week zero: mingle

[cyclists]

Week Zero
32 in Competition

On Monday morning, the sun rises on the sleepy village, and when the first ray of light touches the gates at each corner of the village, the previously tightly sealed doors open.

The barriers around the village fall, and leave it entirely open. Each cardinal direction will have a path exiting the village, taking the curious explorers who follow it on an adventure to new territories to be explored. They’ll find that each location that they arrive in appears to be associated with one of the elements. As the Signs had explained the day before, each of the participants in the game possesses an elemental assignment, whether they are aware of it or not.

When they approach the elemental areas, they’ll find themselves more in tune with their new powerset, as if the location invites them to take them out for a spin. The new areas appear to be perfect for training and learning how to use the new skills, or maybe if you’re curious you can discover which of those listed powers you’ve been granted.

Just try not to hurt yourself while you’re out there.

In addition, it seems now that more pieces of the core are being revealed, the river that runs through the village will begin to be dotted with small lanterns floating on the water. Some of them seem to be holding small notes. Try as you might to grab one, they’ll always just barely float out of reach.

Perhaps try sending one yourself and see what results you might get?

Occasionally in the village, you might hear the sound of drums and flutes - is that festival music? - though no matter how you search, you can’t find the source… yet.



Welcome to your tutorial week mingle log! Please see all the links within the log to check out the new updates. In addition, your status page has been updated. In case you missed it, please report all item theft to this top-level where all comments are screened. Private conversations are also open and should be reported under the Week 0 top-level.

A mini-event will also be posted on Wednesday, June 5th, so please keep an eye out for that!

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Comments

[twinsightful]

[Now that he has her hand, he's leading her to the dance floor just a little away from other people so they don't crash and burn. It's fine. He can deal with blunt.]

Haruhi's a friend from home. We needed her to learn for a Christmas party we were hosting and it went poorly for a while. [Cheerfully.] As long as you know how to count it's easier to learn.

[stillstands]

You hosted a Christmas party that required fancy formal dancing like this? [ check this suspicious face. ] You're not some sort of secret royal or something are you?

[ Does the emperor's family do formal dancing like this? Come to think of it, this kind of dancing usually shows up in stories about Western royalty. So maybe not. ]

I can count, definitely. But it's usually to a rhythm isn't it? I don't know those.

[twinsightful]

All of our parties require formalwear and social dance. [Sorry about him.] Do you think I'm royalty? [He's not going to confirm or deny that. "King" isn't his title and he's definitely not the prince-type, but this seems more interesting to play along.]

There's a rhythm depending on the dance, but for a simple western step like this you can count and move in time with your steps. Follow my lead. [A simple waltz is a go.]

[stillstands]

It sounds like the sort of stuck in formality thing royalty would do. Fancy parties for the sake of fancy parties. [ She shrugs. ]

That's not telling me what that count is you know. [ Erm....?? 1... 2...? 3??? Is that it?? ]

[twinsightful]

[There's a grin. He'll even count out the steps for her this time, out loud, before he addresses the other part.]

What's wrong with fancy parties? It's all for making connections, isn't it? Plus they're fun.

[stillstands]

[ Oh. Oh, it is 1, 2, 3. Okay, she can do this. ]

You can do that in other ways. Through your teachers, or attending university planning classes and the like. They usually have course and job fairs.

[ Connections to Miki Naoki mean: planning for university and her academic future!!! ]

[twinsightful]

[There's a laugh this time.]

A lot of these are for school events or university planning. To show off leadership potential and remain in good standing with certain families. [...but more importantly:] What's a job fair?

[stillstands]

[ ... oh my god. ]

You've never been to a job fair? It's good for companies who want to recruit upcoming potential staff, or to give people some idea of what they might want to do in the future and how to go about achieving their goals.

Training, voluntary work or internships that'll help you stand out, courses to take, that kind of thing.

[twinsightful]

[This is just. The most blank stare.]

Oh. One of those things. [Spoken like someone who knows he doesn't have to worry about his future very much.] I don't think we need those. We know exactly what we want to study when we get to university and everything.

