Honesty
| Honesty | |
|---|---|
| Date of Cutscene: | 17 October 2012 |
| Location: | Shard Seeker HQ - Girls' Dorm, Fluorgis |
| Synopsis: | A curious burst of confidence. |
| Cast of Characters: | Shiki Misaki |
"I deserve to be confident."
"I deserve to be honest about my feelings."
Shiki has to sit on her bed and tell herself these things. It's not easy.
In the Reaper's Game, she chanced upon Eri- the girl whose appearence she was currently wearing- and Yodai Higashizawa's manipulations aimed to crush her under her despair. She eventually overcame those confidence issues, but due to being steeped in the darkness following the destruction of Shibuya, her memories were scrambled and destroyed, leading her to forget those precious lessons.
As such, Shiki Misaki is having to pull herself up by her bootlaces, once again, finding a way to recover and better herself without the important factor of the truth.
She has been scared: scared that the Shard Seekers would reject her if she was, or even if they thought she was, responsible for Reize's death. The first thing didn't come to pass, but she's been proven wrong about the second. Priel was wrong; they stood by her. Would stand by her. Will stand by her.
She has to tell herself these things, because it's hard to make herself believe. She believes she is inferior to others; that her dreams are all she has, that she's a plain, worthless being compared to Eri, and compared to the worth she can have upon other people.
But she's going to learn. She is scared: as she said to Ivo, she is scared of losing everyone. Losing Reize to incompetence; losing her newfound friends, losing Reize to Lenn, losing Neku. Never finding her friends from Shibuya again; being alone. It's ingrained in her mind as a Player: being alone means death.
And so, with her new buzzwords clear in her mind, Shiki casts her mind back to a week or so ago. When they finally arrived in Fluorgis, she told some people they'd seen a Flowering Cactoid, and they were amazed, telling her that it was a rare sign of miraculous fortune for young lovers.
Before, she'd just have been flustered. Now it makes her happy.
"I like Reize," she says. "I'm going to be honest with myself. I think I want ... to stay by his side. Not because of a Pact. Because he accepts everything I am, and because he makes me feel like a better person. Because he is always there to save me, and I'll be there to save him."
"And because he makes me happy."
She breathes in the evening air, then breathes out again.
And if she meets Neku once again, she thinks? Well, we'll cross that scramble when we come to it.
