Author: Lurina

218: Locked Universe Mystery (𒐀) - The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere | Royal Road

Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day

Once I ran out of things to say to Ptolema and had nothing to do but reflect on my thoughts, it took me about 20 minutes to solve the howdunnit.

Roughly the same amount of time passed again before the door finally opened, at which point I was more or less over the tantrum I'd been having in the aftermath. Actually, that's an understatement; I felt pretty embarrassed about it. In retrospect, it was comically obvious that my constant metagaming and refusal to take the game in good faith had ended up making it much harder to work anything out. I'd latched on to one very specific theory, and then when that hadn't worked out, oscillated between resignation and sneering cynicism, except for right at the end when I got so frustrated I'd been in the mindset of prying the truth out with a crowbar.

I wasn't even sure the story was meant as an anti-mystery. It was like I'd been thinking earlier: I had to remember the fact that these people had likely been doing this hobby on-and-off for longer than I'd even been alive. It was natural that there would be little winks and nods at the themes and higher concepts of the genre-- That didn't mean they were what the entire story was about. It was probably just a flourish they'd given to Summiri's character.

I hated these parts of my personality; I always latched on to one way of thinking about things and then refused to let it go, and always got so worked up whenever things didn't go my way. More than that, though, I just wasn't suited for this sort of thing. I already felt so much better now that I could relax as-- Well, with the obvious qualifiers, as my normal self. Maybe it would have been different if the conclave hadn't traumatized me, or if I was just a better actress. But I'd definitely stick to books and dramas going forward.

Anyway, all this left me feeling nervous about meeting the other players, who probably all thought I was a stupid asshole. Far from what I'd said to Ptolema, I was seriously worried about how whichever one of our classmates it was would react. I'd be fine if it was Fang or Ezekiel or something, but if it was Ophelia or, god forbid, Theo, I was about to have a fucking stroke.

Despite the clothing that Dilmun had given me being an outfit I liked (though, admittedly, I liked it a lot more when I was in my first half-century than now), I was getting kind of sick of it, and also felt awkward about the idea of wearing it to this meeting. If the conclave attendees really were micro-celebrities of a sort, if only in this tiny subculture, then I didn't want to look too specifically like, well, myself. Maybe that was an irrational idea; they'd either have pictures of me or they wouldn't, and if they did, attire wouldn't make much of a difference, but I did it anyway.

I wasn't good enough at this particular aspect of the Power to reshape an outfit altogether, but I could at least change the color palette. I switched my dress robe to sunset hues, red, orange and brown, then tied my hair back into a ponytail, which I used to do for work. I removed my glasses, temporarily fixing my eyesight, and tucked them into my pocket. They didn't have a mirror here, so I could only see my reflection in a glass of water; I hoped I didn't look stupid.

Then, somewhat hesitantly, I opened the door.

I don't know what I'd expected, but after a whole day in a series of tiny historically-accurate rooms, I think I'd hoped it would be a little more exciting. The room beyond was a small, cozy lounge, more in the style of the Valley than the City. It had a stocked bookcase, a coffee table on a fluffy rug, and a few cushioned chairs. It didn't even look that nice compared to the watch house or the town hall. It had one window, overlooking the desert landscape of the Island, plus of course Dilmun's eternal sky.

It was weird that I was starting to associate that color with being outdoors now. Seeing it actually made me relax, feeling less claustrophobic than the fake sky of the murder mystery scenario.

There was one other person in the room: A skinny, cyan-haired androgyne wearing what looked like a bathrobe. They were reading a newsheet; there was a pile of them on the table. They didn't turn as I entered.

"...um," I said. "Hello."

"Yo," they said apathetically, still not turning. Their voice also could have gone either way.

I stood there awkwardly. Despite the window being a crack open, the room was effectively soundless, to the point I could hear every crinkle in the parchment as they gripped the rim, and even the movements of their lips as their expression subtly shifted in reaction to whatever they were reading. I had been in this room for less than 30 seconds, and I was already managing to turn it into a torturous experience. This could not continue.

I cleared my throat. "Should I, uh... May I sit down?"

They shrugged. "It's a free heaven."

