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 Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2026 2:06 pm
[backdated to follow flowers in resin] They were out. Tianyi felt a deep sense of relief as soon as Ilmari joined him at the finish of that ridiculous gameboard, and they were back in Destiny City, and all of that nonsense was over.
He turned to smile at Ilmari, to tell him they'd done well, whatever was going to come out of his silly little mouth--because so many of the things he said were so ridiculous, and so silly--but Ilmari....did not look well.
"Ilmari?" Tianyi's voice wavered a little, and he went down to his knees in front of his...friend? Maybe? He wasn't sure, his feelings about Ilmari felt very tangled and messy, but "friend" would do. "Ilmari, can you hear me?"
The way he looked, the way he'd collapsed--Tianyi recognized the look of a man who was very much absent form the present moment. He wondered if he looked like that, when he found himself awakening from a nightmare and not having fully shaken it off. No one had ever really taught him how to handle such a thing in someone else, but he was just going to have to do his best.
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Posted: Fri May 01, 2026 7:10 pm
Shambling out of the gameboard’s little pocket-dimension and back into the real world, Ilmari tried to focus on……something. Anything, as long as it was real around him. Like the chilly air around his face, or the way it felt so heavy in his mouth. The way that trying to breathe felt like ******** drowning. Like he was trying to inhale Jello, or pudding, instead of oxygen.
Even that simile—something that fundamentally wasn’t real—exacerbated things: Ilmari’s legs trembled beneath him, shaking like a fawn first learning how to walk as he tried to move forward because he couldn’t bear the thought of how badly he’d set himself back by making that comparison real. Instead of really seeing the alley in front of him, Ilmari saw the back and side nutritional information panels of different snack foods flashing before his eyes. Black numbers and letters stark against the white, spelling out exactly how godawful for a person that instant pudding was, because the numbers attached to the calorie counts of any given edible thing were indications of how Bad And Wrong And Horrible that food was.
Exactly how weak somebody would make themself by eating it.
Ilmari had barely made it a few steps away from the exit when he staggered too hard and collapsed. Pain shocked up through his body as his knees slammed into the pavement. A gasp came out, but even to Ilmari, with his awareness of the world around him in this present moment quickly fading as everything he carried around drowned out the warm, gentle presence nearby, that gasp sounded shallow. Barely there. Just like his breathing, coming in shorter and faster, so small that he couldn’t feel them.
Doubling over, he hugged himself. Distantly, he heard Tianyi talking to him. Asking him something. But the words sounded as if they were coming from too far off for anyone to hear. As if Ilmari had slipped underwater, and anyone who wanted to reach him couldn’t now and never would again. It was all Ilmari could do to shudder and let slip a tight, high-pitched, whimpering sort of noise with a fragile quality to him, like a window riddled with spiderweb cracks, threatening to finally shatter.
None of what he’d experienced in the gameboard would’ve happened if he were actually on top of things. If he had himself together. If he were not failing his team by failing to, at all times, be his best.
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Posted: Sun May 03, 2026 12:35 am
Oh. Oh no, Tianyi was definitely not equipped to be handling this, and he knew it. Deep down, that was obvious to him--he just....couldn't do things. Couldn't make them right. But he was the only person here, and Ilmari seemed...distant, and lost, and...
And he needed someone to guide him back to the present.
Ilmari had always seemed to respond...well. Interestingly. To Tianyi's magic. and it seemed as if maybe he wasn't quite hearing any words being said, but maybe with a little extra force behind them--Tianyi took a breath.
you have to do something.
He could have stood up and walked away. but that would have made him a coward in new, even worse ways.
So instead, he whispered to call on his magic, and once the kerria flowers were blooming around them, he tried. Because Ilmari sounded like he was suffering, and Tianyi couldn't just...walk away from that.
"Ilmari. Please. Breathe. Slow and deep."
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