JUMP TO MONTHLY PROMPT ↓
A TRAIN COMES INTO THE STATION.
You wake up on a train.
Your phone is buzzing. It's in your pocket, in your hand, on the seat next to you. It's a normal phone, and you're on a normal train car. One of the lights flickers, a little further down. The world is very quiet. It feels like you're right where you're meant to be. On the phone's surface is a white screen and the words—
WELCOME TO THE CITY. BEGIN ORIENTATION?
▶ NO
Please take a moment to complete your orientation.
Once you're finished, the subway doors slide open to let you out onto the train platform. To your right, the platform continues on and eventually ends; to the left is a set of stairs that will lead you up into the station itself. The platform is quiet, clean, empty—there's no one else around, and the only sounds you can hear are your own footsteps, your own breaths, and the occasional faraway sound of a creaking pipe or rush of air. The train you disembarked will stay there as long as you do, its doors still open, until you finally decide to venture up into this new locale.
As you make your way up the stairs to your left, you find yourself in the belly of City Hall station. The station is large, a sprawling underground mini-metropolis of corridors and storefronts. Here, you may find others like you, freshly-arrived city residents from other realms (or even your own). There is also a subway map, which will give you an idea of the layout of the neighborhood, and ticketing machines, which can currently only be used to buy tickets to a handful of stations located on lines 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 9.
If you're hungry or in need of any kind of supplies, there are plenty of storefronts inside the subway station as well—snack stands, convenience stores, restaurants, clothing stores, a pharmacy, and a variety of empty shops that may or may not have ever been in use. Everything is unlocked, and you can take whatever you need.
Characters may stay on the train platform indefinitely, and may re-board and re-disembark from the subway as many times as they like, but the train will not depart nor will the doors close. Once they go up the stairs into the train station, they may hear the train doors closing and the train departing. Another train will not arrive, no matter how long the character waits. Only once they come up the stairs into the station itself may characters encounter their fellow newly-arrived residents and take advantage of what the city has to offer.
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WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
The station is located in the city center. It has three major exits that lead to areas of interest in the district, but there are several other smaller exits that lead in other directions around the neighborhood. You are welcome to use any of them, but may find the north, southwest, and east exits to be the most welcoming.
TO THE NORTH
The northern entrance to the station leads up into the sunlight and puts you out in a brickwork plaza. There's a modest building in front of you, three or four stories of stone with a welcoming facade. There's a sign above the entryway—it says City Hall. You may be tempted to explore, if you're interested in learning more about the city and how it functions, but prepare to find yourself disappointed—the folders in the records rooms are full of empty, blank sheets of paper, and the logbooks and balance sheets are similarly devoid of information.
Immediately to the southwest of City Hall, you will find a small building that houses the tourist information center. It looks welcoming, with an inviting glass facade and a sign above the entryway announcing it as the "TOURIST CENTER." It's a humble building with a receptionist's desk on the back wall opposite the entrance, empty magazine shelves lining the side walls, and a few spinning brochure racks full of blank pamphlets. Anyone is welcome to peruse the tourist literature, though they won't offer much information, being primarily filled with pictures of the surrounding area—City Hall, the park, a statue garden, and the surprisingly heavily-featured cemetery. There are a few sentences sprinkled throughout about basic offerings of the city, such as apartment complexes and office buildings, as well as a few maps with the same limited scope as the larger version on the wall behind the receptionist's desk.
TO THE SOUTHWEST
The western exit of the station takes you up into a city park, lush and green with a very light fog still hanging about the trees. There are lampposts on the walkways and benches where you could rest, and plenty of flora, although you can neither see nor hear any signs of animal life. You walk the paths that meander idly through the verdant grass and you feel a sense of peace, some of your unease about this place easing into a pleasant calm. The air smells fresh, like it's recently rained, and you'll find the grass ever so slightly damp should you decide to take a seat.
