River’s Notebook
-> Two groups with their own goal
Our goal: Complete ritual
-> Map: Building, ground floor off limits
-> Length: Seven days, no repeats
-> No shadows – real setting
Rules
-> Be social/communicate
-> Don’t try to leave
-> Don’t walk around at night
Other Group
-> Papyrus (Strength), Soot (Knowledge), Acorn (Social)
-> Goal: ???
Situation
-> Morning bell with meals together on second floor
-> Seven floors + open rooftop
-> Feeling watched/observed?
-> Miles some sort of leader? Talks about other people’s lives
-> Possibly two opposing cults in here?
-> Security walks around at night, once an hour
Building
-> Ground floor ng (Fingerprint lock)
-> 1. ??? (locked), infirmary (with unfriendly/suspicious doctor?) (Selene, is nice to Acorn)
-> 2. Meals, meditation
-> 3. Rooms
-> 4. Rooms
-> 5. Library, open rooms (also sports)
-> 6. Some rooms + ??? (locked)
-> 7. ??? (locked) cultist room? Miles talks in the evening (no symbolism?)
Incidents
-> Night 1, Logan lost tongue (is conscious, otherwise unharmed? Accident?)
-> Night 2, Vanessa lost fingers + Iris lost ???
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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Papyrus coming to work out wasn’t exactly something odd, considering his build, but everyone’s relaxed expressions faltered momentarily anyway when they spotted the giant man who greeted them with a nod.
Silence reigned as Papyrus got onto a training machine with weights. Everytime the metal gave a clink, people twitched.
Probably out of a desire to get rid of the uncomfortable silence – or to gain a powerful ally – the guy who said he travelled around a lot spoke up. “Well, on that topic, maybe Papyrus has an idea? Excuse me, Papyrus, if you don’t mind…”
The clink sounds stopped. Mister Travel-Lots forced a fawning smile, but his fidgety behavior betrayed his nervousness. “You know, about the… the accidents that keep happening around here. What’s your opinion on them?”
There was a subtle – honestly, not so subtle – glance towards Aspen from Papyrus, but ultimately it was no secret to either of them that this was most likely related to their tasks.
“You shouldn’t be letting others into your room for the moment”, Papyrus grunted, basically admitting that he thought there was someone dangerous around.
“When did we ever let people into our rooms”, the non-player said while playfully rolling his eyes. “I mean, that rule has been around from the start.”
Wait, what?
Both players inside the rooms faltered.
A rule to not let people into your rooms?
There was a rule like that???
Was this why visiting others was so impossible???
Why was there such a rule?!
Wasn’t this making it incredibly obvious that the one who did these things was someone from the staff who could enter without an invitation?!
Was no one thinking about this???
“I mean, not even secretly”, Papyrus tried to change directions, though there was a little waver in his voice.
“It takes time to learn that only together we can thrive, and time to understand the value of a quiet space to ruminate all you have learned”, a shorter guy said in the tone of someone quoting a well-known line. “Our rooms are precious. Not even staff comes in. Do you think… someone is breaking into the rooms?”
No. No. This was not the point. The staff most likely had keys. They wouldn’t have to pick any locks, would they?
“Any lock can be picked”, the traveller agreed with a solemn face, almost replying to Aspen’s thoughts.
Halfway through making a sound, Aspen forced himself into a cough and covered up his mouth to stop himself from talking.
You people have unbelievable trust in the staff of this place, he wanted to say, but the first word was swallowed down like a rock.
Us. We.
He was a part of this. He too trusted the staff. He too worried about the safety of his precious room.
“Right. The locks aren’t anything special, so you could probably even look it up online, couldn’t you?”, he forced out. “I’d bet many people here know how to. It’s an interesting topic after all.”
“That’s true! I got stuck on how to create explosives one time”, someone else blurted out.
Everyone laughed again.
The sweat that cooled Aspen’s skin had nothing to do with the workout.
How evil it was – to find out things, you had to question, but if you questioned, you would stand out. He had to inform River of that as quickly as possible. They had thought they had to blend in somehow, but they hadn’t realized that they didn’t know the details of what they were blending in with.
Obvious actions like eating together were easy to copy, but it was the subconscious actions that followed a certain mindset that were not only much harder to figure out, they would also make every mistake so much more obvious.
No matter what they were thinking, at least openly, the staff had to be trusted.
Miles above all.
…Oh, he really didn’t like that guy!
As things currently stood, Aspen was getting a headache on how to continue. There was no way to form a group when Papyrus was around, any information he dug out would also land in the other group’s ears, and to make things worse, he couldn’t even leave because he didn’t want to leave Papyrus here to talk to everyone!
They both proved to be equally stubborn, refusing to leave until lunch approached.
Originally, River had wanted to use the time to further improve their social interactions with everyone, but Aspen looked genuinely close to breaking down into tears, so they got the quietest table in a corner.
That River was basically feeding an overly clingy Aspen got them good-willed looks from many elderly people at least.
It was easy to wonder where the other team held their conversations, considering that their own place for doing it tended to be their shared room or the rooftop.
Aspen quickly summarized what had happened, and River did the same. He had tried to catch Soot, but the girl had been incredibly wary of him approaching and avoided him easily by slipping into a meditation room. He had then switched plans, sticking to Miles instead.
He had done his best to catch Miles off guard or get some info out of him, but things hadn’t worked out at all.
Miles welcomed all the questions, answering nearly all of them in the most normal way possible. When River had attempted to dig a bit deeper into his own suspicions, Miles had praised him for being a curious person, instantly shutting the awkward River up.
The rest of the staff – well, Selene excluded – was equally happy to indulge a curious young man asking questions. In stark contrast to Miles though, they had reacted oddly whenever he asked too much. It seemed to fit in with what Aspen heard, that maybe he was acting up too much.
Since the staff was off-limits for a while, the easterner decided to work on another point for the rest of the day.
The victims.
By dinner, both men had talked their mouths dry, but at least they had a pretty good idea on the profiles of the three people.
Logan was a young man. Outside, he was working at a large brand selling clothes. He had taken a vacation for whatever thing that was going on around here. Logan was known by everyone as open and friendly, to the point of sometimes being overly friendly with strangers, which could create awkward situations. He didn’t have a single bad thought inside his head. He wasn’t in a relationship, but did have siblings and parents.
Vanessa was an old woman, long retired. Her husband had passed away a couple of years ago and she had no children or living siblings. Most people regarded her as something of a grandma they could talk to. Vanessa’s hobby were handicrafts of all kinds and she often gifted them to others when asked.
Iris was a teenaged girl. She and her two friends were still students, actually at a nearby boarding school, but had slipped out. Their parents thought they were at school, the school thought they were at home. Iris was a bratty girl, but only to an understandable level given her age.
The profiles gave River a bit of a headache.
In truth, he had had a thought the moment that he wrote down Logan’s and Vanessa’s profile. A pattern that seemed to be there. But then Iris came and destroyed that pattern, mostly due to her injury – she too had lost her tongue, and that didn’t match what he had considered the pattern might be.
Another pattern, then?
A tongue yesterday, a tongue and fingers today, then tomorrow three victims with one new injury?
The sooner they found everything they needed, the safer it’d be.
With his head filled with worries, River naturally zoned out through the daily session with miles, blindly staring at the wall.
Even back inside his room, when night approached, he was still focusing on the things he had written down.
At least he tried.
Author’s Note
I cut a couple lines of River’s notebook that aren’t too important 😀
