noasark | Ryslig IC INBOX

And you'll recall I said as much. You shouldn't be expected to try. You shouldn't be expected to care.

What explanation offers is closure to an understanding, and that is all. Something to keep the ever nagging sense of 'why' and 'how dare' from following when you just want to not think about it at all. Understanding why something happened doesn't add a righteousness (frankly it lessens it), it closes the book.

Of course if working through that makes it worse it's pointless. It's simply the angle ~~I used for mys~~

It's simply an angle.

I don't think it's possible to close the book though. Not really. Not while we still live on the same peninsula. I ended up going to a house party where he lives, and that wasn't even on purpose. I just didn't know he lived there.

[Ryou almost writes more but then...wait.]

I'm sorry, the angle you used for yourself? Do you have some kind of experience with things like this?

[Not to flip the situation or anything but you can't just almost say that and pretend you didn't. The network's a little too janky to allow for such mistakes to go unnoticed.]

[EUGGGGH]

Tch, here I thought I'd fixed that issue with the delete key...

First of all, the problem is that unless you can give yourself some closure on this, you are going to damn yourself to nothing but bitter, resentful stress for the entire time that he's here. I suspect you would like to at least go to the corner store without having those sorts of thoughts nagging at your mind. And to be clear this isn't 'and then you won't be upset if you end up at the same house party'. Frankly in your shoes I would be plenty upset as well. It's more about not becoming so entangled in the emotion that you can't even enjoy some of that party, or anything else in this place.

To keep my end of it short, I am Gozaburo Kaiba's biological son, deceased prior the adoption of the brothers; if you can imagine the environment that would have created Seto, perhaps you can take a guess at what I needed to reconcile against. Not that we were treated the same by any means, but acknowledging that it was the same person who acted a certain way between us took some time.

[Ok ok ok. This is a lot.

But.

Ryou wasn't present for like. Most of any Kaiba backstory, never mind Noa's. So he's still a little hazy on all this.]

I'm afraid I don't know half as much about Seto as I'd like. But he seems like he had a stressful childhood.

[Ryou doesn't need a high perception roll for that. Kaiba literally oozes overcompensation.]

I'm guessing that your father was not the best? We don't have to discuss it if you don't want to though, I was just wondering about the whole...relevance.

[Noa is free to discuss but he is also free not to discuss. So in a show of general good faith, Ryou goes back to the subject that is definitely not what he wants to talk about.]

Also you're right. I'd like to do normal things without being upset he's there. Kind of wish that he wasn't upsetting though. It'd make things easier but that's wishful thinking, and we can go in circles with that all night.

Mmm. That puts it lightly but yes.

I'll keep it vague- it...isn't something to talk about lightly. To my father in life, I was the perfect son; I listened, I learned, I enjoyed learning more importantly, and for that matter looked forward to inheriting what was his.

Namely the largest arms company in Japan.

Seto was adopted after my death. Seto, who looked identical to myself.

Seto, who for that matter not only did not measure immediately to the standards I had followed, but did not want to go into war-mongering.

I'll leave the rest there to your imagination, but frankly while I knew one kind of man, Gozaburo Kaiba was the sort to sell weapons to both sides no matter the battle taking place. So he wasn't good, no.

I just failed to realize that for a very long time.

[That aside.]

It's good to wish that he wasn't 'upsetting' to you, but, aside from the fact that the consequences of his actions are unavoidable, it wouldn't help you to set that as a goal- so, we need to focus on coping with his existence in general.

[Ryou takes a little time to process that all. He's never been the one to know much about the Kaiba family, and it's weird to think that there's a person who looks almost identical to you in the world, except that their hair is a different color, perhaps.

You know.

Unless you're Ryou, who has an identical twin with wild eyes and gravity-defying hair living on a cursed peninsula with him. The only thing that makes them different is their species at this point, and Ryou would have almost preferred being a harpy to being a shade.

...But thinking about that is probably rude. Noa's sharing information with him. He should respond to it, right?

What does he even say...?]

That's pretty bad.

[Fuck.]

I mean, about your father. I wish I had something better than that to say, but...it's not my place, really.

[Mostly he's unsure what to say to that, and also he's avoiding the topic of the Ring-Spirit. Not because Noa's wrong just because...that's something he isn't sure how to respond to either. Because Noa's making sense.]

There doesn't have to be anything to say. I'm about as 'over it' as I can be, and ultimately we weren't talking to deal with my problems.

We're here for yours, which are frankly more immediate anyway.

Say something, if what I'm saying isn't helping though. I'd rather take some time to research a better way, than push something that makes things worse.