As you make your way deeper into the park, the trees grow denser and the smell of soil and plant life grows stronger. This is the older part of the park, very nearly a forest, with ivy climbing the trunks of the trees and plants and shrubs growing riotously around their bases. As you turn a corner, you find yourself first in the statue garden, although the statues are harder to see now, choked as they are with ivy. There are many statues, some partially obscured, some fully—very few of them still stand free of the vines and clinging roots. (It doesn't feel quite as peaceful here.) If a statue's face looks a little bit familiar, you may not want to look at it too long.
Continue down the path and you will find yourself in a graveyard, one that seems centuries old. Most of the headstones are worn away by time and covered in moss, rendering them impossible to read. The few that are free of moss are blank, or bear only suggestions of names too faint to be understood. (Was that the name of—no, it couldn't have been. Could it?) Many of the headstones stand at an angle or are toppled over completely, having been subjected to either strong winds or the roots of the trees that grow up from some of the graves, spreading branches toward the sky.
TO THE EAST
The final exit of the station, to the east, puts you out on a quiet surface street. Are you hungry? Or are you paralyzed by choice? There are plenty of restaurants, offering options of almost any food you can imagine. You could try a convenience store—it's well stocked, and the items there seem free for the taking. How about a restaurant? There's no one to take your order, but when you look in the kitchen, there's something on the stove, and it's just what you've been craving. Imagine that.
A few blocks down, you come in through the lobby of a tall building and find yourself in a corporate office. The fluorescent lights are steady and unforgiving, and the cubicles and offices are empty. There are a few pieces of paper on desks, a few folders left in organizers, but everything is perfectly blank. Despite how empty and quiet the office is, it nonetheless gives you the feeling that just a few minutes ago, this place was bustling with workers going about their daily business.
You enter another building and find yourself in the lobby of an apartment complex—finally, a place to rest. The first door you try opens easily into a completely empty living room, freshly vacuumed but without a single piece of furniture. It's a nice apartment, quiet, but with a little too much echo for your taste, maybe. Still, and perhaps oddly, you have no trouble envisioning what life here would be like.
The second door you open leads to an apartment that feels lived-in. Why does it feel lived-in? It's fully furnished with items that seem to go together perfectly, true, but the feeling is more than that—the room feels like someone was just here, maybe standing right in the kitchen only moments before you swung the door open. The air is a perfectly comfortable temperature, and it somehow smells like home despite that you've never once set foot here before. The refrigerator is stocked, and the cabinets are full of spices and flatware and kitchen utensils.
As you look around the living room, you find that there are pictures in frames on the walls and some of the flat surfaces—a seascape, a field, a shot of a city park bench. In each of the photos there's something just slightly wrong with the angle, as though the photographer were aiming for a subject that can no longer be seen.
Characters are welcome to explore the district around the City Hall subway station to their heart's content. The City Hall building itself contains several floors of offices and file rooms, but none of them contain any particularly interesting information. Nonetheless, characters may wish to team up with other newcomers and try to find some hints about the nature of the city. They can also spend a while in the park, the statue garden, or the graveyard. In the blocks surrounding the station there are plenty of options for food and housing, as well as office buildings, storefronts, and alleyways to look around. There are no workers in any of the buildings, and there does not seem to be an honor system for payment, nor any consequences for taking food from the stores or setting up camp in an apartment or office building.
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IT IS THE ULTIMATE SHADOW, THE DEFEAT OF CREATION.
In one section of the newly accessible portion of the city, nestled in among normal looking residential and commercial buildings, is a wide and relatively short and industrial-looking building with no windows and only one grand set of black glass doors set into one side. Above the entrance is a neon sign that plainly states ART. with smaller letters sm added to the front in metallic paint. Hopefully, this simple signage will give passersby the impression that this is an art exhibit of some kind, with a twist.