I hesitated for a moment, then stepped over, taking a seat across from them, which I instantly realized was a miscalculation as now I couldn't even see their face properly. I clicked my tongue, glancing at the books. Naturally, they were all murder mysteries. For some reason I found this extremely annoying.

Why is this so awkward? My social anxiety moaned. What happened to the afterparty? Why is there only one person who won't even say anything?

Maybe they expect you to say something, my common sense replied.

Oh, fuck off. You don't even mean that. You know this is weird. You're just playing devil's advocate.

Maybe we were waiting for someone. That was the obvious answer, wasn't it? People would keep trickling in, and eventually the person running the show would turn up. Then things would kick off.

I waited. There was no clock in the room, so I pulled my resonator back out and idly kept track of the time. Two minutes, three minutes, four minutes. I was too worked up to start a round of Save the Ship!, but eventually I started idly browsing through the Crossroad's equivalent of the logic sea, reading about some concert happening tomorrow at some place called the 'The Burial Ground' that everyone seemed excited about. Six minutes, seven minutes, eight minutes. This was getting really weird. I thought about messaging Ptolema to ask her if there was some social convention going over my head, but it felt too awkward.

By the time I was approaching the ten minute mark, it felt like I either needed to say something, or declare this entire venture a wash and go home. It was only going to get worse. Rebelling against every social instinct I had, I opened my mouth."

"S-So, uh." I swallowed the air. "That was interesting, huh?"

"What was?" They answered instantly. They didn't sound annoyed, but my mind painted the picture regardless.

"...the game, I mean."

"Oh." A pause. "I guess so."

"What did you think?" I asked.

"It was okay."

I felt a brief pulse of anger. Maybe there was a bit of Kasua that hadn't cleared out of my system, but I briefly entertained the idea of trying to beat them to death with the table. That was probably legal here, right? Ptolema hadn't given a direct answer when I'd brought it up, but one could argue that not having an impenetrable barrier was essentially consent.

No, I was being ridiculous. Obviously there were conversational hooks with a bit more grip than that.

"Who were you playing?" I instantly felt regret. "Unless you want to save that for the-- The meeting."

"Oh." No, this was good, this was the right call. "You did great! Your acting was amazing."

They turned the page on the newssheet. I caught a glimpse of their face; they looked skeptical, though fortunately not in a judgemental way. "You thought so?"

"Yeah, definitely," I said. "When you were shouting at us on the roof of the train, I-- I mean, I really believed that."

They were silent for a moment. "Honestly, I wasn't really feeling it," they eventually said. "I never have time to build up a good idea for the character for these one-shots. I was rehearsing all week, but she still just felt like a bunch of tropes, especially down the line. A bit tunnel-vision rationalist, a bit zombie survivalist, a bit jaded consummate professional. I did this one where I was roleplaying a centurion who'd been stranded behind enemy lines and had to hold his troop together back in '73, and I bet if you swapped their bodies you wouldn't be able to tell them apart."

(I forgot to mention this, but the Crossroads had its own calendar which progressed according to the Valley's artificial seasonal cycle, dating from the Domain's founding. It was CC 33129. Suffice it to say, in Dilmun terms, these were rookie numbers.)

"I don't normally sign up for these. The only reason I did is that I've got a five year commitment coming up on next Monday, so there was almost nothing I could squeeze in for the time I had. It was this or some three-day alternate history high society scenario that sounded like it was mostly just an excuse plot for some hardcore BDSM setpieces. Full-time erotic roleplayers are bad enough, but baseline body ones? It's so fucking pedestrian. I'd get more turned on pouring bleach up my asshole."

I blinked three times. "No-- Yeah, they're annoying, for sure." I cleared my throat again, glancing towards the window. "What are you gonna be doing for the next five years? If it's not prying, I mean."

"It's a woodland creatures thing."

"Woodland... creatures thing," I echoed.

"We'll still be allowed to talk," they clarified. "Doing that kind of thing completely realistically just bores me. I starve without some form of conversation, let alone having to pretend not to be sapient. But otherwise it'll be full realism. Square 100 kilometers of forest, little under a hundred residents, something like 2,000 Tertiaries. All the rest will be ghosts with a marker. I'll be playing a squirrel."