It's helping, but

I don't know how to explain this. I don't feel sorry for him anymore. He's wrong, and I don't want to give him the time of day anymore.

But I know that eventually I won't be able to stop myself backtracking into that behavior, because I don't want to be angry and resentful, like you said, and I think my response to that is simply to try accepting things over and over.

[There's a pause here, because he's ruminating over what he is going to divulge to Noa here.]

You aren't going to talk about this to anyone else, right?

[He has to ask. It's more for his assurance than anything else. He's put so much of his trust into everyone, including the Ring-Spirit...and that continues to not work out, over and over, because everything feels as if it's geared towards hurting him, and maybe...maybe that's just the whole malevolence of the Ring itself, given sentient form. He's not sure...

But if Noa's listening, he may as well confirm.]

You're not used to having a third option of indifference.

That's understandable, actually.

And obviously not, I might not be a trained professional but I know better than that. Anything this personal stays between us.

[He does mean that, actually- on the personal matters. Honestly he probably won't even mention that he's having these talks at all. Better to leave the Ring Spirit in the dark on that, he thinks.]

I'm sorry, I know it's a rude question to ask. But thank you for telling me that anyway.

It's difficult to talk about some things regarding my relationship with the Ring. Indifference is very difficult when someone's been in your head for years, and when they committed a murder in your body while you were...

I think I was...twelve.

I struggle with that memory. It was never something I wanted to remember, so I told a different story for a long time, but I think it was more than that. I think I simply pushed it away until it wasn't real anymore. I think that anyone would want to forget killing someone, right?

That's not the point though, the point I wanted to make is that the spirit has a habit of rationalizing his behaviors, and becoming frustrated when you don't understand them. Or...he's told me things with, shall we say, explicit motivations.

[So basically what he was beating around the bush to say was that the Ring-Spirit was an adept manipulator, of him especially, and that he was afraid to continue extending an olive branch to someone like that. But at the same time...Ryou wouldn't feel right staying away entirely. Because he'd spent so many years with that presence in his head, to the point that he, like Yugi, felt attached.

It's hard. This is hard. He's mad and will stay mad and probably if they talk again, Ryou will still always be a sarcastic jerk to the Ring-Spirit. But not talking has had an effect. Noa wants him to have closure? But he can't.]

You're traumatized.

There's baggage and you're traumatized. And I'm not surprised that's the case- if you've ever argued with the Fog, you'll find the mental path is the same. It doesn't justify it, but at the very least there's a beacon of hope that now that he's sorely human he'll figure out that he needs to stop rationalizing certain behaviors.

More to the point of what's important though- of course they would. Especially at that age.

...

Ugh, I wish we had a proper therapist here.

I've never actually gone to a therapist.

Actually I've never spoken to anyone about this really, and I wouldn't have known about it if not for Aigami showing it to me. I pushed it away pretty completely, but...

Demons have a way of crawling out of the closet, I suppose.

[He's...not sure how to respond to the assertion that he's traumatized. It doesn't feel as if that term is for him. As many times as he'd reclaimed the Ring, for whatever foolish reason...did he deserve to feel as if he was "traumatized" at all?]

But traumatized is a bit too strong a term for it, don't you think?

Likewise. Honestly I have no idea how a therapist in your world would have taken it. Professionalism would say 'seriously', but bad therapists still exist.

[.......................

ryou,]

I'll pose a short question to answer yours. If anyone else described to you, the things the spirit did to you, in full, and explained they had troubles with their emotions and so on, so forth, regarding the topic of said spirit, would you say they weren't?

I

I guess that's true.

[Noa stop being right.]

Exactly.

In any case, eventually this will...hopefully be something you can resolve. At the very least I'll do what I can on my end I suppose.

I appreciate it.

I appreciate all of this, Noa. Thank you for listening to me, you didn't need to do that. But I think I've taken up more than enough of your time. Perhaps we can shelve this discussion for a while.

[He's feeling a little drained over the whole conversation, because talking this much about himself and his problems felt extremely unfair. And honestly, it was very unfair to Noa.

But he wouldn't lie to himself that it felt better airing it out.

Actually...he should make sure Noa knows that Ryou's not attempting to run away from this, huh?]

Not that I find your help unwelcome, but I've spoken of a great many things in this one chat that I don't usually discuss in any kind of detail, and I think I need to decompress after this.

Considering how the conversation started, I'm surprised we managed to keep on this topic for this long as it is.

Still, if you want to talk more later, the laptop is generally going to let me know when I have messages.

For that matter my house is available, though that could be tricky to get to.

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