest, at least, unless she and her sister had done some fuckin’ zany Parent Trap hijinks since the last time he’d seen her. That was probably a safe theory to throw out.

Hopefully if she was still carrying a grudge she hadn’t found anything she could use to carry it out. Hopefully if she somehow still gave a shit about what had happened to Forrest, she wouldn’t ask any questions.

“Yeah, Rennes, what sorta music you like? You a fan of when it’s all like, second verse, same as the first, if you catch my drift?”

He showed teeth. It could be mistaken for a smile. His gun was in his hand. If Christina wound up Floating On down into the lake he sure as hell wouldn’t complain.

[decoy73]

She didn't really recognize the two girls - not even the one who said her surname. Of course, she may have been talking about Jessica, which would have been a laugh, given how Jessica had been dead for a week. That she could have dealt with - memory was a fickle thing.

The problem was the one guy whose back had been facing her.

“Yeah, Rennes, what sorta music you like? You a fan of when it’s all like, second verse, same as the first, if you catch my drift?”

Seriously. Fuck. You.

Christina peered down at the gun he had, the same one he had pointed at her about two days ago. Of course, given what she remembered, he probably had another one stashed somewhere given Forrest's fate.

"No, not really. In fact, I don't really listen to music all that much. Too much time playing video games." Christina moved to her right. Slowly, steadily. So that if he got the damn thing up, he'd probably have to risk shooting through someone else. When she was behind the one that actually said her name, she said "Although, I think the two of you have better taste. Didn't think you'd partner up with this stupid motherfucker." Christina tilted her head towards Abe.

Maybe in a different scenario, like where Abe wasn't a stupid asshole, she might have actually thought of some music in the Mass Effect series. A couple of those numbers counted as legit songs.

[MurderWeasel]

As soon as Abe said the words, Darlene got Henry The Eighth stuck in her head, shooing out the Red Baron. One historically-dubious old tune for another, a neat little progression. She would've enjoyed it in some other context, but here and now it was just a distraction, because she was instead trying to puzzle out what was going on with the newcomer, "Rennes," and whether or not it was going to become a problem.

The truth was, Darlene wasn't super assertive and she didn't always think herself the most astute, but she'd dealt with people who seemed like potential problems more or less from the beginning. First it was Beryl, and then Kelly, and then Stephanie, and then Amelia, each in turn someone pleasant enough on the surface but with an unsettling edge. There was no real confirmation anything was wrong with any of them (well, okay, Kelly had murdered the boy they left to guard her, but it took so long it maybe didn't count?), but all the same Darlene had taken what steps she could to preempt any trouble. And so her eyes traced the new girl's path as she moved, and the corners of Darlene's lips wiggled as the girl took cover behind Sakurako.

Darlene didn't relish the thought of Sakurako getting shot to pieces in the crossfire, even if she was possibly dying anyways. She didn't appreciate the tone that Rennes used, either, not one bit. But that was what made this different, wasn't it? The others had played nice but maybe been hiding things. Rennes wasn't playing at all, and while that made Darlene less scared, it also hit her in an entirely different way.

It wasn't too super common for Darlene to get really angry, but when she did sometimes it snuck up on her and then just like that she was mad enough that she wanted to yell right in someone's face, even though she never ever did. She barely even yelled at her parents when she was serious, even when they were being really embarrassing and on purpose. She always felt self-conscious, but it didn't chase away the emotions.

It was the same now, as she found her gun hand shaking just a little, and not in the way it normally did. There was an urge to shout something really mean, or to curse back, or something like that, but that wasn't really how Darlene worked and she couldn't figure out how to do it right, so instead she just stood up straight and glared over the fire at Rennes, free hand forming a finger to point at the girl.

"Shame on you," Darlene growled. "Abe has, he, yesterday someone shot at us and he saved Sakurako, and when I made a big mistake he gave me a chance, and I don't know if that's bad taste but I also don't know who you are, but I do know you shouldn't be talking like that about him."

Even at a distance, Darlene was pretty sure she was shorter than the newcomer, which was just generally a safe bet. She knew she wasn't really the sort of person a lot of people listened to, and she knew that Abe could probably stand up for himself better than she could, but after everything that had happened, after everything that had gone wrong, this was all she had left and this was an okay moment and she'd thought those were all gone, and she wasn't about to let someone screw it all up just because of... whatever was wrong between them.

