Logs:Go Stay Go
| Go Stay Go | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2024-06-25 "Ainokea 'bout normal." |
| Location
texts & Gaétan & Nanami's apartment | |
It's almost a full minute before a reply comes.
It's considerably longer than a minute before Nanami answers; long enough it might seem like there won't be any reply.
It's only a little while later that there's a knock at the door to Gaétan and Nanami's apartment, though Nanami could probably feel her coming before that, if she's paying any attention at all to her eletrokinetic sense. Whether or not Nanami can sense Kelawini, she's not the one who opens the door. Gaétan is dressed in a kind of post-work halfway state, loose wrap pants with a halfway buttoned button-down. "Ballpark, how many times a day do you use your brain to google something?" "Zero." Kelawini is wearing an orange tank top with a bold sweep of pink plumeria printed around one side, deep plum capris, and black sandals with purple and pink straps. "I learn some better way for search. You want I fix up da kine for you too." She claps Gaétan on the shoulder hard and slips past him into the apartment in search of her sister. Nanami is slumped on a corner of the couch in her PJs, nominally watching an episode of Dead Boy Detectives on the TV though since the door opened, her eyes are kind of fixed and her posture kind of tense. "Didn't invite you," she says, without looking over. "Maybe I invited her," Gaétan replies with a shrug. "Maybe you should have." He's trudging into their kitchen, opening up the fridge to frown inside it before holding up a pitcher of lemonade and a can of some kind of hippie probiotic soda, brows lifting in offer to Kelawini. "I like da--" Kelawini points at the lemonade, and then somewhat redundantly also says, "lemonade. Tanks." She unslings her red-and-black messenger bag and settles in on the floor in front of her before sitting down on the couch, not too close to Nanami. "You always been the smart one. But I'm one big stupid head for tink you were okay. Nobody okay." Nanami pulls her shoulders in a little tighter. She doesn't reach for the remote, but the television shuts off. "Nobody okay," she agrees reluctantly, still not looking at Kelawini, "so what's the difference. Just waiting for the next hellworld or torture jail or --" She shrugs one shoulder jerkily. Gaétan fills two glasses with ice and lemonade, bringing them over to set them on the table in front of the Māhoes. He looks just slightly put out when the TV goes off but does not complain. "Alien invasion," he supplies, offhand, in the gap of Nanami's aborted sentence. "Das why hard!" Kelawini is gamely trying to make this sound flippant rather than plaintive. "I never know what to do, but I'm no good at waiting so I try...tried to study harder." She laughs awkwardly. "Too late for my GPA, az all." She picks up her lemonade, takes one gulp and is immediate struck by inspiration. "Eyyy, go stay come holoholo! You can wait in a park, too." "I don't want to go out," Nanami snaps, but looks immediately a little chagrined about snapping. She shakes her head, and though her voice is still displeased it's less sharp now. "It was always too late. That school full of shit. We don't get to just -- graduate and have normal lives. What you think is gonna happen? You go college -- study computers," she says this with an emphasis that suggests this choice is in itself an outrage, "get a nice job, have a nice life?" She sucks her cheek against her teeth in a sharp dismissal of this entire idea. Gaétan almost says something, here -- at least he looks like he's considering it pretty hard. He studies Nanami and then Kelawini, mouth twitching small and meaningless to the side. He's unobtrusive as he slips back away, disappearing into his bedroom and closing the door quietly behind himself. Kelawini's shoulders curl inward at something Nanami says, well after the snapping. She doesn't answer for a few seconds. "Ainokea 'bout normal," she says, sounding small and petulant. "But I thought maybe I study computers, make some money, take care of 'ohana. I never think it was that stupid. If can, can. If no can..." She shrugs tightly. "...can still wait for da kine." "It's stupid," Nanami says, emphatic and stress-edged. "You never even care much about no computers before then we wen get lock up, force into it, now you want that your whole life? Why? Paint some big target on you? Have the government disappear you, rewrite your head to work for them too? You shouldn't even be here, they know what we are together." "You like I change my major, I'll change, but that target already hea!" Kelawini jabs a finger at her own forehead, then Nanami's. "If they want us they no care if we together. It stay easier for um if we not. It come much harder for um if we get odda peopo kōkua. People who know how they work and try to keep us safe and I'm not even talk 'bout no school. We get Unco Joshua, and da flat-ass white boy next door, and dat hippie pake witch, and..." Her impassioned speech derails, gently and with surprising grace. "...some other lolos. We get one community hea." Her head wobbles reluctantly. "It's little, and broken, but still good, ey? Chance um." Nanami flinches immediately back away from the jab, shrinking tighter into the corner of the couch. "You got a community here, maybe. Sorry I don't think sharing some trauma makes them my people." The TV flicks back on. "Just -- go. I neva ask you fo come here." Kelawini subsides, chastened, when her sister shrinks away. "Gomen. I no tink that neither." She sounds quiet and subdued, now. "It's not the trauma. S'what you do 'bout it. Nobody okay, but I know you care. Das how you come one community. Even if you don't care about that, I'm your people. I'm your family. Yeah." She swallows. "You tink I'm stupid, you probably right. So try help. Skosh?" "An den? If it's what you do, that flat-ass white boy," Nanami is tipping her chin in the direction of Gaétan's room, "he my community. Our cousins, our makua, our kūpuna, they my community. Not no "unco" I never see if nobody getting shot. Not no Harm run around pretend to give a shit about everybody else in the world so they don't gotta think about their friends here. And not you." She shakes her head, and though her shoulders are caaaautiously easing out of their defensive tension she is still somewhat subconsciously pressed as far to the corner of the couch as she can get. "What I got in common with any these haoles. The world want us dead? That's not no community. You want fo stay here, be scared together, spend your life waiting for the cops to kill everyone, kay den. Leave me out of it." "I know I never do um right." Kelawini picks up her glass, then puts it back down again. "I like try fo do more better. Why you tink I come hea?" She shrugs. "I wen tell you, I no good at waiting. Das why I study hard, for kōkua 'ohana, yeah. But I wen so jam up for pau school I never see notting else an I know az bad." She turns away, staring past the TV and trying to square her broad shoulders. "Yeah I sked. You sked too, no ak. World want us dead one way or another, and we stronger together. Plenny people here and back home got our back, differen kine ways. They didn't, we'd still be in that place. If I gotta choose one..." She reels her messenger bag back in by the strap and settles it across her lap, chewing on her lower lip. "Is it too late for that, already?" "No, they fucking don't, just sh--" Nanami snaps, sharper and angrier, but after this flare of irritation she just deflates, kind of defeated. "It's not -- about you," she doesn't sound sharp anymore, just frustrated, and tired. "I neva wen text you either. Back home I neva would have to. No way to just -- disappear. Someone's hurting, everyone know it. In some real community, everyone matter. Not because I'm some freak who fits a cause. Not cuz students is their job. Just cuz. We people there. All the reason anyone need to have our back. You choose whatever you want, ainokea. I'm going home." | |
