interstellar5555 | Locked in a Room

"I didn't mean it like that! Sorry..."

He quiets, and quickly changes the subject back to what they were talking about. Jamie hadn't wanted to talk about it at all that night either, and now he understands why. He didn't know that Jamie thought he was going to die, and given what Predator pulled on them, it was probably even worse than he originally thought.

"Anyway...it sounds like these things come when something big happens. The gala, the kidnappings, this lockdown. Argh, this is hurting my head!"

Jamie latches onto the subject change willingly enough, though he's a little more subdued about it at first.

"And before that, all of that...haunting crap was happening on the bus while we were touring. Maybe it's just some kind of stress reaction or something? Or some kind of...energy, building up when we're all in close quarters like this, like some kind of, what is it, biofeedback." He looks extremely dissatisfied with these solutions, though, and throws up his hands in frustration. "I don't know. We need more information."

But how do they go about getting it?

When it's all laid down like that, Yosuke finds it to be more disturbing than he originally thought. It was easy to blow it all off before, like it was just all of them being paranoid or strange things happening by coincidence, but there's no way he can ignore it now.

"You know, if all this strange-ass crap wasn't happening, I mighta said you were nuts for suggesting something like biofeedback. You think that maybe our labels are cursed or something? Actual ghosts that are messing with us, or maybe trying to tell us something?"

He can't come up with any way to find the information. It's too supernatural, and he's definitely not calling the Ghostbusters on this one.

A month ago Jamie would have dismissed the idea of ghosts out of hand, but now his brow furrows as he gives it some actual thought.

"That's...not as farfetched as it sounds, I guess." He goes a little quiet, thinking about how much to share and how to phrase it. "Two of my hallucinations now have had something to do with...a plane crash. At least, that's what it looked like." He doesn't really want to bring up the next part. "So...you think maybe it has something to do with my parents?"

And then, like he can't quite bear to let the topic linger too long, he adds: "Did either of your visions have anything to do with...y'know, dead people?"

It sounds so morbid, when he puts it like that.

Yosuke winces at the question. It did, have something to do with dead people. That much is obvious on his face. And the thought of Jamie's visions having to do with his parents, dying in that accident...it makes his heart sink. And in a way, it terrifies him a little. Ghosts of the past coming to haunt them, how messed up is that.

"...Yeah, actually." He says slowly. "But the girl who died...I don't know who she is. In my vision, she was important to me. I think I might of loved her." He tries not make it obvious, but his voice chokes a little. "You knew your parents, but I have no idea who this girl is. Or really how she died. I just know that something killed her in this weird foggy place called the Midnight Channel."

Fantastical, that's what Rei had said it was.

"What I saw...doesn't seem like it could be real. At least plane crashes are real..."

One look at Yosuke's expression in response to that question tells Jamie enough, and he looks away, a little awkwardly. Yosuke was obviously pretty profoundly affected by his vision of the dead girl, and despite their typically contentious relationship Jamie isn't enough of an asshole to make light of things while he's this upset. But he doesn't really know of a helpful way to react to it, either, so he just goes silent for a bit to let Yosuke pull himself together and finish working through his train of thought.

When Jamie finally speaks, it's very cautiously. "How - " he begins, then cuts himself off, reconsidering; then he starts again. "Did you...see this girl, like...as an observer? Or did it feel like...you were experiencing what she felt?"

If it really was ghosts trying to tell them something, then maybe their way of doing it was by sharing their experiences with the living. To what end was still a mystery, but one thing at a time.

He shakes his head. There was nothing like that at all. He appreciates that Jamie doesn't make fun of him, or poke and prod in their usual manner. If he thought about it too hard, it almost brought him to tears. Without knowing why, which made things all the more worse than they needed to be. He has to look away for a second as he recalls everything he'd gained, taking a deep breath.

"No. I...remember getting the news that she'd died at a school assembly or something. And then, we figured out that she'd been murdered...but nothing like what you're saying. What she looked like, who she was- I don't know any of it. Except her name is Saki Konishi. That's it."

Yosuke looks helpless when he says it, as if putting the pieces together so far isn't making anything better. That the pieces aren't fitting, and it frustrates him.

"See what I mean? I don't get it, bro. Maybe I was off on the ghost thing."

Again, Jamie listens quietly as Yosuke explains what he'd seen. The look Jamie gives him afterward is almost sympathetic. "Maybe you are off, but it's not like anything else makes much more sense. And it's weird that these...dreams, visions, whatever they are, share some things in common. Like dead people." And robots, but he leaves that part out for now. "When you take that into consideration, the ghost thing almost seems like a logical conclusion."