There was of course a possibility the animosity was entirely justified. Abe had responded to a horrible accident by turning to thievery and flight. It was clear he wasn't perfect, but Darlene wasn't perfect, and Sakurako either, and whatever he'd done she frankly didn't care. Right now, he was here and with her and that was the only thing she cared about.

"You can, I, I don't have any issue with you and you can sit if you want," she continued, plopping back down on the log herself and shrinking into herself a bit, because now that she'd gotten the worst part of the anger out (and checked herself a little with the reminder that this was a selfish stance, that the girl could have a very good point) she was feeling a little less certain, but still wasn't going to back down. "But he's here and he isn't stupid and if you have a problem with that, that's your problem."

[Sunnybunny]

"Oh, my taste in a lot of things is garbage!"

Sakurako's smile became earnest, even reached her eyes. Abe was all but ready to cap Rennes while she was happy to return the animosity in kind and Darlene was freaking growling! This was people! This was George Hunter High at its very core, petty as ever, and something about it made her want to roll around in joy.

Her body would never forgive her for that, but her heart raced.

Tilting her head back, she looked up at the new girl, then back to Abe. There wasn't any telling, but the fact that it hadn't come to violence yet meant it most likely wouldn't. Maybe they could just bitch each other out and keep it... if not clean, at least not super grimey either.

"Darlene's right though, these two really are my saviors. And even though someone here thought I was dumb enough to think they were bird hunting, I was at least dumb enough to get caught out slipping alone."

Might as well have been, anyway.

"You should sit if you're gonna stay. 'Sides, I'm offering the chance of a lifetime, the best and only peer-mediation left on this lousy rock. You can talk about the motherfuckery in a peaceful atmosphere." When Darlene's eyes next met hers, Sakurako gave not one but two thumbs up. Way to be, girl. Way. To. Be.

"On the other hand, talking about anything else but island bullshit is also the chance of a lifetime. Can't overstate that."

[dmboogie]

Out of all the people Abe had met on the island, Darlene somehow had a special knack for making him feel bad. Not on purpose, not even close, but he remembered the first time they’d met, where she stood tall with the rest of the gucci gun gang (rip) despite being so obviously scared outta her mind, saying she wanted to help, and there he was, like, twenty minutes removed from stealing Marco’s shit, and it’d gotten to him, that’s all.

And now she was fuckin’ defending him, like, actively, with passion, and what the fuck had he ever done to deserve that? Objectively he knew this was a sign he was doing better than he’d ever expected with the good will and shit, ‘cause listening to her rant about how he’d been okay, he couldn’t imagine her seriously trying to shoot him. Not after everything. It’d be way too easy to blow her brains out, if it came to that, so he better make sure he cleared out before it came to that, huh?

He wouldn’t call the feeling shame anymore, at least. He was above that, or maybe below, he wasn’t sure. It was just a little pinprick at the shriveled husk of his conscience, a mosquito bite of guilt.

Anyways even though Christina, let’s be real, had a legit gripe with him, it was amazing how immediately she’d shot her own case in the foot by not-so-casually hiding behind Sakurako. She seemed to be seriously overestimating both how much Abe wanted to kill her and how much he cared about collateral damage, like, if it came to that, it was already over for the rest of ‘em.

More importantly it was hilarious how she declared him a stupid motherfucker like that was meant to hurt. His friends called him worse things on a daily basis, well, they had before they all died, haha, but c’mon, was she even trying? She had more reason than most to go right for the jugular with a missing the trees for the Forrest joke but maybe she was scared of actually pissing him off, but like, it was fine. It’d be fine.

Sakurako declared herself a connoisseur of garbage, and since Abe was well, kinda garbage, it made sense that they got along, and she seemed very invested in everyone calming down and talking it out, so sure, why the hell not, he’d play along.

“Hey I’m not gonna start any shit if you don’t,” Abe said, visibly relaxing. (Did he even need to say that he still had one hand on his gun, anymore?) He gestured for Christina to sit down around the fire.

“I told you that I’m a real nice guy, didn’t I?”

[decoy73]

The girl Christina hadn't moved behind wasn't wasn't too happy with her. Of course, two phrases of hers really stuck out.

... when I made a big mistake he gave me a chance ...

... I don't have any issue with you and you can sit if you want ...

The girl in front of Christina reciprocated that Christina was actually free to stay. Christina put her hand on her chest in feigned shock.