I could assume from the context that 'resident' was a catch-all for both Primaries and Secondaries, but the next part confused me, and the question slipped out before I could stifle it. "Ghosts?"

They lowered the sheet for a moment, giving me a funny look. "Yeah. Like, golems. Bots."

That term felt a little... strange. If they were qualia-less actors, wouldn't it make more sense to use 'zombie'? 'Ghost' made you think of a consciousness without a body, not the other way around.

Eirene's player either didn't notice or didn't care how much this ignorance outed me as being new to all this, because they went right back to talking as if I understood the whole culture. "What I'm really looking forward to is what's next after that, though. I have a spot in the next Urmiah Trouple scenario, which kicks off at the turn of the decade."

"I'm not familiar," I said. This sounded more obscure, so I felt less self-conscious.

"They do enclosed full-life experiences. One of the last groups that do, since what went down at the Magilum." This made sense; 'Urmiah' was an archaic word in Ysaran for 'lifetime'. "You drop your memories, start as an infant, the whole shebang. They put the effort in, too - 500+ person team, at least 250 there 24/7 in case the ghosts aren't cutting it and they need to direct, all fully certified in writing and acting at the Keep. And the whole thing is two-generational, with the parents played by people who haven't wiped. As close to real as it gets." I thought they were done, but then after a moment continued, for the first time in the exchange sounding slightly passionate. "This one will start off as a period piece in the early Imperial Era, but the gimmick is that there'll be a supernatural element thrown in after a couple decades that we don't know anything about in advance. I'm really excited for it."

I nodded slowly, smiling. Obviously I'd heard plenty about people doing this kind of thing by now, but hearing it in person was still kind of striking. "Wow, that's-- Yeah, it sounds amazing. It would probably be really exciting to start off with a mundane life and then have an, uh. You know, suddenly you break through everything you thought was... possible." I glanced downward, running my tongue over my lips uncomfortably as I thought about what I'd just said. "I hope you have a good time."

They moved their upper body very slightly in a motion that might have been intended as a shrug.

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I was worried about the conversation dying again, so after a few seconds added. "Isn't it... scary, existentially, though? To forget who you even are?"

"It's kind of the point," they answered bluntly.

"But at the end, you have to process the fact that your entire life has been a lie," I continued. "That none of the relationships or the things you believed in were even real. Right?"

This elicited a somewhat longer pause. "Yeah," they eventually said, their tone solemn, but in a way that made it feel like we weren't actually on the same page. "That is the worst part."

Honestly, if I thought about it for more than a few seconds, that didn't seem like even close to the worst part. I could see the appeal in abstract, but the whole idea sounded like a phenomenal leap of faith in regard to the people running the show. Like, what if the management team fell apart half way through, and everything in your life suddenly became fake and low effort? Or the supernatural twist was that the world was invaded by aliens that existed purely to enact the writers' fetish? Hell, they could just straight-up torture you for kicks. Under none of these conditions would you even be able to know anything was wrong.

Worst of all, couldn't a repeat of the Magilum happen, where you were tricked into staying longer? Maybe that wasn't possible; I still wasn't quite sure how the memory-wiping book worked. I really needed to look into that.

Either way, though, the very fact that it existed meant there were still a lot of bad things that could happen to you in Dilmun, if you just did as you pleased.

As I was thinking of this, they spoke up again. "So who were you?"

I stiffened. I'd kind of hoped they'd be too apathetic to ask.

"Uh, I was Kasua," I told them.

"Oh." Beat. "You were okay."

"You... thought so?"

"Sure." They flipped the page again; their face had returned to neutrality. "I mean, we didn't really interact until the end."

"I-- I guess not," I admitted, feeling a little relieved.

"I was planning on trying to bring you over to my side. I got the impression that was what the writer wanted me to do. But you spent all your time hanging around the Fellows, so we never even got a chance to talk."

"Your side?"

"I was the detective."

I blinked.

Actually, this made perfect sense. It had only been established in passing, but unlike the rest of the servants, Eirene wasn't a full-time member of Rastag's staff, but a former hire. In other words, she was the only true outsider in the entire situation, having no possible motive to kill. I'd had this thought during the game, but had dismissed it on the basis of, well, not really knowing anything about her and assuming there could just be more going on beneath the hood.