DO NOT TOUCH THE ART…
Once stepping through the front doors, guests will be greeted with a lobby with walls covered in vertical neon lighting that pulses in a rotating rainbow, and mirrored ceilings that make the space feel surprisingly small. To one side is a bar where various cocktails await pickup. They don't have any special effects, but being a bit tipsy might help enhance the experiences waiting for you beyond. There's also a rack of bottles behind it, stocked with the typical liquors and mixers, if you'd like to play bartender for a while. Thanks to the disorienting amount of colored lighting and dark corners, it may be easy to get lost and turned around in the large building, and guests may be surprised to find that they're unable to locate the exit (or entrance) while alone.
After leaving behind the lobby and stepping into the exhibit proper, you'll find yourself walking through a central winding hallway with large rooms branching off from it in both directions at regular intervals. Some of them are more interactive than others, but all of them are dimly lit except for the "art" that guests will find themselves in the middle of, encouraged to touch and participate in creative collaboration. A few of the simpler rooms include:
Hanging ropes that will light up where touched, changing color with the amount of kinetic force applied: purple for a brush of the fingers, red for a crushing grip. These pulses of light will travel out to either end of the ropes the longer touch is applied, and considering that the room is pitch black and seemingly endless thanks to the mirrored walls, you may want to find some help in lighting up the dark.
A sunken floor filled to the brim with translucent plastic balls. This ball pit is a literal bath of color with every-changing light shining up from the floor of the ball pit and diffusing through the balls. A wall of cubbies at the room's entrance awaits belongings and shoes that are asked to be removed by a polite sign at the top of the stairs that descend into the ball pit. Be careful, for the pit is deep and it's easy to sink beneath the surface if you sit or lie down; you may see some shadows of people a ways away from you, but if you wade through the balls to their rescue, you won't find anyone tangible there.
A small theater of benches all facing the back wall that is a single large screen. The display is a moving series of lines on a black background that give the audience the sensation that the room is moving, or they themselves are traveling through the space. Atmospheric music—mostly heavy bass and noise that's been timed with the movement on the screen—hums through the room and adds to the sense of immersion.
... IT MIGHT TOUCH BACK.
One of the more interesting rooms is actually divided into three smaller rooms, each with a heavy, sound-dampening door that only has a small square window set into the top of it. Through the window, you can see that there is a red room, a green room, and a blue room. Stepping into any of them will be a different experience where guests will be entirely immersed in the color—even the window is a one-way mirror from the inside, blocking out any sights from beyond. The longer guests stay in these isolating rooms, the more disoriented they'll become, and it's entirely possible that moods will shift from the experience. Be careful stepping back out into the exhibit itself, your eyes and ears may need time to adjust.
In the green room, guests may feel like they've stepped into a concentrated and unfiltered essence of nature. The speakers play a variety of animal noises layered with leaves rustling and branches creaking as they move as well as wind, rain, and other kinds of weather. Looking at yourself, or your companions if someone stepped inside with you, you see their eyes and teeth pop clearly in the bath of green, somehow more obviously animal than ever.
In the red room, the temperature is higher than the rest of the exhibit, not uncomfortably so but noticeable all the same. Looking down at your skin, you can see more of the blemishes, the dark spots or pale scar tissue that contrasts much more starkly. From hidden speakers in the ceiling comes a mixture of sounds that are hard to place as they're so layered over one another, but the overall noise is inorganic, discordant, unsettling. It's hard to focus, let alone look at anyone else you might be sharing the room with.
In the blue room, there is almost an absence of experience. The only sound is a low, steady hum that vibrates through you as you stand and close your eyes almost on instinct. Everything gets erased in the layer of blue that covers everyone and everything in the room, skin looking almost gray from the lack of any other colors that are so often associated with life.
The last room of note is completely black and empty except for three massive umbrellas of flowers and other plants that are suspended from the tall ceiling, illuminated by lights shining on them from above. Each umbrella is about as high off the ground as the average human and varying by a few feet or so, so that it's possible to stand or crouch beneath them. Once standing in their shadows below, guests will be able to hear whispers coming from above…
These whispers tell real secrets of city residents—past, present, and future—though names are never included. The secrets are told in their own voices, though, almost like confessionals to a confidant or their pillow in the dark of night. These secrets can be positive, negative, or simple fact. Some may be shocking revelations of guilt, or shy mutterings of love, or secrets spilled as if the speaker has never thought of this part of themselves before. There is a hush throughout the room, and if guests were to whisper to each other beneath the umbrellas, conversations would not be easily overheard.
Residents are encouraged to meet up in the bar with friends, grab some drinks, and then head into the art exhibit. It's also a great place to meet someone new as there will be plenty of interactions happening as everyone hopefully discovers a bit of their inner child. There's no right or wrong order to exploring the rooms, but residents will not be able to find the exit without the presence of another with them—even if you came alone, you're leaving with a friend!
For the Secret Garden whispers, players are encouraged to make up something scandalous to discuss with others or even have their own character's voices whisper to them from the flowers. Please remember to discuss with other players before including any information about existing and potential characters that may affect their gameplay.
Inspiration for this location includes 9 Lights in 9 Rooms as well as Hopscotch. Title is from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.
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WILDCARD.
The city is by no means small, and there are plenty of things for you to see. There are even some places that other residents have created! There's no rush in exploring, so feel free to take your time looking around and peering into various nooks and crannies and alleyways—and don't worry, you're not very likely to find anything peering back.
If none of the above prompts appeal, feel free to check out the Locations and Maps pages and write your own freestyle prompt using one or many of the available locations. We highly recommend checking out the Character-Run Locations as well - they might be great places for new characters to get started!
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citycenter) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
citylogs2023-11-01 09:00 pm
hong lu / limbus company.
Excuse me.
[ there's this very specific encroaching feeling one gets when one is being mistaken for the worker of an establishment that you very much don't work at. it comes first with the weight of an expectant gaze prickling along the back of your neck, next with the soft clop of approaching footfalls that are just a little too purposeful for your liking, and then the little jolt of a thing when you realise that you are, in fact, against all odds and indeed possible existing wishes beneath the stars of this godsforsaken land, being addressed. the feeling sinks much in the way of cement shoes when a pair of mismatched eyes gleam at you from the pall of green that's cast across this room, congealing with the prayer affected by misidentified individuals everywhere: oh fuck me.
one deep dark purple, the other a glinting gentle cyan: both are rife with untenable expectation as with a gentle tilt of his head hong lu beams. ]
This exhibit is lovely. I've never seen anything like it before. Can you tell me what the thought process behind it is? Or what the artist was trying to achieve? Or maybe you can tell me about the history of it. If you have a script, I don't mind hearing the whole thing. I promise I won't be bored. [ with that calm, pleased lilt as hong lu casts his gaze across the gentle green wash of the walls. in the lighting, the colour of his one, cyan eye seems overly saturated somehow, like someone went into photoshop and went to the moon with the curves. he continues, happily, with the earnestness only found in newborn kittens and some conartists: ] For example, is it that there is very little nature in this city, so this is a way for the lower classes to enjoy the calming effects of the scenery? It's nothing as expansive as the view from my bedroom window, but I can see they've put a lot of work into it.
[ question posed, hong lu carefully tucks his hands behind his back, and beams as he waits for an answer. surely this tour guide (you) (i'm so sorry) will have a perfect answer for him! art exhibitions sure are fun. ]
ii.
[ this is it. this is the bad place. for everyone else, that is. because you're walking into a restaurant and you're met with this: hong lu, standing there looking radiant but confused at what appears to be an entire buffet spread across the counter behind him. what's on display - curries of all imaginable colours, an ice-cream soda, nine different types of waffles and a whopping total of sixteen kinds of beefsteak (there are not that many types of beefsteak in existence? there are now).
hong lu is lifting beefsteak number seventeen off the stove right now. the only difference between number sixteen and number seventeen is that there are onions. he looks up with a smile. ]
Well, I couldn't decide how I wanted the dish... hm. The menu said that another side you can have is mashed potatoes. I wonder what kind of potatoes they use in it. My family only uses the one that grows in sandy soil with the ocean's scent; they should have it here, right?
[ beefsteak number eighteen plates itself. the stovetop gleams with it. the mashed potatoes tucked away next to the slab of meat look terribly accused.
hong lu hums. ]
Do you want to give it a try with me? [ he says, hopefully. ] I can't carry all this back to my table myself.
iii.
[ wildcard me! i'm chill, i'm voicetesting, bear with me ahahahhaaaa. ]
iii, grips
most certainly someone peering around the corner at him, following him wherever he goes... there's been all manner of phantoms and false images of her fellows, so don quixote has to be absolutely sure of hong lu's existence. he doesn't seem crazed. seems normal, even. seems... hong lu-ish, and a lightness lifts her heart and feet as she races over to slam bodily into his back with a sobbing cry: ]
Hong Luuuuu! It truly is thee, is it not?! Thou art not a physical phantom, are thee?! Ohhh, I have missed thee so!!!
[ incomprehensible, moreso than usual -- but she's clinging, and if not for that familiar dialect she could be mistaken for a normal girl with the sweater weather casual she's got on rather than their uniform. cat print sweater... ]
grips u back!!
hong lu is in the middle of tilting his head to match the swimming angle of a particularly neon green jellyfish when he hears the patter of footfalls. finally, he thinks, with some amusement - only to have that thought swerve when the patter of the footfalls proves to be something of a familiar cadence. like the clattering hooves of a golden horse, hong lu thinks, just as he lowers his arms and lets the weight slam into his back. don quixote is an energetic combination of noise and unadulterated speed. she seems to be on the verge of tears. it takes him a moment to understand the fuss. were you supposed to miss someone you haven't seen for three hours, hong lu wonders, or perhaps the train was like a warp train, and it has been a thousand years... but don quixote doesn't look like she's aged a thousand years. she looks like she's aged all of ten seconds.
truly, hong lu thinks, the world is an interesting place. but because this is hong lu, what he does is laugh. ]
Yes, it's me. What does it feel like to be a physical phantom? [ hong lu asks. the cyan glint of his eyes is curious and pleased and confused at all once, which is, in truth, a very hong lu sort of thing. he holds up his hand and peers at it with interest. earnestly: ] Is it the outside part that is the phantom, or is it my bones? Oh, but you said physical, so I should be solid on the outside - perhaps my bones have turned into a ghost? How can you tell?
I KNEW YI SANG WOULD BE HERE BUT YOU..... YOU.
[ and won, apparently, squeezing tight a moment before she steps back with a sigh, rubbing her eyes. ]
I am partly happy to see thee, and partly not; I welcome thee to the City, though named simiarly it is not our own, and within the same breath I must warn that the idyllic nature of its silent streets hides a foul side as well. But I do not wish to speak of it now.
[ later, later... later, she's just happy to see another of them after so long, beaming brightly. just... let her look him over. it will have been far longer for sinclair, she thinks, but the encounter is nice enough anyway. ]
I SPEDRUN LIMBCO IN 24 HOURS, DEATH COULDN'T KEEP ME AWAY
that being said - what hong lu hears and what hong lu sees are two different things, as they often are. don quixote rubs her eyes, and hong lu tilts his head for a moment. he then reaches out with a hand to gently pet don quixote's head, the way one would when helping a small and distressed animal. after all, he's seen others do much the same. ]
Thank you for not opening me up to take a look at whether my bones are solid or not, then. [ hong lu says, as always earnest. ] Maybe we can try it a little later. Why have you missed me, though? Is three hours apart long enough of a time to miss someone?
i mean this in the most affectionate way but what is wrong with you
I shall conduct the experiment rightly, later on. [ crack his arm like a glowstick. ] While three hours is certainly enough time, for I have found myself ready to return Young Sinclair's side -- he is here as well -- soon enough after I have left it, the time we -- that is, thyself and myself -- have spent apart is far greater on our end.
[ ... let's see. ]
It has been two months since I had last seen thee, though it was more before that, and for our companion it will have been closer to half a year, now. It would be the same for me if not for a happening I had no control over, but it is too much to explain at the moment.
THAT IS THE REAL QUESTION HAHA
sort of like how there will always be another arm to crack open like a glowstick. hong lu nods earnestly, pleased. he patient listens. ]
I see. [ he says, even if he were to admit that he hasn't seen much of anything. then, hong lu brightens. ] Hmm... you've experienced more time than I have, right? So does this mean that you are Don Quixote from the future?
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[ she's got months on him... if they were the same age, she'd be older than him... that sort of thing. who can say. maybe she is. nonetheless, "don quixote from the future" has a sweet ring to it. ]
In that case, allow this one to tell thee what will happen in the next five minutes!
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Will you? Please do! What will happen in the next five minutes, Don?
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ii.
it's one of those moments. when the mind stops on one thing, then you're quickly swept up into another thing, which leads into another thing, automatic and reflexive. ]
I... don't think we can eat all of that, Hong Lu.
[ with all the tired, gentle energy of the straight man in a disaster comedy duo.
it seems to snap when released, however, and the casual atmosphere he so easily slipped into follows. sinclair blinks, as if realizing, the path of his gaze going from the unhinged spread of food to- ]
... Hong Lu.
[ ah. ]
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Ryoshu said something like this, didn't she? How did she say it again... Ah, right - [ beaming: ] 'Not with that attitude'. [ hong lu delights at it. what a fun new phrase. still, emil looks a little more 'not that attitude' than usual, and hong lu takes a moment to tilt his head and peer at his companion. ] Hm? Emil, what's wrong?
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E.O.D.
brushed aside by the multitude of things that rush in now. what's wrong? well, the beginning is catching up with him after it's already happened. there's something a little surreal about a one-sided reunion, now that hong lu is responding. words and words, the same conversation, falling a little differently on both sides. ]
It's— [ is that something wrong? ] —nothing. I'm just trying to figure out what to say.
[ and how to explain. even though he did once, it's somehow more difficult as the months go on.
sinclair shakes his head. ]
... For now, I guess it's... You're right. That does sound like Ryoshu. [ putting aside the fact that attitude doesn't magically make your stomach empty, in the interest of not getting spiritually stabbed he'll— ] What did you want to try first?
no subject
but don quixote and emil have always been rather similar in this regard, hong lu thinks. they both feel quite a bit. don quixote towards the positive, and emil towards the negative. it makes sense, then, that emil would struggle the same. now... what to do about it. ]
Hmm... well, before that.
[ right. hong lu could do this. he smiles as he turns to face emil properly. he holds open his arms, much in the way shady men in dutch-brown overcoats do everywhere. ]
Come here, Emil.
[ this is, apparently, a signal for a hug. ]
no subject
that is, apparently, a signal for a hug.
that's not choosing the course to start on. food. that's not food. that's— an action sinclair's gotten both less and more used to. that's something he doesn't expect regardless, though it does a wonderful job at stopping the mental sentences he's clumsily stitching (smashing) together in his head. The Thoughtsᵀᴹ, you might say.
replaced, of course, with The Thoughts©.
one of those is that maybe leaving hong lu hanging like that ("come here" is not immediately fulfilled, how did you know) when he's... considering his thoughts is- not great. the next thought is more natural, voiced, entangled in moments beyond this one as emil sinclair shuffles into the most unexpected (mildly awkward) hug of his short life— ]
... Was there something on my face?
[ he feels a little read. ]
no subject
emil shuffles into the hug. hong lu looks on. it's a bit odd, really. hong lu isn't used to this sort of contact, at least, not unless it ends with someone ripping out the throat of someone else. sifting through his memories, he can't recall any instances of having had a hug from his childhood days and beyond, though he supposes that isn't anything unusual. hong lu isn't sure if the hug they're having right now is awkward or not. but don had tackled him the moment he had seen her, and that had seemed to help. perhaps a hug that came from a slow, shuffling approach could also be effective, but hong lu isn't certain.
still, his hand rests on emil's back just once, before he's tilting his head again with a look of abject consideration: ]
Not on your face. But Don Quxiote wanted one when she saw me, so I thought you might have wanted the same. Ah, but hers came to me at my back. Would that have worked better?
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the owner of them is very solid, sinclair is realizing. he's also realizing that some of those loose threads of awkwardness have tied together into the form of something else, the name of it shifting. the smile he gives is in time with the way he moves to return the hug — tiny, light and a little shy, still, but present all the same. like hong lu's hand on his back, or the slightest curl of sinclair's fingers against the fabric of his clothes.
so he met don quixote first. mm, she would beat him to it. ]
It's almost like a tackle, isn't it? You might knock me over if you tried that.
[ he's so much taller for him to try her back hugging? sinclair remembers it from the time they first got here, which... seems even longer ago, now, in hong lu's presence. he can only imagine that the one he got was way more intense, too. ]
... This is okay. I— was just surprised.
[ about a lot of things. ]
i.
...Though, in retrospect, maybe his silk vest doesn't do much to mark him apart from being a potential staff member. That is, if this was an ordinary museum.]
Do you really think I work here?
[please say sike]
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Yes. [ yes! it is a gentle yet confident yes. it's the sort of yes that schoolchildren recite to reaffirm their commitment to academic integrity. hong lu beams. ] You have a lovely uniform on, and you look like you're very knowledgeable.
[ then, a thought occurs to him. hong lu leans in with a pleased hum: ] Oh, I promise I won't tell your manager that you haven't been giving many tours, though. There aren't that many people visiting the exhibit. Maybe it's not very popular? But that's not your fault.
no subject
[fuck it man]
Then forgive me. Ask your questions, I'll do my best to answer. The exhibit's only just recently opened, but surely others will come trailing in. Eventually.
no subject
Then, hm... [ he ought to, hong lu thinks, ask questions that other people might not ask. that way, this nice art exhibit tour guide wouldn't have to repeat their answers too many times... hong lu considers this. ] On the way here, I saw a park with greenery. It seemed nice. Is it 'art' when you take something that usually belongs on the outside and put it inside a room like this one?
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[Daan folds his arms.] Art is but a statement. The statement here is undoubtedly what can be tamed, and that is nature itself. To have it thrive from its natural state, and to have it on display arranged. There it is. Nothing can be untamed by human hands.
[100% bullshitting he just thinks this place is heckin weird]
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hong lu, for his part, is evidently pleased. ]
Are you a senior tour guide by any chance? I knew that you looked knowledgeable. If I had money here, I would have given you a tip... would eight million Ahn be enough? [ hong lu's head tilts. ] Perhaps they should add some of the garbage that people often throw into nature into the display, too, so that their statement can be how even garbage can be tamed by human hands.
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Perhaps you yourself could be an artist? Food for thought.
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the verdict comes with a quiet lilt: ] I don't think so, though. By the way, I've heard that before: 'food for thought'. What does it mean? Are you the sort to need to eat before you can think deeply?
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ii.
Suspicious, too, for it reads far too much like a trap—easy bait for hungry humans who have no choice but to get their sustenance from the shops of this dead city. Case in point: the fool before him, who approaches the counter guilelessly, eyes sparkling and more than ready to dig in.
Scathing: ] Are you an idiot or something? You trust all of this to be free of poison?