caughtinanetwork | [Text] It's about time.

[ You may have noticed, Vatheon, that Ryoji hasn't been around much.

Partly, it was because he'd been sleeping A LOT on and off, and the usually social young boy had decided he'd rather not venture outside much.

The latest curses had not helped matters any, and when all is finally said and done, he rolls over out of bed, finally waking properly. He'd been a sort of semidepressed zombie of late, but he attributed that to the coral.

... Truthfully, it was probably only half the coral. He sends a message out over the Network: ]

-- USER [ anonymous ] HAS LOGGED ON TO SFC NETWORK --

hey Vatheon
i had a question for you all
im wondering if anyone can maybe help me out???
i know girls are usually best at this thing buuuut its kind of complicated and i dont really know how to go about this thing...
i guess what im asking is
can i get some romance advice?
its flushed, i think.
and i just dont know what to do about it
to be honest im pretty depressed it sucks big time but its a really long story i dont wanna go into here :(
if anyone is willing to listen to a woeful guys plight id be pretty grateful
thanks

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SOB he's not a coward he just--wants to know if he's doing the right thing... ]

i guess thats fair
i just dont want anyone to get hurt...

tomorrow is valentines and i was... thinking of asking someone i like out!!
but they're really kind of......
um
well anyway
i have another friend i am pretty sure who likes this person??
and i dont want to hurt her....
so im not sure what i should do!!

...

also my friend is scary when shes mad..... |･ω･｀)

[Hiding behind anon and too afraid to speak up about their feelings?

Hm. Yeah, good luck convincing Yukari of that.]

doesn't sound like there's gonna be a clean way out of this, so you're just gonna have to decide what's more important to you.

It's not your job to take care of your friend, right? but i'm sure fighting will only make it awkward for your crush and youve got to remember that, too.

[...Even as she's typing, this feels strange. First of all, she has her own problems to worry about, with tomorrow being Valentines' Day. A decision to make regarding Minato and whether she should tell him or let the opportunity pass by the wayside, like all of the other times she's thought of it. She doesn't have time to be chatting up this Anon. person, yet...

...

At the same time, she's getting a serious case of deja vu.

In the end, she hits send anyway, the thought lingering at the back of her mind and growing larger as she entertains it.]

[ ......... /sob ]

i dont want to hurt anyone but im SO tired of all this indecision and always HOPING hell take a hint
its hard
and i know it cant... be easy for her.....
weve fought before too so i just.....
i feel like before i do anything i should see what someone with an outside perspective would say is all.
........
it might be messy regardless but i dont want to ruin our friendship because..... shes my friend and i care about her as much as i do about HIM........

why does this have to be so complicated.......!!! （；_；）
but hes so important to me i think ive gotta do this...
i just havent made any moves before for her sake....

he's probably important to her, too. and if this guy's as dense as you say, she's probably in the same boat as you. did you ever think about that?

[Of course they have.

They made this broadcast, didn't they? That's the whole point of it, to figure out how to rectify this. But then there's options he isn't quite considering. Too afraid to consider.]

You say you don't want to hurt her, but what do you think is gonna happen when she finds out you went public with all of this, even anonymously?

i think she's the one you need to talk to. not us. Even if you're afraid. I'm not sure an outsider's prospective will help here

[She's projecting at this point. She knows she is. Ryoji's been asleep on and off for quite some time, so she hasn't thought about it in a while; and yet everything is still so relevant. She hasn't forgotten...so who is this person? She finds herself re-reading over the text he's sent so far, taking note of the emoticon he uses, his typing style...

Had Ryoji woken up again?

With a sigh, she types one last sentence, and hits send.]

you guys need to communicate, and then make a decision from there.

[Maybe she's talking as much to herself as she is to this person.]

........ i know she is
which is why i didnt want to even make any moves and why ive waited so long because well--
shes... my friend!!!!!!!!
but.....
youre right.
im just afraid of hurting her i guess.............. ((T.T； )(； T.T))
i really care about her too you know???
i guess all i can do is be honest with them
ive never done this before and its really new to me so i just...
(｡｡ヾ) ...... i just dont want to lose them both as friends if it doesnt work out is all.

Things might be rocky for a while at worst, but there's always a way out of it. A way to work things out

You guys are just gonna have to look for it and stop hiding from each other like this.

[That may be a jab at the fact that he's still anon, or the fact that neither of them have been able to confess their feelings. He can feel free to interpret it however he wishes; but either way, it's getting harder and harder to convince herself that this is just some stranger.]

... heh
guess so.

... i know doing this probably seems cowardly
but i honestly just want to know if this is the right thing to do before i do it
i... figure theres lots of people with more experience than me
well honestly????????
almost EVERYONE has more experience than i do
i mean i try to pretend i know what im doing but... thats with girls
and thats different
ive always felt like if enough people liked me i could stop feeling so empty
maybe thats why im afraid of losing them both or even just one of them
i hope she understands 8(

You don't need any confirmation from me. even if you don't have any experience, you gotta learn somehow. Make your own mistakes and all that...

if you don't take risks, then you're never gonna get what you want

and then neither of you will be happy, stuck in limbo like this.

it'll be easier if you guys are on the same page about it. You know?

........ yeah
i guess youre right :(
that doesnt make this any easier sigh
i feel like this could be solved if he wasnt so bad at figuring things out

sometimes

i wonder if he just does it for the sake of us???
like... he wants everyone to stay friends and together cause thats what our--group... does?
but like
no man he would have said something i think
hes really leaderly so.......
i guess... all i can do is tell him tomorrow
i think its a fitting day for it right???
i need to think about what im going to say
nothing fancy i just.. want to be honest

[...He's slipping.

Or at least that's definitely what it feels like. But maybe he hadn't tried very hard to hide it in the first place. Because even though there are probably many groups that fit the description, there's only one that comes to her mind at the moment.

And one leaderly person who's dense enough.]

...i should have known it was you, Ryoji.

Im sorry, but i'm probably going to tell him, too. It'd hardly be fair for you to be the only one.

[She sends another text a minute later.]

I don't think it's exactly fair for us to put him on the spot like that either, but it sounds like you want to know as badly as i do

........ of course i do

i mean

its been a whole year Yukari.
i will say this
i hope he seriously considers how you feel as much as me :(
none of us is any less important than the other right
but i do feel bad here. for him. i know its putting him in an awkward position but--
is it fair for us to keep hoping someday hell stop thinking we cant be with him?
ive been trying for awhile now to let you guys be alone but its
not really working...
so.......
so this is the only option left, i guess.

... its not really a competition
like i said earlier, i dont want anyone hurt over this
but were already being hurt by him not saying stuff so...

...

but it is a competition. You may not want it to be one, but that doesn't change the fact that we both want him all to ourselves...right? Even if we are both important to him.

[heh.]

if that was enough, i don't think we'd be having this conversation right now.

but i do believe in what i said. I think there's a way we can come out of this and still be friends. i'm just not sure we can come out of this without being hurt in some way.

we're just going to have to cross that bridge when we come to it.

[Text] It's about time.

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