He scrunches up his face in thought. "Have you, y'know...tried looking any of this stuff up, to see if there's anything about it online? That girl's name, or that Midnight Channel thing?"

"I was gunna, but I got so caught up with trying to get with Rei and all the interviews and stuff that I never ended up having time. Sora said he was going to see what he could find too, 'cause I talked to him about it a little at the gala. Guess it's never too late..."

He made a mental note to look that stuff up later. Now that it's invading his mind again, he won't forget. Yosuke seems to of relaxed a little bit during the course of the conversation though- talking about it has helped.

"Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea if you did a little research yourself. Like trying to find articles about your parent's death or something. There should be obituaries and stuff online, right? Maybe that'll tell you something about what's going on."

"...yeah. I think I might do that." There's a sort of uncertainty to Jamie's tone, and not just because he's not especially looking forward to reading about his dead parents. He can't remember anything about the crash, save for the vaguest of details, and he can't bring himself to push past a sort of mental block to think back on it too much - and that makes him feel terrible, because what kind of person doesn't remember anything about something like that?

...but that's not something he's going to let Yosuke know right now, despite how unusually open they've been with each other tonight. "So maybe we can do that and compare notes later, see what we come up with?" He hesitates again, because he's worried sick about their still-absent bandmate and, deep down, is afraid they'll never get the chance to talk with him again. "...and we could talk to Sora, too, if - when he gets back. To see if he found anything."

The attention that's brought to Sora makes Yosuke's eyebrows knit with worry. He knew Sora had gone missing. He'd discussed it before and he'd decided that he was going to talk to his other bandmate when he got back. He's just been gone for way too long now. The word 'if', it strikes something within him, something that didn't exactly feel good.

"...How long has he been gone now? Hasn't it been a couple of days? He shoulda been back ages ago. This is seriously getting way too weird..."

He looks around the room nervously, as if trying to see if those same men who had taken Sora were there in the room listening.

"It's been...yeah, almost three days now." His tone is glum, his expression anxious. "I haven't been able to reach him on his phone or anything. You still haven't heard anything from him?"

Jamie sees that little glance around the room, and it makes him nervous, in turn. "What...are you looking for?" he asks uneasily, and huffs a dry, humorless chuckle. "You think someone's gonna sneak in here and grab us all again?"

He regrets saying that the moment the words are out of his mouth, not just because it's an all-too-likely prospect given the ease with which Predator pulled it off, but because that's more or less what Jamie's started to suspect has happened to Sora.

"Sora wouldn't just leave and not say anything," he says, concern lacing his tone once again. It was too weird. He didn't like it, it creeped at the edge of his mind and he couldn't get rid of it.

"I'm not ruling out someone coming in here and kidnapping him or something. They did it once, who's to say they won't do it again?"

His position changes as he says it, almost seeming like he's putting himself into a defensive stance. In case someone does come for them again.

"I know he wouldn't," Jamie says a little more forcefully than he intends. "And - yeah. I keep thinking, y'know, he missed out on the thing at the amusement park, maybe this little 'trip' he went on was some kind of...private hazing or something. I don't know."

He throws up his hands again, looking bitter and frustrated. "I hate being where we are in the pecking order, y'know? Everybody gets to do whatever they want to you and nobody fucking tells you anything that's going on. It's bullshit."

Yosuke understands that frustration, he feels it too. He hates it. He can't argue Jamie's point, nor would he want to right now, because he's right- it is bullshit, and he doesn't get why they have to suffer through any of this.

"Don't say that. About Sora. I don't want to think that he's going through the same crap we did. One day we're gunna be the seniors around here, and no one will get to do a thing to us. Screw those guys at the top right now, they'll be wash-ups before you know it."

He says, trying to get Jamie to feel better, trying to get himself to feel better. Somehow. Through this entire mess that was their current life.

Jamie doesn't want to think that either, but the notion keeps creeping into his head anyway, no matter how he tries to dismiss it. Maybe that anxiety is what's really to blame for the dream that woke him up, not ghosts or anything else. He doesn't know if he can bring himself to fully believe that, though.

He exhales heavily, one corner of his mouth quirking up in a half-hearted ghost of a smile. "Yeah. We're gonna have to work hard to make it happen, but we'll get there for sure, once Sora gets back."

Locked in a Room

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