And then, of course, there was the way she'd taken charge of the situation once everything had started falling apart. Trying to get everyone in one spot where the crime could be analyzed methodically. In other words, a parlor scene. She'd been trying to create a parlor scene.

I felt stupid for not getting it sooner. (Though maybe that was hindsight bias. That was the thing with mysteries: Unless they were written utterly incompetently, you could always find reasons to say 'oh, that made sense' after it was all over. But the problem was when multiple things had obvious clues pointing to them at the same time. Like, if it had turned out Noah was the detective after all, I could just as easily point to his textbook eccentricity, absence of a connection to Rastag and the wider cast, and the fact that he was, well, literally a detective. And then I'd be saying I was stupid to ever doubt things beyond the surface level.

That was why hard closed room mysteries were so important to me. If they were done perfectly, if the author accounted for absolutely every way the reader could confuse or render open-ended the situation, then they only had one solution. And that solution, that point of absolute tangibility, could be the guiding star through which all events of the novel could be interpreted; when you eliminate the impossible, all that remains is the truth.

In the end, I probably liked mystery stories for the same reason I told you at the very beginning of all of this: Because they attempted to communicate an absolute meaning. A line between which things were either true or false, one thing or another, good or evil. Where it was obvious who I was and where I was supposed to be. A light that destroyed nihilism and gave birth to the universe-- Even if it was only a fantasy.)

"I'm sorry," I admitted. "I'm new to... this sort of hobby. I didn't--" Fuck, that was close. I almost said I didn't think she was an important character, which would have confessed to metagaming. "--uh, feel like Kasua would be interested in you. She was looking for her mother's killer, and she suspected it was one of Rastag's old associates."

"Yeah, I figured it was something like that."

"What were you doing for the whole day? I assumed you were in the kitchen, but if you were the detective..."

"Mostly talking to the other servants or Summiri. Got some time with Hildris and Noah, too. But I figured out pretty quickly that Gaizarik was the weak link in the conspiracy, so it felt like a better idea to push him and watch the rest from a distance."

"Conspiracy," I restated.

"Did you not figure it out? A lot of the inheritors were working together," they revealed. "The writer for these things loves conspiracy plots, so I figured it out fast. Gaizarik was being blackmailed, and Summiri was being paid off. Or I thought so, at least. Her motives feel a bit more inscrutable now, I should have spent time with her." They exhaled subtly in a way that might've been a sigh. "It was novel, so I shouldn't complain, but I'm kind of annoyed I got shot out of nowhere. Everything happened so quickly in this one compared to the last two, and the way everything fit together felt different. I'd been expecting Noah to have vanished once we broke down the door, and then we'd have to puzzle out how he disappeared, but instead it was just over."

There was a lot to unpack here. I definitely should have spent some time in the game interacting with the servants - despite the butler-did-it taboo, there were enough mysteries that subverted that it was stupid to write them off as nonentities, and the only real excuse I had was that I couldn't think of a reason for Kasua to do it.

I latched on to one phrase. "This wasn't your first one?"

"It was part of a series. The whole gimmick was that Eirene was this suffering everywoman character, trying all these different jobs and getting wrapped up in crimes." They lowered the paper slightly, glancing upwards. "Guess she's just dead now. Kind of a shitty ending. But I was moving on anyway."

"So... this was kind of your game."

"Well, it was before. I think I was the only real player in the last two. But you walked in here, so." They raised the paper back up.

I was about to ask what she meant by the 'only real player' (did she just mean that they were part of the staff running the game, or could some of the people I'd been interacting with have been golems? That level of sophistication was hardly beyond Dilmun) but an intrusive thought struck me instead. "Wait, you, uh." I hesitated. "You were looking for a conspiracy plot because it was in the last two games."

"Isn't... that metagaming?"

They paused. "I guess." They turned the page. "Everybody does it for this kind of game, though."

There were several moments of silence.

Suddenly, behind me, a door creaked open. I hadn't realized until this very moment, but the one I'd entered from had either disappeared or moved, with this new one taking its place. I looked over my shoulder to see who was coming.

