paixaorpg | [Open Thread]

Entry tags:

[Open Thread]

Character(s): Mr. Hanekoma. Open to anyone who wants to join
Content: The Paixao branch of WildKat Coffee is open for business. Feel free to stop on by!
Setting: WildKat Coffee, corner of H5
Time: Throughout the day
Warnings: None.
Note: This will be party style, so feel free to start your own threads, and Mr. H will jump into them. Also, if you want tag other people's threads, since this can be a great chance to meet someone new!

Wiping down the counter of the newly opened Paixao branch of WildKat coffee, Hanekoma looked around to do one last check that everything was in order for a new day of customers. So far business hadn't exactly been booming, but even if he met one new customer Hanekoma was willing to call it a good day.

After all, the more people he met, the more his world expanded, and the more he understood the events that surrounded him. That in mind he moved to the door, and flipped the sign to 'Open.'

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Well, the truth is we're always changing in some ways, but in other ways we stay the same. Embracing that process allows us to adapt to the twists our life takes, while keeping who we are intact. Resist change enough, and you wake up one day a totally different person with no idea how you got there."

Hanekoma paused to take a sip of his coffee, savoring the flavor. He noticed that Larxene didn't exactly answer his question, but he let it slide. "Well then, this is a very interesting place indeed. I don't suppose anyone has any clear idea why this happens, huh?"

Larxene's smile widened. "Some people must know more than others, though," she said. "And what about after you die? Do you keep adapting, or is that it? I guess that would be a pretty quick transition depending on how fast they died."

An innocent hypothetical question, of course. A Nobody's transition, from life, to death, to nothing... It was all very fast. And she could remember exactly when she had stopped being someone. In every empty, hollow mimicry of emotion, she was reminded. Every time a heart that wasn't there should have beat didn't.

"Death is just another adventure, another chance to relearn who we really are," he said in a tone of certainty. After all, who better to know about the nature of death than someone who worked in the afterlife?

That was the whole point of the game, after all, to show people that even when they lost that which they valued most of all, they could still endure, could still grow and change and rebuild their lives and find new loves. That life was about living, and you never had to stop. He wondered if Neku had realized that lesson.

Hanekoma had faith that he had.

"Or become someone else entirely?" Larxene asked, watching Hanekoma and sipping at her coffee innocently enough.

She wasn't Elenra, not anymore. She was something else--a not-thing, to be precise. She could remember what Elenra would do in situations, how she might react, but it was almost never how Larxene chose to behave. She took what she could from her old life and made it work for her now, all in the name of getting back that old life--or something like it.

Though, the more she saw how people seemed to treat their hearts, and the more she saw how emotions led to the downfall of many around her, the more she wondered if it was really worth all the trouble nobodies went through. Still, though, she could feel her heart calling to her.

"Given enough time, everyone turns into someone else. Sure we retain some of who we were, but just look at a child compared to an adult. At their core they are the same, but so much else about them has changed, could they be considered the same person? I think so, but others might beg to differ," he mused.

Of course, the question itself was an intriguing one. Hanekoma had learned that it was rare for someone to ask a question without some reason for doing so, and Larxene had just asked two very interesting questions in a row. Death, and the changes it brought, seemed to be on the young woman's mind.

Were Hanekoma a different man, he might press the issue to find out more, but that would go against his policy of letting others open up to him when they were ready to. He found you learned a lot more about someone when you listened to them, than when you tried to force a connection. It wasn't like he didn't have time.

"I'd say there's a difference if the change is extreme enough," Larxene said with a childish tilt of her head. "Some of the sweetest children grow up to be murderers."

And the conversation had taken a somewhat morbid turn--even for a conversation on death--but Larxene treated it as gently as if she were talking to a child. It was all the same to her, and she would treat it as such. It was easier to forget the difference when you didn't have emotions clouding your judgement. Easier to remember just how pointless some things were, too.

Larxene was a fan of hypotheticals when it came to getting to know someone--especially on this particular topic. And, assuming he wasn't lying to her, she would at least get to know a bit about his philosophy toward life. That could be a good thing to know, for later.

"True," Hanekoma conceded, "However, that murderer would not be who they are, were it not for the child they once were. There is always a continuity to our lives, and even if we are very little like who we once were, that person is still important to who we are now."

In truth, Hanekoma didn't consider death to be all that morbid of a topic. All it was truly was a transition into a new way of experiencing the world, giving all sorts of new opportunities to expand one's world.

Certainly the loss of old possibilities, and the departure from those you'd welcome into your world was sad, but that was why it was so important to live every day to the fullest, so that when you had to transition to a new stage of your existence you did it without regrets. After all, things always change, and you couldn't let the fear of that change paralyze you from experiencing life.

Hanekoma enjoyed hypotheticals as well, they were great for learned more about a person. As for Hanekoma's honesty, he never lied, he just never told the whole truth.

"Is there any case a person would be different than they once were? Unconnected to what they were before." Larxene asked. "In your opinion, of course."

She was watching him carefully, but he seemed quite good at keeping a poker face, and it was as frustrating as it was curious. Normally people betrayed more of their inner feelings than he seemed to be. Was it something he'd learned to do, or was it natural? Either way, cracking him was going to be harder than she thought.

But she didn't want to abandon the conversation yet. It was quite an interesting topic; she hadn't had such a conversation in some time.

"I don't think so," Hanekoma mused, "Unless they were completely reborn, without any connection or memory to what they once were, and even then, it would depend on the circumstances. I suppose the most accurate answer would be that I have yet to experience such a person." For Hanekoma not to have seen them, that meant they were very rare indeed.

Part of the frustration of dealing with Hanekoma was just how honest he was. He always told the truth, but never the whole truth, and his personality and self identity was so layered that it was possible to think you'd learned everything there was to know about him, only to have a whole new layer you never imagined.

As for the conversation itself, well Hanekoma was clearly very interested in it.

"Paixao brings many people here," Larxene said, sipping lazily at her coffee. "Perhaps you'll meet one here."

Perhaps he would meet many here. As for Hanekoma, Larxene was certainly having trouble figuring him out, but was interested enough in the conversation to continue regardless. It wasn't often she could talk about this without having someone whine about morbidity or in some other way prove themselves an idiot only worthy of being a plaything. Not that Hanekoma wasn't a toy in her eyes--he was just a more interesting one than usual.

"So, do memories make a person, then?"

"I can only hope," he replied with a grin.

Hanekoma wasn't one to consider any subject taboo. Certainly he was a man who valued life in all its forms, but in his opinion censorship only served to keep people from being able to truly understand each others point of view. To understand one another, people first had to be willing to be honest with one another.

Shaking his head, Hanekoma said, "People are more complicated than that. Memories are one part of what makes us who we are, but a person can endure even the loss of their memories. Loss is just another means of growth, albeit not always a pleasant one."

But that was too simple a scenario to satisfy Larxene. She tilted her head, took another sip of coffee, as if trying to work a question out into the open. It was more for show than anything; she already knew what she was going to ask.

"And if it were the other way around?" she asked. "If memories were all you had left, and you lost everything else. What are you then?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Open Thread]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject