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guestservices) wrote2022-04-26 05:00 pm
guestservices) wrote2022-04-26 05:00 pm
Entry tags:
VALET.
VALET
Today, when Lup is in her bedroom, she will receive a message on her typewriter.
Dear esteemed guest, congratulations on winning our raffle. The grand prize: a way out of this place.
No, not really. As if you'd be that lucky. Hope you're not afraid of heights.
Immediately after she finishes reading the message, a trap door opens underneath her, plunging her into the darkness. When she wakes up at the bottom (?), bones miraculously not broken, she will find herself in a room.
It's a room that she won't have seen before, small and dimly lit. Its appearance is utterly generic, almost empty save for the sofa chair Lup landed in, a coffee table; a lantern on said table along with a box of office supplies and YOU TRIED stickers; a box of keys; and a sofa chair across from her on the other side.
Lepus is lounging on the latter chair, the very picture of casual. They glance over at her.
"Congrats on not dying. This is going to suck for you, so let's get it over with."
They push the box of keys over at Lup, which will allow her to see that each key has the name of a guest at the hotel. Furthermore, Lepus tosses over a paper at her. It reads PARTICIPATION CONTRACT: ADDENDUM.
"Go ahead and sign it. You don't have much of a choice here, after all."
RULES
1. Once a week, the Valet will be called on to carry out duties on behalf of the other guests.
2. They will be able to do both of the following:2A. Choose the keys of two possible targets. One of them will, at RANDOM, be selected; the Valet will not be informed of which one, though they may be able to determine once the relevant day has passed. If the selected target is targeted for death on Thursday night, they will be granted life at a later time.
2B. Choose the keys of two possible targets. One of them will, at RANDOM, be selected; the Valet will not be informed of which one, though they may be able to determine once the relevant day has passed. If the selected target is voted at trial to be executed, they will be granted life at a later time.
3. Note that these keys are replicas, cannot be removed from the room, and will not grant the Valet actual access to the guests' rooms.
4. The Valet is not to disclose that they are performing these duties. Discussing them with anyone other than authorized Hotel Staff will be considered breach of contract and will result in the death of MILES EDGEWORTH.
N̸A̵V̴I̶G̶A̶T̴I̴O̸N̷.̷
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Look - agreed, first of all, wow! The first thing we've ever agreed on! Wild. Anyway. [she leans forward a bit.] I do wish I was anywhere but here. I want to go home. I don't want all of this on my shoulders.
But, uh, you're not the cause of it. You're a dick, but I hate being here because it gives me anxiety to be responsible for people's lives, not because I can't handle some jagoff with a few thousand complexes.
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... Haha. And you wonder why I don't...
[anyway.]
Sorry, but I'm not a masochist. I might be a psychopath, but I think that's more of a kindness than telling people you like them and then immediately make it clear how much you hate talking to them.
If you want someone to be angry at so you can feel good about letting off steam without accidentally snapping at someone nice like Gemini or whoever, then it makes no difference to me to play the part.
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I didn't talk to you for a week because I was perhaps understandably a little bit angry about being thrown into a wall. Is that what you're talking about when you say it's clear I hate talking to you?
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... Look, let's be blunt. I don't have the time or effort to spare on grudges from my end, but on the other end? You should hate me. It makes everyone's lives easier if you do, really.
[...]
From my perspective, you don't like me. You like the idea of liking me, maybe. [their tone's a little less nonchalant now and more tense.] But—I'm not some kind of game where you press the right options to unlock backstory or level up relationship points or whatever, and if you make a wrong step somewhere, the story just goes back to the route and moves on.
I don't hate you. I don't even dislike you, frankly. But my friendship isn't a challenge for people to obtain at their own convenience.
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Don't assume that shit. You don't know how I feel about you because you're not in my head. [she says, first off.] You make it really hard to like you. You know that. You do it on purpose. And I'm not always a very patient person.
[she pulls her feet up to the couch, putting her chin in her hand.]
That being said, I'm not trying to press buttons to unlock anything. Sorry if I'm making you feel that way. I just... don't know how to connect with you. I want to.
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You shouldn't. I'm a violent, dangerous psychopath, remember?
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Okay - I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Genuinely. You scared the shit out of me and my response to that is to be an asshole.
[...] Cloud mentioned something to me that made me think about what happened in a different context, so just - I was mad, and now I'm not.
What I said to you before you held a knife to my throat is still true.
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Okay, so what if I acknowledge that, but I still stick around anyway? And deal with it as it comes.
Not saying that I believe there's nothing good about you, for the record, but just in the flow of this conversation.
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[...]
Shouldn't you be celebrating? Your friend is alive. Don't let someone like me kill your day.
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I can celebrate and also do this. Multitasking. [...] You know who you remind me of?
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If it's Royce or Jason's brother, I've heard.
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Those are right, too. But uh - no, you remind me of Taako, in a way.
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they really do not know what to make of this comparison to her brother? should they feel offended?]
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Bratty and mean and reluctant to let people close, but also prone to being secretly upset that nobody likes them when they're mean.
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I understand what you're saying. You're a terrible person and you think I should stay away from you, and also I can't just put coins in your machine to collect you like a prize, which I guess is what I've been doing according to you. Yes? No?
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For one, I'm not so much of a child that I'd get upset that my actions are working as intended.
[so they're not really secretly upset that people don't like them for being mean. that's a feature, not a bug.]
When you could die at any moment, you're better off saving your breath either for people useful to you or for those you know who'll stand by you. Staff like me doesn't fall under that.
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[she's not bringing up the memories. that's a little bit of it, too.]
... Is that all people are? Useful or loyal?
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You don't always get the luxury of associating with people for other reasons.
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[a pause.] A long time ago, my - my, um, one of my crew members. He told me about how my brother had said that people... got interchangeable. Like, everybody he ever met was just talking dust, because that's how it got, when we had to abandon every world we came across. A hundred years of that, you know? I don't... blame him, I guess.
I don't really think that way, though. It's hard, actually, I don't know if I'd call it a luxury? I don't know if empathy is a luxury.
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[if one's willingness to connect with others was always proportional to their level of empathy, things would be very different.]
Relationships are a time sink. Cozy relationships—based on the notion of "liking each other" rather using one another—even more so. Practically speaking, not everyone can afford to invest in those.
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