one death: tragedy / a million a statistic / incommensurate

[roc_on]

Beila gives Dao space. He is extremely right that she's not the best person to be sad about his dead serial killer friend with and that seems to be his principal occupation, so - space.

Comments

[thinklikethis]

"Oh."

[roc_on]

"...I can think about that not at you, if you prefer."

[thinklikethis]

"I don't know," he sighs.

[roc_on]

Smoothie. Slurp.

[thinklikethis]

"I guess it depends if you think I'll have anything useful to contribute."

[roc_on]

"I'm not sure. Do you think you might...?"

[thinklikethis]

"Kinda hard to tell without trying it."

[roc_on]

"Suppose." Shrug. "Where do you see us going? Where does this end up?"

[thinklikethis]

"I... don't really know?"

[roc_on]

"Where do you want it to end up, then?"

[thinklikethis]

"I don't really know that either. I don't have, like, a big plan for how my life is supposed to go. I don't know where I want to be in ten years, besides out of my dad's house and, like, alive and not a serial killer."

[roc_on]

"Okay, side question, how actually difficult is not being a serial killer for you."

[thinklikethis]

He sighs.

"Not actually that hard. Like... the thing that goes wrong when I think the wrong way about it isn't that I start turning into a serial killer, it's that I start feeling really scared that I might, and those are really different things."

[roc_on]

"Okay, good."

[thinklikethis]

"Yeah."

[roc_on]

"So like... there's kind of not enough there there for me to even say 'we're not compatible', it's not like you want to move to Ember Island or devote your life to protesting various monarchies or something I couldn't be attached to like that, but that's... kind of not helping? Not incompatible but not present enough to be compatible in a more active sense."

[thinklikethis]

"...What do you mean, 'not present'?"

[roc_on]

"Your plans are all about places you don't want to be. There's not enough substance for me to think about in terms of the question I'm trying to get at."

[thinklikethis]

"What actually is the question, though?"

[roc_on]

"Whether I want to stay together that being the logical consequence of not breaking up."

[thinklikethis]

"Okay... I mean, what are your big life plans?"

[roc_on]

"Traveling around for Avataring projects and going back over all the bending forms to polish them and I'm ambivalent about having, like, kids, but I do want a relationship and while I'm listing things I'd probably rather it be properly monogamous at least once I'm no longer literally a teenager and I want to build that bridge and figure out how spirits work and see if there's dead people somewhere and if so whether anything useful can be made of that information and become immortal."

[thinklikethis]

"I'm still going to study structural engineering, I want to like... build stuff... I just don't know what stuff, or where, or anything like that."

[roc_on]

Nod.

[thinklikethis]

"...I dunno. I feel like we don't have to know for sure that we're going to be great for each other five years from now to decide not to break up immediately, but... maybe you don't feel like that."