It was-- It was the fucking cat. Of course. Of course the cat was the game master all along, that made absolute sense in a way that transcended mystery reveals. God fucking damn it. What was it with people in this world and cats?

The cat was followed by what looked like a floating cooking pot adorned with a couple sheets of parchment, and also spoke in an androgynous voice, though somewhat higher in a way appropriate for a cat. "Hello. Very sorry for having kept you both waiting."

"It's fine," the person sitting across from them said.

"Here's your scoring and commentary sheet, Eri," the cat said, one of the pieces of parchment folding and floating towards their lap. "I'm afraid that'll have to be it for today. I'm a little busy, so I can't do another long post-mortem."

They took the sheet. "I was hoping to ask about a couple things, but I guess that's fine." They lowered the newssheet, rising to their feet.

Then they stood there for a moment. They looked at me, the cat, the cooking pot.

"Are you," they said, "not going to see her off too?"

"Apologies, but we're done for the day," the cat said in a friendly tone.

"It just seems a little weird--"

"Eri," the cat spoke, tone still superficially friendly but now extremely insistent. "Hit the bricks."

A square section of the wall disappeared next to them, bisecting the window. The woman of a couple passing by on the road pointed.

"Wow," 'Eri' replied, frowning. "Rude."

Taking the newssheet with them, they walked out on to the sands, then took off into the air, quickly disappearing in the direction of the City. The wall rebuilt itself behind them.

"Wonderful," the cat said, hopping up onto the chair that had just been vacated.

"...I'm assuming based on that, that you're the one who's supposed to know me," I said slowly.

"You deduced that much? But I was being so subtle." It let out a small laugh. "But you're getting ahead of yourself. As it stands, there's no proof that we know one another at all. You wouldn't be the first stranger I've encountered capitalizing on one of our names, or even yours specifically."

"You want me to prove it?" I asked. "Through Spectating?"

"Obviously."

"I don't know how to do it," I told it, which was the truth. I hadn't even tried since meeting with Neferuaten.

"I'll do it for you, then. You won't weasel out of this with that kind of trick." It extended a paw. "Make physical contact with me."

I stared at the creature for a moment. I thought about petting it instead as a bit, but decided against it, grabbing its limb between my thumb and forefinger.

It was a little different to how Nora had done it; there had to be different ways you could present the same information. Images started flashing all around us, scenes from the Old Yru Academy of Medicine and Healing - the quad, our classrooms, the auditorium. I saw scenes of our class assembled in various contexts; tests, socializing, one of the headmaster's stupid conferences. It was nostalgic, though in an unpleasant, overwhelming way.

"Since I assume you don't want me following your claimed past self home or into the lavatory, name a time when you were alone that you wouldn't mind me seeing," the feline instructed. "If you really are Utsushikome of Fusai, you should hardly struggle with such a task."

I thought about it for a moment. Irritatingly, it was surprisingly difficult to recall occasions I'd been alone where I could be absolutely certain I hadn't mumbled or done anything at least a little embarrassing, incriminating, or some combination of the two.

"October 12th, 1408, 6 PM, in the hall they gave us for testing arcana," I eventually settled on. I remembered it better because it was right around my birthday.

The scene flickered and sped through time like something from an echo game, then suddenly came to a halt at the time in question. As I remembered, I was standing over a desk, a dead pigeon sitting in a jar next to me, looking over some papers with visible frustration on my features.

"Oh, it's this!" the cat exclaimed. It laughed in its squeaky voice, though sounded like it was suppressing more. "The pigeon you tortured."

"I didn't torture it," I said. "It was already dead. You can't torture something that's already dead."

"You defiled its dignity, at least. That certainly brings back memories." It looked up at me, smiling (which was a little uncanny, since real cat smiling didn't work quite like that). "There are ways to cheat this sort of test, if you have the proper resources. Who it qualifies as 'present in a scene' is a little generous, and when you consider the length of a life and how many Primaries had connections in the mortal realm, it can be surprisingly tenable to find a specific moment where the imposter happened to be standing in earshot. However, the fact that you picked this in particular..." It hesitated. "But I should insist, just to be on the safe side. One more."