[stillstands]

[ Gross. ]

Not everyone does, you know. It's there to help everyone - and it's also good for getting things that improve employment prospects and your employability. I don't think it's worth dismissing them so flippantly.

[twinsightful]

[It's still not something he has to worry about, hence the disinterest. Instead, he seems focused on keeping them moving in their dance.]

Does that mean you don't know what you want to do with your future just yet?

[stillstands]

[ At least someone is. Because Miki sure stopped paying attention at that question. The future, huh...? ]

I thought I just wanted to graduate. But now... I think maybe I want to be someone who can help other people, and change things people say are impossible into things that aren't.

Maybe medicine, or studying illnesses. Something like that.

[ She blinks, and then looks back up again. ]

Why? Do you already know what you want to do?

[twinsightful]

An entrepreneur, then. [That's a concept he's aware of.] Although the medical field has done miraculous things if that's the sort of change you're going for.

[He seems to think of something before waving it off.]

We want to study fine arts. Culture, painting, pottery, design...things like that. ["We" still.] But we have two more years before university to narrow it down if we need to.

[stillstands]

The medical field might be more along the lines of what I’d like. I’d been thinking about it in some capacity, but I guess I started being more serious about it than I thought.

[ Ah. ]

“We”?

[twinsightful]

Might I ask what caused you think along those lines? People usually don't just decide to change the world without prompting. [Not really. Not him.

But before he answers her he's sweeping them into a spin.]

My brother and I. We've already decided.

[stillstands]

...

[ There’s a pause. ] A lot of people got sick. And we don’t know if we can do anything about it. Feeling that lost and helpless is scary, and I don’t want to be in that position again.

[ Oh lawd there they go with the spin. Help. ]

It sounds like you’re close, if you want to go into the same industry together.

[twinsightful]

I suppose that would be good motivation. [That sounds like there's more to it than that, but he settles for spinning them and not taking this quite as seriously as he could.]

We've always done everything together, and it makes sense for us. [They had talked about living their own lives versus being together forever and it's a comfortable enough situation now.] Besides, we have friends who want to study law and business and those sound boring to us.

[stillstands]

[ Acccccckkkk. There she goes. There she goooesss againnn. This spinning thing is kinda disorienting. ]

How do you not get dizzy doing this?

I guess it depends on what you're good at. I'm not creative, so facts and information, and how it all fits together is more what I'm comfortable with. If you have the ability to be creative, then why not work outside the box?

[twinsightful]

Oh. You pick a point on the wall and focus on it so your eyes don't spin. [But he'll stop spinning them.]

We've never really lived inside the box in the first place. [A box, yes, but not a normal person's version.] ...someone once told us something very important. "The winner is the one who lives the way he wants." Would you believe that?

[stillstands]

You... uh--[ She squints at a point on the wall but then they're not spinning and now she's just there squinting at a wall. Nice. ]

...

I think it depends on your situation, and how you think. Do you think you're a winner if you trample and destroy to get to where you want to be? Can you live the way you want if other people factor into your life as well?

But it would be nice to live life how you wanted to.

[twinsightful]

It works better when you're actually moving. [Don't be an asshole, Kaoru.]

Wouldn't it depend on if those other people still have other opportunities to pursue? If you're not stealing every single chance from them, isn't that just getting ahead of something you both had a chance of getting? [It's a thought.] And anyway, I wouldn't call something like that destroying.

[stillstands]

I was moving! And then you-- [ You know what? Never mind. ]

If you took all those opportunities, then... maybe I would see it as destroying. If it's a even ground, sure, but sometimes people focus so hard on one thing they miss the other things around them. I'm not sure I want to live a life where I work so hard on one thing that I forget to actually live.

[twinsightful]

[A mischievous grin? Yes, he was moving and then ruined it.]

...sometimes working on too many things all at once isn't so great either. But learning to balance that is where it becomes complicated, I think. People are always learning all the time. But what happens if they learn too late?

[stillstands]

[ She's so tempted to step on his foot. So. Tempted. ]

It's never too late to learn things. Better to learn late and still experience that balance than to not learn at all, right? As long as you get to experience some benefits it's worth doing.

[twinsightful]

...a very wise statement. [He seems to ponder on that...

...and begins to spin them again. Weeeeee.]