"Oh, thank you!" Christina said. "Now this is how people should be treated!" She sat down in between the two girls. "I understand you might be angry, and maybe tensions rise a bit, but that can happen in a situation like this. Who knows. Maybe I got the wrong guy. You" she motioned to Abe, "do seem like a decent guy. It's just that, a couple days ago this other guy, he met up with me and this other girl I was with. I have my hands up, and you know what he did? He pointed his gun at me and told me to shove off. My ... 'friend,' what does she do? She tells me to leave. No apology, just a fuck you, your existence is meaningless, now fuck off. But hey, you're a nice guy. You wouldn't do something like that. Oh, sorry. My name is Rennes. Christina Rennes."

[MurderWeasel]

Darlene scooted over a little bit on the log. It wasn't just to make room for Christina, as she now knew the girl to be named, but also to put a little extra distance there. Just in case! It had by now been long enough in this situation that Darlene had learned the value of a bit of extra caution. Healthy skepticism of surface-level-safe situations was how she ended up running away from a tangled-up Amelia instead of getting bludgeoned from the shadows.

Besides, a little further down, she wasn't stuck on the uncomfortable lumpy spot anymore. She hadn't even really realized until right now that moving had always been an option. She could almost tell herself that was the primary reason for her opening some distance.

She was definitely not letting go of her gun anytime soon, but at least this was on the surface more friendly than thirty seconds ago. The sarcasm in Christina's words was evident even to Darlene, but its source was not, and there was a chance that the girl had indeed been mistaken (a whole lot of people in their class looked more or less the same!) and a perhaps bigger chance that Abe had done something a little unfortunate, something from the same playbook as shooting his gun for no reason in the direction of people just standing on the shore, and that it had left lingering unhappiness but that in the new situation and with the testimonials of two others Christina was willing to overlook it and start again.

In Darlene's experience, often a good way to get things to come true was to act like they already were. In this case, what she wanted was for everyone to get along, so she would do what she could, especially with Sakurako making such an effort of her own.

"I'm sorry," Darlene mumbled kind of at Christina but mostly at her hands. "It's been, uh, we've, I've had a pretty bad week."

Her fingers were not only small but kind of stumpy, not slender and nimble and elegant like so many of the other girls. She rarely painted her nails because she wasn't very good at it, and often ended up smearing stray dashes of nail polish onto the skin around the edges. She didn't let her nails get that long, either, because it was really impractical and also the longer they were, the more crud worked its way under them and that made her feel super gross, especially if she was eating something like fried chicken.

By now, of course, those nails were little claws, because she hadn't trimmed them at all on the trip and hadn't really thought to since, or had an opportunity. She wasn't so worried about what got under them now, though. What was the point? She'd seen worse.

"It's nice to meet you, Christina," Darlene said a little more cheerfully, looking at the girl and smiling but not offering her hand. She thought right now with where her head was she wouldn't be able to shake without scratching at the girl, even if she really didn't want to. Besides, they'd been in school together for four years. This was an introduction in only the loosest sense, and just because she was bad at names. "I'm Darlene."

[Sunnybunny]

Ah. Bad gun etiquette was an understandable gripe. If a gun was pointed at you, you had to assume they were going to shoot. If you got shot at, you had to assume it was to kill.

It was a life or death matter, and that was a big fucking deal out here.

"As fucked of a dick move as that is, whichever guy and friend did you like that, you got to walk away. There are people out here that would have killed you just for fun."

Or because they were cowards or monsters or broken.

She briefly thought of Justin, durians and brand new cars.

"Which is really messed up because killing isn't fun at all."

[dmboogie]

Well now they were all sitting in a nice little circle, weren’t they, just missing marshmallows and a singalong and another grenade plopping straight into the fire pit and blowing them four idiots into hell.

Christina was extending a weird olive branch but like, it was obvious bullshit, she knew and he knew that she knew and she knew that he knew that she knew, and Abe hadn’t exactly been trying to hide it from the others, so might as well come clean, right, not like they were gonna hold it against him now, maybe he’d even get some of those fabled points for honesty.

“Nah bro that was absolutely me, I mean thanks for the benefit of the doubt, but I totally did gunpoint you into scramming.” Gunpoint was a fun word to use as a verb, wasn’t it? Nice and sufficient, putting a cozy cover over the mind-numbing terror of knowing someone could fatally numb your mind, with a bullet.

Sakurako’s last little bit of wisdom was ringing around in his head and so he just kept fuckin’ talking, didn’t he.

“If it’s any consolation you got the better end of that deal than Forrest did anyways, haha,” he said, laughing a little even though it wasn’t funny and nobody else would find it funny, but hell if it wasn’t the truth.