It actually ended up asking for two more. First I showed it a scene where I was alone in a tram carriage later that winter, and when this was rejected as too ambiguous, a grisly scene where I was changing part of my robes after a dissection. (I wanted to pick something a little bit spiteful, that had a voyeuristic undertone while being the opposite of sexually appealing.)

"Well," the cat finally said. "I'll be damned. I hadn't trusted what I'd heard, but there's really no room for doubt. It must be you."

"You know, Bardiya and Ptolema weren't this skeptical," I remarked dryly.

"I certainly wouldn't want to speak ill of them."

"Okay, so you know who I am, and that I've been around. You presumably have some information about how I was directed here." I squinted. "Can we drop this weird pretense, now?"

"Not so fast," it said. "You still don't know who I am."

I snorted.

"Why don't we make a game of it?" The cat suggested. "You've seen the story I created for this game. Why don't you try deducing--"

"You're Kamrusepa," I interjected.

The cat paused. I paused.

"That's an interesting conclusion to jump to so quickly," the cat stated tactically. "What makes you so certain?"

"Because it's super fucking obvious."

"That's not a thesis."

"The fact that you just said 'that's not a thesis' is what makes it so obvious," I countered. "You're like, affecting a sort of more ambiguous neutral tone to your speech, but it's paper thin. A minute ago you called the outside world the 'mortal realm'. Nobody says that. Only you would say that."

"Seems like something of an association fallacy. Not firm ground to base a supposition."

"Listen to yourself!" I demanded. "You latched on to the pigeon thing and laughed at it. You tried to kick that other guy out in the most passive-aggressive way possible. You're Kamrusepa! Kam. Kamrusepa of Tuon." I rubbed a hand over my face. "Oh my god, I can't believe I was overthinking this so much. You really did just make a scenario set in Rhunbard because you're from Rhunbard, and it's even about rich people. The whole plot with Summiri was about immortality research. I'm fucking-- I can't believe this shit. It really is just the most obvious answer."

"You're being a bit of a poor sport right now, you know," the cat criticized me. "Even if you're correct, don't you think you might get something out of examining your priors?"

I considered repeating the phrase 'examining your priors' in a stupid voice, but held myself back. Instead, I crossed my arms and just stared at it across the table. It had been a long day.

"This is infantile," the cat said.

"Pot calling the kettle black," I stated.

We stared one another down for another few moments.

Finally, it sighed. "Fine. Gods above, I'm not sure if I should be annoyed or relieved to see you acting so typically boorish."

And then, unceremoniously, the cat vanished, and Kamrusepa - as if it hadn't been centuries for me, and countless ages for her - was sitting in front of me. She was dressed a little differently than she used to, with less jewelry and a fur cloak that made her look more like she'd come from the countryside, but otherwise she was identical. Her hair hadn't even really changed.

My chest suddenly lurched a bit. Even though I'd deduced it was her, some part of me hadn't believed it, and now this all felt different.

"There," she said, wearing a slightly smug smile much like she'd always worn, but with a subtly different, perhaps wistful quality. "Now that you've performed a summary execution of all the magic in the situation, I suppose I should--"

"Do the same for me."

She frowned. "Pardon?"

"Prove that it's really you," I insisted, narrowing my eyes. "This was too obvious, now that I think about it. I'm not sure I believe it."

She scoffed, and a flash of something between annoyance and amusement crossed her face, along with a roll of her eyes. She took my hand again, and three more scenes flashed by in rapid succession. Her alone in what must have been her apartment, writing a letter. Her gathering her things from one of the classrooms late in the evening. And the two of us alone in the study hall one evening, having some argument.

"There," she said. "Now, as I was saying, I don't know where to--"

I'd joked to Ptolema that if it really were Kamrusepa, I would kill her on the spot as a bit. And a minute ago I had half-thought I was going to do that. The reasoning - that the mystery was bad - didn't really make sense any more, it wasn't really, but it still would have been fun to try blasting her with some big fireball or something. Make some joke about this whole insane situation.

But instead, before the idea had even finished going through my mind, I found that I'd stood up, stepped around the table, and hugged her.